Bhairava: Kotw�l of V�r�nas�

by

Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam

published in

V�r�nas� Through the Ages

Editors: T.P. Verma, D.P. Singh and J.S. Mishra

(Varanasi: Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti, U.P.,1986)

[241] ....

Bhairava�s cudgel or L�t-Bhairava

[p.250>] �

Bhairava conquers Death in K�sh�

[p.253>] ��Death in K�sh� is not death feared, for here the ordinary God of Death, frightful Yama, has no jurisdiction. Death in K�sh� is death known and faced, transformed and transcended� (Eck, p.24). One could easily reverse the causality and affirm that, if Yama is exiled from K�sh�, this is because he represents not Death as such but natural death, death unmastered that overtakes the cringing mortal and shatters his life aspirations. Hence, the apparent paradox that K�sh�, the Mah�shmash�na or �Great Cremation Ground of the entire Universe,� where every pious Hindu hopes to die, is the only city from which the God of Death is himself excluded (cf. Eck, p.325). But death in [254>]� K�sh� is willing death, sometimes even taking the legitimized form of religious suicide, death �transformed and transfigured� and Bhairava, by usurping the throne of Yama in K�sh�, must necessarily represent what one could rightly term an initiatic death. �Yama, the God of Death, may not approach the dead here, noose in hand. K�la Bhairava takes charge of the dead, and he is Shiva�s own self. Even if there is some terrible punishment to be meted out, it is guaranteed to be short-lived and to be followed by the bliss of liberation� (Eck, pp.344, cf. also p.193). Jonathan Parry has elaborately demonstrated that cremation in K�sh�, homologized with the cosmic dissolution (pralaya), is conceived as a form of fire-sacrifice, wherein the sacrificer (chief mourner) is identified is identified with divinity (Ziva) through the mediation of the victim in the form of the dead-body (zava = Ziva). Emphasizing the cosmogonic function of this perpetual process of cremation, he has sought to explain why �while in India the cremation ground is generally on the periphery or outside the area of human settlement, in K�sh� it is at the very hub. Just as India is said to be the �navel� (n�bh�) of the world, and K�sh�, the navel of India, Manikarnik� is the navel of K�sh� (Parry, 1981, p.337); there is in fact an image of Batuka Bhairava beside that of the Zmaz�na-n�tha near the dhuni� [sacred fire] at Manikarnik�).

What is important in the present context, is that the funerary rites in K�sh� transform natural death into the most concrete and vivid symbol of the sacrificial or initiatic death that can even occur prior to and independently of physical death as the inevitable lot of all mortals. We would like to suggest here that, if the adepts of Bhairava, being themselves Bhairava incarnate, did not fear death anywhere, this was because they had already undergone an initiatic death even while living and the subsequent natural death was, for them, only a faint shadow and tangible physical symbol of this initiatic death. In fact, in the origin-myth, the K�p�lika K�la-Bhairava is so called because even (Time-)Death (K�la) is afraid of him and he is rewarded with eternal suzerainty over K�sh� precisely in return for his decapitation of Brahm�, for his transgressive act of brahma-haty� [brahmanicide]. This is apparently one of the main reasons the Kaulas worshipped Bhairava. Abhinavagupta (a brahmin!) is proudly affirmed by the Kashmiri teachers to be Bhairava incarnate and he himself declares this identity in his hymns like the Bhairava-stava, where exultantly challenges Death: �O Death (= Time)! Do not caste thy gaze most terrible with anger on me; (for) steadfast in the service of Zankara and ever meditating on him, I am the terrifying power of Bhairava� (see note 16 above). If the pilgrims to K�sh� do not fear death there, this would be because their pilgrimage to the Mah�zmaz�na is conceived on the ritual model of Bhairava�s own arrival at K�sh� �for absolution from his terrible sin and his subsequent establishment there.

