[427>] The clownish Pâzupata, an inextricable fusion of ascetic renunciation and symbolic violation, immediately offers us the ideal semiotic definition of transgressive sacrality, for his divine purity exaggerates the interdictory regimen of the classical Brahman sacrificer only as a preparation for the demoniac power of the outcaste criminal Kâpâlika. He is the focal point of tension that holds together the perspectives, by mediating between the values, of the impure pre-classical and the pure classical dîkSita, the orthodox renouncer (sannyâsin) and the heterodox monk, [428>] the Zaiva devotee (bhakta) and the Vedic ritualist, the Brahman VidûSaka [‘jester’] of the classical Sanskrit theatre (vidûSaka) and the tribal shaman. A proper hermeneutic of the Pâzupata spiritual praxis, intent on restoring its unity as an integral discipline contributing to a single goal, can therefore provide the indispensable conceptual framework for a dialectical understanding of the complex relations between the mutually interfering categories of the pure and the impure, the sacred and the profane, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, sacrifice and bhakti, external ritual and internal yoga, Vedism and Zaivism, Brahmanical law and tantric transgression.

Unlike the alert studied reserve and chaste self-control of the orthodox vegetarian Brahman with his ritual safeguards against the impurity of death, the Pâzupata was obliged to worship Rudra with loud laughter, songs, dance and meaningless sounds (Pâzupata-Sûtra I.8) and practice an unorthodox yoga (I.1) of pretending to be asleep when awake (III.12: krâThana ‘snoring’), limping as if his feet were deformed (III.14: maNTana), performing lewd gestures in the proximity of women (III.15: zRngâraNa), improper actions (e.g., blurring the distinction between the pure and the impure; III.16) and nonsensical speech (full of repetition and contradiction; III.17), but whose sacred character and intent is so artfully disguised before the profane public (IV.1-5) as to invite abuse and even assault (III.1-7,18, IV.14) for his apparent idiocy and madness (IV.6,8). Yet in its classical Lâkula form it was particularly meant for (loin-clothed or even naked, I.10-11) Brahmans compelled to avoid (at least in the initial stages) the sight of (impurities like) urine and excrement (I.12) and all contact with women and low-castes (I.13)—even accidental pollution required meticulous purification (I.14-17)—and who assiduously cultivated mental purity (I.18) culminating in yogic detachment and conquest of the senses, and the universal friendliness (maitra) that accompanies constant union with the Lord (V.1-7,11).

Even while reinforcing his interdictory sacrality by providing the (unconscious) safety-valve for the repressed primal energies that he seeks to master, the symbolic transgressions of the Brahman(ized) ascetic form a system that finds concrete fulfillment in the ritual praxis of the impure Kâpâlika as the supreme Mahâ-Pâzupata.⁴ The ‘contradiction’ between the ‘paranoid’ avoidance of impurity in the first or ‘Marked’ (vyakta) stage and living in the cemetery infested with CâNDâlas (‘outcastes’), dogs, vultures, Kâpâlikas, etc., in the fifth and last stage, where “the accomplished Yogin is not [any longer] tainted by [his] actions or sins” (PS V.20), imposes a dialectical reading of the Pâzupata aphorisms, against the ‘apologetic’ interpretation of the commentary [429>] which is necessarily obliged to camouflage its transgressive finality in a manner suitable to the interdictory requirements of the novice at the first stage or even would-be candidates from the ranks of orthodox Brahmanism. Whereas the Brahman (formerly) worshipped the gods in an auspicious right-handed and the manes in an inauspicious left-handed manner, the ambidextrous bhakta now adored the intrinsically ambivalent Rudra in both these modes as containing both gods and manes in his demoniac divinity (PS II.7-11). Whereas the left-over offering to the terrible divinity is dangerously unfit for normal use, the abnormal Zaiva adept should wear only the garland already worn by the terrible Rudra (I.5), as all that was inauspicious in normal worship became auspicious (II.7) for the symbolic transgressor. The lewd bearer of the phallic linga (I.6) should ultimately revert to animal behavior like that of a cow or deer (V.18), best understood in the light of the transgressive sexuality of the deer-skinned dîkSita finding full expression in the ritual incest of sacrifices like the Gosava. The royal Indra who first practiced the Pâzupata vow among the demoniac Asuras (IV.10) in order to defeat them through their own magic (IV.12: mâyâ) is but the mythical projection of the Brahmanical sacrificer.

