All You Need Is Love

The other night Sophie and I went to go see the new movie "Across the Universe," a love story set in the turbulence of the 60s and narrated through the songs of the Beatles. Though the use of visual overlays in some scenes was a little cheesy, the selection of songs was impressive, and for most of the flick I was close to tears, which I will admit takes a really good movie to bring me to.

The movie also brought up my interest of looking for modern mythemes, as the Beatles' cultural influence has been coming up recently each time I play them at work. The Beatles clearly represent one of the largest modern set of culture heroes, especially in the 60s. Not to downplay the works and influence of Leary, Kesey, et al., but the Beatles' popularity and rise to fame had a dramatic effect on American youth, and was perhaps paradigmatic of the ideals of that generation. That four "lads from Liverpool" could rise to international stardom not only exemplary of the American mytheme of 'rags to riches,' but may also have created that mythic idea of bands "making it" from humble, anonymous beginnings, certainly not an easy task, as any musician can tell you. Not only that, but the Beatles' whole aesthetic, politics, etc. had deep repercussions on fashion, social consciousness, and, though maybe not an enormously positive effect depending on your stance, the use of mind-altering substances. When the Beatles began experimenting with psychedelics, when they went to India to learn transcendental meditation and incorporated such Asiatic sounds and styles in their own feel, they took American youth along for the ride. How many peace activists may have been moved to non-violent protest after hearing "You Say You Want a Revolution?" Of course, it's hard to say whether the Beatles caused these changes themselves, or were just the most visible public figures riding the waves of social change, but as they were such figureheads, their actions fed-back on culture, became an example of what was possible in the world. That it was possible for a "small group of dedicated individuals"(to quote Margaret Meed) to sing "All You Need Is Love," and mean that enough to make a difference.

As Mircea Eliade and Charles Long both discuss, new myths and hierophanies come into affect by being truer 'over against' older, worn out social and sacred realities, and many were tired of the social staidness of the post-World War fifties. Whose to say that a hundred, a thousand years from now the Beatles might not be mythologized as the Heroes who through the magic of song defeated the demons of war, social mores, etc.? If they are not already attributed with these epic victories. Perhaps the only other band who comes close to this role, for me at least, was Crass, whose political stance against the Thatcher administration, and rejection of the colorful, commodified punk look of the 70s I suspect became the model for the resurgence of Anarchism asa valid modern youth movement in these decades following the 80s. But this influence is more contestable than that of the Beatles, whose sheer legacy of hits and continued mass appeal assures their heroic place in the cultural imagination.

Ironically, it was precisely this inordinate mass appeal that turned me off from the Beatles' music for a long time. My parents had been hippies back in the 60s and I vividly recall my father playing both "Rocky Raccoon" and "Cry, Baby, Cry" to us on his guitar when we were children. Though from my childhood intimately familiar with most of their material, I always associated it first as "something my parents listened to," and then with all the stoned, tie-dye clad hippies I knew in high school, as being just too weak and feel-goody, in contrast to the aggressive and directly political music I was listening to then. It wasn't until many years later, after performing in many bands and intentionally broadening my musical horizons to anything remotely influential, that I realized how effective the Beatles' music really was. Even on just a compositional level they still blow away any other rock/pop band before or since. Not to mention the effect those songs had in helping shape the beliefs of an entire generation, and many of the generations since. No overtly political punk band can boast to having such a deep effect on culture, not by directly singing about what they were against, but by singing about love, and coming together.

The Beatles continue to be the biggest selling band of all time, with movies, toys, and even a circus show in Las Vegas dedicated to their legacy. Despite this commodification, the reason why they continue to serve as an paradigm is that their music was just that good, and still speaks with just as strong a voice these forty years later.

A Definition Among Many

"Myth (may be) a symbol system expressed in story form generally modeled from the given factors of the human situation and expressing a people's or possibly an individual's view of reality by chronicling past events perceived to be definitive and authenticating and ascribing them an aura of ultimate significance so that the story often serves as a paradigm for human activity." -Dr. Fred Clothey's final words on myth, from his lectures on Myth, Symbol, and Ritual.

I finished writing my research paper in time to hand it in at class this evening, though when I laid down to sleep I started thinking about particular themes and symbols from the myth that I wasn't able to touch on in the paper, nor frankly was sure just how to interpret. I realized that though I felt I did a good job trying to show how Indra-Vṛtrahan may have been a manifestation of the power of the Vedic nobility, I may never really know what some of the symbols mean, nor for that matter what the entire myth actually meant for its culture. Which returns to Dr. Clothey's perspective that interpretation, and theories in general, are themselves a form of mythmaking, and we can never quite keep from brining our own subjective givens to whatever we look at.

