Though Vishnu, unlike Brahm�, is a supreme divinity of the cult of devotion (bhakti) and even of the Hindu renouncer (sanny�sin), he still participates in and prolongs the pure, conservative pole of the sacrificial order, universalizing it in the very process of loosening its links with the material reality of the Brahmanical sacrifice as performed by the exclusive Shrotriyas specializing in its ritual technique. But unlike Vishnu and though also a supreme divinity of asceticism and bhakti, Rudra participates in and prolongs the highly impure, violent and dangerous element that the sacrifice sought to productively manipulate within itself and that it assimilated to all that was destructive and menacing outside the sacrifice.31 This contrast between the two gods of bhakti, in terms of their relative proximity and opposition to the pure sacrificial order (dharma) incarnated in the classical Brahman, is very well expressed in the Kank�lam�rti-episode where it is the Brahman Vishvaksena who stands at the threshold barring the transgressive Bhairava's access to the conservative Vishnu. It is by killing Vishvaksena, by repeating his Brahmanicide, that Bhairava comes face to face with Vishnu, and it is evidently due to this peculiar circumstance of their encounter that the apollonian Vishnu favors the Dionysian Bhairava in a mode that is more ‘tantric,’ more transgressive, than socially orthodox. For blood, like saliva and finger-nails, is highly impure.32 The unwarranted slaying of his faithful Brahman door-keeper does not at all perturb Vishnu, who rather rewards Bhairava in like manner for his violent transgression. In the form of the ‘Man-Lion’ Narasimha, especially popular with the esoteric P��car�tras, and also as the equally tantricized ‘Boar’ Var�ha, Vishnu does closely approach Bhairava in character, to the point of emerging like Bhairava from the sacrificial (stake-)pillar. The myth then reveals two different, but complementary, faces of the bhakti-ideology incarnated in Vishnu: an orthodox face linked to Brahmanism and preoccupations with purity and the other, secret, face turned towards the transgressive valorization of impurity symbolized by Bhairava.33
The same complicity seems to have existed between the Olympian Apollo and Dionysus, the god of transgression in ancient Greece. Not only did the impulsion vivifying the Dionysian cults come from the Delphic Apollo, but Dionysus himself shared Delphi with Apollo to the point of sometimes appearing to be the real master of the sanctuary, it being claimed that he even preceded Apollo there. Similarly, Thebes has its own sanctuary of Dionysus Cadmeios and, though he presents himself as a stranger before his own natal city, the most powerful of the Theban gods is Dionysus, with Apollo, again his accomplice.34 "Apollo wanted this close liaison with his mysterious brother, because their reigns, despite their abrupt opposition, are however in reality bound to each other by an eternal tie"; "the Apollonian world cannot exist without the other. That is why it has never refused it recognition" (author's trans.).35 Whereas the royally munificent protector-god Vishnu radiates life and prosperity through the politico-religious order deriving from the union of the two highest castes (Biardeau, L'hindouisme, p.108; see note 10), the obscure ‘popular’ outcaste destroyer-god Bhairava remains like Dionysus close to the embryonic potentialities of savage nature and death(-in-life) in order to inspire the frenzy of possession, that has earned him and his adepts the enduring epithet of ‘Mad’ or Unmatta (-Bhairava).36 As executioner-cum-victim, both Bhairava and Dionysus are identified with the phallic sacrificial post drenched in blood, and the embryogonic dimension of Bhairava's Brahmanicide is not without parallel notations in Dionysus' birth from his dead mother, reflected also in his cult.37
This comparative
excursus merely points to the universality of this complementary opposition
between the interdictory and transgressive poles of the sacred which is prior
to and ultimately quite independent of the bhakti-ideology.
From the exoteric socio-religious point of view, Vishnu is superior to
Bhairava, who 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
Vishvan�tha in V�r�nas�, 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. Thus K�labhairava's promised suzerainty
over K�sh� has been translated in reality into his being the
policeman-magistrate (kotw�l) of Lord Vishvan�tha.
The myth achieves this ‘conversion’ from criminal to kotw�l through Bhairava's ‘purification’ at the Kap�lamocana ‘pilgrimage site’
(t�rtha) at K�sh�. But if the kotw�l nevertheless remains there as the scapegoat ‘Sin-Eater’ par excellence,
this is no doubt because even as the criminal K�p�lika, he had already
transcended both good and evil and always remained untainted by them.38
Yet the pure central Shiva-Vishvan�tha of K�sh� has always been inwardly
identified by his priestly ‘Vedic’ (vaidika) custodians with the transgressive Bhairava of
the impure ‘marginal’ K�p�lika ascetics, so much so that until very recently he
still received secret tantric worship every morning (nityap�j�) in the ‘right-hand’ (dakshin�c�ra) mode with symbolic substitutes of the ‘five
“M”s’ (pa�ca-mak�ras: viz. meat, fish, wine, parched beans, and
sexual intercourse), from the priests (p�j�ris) who used
to smear themselves with ashes from the cremation-ground. And human heads were
sacrificed to him in the form of pumpkins at the sacrificial stake (y�pa-stambha) within the temple. During K�la-Bhairava's birthday on Bhairav�shtam�,
he also used to be secretly worshipped as the destructive Samh�ra-Bhairava, and
only on that day, seven different fruit and vegetal juices were mixed together
(saptarasa) to constitute nectar (amrta = Soma), with which the ‘phallic’ form of Shiva (shivalinga) was bathed before its distribution to devotees. Depending on
availability, water-melons, jack-fruit or coconuts were used instead of
pumpkins as substitutes for human-heads. It is likely that in much earlier
times real blood-sacrifices were offered in the temple itself.39
This should hardly
surprise us when, from the esoteric standpoint of transgressive sacrality,
Vishnu himself recognizes Bhairava as the supreme divinity. Nevertheless,
Bhairava himself is anxious to "keep up the appearances," to maintain
the distinction between what can be described as the exoteric and esoteric
hierarchies, for he recognizes Vishnu's supremacy in the socio-religious domain
in exchange for the latter's recognition of his own metaphysical and initiatic
supremacy. The collusion between the two corresponds perfectly to the
oft-repeated dictum of the Bhairav�gamas that one should be a
(Bhairava-worshipping) ‘tantric’ (Kaula) within, a Shaiva without, a devotee of
Vishnu (vaishnava) in the ‘public assembly’ (sabh�), and an orthodox brahmin (vaidika) in everyday (ritual) life.40