Kannappa: The Hunter's Eye
Bhakti that ignores the rulebook
On a forested hill in what is now Andhra Pradesh, a young tribal hunter named Thinnan walks up with a kill on his shoulder and meat in his mouth to offer Shiva. He removes the garlands left by the local priest and replaces them with what he has. The priest is horrified. The Shiva Purana is not. This lesson follows Kannappa all the way to the eye he plucks from his own head.
A Hunter on the Hill
On a forested hill above the Swarnamukhi river, in the country we now call Andhra Pradesh, sometime around the early centuries of the common era, a young hunter named Thinnan walks up a stone path with a wild boar slung over his shoulders. He is barefoot. There are leaves in his matted hair. His hands are wet with blood from the kill. In his mouth he is carrying water from the river, the only way a tribal hunter knows to carry water cleanly through a forest, and in his hair he has tucked a few wildflowers and meat from the boar he has just hunted, the choicest pieces, set aside specifically for the god he is going to see.
He is climbing toward a small shrine on the hilltop. Inside the shrine sits a small Shivalinga. The hunter has only recently learned that this stone is a god. A few days earlier, he had wandered up the hill, seen the linga, and been struck by something he could not name. Since then he has not gone home. He is sleeping in the forest. He is hunting only enough to bring the god the best of the meat. His mother thinks he has been possessed. His father, Naganatha, the chief of the Bedar tribal community, has stopped trying to call him back.
Thinnan reaches the shrine. He spits the water from his mouth onto the linga, washing yesterday's offering away. He pulls the wildflowers from his hair and lays them at the foot of the stone. He sets the meat down. He whispers to the god the way he would whisper to his father.
What he does not yet know is that another man is climbing the same hill from the other side every dawn. And the god in the shrine is about to put both of them through the strangest test in the Shaiva canon.