Although (initially) committed to non-violence and other traditional restraints (yama/niyama), the wielder of the club relished (buffalo, boar, etc.) meat and, though not to be killed by others, acquired the (magical) power to injure and kill others, in order to become chief of the (warrior-)hosts (mahâ-gaNa-pati) of the great God (I.31-2,37). It is legitimate to pose the question whether the ascetic does not owe his manifold suphuman powers as much to his (symbolic) transgressions as to his severe austerities (I.20-37). The rule of bathing thrice daily with ashes, lying on a bed of ashes and re-bathing with ashes in the case of (accidental) defilement (I.2-4), which commentaries beginning with KauNDinya prescribe as ‘purification’ potent enough to absolve from even brahmanicidal transgressions (ad I.9), served in reality only to reinscribe the ghostly initiate (III.11 pretavac-caret) into the impure universe of death before he culminated (the last stage of) his yoga confined to the cremation-ground where he constantly meditated upon and awaited union with Rudra (V.30-4). The impurity of death affirms itself as the cornerstone of the purified Pâzupata asceticism already in the founding myth, reported in the Vâyu (ch.23) and Linga (ch.24) Purânas, of Rudra entering a dead-body thrown into the cremation-ground at Kâyâvatâra or KâyâvarohaNa in order to incarnate himself as the brahmacârin Lakulin. In the Kâpâlika, the aggressive club is replaced by the murderous skull-topped khaTvânga, and the [430>] (Mahâ-)Pâzupata's becoming “Dharma incarnate” (V.31) by residing in the cremation-ground (V.30) again reveals that underworldly foundation of the socio-religious order governed by royal Death as Yama-Dharmarâja.

The (feigning of) epileptic fits (III.13) and psychopathological states, combined with the recommended exclusive meditation on the ‘quivering’ (vipra) sound-syllable Omkâra (V.24-8) and the archaic terminology of the aphorisms where the (raudra) bráhman still refers to compressed liturgical formulas (I.15,39, II.21-7, III.20-6, IV.21-4, V.21-2,41-7), not only suggest the ritual systematization of the original identity of the vision of the Rigvedic seer (RSi) and the ecstatic trance of the shaman but also the cultivation of a transgressive technique of ‘divine madness’ regulated by the interdictory controls that also define classical Brahmanism.⁵ Concealment of his ‘purified’ ritual(ized) speech (IV.3: gûDha-pavitra-vâNih) and behavior (IV.2: gûDha-vratah) by the erudite ‘Brahman par excellence’ (mahâ-brâhmaNa), who thereby seeks to transform his knowledge into consummate penance (III.19, IV.1), suggests that much of his incoherent rambling was only the comic disguise assumed by the enigmatic bráhman, whose “purest” essence was Omkâra (V.27: vâg-vizuddhah). The deformed (Mahâ-)GaNapati, ‘Lord of the PramaThas,’ who presides over the comic sentiment (hâsya) in the Sanskrit drama, is himself born from Omkâra's bi-unity (mithuna). Issuing thunderously from the sacrificial stake in the form of the cosmic linga, Omkâra's mysterious laughter, while affirming the supremacy of Rudra, is indistinguishable from the violent laughter (aTTahâsa) of the ‘Great God’ (Mahâdeva) himself.⁶

All these essentially comic figures of symbolic violation like Pâzupata, GaNeza and VidûSaka have for their sacred syllable the inarticulate (anirukta) Omkâra because, like the ‘vacarme’ of explosive laughter, it signifies chaotic non-differentiation in the acoustic/linguistic code. In a traditional culture sharing a depreciative, repressive attitude to profane laughter, the Pâzupata's ‘sacred’ laughter in imitation of the aTTahâsa of his elect divinity Rudra can only further signify transgression.⁷ The recoding of these Pâzupata notations into the nonsensical poetic humor (kâvya-hâsya) of the laughing VidûSaka is only the profane spectacle of that archaic shamanic inspiration dramatically objectivizing itself through the aesthetic creation of the ‘poet’ (kavi)⁸ under this inscrutably familiar guise of folly that psychoanalysis must appropriate at its own risk. The contrarying VaruNa-VidûSaka who ‘deforms’ (vidûS- = virûp-) the well-structured propositions of the hero-Indra in the ritual preliminaries (pûrva-ranga) to the Sanskrit drama is none other [431>] than the transgressive Vedic Gandharva who, bearing onomatopoeic names like ‘Hâhâ’ or ‘Hûhû,’ still conserved the comic dimension of the stammering pre-classical dîkSita.⁹ Torn apart, in the post-axial differentiation of classical Hinduism, between the anti-social Pâzupata transgressions of the unorthodox Brahman renouncer and the domesticated ‘non-Vedic’ stage-figure of the privileged MahâbrâhmaNa VidûSaka, primitive clowning recognizes its lost organic unity in the spectacular performance of the Pueblo Koyemshi, where the highest specialists of the sacred publicly violate fundamental taboos before the half-terrified half-amused spectators of the tribe, whose entire religion would seem to be founded on the observance of these very interdictions, which the clowns indeed help maintain by their ridiculous negative example.¹⁰