For the ordinary K�sh�-dweller, however, this initiatic death is supposed to occur only at the time of its natural counterpart, and it intervenes during the latter process in the form of the �punishment of Bhairava� �[255>]� (bhairav�-y�tan�) whose �dispensation is an important part of Bhairava�s function in the city� (Eck, p.193). In the context of the karma-doctrine, the bhairav�-y�tan� seems to have been improvised to explain and justify how the worst sinners could gain liberation by simply dying in K�sh�, whereas the most virtuous of saints despair of obtaining the same elsewhere. Do not sinners have to expiate their bad karma before becoming even eligible for moksha? �The mechanism by which all this karma is experienced is called bhairav�-y�tan�. Because it is called a �punishment� one can only conclude that it applies especially to the experiencing of bad karma. Bhairava�s punishment is brief, lasting but a moment, and very intense. It is a kind of compression chamber of experience in which the karmas, which ordinarily might land one in hell or in countless difficult births and rebirths, are experienced completely in a split second�(Eck, p.338). But there is an inherent ambiguity in the term �punishment of Bhairava� that must not be lost sight of; is it simply the accepted punishment at the hands of the terrifying chief-of-police of K�sh� (Eck, p.337) or rather the �sufferings of Bhairava� himself in his equally terrifying expiatory role of criminal K�p�lika (Parry 1981, pp.345, 355)? The question becomes all the more significant when we consider that it was at the Kula Stambha, now the L�th-Bhairava, beside the Kap�lamocana T�rtha, where the K�p�lika-Bhairava was freed of his heinous crime, that this intense suffering is undergone. �It was here, they said, that Bhairava would administer his punishment, the bhairav�-y�tan�, as moment�s prelude to liberation� (Eck, p.196). Is it not strange that the kotw�l Bhairava should mete out his �punishment� at the very spot where the K�p�lika Bhairava was himself freed of his own �suffering�?

This paradoxical fusion of two opposing meanings can perhaps best be resolved by assuming that the bhairav�-y�tan� ultimately refers not to Bhairava as the giver or receiver of punishment but to the suffering involved in the initiatic death which alone can confer liberation at the time of natural death. �In the case of a man of great spiritual force a kind of spontaneous combustion cracks open his skull to release the vital breath�. An image of the way in which the soul might ideally emerge was provided by the case of an old householder, whose extraordinary spiritual development had gained him a circle of devoted disciples, and whose subsequent mortuary rituals I attended. His copybook death was said to have been consummated on his funeral pyre when his burning corpse successively manifested itself to a privileged few in the forms of the celebrated religious leaders Sai Baba, Mehar Baba and Rama Krishna Paramhamsa, as the terrifying god Bhairava (Lord Ziva�s kotv�l or �police-chief� in Benares) and finally Ziva himself. A rounded protuberance was seen to move up the spine of the corpse, burst through the skull, soar into the air and split into three parts. One fell in Benares, another went north to the abode of Ziva in the Himalayas and nobody knows what happened to the third� (Parry 1982, pp.82-83; emphases added).

