Day 358: The God Market

India today is teeming with millions of educated, relatively well-to-do men and women who enthusiastically participate in global networks of science and technology. The Indian economy is betting its fortunes, at least in part, on advanced research in biotechnology and the drug industry, whose very existence is a testament to a thoroughly materialistic understanding of the natural world. And yet, a vast majority of these middle-class beneficiaries of modern science and technology continue to believe in supernatural powers supposedly embodied in idols, divine men and women, stars and planets, rivers, trees, and sacred animals. By all indications, they treat supernatural beings and powers with utmost earnestness and reverence and go to great lengths to please them in the hope of achieving their desires. Hindus are not the only ones who are becoming more religious—data shows that all the many religious communities of India are showing signs of growing religiosity. But since this book is about Hindus who make up the majority, we will be looking mostly at how the expressions of Hindu religiosity are changing.

That a great many Indians of all religious faiths are taking their gods with them into the new economy is hardly surprising. In this, Indians are no different from people in other fast growing economies like Brazil, China, and Russia: all of these countries are experiencing an explosion of religiosity. Besides, there are industrially advanced countries like the US which have always been highly religious. Contrary to classical theories of secularization, scientific, technological, and economic development does not invariably lead to a decline of religiosity. (We will look at these theories of secularization in the last chapter of this book and see if they help us explain the Indian experience of juggling with religion as it modernizes.)

However, what is noteworthy about the new religiosity of middle-class Indians is how openly ritualistic, ostentatious, and nationalistic it is. Unlike the previous generations that grew up on a mixture of Nehruvian exhortations for cultivating scientific thinking and the neo-Vedantic preference for a more cerebral, philosophical Hinduism, the new Hindu elite and middle classes revel in ritualism, idol worship, fasts, pilgrimages, and other routines of popular, theistic Hinduism, sometimes mixed with new age spirituality. It is not that these more ritualistic expressions of popular Hinduism were entirely absent from the cultural milieu of the educated, middle to upper classes of the generations that came of age in the earlier, more ‘socialist’ and secular era. What has changed is that the ritualistic aspects have moved from the privacy of the home and family, to the public sphere, the domain of pride and prejudice, politics, and profits. What has also changed is that the educated elite don’t feel that they have to defend their practices and beliefs against secularist finger-wagging (which has almost completely disappeared anyway). There is a new, unapologetic, and open embracing of religiosity in India today which wasn’t there in, say, the first half of our sixty plus years as a republic.

Overall, it seems fair to say that economic prosperity is bringing with it a new ‘rush hour of the gods’ in India. The expression ‘rush hour of the gods’ was first used by H. Neill MacFarland back in 1967, in a book bearing this title, to describe the proliferation of new expressions of religiosity in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. It was a time when ‘new religions rose like mushrooms after a rainfall’, attracting millions of Japanese who were left battered after the war. The term ‘rush hour’ was supposed to signify the ‘frenetic quality’ of the mass-based, media-savvy popular religious movements that promised fulfilment of worldly goals through spiritual means to ordinary people.

Today’s India is obviously very different from post-war Japan. The Japanese rush hour, moreover, referred more to new religious cults rather than revival or reinvention of the traditional Shinto or Buddhist faith of the Japanese. Yet, one can legitimately speak of a rush hour of the gods in India, for the new religiosity displays that rather frenzied search for spiritual remedies for material concerns that characterized the Japanese case. Just like the Japanese religious movements were a response to turbulent and traumatic social change, the new Indian religiosity is in part a response to India’s headlong rush into the global economy with all the attendant social and cultural dislocations. Moreover, the new middle-class religiosity in India bears distinct undercurrents of the kind of muscular cultural nationalism that the Japanese displayed before the Second World War that left them defeated, and in despair.

There is no doubt that growing religiosity is, at least in part, a response to new socio-psychological needs created by neo-liberalism and globalization. But this turn to gods and faith was not inevitable, or unavoidable. It is not an unalterable law that all societies undergoing rapid change have to become more religious, for there are societies (especially in Europe) that cope with change in relatively secular ways. Nor is it the case that Indians are innately more religious than any other people, for what often passes as religion in India is a cover for ‘power and pelf’, to use Pavan Varma’s words cited above.

Far from being inevitable, public expressions of Hindu religiosity are growing because they are being facilitated by the Indian state and corporate interests, often in a close partnership. Despite the periodic panics about ‘Hinduism in danger’, and despite the often heard complaint that the Hindus face reverse discrimination in their own country, Hinduism is doing very well. The Indian state and its functionaries operate on the unstated assumption that Hinduism is not merely one religion among other religions of the Indian people, but rather the national ethos, or the way of life, that all Indians must learn to appreciate, if not actually live by. As a result, politicians and policymakers of all political persuasions think nothing of spending taxpayers’ money and deploying public infrastructure for promoting Hinduism in the guise of promoting Indian culture at home and abroad. In recent years, direct state and corporate sponsorship of expressly religious elements of Hinduism (as opposed to artistic and cultural aspects) has become more blatant, as is evident from provision of public funding for yagnas, kathas, and yoga camps; matching grants for organizing religious festivals and pilgrimages; promotion of temple tourism and pilgrimage circuits; providing land and state-financed infrastructure for temples, ashrams and priest training schools; providing funds, physical infrastructure, and official credentials for training in Vedic astrology, vastu, and other elements of Hindu priestcraft; and in some states, even directly paying the salaries of temple priests. In addition, many of India’s well-known family-owned business and industrial houses have a long history of contributing handsomely to building new temples and ashrams, and sponsoring religious events. In the absence of strong enough countervailing institutions and agencies that can offer secular alternatives to these well-funded initiatives, the public sphere in modern India has remained thoroughly intertwined with religious symbols and rituals of the majority religion.

~~The God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu -by- Meera Nanda

Day 355: India Unbound

The bazaars and palaces of Punjab had been filled with talk ever since Alexander made the Persian Empire vanish four years before. The princes of India had shivered when they heard that Persepolis had been set on fire. But the India that Alexander faced was not united. Even Punjab, guarding the northwest gateway, was divided between three major kings and dozens of free tribes who were constantly at war. Their inability to unite lost them four years during which they could have planned for Alexander.

Alexander crossed the Indus near Attock and reached the kingdom of Taxila, between the Indus and Jhelum (Hydaspes) rivers. Ambhi, the king of Taxila, from prudence or cowardice, chose not to fight. He sent Alexander envoys and presents and offered him his army, provided his kingdom was spared. Ambhi warmly welcomed the Greek invader and threw open the gates to his city, long famous as a center of trading and learning. The inquisitive crowds in Taxila watched the strange Greek figures in curious dress who milled about their streets.

Smaller chiefs from the surrounding areas brought presents, and Alexander rewarded them with generous extensions of their territories and vessels of gold and silver. The Greek soldiers performed games and sacrifices before the awestruck citizens. The Greeks were impressed by the civilized city life within the mud-brick maze of Indian streets. They visited the university and the learned men. They watched the rich townsfolk go about in linen tunics, capes, and turbans, their beards dyed white, blue, red, and purple. Some carried umbrellas, others wore leather boots. Holy men blessed the passersby by smearing their foreheads with oil.