We transitioned into our discussion on symbol tonight and Clothey stressed the distinction between direct signification and the potentiality of meanings possible in symbols, in that signs act like religious dogmas that delimit and exclude other perspectives, and symbols openly invite thought and community. To illustrate this he contrasted Western discourse's use of A/not-A logic to the Jain philosophical arguments of "Viewpoints" (nayavāda) and "Maybe" (syādvādha), which are taken together as the "Doctrine of Manysidedness" (anekāntavāda) in which discourse can have a conception of possibilities that recognizes the finitude of individual perspectives. I asked why, if such open and flexible discourse is possible, is Western Culture still stuck on A/not-A? Dr. Clothey, who had just been very animated in his discussion, suddenly grew quiet and after pointing at Plato as the origins admitted he didn't know. Then he went on tell how in all his years studying religion and trying to promote open dialogues in religious communities around the world, he had seen that whenever violence was done in the name of religion it often stemmed from a fundamental ignorance of the other guy's position, and an inability to recognize the finitude of one's own. Holding back both evident tears and growing rage he said that often, if not always, you can't understand your own perspective until you look someone else in the eyes and take their perspective seriously. After which he apologized for ranting, asked for our papers, and told us to go home.

Between the Covers

I've been doing long hours typing up my paper for class on the Ṛigveda myth of Indra slaying Vṛtra and freeing the waters and lights. I don't really want to write about it since it's about all that's been in my brain for weeks now, I'm sweating vajras and soma. And it's occluding everything I'd rather discuss about mythology that's come up recently, such as modern myths about race or the Native American geographical myths we trekked through out west this summer. Hopefully I'll have more time to write about this stuff as I wrap up the paper for thursday, and the other paper that's due, and the personal myth I still have to edit.

Despite this (or perhaps because I needed a break) I decided to do a bit of interweb housecleaning, finally getting a gmail account, and starting a new blog which I can use to focus on my studies of cultural and literary myth-making, and keep my "academic" interests more clearly distinguished from my own personal story line.

"Oh brave new world that has such people in it!"

It seems that all the scientific excitement right now is percolating around Craig Venter's impending creation of the first form of artificial life (via monkeyfilter.com).

Perhaps the most fitting quote I've heard in connection with this event comes from Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (though originally from Shakespeare's "The Tempest"), which ironically predicts such biological engineering in contrast to the myth of a 'noble savage' who sees through the Soma haze of this utopian future at the sexual, familial, and moral degradation such genetic manipulation might produce. These are perhaps the kinds of controversial questions Venter hopes to raise with his brash step forward into a somewhat foolish new world. Incidentally, Huxley's society's delight in the intoxications of Soma is drawn from the pre-Hindu Vedic culture of India, where it took pride place in their sacrificial rituals and stirred the warriors into battle frenzy. A far cry from the tripped-out mellow of Huxley's anti-utopia.

Bioengineering is a rather modern plot twist however, even Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was a 'modern Prometheus' born from fears of the Industrial Revolution. Humans have been trying to usurp the creative abilities of the gods since at least the Renaissance, when the ancient Hermetic texts of the mythic Hermes Trismegistus were translated, and drawing wild comparisons between science and magic was all the rage. Trismegistus's "To Asclepius" from the "Corpus Hermeticum" in particular claimed to record the rituals ancient Egyptian priests used to bring spirits into statues and animate them to life, which compares to the Kabbalistic technique of creating golems by inserting a scroll into a statue's mouth. Pico Della Mirandola, as exemplary of the Renaissance Man archetype, praised human individuality and ability above the rest of creation, claiming that we could learn the words with which God spoke the world into existence. And though we have up till now not been able to speak life itself into existence, and it still may be too soon to say, the magical power of language to create is perhaps responsible for the enormity of the world's cultures, from myths, to laws, to the varied interactions of our every day.

Towards The Ineffable

Tracking down that religious feeling... in the brains of nuns (via KurzweilAI.net) and in the morals of culture.

After thousands of years the clearest thing we might be able to say about the sacred is that it just defies expression. And yet mankind is still haunted by the presence of the divine, the transcendent, the mystical. As Epicurus, an ancient Greek atomist, perhaps jokingly put it, the clearest proof in the existence of gods is that every culture has them. Though he also went on to suggest that as the gods are "immortal and blessed," their lives were too excellent to be bothered by such matters as keeping the cosmos spinning or being angry if humans did not perform the appropriate sacrifices.

Manifesting Power: Indra’s Slaying of Vṛtra as Kratophany of the Vedic Kings

Manifesting Power: Indra’s Slaying of Vṛtra as Kratophany of the Vedic Kings

The Ṛigvedic myth from pre-Hindu India in which the god Indra slays the dragon Vṛtra has been considered the most important myth of the Vedic Indians (Frawley 31). However, even the oldest Indian scholar Yāska, writing shortly after the final collection of the Ṛigvedic texts in 600 B.C., was uncertain how to interpret this epic victory (Dandekar 142). For scholars since then, the slaying of Vṛtra has symbolized the release of rains or rivers, the Āryan tribes’ conquest of their enemies, or the creation of the world out of Vṛtra’s body (O’Flaherty 148). Though the socio-cultural context of the Ṛigveda indicates problems in each of these interpretations, they all may point to Indra as being a manifestation of creative power for the Vedic Indians, as embodied in their nobility. Mircea Eliade’s theory of kratophanies has the potential to elucidate why the Āryan tribes may have needed such a multivalent expression of power during their migration into India.

