Conjuring
N
Now you know
How I conjured you
From amongst
Tattered tomes
On the poetry shelves
R
How I conjured you
From amongst
Tattered tomes
On the poetry shelves
R
R
Now you know
of another conjuring
unfolding in another dimension
when pen started bleeding
slivers of my liver
and drunk on desolation
I tied corners of my dupatta
in tight knots
invoked blessing of blue throated god
I did not believe in
by denying self of viaticum
rocked gently on my feet
chanting soundlessly
one hundred names of love
of another conjuring
unfolding in another dimension
when pen started bleeding
slivers of my liver
and drunk on desolation
I tied corners of my dupatta
in tight knots
invoked blessing of blue throated god
I did not believe in
by denying self of viaticum
rocked gently on my feet
chanting soundlessly
one hundred names of love
N
A dupatta is a long, multi-purpose scarf that is worn to match the woman's garments. It has long been a symbol of modesty in South Asian dress, though many today wear it as just a decorative accessory. The word comes from the Sanskrit "du-" (two) and "patta" (strip of cloth). originally from Sanskrit. It probably evolved from the ancient uttariya veil which was worn as part of three-piece attire. Traditionally it was worn across both shoulders and around the head but it may also be worn with the middle portion resting on the chest like a garland, with the ends thrown over each shoulder, or draped over one shoulder or even over just the arms.
ReplyDeleteThe Viaticum is the administration of Catholic communion (the Eucharist) to someone who is dying. It does not need a priest and may be administered by a deacon or by an extraordinary minister, using the reserved Blessed Sacrament but with the added words, "May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life." It comes from the Latin "viā tēcum" ("with you on the way"), the Roman provision of transportation and supplies, and later of money, for officials traveling on public missions, or as an enlistment bonus given to a Roman legionary, auxiliary soldier, or seaman.
Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, is one of the chief Indian deities and is easily recognized by his appearance. Though his skin color is sometimes black (or dark), he is usually shown with a blue or purple skin. His name originates from the Sanskrit word “Kṛṣṇa”(black, dark, or dark blue). Despite his divine status, many of his traditions treat him as a human rather than as a god. He was a member of the Satava clan of the Yadava confederacy that was descended from Yada and ruled the Mathura region of India until they were driven into Dvārakā by the Paurava rulers of Magadha. He was the 8th son of Devaki, the daughter of the Yadava king Ugrasena of Mathura. Her brother Kamsa was the country’s crown prince, the commander of its army, and the husband of two of the daughters of emperor Jarasandha of Magadha. With his father-in-law’s support, he deposed and imprisoned his father, and to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by one of Devaki’s sons, he had the first six of them killed at birth. But the seventh was magically transferred into the womb of Rohini, Vasudeva's other wife who was living under care of his stepbrother Nanda, the head of the Gopas, a powerful tribe of cowherds. And when Krishna was born, Vasudeva gave him into Nanda’s care as well. Crossing the Yamuna river, its goddess (also known as Kalinga, Krishna’s future wife) wanted to touch the baby’s feet, which she did in the depths of the river and caused it to become calm enough for the father and son to cross. Kamsa sent a host of demons to kill the child, but Krishna killed them all. Growing up, Krishna spent much of his time beside the river’s banks, playing with his flute and his lover Rādhā. Once, when Balarama was drunk he ordered the Yamuna river to come to him so he could cool down, but the chaste river goddess refused. He dragged the river to him with his plow, harming her and causing her to assume her divine form to ask his forgiveness. Balarama thereupon ordered the river to flood the forest so he could bathe and in her waters. Eventually, Krishna went to Mathura, slew his uncle, and restored Ugrasena, with Vasudeva as crown prince.