Puru watched Alexander from across the Jhelum River. He observed the traitorous alliance struck by Ambhi, his old enemy. He saw the other princes rapidly submit to the new power, including his own Paurava kinsmen. He realized that he was up against huge odds, and he had to fight or surrender. When Alexander’s envoys came to summon him to Taxila, Puru replied that he could meet another king only as an equal. War became inevitable and the stage was set for one of Alexander’s greatest battles.

Alexander’s army soon marched towards the Jhelum, accompanied by Taxila’s forces. When they reached the river and saw Puru’s hundred elephants massed on the other bank, the Macedonian cavalry became frightened. Not having faced elephants before, the Greeks feared them as soldiers feared the Patton tank in recent times. Behind the elephants stood a thousand chariots and Puru’s forty thousand infantry. Although different figures are given about the relative strength of the two forces, they were more or less equal, with Alexander’s cavalry superior in numbers. Alexander quickly realized that a direct crossing would be impossible. Meanwhile, the river began to rise, as the snows melted early in the Himalayas. Heavy rain and storms made the river swell further. Puru’s spies brought news that Alexander had ordered vast quantities of grain, and since nothing seemed to happen for days, Puru concluded that the invasion had been put off for several months, till after the monsoons.

One morning at dawn, Puru was stunned to learn that boats filled with horses had crossed twenty miles up the river. Concealed by the torrential downpour Alexander had quietly moved a third of his army upstream. He had chosen this point because it was hidden from the other side of the bank by a wooded island. As the rain abated, Alexander and his cavalry crossed in the first light of dawn. A single narrow boat carried history—the king himself with his great captains, who would one day rule vast parts of the world: Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt; Lysimachus, the future king of Thrace; Perdiccas, the future regent; and Seleucus, who would inherit Alexander’s vast Asian empire. However, they had not reached the other shore. They were still on the island, which a swollen channel had completely cut off from the eastern shore after the rains.

It was here that Puru’s outposts discovered the Greeks, who had to hurry to get across because Puru’s troops would arrive any moment. They found to their horror that the channel was not fordable: they were caught in a trap. They made desperate efforts at various points, at all of which the water was too deep. In that moment of panic, Alexander reassured his men that they were doing all this for the sake of glory—one day the people of Athens would talk and write about them. Eventually, they found a spot where the water was only waist-high and the men and horses struggled through.

When Puru heard that the enemy had crossed, he sent his son with a force of two thousand mounted men and 120 chariots. He did not send the bulk of his force because he did not believe that this was the main attack. Across the river, he saw the Macedonian phalanxes, the royal guard, and the Asiatic horsemen were in a state of readiness. As soon as Puru’s son reached the scene, he was greeted by a hail of arrows followed by squadron after squadron of the famous Macedonian horsemen. Soon they were overpowered. Four hundred cavalry fell fighting. All his 120 chariots were captured—most of them stuck in the mud, the charioteers dead.

When Puru heard of this, he realized that the final hour of decision had come. He turned his entire force upstream. He placed himself on the largest elephant, alongside the image of Indra. Puru was a giant of a man, and his troops took courage from the sight of their powerfully built leader with the banner of the warrior god. The battle began with the trumpeting of the elephants, which terrified the European horses. Alexander’s thousand mounted archers from Central Asia began to hail arrows upon the Indian left flank. The Indian archers responded, but the rain made it impossible to get a firm rest for their longer bows. When the Indian cavalry began a wheeling movement on the left wing, Alexander’s horse guard charged upon them from the right. The Indian cavalry found itself outnumbered by the Greek cavalry, which had the experience of a hundred battles. Finding that they now had the upper hand, the Greeks sprang a surprise attack from the rear. Puru’s infantry was thrown into confusion. The elephants, pushed back from the front, were now hemmed in from behind. Under stress, they caused a stampede on their own men. Resistance became hopeless; butchery followed. Meanwhile, the balance of Alexander’s forces crossed the river, including two fresh Macedonian phalanxes, and they completed the rout. In the end, Alexander’s superior cavalry had decided the battle. Among the thousands who died that bloody day were two sons of Puru and a brave neighboring prince.

Puru himself, unlike the king of Persia, did not flee nor surrender. Despite the losing battle, he kept fighting and goading his men to keep their honor. Alexander’s forces were impressed, by both his size and his courage. It was only when he was hit by a dart on his right shoulder that, wounded and tired, he turned his elephant to safety. He had not gone far when he recognized the hated face of the traitor Ambhi. He turned around and hurled a lance with whatever strength his wounded arm could muster. Ambhi evaded it and turned back. Soon, two envoys from Alexander came up to him. Loss of blood had made him intolerably thirsty. He halted his elephant and got down. Alexander’s envoys honored him and gave him water to drink, and he commanded them to lead him to their king.

As Puru neared the Macedonian lines, Alexander came galloping out to meet him. He was filled with admiration for his brave and proud adversary and asked Puru how he wished to be treated. “Treat me, Alexander, as you would treat a king,” replied Puru. Alexander was confused and asked him to be more precise. “When I said ‘a king,’” repeated Puru, “everything was said.”

Alexander was pleased with the reply. He not only gave Puru back his kingdom but, much to Ambhi’s chagrin, enlarged Puru’s territory to all the lands towards the east. Thus, Puru accepted the Greek dominion and became Alexander’s faithful and energetic ally. Puru’s own people, like the Greeks, were also proud of their king. Alexander ordered a city of victory, Nicaea, to be built on the field of battle, and another at the gray spot on the opposite bank from where he had crossed the Jhelum that morning. He called the second Bucephala, after his great horse who had died that day. The Greeks then performed their sacrifices and athletic games before the admiring people of the Paurava kingdom. After this great battle of the Hydaspes River the Greeks marched on. When they reached the fifth river of Punjab, the Beas (Hyphasis in Greek), Alexander’s tired army refused to go further. He ordered and cajoled them, but it was to no avail. Disappointed, he turned back, somewhere near modern Gurdaspur.

Seven years later, all trace of Greek authority had disappeared from India. The chief reason was another romantic figure, Chandragupta, who was a lesser warrior but a greater ruler than Alexander. The young nobleman from Magadha, helped by his subtle, Machiavellian adviser, Chanakya, organized an army and overcame the Greek garrisons. He established the Mauryan Empire, which ruled north India and Afghanistan for 137 years.

At the end of this saga, the main question is, why did Puru lose and Alexander win? On the face of it, the invader’s superior strategy and the element of surprise clearly gave the Greeks a decisive edge. However, beneath the surface there were important differences between the two armies. Professor Stephen Rosen, the military historian from Harvard, has recently found the answer in the divisions in Indian society, which resulted in poor coordination in Puru’s army. Puru’s cavalry refused to aid the infantry. On the soggy banks of the Jhelum that morning, the Greek historian Arrian observed, Puru’s chariots got stuck and the charioteers were unwilling to double up as infantry. Later in the day, cohesion in the Indian army broke down as the Macedonian phalanx put pressure on Puru’s infantry, and the elephants pushed back and began to trample their own men. In this crisis, Rosen notes, “the Indian cavalry … did not assist the Indian infantry against the enemy phalanx but dealt as best as it could with the Macedonian cavalry.”