For Eliade, myth is a sacred history that narrates through the acts of supernatural beings how some aspect of reality came into existence, establishing a paradigm for all human actions (Myth 5). In this story, most prominently depicted in hymn I.32 of the Ṛigveda, Indra wields his divine weapon, the vajra, against the demonic Vṛtra, who is holding the waters prisoner on the mountains. After a legendary battle, the god slays Vṛtra, freeing the waters and in the process bringing forth the light. While supernatural beings and the origin of waters and light are clearly present, it is unclear what sort of paradigm this myth might represent without looking closer at Vedic culture.

Though there is some disagreement over the exact age of the Ṛigveda (Griswold 67-9), most of the hymns seem to have been composed by 1000 B.C. at the latest, by many families living around the Sarasvatī river in the Punjab region of India (Gonda 1). Before their migration, the Indo-European clans may have primarily been cattle-breeders divided between nomadic and settled life with no formal political unions, though they would usually act together in times of war (Griswold 7-10). By roughly 1500 B.C. the pre-Āryan tribes split from the Iranian branch and their shared Varuṇa-religion (Griswold 22-3) and began moving southeast from Central Asia in what is generally characterized as a “mission of conquest and colonization” (Dandekar 169). The scholar H. D. Griswold suggests that the Āryans migrated in multiple bands over several centuries, entering India through waves of both peaceful penetration and armed force against the dark-skinned natives; and though they certainly fought against the aboriginal Dasyus, the Āryan tribes may frequently have warred amongst themselves (34-6). The Ṛigveda mentions five Āryan tribes, to all of whom the god Indra belonged, and it is possible that the hostile Dasyus halted the Vedic Indians in the Punjab region until the five tribes had banded together with enough strength to make the final push towards the Ganges river (Griswold 45-7).

Vedic society eventually settled into a caste system centered around two main classes, the noble or warrior class of the Kṣatriyas, and the priestly Brāhman class (Frawley 101-2). The Vaiśya class contained the rest of the Āryan subjects, common farmers and merchants, while non-Āryan peoples under Vedic rule were relegated to the Śudra class at the bottom of the social structure (Griswold 51). However, the Ṛigveda and its accompanying religion belonged solely to the higher castes, while the masses remained spectators of the rituals (Oldenburg 206). The Vedic monarchy had been strengthened by war against the Dasyus, and many of the Vedic gods may have been patterned after the nobility, especially Indra (Griswold 47). War was portrayed as a struggle between good and evil, but it was often the priestly prayers and mantras that were thought to determine victory (Frawley 102). This is clearly shown by Indra and Vṛtra’s use of magic in the myth. Though the main rituals were already established when the Vedic tribes migrated into India, the hotar, or chief priest, composed most of the Ṛigvedic hymns under contract to the wealthy Kṣatriya class (Griswold 48). The rituals were performed in exchange for a dakṣiṇa, or sacrificial fee (Griswold 49), wealth won by the nobility in battle (Frawley 103), which sets up an interesting relationship between the warring rulers and the conception of the religious texts.

The Ṛigveda primarily focuses on the main gods and the Soma sacrifice (Oldenburg 5), and was a priestly textbook written with the practical interest of serving this ritual (Griswold, 55-6). Jan Gonda contests this view however, positing that many of the hymns were used on other religious occasions (2). Regardless, the Soma offering was the main sacrificial ritual of the Vedic Indians (Macdonell 7), and Indra was considered the main god of that ritual. The hymns praise Indra as the drinker of Soma above all the other gods and the noon Soma pressing was dedicated to him alone (Oldenburg 241). In the myth, Indra drinks three vats of Soma before confronting Vṛtra, a practice the Kṣatriya may have picked up in order to banish fear and restore vigor before battle (Dandekar 176). In brief, the ritual consisted in a portion of milk, meat, vegetables, or Soma being offered into the sacred fire with the rest consumed by the sacrificer (Heesterman, Inner 89). Fixed and spontaneous prayers accompanied the offering (Oldenburg 232) with the purpose of mediating between the sacred and profane worlds (Smith 173). J.C. Heesterman claims that battle and catastrophe had originally belonged to the essence of the sacrifice, including the slaying of Vṛtra as part of the Soma ritual (Inner 86-7), which allowed the Vedic Indiands to enact “the periodical regeneration of the cosmos, the winning of life out of death” (Inner 26).

There seems to be little evidence to connect this specific myth directly to the Soma ritual, though the immense number of hymns composed in Indra’s honor attests to his importance in the Vedic religion (Gonda 3). The Ṛigvedic text clearly shows that Indra-worship was rapidly succeeding the earlier Varuṇa-ruled religion (Dandekar 179). Beyond the offering of sacrifice before battle, in which the priests presumably called on Indra for help, the god was also invoked to bring rain, crops, cows, and strong children (Griswold 43, 207). The sacrificial poems of the Ṛigveda were recited by the hotar in order to celebrate the deeds and splendor of the god as well as to narrate the wishes of man (Oldenburg 214, 235). This praise sought to confirm or strengthen the deity (Gonda 77) and to give him the pleasure of performing new acts inspired by memories of former deeds (Oldenburg 234). Though the first stanzas of the Ṛigvedic poems often invoked the gods to the sacrifice, Gonda sees hymn I.32 as being instead a commemoration of that mythic conflict and an appeal for the god to reiterate his heroic deed (6, 11, 102). Scholars have offered varied perspectives on what Indra’s deed may actually have meant for the Vedic Indians, but like all myths this meaning may remain dependent upon subjective interpretation.