ReplyDeleteAmong his myriad attributes, Krishna is regarded as a model lover. He is worshipped in the form of a young cowherd in association with Rādhā (“fortunate, successful” in Sanskrit, perhaps related to “ārādha [paying homage, gratification] and “ārādhana” [homage, worship], denoting devotional service, since it comes from love and thus is joyful). Vaishnav sects, which focus on Krishna, regard her as the original goddess (shakti), the incarnation of "the feeling of love towards Krishna," and she is the principal deity in the Nimbarka Sampradaya, in which she and Krishna together constitute the absolute truth. Her connection to Krishna is of two types: svakiya-rasa (married relationship) and parakiya-rasa (the highest form of love, wherein Radha and Krishna share thoughts even through separation.) When Krishna brought all his consorts to meet Radha, they declared her the most beautiful and sacred-hearted woman in the universe and that she would retain that status for eternity. He had eight queens (the Ashtabharya), two of whom (Rukmini and Satyabhama)are worshipped as his married consorts. (Another, Kalindi, the goddess of theYamuna, the second holiest river in Hinduism, is worshipped independently.) Krishna also had thousands of junior wives, sometimes called “gopis” (milkmaids) since he had been a herdsman when under Nanda’s care. Each of his wives bore him ten sons and many daughters; each son sired ten more sons. When Krishna became the king of Dvārakā, in modern Gujarat, his reputation caused princess Rukmini of Vidarbha (an avatar of the goddess of wealth and fortune Lakshmi, Vishnu’s chief consort) to fall in love with him. But her brother Rukmi arranged for her to marry the crown prince of Chedi, a close associate of emperor Jarasandha of Magadha. At Rukmini’s urging, Krishna abducted her before the marriage while Balarama held off Jarasandha's forces. Rukmi continued the chase but was defeated and spared; he was worshipped as Gaudera, the god of defeat and shame, while Rukmini became Krishna’s chief queen (patrani) and the mother of his first son, Pradyumna, an incarnation of Kandev, the god of love who had been incinerated by Shiva when he interfered with his meditation. When Pradyumna was a baby he was abducted by the demon Sambara, who cast him into the sea. A fish swallowed him but was caught and taken to Sambara’s home. When the fish was cut open, Pradyumna was found inside and given to a servant to raise, and the sage Narada informed her about the true identity of the child. When Pradyumna grew up, he killed Sambara with the Vaishnavastra, the most powerful weapon in the universe, and married Rukmi’s daughter Rukmavati, the reincarnation of Kandev’s wife.
ReplyDeleteSurya, the sun god, appeared before Satrajit, Dvārakā’s royal treasurer, in an indistinct and dazzling fiery shape, and Satrajit asked him to appear in a less blinding form. Surya took the Syamantaka jewel from around his neck and revealed himself as a dwarfish figure with a body like burnished copper and reddish eyes. To reward Satrajit’s devotions, he gave him the jewel which would provide him daily with about 80 kg (almost 170 pounds) of gold and would protect any land that possessed it from natural disasters such as droughts, floods, earthquakes, or famines. Krishna asked Satrajit to give the jewel to Ugrasena, but Satrajit refused and gave it to his brother Prasena instead. Prasena was killed by a lion that ran off with the jewel. Jambavan, the king of the sloth bears (or maybe of the apes) and a devotee of Rama (Krishna’s previous humanly avatar), killed the lion and gave the jewel to his daughter Jambavati. Jambavan had offered her to Rama, who declined because of his vow to marry only once but promised to marry her in his next life. When Prasena did not return, Krishna was accused of killing him to obtain the jewel, and he set out to locate it. Eventually he came upon Jambavan's cave, and the two men engaged in combat for 28 days. When Jambavan realized he was fighting against “Rama,” he piously gave him the jewel and his daughter. Krishna and his new wife returned home and restored the jewel to its rightful owner, and Satrajit gave him his three daughters Satyabhama, Vratini, and Prasvapini. Narakasura was an asura (demon), the son of Vishnu's boar-avatar Varaha and the earth goddess Bhudevi. Vishnu had promised Bhudevi that her son would die only when she wished it, and Brahma promised Narakasura that only his mother could kill him. Thus empowered, he mastered the three worlds. On earth, he captured