The dialectic of transgressive sacrality provides us with fresh
insights into the complex structural transformation of the Vedic dualistic
universe dominated by the opposition between the deva
Indra and the asura
(Mitra‑) Varuna into the subsequent Hindu trinity of Brahmâ, Vishnu and
Rudra, each of whom is in his own way a ‘god of the Totality.’119
The term ‘Asura,’ (acquiring the unambiguous meaning of ‘demon’ in the
post-Vedic period) used only in the singular in the earliest portions of the
Rig-Veda, seems to have originally referred to a ‘Lord’ of peoples hostile to
the Indra-worshipping Aryans,120 and probably characterizes this
Lord as endowed, like the later brahmán,
with mana-like magical power (mâyâ). Though Mitra-Varuna, the
Asura(s) par excellence, and the chief of the Devas (‘gods’), Indra, stem from
two different cultural worlds, and perhaps even two opposing civilizations,
they already reveal in the Vedic religion a significant structural opposition
which can be defined just as well in terms of priestly ‘first’ versus warrior ‘second’
function or as sacred versus profane kingship.121
Mitra-Varuna is a dual divinity because it expresses the complementarity
of the pure interdictory Mitraic and the impure transgressive Varunic poles of
Vedic sacrality, also translated into the opposition between the upper and
nether worlds of a dualistic cosmos.122 This internal opposition is
retained in the later Brahmâ, the god of the ritual texts, for he is primarily
the mythical projection of the (royal) ‘chaplains’ purohitas,
the foremost among whom, the Vasishthas, are explicit ‘incarnations (maitrâvaruni)
of Mitra-Varuna.’
Nevertheless,
the overlapping functions of Indra and the Indian (and Iranian) Mit(h)ra, who
shows the greatest reluctance to strike at Vrtra (and bears the vazra like Indra's vajra ‘thunderbolt’), requires that we
replace the notion of a spatial structure defined by fixed terms with a dynamic
dialectic that seeks to define each mythico-ritual entity in terms of the
vectors that determine its transformations. Such a dialectic, already implicit
in the pre-classical dîkshâ, may be described as an upward
movement of purification of the profane (royal) sacrificer represented by
Indra, who accedes to the sacred (only) through the mediation of the Mitraic
pole of Brahmâ before his transgressive plunge as the dîksita into the impure womb of Varuna.
That this entire dialectic can be internalized within a single personage is
indicated by the identification of sacrifice as Prajâpati with both Brahmâ
(officiant) and yajamâna or sacrificer represented by Indra
(Heesterman, Inner Conflict, pp.27, 33, 50, 94;
see n.47). The mythic interferences and the hybrid figures that correspond to
them on the socio-religious level must be reduced to their ideological
coordinates in order to arrive at their Hindu transformation.
Brahmâ
represents the isolative domain of the sacred within the late Vedic cultural
universe (madhya desha) as opposed to non-Vedic India,
which it could absorb and assimilate only by expanding and reorienting its
profane pole so as to counter the secularizing tendency on its geographical
borders, such as gave rise to post-axial Buddhism with its separation of a
revalorized profane kingship finding its apogee in the Mauryan empire and
Ashoka on the one hand and the exaggerated religious renunciation of the
monastic order on the other.123 Thus the Vedic Mitra practically disappears and Varuna is
relegated to a subsidiary position, but without losing his embryonic
associations with the subterranean waters and the demonized Asuras even in the
epic (Kuiper, Varuna and Vidûshaka, pp.74-93).
