[Counters temporarily disabled]
[page 479] These supplementary notes have been omitted from the main body of the thesis because they are primarily materials we have reserved for a subsequent D.Litt. thesis and they would moreover over-widen the scope of our arguments, extensive as they already are. Nevertheless, these brief indications could well serve readers to better orientate themselves with regard to the various currents of thought that have converged to render the present thesis feasible.
1) This would have been a systematic elaboration of the transgressive ideology invested in the vidūṣaka through comparison of the various comic symbols he displays—deformity, gluttony, contrary speech, loud laughter, outcaste- (c�ND�la-) like traits, etc.—with the same occurring in non-comic contexts elsewhere in the tradition.
2) This would have provided abundant evidence of religious dualism—such as those universal features analyzed by Mircea Eliade in Quest, pp.127-175 (including Twins, Cosmogony, Ritual Competition and Verbal Contests, Devas and Asuras, Mitra-Varuṇa, etc.)—from the domain of Indian symbolism and offered a psycho-physical theory of the same. It could be shown that this dualism is evident in the vidūṣaka’s love of quarrel, tuft of hair (zikh�), etc., and the abundance of ‘vidūṣaka notations’ in the zodiacal sign Mithuna (Gemini) generally represented by a pair of twins or by a sexed couple. It would have comprised also the analysis of the Rig Vedic semantics of the term ‘mithuna’ (Renou) confronted with the use of corresponding terms in other Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages meaning ‘cross-cousin’, which converge to reveal the kind of structures commonly associated with dualist societies (evidence for which Held finds both in the Mah�bh�rata and in Indian ethnology). The psycho-physical theory would have especially dwelt on the theory of the five pr�Nas as elaborated by Abhinavagupta in IPVV III. This ‘viSuvat-principle’ embodied in the vidūṣaka would be structurally homologous to both the bisociative mechanism of his hāsya and his ambiguous/ambivalent mediating function between the exoteric order of interdiction and the esoteric valorization of transgression. [480]
3) “Although much has been written on the part of the vidūṣaka, it is remarkable that most scholars have started from a premise which to them was apparently so self-evident as to be in no need of being stated explicitly, viz. that the vidūṣaka was a clown (‘Spassmacher, Hanswurst’) , who therefore could not have originally belonged to the drama. The further conclusion was that in that case he must have originated in a ‘popular drama’, about which, however, nothing is known…. It may be useful to state clearly that this whole scholarly discussion, which in German-speaking countries was dominated by the word ‘volkst�mlich’ as the vitium originis, was primarily based upon a questionable conception of the character of the vidūṣaka” (VV p.p.199-200). “It is inevitable, in view of the current opinions on Varuṇa and the vidūṣaka, that the idea that the latter is an impersonation of the former must appear wildly grotesque and absurd. This is due, on the one hand, to a misinterpretation of the vidūṣaka as a mere buffoon and, on the other hand, to a confusion of a superhuman cosmic order (Rta), of which Varuṇa was the guardian, with human ethics. In the Vedic conception one who unwittingly transgresses the cosmic order is punished for a sin which can only be understood metaphysically, not ethically. Varuṇa is a majestic god in his own way, not as many great Vedists of the 19th and 20th centuries used to depict him, because he impersonates the ambiguity of cosmic life, in which death is comprised. Just as no pravrtti can be conceived without its negative counterpart of nivrtti, so the nāyaka can only be understood in relation to his counterpart, the vidūṣaka. The basic flaw in many studies on the vidūṣaka has been that he was considered separately, not in the interrelation which constitutes his real character. This also provides an answer to the fundamental question, which, however, seems never to have been asked: Why was it that this purportedly grotesque and comical character is stated in our oldest source to have been the leading part of the drama, on a par with the hero? This fact, which none of the existing theories can explain, becomes clear when it is realized that in the interplay of action and counteraction his relation to the nāyaka was that of Varuṇa to Indra. For basically the action of the oldest Sanskrit drama must have been a reiteration of the cosmogony and a ritual act aiming at a renewal of life” (16. “The Character of the vidūṣaka in the Sanskrit Drama,” Varuṇa and vidūṣaka, pp.209-10). [481]
4) The VrS�kapi identity of the vidūṣaka, originally suggested by Lindenau (Bh�sastudien), has been revived by M.C. Byrski with cogent argument. “The meaning of the association of Indra and Sarasvat� with the hero and heroine of the N�Tya becomes now abundantly clear. Each performance is a daiv�suram conflict in its course and sacrifice in its meaning. In each performance, therefore, the union of a nāyaka with a n�yik� [heroine] is as substantial as the union of Indra with V�c-Sarasvat� which, brought about through the victory over the demons in each daiv�suram struggle, is an integral part of each sacrifice. The intimate relationship of Indra with V�c-Sarasvat� seems to allow us to take her as being identical with Indr�N�…. If we admit such a possibility in spite of lack of any explicit identification of these two, then a Rgvedic hymn about Indra, Indr�N� and VrS�kapi can acquire some meaning for N�Tya. Consequently it may not be altogether unjustified to suppose that there is some kind of relationship between VrS�kapi and vidūṣaka. Both are hero’s or Indra’s beloved friends. Both incur the anger of hero’s partner, Indr�N�, heroine. Finally both are compared to a monkey. This would give a new strength to the hypothesis made almost half a century ago by Gawronski that VrS�kapi is a prototype of vidūṣaka” (CAIT, p.142 and note 6). In this, his BHU Ph.D. thesis, Byrski had already argued for conceiving N�Tya in terms of Yaj�a, sacrifice, an idea that has been much further elaborated by Kuiper. Such an approach must necessarily find a satisfactory sacrificial role for the vidūṣaka.