So powerful are the structured images of the inner lived experience of initiatic death projected onto the Hindu symbolic universe, that it has actually become possible for the pious to really �see� the process taking place in the dead or dying adept! If the bhairav�-y�tan� is administered at the L�t-Bhairava, this would not only be because the l�th �is the obvious instrument of punishment at the hands of the kotw�l, but also because the L�t-[256>]� Bhairava as axis-mundi� is only the macrocosmic projection of the spinal column, and the initiatic death involved the forcing up of the vital airs through the sushumn�� in the form of a fire-ball that pierces through the cranium at the �aperture of Brahm� (brahma-randhra). Only such an understanding of Bhairava�s staff would explain the definition of the K�p�lika�s khatv�nga� as a �banner made of a skull mounted on a stick (danda)� (Lorenzen, p.75, citing Vij��nezvara�s Mit�kshara commentary on Y�j�avalkya iii.243), resembling the head mounted on the L�t-Bhairava itself during festive occasions. Not only does the sacred mystic geography of K�sh� confirm that cremation at Manikarnik� is understood in terms of the adept�s fiery ascent up the sushumn� , but the appellation of the latter in esoteric tantric texts as zmaz�na �very clearly reveals that it is this ascent� that constitutes the real or initiatic death. Though K�sh� is sometimes identified with the �j��-cakra, mystic center between the nose and the eyebrows, it is also identified with the subtle body as a whole. �The rivers As� and Varuna at the extremities of the city, and a third river which flows through the center, are identified with the three main veins of the yogic body�respectively with id�, pingal� and sushumn� (�). Under normal conditions, at least, the third river is not visible and its precise location open to interpretation. Some of the more theologically sophisticated of my own informants identified it with the Brahman�l�, a small rivulet of which there are now no obvious traces but which is supposed to have issued into the Gang� at Manikarnik�. According to this identification, then, the central vein of K�sh�s mystical body thus terminates at the cremation ground, equating it with the highest center of the yogic anatomy. In this context,� it is perhaps worth recalling that two synonyms found in the texts for sushumn� are brahma-n�d� (�brahman�l�?) and zmaz�na �(cremation ground)� (Parry 1982, p.343 and note 8). I have found the same mystic geography of three rivers centering on shrines of Bhairava in Nepal, the third river being either visible as in Tika Bhairava at the southern limit of the Katmandu Valley or invisible as in the case of Unmatta Bhairava at Panauti.

According to one of my informants, not originally resident of Benares and at that time rather ignorant of these matters, the gathering of the vital energies at the base of the spine and their forced penetration up the median canal is accompanied by intense and almost unbearable suffering, especially to one who is unprepared, and is an experience verging on self-annihilation, like death. He claims that this occurred to him rather suddenly and unexpectedly while he was wholly committed to a transgressive attitude, and he withdrew prematurely before the process could take its proper course, as he felt he was not yet ready to die. If this could be taken as a reliable guide to understanding the initiatic death of the adepts of Bhairava, it would not be difficult to explain how the bhairav�-y�tan� could have the ambiguous meaning we noted above. Insofar as the adept is completely identified with Bhairava, the initiatic death would be the �suffering of Bhairava� himself; but insofar as it is conceived of as being as it were imposed on the pilgrim, it would be the� �punishment� meted out by Bhairava. The idea of �punishment� in the bhairav�-y�tan� seems to have been introduced only to satisfy the karma doctrine indissociable from a sacred of interdictions, that is also wholly responsible for Bhairava�s having to expiate his brahmanicide through [257>] twelve-year long kap�la-vrata. But it is radically contradicted by our knowledge that the adepts of Bhairava, whether K�p�likas, Aghoris or Na6aths, sought to transcend both good and evil, to conquer death and attain a mode of immortality, through an uncompromisingly transgressive sacrality. Though K�sh� is the sacred city where Bhairava was absolved of his sin of brahmanicide, he was rewarded with suzerainty over it precisely because he had carried out the order to decapitate Brahm�s fifth head.�

Bhairava: Policeman, Criminal and Supreme Divinity of Transgression

Throughout this article, we have alluded to, even played upon, the contradiction between Bhairava being at the same time chief policeman-magistrate [kotw�l] of K�sh� and also a heinous criminal divinity adored especially by anti-social ascetics who flagrantly transgressed even the most fundamental socio-religious norms and rules. It is now necessary to pose this paradox explicitly. For a kotw�l� expected to punish criminals for their sins, Bhairava has the truly bizarre function in K�sh� of taking upon himself or devouring the sins of the pilgrims so much so that one of his titles is �Sin-Eater� (P�pa-bhakshana). �Here in K�sh� the place called Kap�lamocana comes to symbolize the power to make sins fall away, for here �Where the Skull Fell� the worst of sins was shed� (Eck p.119). The temple of K�la Bhairava itself was, according to the K�sh�-Khanda (31.138), located on the banks of the Kap�lamocana T�rtha, in the Omk�rezvara area north of Maid�gin. �Bhairava stands right there,� says the text, �facing Kap�lamocana T�rtha, devouring the accumulated sins of devotees� (cited from Eck, p.193). Bhairava is the �sin-eater� par excellence not because of his newly found office of policeman but by virtue of having himself been the worst of criminals, for Kap�lamocana is the very place where the skull of the murdered Brahm� fell from him along with the sin of brahmanicide that had been relentlessly pursuing him in his wanderings. �The one freed from the worst sin now devours the sins of others� (Eck, p.192).