the 16,000 (or 16,100) princesses of defeated nations; they were the daughters of gods, siddhas (saints), demons, and kings, or they were apsaras (celestial maidens). In some accounts, they were the daughter of a king who had cursed them for their favoring Vishnu, disguised as a sage, over him, but Brahma, advised by his son Narada, had blessed them with the promise that they would be Vishnu’s wives in their next lives. They were imprisoned and guarded by Narakasura’s 10 sons, while the kingdom’s gates were protected by various demons, including the five-headed Mura and his seven sons. In Heaven, Narakasura stole the earrings of Aditi, the mother of Indra. In the underworld, he seized the imperial umbrella of Varuna, the god of the waters. Indra recruited Krishna to defeat the demon. In the battle that followed, Krishna slew Mura and his sons and Narakasura's army, but Narakasura wounded Krishna and knocked him unconscious. Satyabhama, who was actually Bhudevi’s avatar, killed him with her arrows. Aditi rewarded her with eternal youth and beauty. Each of the captive women prayed to Krishna to accept her as his wife to preserve her honor, since they had been degraded by being under Narakasura's control for so long. Each was given a home and hundreds of maid-servants. Krishna divided himself into several forms, one for each wife and spent the night with each one simultaneously. At Satyabhama's behest, Krishna also later defeated Indra, the king of heaven and the gods, and obtained the celestial parijat tree for her; this is a wish-granting baobab near Kintoor, Uttar Pradesh, a village named after Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas.
ReplyDeleteJambavati became a close companion of Rukmini and an opponent of Satyabhama. She became distraught when she became the only wife not to have children. To gain divine favor for her, Krishna did penance for six months in various postures, once holding a skull and a rod; in the second month he stood on one leg and survived on water only; in the third month, he stood on his toes and lived on air alone. Shiva the destroyer finally appeared in the guise of his hermaphroditic form, Samba, and agreed to give Jambavati a son, whom she named Samba. Since the Yadavas were invincible, Krishna wanted his son to be like Shiva and destroy their enemies. Meanwhile, in preparation of the coming era of decay in values and the consequent havoc, in order to create an embodiment of immorality to act as the catalyst, Narada arranged that the demon Kali’s avatar would be Duryodhana (“unconquerable warrior”), the eldest of the Kauravas, the hundred sons of blind king Dhritarashtra and queen Gandhari. When her pregnancy continued for an unusually long time, she beat her womb in frustration, causing a hardened mass of grey flesh to emerge. The sage Vyasa divided the mass into 101 equal pieces and put them in pots of ghee, which were sealed and buried into the earth for two years. When the first pot was opened, Duryodhana emerged, braying like a donkey, but Dhritarashtra kept the child because Shiva had promised that the future king would be invincible. However, because of his blindness, Dhritarashtra renounced the throne in favor of his younger brother Pandu, the husband of Vasudeva’s sister Kunti, who had been granted the boon to invoke any god to bear her a child. When he mistook a sage for a deer and mortally killed him, the sage cursed him, saying he would die if he ever had sex with his wife. Pandu abdicated and went into exile, and Kunti bore three sons by three gods (Yama, Vayu, and Indra), while Pandu’s other wife bore two more sons by the twin horse-headed sons of Surya and Saranyu. Pandu eventually attempted sex with his second wife, causing his head to explode and his wife to kill herself. Kunti raised all five of the Pandavi, but Duryodhana’s maternal uncle Shakuni worked on his behalf against them. Duryodhana also studied combat under Balarama, who described his body as "lightning made flesh."
ReplyDeleteEventually Duryodhana kidnapped the daughter of the king of Kalinga and had a daughter, who in turn was abducted by Samba, and Balarma had to rescue him from Kaurava captivity. Some of Krishna's gopis became infatuated with Samba. One, Nandini, disguised herself as Samba's wife and embraced him; Krishna’s response was to curse Samba to be inflicted with leprosy and his wives to be kidnapped by the Abhira worshippers of Krishna after his death. But the sage Kataka advised Samba to worship Surya, who cured his ailment after 12 years of penance.
