“Have you heard about Garuda? He is the king of all birds and the transportation vehicle of Lord Vishnu to move from one world to another. With one single flap of his wings he was able to cover the whole sky and cause devastating storms and large-scale destruction. He often helped the gods defeat the demons. After the churning of the ocean Garuda was carrying in his beak a kumbha, a jug with amrita, the drink of immortality, when four drops fell on the earth – the first one here, in the city of Haridwar [in the northern state of Uttarkhand], the second one in Ujjain [the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India], the third one in Nasik [in the western state of Maharashtra] and the last drop fell in the city of Allahabad [in the state of Uttar Pradesh]. These are our dhaama-s, famous holy places. They attract pilgrims from all over India and the world. Every twelve years we celebrate the greatest religious festival Kumbha mela. People used to call this city Gangadwar, the door of the Ganges.”
I was visiting Haridwar. The name literally means ‘the god’s door’. It is situated on the banks of the Ganges River. A local sadhu, whom I met on the bank of the river readily narrated to me this story.
After rushing down the mountain with a roar, the river settles down on its wide bed and quietly flows through the valley. The water here is crystal clear and ice cold. I was in the city to witness one of the most interesting rituals, Ganga Arti. Every night at seven o’clock devotees lit candles in the hundreds of temples around the river. They slowly come down the ghats or the stone platforms on the banks, singing songs of praise to Ganga Ma, accompanied by the rattling of conch shells, bells, and the beating of drums. They offer garlands and let the burning candles float on the surface of the water in reverence to the ancestors, whom they will join through the river. The view is unique. Thousands of flowers and lights travel toward the wide plains on the smooth surface reflecting thousands of stars from the night skies that flicker and dance in exhilaration and hope, before they merge with the eternal ocean.
I was staying with Tara, whom I had met at a workshop that both of us attended when we were in graduate school. She had come to Haridwar for eight months to study Sanskrit with a famous guru and to work on translating the works of Bhartrihari, a legendary grammarian-philosopher and poet, who lived at the end of fifth century. Not too much is known about his life, but according to stories about him that are available, he was torn between the life of earthly pleasures and the life of complete renouncement and yoga. His poetry is organized in three collections and it reflects his emotional, spiritual and intellectual explorations. In “Shringara” he focuses on love and erotic experiences, in “Vairagya” he ponders over renouncing worldly passions and attachments and in “Niti” he shares his ethical and moral views40. One story tells us that he was the king of Ujjain, but when he learned about his beloved wife’s unfaithfulness, he was in despair, relinquished the throne to his brother and became an ascetic. He meditated on the banks of the river in Haridwar and died here. His brother king Vikramaditya built the ghats in his memory.
One morning Tara told me that she had a bizarre dream about Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. She came into her dream wearing white, no jewelry, was sitting on a white lotus flower, escorted by a white swan, i.e. in her usual appearance from an iconographic point of view. Tara told me that then she woke up, opened her eyes and saw Saraswati’s white radiance above her head and over the nightstand and this light remained there until dawn.
“I wonder what this means,” she said and without waiting for an answer continued. “There must be some kind of message that she is sending me. Maybe I am supposed to do something, I am not sure. Or maybe she just reminded me how much more I need to study. Who knows!? It would be nice to know, though. I will ask my teacher. He might have an explanation.”
When we met in the afternoon again in her apartment, she told me that her teacher’s interpretation was that Saraswati had come to bless her studies, because she had a lot of books on the night stand and also to remind her to respect her teacher. He instructed her to go to a temple and offer honey, symbol of perfect knowledge, and an apple, the favorite fruit of the goddess, and pray for her protection. Tara also mentioned that on the way to the temple a boy from Europe had an epileptic seizure in the middle of the street. A few people gathered around him, watching, not knowing what to do. She told them to move away and turned the boy on one side so that he wouldn’t choke. The convulsions lasted almost a minute, but he didn’t lose consciousness. When it was over, Tara did not let him get up right way because he was confused, but in a few minutes he was fully awake and she helped him stand up and accompanied him to his house.
“I know what to do because my sister started having seizures since she went through puberty. It’s pretty terrifying to watch, but at least it doesn’t last long. Anyway, he is fine at home and we can go now to the ghats.”
We were about to leave when someone knocked on the door and a boy, about seventeen, came in. He was the one she had helped a couple of hours ago. He smiled and thanked her again and then added that he had no money and he had nothing to leave for her as a gift, except for a manuscript he had bought from an antique shop in Nepal. He was told it was very old and authentic. He doubted that his level of Sanskrit would ever be so good as to enable him to read this text. He left it on the table wrapped in newspapers and left.
Tara opened the packet and uncovered a long thin box with rounded corners in which the manuscript lay. The box had an upper and lower cover made of carved and painted wood. The text itself was on thin, yellowish painted wooden strips, one over the other in a pile, with two symmetrical little holes on the top part of each connected by a string. The text was written both on the back and the front along the long side of the piece in black and in red, the symbols designating accent, stanza and verse endings. The corners were old and burnt as if the manuscript had been salvaged from a fire. We knew it was old and valuable. Some places were difficult to read because of the damage and our Sanskrit was not good enough even to guess what this text was.