In contrast, Alexander’s army was a professional machine. Originally it had been, like Puru’s, a tribal militia. Neither was Greek society more cohesive, but Alexander had professionalized his army and separated it from the divisions in society. When Alexander’s cavalry first sighted Puru’s troops, their first instinct was to charge. Alexander, however, “checked the advance of his cavalry to allow his infantry to come up with him. Regiment by regiment, they made contact, moving swiftly until the whole force was again united.”

Indian military historians have also noted this aspect. Rosen attributes the lack of solidarity partially to the caste system, although he correctly points out that caste structures were not yet fully developed. Caste, he hypothesizes, divides society, encourages loyalty within the subgroup, and discourages it across caste lines. Puru’s upper-caste mounted cavalry did not sufficiently support the lower-caste soldier who was on foot. Jadunath Sarkar, an authority on ancient and medieval military affairs, said that although “the Indian defenders of the Punjab were brave, each man fought to death in isolation.” The soldiers were “unable to make a mass movement in concert with their brethren of other corps.” The people of Punjab were disunited and narrowly self-centered, with the net effect that “divided we fell.”

Puru may have lost to the greatest general of his time, but the theme of the poor teamwork runs throughout Indian history. Babur’s victories at Panipat and at Khanua (against the Rajput confederacy, led by Rana Sangha) were partly a result of the same deficiencies. Although the Marathas had more cohesive armies, they too suffered because some sub-castes armed themselves against others. The British Empire professionalized the Indian armies, however, and after 1947 the Indian military has been “an island of discipline.” Despite that, there have been problems between generals in the battlefield. In the 1962 Indo-Chinese war, the commander of the Fourth Division at Se-La confessed that “private animosities, personal weakness and in many cases lack of mutual confidence among the commanders … led to disaster.” Even in the victorious wars against Pakistan, in 1965 and 1971, there were major failures of coordination, according to Generals Harbaksh Singh and Sukhwant Singh.

~~India Unbound : From Independence to the Global Information Age -by- Gurcharan Das

Day 304: On Hinduism

Right from the beginning, Hindu texts and practices tell of the simultaneous existence of polytheism and a broader belief in the ultimate oneness of the divine—not exactly monotheism, but a unitary substratum supporting a vigorous polytheism. And yet there has been from time to time an angry debate, in which some Hindus find it insulting to be called polytheists. The answer to this paradox lies in the history of Hinduism.

To the question, ‘Is Hinduism monotheistic or polytheistic?’ the best answer is, ‘Yes’ (which is actually the answer to most either/or questions about Hinduism). Not only have elements of both theologies been woven through Hindu texts for thousands of years, but different factions have argued passionately for one view and against the other during this entire period, and the issue still raises Hindu hackles today. The force of the passion comes from the political issues that have often driven this question, particularly since the time of the British Raj and now again in the Age of the Internet.

KATHENOTHEISM IN THE RIG VEDA

Hindu texts began with the Rig Veda (‘Knowledge of Verses’), composed in northwest India around 1500 BCE; the first of the three Vedas, it is the earliest extant text composed in Sanskrit, the language of ancient India. At first glance, it would seem to be unequivocally polytheistic: there are certainly many gods. Indra is the king of the gods and the god of rain (much like his Greek and Roman cousins Zeus and Jupiter); Varuna the god of the heavenly vault and moral law (related to the Greek Ouranos); Agni the god of fire (cf. the Latin ignis, and the English ‘ignite’); and so forth. Vividly anthropomorphized, these gods are like us, in fact, more so, and understand our appetites and desires since they want what we do—things like physical love, wealth, fame and praise. Each individual worshipper would know, and might use, several different poems to different gods. Always, there was an awareness of the multiplicity of the gods. At time of war or drought, for instance, one prayed to Indra; and in a sacrifice, one invoked Agni (the sacrificial fire). We can detect in the Veda both what might be called internal polytheism (one person worshipping several gods) and communal polytheism (several people worshipping several gods and respecting, or at the very least acknowledging the existence of, one another’s gods).

But the polytheism of Vedic religion sometimes functioned as a kind of serial monotheism that the Vedic scholar Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900) named ‘henotheism’ or ‘kathenotheism’, the worship of a number of gods, one at a time, regarding each as the supreme, or even the only, god while one is talking to him. Thus, one Rig Vedic poem will praise a god and chalk up to his account the credit for separating heaven and earth, propping them apart with a pillar, but another Vedic poem will use the same words to praise another god:

To the unknown creator: ‘He by whom the awesome sky and the earth were made firm, by whom the dome of the sky was propped up …’ [10.121.5]

To Soma: ‘He who is the pillar of the sky …’ [9.74.2]

To Tvastri: ‘He measured apart the two realms of space … and fixed them in place with undecaying pillars.’ [1.160.4]

To Varuna: ‘He stretched out the middle realm of space … placed the sun in the sky.’ [5.85.2]

To Vishnu: ‘Vishnu, who has measured apart the realms of the earth, who propped up the upper dwell-place.’ [1.154.1]

In addition, each god would have characteristics and deeds that were his alone: no one but Indra kills the demonic serpent of drought (Vritra), for instance.

Bearing in mind the way in which the metaphor of adultery has traditionally been used by monotheistic religions to stigmatize polytheism (‘whoring after other gods’), and used by later Hinduism to characterize the love of god (as in the Bengali tradition of Krishna and Radha), we might regard this attitude as a kind of theological parallel to serial monogamy, or, if you prefer, open hierogamos: ‘You, Indra, are the only god I’ve ever worshipped; you are the only one.’ ‘You, Varuna, are the only god I’ve ever worshipped; you are the only one.’ ‘You, Draupadi, are the only woman I’ve ever loved; you are the only one.’ ‘You, Subhadra [or Chitrangada, or Ulupi], are the only woman I’ve ever loved; you are the only one.’ This made possible a kind of non-hierarchical pantheon; the attitude to each god was hierarchical (‘You are the best’), but the various competing claims of supremacy cancelled one another out, so that the total picture was one of equality: each of several was the best.

The idea of ‘the [only] one’ as applied to several different members of a polytheistic pantheon also appears in some of the later verses of the Rig Veda: ‘They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, and it is the heavenly bird that flies. The wise speak of what is One in many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarishvan.’ [1.164.46] And ‘The One’ is neuter, not male nor female: ekam sad vipra bahu vadanti. Neuter, like brahman (the impersonal Absolute). Not masculine, like Vishnu.

VEDANTIC MONISM

The Atharva Veda too, a fourth Veda composed around 900 BCE, asked how many gods there might be: ‘Who and how many were those gods who fastened together the chest and neck of the Primeval Male? How many fixed his breasts? Who formed his elbows? How many joined together his ribs and shoulders?’ [10.2.4]

To this polytheism question (‘How many?’) of the Atharva Veda, the Upanishads, philosophical texts composed from around the fifth century BCE, suggested a different answer. The gods were often called ‘The Thirty-Three’. But one of the earliest Upanishads mocked this number with a dialogue in which, in response to the pupil’s repeated question, ‘But how many gods are there, really?’ the increasingly impatient teacher replies, first, ‘Three hundred and three, and three thousand and three,’ then, ‘Thirty-three,’ then, ‘Six,’ then, ‘Three,’ then, ‘Two,’ then, ‘One and a half,’ and finally, ‘One.’ This ‘One’ is the emblem not of monotheism but of Upanishadic monism, which assumes that all living things are elements of a single, universal being (often called brahman), reached by individual meditation, a philosophy often contrasted with the polytheistic world of group sacrifice to multiple gods. An image often used to characterize the relationship between the individual soul and brahman is that of salt dissolved in water. ‘Thou art that [tat tvam asi]’, the Upanishads insist.