ReplyDeleteDuryodhana was made prince regent of Hastinapur, while Pandu’s son Yudhishthira was named crown prince and given rule over half the realm at Khandavprastha, which his brothers transformed into Indraprastha (Delhi) with their cousin Krishna’s help. Yudhishthira power and prosperity continued to grow. While visiting the city, Krishna and the middle Pandava brother, Arjuna, spotted a young woman walking along the Yamuna. She identified herself as Kalindi and said she was living in a house built in the river by her father and was performing austerities so Vishnu would marry her. Krishna immediately proposed, and she became his fourth wife. In the Vedas, Kalindi (“the dark one”) was called Yami, the goddess of life, and was associated with her twin brother Yama, the god of death (who was later known as Kala). They were the first children of Surya and Saranyu, the goddess of the clouds. Because Saranyu was unable to bear her husband’s heat and light and had to close her eyes in his presence, Surya promised to name their son Yama ("restraint") and their daughter Yama. Yami wanted to marry her brother, arguing that since they had slept together inside their mother's womb, it was not wrong to sleep together outside it. They became the ancestors of the human race. Since it was continuously daytime at the start of creation, when Yama became the first mortal to die, Yami was unable to understand the lapse of time, so the gods created night to separate two days to help her recover from her sorrow.
Shakuni and Duryodhana challenged Yudhishthira to a game of dice and successively took from him his kingdom, his wealth, his four brothers, and their mutual wife Draupadi, after which Duryodhana publicly humiliated her by suggestively patting her thigh. The second Pandava brother, Bhima, threatened to break Duryodhana's thigh, but Dhritarashtra and Gandhari restored all of Yudhishthira's losses in an attempt to prevent a civil war. However, in an attempt to annex Hastinapur, Yudhishthira agreed to play again, under the condition that if he lost the Pandavas would spend 13 years in exile. In their absence, Duryodhana conquered the entire world and made preparations to make war against Arjuna’s father Indra. Krishna’s fifth wife, Mitravinda “the virtuous" was the daughter of Rajadhidevi, another of Vasudeva’s sister, who had married king Jayasena of Avanti. Her brothers were the co-rulers of the kingdom and wanted her to marry Duryodhana in order to forge an alliance and garner the support of Vidarbha and Magadha. At Balarama’s instigation, Krishna sent his younger sister Subhadra to ascertain Mitravinda’s intentions; when she confirmed that Mitravinda loved Krishna, Krishna and Balarama abducted her. At the end of the Pandava exile, Duryodhana refused to restore Yudhishthira's kingdom; Krishna tried to mediate a settlement, giving the Pandavas five villages in exchange for all claims to Indraprastha and Hastinapur, but Duryodhana refused to give them even "five needlepoints of land" and attempted to arrest Krishna, who revealed his Vishvarupa form, temporarily blinding everyone. But Duryodhana was undeterred and gathered an army against his rivals. Duryodhana and Arjuna sought Krishna's support, who offered them both a choice: either himself, unarmed, or his army. Arjuna chose the first option, and Duryodhana the second. In the war, Arjuna and Krishna, his charioteer, consistently defeated the Kauravas. When Duryodhana was going to meet Gandhari to receive her blessings, which would convert into diamond all the parts of his body on which her sight fell, Krishna tricked him into wearing banana leaves to hide his groin and thighs. Then Krishna visited Gandhari to offer his condolences for the loss of her sons, but she cursed him and predicted that the entire Yadava dynasty would perish in 36 years. After defeating Duryodhana at the battle of Kurukshetra, Yudhishthira offered to end the war by allowing him to challenge any of the Pandava brothers in a duel. Just as Duryodhana was on the verge of defeating his old rival Bhima, Krishna began clapping his thigh with his hand to remind Bhima of his earlier oath. Bhima recovered and struck Duryodhana in the thigh, mortally wounding him. Duryodhana accused Bhima of unfairly hitting him below the waist and ordered the only three survivors of his army to take revenge. They attacked the Pandava camp at night and slaughtered the children of the Pandavas and most of the soldiers, but were disappointed that the Pandavas themselves were away with Krishna. However, so the Pandave lineage would continue, Krishna resuscitated Arjuna’s grandson who had been killed in his mother’s womb.
