upakathā of previous: śūlapuruṣa-catvārakam-2

upakathā of previous: śūlapuruṣa-catvārakam-1

It was a Saturday afternoon. The caturbhaginī-s had returned from their weekly visit to the museum library and were in a huddle at their home. Lootika was seated on the floor and was classifying and labeling the insect photos in her computer placed on the low desk in front of her. Little Jhilleeka lay on the floor with her head on Lootika’s lap facing Vrishchika, who was reading a fat volume from her grandfather’s time. Lootika occasionally caressingly tousled Jhilleeka’s locks but was otherwise busy with her work and was not paying attention to the rest. Jhilleeka asked Vrishchika: “That Mahābhārata looks like a rather prolix tome Vrishchika. It did not seem like such a giant story from what Lootika told me. What is it that makes the book so big?” For some reason this statement caught Lootika’s attention and she remarked, perhaps meaning it only for herself: “I am reminded of a statement of the crazed old German Nietzsche – ‘Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.‘ Though very young, Jhilleeka, intelligent as her sisters, got the drift and remarked with a smile of mischief, as though to needle Lootika: “Sis, if that was supposed to be for me, I am not censuring the author of the text here, but the person who narrated it to me.” Lootika half smiled and tickled Jhilleeka as though to get back at her.

Vrishchika: “Jhilleeka, what you have heard from our agrajā is only the skeleton of our national epic; it is replete with many more stories and narrations that you are not yet aware of or might need to grow up a little more to grasp them. There are other parts there which would take all of us a long time to understand. Those would need a much more detailed study. Lootika, I am sure you have something from the unmatta śūlapuruṣa of old to say on such a study of a text.”

Lootika looked up something on her computer and read it out: “Here – ‘An aphorism, properly stamped and moulded, has not been ‘deciphered’ when it has simply been read; one has then rather to begin its exegesis, for which is required an art of exegesis. […] To be sure, to practise reading as an art in this fashion one thing above all is needed, precisely the thing which has nowadays been most thoroughly unlearned – and that is why it will be some time before my writings are ‘readable’ – a thing for which one must be almost a cow and in any event not a ‘modern man’: rumination…‘

Lootika then continued: “While the pramatta-śūlapuruṣa says this of his own writings, it does more generally apply to any literature ensuing from a serious author. Unfortunately, this is not a custom cultivated by many in the modern age. Dear Jhilleeka that is why you must be careful at school not to adopt such ill habits from your plebeian friends.”
Jhilleeka: “The Bhārata has been fascinating to me but I have not put in such cow-like introspection you talk about.”
Vrishchika: “You will have the chance for that as you grow older but you have to begin young like our agrajā showed the way.”
Jhilleeka: “For now could you please tell me some narrative I may not have heard of.”

Vrishchika: “Why not: here is one which would make you think. I am not endeavoring to reproduce the exact words of the great sage Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana but I will put it in my own words trying to keep fairly close to the original. When your competence in the daivi-vāk reaches a sufficient degree you may read it on your own, little one. The narration goes thus – After the great war, Dhṛtarāṣṭro Vaicitravīrya, who has been described as an evil king in the śruti, was distraught at the death of his century of sons. While attending to their final rites he repeatedly sought consolation from his half-brother the kṣattṛ Vidura. In one of his many consolatory statements Vidura told him the following: There was once a brāhmaṇa, who was lost in a great forest, difficult to traverse. [Such forests indeed used to characterize our country when our Ārya ancestors had first settled in it.] It abounded in voracious lions, tigers, and animals having a form like an elephant.

Lootika distracted by Vrishchika’s narrative interjected: “May be those elephant-like animals were the supposed relict populations of Stegodons that apparently persisted in Asia into the Holocene.”

Vrishchika continued: Perhaps! The said brāhmaṇa became exceedingly agitated and his hair stood on end. He panicked and wandered about hoping to find someone who might help him. To his horror he saw that the forest was surrounded by a net that blocked his escape and he also saw a large, frightful woman lying in wait with her arms stretched out, along with many broad-hooded cobras. Everywhere there were trees that seemed so tall that they were touching the sky. In their midst was a deep waterhole, which was obscured by a dense overgrowth of grass and entwined creepers. Not seeing it the brāhmaṇa fell headlong into the mouth of that waterhole. But he got enmeshed in the vines lining the wall of the waterhole and was suspended there even as the giant fruit of a jack-tree is attached to its trunk. Thus, he did not fall into the hole but remained stuck in an upside down position. Trapped thus, he saw a huge python eyeing him from the depths of the waterhole. At the rim of the waterhole he saw the giant-elephant-like animal gradually approach, which looked to him like the dreadful elephant of Kumāra with six heads. There were branches of trees that extended out into the waterhole. On those were many large beehives of diverse forms, buzzing with angry bees gathering honey.