The doctrine of the Upanishads is also sometimes characterized as pantheism (in which God is everything and everything is God) or, at times, panentheism (in which God encompasses and interpenetrates the universe but at the same time is greater than and independent of it). And as the Upanishads are ‘the end of the Vedas’ (Vedanta), Upanishadic philosophy is also called Vedanta. These Vedantic doctrines view the very substance of the universe as divine, and view that substance and that divinity as unitary.

The vague monism of the Vedas was, thus, sharpened by the more systematized Vedantic monism of the Upanishads. The term ‘Vedanta’ later came to be applied to the philosophy of Non-Dualism (that is, the doctrine that there is no distinction between the soul and brahman), particularly with respect to the Shaiva philosopher Shankara (788-820 CE), whose teachings may have been buoyed by a need to respond to the monotheist philosophies of the great proselytizing religion, Islam, which arrived in India around the middle of the seventh century CE. (Shankara’s competitors argued that he championed monism because he was so stupid that he could only count to one.)

Vedantic monism stands in contrast both with Vedic polytheism and with the sort of monotheism that posits a single deity with consciousness and/or a physical form, like some of the deities of the medieval bhakti (devotional) movement. That sort of monotheism, unlike most other forms of Hinduism, did (and does) actively proselytize, and could be doctrinaire, even violently persuasive, at times. The South Indian bhakti authors even mocked their own proselytizing:

A Shaiva saint was a great proselytizer. He converted those of this world by any means whatever—love, money, brute force. One day Shiva came down in disguise to test him, but the devotee did not recognize Shiva and proceeded to convert him, forcing holy ash on the reluctant-seeming god. When his zeal became too oppressive, Shiva tried to tell him who he was, but the baptism of ash was still forced on him. Even Shiva had to become a Shaiva.


~~ On Hinduism -by- Wendy Doniger

Day 284: India in Mind

17 Dec '62
Long walk this morn to Manikarnika ghat—sat inside red stone porch with Saddhus & smoked ganja pipe & inquired about guru of good looking saddhu from Nimtallah—reminiscent red haired Naga saddhu knew him. Cow laid its head on my lap to be scratched. American tourists floating by in rowboats.
Dream: I meet Buddy Isenberg & Burroughs—turns out Isenberg is a nice girl—we sit at cafe table & talk, I apologize for writing so late. Nice dinky soft mannish looking girl. My demeanor is excessively self assured, is demeanor. Strange I should dream twice of girls in one day. “At my age” I said to Peter.
This morning while my back was turned from the table I heard a great thump—turned around to see a monkey jump on the table loaded with oranges & bananas, snatch one banana & leap out to the balcony, disappearing thru the lavatory window—next sitting on high branch of adjoining tree peeling the banana & staring at me thru the big leaves.
Incense in the room tonite, bought straw mats to cover half the slate-black tile floor.
What Vanity? What possible divine
blessing on all this Politics.
What invocation beyond Millions
of Votes for 1960 Hopes
What rat Curse or Dove vow slipt from my hands
to help this multitude
Smirking at the ballot box, deceived,
sensible, rich, full of onions,
voting for W. C. Williams with one
Foot in the grave and an eye
in a daisy out the window
18 Dec '62—
Sitting on rock at Harischandra Ghat—down below a sand slope at the water's edge blackened with ashes, a high pile of firewood ablaze and a man's head bent back blackened nose & mouth unburnt, black fuzzy hair, the rest of the chest belly outlined along down thighs at top of the pyre, feet sticking out the other end—now turned toes down—cry of geese & rabble of white longnecked good goose swan boids pecking in the water's edge a few feet from fire.
Nearby scows filled with sand from the other side of the river, laborers carrying baskets of grey sand up the brick stairway from the river—“Oh—the head's going to fall off—” The pile darkening, white ash floating up—a few watchers squatted on bricks facing the pyre—Pole man comes & tucks a foot into fire—then circles around & pushes length of pole against the black head (lain back with open black throat & adam's apple silhouetted against the small flames against the green river) til the body's balanced on the center of the collapsing charred logs. Donkeys led along the sand path, children running with kites, a black baby with no pants & pigtails, balancing a stick of bamboo—A saddhu in orange robes sitting up on a stone porch on the embankment under turrets of an old small castle—rather Venetian the scene—Rectangular-sailed boats going down stream—the air above the pyre curling in the heat, like a transparent water veil between my eyes & the greenfields & trees along the horizon on the other side of the Ganges—and the embankments, red temples spires, toy mosques, trees and squat white shrines walling in the bend of the river upstream to the long red train bridge at Raj Ghat an inch high.
18 Dec and a torn burlap bag to cover the squat pantsdropd lavatory window that opens on the staircase of the house, so ascending passersby can see the diarrheic mud bubble down from the asshole of P. Orlovsky & Company, Inc.
This morning down to the burning ghats & sat with same group of sadhus in their eyrie in the sandy basement porch of a pilgrim's rest house—fire with a pot of boiling lentils, embers from the burning ghat down below at 10 AM—a trident and bamboo lance & brass water-pot begging stoup scattered around, one friendly Sadhu named “Shambhu Bharti Baba” with whom I've sat and smoked before—today seeing my difficulty handling the red clay pipe he made & accompanied me smoking a cigarette mixed with ganja—I also partook of two pipes tho I coughed & the cold snot bubbled out my nostril from the strain-wheeze—brought some bananas & green seed fruits to distribute, gifts—and camera so made photos—the Naga Sadhu (S b b) wanted his very confusingly, as he don't talk but makes finger gestures—he got to his feet, stripped off his g-string & pulled down his cock under between his legs—one yogic ball bumping out—like cunt—for a photo—I took a dozen, all the group smoking round the pot & ashes—one standing of the Naga sadhu with his pots & brass tridents etc. then high put on my shoes & walked back along the ghats home, & slept in dark closed room a half an hour—read Mayakovsky
elegy to Lenin—“and
child-like,
wept the grey-bearded old”
and Brooklyn Bridge poem—I didn't remember it was so lovely —“in the grisly mirage of evening
… the naked soul
of a building
will show
in a window's translucent light”
Jodrell Bank's deposit of heavenly radio waves
Shot some M, last nite, up on mattress reading The Statesman (Calcutta), Time, Mayakovsky, writing postcards, washing socks handkerchiefs undershirt, Peters cock, necking with him,
While below the balcony under the streetlight one milk shop clattered pails
in the darkness, the Desasumedh Ghat beggars kept thin fingers moving under dried burlap, counting beads Jai Ram Jai Citaram, & the woman on the opposite corner with long wild hair crouched against a bidi shop steps rocking back & forth—I gave her 25 NP when I went out before dawn to buy milk & cigarettes—
now the square begins working—I feel like An American in Paris in 1920—The naiveté of neighborhoods awakening, radios turned on too loud to the Hindi news in the milk shop,
First lights turned on across the street, in the Cigarette and fried noodle peppers stall at the gate of the market,
three rickshaws circling to take off up street and look for cold dark business
Householders wrapped in shawls carrying brass waterpots trudging into the Ganges steps, passing & observing the beggar man in the mid-street shrouded in his own burlap shawl—he'd moved all night praying—
and carrying flowers to adorn the Lingams in the temples overlooking the starlit, planet-lit river—
arguments between Ram & Cita in Hindi voices tinnily rickochetting all the way up to my balcony from the radio—
Walkers coughing & trudging river street in Paterson too at this hour—
Him crouched under street lite on the corner counting a basketful of small potatos
Such a basket as I bought last night to contain my bananas & oranges, from white glued paperbags written in ledger sheets Hindi another day in a dark office—
Martial music to accompany the morning's broadcast, and the sound of a claxon with a throat inflammation in the background—
Peter lying dressed up in pants on mattress picking his red mustache, with long hollywood Christlike hair & Christ's small beard stubble—
I found out Octavio Paz is in Delhi the Ambassador of Mexico, arranging train rides for his tennis team—a headache—
Blake's photo on the wall, waiting waiting waiting—with his life mask eyes closed—thinking—or receiving radio messages from the cosmos source—
The rickshaw wallahs had slept all night crouched covered with their shawls on the red leather slope plastic of lowered rickshaws—
at night their bells rang in tune back & forth, speeding down the hill to Godolia from Chowk, up & down answering alarm clock tingalings in the dead streets—an iceman's tingaling, a knife sharpener's charged bellsound—
A huge black tree looming over my window obliterating half the square, all nite lights shining thru its leaves from milk shop where a vat of white cow buffalo lact bubbles over a charcoal trench.
Coughs answering back & forth across the square, and the splash of the streetcorner waterpipe faucet, clearing the throat near dawn—
a big white cow with horns had walked slowly up the street alone, looking for something to do—cows all last night in repulsive play, chasing each other in the traffic to lick the red asshole pads they drop streams of urine thru on the puddled street—black bulls horning the girls in front of Sardau's Hindu Hotel, separated by silver giant wire trees, knobby with ceramic eyes—
Wet charcoal & first white smoke impregnating the air to the tops of the trees—the monkeys asleep—the weasles aware— few rare ants—cigarette ashes cleaned from the trays in paper bag on the porch with banana & orange peels (the cows' lot) waiting the sweeper
Morning not yet come, Dec 19, 1962 must be 4 or 5 AM in Benares, writing & fingering my cock & remembering Shostakovitche's dead March as the radio bounces & crashes across India with brass violins—
The smell of frying meat cakes and potatos, Jai Citaram in a toneless voice, & gentle gossip near the rickshaws, the clanging of a temple bell at worship time early a few blocks away.
A lady already arrived with small baskets of parsley & radishes sits in the road where it turns down to the river steps, coughs & spits on the ground & bides in the gloom as the first blue light breaks open clouds in the East sky over the river, seen from balcony thru trees and a few balconied chickenwired houses leaning over the steps.

