Liaisons between kings and supernaturally accomplishedsiddhas are acommonplace in Indian story literature. They arealso quite commonly fraught. A familiar scene findsthe siddha enacting anoccult ritual to achieve supernormal powers andtranscendental sovereignty. Kings, for their part,may appear in one of two roles. Either they guardsaid siddha from thefiendish beings that are invariably roused in thecourse of esoteric activities, and wield asrecompense magic swords or other gifts that amplifytheir royal fortunes; or else, in more disturbingscenarios, kings arrive on the scene to foil (thatis, decapitate) evil siddhas who require maiden sacrificesfor their transgressive rites. In either case, theprincely figure stands as protector, intervening tosecure some moral order. Siddhas, though, seem always to stand inshadow. David White has recently argued that in thepopular pan-Indic imagination the yogī siddha is fundamentallya “sinister yogī” – an adept who employs occultprocedures to gain power and possession of others,especially royalty (White 2009). But even when thesiddha is not sodepraved, he is arguably still a “dubious” and“self-absorbed” character (Davidson 2002,176-7).

This is seldom the case in Gaurana's fifteenth-centuryNavanāthacaritramu(“Account of the NineNāths”, hereafter NNC). A long poem in the Telugudvipada (“couplet”)genre, Gaurana's work inverts the model of siddha sovereignrelationships at every step as it details theexploits of the first and master Siddha YogīMatsyendranāth and his disciples. Even as it agreesthat relations between siddhas and worldly sovereigns areproblematic, Gaurana's NNC identifies a differentsource for the problem.