Honey dripped in streams from those hives and the suspended brāhmaṇa sustained himself by licking that honey. However, in that distressed state he could not satiate himself satisfactorily with that honey and tried to lick more of it. Then he saw white and black rodents gnawing away the roots of the tree on which the hive was situated. Thus, he remained suspended from the wall of the waterhole fearing the snake beneath, the elephant-like animal above, the angry bees, and the fear of the tree coming crashing down upon its roots being cut away by the rodents. Even if he did make it out, he still had the snakes in the forest and the dreadful woman and the net to fear. Despite this he tried his best to enjoy as much sweetness of the honey as he could and continued to hope that he would live on.

That is it, Jhilleeka. It is a narrative with no ending but one that you should think about.”

Jhilleeka: “It is indeed a dark narrative. It seems frightening to think about. Could it mean that is how life is supposed to be?”

Lootika chimed in: “That is correct Jhilleeka. It is not impossible that such is the condition of any of our lives in the future. We may be of high brāhmaṇa birth but it does not take much to fail to adhere to the path ordained for those in the head of the puruṣa and fall headlong into ignominy, even as king Triśaṇku was hurled down by the deva-s. Then, even if one did adhere to the high path there is no guarantee that our individual biology will match up. We could thus fall prey to defective genetics or disease and be reduced to the state of the fallen brāhmaṇa in the narrative. Or ill-luck, which manifests as genetic drift in the evolution of organisms, could reduce one. That is why when population sizes are small the fittest may not make it and deleterious genetics persist in the population.”

Vrishchika: “Now this narrative from the great epic reminds one of the very life of Nietzsche. Indeed, our agrajā told me the said śūlapuruṣa as consequence of being unable to control his urges contracted a dreadful disease and continually suffered from it. Finally, he became mentally ill and thereafter lapsed into the condition of a human vegetable. Such indeed could be ones fate even upon the acquisition of discernment.”

Lootika: “Perhaps, when one is confronted with such misfortune, some people might acquire a meta-insight into the human condition as Nietzsche did in a brief flash before the disease took him out. Whereas others, like the fallen brāhmaṇa in the itihāsa, even in dire straits might merely try to get a transient pleasurable experience, like his attempt to lick some more honey, but they never get any satisfaction from this and it goes on till their end comes. From the viewpoint of the individual both fates might be the same, but because we are eu(?)social organism the former path is of great value for we might benefit our group thereby.”

Just then Varoli joined her sisters and showed Lootika and Vrischika a tube with a blue solution and said: “I believe that the basaltic eminence where we hang out occasionally has two types of nodules. This nodule seems to have copper in it.” Lootika: “That is good, kanīyasī. I am pleased that you did the whole qualitative analysis properly from merely our oral instructions. But don’t tell our parents about your success in detailed terms for I don’t want them to know that I let you use the concentrated nitric acid.”
Lootika realized that it was time for her to go to the university lab where she worked on weekends and some evenings to do her research on the catalytic activities of insect toxins and biosynthesis of certain secondary metabolites. She had a few overnight reactions to set up, so she got up and left saying: “Varoli, I will get you some more minerals to analyze later this evening.”

◊◊◊◊

On her way back from the lab, Lootika met Somakhya at the base of the hill of Vṛścikodarī and they ran up the hill. After a quick visit to the shrine they climbed further up until the reached a plateau with henge of stones from the megalithic period. There they wandered in silence on the plateau till the sun hit the horizon. Lootika occasionally picked up some stones and put them into her bag, while Somakhya was silent and deep in thought. But at one point he paused and kept staring at a rock. Lootika broke his reverie: “Somakhya, I see that you are looking at the lichen – anything of interest there?”
Somakhya: “I noted that a couple of minutes ago you were staring at this mass of Asteracean plants spreading before us.”
Lootika: “They were not here a month ago.”
Somakhya: “Yes, but I measured the lichen on this rock 3 years ago and in that time it has hardly added a centimeter to its diameter in that time. That aster and this lichens are close to the two poles of the spectrum of growth strategies.”
Lootika: “This suggests to me a possible fallacy in a statement of the pramatta-śūlapuruṣa that I read- ‘It can be shown most clearly for every living thing, that it does everything, not in order to preserve itself, but to become more.‘ He saw this formulation as a improvement of Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’…”

Continued…