~~Allen Ginsberg's notes from India in Mind -ed- Pankaj Mishra

Day 271: Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra And Bengal

This subject is discussed in greater depth in chapter 9. The term tantra 'means simply a system of ritual or essential instructions' and strictly speaking refers to certain texts, related to or derived from another class of scriptures called āgama — hence the name of the company which published Arthur Avalon's books, Āgamānusandhana Samiti, the Āgamas Research Society. It was said by a commentator in the fifteenth century: 'Śruti is twofold: Vaidik and Tantrik', which shows how the Tantras were regarded as a separate kind of revelation (śruti) and a new source of authority from the Vedas. Whereas the vedic tradition is synonymous with orthodoxy in Hinduism, the position of the Tantras and their followers has always been more ambiguous; the Tantras themselves however mostly claim to be in the vedic tradition.

 A typical Tantra, according to a traditional list, should contain seven subjects including cosmogony ('creation and dissolution of the world'), worship, meditation, mantra, and the sat-karma or six magic acts. The tantric literature is divided between original Tantras, which are usually anonymous and considered to be the Word of Śiva (or other deities), and digests and commentaries by named authors. The former possibly originated from around the eighth or ninth century, but the period when Tantrism flourished was from the eighth until around the fourteenth century; it is still practised today.

 Tantras prescribe individual practices (sādhanā) aimed at the goal of personal liberation (moksa) and/or the acquiring of magic power (siddhi). With the dual goal of knowledge as inner self-realization and as mastery over nature, Tantrics seek initiations (dīksā) from a Guru who imparts oral instruction and to whom the disciple submits. Tantric sādhanā has characteristic features by which it is usually defined. Most important of these is the use of certain mental and physical objects which express or concretize, abstract principles and deities. These are: mantra or bīja (sound'seeds') accompanied by yantra (geometric patterns representing mantras and divinities), mandala (cosmos diagrams), mudrā (ritual gestures) and figurative images (pratimī). Tantric divinities are those of the wider Hindu or Buddhist pantheon but conceived in many more forms and with a special iconography important for dhyāna — mental images constructed in meditation — which accompanies outer ritual worship (pūjā). Ideas of microcosm-macrocosm correspondence underlie Tantrism, where the bipolar, bisexual divinity (Śiva—Śakti in Śaiva and Śākta Tantra) resides in the human body, and is brought into conscious union through tantric or kundalinī yoga. Kundalinī is a form of śakti — 'energy' or 'power' — the female, active, cosmogonic aspect of the divine polarity, which is conceived to permeate all things and is the most important concept of Tantra. In the theological context śakti means the activity of a deity in manifesting the cosmic cycles and dissolving them, or reabsorbing them into the Godhead.

 Eventually śakti became more significant than her consort — especially in the śākta literature that grew out of Śaiva Tantra — and the Goddess took central place, appearing in many forms and lesser emanations. Hence 'Tantra' in Hinduism became almost synonymous with Śāktism, although it originally had a wider reference, for there were tantric forms of Vaisnavism, Saivism, Buddhism and even Jainism. Today, the term tantra (or 'Tantrism') is often used generically to cover the body of metaphysical, theological and cosmological ideas along with ritual and yogic practices, which are contained in, or derive from, the āgamas and Tantras but are also to be found in other texts which do not bear that label. This is the sense in which the term is used in this book.

 The prominence of the Goddess in itself appeared sinister enough, at least to English commentators on Hinduism and Buddhism who were mostly raised, unlike Woodroffe himself, in the protestant tradition where the 'maleness' of God is not compromised by the practice of devotion to the Mother of Jesus. To this was compounded Tantra's strong emphasis on ritual, with its images and mantras — seen as 'idols' and 'magic spells'. Moreover much of the imagery was associated with death and some rites (especially those of a more magical nature) took place in the cremation ground. This gave Tantra a particularly repugnant surface and was roundly dismissed as 'necromancy'. Last but not least, there was the sexuality of Tantra, derived at least in part from its concept of bisexual divinity. The notorious pañcatattva rite, or cakra pūjā (circle worship), was the main focus of notoriety in Woodroffe's time, in which male initiates worship female partners who represent śakti, through 'five substances' or 'five true things' (tattvas). These are also known as the pañca makāra, or the five 'm's: wine (madya) meat (māmsa), fish (matsya), grain (mudrā) and sexual intercourse (maithuna) This deliberate ritual transgression was usually seen by orthodox Hindus and European observers as simply an excuse for licentiousness.