We were really eager to know what we had in our hands, so early next morning we went to Tara’s teacher. He wasn’t surprised to see us. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor on a large thin mattress covered with a saffron colored cotton sheet. He was wearing a long white shirt and a white dhoti. He invited us to sit in front of him.
“I was waiting for you! Last night Saraswati visited me as well. Her white radiance stayed over me the whole night. What did you bring?”
Tara handed over the packet. He moved a pillow closer, placed it on it, unveiled the manuscript, opened it and instantly froze and began staring at it. Then he gathered his hands in front of his chest, leaned over, touched it with his forehead, closed his eyes, started moving his body back and forth and began chanting something in Sanskrit. In a minute or two, he looked at us and explained:
“This is Rig Veda, the version that my family has had to learn and transmit for hundreds of generations.”
Tears of excitement or relief or maybe joy rolled down his cheeks:
“This manuscript has reached its final destination. It has found its real home…”
Rig Veda is the first of the four Veda, Sama, Atharva and Yajur being the other three. Rig Veda is the most ancient literary work in the history of the world, preserved until today in its original form. It consists of 1028 hymns. The authors belonged to clans who were especially designated among the members of the Indo-Aryan tribes and whose names were mentioned in the songs. The tribes were moving eastwardly towards the subcontinent within an extended area including nowadays Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Hindukush, a conclusion based on repeated references in various texts. Along with their cousins, the Iranian tribes, they form the so-called Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. They were semi-nomadic, organized in tribal unions and formed alliances among themselves or with proto-Dravidians or tribes speaking other languages, and fought the enemies in search of new pastures, more cattle and land for temporary and limited agricultural activities. The older civilization in the area of Punjab, known as the Indus Valley Civilization, most probably created by the proto-Dravidians, had already reached its developmental peak around the middle of the second millennium BC and was on the decline, when the Indo-Aryan tribes started trickling into the territory of present-day Pakistan and North-West India. They encountered ruined cities and deserted towns and the most probable causes for this situation are assumed to be climate change, deterioration of natural resources, and ideological crises. The great advantage of the Indo-Aryan speaking tribes was that they knew how to tame and use the horse, unknown in that area until their arrival, they had invented the axed wheel, and their chariots were superior in transportation and in battle. In addition, they lived in a well-developed social organization and had a stable religious system and rich ritual practices. During a long process of socio-economic and linguistic integration and cooperation, their superiority and dominance were gradually established, but the composition of the Rig Veda must have started long before they arrived in the Punjab area, which probably happened between the 18 to 9th century BC. The hymns were composed and transmitted syllable by syllable, word by word, stanza by stanza through a uniquely elaborate oral tradition, securing the perfect preservation of the texts among chosen elite clans only. The hymns are exquisite poetic compositions, devoted to the gods, praising their attributes and strengths, deeds and heroism in the eternal battle against evil. They are beautiful prayers for protection and blessing, victory in battle, acquisition of cattle and riches, hero-sons, cures for sickness, and also for poetic inspiration and for flawless execution of the ritual during which the hymn is recited. Some of them are philosophical interpretations of the world, natural phenomena and their creation. They were chanted by the priests during the performance of intricate esoteric ceremonies, the most solemn and important among which was the horse sacrifice, ashvamedha. These songs were a part of a highly structured set of required ritual actions essential for the appeasement of the gods and thus for the maintenance of the whole universe. This ultimate goal was achievable through the perfect performance of the ceremony and the flawless recitation of the hymns. Many centuries after their oral composition and uninterrupted oral transmission they were written down and organized in 10 books, mandala. For the most part, their order depends on the poet, the god it addresses and the number of the stanzas, starting with the longest and ending with the shortest poem in each group. Mandala 1 and 10 contain the most recent compositions41. Each book begins with songs devoted to Agni, the god of the sacrificial fire, which delivers to the gods the offerings and messages of the mortals, then to Indra, the king of all gods, the ultimate warrior, etc. The ninth book is an exception, because it consists only of hymns to the god Soma – the protector of the drink of immortality. The Vedic gods are ingeniously adapted to the Hindu pantheon where, however, they have a secondary role.
Tara’s teacher looked at us and uttered:
“Here, take the manuscript. Open it anywhere. Read the first word of any stanza. I will tell you the hymn, the author, the book it belongs to. I will also tell you how the song starts and after I get to where you read I will continue until you stop me.”
We did this a few times, then he suggested that we give him a word from the middle of the stanza and he repeated his performance. He was even able to trace a syllable backward and forward. He was so proficient in the texts and was able to segment the stanzas with such speed that one would think he had a computer database in his head. He was a living example of this unmatched millennia-long, uninterrupted and continuous tradition.
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40 See for more Bhartrihari: Poems. Trans. Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967
41 See for more Witzel, Michael. “The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu”. Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. M. Witzel ed., Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1997 and Witzel, Michael. “Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts”. In Electronic Version of Vedic Studies, Vol. 7.3. 2001