When Earth Was Young

Reading Sacred Indian Texts _________________________

Story of Rivers

When they set in motion the first beginning of speech,giving names,

their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love

The Rig Veda , 10.71

(translated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty)

Vastness of the sky

expands his heart and

clears the fear

pooled in silence there;

cradled alongside

are doubts,

hundred muted questions -

is fire born in water

as lightning in a cloud ?

is earth born in water

as a golden embryo in deep ocean?

is speech born out of thought

as an action out of desire?

between fire and water,

between earth and ocean

flows a river of stories,

like love that marries word to thought.

Ashwamedha

Each of the organisms

that flies in the sky

swims the water,

walks the land

is the sacrificial horse.

The adhvaryu measures the sacrificial land, fills chants like breath into an inert body:

thus an unremarkable clearing becomes centre of heavens and earth:

what is the navel of the universe?

what is the farthest end of the earth ?

The sacrifice is the navel of the universe

the altar is the farthest end of earth

Temporary huts spring up, become little factories,a melee of activities: stakes built from felled trees,

knobs fashioned with care to bind the stake;ropes made by firmly twisting durba grass,

finely woven cloth to lay the sacrificial horse and shroud him with the chief queen,

gold smelted in furnaces for the queensfor the sacrificial horse on its return a year after -

all strung by chants, words coded in brainfirst to last last to first. He builds the altar

eyes feverish, mind in vigilance. Every utterance, action unites the horse with

Prajapati whose right eye fell down and swelled,became the white horse with dark patch -

stories that the hotº narrates,the sacrificer king listens while the horse roams,

a year his thoughts follow the horse across the earth,the cloud of dust it leaves with a retinue of 400 people.

(First, the poets created the world in metaphors:

Drops of gold

melted from the sun, the horse -

the whinnying white animal

with wings of eagle

gait of antelope, flashes across the sky;

its russet mane

like light dances on the floor of forests.

This, coded as manual of rituals, mnemonic verses welded in memory

notwithstanding obscurities where cognition crumbled.)

Prajapati desired the horse that he was, desired sacrifice;desire is heat that dispersed as gods to be propitiated -

a sacrificial animal victim for each of the gods,parts of the universe: the sky, grass, heavens.

Bestow dark necked goat, a deep hued goat,

a white one, black one, two with shaggy hind thighs.

And the horse for Prajapati. Queens like the metre of poetry

write on the horse, mark the path for the knife; adhvaryu carves the ribs dexterously,

cleaving the limbs with love and without hurt, endearingly: you do not die, you are not harmed.

one two three four… thirty-four, calling them outoffers the first to Agni … the thirteenth to Yama…

every muscle, every tendon to each of the organisms that flies in the sky, swims the water, walks the land.

_________________________________

From the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda and Shatapatha Brahmana.

Yama and Yami

Yama died, stepped across the divide of the pasture;there he sat on the cool grass, drank the fresh pressed Somaas he thought of his sister Yami he left behind: she was a lover he had denied, his twin of destiny /desire they lay together in their mother's womb man/woman.

Her flesh he shared, her breath his, the hair thatblew on his face as she bent to pick a flower,he had gathered into curls of order on her neck,the down on her neck he had seen bristle on cold eveningsthat they as children spent alone on the banks of the river.

Their beautiful mother the dear daughter of Tvastr,the free spirit of the skies could not be made to yield to banalities of parenting: changing diapers, cleaning snot,spooning messy drools of porridge. She complained she had perpetual headache and that light swam behind her eyes.

After bearing Yama Yami she refused to lie with her husband,Vivasvat the glorious Sun; he was too radiant, gave her a migraine. She darkened the chambers in her palace with thick curtains,desultorily spent the afternoons sipping cool chalices of Somaas her neglected children sat in the cold porch outside her room.

Yama and Yami the inseparable twins were the only mortals in the world of gods blood and clay, sweat and desirethat made and unmade them at birth. One day was like anotheras she baked bread and stirred soup for him she feltalone as life passed by, angry that he never touched her.

Eyes rheumy with age she sat in the dark kitchennot quite recognising the man her brother became -shifting on his feet, looking into the blue depths of the skybeyond the radiance that their father shed on the earth.One day she brought him a kernel of pumpkin soup

and found him dead, the breeze from the mountainson the skin that she knew so well. It had never happened before-Death. Gods didn't know what to do with a dead man.But Yama knew, lived for this death to step into a world that was left for him to create.

No Viswakarma could do that convincingly: you should have lived to die, have the fire claw-singe your flesh, feel the body mix with the earth, eyes with the sun, breath with the wind. Death calls for compassion, to deliver the dead you must be compassionate like Yama.

_________________________

Yama and Yami were twins, born to Saranyu and Vivasvat or Surya.