 The pañcatattva and the rites performed in the cremation ground remained secret, esoteric affairs, but the general features of tantric ritual and imagery gradually penetrated the Hindu mainstream and became allied to Vedanta philosophy. It was on this aspect of 'Tantra' that Avalon/ Woodroffe placed his emphasis. His approach was in striking contrast to that of nearly all previous European scholars who either ignored or vilified the Tantras.

~~Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra And Bengal -by- Kathleen Taylor

Day 268: Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia

Historians have reconstructed the political history of the vedic and epic ages and philosophers have studied the metaphysical aspects of the same. In this chapter, the objective is to show the interrelationship between war making (an integral part of state formation) and the quasi-religious vedic and epic philosophy. The vedic age extends roughly from 1500 bce to 600 bce. The Rig Veda is the first of the four vedas (the other three are the Yajur , Sama and Atharva Vedas , respectively). The Rig Veda was probably composed between 1300 and 1000 bce.

 There are problems involved in historicizing the society that the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata , represent, just as there are problems in historicizing Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey . While some say that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey represent the Greek Dark Age or the eighth century bce , others argue that Homer is representing multi-layered materials from different eras. Tradition ascribes the authorship of Ramayana to Valmiki, but about his background we know nothing, just as we draw a complete blank as regards the background of Vyasa, the so-called author of the Mahabharata . John Brockington writes that from an analysis of the style and subject matter, it is clear that the Ramayana is the work of a conscious artist who worked within the limits and in the spirit of a living epic tradition. The Valmiki Ramayana is an epic poem of some 50,000 lines describing in Sanskrit verse the career of Rama, the prince of Kosala in Awadh (the eastern part of north central India). The poem is divided into seven kandas (books) that chronologically chart the career of Rama. There are hundreds of manuscripts about the Ramayana ; most of them date from the sixteenth century ce, and the oldest among them goes back to 1020 ce. Brockington identii es five stages in the growth of Ramayana . Stage 1 extended from the fifth to the fourth century bce, and during that stage about <7.1 percent of the Ramayana was composed. This constitutes the Valmiki Ramayana . Stage 2 extended from the third century bce until the first century ce, a stage during which about 34.05 percent of the text was composed. During both of these stages, the Ramayana was orally transmitted. Stage 3 extended from the first to the third century ce; during that stage about 24.57 percent of the Ramayana was written down. Stage 4 extended from the fourth to the twelfth century ce, and Stage 5 started after 1200 ce. Tulsidas’ Ramayana came into existence during the last stage.

 It seems that the Mahabharata was composed in Sanskrit between the fifth and the third century bce. B. A. van Nooten says that the Mahabharata represents society as it was around 1400 bce. The Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world, with more than 100,000 verses and seven to eight times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. The core of the Mahabharata is an account of the combat between the Kurus and the Pandavas for the fertile land at the conl uence of the rivers Jamuna and Ganga. The Kurus were a tribe living along the upper reaches of the Jamuna, and the Pandavas were a comparatively newly emergent clan based around Indraprastha, about sixty miles southwest of the Kuru capital, Hastinapura. With the passage of time, peripheral stories that provide a social, moral and cosmological background to the climactic battle were added. Both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata portray the actions of the warriors in a heroic and moral context. To an extent, the Mahabharata also represents, writes Nooten, a re-enactment of a moral confrontation at the cosmic level. The Mahabharata is a moral and philosophical as well as an historical tale. Occasionally, the gods interact with the humans, give them weapons, inl uence the outcome of battles, make love with the queens, and so on. The great Rig Vedic deities were all anthropomorphic in conception (idealized in human and superhuman forms). Similarly, in the Iliad , the gods in human shape interact with humanity and determine the winners and losers in battle.

 The Bhagavad Gita was composed around 200 bce. Angelika Malinar and Steven J. Rosen claim that the Bhagavad Gita was composed not independently but in relation to and even for the epic Mahabharata . The Bhagavad Gita became part of the epic in the course of its own textual history.

 Let us review the material context in which the vedic and epic philosophy flourished. The art of manufacturing arrowhead from stone was invented during the Neolithic era. The chalcolithic age witnessed the replacement of stone arrowheads with bronze (an alloy of nine parts copper and one part tin) and copper arrowheads, which were used for both fighting and hunting. In the Indus Valley civilization (2500–1500 bce ), combatants used arrows made of bronze and copper, and double-edged swords and socket-hole axes also appeared. Spoked wheels that transformed transportation emerged in Central Asia between 1700 and 1500 bce . The Indus Valley civilization used carts with solid wheels, and in India spoked wheels came into use around 700 bce.

 Between 1000 BCE and 600 bce , the Aryans moved from north-west India and Punjab to the Ganga-Jamuna doab. The location of the Aryan homeland and the very meaning of the term “Aryan” have generated debate among scholars, and the Aryan question is yet to be resolved. Initially, scholars argued that the Aryans were Sanskrit-speaking people who entered India through the north-western passes around 1500 bce . However, a minority group claims that the Aryans were indigenous to India and identical to the people of the Indus Valley civilization. The Dravidian languages were prevalent in north India prior to Sanskrit, and this tends to support the hypothesis that a Dravidian language was the language of the Indus Valley civilization. The most recent view is that the Aryans did not represent any particular race but was instead a language group. As this particular language group moved into India and the Aryan-speaking people intermixed with local people, the Aryan language (a variation of the Indo-European language group) absorbed a large number of local Dravidian words. And instead of invasion, scholars are now more comfortable speaking of slow and gradual migration resulting in intermingling of the various communities.
...
As regards the actual conduct of war during the vedic and epic eras, we have two different interpretations. U. P. Thapliyal is of the view that even in Rig Vedic times, the troops were arrayed in vyuhas (prescribed formations) before being led into war, and that the troops were adept at maneuvers such as attack, encirclement and assault. Thapliyal asserts that the Rig Veda mentions the troops being organized in formations of tens, hundreds and thousands. Thapliyal continues that on the opening day of the Mahabharata War, Yudhistira, the eldest brother of the Pandavas, favoured suci-vyuha , which was formed according to the military thinker Brihaspati’s doctrine. The suci-vyuha was an array suited to a numerically inferior army fighting a numerically superior enemy. In a somewhat similar vein, Bimal Kanti Majumdar says that a standing army emerged in India around 600 bce . Pradeep P. Barua writes that despite their stage-managed appearance, battles in ancient India were extremely bloody affairs. By contrast, a recent view put forward mostly by Western scholars asserts that ancient Indian warfare was comprised of ‘Flower Wars’. The reality probably lies somewhere between these two extreme viewpoints.