Hence, transgression acquires a sacred dimension only when it is subordinated to a suprahuman aim, either explicitly or through its inscription in a symbolic context which, by paradoxically juxtaposing and especially infusing them with the values of the interdictory sacred, charges even the crudest profanities with a transcendent significance. As the social organization becomes more differentiated, the process of re-inscription may well be translated into mythico-ritual ‘sectarian’ confrontations between renunciatory ascetic orders and frankly transgressive religious currents, or between the hierarchized gods and perspectives of pure sacerdotal and impure even ‘marginal’ castes. By reserving, as ordained by Prometheus in the Hesiodic founding-myth, the aromatized fumes of the burnt bones for the gods and the cooked animal for human consumption, on the one hand, and by inscribing, within the sacrificial procedure itself, the culinary progression from a ‘savage’ roasting of the victim's unsalted vital organs consumed on the spot to the "civilized" boiling of its seasoned flesh fit for delayed consumption on the other hand, the Greek citizen sought to maintain his political life at a reasoned mid-distance mediating between the beastly and the divine. By inverting this culinary sequence, the central Orphic initiatic myth of the ritual murder of the child-Dionysus by the Titans, cast in the image of primordial mankind, who first boil his members before roasting them, reveals and condemns the animal-sacrifice that sustains the Greek city-state to be no more than a reversion to primitive cannibalism, shunned with horror by the pure vegetarian spirituality of the Orphics who rejected this institutionalized violence. Yet, not only did Dionysus, whose pure purified pole was adored by the Orphics themselves as the benign incarnation of the paradisiacal Golden Age, receive blood-sacrifices and even raw-flesh [432>] from the polis, but his transgressive essence took possession of his frenzied devotees to sanctify even their omophagy and anthropophagy. By presenting itself as that critical point where the interdictory masculine spirituality of Orphic asceticism reaches its zenith only to plunge into the abysmal depths of Dionysian transgression, the savage dismemberment of the sun-worshipping apollonian Orpheus at the impure female hands of the furious Bacchae, could just as well be read, in the light of the profound complicity between the Delphic Apollo and the victimized Dionysus, as the tacit sacralization of the unmitigated crime of cannibalism that nourishes the roots of Greek humanity.¹¹

Brahmanicide likewise sacralizes the demoniac Bhairava, even while debasing and excommunicating him, only because the mytheme of decapitation, reinforced by the precise ritualization of its symbolic notations, allows him to participate in the interdictory sacrality of his victim Brahmâ. If the terrible Mahâvrata of the criminal Kâpâlika corresponds so exactly to the punishment prescribed by the Brahmanical law-books of the sacrificial Dharma, this is only because this juridical order was itself determined by the equation of the Soma-dîkSita to the ritual murderer of the sacrificial animal. The continuity is attested even in the sixth century A.D. in South India in the person of Kapâlizarman of the Taittirîya-carana who performed Soma-sacrifices, which has rightly been linked to the Somasiddhânta of another 11th C. Brahman Kâpâlika, Somi-bhattâraka.¹² The Kutsa-gotra to which Kapâlizarman belonged was a clan of despicable, degraded Brahmans from whose ranks the Soma-seller impersonating the Vedic Gandharva could be drawn, a role otherwise often played by a Shûdra who was subsequently abused and beaten. This ambivalent Soma-seller is one of the models of the likewise manhandled MahâbrâhmaNa-VidûSaka who, as MâDhavya, is himself assimilated to the sacrificial animal, whose ritual identity with the Soma-dîkSita projected as the Brahman Kâpâlika is retained in the persistent belief in Nepal that the best human victims are the semi-untouchable Kusles, descendants of the Kâpâlikas and often custodians of the Newar cult of Bhairava. The deradicalization, attributed to Macchanda/Matsyendranâth, of the clan-structured (kula) Kâpâlika praxis of the cremation-ground, reformed by the abandoning of sect-distinctive signs which permitted its domesticated generalization as the Kaula secret societies attracting converts from the ranks of Brahmanical orthodoxy and penetrating deeply into the royal courts and the "patrician intelligentsia," could therefore just as well be understood as a Tantric reworking, around the Bhairavâgamas, of the pre-classical sacrificial ideology which was thereby rendered accessible [433>] to especially householders from all levels of the caste-society. For the Trika Brahman, schooled in all the classical "philosophies" and thoroughly imbued with 'Aryan' culture, it is not the impurity of the untouchable in itself, but rather its radical exploitation in the violation of interiorized norms of purity that is the source of the Kaula's sacred power.¹³ Likewise the founding discourse of the MahâbrâhmaNa-VidûSaka, in whom the pre-classical Vedic dîkSita has assimilated the Tantric notations of the Kaula adept, continued to be enacted at the transgressive centre of the nevertheless Brahmanical stage.

