The real night was coming. A dull green shadow was gathering in the ravines of Kailasa. I remembered Nehru and his Tibetan mountain: ‘I shall never see Kailasa again …’ In the cleft in the rock that forms the entrance to the temple, the sun still glowed red on the wild mimosa and the vast, dusty plain, as if reflected in the sea. We reached the Buddhist caves, with their rows of ascetics ‘like motionless flames sheltered from the wind’; then the Jain caves, and their Roman massiveness. But Ellora was Shiva.
We were making our way towards the temple of Mahalinga—symbol of Shiva, and one of the eight sacred lingams of India. It was already completely dark. There was no temple, but a vast terrace, which one reached by way of a flight of steps that might have led to some ruined palace. The lingam was somewhere in the gloom. The muffled boom of the ritual conch rose up, followed by murmured hymns, and by a distant music. No doubt the temple was a little further on, and as at Madurai, it was the hour of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati. The true place of worship was this void, these flagstones of the Ramayana appearing in the lantern’s gleam, in the silence of a forest without beasts.
And yet, in the darkness haunted by royal and divine cosmogonies, there had never been a Creation. For the Fall, the Redemption, the Last Judgement that Christianity reveals, the world is a backdrop; for Brahmanism, man is an episode. Not only because of transmigration, but because the fabled cycles that divide the successive returns from the shades have the gods and the elements for heroes. India experiences the infinite as Job experiences the majesty of Jehovah. And the Kailasa, and this empty terrace where for so long men had been talking of the gods, and these nocturnal hymns, were all communing with Being across the infinite as if they were worshipping the infinite—which happens upon man as it goes by … In the temple of Chidambaram, in the place where the god of the sanctuary ought to be, the Brahmans show you an empty circular space: ‘Here is Shiva dancing …’ In the centre burns camphor, whose flame leaves no ashes.
At Ellora, maya finds its most profound expression, because there it seems to antedate the religions as the rock antedates the figures which they have each in their turn hewn out of it. And in Gandhi’s eyes, as in those of the ascetics who greeted Prince Siddhartha in the forest, and in those of the Vedic poets who signed their hymns with the names of the gods, the favoured means towards deliverance was detachment. The obstacle to Deliverance is not the vain spectacle of things, but the attachment we bear to them. Desire is the demon in a great many religions. And for Christianity, ever since the original sin, the demon has been in man; for India, attachment is in man in the shape of a metaphysical demon, not so much concupiscence as life itself, the enslavement of man, blind to the essence which transcends him, and by his blindness delivered over to the world of illusion. If all the gods were dead, maya would still exist, because the Hindu carries it within himself as the Christian carries sin. The irresistible agent of maya is not divine action, it is the human condition.
The hymns had stopped. The music of night began.
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This extract is from Antimemoirs..
33.
Eating Betel Nut in the House Of God
A Khasi Myth Retold
Those were dark days in human history. The reign of confusion had dawned. And man had begun to forget.
His ancient covenant with God—‘Know man, know God, know maternal–paternal relations and earn righteousness’—was slowly slipping from memory. God had planted the Tree of Gloom, Ka Diengiei, and as man strayed further from the path of virtue, the tree grew taller, its roots more tenacious, its branches more multiple, its foliage more abundant, so that its great gnarled shadow enveloped the entire earth.
Sunshine gradually disappeared. The world grew cold and penumbral. Terrified of the dark and the implications of a life lived in darkness, the sons of men got together and felled the tree. God retaliated. He closed forever the Golden Ladder to Heaven located at Lum Sohpet Bneng, or the Navel of the Mount of Heaven.
Groping through the gloom, some of the more righteous elders were able to dimly recall happier times. Simpler times too, when lives were lived under the guiding spirit of God. They convened a council of mankind where they impressed upon the members the need to live according to the divine commandments all over again. They said: ‘Do you remember the golden age of our existence? Do you remember how happy we were when our lives were guided by divine decree? Let us turn to God once more. Let us cease to blunder in the dark like blind men. Let us plead to God for mercy and for signs of His mercy. Let us plead for spiritual guidance.’
The council was impressed. Its members pleaded with the elders to do whatever necessary to bring back God’s benevolence into their lives. The elders began propitiating their Creator day and night. Eventually, God was moved to pity and relented. He revealed to them the long-awaited signs, directing them to send an ambassador to meet Him on the summit of a tall mountain. The ambassador was to be accompanied by a representative of the people living in the plains below Ri Khasi, popularly known as Dkhar.
It was the beginning of a great adventure. The magnitude of their mission was not lost on the two emissaries, the Khasi and the Dkhar. They knew humanity was being offered another chance, perhaps its last one. This, they knew, was to be a return to their origins, to the very source and sustenance of their existence. It was a journey with momentous implications for a civilization in crisis, for a lost people. It was a pilgrimage on which their lives and the lives of the human tribe depended.