~~Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia -by- Kaushik Roy

Day 259: Hinduism and Modernity

On the morning of Thursday, 21 September 1995, a miracle took place in a Delhi temple. The image of elephant-headed Ganesha drank up the milk offered to him in worship. News of this event spread throughout India and was reported world-wide the next day. Hindus in every continent, in temples and in homes reported that their Ganesha too was drinking the milk offered to him. A barrister reported from Malaysia that the plastic Ganesha on his car dashboard had exhibited the same thirst. The London Guardian of 23 September reported it as ‘probably the first example of global religious fervour propagated by mass telecommunications’.

 This world-wide Hinduism was counterbalanced by the modernity of the national press in India which generally declared it to be no miracle, to be indeed a waste of time and milk – under such headlines as ‘Ganesh Hysteria Peters Out’, ‘Have the Gods had their Fill?’ and ‘Temples Deserted, Rationalists Prove Capillary Action Works Always’. The usual editorial line was that such superstitious credulity was incompatible with the secular and scientific orientation of independent India. Among English-language publications it was left to the Hawaii-published Hinduism Today to lament that ‘in India, which has taught mankind so much about religious tolerance, it is a surprise to see such an antiHindu bias. Years of British “divide and rule” policy, Christian missionary attacks and Marxist influence have created this atmosphere of bias. Lord Ganesha, Guardian of Dharma and Remover of Obstacles, has now revealed this anomalous situation to the entire world.’ That is, Ganesha had deliberately exposed the anti-Hindu bias of the Indian press. Here we see at once the global scope of Hinduism today, the strength of traditional belief, the rational scepticism of the Indian press, and the embattled attitude of the new fundamentalism.

 Ganesha became the first god to span the world instantaneously. What occurred was not simply world-wide reporting of a miracle, but the instantaneous world-wide occurrence of multiple instances of the same miracle. This miracle contrasts with the popular myth wherein the chubby Ganesha opts out of the hassle of circumnavigating the globe: when Shiva offers his two sons a mango as prize for the first to race round the world, six-headed Skanda dashes off on his peacock, while Ganesha merely ambles round his parents to claim the mango, explaining that they are the universe in themselves.
...
 Like six-headed Skanda, modernity encircles the globe. Ganesha, with his elephant trunk, pot belly, and plate of sweets, most bizarre of gods to Western eyes, sums up in himself the chaotic variety of Hinduism. Shiva got his sons to run a race. I venture to set Hinduism against modernity: I propose a consideration of Hinduism and modernity by means of which each will cast light on the other. Skanda, of course, is no less profoundly Hindu than Ganesha, an ‘ejaculation’ of Shiva’s semen while Ganesha is made from a fold of Parvati’s sari; Skanda’s origins lie deep in south India. But the rivalry of the two brothers justifies for the moment my metaphor.

 Both Hinduism and modernity are somewhat arbitrary intellectual constructs. Modernity is not a word used in ordinary speech. Modernity is not simply the modern world or modern times; it is the theorization of the modern world. Hinduism too, though an older term than modernity, began as an extraneous, external term for the indigenous religions of India other than the reform movements that became separate, clearly self-identified, religions: Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Hinduism comprises Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism, themselves refracted in turn into more distinct groupings. Both terms – Hinduism and modernity – constitute theorizations.

 Our point of focus is not India and the West today, though that combination is the background of our investigation, the theatre in which this performance proceeds, the stage that Hinduism and modernity tread. Hinduism is the religion of 80 per cent of Indians, but it has only recently been sharply defined. Modernity is the time in which we all live, but here it is used in the sense of a coherent body of doctrine, a kind of sociological theology, a reified entity. Hinduism as a unit is set out in a stream of mainly Western books; it is mainly Western scholarship that has set out for inspection Hinduism as a ‘world religion’. Modernity is conjoined with endless subjects in hundreds of book titles; its hard core is provided by studies of such authors as Max Weber and Walter Benjamin. The world has become disenchanted, art has lost its aura. For Weber the peculiar conditions of the modern world were to be explained by the uniqueness of Europe; for Benjamin, messianic materialist, modernity is the landscape of the metropolis. For Weber, modern bureaucracy has created an iron cage for mankind; for Benjamin, mankind is seduced by the bright lights of arcades of shops in the big city. These two cult figures for current definers of modernity serve to delimit our view of modernity.

~~Hinduism and Modernity -by- David Smith

Day 159: Book Excerpt: The Iconography and Ritual of Siva At Elephanta

The earliest European references to Elephanta date from the sixteenth century, although several earlier travelers are known to have been in the immediate area. Marco Polo visited the nearby town of Thana around 1292-1293, upon returning from his famous stay in China. in his account, Polo remarked that "Tana is a great kingdom lying towards the west, a kingdom great both in size and worth. The people are Idolaters, with a language of their own, and a king of their own, and tributary to nobody." The use of the term "Idolaters" would seem to indicate that the region was predominantly Hindu.   
Shortly after Polo's visit, in 1322, a Franciscan friar named Odoric from Pordenone in northern Italy visited western India before going to China. He too stopped in Thana, where he noted the recent martyrdom in 1321 of four Friars Minor, whose executions had been ordered by a Moslem governor. Odoric also notes that Thana was a great place in days of old, for it was the city of King Porus, who waged so great a battle with King Alexander. The people thereof are idolaters, for they worship fire, and serpents, and trees also. The land is under the dominion of the Saracens, who have taken it by force of arms, and they are now subject to the Empire of DILI [Delhi].
   
The earliest recorded European visit to Elephanta itself was apparently made in 1534 by Garcia da Orta, a Portuguese physician and scientist, in the company of the Portuguese sea captain Martim Afonso de Sousa. Orta included his record in his remarkable book, Coloquios dos Simples e Drogas da India (Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India), published at Goa in 1563. After describing cave-temples on the island of Salsette, he surveys Elephanta briefly as follows:   

       
Another pagoda, the best of all, is on an island called Pori, which we call the Isle of the Elephant. On it there is a hill and in the upper part of it is a subterranean house worked out of the living rock, and the house is as large as a monastery. Within there are courts and cisterns of good water. On the walls, all round, there are sculptured images of elephants, lions, tigers, and many human images, some like Amazons, and in many other shapes well sculptured. Certainly it is a sight well worth seeing, and it would appear that the devil had used all his powers and knowledge to deceive the gentiles into his worship. Some say that it is the work of the Chinese when they navigated to this land. It might well be true seeing that it is so well worked and that the Chinese are sutis. It is true that, at the present day, this pagoda is much defiled by cattle getting inside but in the year 1534, when I came from Portugal, it was a very fine sight. I saw it at the time when Bataim was at war with us. Soon afterwards the King of Cambaya ceded it to [Governor] Nuño da Cunha.