The most important festival dedicated to this guardian policeman-magistrate of K�sh� is Bhairav�shtam�, which, instead of celebrating his investiture with the office of kotw�l , on the contrary, celebrates the birth of Bhairava, born only to perpetrate his brahmanicide immediately. �On this day alone, the cloth apron that covers all but K�la-Bhairava�s face is removed. He is garlanded with a necklace of solid silver skulls. People crowd in for the darzana� of his complete image on this day� (Eck, p.274). Not only do the priests officiating at the temple know the origin-myth of the brahmanicide Bhairava by heart, it is also inscribed in Hindi on a marble slab on the wall (Eck, pp.194-95), and forms of Bhairava are painted on the temple-walls bearing the bleeding head of Brahm�. One is never sure whether it is the kotw�l  that is being worshipped or rather the brahmanicide k�p�lika-Bhairava. The myth, and along with it the ordinary worshipper, seeks to rationalize and minimize the two incompatible identities of Bhairava by inserting a diachrony between them: Bhairava becomes kotw�l  of K�sh� only after he has purified himself from the crime of brahmanicide at K�p�lamochana. Does this mean that he has completely lost his criminal character? Why could not a non-criminal god, like Hanum�n or Ganeza, have been elected as kotw�l  of this most sacred of cities? It could perhaps be claimed that, having been an ex-criminal, [p.258>] Bhairava was ideally suited to fulfill the role of (reformed) policeman. But a synchronic view necessarily imposes itself because, even while Bhairava has remained kotw�l  of V�r�nas� (and kshetra-p�la all over India), there have always been and still are tantric sects like the K�p�likas, Kaulas and N�thas which worship him primarily as a Transgressor and certainly in a transgressive mode (for example, with the pa�ca-mak�ra [�5 Ms�]�). I have elsewhere demonstrated (see note 1 above) that Bhairava�s lopping off Brahm�s fifth head with his left thumb-nail is symbolic as all manner of transgressions of brahmanical socio religious norms (assimilated in the dharma-z�stra� [�law-books�] to �brahmah�ty��).

Moreover, if Bhairava has already once and for all been purified of his terrible sin, how could he continue to play the impure role of scapegoat by taking over, tainting himself with, the sins of others? True such a scapegoat role is also played by the mask of �k�sh Bhairab during the Gjhantakarna festivalin Katmandu when all the evil of the locality is discharged upon him at the crossroads of Indra-Chowk. But the fact that at all the other crossroads exactly the same function is performed by effigies of real demons who are subsequently expelled, reveals that it is through his quasi-demoniacal aspect that (�k�za-) Bhairava has come to play this role. The paradox is raised to a second order when we realize that, whereas after his absolution Bhairava is worshipped as a mere kotw�l  subservient to a higher divinity like Vizvan�tha or his consort Annap�rn�, before his absolution Bhairava is already recognized, even in his degraded condition, as the Supreme Divinity, second not even to Brahm� and Vishnu.