They began their ascent. It was a long and perilous climb. But could the journey to the heart of the world’s greatest mystery be otherwise? They persevered. Whenever their spirits flagged and their footsteps faltered, at the sight of the rugged and forbidding terrain, they recalled the purpose of this expedition and renewed their resolve.
They often doubted whether they would reach. But one day, ravaged, breathless, almost vanquished, they suddenly saw the summit heave into view behind a distant curtain of mist. They scrambled painfully ahead and plunged through the last vestige of cloud to reach their destination.
Nothing prepared them for the encounter that ensued. It was an encounter of such terrible majesty and splendour that it surpassed anything they had envisaged in their wildest dreams in the other world. But there was also a sense of familiarity, of having returned home—better still, of feeling welcome. They would never forget the next eight days and nights. Even when they were old and grey, they could recall the experience quite as vividly as if it had happened just the other day. But they could never find the right words to describe it. ‘It was an experience … well, unlike any you’ve ever known,’ they would say. And their exasperated listeners would have to rest content with that. (The Khasi did finally find a metaphor, however, that most closely conjured that unforgettable encounter.)
If the experience was difficult to articulate, the teaching was not. It was incumbent upon them, said their Creator, to share His instructions with their people. In all His immeasurable benevolence, God taught the two pilgrims various rites and rituals and gave them advice on how to live a life of truth and integrity. He recorded the teachings, along with the alphabet of the scripts, on a set of two documents. He handed these over to the two representatives so that they could better propound His laws to their people.
After eight long days and nights, He bade them farewell. ‘And do not forget,’ He said as they prepared to take His leave, ‘my instructions on how to revere and safeguard those precious documents.’
Forget? How could they? They held those documents dearer than their lives already.
And then began another journey. A journey away from God, after that long blundering journey towards Him, the descent from Grace to the everyday world, a journey more significant in its own way than the one up the mountain. It was in a mood of quiet exultation that the two pilgrims turned homeward. There was regret. They were leaving behind a life lived in an ecstatic present continuous, a life lived
in direct communion with their Maker. But there was also jubilation at the fact that they now had in their possession a manuscript that was the greatest treasure on the planet, the living word of God. That mood of elation was tempered by a sombre awareness of responsibility. For they knew they had been entrusted with no mean challenge: the task of keeping the channel open, remaining faithful conduits between the worlds of the divine and the human.
It seemed to the triumphant pilgrims an aeon before they reached the foot of the mountain. At last they found themselves on level ground again. The journey was over.
Or almost.
For there was still a river to be crossed. The two ambassadors discovered that it was not as easy as it seemed. The river was in full spate. Could they make it to the other bank safely? And more importantly, could they make it with their treasures undamaged?
There was a choice, of course. It was the choice to wait until the floodwaters subsided. But our two protagonists were impatient. They had braved many adventures in the course of their journey, emerged unscathed from many a battle. Their victories made them just a tad overconfident. And then there was the raging excitement to share their discovery with their anxious kin back home. And perhaps there was just a small, entirely understandable yearning to receive a hero’s welcome. It was the last leg of their journey. The end was in sight. Surely nothing could go wrong now?
They took the plunge, each trying to protect his precious cargo as best he could. The Dkhar, who sported a long tuft of hair according to custom, attached his document securely to it. He was able to swim across without as much as a ripple of water touching it. Safely on the other side, he hastened to his plains without another thought for the Khasi behind him.
But what of the Khasi? He had no such tuft of hair. He decided to carry the document between his teeth and swim. But this was a man of the hills. Unaccustomed to swimming in large rivers, he soon found himself floundering midstream. Buffeted this way and that, gasping for breath, flailing for survival, he accidentally performed a deed that was to be the most enduring regret of his life. He swallowed the document.
Overtaken with remorse at what he had done, he lost his fear of the tempestuous waters and retraced his journey. He then undertook his arduous journey up the mountain to plead with God once again. For he knew that the loss of the manuscript was not a mere personal tragedy. It was the loss of a tribe.
Unfortunately for him and for the Khasis, however, God was nowhere to be found. The seeker sought high and low in vain. He realized finally that he had no choice but to return empty-handed.
As he neared his destination, his footsteps faltered. As they saw him approach, his people thronged around him, clamouring, weeping, exulting, their faces alight with hope. The errant ambassador shamefacedly recounted all that had happened. He knew he would be lynched by an enraged mob and had to think on his feet. Unable to face the disappointment and rage on the faces of his tribe, he swiftly offered an alternative. He still remembered some of the most important divine instructions, he said, and would impart these to them. It was piecemeal teaching, it was true, but it was better than nothing.