The most prevalent school of interpretation treats the Ṛigvedic mythology as a set of primitive belief that all phenomena of nature are animate and divine (Macdonell 2). From this perspective, Indra is a storm god, and Vṛtra is the withholder of rain (Griswold 88), either a personification of the droughts or dust storms that afflicted the Punjab region before the summer monsoon season (Griswold 33). The vajra is the lightning bolt (Macdonell 55) with which Indra frees the rains from the bellies of the cloud-mountains (Griswold 182). In another naturalistic interpretation, Hermann Oldenburg sees the myth as the freeing of seven earthly rivers from the earthly mountains (76). This theory relates the mythic rivers to actual geography, as the most prominent feature of the Punjab region is its seven rivers (Griswold 30), which the Vedic Indians must have relied upon to support their life in the arid Indian climate. Conversely, Alfred Hillebrandt argues that Vṛtra was an ice-giant and Indra a sun god who freed the waters from the grip of winter, making this an older myth from a northern climate, later developed into a rain mythology (vol. 2, 112-26, Griswold 181). From yet another set of perspective, B. G. Tilak considers the winning of the light to be a yearly myth reflecting the relation of the sacrifice to the solstices (Frawley 33), and in the later ritual texts of the Brāhmaṇas, Vṛtra is the moon swallowed by Indra as the sun during the new moon ritual (Macdonell 159). The Brāhmaṇas also describe Vṛtra as the darkness cleaved by sunrise (Heesterman, Ancient 100).

Problematic to these natural interpretations is that Indra’s name does not seem to designate any phenomenon of nature (Macdonell 54). There were already both a rain god and a sun god in the Vedic pantheon, called Trita Āptya and Sūrya, although Indra gradually took over their functions in his rise to prominence in the Vedic texts (Dandekar 151-6). Furthermore, the Ṛigveda does not refer explicitly to the phenomena of either rain or snow (Oldenburg 76-7), and descriptions of the vajra as metallic and four or hundred-angled may be too specific to be symbolic of lightning (Dandekar 147). Though sacrifices were performed to bring rain, it seems likely that the Vedic priests and nobility had more pressing social concerns to express in their mythology.

The second major school of interpretation considers Indra as a war god conquering the foes of the Āryans. As we have seen, Indra was invoked for success in battle, and in the myth, Vṛtra is called Dāsa, another name for the dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants of India (Macdonell 64). In this perspective, Indra represents an embodiment of the imperialistic tendencies of the Vedic Indians, and his vajra is a weapon suggestive of ruthless might (Griswold 177-8). Other hymns of the Ṛigveda describe Indra as being a warrior from birth, and as having been born for the purpose of slaying Vṛtra (Macdonnel 56, 158). R. N. Dandekar even suggests that the Ṛigveda portrays Indra’s physical characteristics and excessive drinking of Soma in such human terms that the god may originally have been a Vedic hero or warlord later elevated to godhead for his miraculous deeds (160-2). This seems unlikely though, as Indra was already a deity in the Varuṇa-religion of the earlier Indo-Iranian period (Griswold 23). Regardless, Indra’s chief epithet is Vṛtrahan, the ‘Vṛtra-slayer,’ and though Vṛtra’s name may have derived from the root vṛ, ‘to encompass’ (Macdonell 60, 159), it may also have derived from the root var, ‘to resist,’ making Indra a divine power called upon to overcome enemy resistance (Dandekar 173).

A major challenge to this sociological interpretation may be in determining what waters and lights freed from the mountains may have signified for a war god. In other Ṛigvedic hymns addressing this myth, Indra is said to shatter Vṛtra’s ninety-nine fortresses when he slays the dragon, which may either refer to storm clouds (Macdonell 60) or to river bends in which Vṛtra lays (Oldenburg 75). Vṛtra is sometimes related to the mythic Dāsa warlord Śambara (Oldenburg 83), whose his ninety-nine mountain fortresses Indra destroys with a flood (Frawley 115-6). As such, the fortresses may have been river-dams built by the native peoples (Dandekar 183), but this does not fully explain why a war-god would be concerned with freeing the waters or winning the light.