ReplyDeleteNarada asked Krishna to give him one of his wives. Krishna told him he could win any wife for himself, if he was not with her at the time. Narada went to all of the 16,000 homes but found Krishna in every one of them, so he had to remain a bachelor. He enraged Satyabhama by hinting that Rukmini was Krishna’s favorite wife but insisted that Krishna’s love for her would multiply if she ritually gave Krishna to him as his slave and then repurchased him with Krishna’s weight in gold and jewels. Despite her boast that her wealth was more than enough to accomplish that, it fell far short, even after she requisitioned the treasure of his other wives. In desperation, she appealed to her rival, Rukmini, who had no wealth of her own because she had been abducted by her husband, requested that Krishna put a single tulasi (holy basil, "the incomparable one") leaf on the scales as a symbol of her love. (Tulasi had been a pious woman who sought to marry Vishnu, but his consort, Lakshmi, changed her into a plant; however, Vishnu allowed her to grace him when he appears in the form of Shaligrama in temples; tulasi thus plays an essential part in the worship of Vishnu and his avatars – including Krishna – and is also regarded as a consort of Krishna himself as an avatar of Lakshmi; giving water mixed with tulsi petals to the dying allows their souls to ascend to Heaven). When the leaf was placed on the scales, it outweighed all of the jewels and allowed Satyabhama to reclaim her husband. (In the ceremony of Tulsi Vivaha, Krishna ceremonially marries tulasi on the eleventh day of the waxing moon of the month of Kartik, which inaugurates India’s marriage season because it ends the four-month Chaturmas which is inauspicious for weddings and other rituals.)
ReplyDeleteThirty-five years after the Kurukshetra war, Krishna’s empire was peaceful and prosperous. Various rishis, including Narada, were met by Samba, who pretended to be a pregnant woman and asked the wise men to predict the baby’s gender. But the angry rishis cursed him and said he would give birth to an iron rod that would destroy the entire Yadava clan, which Samba duly delivered the next day. Ugrasena advised him to grind it into powder and throw it into the Prabhas sea, but the powder grew into eraká grass.
ReplyDeleteSatrajit was killed in his sleep by Satadhanva, who entrusted the magical jewel to his co-conspirator Akrura before they both fled. Krishna chased Satadhanva down and killed him, but summoned Akrura to return and admit his complicity; he was allowed to keep the jewel on the condition that it was to remain in Dvārakā. The third conspirator was the acclaimed hero Kritavarma, one of the three Kaurava survivors who led the night attack against the victorious Pandavas. Satyaki, a commander on the Pandava side, had been beaten unconscious by Bhurisrava but was saved from death when his guru, Arjuna, severed Bhurisrava’s arm with an arrow; recovering, Satyaki decapitated his defenseless enemy. Years later, in a drunken argument, Satyaki was applauded by Pradyumna for accusing Kritavarma of killing the Pandavas in their sleep; Kritavarma taunted Satyaki in turn, saying that he had murdered an armless opponent; and Satyaki the exposed Kritavarma’s role in Satrajit’s murder. Overhearing this, Satyabhama ran to Krishna as the fray grew more intense. Satyaki beheaded Kritavarma and attacked his companions, who defended themselves with the pots they had been eating and drinking from, which had been made from the eraká grass that had once been Samba’s iron rod. Pradyumna tried to rescue Satyaki, but both men were overwhelmed and killed in front of Krishna, who had arrived too late, and the other Yadava nobles killed each other. Balarama used yoga to give up his body. Krishna retired into the forest to meditate. Jara had attached the rest of the iron rod, which had been swallowed by a fish, to an arrowhead. Jara saw Krishna’s partly visible left for and mistook it for a deer; his arrow mortally wounded Krishna. Four of his wives, including Rohini, committing sati by throwing themselves onto his funeral pyre. Dvārakā sank into the ocean, and the rest of his widows went with the inhabitants of the lost city accompanied Arjuna to Hastinapur, but on the way, Abhira robbers attacked them and kidnapped some of Krishna's widows. Some of them, including Mitravinda, burned themselves alive. When the remaining widows reached Hastinapur, they retired into the forest to perform austerities. Krishna’s end marked the end of Dvapara Yuga and the start of Kali Yuga, the present age.