Brahmâ, though omnipresent, recedes to the background along with the
this-worldly mythico-ritual sacrality of the pre-classical Brahman. Instead,
the gods of bhakti (‘devotional love’) rise to
prominence with Vishnu embodying the vector uniting the profane kshatriya (‘warrior’) with the pure pole of
Brahmâ to generate the religious image of the king as the protector and even
pivot of the socio-religious order (dharma), and Rudra incarnating the vector
linking him with the transgressive pole of Brahmâ to generate the equally
religious image of the king as the savage destroyer in the impurity of the hunt
and the violence of battle.124 This explains how the model of the profane Hindu king, Arjuna son
of Indra, can nevertheless be alternatively identified with Vishnu-Krishna and
also with Rudra-Shiva.125 But if instead of Arjuna,
the Mahâbhârata crowns as king the ‘Brahman’
Yudhishthira, identified as Dharma with his impure shûdra alter ego Vidura, born ‘equal to
Mitra-Varuna’ who ruled over the earlier Vedic Rta (‘cosmo-ritual order’), this
is because Yudhishthira expresses most fully the hidden (transgressively)
sacred dimension of Hindu kingship that still underlies its secularized
prolongation. Any total picture of Hindu kingship must necessarily integrate
the sacred kingship of Yudhishthira and the profane kingship of the ‘Conqueror
of Wealth’ Dhanañjaya (= Arjuna) as the complementary poles of a single model.126
If
the Brahmanical tradition has succeeded in retaining its specific symbolic
universe and the continuity of its cultural identity even in the process of ‘colonizing’
the sub-continent, this has however been achieved only at the cost of reducing
the public image of the ideal Brahman to his primarily ritual (and not racial)
purity so as to confer upon him the social pre-eminence of the world-renouncer,
even while he continues his ritual traditions. This classical reform of the
Vedic sacrifice is epitomized by the transformation of the transgressive pre-classical
dîkshâ into a purification of the
sacrificer conferring upon him the temporary status of a Brahman.127 The Vedic-Brahmanical universe of
values occupies primarily the top-right triangle of the over-simplified
transformative diagram below:
HINDUISM EPIC VEDA
Brahman <ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Yudhisthira <ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ pure Mitra
Vishnu
classical conservative
dîkshâ bhakti
purohita
Mahâbrâhmana -------- <ÄÄ> ArjunaÄIndraÄÄÄ> king == Vidûshaka
<ÄÄÄBrahmâ
(ksatrasama) (profane)
(purohita) (sacred)
Tantric
transgression Hinduization transgressive transgressive
bhakti dîkshâ
(Kula-Yâga)
(Kâpâlika) Rudra
etc.
jumbaka
niravasita
Bhairava-----------------> shûdra-Vidura-----------------> impure Varuna
(tribal, outcaste, etc.) (dog-Dharma,
etc.)
Figure: Transformation of Vedic
"Dualism" into the Trinity of Hindu Bhakti
If
we nevertheless find certain Hindu figurations like the ‘warrior-equivalent’ (kshatrasama,
though otherwise a Brahman) purohita beside the king, the impure
sin-eating Mahâbrâhmana as representing the priestly Brahman, Dharma incarnated
in the shûdra Vidura, and the more problematic
Brahmanicide and even tribal Bhairava, projected beyond the Brahman-Varuna axis
onto the lower-left triangle (where the vectors are represented by broken
lines) enclosing the extra-Brahmanical universe, this is because these ‘lawful
irregularities,’ though they each have their Vedic counterparts on the right
half of the diagram, cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by the system of
values of classical Brahmanism alone. That these disconcerting projections are
not mere vestiges of the pre-classical system but serve a positive function is
immediately evident in the key figure of the lowly ‘territorial protector’ (kshetra-pâla) extra-Vedic Bhairava, who has
been exalted to occupy the transgressive position corresponding to that of
Varuna in Vedic religion. That Bhairava should appear in the guise of ‘outcaste’
(cândâla) is natural in view of the
latter's ritual functions of being ‘excluded’ (niravasita) from the village, having dogs and
donkeys for his wealth, wearing the garments of the dead and carrying corpses,
and appropriating the belongings (clothes, ornaments, beds) of the criminals
they execute, suggesting an identification (see nn.96-97). The underworldly
seat of Varuna's cosmo-ritual Rta becomes the impure foundation of the
socio-religious Dharma incarnated in the shûdra Vidura and in Yudhishthira's dog
before the latter reveals its transgressive dimension fully as Bhairava's
theriomorphic form; and all these figures retain their essential identity with
Yama, Dharma-Râja, lord of Death.128
From a
purely sociological standpoint, the Mahâbrâhmana (‘Great Brahman’) as funerary
priest is a category which is not pure enough to be ranked as a proper Brahman, and yet not so impure,
like the untouchable Dom, cremator of dead bodies, cast in the image of
Yama-Râja, as to cease being a Brahman. But I use the term ‘Mahâbrâhmana’ here,
still in accordance with Hindu usage, rather as a dialectical figure, extending
to other personages like the purohita, Vidûshaka, Pâshupata, and even
the Brahman Kâpâlika, who contains within himself the opposing extremes of the