In antithesis to this interpretation of Indra as a war god, the deity is often called Maghavan, ‘bountiful’ (Griswold 207), and functions to bestow fertility on the Vedic Indians just as much as to destroy their enemies (Hopkins 244). Even in the myth, Indra is compared to “a bull bursting with seed,” and the bull is sacred to the god as exemplary of his virile powers (Hopkins 243). Hymn I.32 relates the freeing of the waters to another of Indra’s deeds, in which he rescues stolen cows from the hostile tribe of the Paṇis (O’Flaherty 152). Cattle may have symbolized both fertility and wealth for the Āryans (Frawley 119), but the Vedic texts display a tendency of drawing playful connections between disparate entities (Smith 30), which makes it difficult to tell what is actually being referred to in the myth. Cows were occasionally homologous to rain clouds and sunbeams (Macdonell 59), mountains or fortresses (Frawley 119), and to Vṛtra’s mother Dānu (Macdonell 158), making it difficult to tell just what Indra freed or where he freed it from, or more importantly, what this heroic action meant for the Vedic Indians.

While the varied interpretations of the myth as portraying natural, martial, or fertile themes each might have some validity, Gonda asserts that Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra is now essentially viewed as cosmogonic, or at least demiurgic (4): “In the beginning was Vṛtra, who covered over all that the Universe needed,” both the cosmic waters and embryonic sun prior to creation (Brown, Creation 91). In this perspective, Vṛtra is cast as the shell of the cosmic egg, and Indra’s slaying of the demon breaks the shell and forces Heaven and Earth apart, allowing the sun to shine and creation to begin (Brown, Creation 96-8). The Brāhmaṇas state that after the battle, Vrṭra’s eyes become ointment and the overflowing waters become darbha grass used in the Soma ritual, while the vajra is the bow held by the sacrificer to symbolize the rebirth of the sun (Heesterman, Ancient 100). In these later texts the freeing of waters and lights disappears entirely from the myth, and it is the gods Agni and Soma whom Indra frees from Vṛtra’s belly with the use of a sacrificial cake (Hillebrandt, vol. 2, 134-6). As Agni and Soma are the two other deities connected with the sacrifice (Macdonell 20), the myth may have eventually been interpreted as a discovery of the ritual (Heesterman, Inner 49). Other hymns of the Ṛigveda equate Agni directly with the fire and sun, and Soma with the flowing waters (Macdonell 91, 107). Indra also recovers both Agni and Soma during his various exploits (O’Flaherty 108, 128). Though these deeds are only briefly alluded to in hymn I.32, the Vedic priests may already have considered Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra as an origin of the sacrifice when the Ṛigveda was being composed.

If this myth indeed revealed the ritual and Indra’s victory was sometimes spoken of as a sacrifice in itself (Brown, Theories 26), it is possible to see how its recitation may have allowed the Brāhmans to reiterate the cosmogonic act. The Ṛigveda however describes Paruṣa as the sacrificial giant from whom the Universe is made, and later Prajāpati becomes the cosmic man (Macdonell 12-3), though Indra may have taken over this role as well during his period of fame. Norman Brown suggests that while some may have taken this demiurgic creation at face value, the sophisticated Āryans saw in the myth “Potenitality striving to overcome Inertia by the aid of Power… in the Universe” (Theories 24). The Kṣatriya may not have paid the Brahmans to indulge in this level of philosophic speculation while wars and society remained disorganized, but it is also possible that the nobility may have benefited from comparison to such manifest creative power.

Having examined the myth through its sociological origins and a variety of interpretations, the application of Eliade’s theories may offer yet another perspective. As stated previously, the myth may have been cosmogonic, and may also have represented a model for how the Vedic Indians acted towards the natural, social, cosmogonic, and ritual worlds. For Eliade, the sacred and religious stand opposed to profane and secular life, but are expressed in historical moments through what he calls Hierophanies (Eliade, Patterns 1-2). “Everything unusual, unique, new, perfect or monstrous at once becomes imbued with magico-religious powers and an object of veneration or fear,” an ambivalence even more clearly expressed when the sacred is revealed as a kratophany, a manifestation of power (Eliade, Patterns 13-14). As opposed to having an anthropological approach that might place the myth in the context of a specific people, Eliade is primarily concerned with how myth brings out certain patterns of meaning (Strenski 105). Theorists such as Malinowski and Lévi-Struass are more concerned with the cultural functions of myth (Malinowski 19) and its linguistic structure (Lévi-Strauss 206-7), in contrast to Eliade, who relies on the development of generalized cross-cultural comparisons that are ungrounded in sociological contexts (Strenski 105). Regardless, Eliade’s concepts may still be useful for establishing what this particular myth meant for the Vedic Indians.