The semiotics of transgressive sacrality finds its ideal symbolic operator in the multidimensional category of the pure/impure, which resists all attempts by anthropologists to reduce it to the purely sociological opposition that, in Indian civilization, rules the separation of the Brahman and the Untouchable, even while embracing their conflicting functions within the hierarchical norm(s) of the caste-society. Far from being a simple first principle that would have proliferated into a bewildering variety of substances and situations so as to regulate human conduct in its entirety, the apparently "mixed" category of the impure, the point of articulation of conceptual levels that we would now distinguish as physical, physiological, psychic, juridical, moral or metaphysical, and not only social, appears rather as the complex terminal concept precipitated by an invisible semiology generating the diverse taboos of which it is the object. In other words, impurity is not the independent objective property generally presupposed by interdictory sacrality but itself on the contrary the hypostatized effect projected by the operation of a network of taboos held together by a mythico-ritual symbolic system which needs to be adequately deciphered in order to understand why certain objects, actions and persons are impure in certain contexts.¹⁴ The quasi-untouchability of the MahâbrâhmaNa as funerary priest defies any functionalist or structuralist sociology that defines (the supreme status of) the Brahman in terms of his ritual purity alone, instead of deriving the inscrutable symbolism of death invested in this (in principle) Vedic Brahman in a dialectical manner from the impure sacrality of the Brahman(ized) initiate (dîkSita) during his embryonic regression in the pre-classical sacrifice.¹⁵ For the symbolic universe of the Vedic ‘sacrifice’ (yajña), itself the social dramatization of an inner lived experience of transgressive sacrality, is the formal paradigm whereby the strict observance of ritually prescribed injunctions (vidhi) and interdictions (niSedha) paradoxically culminates in the sacralization of the forbidden impure so as to consecrate even the criminal Brahmanicide of the Kâpâlika MahâbrâhmaNa. [434>]

It is this enigmatically structured universe of mythico-ritual correspondences and its mana-like sacred power released by their assimilation and mastery as evidenced in the riddle-like hymnology of the Rigvedic poet (kavi), that constitutes the original meaning of the term "bráhman," which later appears in a primarily liturgical form as ritualized enigma-contests (brahmodya) whose key was hidden in the officiating brahmán priest who silently supervised the mysterious workings of the sacrifice.¹⁶ Makarius has sought to demonstrate that mana as power is unleashed through transgression, and resolving the enigma is symbolically equated by Lévi-Strauss with committing incest, such as bequeathed by Prajâpati in the form of the black antelope skin to the (royal) dîkSita before it came to characterize the transgressive fifth-head of the Purânic Brahmâ.¹⁷ Though apparently suffering from exaggerated timidity, constant allusions, often teasingly by his royal patron himself, are made to the formidable (magical) powers of the mock-heroic VidûSaka, who brandishes the crooked (kuTilaka) weapon of Brahmâ in phallic gestures of displaced aggressivity ultimately aimed at the protectress of the heroine, the mythical Sarasvatî, incestuous daughter of Brahmâ(-Prajâpati). If this "caricature of the purohita," though always a Brahman and indeed protected by Omkâra the quintessence of bráhman, is regularly depicted profaning the cherished values of Brahmanism and even (symbolically) violating its sacralizing interdictions, so as to earn the mocking label of "Brahman par excellence" (MahâbrâhmaNa), this is no doubt because the semiotics of transgression reveals this enigmatic buffoon, who revels in abrupt irrelevant nonsensical pretentious remarks dismissed as puerile jokes, to be the delightful bearer of the primordial bráhman.¹⁸