pure and the impure, Mitra-Varuna having become the transgressive conjunction
of Brahman and outcaste. Râmânuja condemns the Kâpâlikas because they claimed
that even a shûdra could instantly become a Brahman
by receiving the dîkshâ to ascetically undertake the
Mahâvrata, and the Kusle descendants of the Kâpâlikas play the role of
Mahâbrâhmanas among the Newars. Even the Dom-Râja of Banaras claims descent from a ‘fallen’ Brahman in an ancestral
myth that simultaneously accounts for the origin of Manikarnikâ tank. It is in
this context of ‘lawful irregularities’ generated by the suppressed affinity of
Brahman and outcaste, that paradoxical sociological phenomena, inexplicable in
terms of a purely linear non-cyclic hierarchy, like that of (only) the lowest
outcastes (cândâla) being contaminated by contact
with Brahmans and not accepting food even from them, must ultimately be
explained.129
The broken
vectors reveal that, far from being symptomatic of the inner contradictions of
the reformed classical system, its irregular projections serve as receptacles
and tentacles governed by an implicit intentionality: assimilation of the
non-Brahmanical universe without surrendering the continuity of Hindu identity
with its roots in the Vedic Revelation. Thus we see two opposing yet
complementary movements. On the one hand, there is the process of Hinduization
or ‘Sanskritization’ whereby tribal divinities are identified with Bhairava,
who is himself ‘whitened’ as he ascends the social hierarchy, just as entire
groups of shûdras and even tribals can acquire
sufficient power and influence to claim ‘warrior’ (kshatriya) status, before receiving the
purifying classical dîkshâ to become (temporary) Brahmans.
And on the other hand the tantric Brahmans, like the Kâpâlikas and Kaulas,
descend through the dîkshâ to identify themselves, in the
midst of ‘egalitarian’ transgressive rituals, with Bhairava incarnated in the niravasita-cândâla.
The
diagram also reveals that, from a socio-religious point of view, Hindu bhakti primarily serves the historically
determined function of bridging the profane with the pure and impure poles of
the sacred, which however survives independently of bhakti in the figure of the five-headed
Brahmâ whose fifth head is now borne by Bhairava. It is in this way that Vishnu
and especially Rudra-Shiva, in whom the impure sacred can appear in the guise
of the profane and vice-versa130 could have played a crucial role
in the process of Hinduization by countering, on the religious level, the
Buddhist tendency to desacralize the world in favor of renunciation and
transcendence alone. Though each of the Hindu trinity occupies only one face of
the triangular Vedic structure, they are all equally entitled to be gods of the
totality only by symbolically incorporating the opposing apex of the triangle
and thereby revealing the dialectical movement of their interlocking
identities. Thus Rudra finds his purified counterpart in the ascetic and ‘auspicious’
Shiva, and Arjuna's very name ‘Bîbhatsu’ identifies him not only with the ‘Brahman’
Ajâtashatru but also with the ‘white’ foe-less Mitra ‘disgusted’ at the thought
of doing violence to Vrtra. Vishnu, like Arjuna, finds his ‘black’ Varunic
counterpart in the name Krishna he assumes in the Mahâbhârata;
and Brahmâ becomes profanized in the figure of the royal purohita projected as the martial Drona, or
even the Brahmanized warrior Bhîshma-Pitâmaha (see n.50). The goddess,
apparently eclipsed from this male-dominated scenario, participates as the
tripled consort of the trinity and finds her centre of gravity at the womb-like
Varunic pole as the menstruating Krshnâ-Draupadî projected towards the
effeminate ‘long-haired’ Keshava as the auspicious Shrî-Lakshmî. It is no doubt
for this reason that she is identified in the Newar Bhîmsen temples with the
blood-thirsty Bhairavî and placed between the vegetarian Arjuna and the bloody
Bhîma-Bhairava.131
Just
as the passive sacred kingship of Dharmarâja is overshadowed by the active
central role of Arjuna-Dhanañjaya intent on the ‘conquest’ of the quarters
(Jaya), it is the profanized public image of the Hindu king that occupies the
mediating role in our diagram not only between the synchronic opposition of the
pure and the impure but also diachronically between the Vedic heartland traced
by the peripatetic sacrificial black antelope and the Hindu sub-continent with
its imperial South East Asian expansion. His temporal power continues to
participate in the legitimizing spiritual authority of the sacred only through
the ritual bi-unity he forms with the royal purohita who always precedes him, just as
the kshatriya ‘charioteer of Pârtha’ Pârthasârathi
(Krishna) stands before Pârtha (Arjuna) as the two Krishnas on the same chariot
equipped for the sacrifice of battle.132 Unlike his royal patron who is
actively involved in the mundane preoccupations of his ephemeral realm, and
though apparently on the same profane level as his indispensable but polluting
partner, the Brahman purohita still remains primarily a
specialist of the sacred, incorporating in himself the extreme tension between
the pure Mitraic and the impure Varunic poles of Brahmâ.