Eliade at first suggests a natural interpretation, treating Indra as a sky-god concretized into the dynamic force of the storm (Eliade, Patterns 52-3). However, Hierophanies of the sky can never be reduced to meteorological phenomena and instead become expressions of power and sovereignty, epiphanies of force and violence upon whose energy life depends (Eliade, Patterns 59, 83). As such, Indra is the epitome of all energy: his weapon denotes strength, his symbol is the bull, and he rules over the Vedic gods and humans as king (Hillebrandt, vol. 2, 99). Indra governs rainfall, fertility, the fields and plough, and the inexhaustible power of generating life (Eliade, Patterns 85). While his name has uncertain meaning for any particular phenomenon of nature (Macdonell 54), it is commonly thought to derive from indu, ‘drop,’ suggesting not only drops of rain and pressed Soma but also the virile power of semen (Dandekar 186). Indra may not directly make the Universe, but he is a personification of the cosmic and biological energy necessary to keep life in motion (Eliade, Patterns 84-6). Of course, it may be difficult to ascribe this role of cosmic progenitor to the sky-gods of other religions, much less to the Vedic religion, without studying the specific socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, Eliade’s theory operates on the assumption that as a hierophany, myth reveals the sacred, a concept generally viewed as being transcendent and ineffable. While a culture’s mythic expressions of its daily rituals and need for origins may have arisen from functional and creative desires, it seems impossible to prove that all members of that society subjectively viewed these myths as being a manifestation of an inexpressible reality, without asking them in person.

As the progenitors of the Ṛigvedic Indra mythology, the Vedic Kṣatriya may have found it easier to rule their subjects and lead them through the hostile natives into India if their noble strength was perceived by these subjects as vital for the continuation of social and cosmic life. While trying to unite the Vedic tribes in the Punjab region, the emerging nobility may have commissioned the Brāhmans to compose new hymns to the deity who most portrayed these desirable characteristics of courage, virility, and bounteousness. Thus Indra was hailed as the Kṣatriya of the gods, and he gradually took over other deific functions that would grant him the ultimate sovereignty that the nobility required to rule.

In his role as divine king, Indra could bring the rains and daylight, win battles against the Dasyus, make the fields, cows, and women fertile, reveal the sacrificial ritual, and through all these continually recreate the cosmos for the Āryans. Hymn I.32 of the Ṛigveda, the epic commemoration of Indra’s slaying of Vṛtra, is exemplary of this godly will to power because it concentrates all of Indra’s creative functions into one heroic deed. The god’s victory is not simply over a draconic representation of drought, darkness, Dasyu foes, or cosmic disintegration, but may have revealed to the Vedic people that their leaders could overcome any obstacle hindering their growing civilization’s rise to power.


Bibliography

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--- “Theories of Creation in the Rig Veda.” JAOS 85.1 (1965): 23-34

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--- “The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985

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A Personal Myth (fiction)

A Personal Myth (fiction)

Before the World, all was dark, an empty voracious night called the Dream. At the heart of this Dream lay the Maelstrom, a blind crawling chaos with eight thousand hoary legs skittering out into the void. The Maelstrom had no parents, no progeny, but had woven a great Web from her womb that stretched to the ends of the Dream, and she slept in the middle of this Web, waiting, and dreaming all the possible things that might one day be. She dreamt of animals, constructions, man, and each Form she dreamt was drawn by her legs into the Web, there the Forms hung frozen in the Dream, ready for her to consume, and digest them back into chaos to be spun again.

One such dream was a man named Murphy, who likewise had no history, having just been dreamt. But on seeing that all the scattered Forms around him were being drawn slowly into the monster’s gaping maw decided that he would not be eaten and returned back to the unformed chaos. The Maelstrom’s Dream had grown so large by now that there were endless places to hide; one could wander for lifetimes in any direction through the strange frozen Forms without ever once escaping the Web. Murphy realized that if he were to combat the Maelstrom, he too would have to dream, imagining a Sword, a great Knowledge, and a Reflection of himself to act as a decoy, as food for the beast while he waited in the shadows, ready to slay her.

And so Murphy dreamt, and waited, and soon he had his Sword and Knowledge, and the Maelstrom’s legs reached for the Reflection to draw it into her jaws, and still he waited, at the edge of the Dream, for that moment when the Maelstrom was busy consuming his Reflection, and he would be able to strike. And as planned, she ate. The Reflection was slowly ground down in endless rows of jagged teeth into shimmering shards that were scattered to the edges of the Night, becoming Stars. All the while the Maelstrom hummed a low tuneless melody to herself, as it was all the same to her what she ate, a screaming man or his mute reflection, for she was the dark itself, which consumes all things. Then Murphy raised his Sword, its edge sharpened to pierce his toothsome foe, and he slashed down through the Web, through the Dream, and cleaved the Maelstrom in two. Each of the Maelstrom’s halves reared up to attack, one of them raked its great pincers across the side of his face so that his left Eye was torn and blinded. But Murphy was too close to the Dream’s core for the Maelstrom’s halves to grasp him.

