Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE WARRIOR SAINTS
knowing how to get inside, he asked the angel Jibrīl about it and the
latter explained that the Prophet should exclaim Dam Madār (‘Madar
is Life!’), the ritual formula of Madariyya (it also means ‘do not
breathe’, ‘hold your breath’, and in a profane vulgar sense, to ‘croak!’).
Only having done justice to the founder of the dubious fraternity,
could the Prophet have entered paradise (Meer Hassan Ali 1975:
375)!
The term dam, meaning ‘breath’, ‘life’ and ‘spirit’, is central to the
ritual practice of the Madariyya sect. Breath control, or ‘breath
retention’ (h˝abs-i dam) was always present in Sufis’ psycho-technical
exercises; dhikr is impossible without it. Al-Hujwiri quotes Bayazid
Bistami, who had said: ‘For gnostic (‘ārif ) faith is holding of breath’
(al-Hujwiri 1992: 210). Founders of Sufi fraternities supposedly
learnt the technique of h˝abs-i dam from the legendary Khizr. As for
Madaris, they originated the doctrine according to which God was
the spirit, Muhammad was the body, and the four righteous Caliphs
were the hands and feet. In this ‘organism’, isomorphic to the world
of Islam, Shah Madar was assigned the role of breath, and holding
it, a dervish simultaneously retained in himself the presence of the
saint as well as his very life.
It is not difficult to see in it a parallel to the teaching of the esoteric
sect of Naths, whose ritual and psycho-technical actions were
directed towards retaining prāņain one’s body, understood both as
a physiological act of breathing and as mystic vital energy, a direct
analogy to the concept of dam. Like Naths, Madaris also strictly
observed celibacy, since the outflow of semen came under the
category of the same loss of vital energy. The same notions about
isomorphism of the universe and the human body are typical for
Naths as they are for Madaris. Finally, Naths, like the Madaris
(who sometimes were called be-qaid-o be-nawā, i.e. ‘without ties
and worldly concern’), did not follow the conventional rituals of
Hinduism, did not make offerings in temples and did not celebrate
religious festivals. The Muslim mystics had been familiar with the
teachings of the Naths since the earliest times, and scholars think
that the term jogī (or yogi), which one comes across all the time
in the Indian Sufi texts, applies precisely to Naths. Taking into
consideration the fact that the Madariyya sect came into being fairly
late and exclusively on Indian soil, it can be surmised that here the
question is not of typological similarity, but of direct influence. 8
The main event of Shah Madar’s ‘urs, celebrated in the month of
Jumāda’l-awwal, was the fire walking of the dervishes, accompanied
by yells of Dam Madār. A shallow ditch was filled up with burning
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