Krishna was absorbed into other Indian religions besides Hindism. Buddhists adapted the Krishna cycle in the “Bhagavata Purana” in their “Vaibhav Jataka.” Since the Jataka tales were written from the perspective of Buddha's previous lives (and those of his disciples), Krishna (called variously Vasudeva, Kanha, and Keshava) is Buddha’s right-hand man, the "Dhammasenapati" (Chief General of the Dharma). Balarama is called Baladeva. Vasudeva and his nine brothers (each a powerful wrestler) and an older sister, Anjana, use the Sudarshana Chakra to conquer Jambudvipa (probably a name for India) after beheading their evil uncle, Kansa. All of the sons die due to a curse levied by the sage Kanhadipayana (Veda Vyasa), and Krishna is speared in the foot by a hunter. The sole survivor of their family is their sister, Anjanadevi, but one of his youngest brothers, Ghatapandita, is reborn as a Bodhisattva. For the Jains, every age cycle is based on a conflict between a villainous Prati-vasudeva and the Baladava (the upholder of nonviolence) and his younger brother the Vasudeva (who must renounce this principle in order to kill the Prati-vasudeva and save the world). In one of these triads, the Prati-vasudeva is Jarasandha, the Baladava is Balarama, and the Vasudeva is Krishna.
ReplyDeleteSince the 19th century, Krishna reverence has been incorporated into several new religions, often as part of a pantheon of Greek, Buddhist, Biblical, and other figures. For instance, Bahá'ís believe that Krishna, like Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, Siyyid `Alí-Muhammad "the Báb" ("the Gate"), and Bahá'u'lláh (the founder of the faith), was a "manifestation of God," part of a line of prophets who have progressively revealed the divine word to a gradually maturing humanity. Their movement was initiated in 1844 in Persia and consolidated shortly after by Bahá'u'lláh. Helena Blavatsky, William Quan Judge, and Henry Steel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, though Blavatsky had published “The Secret Doctrine” in 1888. Theosophists regard Krishna and Buddha as incarnations of Maitreya (one of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom), the most important spiritual teacher of humanity.The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was founded in the Punjab late in the 19th century by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. On the basis of Quran 10:47 and 16:36 and other suras, Allah has sent prophets and messengers everywhere, so that no nation is without divine guidance. He likened himself to Krishna (also called Murli Dhar) as a human reviver of religion and morality, whose mission was to reconcile man and Allah: “Let it be clear that Raja Krishna, according to what has been revealed to me, was such a truly great man that it is hard to find his like among the Rishis and Avatars of the Hindus. He was an Avatar—i.e., Prophet—of his time upon whom the Holy Spirit would descend from God. He was from God, victorious and prosperous. He cleansed the land of the Aryas from sin and was in fact the Prophet of his age whose teaching was later corrupted in numerous ways. He was full of love for God, a friend of virtue and an enemy of evil.” Krishna’s flute was actually the flute of revelation, not a physical object. Édouard Schuré, an influential figure in perennial philosophy and occult movements, considered Krishna a “Great Initiate.” Édouard Schuré published “Les Grands Initiés” (The Great Initiates) in1889, describing the path ("initiation") followed by ancient philosophers in search of esoteric knowledge. Rama, Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates, Jesus, Orpheus, and Krishna were among the founders of spiritual and philosophical advances throughout history. The Ordo Templi Orientis was founded in 1895. In 1910 Aleister Crowley joined and quickly negan imposing his own stamp on the organization. In 1913, in Moscow, he composed the Gnostic Mass (Liber XV) for its eccelesiastical arm, the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, as the "central ceremony of its public and private celebration." In 1914 he reorganized the order around his Law of Thelema ("Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"). Krishna was canonized as a saint. In 1965, the Krishna-bhakti cult spread outside India when Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura sent Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to New York, where a year later he founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (“the Hare Krishnas”).
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