He slashed again, and a third time, each slice further subdividing the Maelstrom until it was sundered into a thousand pieces, each no bigger than a man’s hand, eight-limbed miniatures of their Mother’s pattern, all skittering about at Murphy’s feet. The Hero, for that’s what he had become for this half-formed Dream, summoned his great Knowledge and called the creatures “Spider,” a grave insult he had overheard in the Maelstrom’s sleeping murmurs. Murphy banished the Spiders to the edges of the Dream, where they might bide in the dark corners in their own small webs, but never come back together to overwhelm the Dream. With his foe thus fought, and her remnants dispersed, Murphy planted the Sword in the darkness beside him. And then he smiled, which was like a glimmer of Light for the first time striking the dark World. The battle had made him tired, so gathering the cut strands of the Web around him like a blanket, he laid in the center where the Maelstrom had lay, and had a Dream of his own.
As he slept, Murphy grew, until his body filled the void. His ribs became the rocky earth, his fingers blossomed into flowers and trees, and his blood flowed into rivers and seas. He dreamt that his head would become a castle, but it continued to expand until it was a mountain whose peak brushed the Sky and looked down over the whole young World. His Eyes took flight, and chased each other around the Sky, the whole one shedding such a glorious Light that it illuminated everything below, and the torn Eye reflecting as best it could, following the glowing orb as a sullen moon. And above their orbit, his haughty brow formed the dome of Space, and his hair tangled with the Stars of his shattered Reflection. And so the World came into being and was quickly populated with Murphy’s imagination, all life a Dream to stave off the uncertainty that lies in the darkness of night.

Murphy had but one law for his newborn Dream: that whatever could happen would happen, with as much glory and wonder as might be brought forth into the World. However, being only a young World, he was mightily alone, and could dream only those Forms that he had seen hanging in the Maelstrom’s Web. The next day, Murphy’s strong Eye arched over the whole World while his other Eye struggled to catch up, shedding its meager gaze through the night. Murphy reflected on the Forms he had seen and how he might make sense of their disorder, all chaotic from being hung in the limbo of the Web. Murphy took one Form into his hands, and called it a Book, and when next his Eye illuminated the land, he transcribed what he saw into the Book. Later, as he lay in his castle on top of the mountain, he reflected over what had been written, naming the Forms and sorting them out into Classes and Orders: those that moved and those that were rooted, those that had no life, and those which were invisible, spirits or forces he could only see by their affect on the others; that which stirs water, that which melts snow, that which weighs on beasts and reduces them to bones. Murphy watched his World, and wrote, and soon filled the whole Book, which he closed with another bright smile, feeling that he had now ordered everything in its right place.

Yet when next his Eye rose Murphy looked closer and was shocked, and looked closer still at his World. For he saw that where there had been only enough Forms to fill a Book, now there were Details, each Form its own small World of infinite variations. And Murphy realized that he would have to write another Book, several Books, a Book for each Form, which he started at once, each day focusing his Eye on all the Details of just one Form. He wrote intensely, setting each finished Book on a shelf in his keep, but soon realized there would be little room left to sleep, and he would have to do something with this endless library. Being ever resourceful, as this was his own Dream after all, Murphy erected another story to his castle, and another story after that, filling each with Books and moving his bed ever closer to the Sky.

But still he had but scratched the surface of recording everything in his domain, and rarely going down to the lowest stories of his castle anymore became afraid, that he might forget something that he had written, that he might accidentally record something twice. This thought filled Murphy with much confusion, over what a doubling of Forms might mean (for he felt still somewhat guilty for casting his Reflection into the Maelstrom’s jaws). So one night he hurried down the Book-lined stairs, determined to take note of what each volume contained, and if possible devise a catalogue, an Order of Orders, which was more work and Words, but he had an eternity to fill with Words, his only companion. So he descended and descended and somewhere on the second story he began to notice Webs, thick draping dust which sent a chill down his spine. Having built his knowledge up to the Sky, Murphy had left his earliest words to rot and ruin. For roping up his earliest tomes, and shredding them back into chaos, was a Spider, still a slivered reflection of its Dark Mother’s horror. Had it not obeyed his banishing Words? He called it Spider again, but still it spun a web that threatened to tear his Words asunder and reduce them back into unknown Forms.

Murphy rued that he had planted his Sword on the roof of his castle, where it had grown to be a Tree of enormous girth, whose branches gave shade and sweet fruit to his whole World. If only he had the Sword now he might slay this intruder. But at the very thought of his dark, dividing blade, the Spider trembled and turned and straightaway leapt towards Murphy, its jaws snapping wide to avenge its Mother’s murder. Unarmed and in profound terror, Murphy turned and fled, scattering stacks of precious manuscripts in his flight. Up story after story he fled, racing to the top of his tower, with the Spider eating his every footstep, not more than a pace behind and growing larger as it climbed, filing the entire castle with its chaotic binds.
Once upon the roof Murphy didn’t dare stop, but climbed right up the Tree, what had once been his Sword, struggling up the branches towards the overhanging void of the Sky. In his haste the branches were stripped bare and became bones, their fruit made quick into beating organs. But Murphy had no time to marvel at this transformation, for the Spider was rapidly gaining. Glancing back, Murphy swore that it was a Spider no more, but the Mother, the very Maelstrom herself come back to torment him, to finish what she started when she first spun his Form. So Murphy climbed, and wondered that the Tree had no end in sight and seemed to breathe and sigh as he rushed up higher. Indeed it rose so high that its branches pierced the Sky, and Murphy clambered out through this hole into another World, where at last he stopped and looked down below.

