Roberto Calasso: Ka

The mind: a flow restricted by no bank or barrier, crossed by flashes that fade away. A circle would have to be drawn, a frame, a templum . “Settle down,” Prajāpati told himself. But everything pitched about. “Need a solid base,” pratiṣṭha , he said. “Otherwise my children will wander around witless. If nothing stays the same, how can they ever calculate anything? How can they see the equivalences?” As he was thinking this, he lay on a lotus leaf, delicate and flimsy, blown along by the breeze, which was himself. He thought: “The waters are the foundation of all there is. But the waters are the doctrine too, the Vedas. Too difficult. Who of those to be born will understand? Need to hide, to cover at least a small part of the waters. Need earth.” In the shape of a boar he dove into the deep. Surfacing, his snout was smeared with mud. He began to spread it out on the lotus leaf, with loving care. “This is the earth,” he said. “Now I’ve spread it, I’ll need some stones to keep it still.” He disappeared again. Then he arranged a frame of white stones around the now dry mud. “You will be its guardians,” he said. Now the earth was taut as a cowhide. Tired as he was, Prajāpati lay down on it. For the first time he touched the earth. And for the first time the earth was burdened with a weight.

The dried slime covering the lotus leaf set in a thin layer. Yet it sufficed to give some impression of stability. The white stones sketched out an enclosure, allowed one to get one’s bearings. It was this, more than anything else, that was reassuring, that invited thought. Beneath, immediately beneath, flowed the waters, as ever.

While Prajāpati’s back lay glued to the earth, time stretched out within him. One by one, his joints were coated, inside and out, by a corrosive patina: past and future.

In his solitude, Prajāpati, the Progenitor, thought: “How can I reproduce?” He concentrated inside, and a warmth radiated from within. Then he opened his mouth. Out came Agni, Fire, the devourer. Prajāpati looked. With his open mouth he had created, and now an open mouth was coming toward him. Could it really want to eat him, its own creator, so soon? He couldn’t believe it. But now Prajāpati knew terror. He looked around. The earth was bare. Grasses, trees, they were only in his mind. “So who can it want to eat? There’s no one but me,” he repeated. Terror left him speechless. Then Prajāpati knew the first anguish and the first doubt. He must invent a food for the creature he had made if he wasn’t to end up in Agni’s mouth. Prajāpati rubbed his hands together to conjure up an offering. But all that appeared was some soggy stuff, matted with hairs. Agni wouldn’t want that. He rubbed his hands together again — and out came a white, liquid substance. “Should I offer it? Or maybe not?” thought Prajāpati, paralyzed by terror. Then the wind rose and a light filled the sky. Agni devoured the offering and was gone.

Prajāpati sensed he had a companion, a “second” being, dvitīya , within him. It was a woman, Vāc, Word. He let her out. He looked at her. Vāc “rose like a continuous stream of water.” She was a column of liquid, without beginning or end. Prajāpati united with her. He split her into three parts. Three sounds came out of his throat in his amorous thrust: a, ka, ho. A was the earth, ka the space between, ho the sky. With those three syllables the discontinuous stormed into existence. From eight drops were born the Vasus, from eleven the Rudras, from twelve the Ādityas. The world, which didn’t yet exist, was already full of gods. Thirty-one born from as many drops, then Sky and Earth: which made thirty-three. Plus there was ka , the space between, where Prajāpati was. Thirty-four. Silently, Vāc slipped back into Prajāpati, into the cavity that was ever her home.

When creating the gods, Prajāpati decided to issue them forth into this world because the worlds below, in the depths of the sky, were pitted and impracticable as a dense thicket. The earth had the advantage of being insignificant. Everything still to be built. There was a clearing — and the wind whistling through empty space.

But no sooner had they appeared than the gods were gone. To seek the sky? They took no notice of the Progenitor. They turned their backs on him at once. The earth was just a point of departure, beneath consideration, a desolate way station. Prajāpati was left behind, alone again, last not first. Something held him back, something still there waiting for him: Mṛtyu, Death. One of his own creatures.

In the dusty clearing, Prajāpati watched Death. Death watched Prajāpati, symmetrical, motionless as his adversary. Each was waiting for the right moment to overcome the other. Prajāpati practiced tapas . He generated heat within himself. Now and then, in that dark period of silent affliction, Prajāpati raised his arms. Upon which a globe of light would rise from his armpits and shoot off to bury itself in the vault of the sky. So the stars were born.

The first equivalences were the sampads that flashed across Prajāpati’s mind as he was dueling with Death. A sampad is a “falling together,” a chain of equivalences. How did they reveal themselves? Prajāpati was staring straight ahead, at Death. All around him, the world. The two combatants gazed at each other, studied each other. But didn’t move. Each was surrounded by a supporting army. Wooden spoons, a wooden sword, sticks, bowls: such was Prajāpati’s army. Frayed and frail. Around Death were a lute, an anklet, some powder puffs for making up.

How long would this tension last? As he waited, Prajāpati ran through everything that served as a frame to Death, a frame that amounts to everything that is. It was a long way to run. He penetrated the frame, in its scrolls and flourishes — and the density of decoration would sometimes hide Death from him. He thought: “This is like that, this corresponds to that, this is equivalent to that, this is that.” A vibration, a tension, a euphoria flooded his mind. If this is that, then that corresponds to this other thing — he went on. Slender bonds wrapped themselves like ribbons around this and that. The bonds stretched, invisible to many, but not to the one who put them there. With a sentinel’s eye, Prajāapati went on watching Death. But with the eye that wanders, that evokes images, numbers, and words, he went on getting things to “fall together,” sometimes things that were far apart, getting them to coincide. And the further apart they were, the more exhilarated he felt. The existent world — prickly, numb, empty — let itself be covered, taken, gathered, enveloped, in the mesh of a fabric. Oh, still a loose mesh, for sure… Yet this made it all the more exciting, that the mesh was at once so loose and so fine, as though to avoid upsetting the blind breathing of the whole. But Death? Still crouched there, waiting. Prajāpati thought: “If he kills me, what will be left?” Until now, this thought had terrified him. Prajāpati knew that everything proceeded from himself. Imagining himself as not existing meant imagining all existence nonexistent. But now he looked around. Then he saw himself from without: an exhausted, weary, wrinkled old being. All about him, everything was still new, so that looking around he could now see how every dapple of vegetation, every outline of a rock, concealed a number, a word, an equivalence: a mental state that clung and mingled with another state. As if every state were a number. As if every number were a state. This was the first equivalence, origin of all others. Then Prajāpati thought: “If I were gone, perhaps these things would no longer fall together? Perhaps the sampads would dissolve? But how could Death hurt the equivalences? How could she strike them?” Where was their body, for her to wound? They occupied no space, they couldn’t be touched. They surfaced in the mind, but where from? As he thought all this, Prajāpati felt a fever, release. He thought: “If the sampads elude me, who am myself thinking them, they will be all the more elusive for Death, who knows nothing of them. Death can kill me, but she cannot kill the equivalences.” He wasn’t aware that a clear, dry voice was issuing from his mouth. He was speaking to Death, after their long silence. Prajāpati said: “I’ve beaten you. Go ahead and kill me. Whether I am alive or not, the equivalences shall be forever.”