Saranyu was the daughter of Tvastr or Hiranyagarbha, she was

a wild and free spirit who could not be pinned to domesticity of

marriage and child raising. Yama was the first mortal to experience

death . This poem is drawn from the allusions to Yama and Yami

in the Rig Veda (10.13, 10.14, 10.15)

Satyavati and Parashara

He seeks her in the crevices under the arms -

smell of fish, the river bed, weeds that dance in the water;

she ferries him across the Ganga, dreams in her eyes

like the distant moon, blue in a honeyed night.

In the velvety darkness through speeding currents

in the folds of her misted skin he inhales

the smell of worms and algae that swim

in the depths of her eyes; as the pool of passion

surges and stirs, he ingests fragrance of the musk

under her breasts that roll down the waist like heads of

sleepy children. She is no longer a secret he carries

in his loins, she has spilled into kingdoms far and in history.

_________________________

Satyavati was the beautiful daughter of a fisherman-chieftain.

She ferried passengers across the Ganga. Sage Parashara, who

halted for a night on the banks of the Ganga, was attracted to

Satyavati who ferried him across the river . A love child was born

to them - Vyasa, the author of the Itihasa ‘Mahabharata’.

Satyavati and Vyasa

The man from the mountains

ferreted out the fish girl; feet sore

with calluses, he descended the hills

like a mountain lion and sniffed her skin

scaled in water. (He stepped out the river boat

water at the bottom slurped, a hood over

his head he disappeared beyond the copse

to a path that took him again to the mountains.)

Like a sprig of herb ruffled by breeze

smelling of radiance, in the warmth

between her legs she cradled silence.

A word snarled in skeins of sounds

swelled in her belly, looped into tales

till the tangles stretched her uterus;

her story got written in her womb

where the Kuru dynasty swam:

Vyasa birthed Satyavati and the Kuru clan,

blurring who mothered whom.

This is the first of the three poems on Garuda from the purana ‘Srimad Baghavatham’.

Sisters That Bet

The sisters moved away from the valley -Kadru didn't want anything of the forests and hillsmarshes and darkness that left her depressed;they moved to a low cliff close to the sea,she sunned on the rocks waiting for her thousand eggs to hatch.

Vinata collected stones and twigs, built a nest with wind-swept feathers, dry leaves,cradled her golden egg in cosyness of care,bordered the nest with a levee of sharp stones.Waited warily for the serpents her sister would birth.

Kadru was fatigued cracking the eggs, reaching for her thousand serpent babies, throwing away the shells that built like a small hill of foam.The children looked through slits of glass eyesreached for the warm crevices of rocks.

Not one given to parenting she fed her babies for a day or two rats and fledglings, then she went to her favourite rock lay there looking at the clouds above the seathat changed shapes ever so often.

Kadru was disgruntled with her brood she had asked Kashyapa for a thousand sons, but Vinata as always outdid her, asked for one son to surpass Kadru's thousand.Jealousy stirred like a python when Kadru saw Vinata's golden eggas it lay on the rock to collect sunshine for five hundred years .

Vinata kept busy having the egg warm at night time

protected it from the cold sheets of wind that blew from the sea -

she built a clay oven where she placed the egg ;

through the day she watched the knotted coils of serpents

as they moved on rocks, foraging for prey.

Kadru annoyed with the clamour her hungry sons made,

busyness of her sister clambering the rocks,

moved close to the sea, walked on the cool strand of sand .

She thought she saw an apparition in the horizon -

just a family of clouds gathering into a thunder storm?

That is Indra's horse, Vinata pointed to the horizon.

The seven headed white horse. Uchaishravas.

Vinata's lips rounded around the name. Kadru scowled

Not all white Kadru said, let's fly close to the horse,

if it's not all white I become your mistress.

The sisters flew like wisps of breath over the sea

As their skirts tossed, like marble their thighs shone.

Uchaishravas looked at the women skimming the ocean,

unaware of serpents, the ugly sons of Kadru, on his tail -

black shot through silver - making him not all white.

Garuda

From thousands of feet up, circling the brown waves of hills

he scans pinheads of mountain peaks searching for his father;

feathers bleached a deep indigo with sunrise, the large bird

like a flying firmament squints into the caving sockets of hills.

The air gets pressed as Garuda plunges close to the earth,

Kashyapa in deep meditation opens his eyes as flaps of wings stir breeze,

sees his glorious son for the first time. Hardly hatched, but brimming

with purpose that even as seed Kashyapa laid in Vinata's womb:

tapas of sixty thousand hermits mixed like rich cream

as he took her that night and she cried with pleasure.

She waited five hundred years for the egg to hatch

as the thousand serpents hissed and tormented her.

The shell cracked and the tender down of the eaglet shone,

his mother looked with sadness. Wind on the high mountain moaned,

coils of serpents that sunned on the cold rock welcomed Garuda:

his cousins that he will kill as prey for holding his mother in bondage.

Darbha Grass

On the flattened darbha grass

Garuda kept the pot of Soma -

ransom to free his mother from bondage.

He asked the thousand serpents

to take purificatory bath at the river.

