Roberto Calasso - Ka

Śaravanodbhava, Born-in-a-reed-marsh: that was one of the names they gave. Skanda, Squirt, the boy who was to save the world. Fire burned by fire, Agni spat out Śiva’s seed into a meander of the Gangā. Still water, under moonlight. The Pleiades, the Krttikās who watch over from above, saw the scene. Then a glow in the water drew them irresistibly. Having conversed so often with sailors and helped them find their way, they were eager to know the earth. Only the ever punctilious Arundhatí stayed where she was, reluctant to touch the world. Six girls descended in line from the night sky. They hid among the reeds, as though behind screens. Śiva’s seed penetrated the pores of their pulsing bodies. They lay there, feeding it, six guardians of a single womb. Then the white torsos of the entwined sisters rose from the waters as they all gave birth together. There was a profound silence, but that was not to say no one was watching. Hidden behind bushes on the riverbank, impatient for a sight of the boy who meant survival for them, the gods gazed hard at that glowing swamp. The reeds rustled in a first breeze. They saw six pairs of hands lift and caress a child above the surface of the water. Pārvatī was far away, alone, shut up in the shadows, melancholy, despondent. Quite suddenly she felt the milk flow in her breasts. And at the same time a spasm more painful than any birth, because it meant that she would never give birth. The milk was a mockery. But it did confirm that Skanda was her child, even if he hadn’t been born from her womb. “Your flesh is made of my tapas and my pleasure. You exist because Śiva touched me,” murmured Pārvatī to her distant son. And already Skanda was laughing amid reeds and mud. Six women offered him their breasts. They looked more like playmates than mothers. The divine infant’s six mouths stretched out to suck the milk of the Pleiades.

The world was never so peaceful as during Skanda and Ganeśa’s childhood. The boy with the elephant’s head and the boy with six heads played unceasingly around Śiva and Pārvatī, who no longer bothered with their lovemaking, rarely spoke, sat for hours on a smooth rock surrounded by pastel-colored drapes. Nandin the bull squatted down and gazed into the void. Gaṇeśa played at wrapping snakes around Śiva’s chest. With the same movements she had once made to string pearls in her palace, Pārvatī was engrossed in lacing little skulls onto Śiva’s garland. Skanda helped by holding one end of the string. The other animals around them — a peacock, a mouse, a lion — kept quiet and slept. For once almost nothing was happening in the world. No tremor from the coitus of Śiva and Pārvatī. No threat of Tāraka rocking the earth from its foundations. Skanda had chased him off like an insect in no time at all. Even the gods were finally at rest.

Driven into the year like a wedge, the three last days of the aśvamedha , the “sacrifice of the horse,” came as the climax of what was the king of all sacrifices, the sacrifice that allows he who celebrates it to become king of all kings, to obtain everything he desires. Three days of ceremonies, but the whole year converged on that short segment of time. All year one sensed a hidden tension, all year something was going on in preparation for those days, as if the ultimate purpose of the year was to home in on those three days. After which another year and other ceremonies would follow, as though to attenuate the consequences.

To be sovereign of the whole earth, one need do no more than think of oneself as sovereign of the whole earth, one need do no more than celebrate the rite of he who is sovereign of the whole earth: the sacrifice of the horse. What is real in effect (actual sovereignty over the whole earth) is secondary and derivative with respect to what is of the mind, and to the rite that is its consequence.

The place of sacrifice was an even, well-trodden stretch of land, flat but sloping gently toward the east. Beyond its eastern edge, there was to be no sign of another, similar space that might itself become a place of sacrifice. Rather, there had to be water to the east, water all year round. Usually a pond. Above all the place was an empty space, a clearing. Something entirely normal and nondescript. The only thing that mattered was that there be no other place, at once equally normal and nondescript, in the immediate vicinity. Because there a rival’s shadow might one day loom. It was also important that one be aware of the presence of water.

Before the sacrifice of the horse, there is an empty clearing. After the sacrifice of the horse, there is an empty clearing, with a few remaining ashes and a melee of foot and hoof prints. Some of the items necessary for the sacrifice, like the mahāvīra pot, were made during the sacrifice itself. Making these things was part of the sacrifice. And they were then destroyed at the end of the sacrifice. Again this destruction was part of the sacrifice. You might say that the main concern of those officiating was to start from zero and return to zero. To make everything themselves, accepting nothing ready-made, nothing already in existence. Then to destroy everything, leaving no trace, as if what was being worked out within the sacrifice was of the same stuff as time, which looms over all but is palpable to no one.

Everything begins, and ends, with the eye, within the eye. In the beginning, Prajāpati saw the sacrifice of the horse. He saw it as one sees an animal passing by. But what was the horse? Prajāpati’s eye.

This happened: Prajāpati was watching and desiring, in the void. His left eye began to swell ( aśvayat ). His left eye fell to the ground. Prajāpati looked at his swollen, now detached eye, lying in the dust, and saw that it was the horse ( aśva ). Upon which he thought that more than anything else he would like to be whole again, to recover his eye. Then that very moment he saw the sacrifice, saw the white horse with the black patches galloping by, its mane blowing in the wind. He knew he would kill it, knew he would cut into the horse’s flesh on its left flank so that his left eye might return to its socket as before. But now there would be the almost imperceptible mark of a suture. That scar would be the sign of sacrifice, of life passing by.

Agni, the firstborn, had just fled. The other gods were crowding around Prajāpati: “Follow him! You’ve got to get him back! Agni won’t show himself to anyone but his father!” they said. So Prajāpati turned into a white horse. For a long time he wandered around at random, tried every direction. While drinking from a pond, he saw a lotus leaf with a blaze of light flickering over it. He raised his muzzle to look. His mouth was seared by fire. And his eyes too were affronted by the blaze. Agni realized he had hurt the Father. As he burned beneath the horse’s noble and solemn muzzle, he said: “Father, I shall grant you one boon. Ask…” Prajāpati said: “That whoever goes in search of you in the form of a white horse shall find you.” From that day on white horses have red mouths, as if seared, and delicate eyes. They are the marks left by that wound we call knowledge.

Preparations for the sacrifice of the horse were long. The craftsmen had to make the wherewithal. They cut down twenty-one trees to make as many poles, to which the victims would be tied. Thirty-six long-handled spoons were required. Four four-wheeled chariots. Four silver-buttoned headdresses were prepared for the brides of the sacrificer-king. They baked the bricks for the altar of fire. They forged two hundred and forty-two knives. Three hundred and thirty-three gold needles, the same number of silver, the same number of bronze. Then a pot to cook the horse’s blood in. Three cushions were embroidered with gold. Hundreds of animals were rounded up, from every village. “The tame animals they keep in the villages; the animals of the forest in a forest; the animals of the mountain on a mountain; the animals of the rivers in the rivers; the birds in cages; the reptiles in pots.”