Bhairava's twelve-year wanderings as a beggar, bearing Brahm�'s skull as public testimony to his crime and begging from the seven houses of the Seven Sages in the Daru forest, all of these and other traits, like his exclusion from settlements and inhabiting the cremation-grounds, correspond exactly to the prescribed punishment for Brahmanicide in the Brahmanical law-books (Stietencron 1969, p.867; Lorenzen pp.74-76). But whereas in Hindu society such brahmanicides, even if themselves brahmins, were treated as horrible outcastes and considered wholly degraded, Bhairava is exalted in the myth as the supreme divinity by Brahm� and Vishnu, the latter even recognizing that he remains untainted by the sin of brahmanicide. Though the punishment of Bhairava corresponds perfectly to the norms of brahmanical orthodoxy, his simultaneous exaltation corresponds rather to the doctrines and practices of the K�p�lika ascetics, who took the brahmanicidal Bhairava for their divine archetype. Even when themselves not originally brahmanicides, these K�p�likas performed the Mah�vrata or �Great Penance� bearing the skull of a brahmin in order to attain the blissful state of spiritual liberation and lordship that confers the eight-fold magical powers (Lorenzen, pp.92-95). Following the �doctrine of Soma�, the K�p�likas experienced the spiritual bliss of Bhairava in the felicity of sexual union induced and enhanced by the partaking of meat and wine. Whereas Bhairava is presented in the myth as undertaking the �k�p�lika vow� as punishment in order to expiate his brahmanicide, the K�p�likas in pursuit of their �supreme penance� (mah�-vrata) have always been associated with human sacrifices (Lorenzen, pp.85-7), the ideal victim being a brahmin, and it is clear that brahmanicide [p.259>] or, rather, whatever it symbolizes, was itself supposed to be productive of great power.

If the intention of the brahma-ziraz-ccheda [�cutting of the head of Brahm�] myth could be reduced to a narrow sectarian exaltation of an extra-brahmanical Bhairava or the deliberate devaluation of the brahmin, there would have been no sense in Shiva instructing Bhairava to strictly conform to the brahmanical legal prescriptions for the expiation of brahmanicide. The fact that Bhairava scrupulously performs it amounts to a full valorization of the brahmin (= Brahm�, cf. Eck, note on p.108) as demanded by traditional Hindu society. At the same time, it could not have been intended to glorify Brahm� as such, for the latter clearly admits the supremacy of Bhairava, and even Vishnu lauds him as the Supreme Reality despite his outward appearance as a criminal beggar steeped in impurity. The real conflict is rather between the two opposing poles of the Sacred, one of interdiction incarnated in the non-violent, chaste, truthful, pure, self-denying classical brahmin and the other of transgression represented by the savage, impure, hedonistic K�p�lika-Bhairava who beheads this brahmin or his divinity. The myth in its essence reveals a compromise between the socio-religious point of view which must necessarily condemn Bhairava to be an outcaste criminal and the esoteric valorization of transgressive sacrality that exalts him as the supreme divinity, both precisely because he has performed the transgression par excellence in brahmanical society. From the exoteric socio-religious point of view, Bhairava is no more than the terrible policeman god protecting the boundaries of the socio-religious community and, as door-keeper, the access to its temples from hostile external forces. He preserves the socially central divinity, like Vizvan�tha in K�sh� , from any direct contact with impure elements which are nevertheless vital for the proper functioning of the social whole. The terrifying divinity of transgression can never become the object of public cult as such and the only means for him to receive communal worship is by transforming himself into the equally terrifying protector-god for a more central pacific and benign divinity (with whom he is nevertheless often subtly identified). Thus K�la-Bhairava's promised suzerainty over K�sh� has been translated in reality into his being the policeman-magistrate for Lord Vizvan�tha. The myth achieves this �conversion� from criminal to kotw�l through Bhairava's �purification� at Kap�lamocana T�rtha [p.260>] at K�sh�. But if he remains there, even in his capacity as kotw�l, as the scapegoat �sin-eater� par excellence, upon whom devotees and pilgrims can shed all their evil, would this is not be because even as a criminal K�p�lika, he had already transcended both good and evil and always remained untainted by them.

The question why Bhairava, the supreme divinity of Transgression, had to come to K�sh�, the Centre of the whole Universe, of all places, in order to be promoted from criminal to policeman, will have to be answered in my subsequent article on �Bhairava: Transgression and Embryogony in K�sh�.