As they slithered towards the river

Indra took away the celestial drink;

the hissing serpents mad with anger

pressed their bellies on the grass

where the pot lay, licked

the dharba sharp like razor,

and thus acquired forked tongues.

Better Off Unborn

Never make love at sunset when the gods

take a ride in the skies, look down at you copulating

skirt pulled up; the breeze from the jackfruit tree

cooled the damp sweat, mapped the moist trail

that her ascetic husband with dreadlocks left on her skin.

He watched her emerge from the blue depths of desire

muddied by wisps of sadness. The sky a mottled lilac skirt

planted the two seeds of curse under, a gash that ached while

the voyeuristic gods reclining on firm clouds

sneered at the woman for lusting seeking her man.

(My upbringing is impeccable, never leave behind my comb

with strands of hair, never let my skirt balloon

on the clothesline at night time, roll away my mat, sweep the floor.

Twilight is dangerous my father had warned, open the doors, let

gods see everything, that I am clean at dusk time between my legs.)

Her womb swelled like the river in monsoon time,

rashes of worry spread on the skin, pouches of dread hung under eyes,

complexion the colour of lily curdled like stale cheese -

happens in pregnancy the women at the ashram told her. She

stilled her breath, eclipsed time till it hung like a discarded plastic bag.

The poison inked her blood a deep purple,

fetuses kept a hundred years in the womb turned blue;

the glaciers inched and the earth shifted under her feet,

her boys moved pushed tugged , stirred love and affection

while she prayed they drown in the primeval water of creation.

___________________________

Story of Diti and Kashyapa from the purana ‘Srimad Bhagavatham’.

When the universe was still young during the first Manvantara,

Brahma created from parts of his body Prajapatis who would

people the universe with their progeny. Daksha was created

from Brahma's thumb and he birthed fifty sons and thirteen

daughters, one being Diti and the other Sati the wife of Mahadeva.

Marichi the other son of Brahma was one of the Sapta rishis.

His son Kashyapa inherited from his father the right of creation.

He married Daksha's daughter Diti.

Meanwhile in a different world Vishnu's celestial gatekeepers

were cursed by rishis. This could be annulled by their birth

on earth.

Diti makes love with Kashyapa in dusk, under the prying eyes of

gods and gets cursed for her improper act with asuras for sons

so that the accursed gatekeepers get a passage of life

through her womb. She gives birth to the asuras Hiranyaksha

and Hiranyakashpu .

Savitri

Savitri the beautiful princess shed her exuberant silkdropped her pearls and gems, the fragrant flowersthat knit her hair. Clad in simple robes of rough cotton she assisted her husband perform sacrificial rites.The glowing daughter of the Sun carried a dark secret,remained anxious of shadows lurking near her conjugal nest.

She sat in the evening under the banyan treeas birds settled high in the branchesthickening with darkness, her mind clouded with fatigue, parched dry the tongue stuck at the roof of her mouth. Pools of sadness gathered in her eyes that drooped like wilted lotus.

Satyavan emerged from the forestsweat on his sinewy arms that labored collecting wood for the sacrificial fire. The smoke of that day's oblation hung like a dark cloud, the hut barren like an ascetic's carried smell of fire that licked as the sun ascended the heavens.

He spread himself like a panther on the kusa grass,she brought wild berries she collected near the clearing,the milk she pressed from the almonds that hung like sore nipples at the trees.Since she hadn't eaten for three days the smell of boiled wild rice nauseated her.

He turned towards her inviting,the coarse cotton barely concealing his desire;as he ran his lips down her throat, salivafrom his mouth froze like snow on the Himalayas and she saw the dark figure of Death penetrate her: lifeless wood inside her.

He looked into her dark eyes,seeing defiance in her compliance, inscrutable from the day of their marriage.He was aroused and disturbed at the thoughtof the silent lover lingering every night of their union.She refused to receive his seeds in her burning womb.

It was his last day on earth, her mind feverish with prayers and mantras refused to descend in response to his touch; a trail of chillness, remoteness laced her caress,rejecting yet again his attempt to impregnate her.She had to remain an empty vessel to bargain for his life.

As Yama resplendent in red stood before herthe beautiful daughter of the Sun dared to brook his stare, poetry she read in the scented garden of her father's palacelike a treasure offered words to praise the Lord of Death, dialogues with ascetics during her journey along the Gangahelped Savitri engage Yama in talks on metaphysics.

Honeyed words like wild bees hummed in the forest,mesmerised by her intelligence and wisdom Yama granted her a boon. As a fruit for a year's austerityshe asked for a hundred sons from her husband. For this Satyavan had to live, for this she allowed seeds waste away. The glorious lord of Death, the silent lover smiled at Savitri.

____________________The story of Savitri and Satyavan is an upa-katha (a sub narrative)

from the Itihasa 'Mahabharata'. This tale has stood out and acquired an

existence of its own because of the strong protagonist Savitri

who stands shoulder to shoulder with Sita and Draupadi ,

the two powerful women from 'Ramayana' and 'Mahabharata'.

________________________________________

Uma Gowrishankar