A more detailed description of the Elephanta cave is found in the logbook of Dom João de Castro, who later became the fourth Portuguese viceroy and a governor of India. He visited the island between December 12 and 18, 1538. His enthusiastic chronicle, Roteiro de Goa a Diu (Journey from Goa to Diu), written when the armada was enroute from Goa to the fortress at Diu, is regarded as "the first, careful scientific description of these shores." He first notes the topography of the island, then its myriad of birds and wild groves, and the lifelike statue of an elephant from which the island takes its name. He then observes the remarkable quality and variety of carvings in the temple, that seemed impossible to be made by human hands. Castro made measurements of the temple and remarked on the "two huge, ferocious guardians" flanking each door of the shrine; that within this chapel was an altar "with a large ball (obviously the linga*) that must symbolize the world''; in one of the other chapels that encircle the interior, a man is shown from the waist up with three faces and four armsin one right hand a hooded cobra is held, in the left the shape of a rose, in another the world is raised ("o mundo alevantado"), and the remaining hand is broken; in another chapel is a giant-like man with eight armstwo of them are raised to support the sky of the chapel ("o ceo da capela"), another holds a sword aloft, the fourth holds a bell shaped object, the fifth holds a boy by one foot with the head down, the sixth has a vase-like shield ("vaso como escudela") and has a covering of ashes ("nele emborilhado"), a chain of skulls of little boys, and a cobra, and the other two arms are broken; another chapel has a large bodied woman like a giantess, entirely naked, with a breast only on the right side, "thus like it is written of the Amazons"; and he briefly notices the cistern and the east wing. He seems to have been overwhelmed by the incomparable novelty and history of the cave, an understanding of which was beyond him. He does not posit any identifications of the reliefs, nor does he mention the existence of any inscription or plaque.
The next Portuguese account of Elephanta is by Diogo de Couto, an official chronicler at the time. It was written in 1603 but with reference to a visit he made to the monument some fifty years earlier, that is, perhaps only ten years or so after Castro's trip to the island. His account is more detailed than the latter's, and he mentions that an inscribed stone was removed from the entrance and sent to the king of Portugal. He observed a bright lime and bitumen coating over the whole temple interior.

~~The Iconography and Ritual of Siva At Elephanta -by- Charles Dillard Collins

Day 133: Book Excerpt: Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees

From the beginning of my Indological studies, I have been quite convinced that Hindu society was much less divided ideologically, that the top and the bottom were not so utterly alien to each other, than was usually contended, particularly among anthropologists. Being myself of classical philosophical training, I could not imagine how to convince others, including anthropologists, of this belief, and I was prepared to say that, after all, it was a philosophical matter that should not be debated in scholarly circles, because everyone had his own opinion beforehand. I now think, however, the Hindu gods have been with me, and even more so the Hindu goddess.   

It was years ago, when I started studying the goddess both through texts and through fieldwork in South India, that my attention was drawn to a series of minor carnivorous gods who were all guardians and devotees of the goddess. Actually, although the texts taught me one side of the situation, fieldwork brought me another type of data which by and by started to make sense through my classical background. The more or less poor and local goddess temples I visited contained some lesser known deities who had the common property of being subordinate to the goddess. Quite by chance, I started in coastal Andhra and noticed in front of the so-called gramadevata,or village goddess temples one of these minor gods called Potu Raju. By now I have published a few small articles about him, and especially about his usual shape as a wooden stake and its similarity to the Vedic sacrificial stake, the yupa. I have since been interested in following this plastic motif of the post under different versions in different parts of South India, and I am preparing a book on the whole subject.
   
For the present I want to select two of these versions, but not    mainly from the viewpoint of the post, which in our present cases can no longer be so easily compared to the yupa, but from the angle of myth and ritual, which also introduces a number of classical references. The two versions are found in Mariyamman temples, one in the lower Kaveri basin mainly among temples on the north bank of the delta area, and the other in Kongunad. It is mainly the posts and rituals that differentiate the two, but these elements are both connected with mythic differences as well. Everywhere my visits to the temples were quite brief, and I never attended the festivals personally.
   
I shall discuss only two examples of the first category, which have in common at first sight an impalement stake in front of the temple. Mariyamman's shrine is always considered to be in the center of the village. Usually the local landlord caste is that of the Vanniyar, or exceptionally the Kallar.
   
The Valattur temple (Papanasam Taluk, Thanjavur District) is a Mariyamman temple, as usual facing east. It is trying to revive its traditions. The Kallar are the dominant caste. The festival takes place in the month of Cittirai (April-May). The Kallar informants, including the headman of the village, explain that Vaisnava and Smarta Brahmans live on the northern side of the temple, as do the Acari; all the Kallar live on the southern side. One Velalar family provides Mariyamman with a priest. In front of the temple are a balipitham 3and an impalement stake that served originally to impale Kattavarayan, that demon king who stole a Brahman woman. But Kattavarayan's friend, Cinnan, helped him out of the difficulty. A Cettithat is, one of those rich merchants who used formerly to be attacked and robbed of their goods by the Kallarpassed by the kalumaram (a high hook-swinging post and not the low one now there) and asked what it was. Cinnan advised him to climb it and see for himself. So the Cetti did, and Cinnan quickly impaled him. Soon after, some eagleskalakucameand plucked out his eyes. Since then the Cetti has been worshipped on the kalumaram as Kaluvutaiyan: the Master of the impalement stake.

We can bypass most of the ritual, but must note some characteristic details. Inside the temple mandapam are several painted wooden statues of Kattavarayan with his two wives, Kaluvutaiyan, Cinnan, and Karuppucami. There is a festival to the god Aiyanar that is celebrated at the same time as Mariyamman's in Cittirai. Some he-goats are offered both on Mariyamman's side and on Aiyanar's side, but in each case they are offered to the subordinate demon guardians, so that the distinction between the vegetarian Mariyamman and Aiyanar and the meat-eating demons is well marked. One or two days after the conclusion of the seventeen-day festival, there comes the day of "human sacrifice." This takes the form of kavati offerings, which are of three types: alaku-kavati,in which long needles (alaku)are stuck under the skin of those who stand under the vow; pal-kavati,in which a stick is carried on the shoulder with a pot of milk at each end; and ter-kavati,in which a tiny ter or rath (a war chariot) is drawn by a rope and a hook fixed under the skin of the offerer's back. These offerings are brought to the goddess at the end of a rather long walk. Kallar are non-vegetarian people. But they show all respect to the vegetarian diet of Mariyamman and Aiyanar, who are the protectors of their village. The "tortures" for which they take vows are of a rather mild type and do not seem to upset the goddess, though the needles and hooks are removed as soon as the votary arrives at the temple.   

One more thing: Kattavarayan seems to have some special link with the Kallar, because the latter spare him even though usually the impalement stake is meant for him as the one who stole a Brahman woman. The Kallar, although formerly a "criminal caste," regard themselves as Ksatriyas, because there are Kallar kings. Kattavarayan is also a Ksatriya, if we remember that he is the same as Arjuna Kartavirya, the oppressive king who stole the cow of the Brahman Jamadagni, whose wife Renuka is herself identical with Mariyamman. But this is not the only place where Kattavarayan is spared: it would be difficult to assume that he is forever sitting on the impalement stake and at the same time permanently staying with the goddess as her guardian and devotee. But the Tamil stories about Kattavarayan are very far from the epic and Puranic ones. One feature remains, though: he is still a warrior, and the cow turns into a Brahman woman in order to retain the classical pattern of distorted relations between Brahmans and Ksatriyas.

~~Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees -ed- Alf Hiltebeitel