Roberto Calasso - Ka

Indra writhed in pain on the ground and told himself that never had any god been so humiliated. His confused mind boiled with rancor against the other gods: “As always, I undertook this adventure on their behalf. And, as always, I alone must suffer the consequences. The gods are snoops, always scanning the earth, anxious and apprehensive, tormented by their one fear that some ṛṣi’s tapas will grow stronger than their own. Then they always resort to the cheap trick of ruining the seer with the help of some Apsaras or courtesan. Or they get a god to seduce his wife. And who better than I, Indra, the woman thief? I was acting on behalf of the gods — and all the evil has befallen me alone. Meanwhile the anger I aroused in Gotama has destroyed his reserves of tapas . So the gods are safe again. But they won’t remember me.”

When the thirty-three gods heard these words, they decided they had better get together and see to the matter. Agni spoke first. His right hand rested on the neck of a large ram. “Look here,” he said. “This ram has got testicles. Indra, who is king of the gods, has lost his. I propose that we give Indra the ram’s testicles.” Solemnly, the other gods agreed. Gripping the ram’s neck with one hand, Agni tore off his testicles with the other. Then he went down to Indra, still on his back by Gotama’s abandoned hut, and attached those dark testicles to the god’s bright body.

“Ascetic” (“he who exercises himself” is the Greek sense of the word) offers us a sober definition of those wise men, the ṛṣis , who spent their lives kindling tapas , expanding a nucleus of heat. Were the ascetics to succeed in absorbing the world into themselves, nothing would ever happen. Nature would gradually spread its leaves and weeds over the many scattered rocks that nurse incandescence in their depths. Not only would there be no history, but there would be no stories either. Or at least no visible stories. The landscape would be swept bare and refashioned by the wind. But that is not the case. The ascetic — be it Śiva himself, greatest of all ascetics — cannot stop the world’s existing and flourishing. Deep down, he wants the world to exist and flourish. How do we know that? Beside the ascetic there is always a woman. It might be the beautiful Anasūyā, wife of Atri, devourer of meditation, who is busying herself with the housework when all of a sudden the three supreme beings — Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva — turn up like a bunch of rogues and grab hold of her. Or it might be the wives of the ṛṣis in the Forest of Cedars, who one day see a stranger approaching, his clothes ragged, his eyes feverish, his body smeared with ashes, and suddenly they are following him, swaying their hips as if to the sound of cymbals. Or it might be the magnificent courtesan whom the ascetic Rśyaśṛnga meets in the forest and mistakes for a young man, an aspirant to spiritual ascent with whom he can exercise his tapas . Or the celestial Nymphs, the Apsaras, to whom any malevolent god may entrust the task of leading another ascetic astray. Wherever we find the ascetic, there is also the most beautiful of women, at once tempted and tempting, moving in circles around him. This figure is the first concretion of tapas , a ghost who weaves herself a body, which is then used to protect her origin — the ascetic — or recklessly to attack and destroy it. The ascetic becomes the only lover she ever knows: or alternatively he will be ridiculed and humiliated by this woman, will spill his seed without touching her; or he may ignore the Nymph. But a female figure will ever revolve around him, in her circle of fire.

Yājñavalkya said: “Thinking is dangerous. And it was never more so than the day Janaka of Videha invited me for a sacrifice, and likewise invited the brahmans of the Kuru-Pañcālas. On arrival, I found myself walking through a huge fair. Behind a stockade, a thousand cows were lowing, coins tinkling around their colored horns. Those cows were the prize Janaka was offering to whoever proved best able to answer questions about brahman . The Kuru brahmans all looked at me with suspicion, and some with resentment. I was seeing many of them for the first time, but we all knew something about each other. I was renowned for my brusque manners and didn’t want to disappoint. The meeting began: it was made up of two white stripes, the brahmans and the cows, between which milled a colorful crowd of women (some of them, I noticed, supremely beautiful), merchants, warrirors, and craftsmen, in short people who keep quiet and bear witness. Then I turned to Sämaṣravas, the young disciple who followed in my footsteps: ‘Sāmaśravas, my boy, go ahead and get the cows.’ I had spoken softly, but it seemed everybody had heard. There was a buzz of noise, with everybody speaking in everybody else’s ear.

“Aśvala, the hotṛ of Janaka, who was master of ceremonies on that occasion, stood up and asked me: ‘So, Yājñavalkya, you really are the best, are you?’ His voice was calm, his mind seething with rage. ‘I’m ready for anything,’ I said, ‘but I want those cows.’ The contest began at once. Gazing along the line of brahmans, I had the impression that every eye had narrowed to a slit: each mind was looking for the sharpest question. They wanted my head to burst. The first question was Aśvala’s by right: ‘Yājñavalkya,’ he said, ‘everything that exists is tainted by death. How can he who sacrifices not be tainted by death?’ There was a strong wind that day, bright sunshine, tents and banners hummed like sails. The wind bared my head. Everybody was looking at it. They wanted to see if the bones would shatter. The questions went on and on. With the concentric circling of the hawk they were homing in on brahman But my head was not bursting.

“Then Gārgī stood up. She was the most beautiful of all women theologians, and the most to be feared. Few were the brahmans who dared compete with her. Yet, rather than at the woman herself, I found myself looking at her robe. I hadn’t known that a fabric could be so splendid, hugging her body as if it were itself a body and eluding any definition of its color. She must have woven it herself, was my first thought, since I knew that Gārgī did some weaving as a pastime. She was famous for her fabrics, though one never saw them. Then I thought, ‘Perhaps the excellence of Gārgī’s thinking was a pastime when compared with her art as a weaver.’ As this thought came to an end in my mind, so did Gārgī’s first question. Playing the coquette, the woman who will speak of nothing but women’s matters, she was asking me a question about fabrics. ‘Yājñnvalkya,’ she said, ‘if the waters are the weft on which all things are woven, on what weft are woven the waters?’ An easy question, or so it seemed. But watching her facing me, I sensed that Gārgī was determined to beat me. The deceptive modesty of this opening was just a way of leading me into a trap. Ten times she asked me on what weft had been woven the world that was the weft of the preceding world. And I answered without hesitation, as though repeating a liturgy. After the tenth question, she looked up at me with blazing eyes: ‘And the worlds of brahman , what weft were they woven on?’ Then I felt fury well up within me against that insolent woman, temptress of the mind. ‘She believes that what her hand weaves is everything, that everything is there in her loom, beneath her fingers. Quite probably no man has ever dared contradict her. And she’s too proud and mad about her body ever to have invited a man to her bed,’ I thought. Then I found a new vibrancy in my voice, it was harsh and tense as I heard it pronounce these words: ‘Do not ask too much, Gārgī. Take care, lest your head should burst. You ask about a divinity beyond which there is nothing more to ask. Do not ask too much, Gārgī.’ And Gārgī fell silent.