The Maelstrom had now webbed the entire Tree, the ropey tendrils almost obscuring its natural growth. Murphy gasped, for there was his sought for Order of Order, not the linear branches he had written in his Books, but a sprawling Net that connected each Form to all others. He could embrace the Maelstrom if it wasn’t his sworn Nemesis, so instead he smiled, and at his joy the Maelstrom was reduced, turning back into a Spider that cowered in the branches, rattling the bones of Forms that lay caught in its Web. Gasping, Murphy stepped back again. For he had not climbed up the Tree and out of a hole in the Sky at all, but had emerged from the head of another Form, one he had not seen before yet was the loveliest in this entire World. This Form was familiar, in a way his own body was familiar, but different in certain appealing ways. He called the Form Woman, and lay down like the Sky over the Earth to gaze into her eyes, which slowly opened with an equally radiant smile.

The Woman called herself Mata, and told Murphy she had just woken from the most peculiar Dream, in which a small man had climbed up from out of her insides, frightened and chased by his own frail Shadow. Murphy listened and wondered what this could mean, for hadn’t it been his World, his Dream, that was now this beautiful Woman? Perhaps there were several Worlds, endless Dreamers, of whom he was only one, and Murphy wanted to set out at once to find them all, to record all the Forms of all the Dreams that might be. But Mata grabbed his hand with such force and held him to her, so that Murphy decided to be content in her sweet embrace. And that is why the Sky rests above the Earth and does not go running off at the slightest whim and wonder. And so they lay like this, with his Eyes gazing over her entire body, learning her Details that still contained all the Forms he had studied before.
And all he saw was beautiful and wondrous, though sometimes behind Mata’s Eyes, when she was gazing off at a distant storm, Murphy thought he saw a darkness unfurling, the spinning Form of the Shadow he had left behind in that other World. For somewhere the Maelstrom was still inside her, biding its Time and weaving its Order of Orders that would inevitably consume his Books and Words. He called that Shadow Death, and though it made him deeply sad, Murphy loved Mata even more for that chaos she bore inside her chest; the necessary uncertainty of living that drove off boredom and forced him to act his best. For on the day it might strike and finally take him back into the darkness of night, he wanted to be as full of love and wonder as it was possible for a man to realize in this life.

And so Murphy and Mata lived like this, reveling in their shared Dream, and occasionally other Dreamers wandered by, whose Dreams Murphy wrote down in his Books and added to his own. And they were happy and as full of love and wonder as it was possible for them to be, and before long Mata gave birth, her body heaving with great tremors which shook the entire Earth. From between the mountains of her legs a bright being shot forth, a boy of such vigor and mirth that he might have glory over the entire World. Murphy named him Will, writing the name down on the first page of a new Book. But Mata was not done, for in her labors still struggled a second son, who after many more hours crept slowly into the World. This boy seemed weak and woeful, trembling at life and almost unable to survive. Yet Murphy saw a gleam in his second son’s ryes, a deep understanding immediately applied when the boy crawled over to the Book and began reading what had been written inside. So Murphy called the boy Wise, and that night, Mata dreamt that her youngest child would grow to take care of his father’s library, ordering all the Dreams in all the Worlds, a task of which Murphy thoughtfully approved.

As for the first Twin, Will was wild, and so full of life that they could never predict what he would get into. He was always found running around and building forts from unfinished Forms, or inventing games and songs for the children of the other Dreamers to play, who all worshipped him for his bright smile and exuberance. He even carved a Sword like his father’s and went around stabbing at dark corners, saying that he was hunting the Maelstrom, which touched Murphy’s heart, though he didn’t know what this act boded for the boy’s future.

Then one day Murphy and Mata’s neighbor, an old man named Kairos, who was said to be the most ancient of the Dreamers, older perhaps than the Maelstrom herself, came and told Murphy that he had caught Will stealing the apples from his garden. At his father’s displeasure, the youth said he only wanted to hold a Feast for the other children, especially those who did not have apples of their own, which eased some of Murphy’s anger. But Kairos was not so easily appeased, and working himself up into a divine frenzy began to prophesy that what the boy needed was to go on a Quest. But first, he cried, eyes rolling wide and foot stamping on the ground, there would be many trials. A great flood would descend, heralding the Maelstrom’s return, and all the Dreamers would have to set sail towards another Dream, filled with stone Towers hung with Webs and strange Machines, where in their tears they would forget that they were dreaming. And after several generations this dark Dream would be overcome by Wars and Flame, and only then would Will be called to his Quest: to find the Key of Remembering how to dream, to slay the Maelstrom again, and to lead the people through the Flames towards a Feast with which they would found a new Dream. And only then would the theft of the apples be atoned.

Will did not believe the old man’s Words, thinking them the raving of a madman, and promptly forgot, running off overjoyed to have evaded punishment. Murphy himself was not so unconcerned, but even he felt Kairos’s predictions to be rather absurd. He could easily have repaid the apple’s theft and then they could all continue to dream in peace, but just in case he decided to dream of a Ship that night. Wise, who had been listening quietly this whole time, wrote down the old man’s Words the way he wrote down all Words, as if they were the Truth. And then he closed his book and bound it tight, for as Mata cried over her son’s cursed fate, it had quickly began to rain.