Another council was convened in which everyone was instructed on the laws of the Creator. But not remembering all of it, the ambassador was compelled to simplify the teaching to a few basic tenets.
Human life, he said, was to rest on three doctrines: ‘ban tip briew, tip blei, ban tip kur-tip kha, ban kamai ïa ka hok’, or ‘to know man, to know God, to know maternal–paternal relations and to earn righteousness’. Man’s first responsibility was to respect his fellow men, his near and dear ones and all other creatures in the natural world as equal creations of the one supreme God, U Blei. It is only when man has learnt to love and respect his fellow beings that he can learn to respect his Creator. And to love God is to love all that is good and divine in the world. It follows, therefore, that man lives in the world to grow in righteousness. By living an upright and honest life, he earns his just reward when he dies by returning to his Maker.
This return, said the Khasi ambassador in a sudden flash of inspiration, is ‘leit bam kwai sha ïing U Blei’, or ‘going to eat betel nut in the House of God’. It was the closest image he could come up with to describe his experience on the mountain.
Thus, the universe, according to the Khasi messenger, is essentially a two-tier system, comprising ka bneng (heaven) and ka khyndew (earth). (He never spoke of hell, and phrases like dujok, ka nurok ka ksew—the accursed place of the dog—and ka khyndai pateng ñiamra—the nine stages of the underworld—were later additions.) But that does not mean that a person who leads a wicked life will not receive a punishment commensurate with his crime, said the ambassador. The offender, he said, would be denied the right to partake of the divine betel nut. And his rngiew, his anima, would be condemned to roam the world as an accursed and malignant spirit.
The council members found the teaching easy to comprehend. They listened closely and the simple wisdom was engraved forever on their hearts and minds. This enabled them to pass it on to future generations by word of mouth. And that is why the religious thought of the Khasis is not particularly complicated. But it remains direct and deeply personal. And that is what makes the worship of God such a personal affair for the Khasi, taking place in the heart of each individual, rather than in any church or temple.
And thus the world’s first ambassador from God was accepted once more by his people. He was a chastened man, however, and remained a more silent and reflective person till the end of his days.
But it is said that whenever anyone ever happened to mention betel nut, his face would light up like a child’s and his eyes would take on a faraway look.
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Source: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih.
34.
Mahabalipuram (The Seven Pagodas)
Count Hermann Keyserling
In 1911 philosopher and author Count Keyserling spent the year travelling the world (Egypt, Ceylon, India as well as China, Japan, Hawaii and the Americas) and for the next six years wrote about his experiences. The result (later called Travel Diary of a Philosopher) became ‘an instant best-seller’, and was hailed by Tagore as ‘a great book’. In 1920 Count Keyserling founded the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt, Germany, which drew from his syncretic approach to spiritual traditions.—Ed
And thus my pilgrimage through the sanctuaries of southern India has come to the most ideal conclusion. On this bare and empty isle of sand, every rock, almost every stone, has been recreated as a work of art. Sometimes the vast bodies of elephants and bullocks have been chiselled out of great blocks, then again delicate Mandagrams. Monolithic temples crown the heights, and cover every hill, and when the sea rises, its waves roll over exquisite stairs and doorsteps and gradually rise to and break before the slumbering gods. Who were the men who fashioned this world? The sand has blown away their traces. Mahabalipuram must once upon a time, probably thanks to the transient caprice of a rajah, have been one single workshop in which thousands of hands hammered, bored, attempted, improved and rarely perfected, in order suddenly to be deserted again. That is what one suspects, but we know nothing. Today only a few poor fishermen and handful of Brahmins live here; lean sheep wander among the ruins in search of their scanty food.
I sat until late at night in the gateway of the Vishnu Temple, which originally lay in the middle of the land, but is surrounded today on three sides by the hungry sea, and I only left it when the rising flood began to wet my feet. They say that five temples have already been swallowed by the sea, and that the day of this one are numbered. My imagination races ahead of time. I see our ancient planet, covered with broken fragments, rolling, cold and dead, through space. And this idea does not make me sad. Transitoriness is the safeguard of eternity. If men and their work were not unique, irreplaceable and irretrievable, their existence would signify nothing. The ending of nothing has never hurt me in my heart of hearts, but how often have I suffered on rediscovering condi
tions which should have been buried long ago! Will men never understand that duration only means delay whenever it exceeds the span necessary for realization? Will they never see that it is sacrilege to cling to the past? And that, in so doing, they threaten the life of the eternal? … Only small fragments remain of the great art of India. Indian artists, forgetful of destructive forces, have worked chiefly in wood. They knew very well that they lived in the spirit of the great doctrine of the Bhagavat-Gita: Toil day and night, but sacrifice beforehand the results of thy work.
Pilgrim's India Page 17