He appears problematic only because
this deathly sin-eating pole has been systematically obscured in the classical
image of the ideal Brahman. For the same reason, his symbolic counterpart in
the deformed ‘Brahman par excellence’ with his exaggerated (jumbaka) Varunic dimension now appears in
the Sanskrit drama as the ridiculous extra-Vedic (avaidika) Vidûshaka, with so many
tantricized traits. Yet the Vidûshaka, protected by Omkâra, is not only a ‘learned
Brahman’ (Shrotriya) through all his abundant Vedic
symbolism. Even his sexuality reveals the triangular sacrificial dialectic:
chastely warding off all the symbols of lust with his crooked stick on the one
hand, and obscenely indulging in symbolic incest with the same upraised phallic
kutilaka on the other, this ‘counselor in
the science of love’ (kâma-tantra-saciva) nevertheless furthers the royal
hero's marriage with the heroine, herself incarnating the prosperity of the
kingdom.133 The (not only sexual)
universalization offered to the king's profane individuality by the opposing poles
of the sacred in the (brown‑) monkey-like ‘joking-companion’ (narma-saciva) is also reflected in the awesome
multiform ‘monkey-banner’ (kapi-dhvaja) of Arjuna's chariot, and finds
its metaphysical expression in the terrifying ‘Universal Form’ (vishva-rûpa) assumed by Krishna, himself
elsewhere identified with the Vedic Vrshâ-kapi or ‘Virile Monkey.’
Though
the twin gods of bhakti occupy and even encompass the two
royal or profanizing faces of the sacrificial triangle, the dialectic of
transgression is impossible without the vertical dimension of the sacred in
Brahmâ, in whom the opposing yet complementary poles of the pure and the impure
are both separated and united. Indeed, not only does the dialectic of
transgressive sacrality wholly encompass the universe of bhakti, it also finds independent and
prior symbolic expression in the mythical motif of Indra's Brahmanicide of his purohita Vishvarûpa.134 If Bhairava later decapitates
Brahmâ with his left thumb-nail, he is only following the illustrious example
of the ambidextrous royal Arjuna, who was not only guilty of Drona's
Brahmanicide but also wielded, as the ‘Left-handed Archer’ (Savya-sâcin), his
infallible bow Gândîva with his unerring left-hand. There has been hardly any
need, till now, for an abstract Indian term corresponding to the complex
concept of transgression when the Hindu vocabulary had already captured its
dialectic in the vivid image of Indra's royal and Bhairava's criminal
Brahmanicide, defining it with such mythico-ritual and even juridical
precision. If it is Brahmâ's inability to create that is responsible for his
decapitation by the filial Shiva, this is only because the Brahmanical sacrifice
is ultimately the process of winning life out of death. Though subordinated to
the classical Brahman through his public image as the profane Indra, as the
divine protector Vishnu and even perhaps as the ascetic yogin and destructive warrior Shiva-Rudra,
the ambivalent Hindu king reasserts his independent magico-religious power as
Lord of the Universe through his hidden tantric identity as the Brahmanicide
Bhairava, but only because he thereby creatively incorporates in himself the
dialectical Vedic figure of the universalizing royal Mahâbrâhmana.135
[End of
section on Mitra-Varuna and the niravasita-Bhairava:
the Royal Mahâbrâhmana]