5) Though such transgression can provoke purely negative reactions in others, the cultural institutionalization (whether in ritual, myth or drama) of the transgressor, which amounts to an implicit valorization, neutralizes these negative reactions in order to transform the transgression into a comic stimulus. Compare S. Reinach: “We should ask ourselves why the same gesture, in the stories of a very great antiquity, provoke sometimes laughter and sometimes flight. I explain this by the very conception of taboo intentionally violated. This violation produces a shock—we still say that such an act is shocking—and, without wishing to press the metaphor too far, I admit that this shock can determine either a sharp movement of repulsion, arising from a religious dread, or an instantaneous protestation, the reestablishment of the broken equilibrium, a mental redressment of the fault committed, which are [482] among the best attested psychological causes of laughter…. There is no unique explanation of laughter, but it is certain that laughter often implies and resumes a censure…. Now, what we call pleasantries or boorishness were formerly sacrileges, blasphemies, occasions of mortal peril. One understands just as well, on reflection, Demeter who laughs as Bellerophon who flees” (Le Rire Rituel, pp.118-19). The personage who is obliged to assume the function of transgression before an exoteric public is thereby naturally transformed into a comic clown. Cf., in this regard, L. Makarius, infra, p.143, note 19.
6) These diverse symbolic traits should be understood as synonyms drawn from different codes each derived from a separate domain: visual, alimentary, social, linguistic, etc. L�vi-Strauss has demonstrated (esp. in Le Cru et le Cuit) how the same message is transmitted in the most varied ways in Amerindian mythology by exploiting terms borrowed from different but logically equivalent codes. “The analysis of myths thus begins with the decipherment of their message in the light of the code whose presence is immediately detectable. Then, in the measure that the analysis progresses, this message is reinterpreted by means of different codes whose role has appeared subsequently, in other myths, and which prove to be equally apt to encode the message of the myths examined previously. These successive rereadings enrich the signification of the myths and thereby multiply the possibilities of comparison, for they permit the establishment of relation between myths that appear, through their contents, to be at first sight wholly foreign to one another” (Marc Lipiansky, LS, p.154). Such analyses, in diluted form, have already been applied to Indian mythology and ritual by ‘structuralists’ like Wendy Donniger and Madeleine Biardeau. See infra pp.328-40 [???] for a rapid elucidation of these motifs. In a traditional society where one’s pure ritual status (and even social identity) are expressed in terms of what one can and cannot eat, the figure of the vidūṣaka’s omnivorous appetite must signify the transgression of alimentary interdictions.
7) In the myths narrated by L�vi-Strauss, the jaguar is often presented in a ludicrous light, as pouncing repeatedly and futilely at the shadow of the human would-be culture-hero perched in the tree above, until the latter finally chooses to reveal himself through an unobtrusive sign. “Numerous American myths attest that there is no [483] situation more laughable, and more apt to cover someone with ridicule, than that of a personage releasing the prey for the shadow or exerting himself to seize the shadow instead of the prey” (Le Cru et le Cuit, p.117). Now, L�vi-Strauss accords this comic aspect of the jaguar a precise, though arbitrary, role in the encounter between human hero and wild jaguar between whom the normal relation is that of mutual hostility: “We are going to demonstrate that it is because the hero restrains himself , vis-�-vis the jaguar, from being a scoffer or a deceiver—more precisely because he restrains himself from laughing—that the jaguar does not eat him, but communicates to him the arts of civilization” (loc. cit., contrast with the ridiculing laughter at the deformed Angirasas, infra p.334).
Makarius however offers a different reason as to why the jaguar adopts the boy and interprets the clownish antics of the former differently: “The jaguar comes to his aid not, as L�vi-Strauss says, (…) because the boy did not laugh at his ridiculous behavior (The jaguar made himself ridiculous by taking the shadow of the boy for a prey. This episode….recurs often in the burlesque narratives about violators of taboo), or has given him a truthful reply (Cru et le Cuit, 116-17), but for an organic and non-circumstantial reason: because the boy identifies himself with the jaguar, being like him a violator and a future cultural hero…. It is because of this identification that the young man does not lie to the jaguar (….). It is because the birds-nester is as it were his alter ego, another himself, that the jaguar approaches him with benevolence…” (Les Jaguars et les Hommes, p.228).
We are here in full agreement with Makarius, who has shown the organic link
between the boy’s contact with impurities (covered with birds’ excrement or
eating his own excrement) and his characterization as a taboo-violator, a
relationship that is evident, for example, in the impure birth of Gaṇeśa or in
epithets of Bhairava like ucchiSTa-
or lalaj-jihva
(drooling-tongued). But in the light of the bisociative structure of hāsya proposed in this thesis, there is also an organic relationship between the hero’s not laughing and his identifying himself
completely with the jaguar, because
it is precisely those who shrink at the thought of such violation who would laugh at the jaguar for they are unable to
identify themselves with him. As
such, the non-laughter could just as well serve the jaguar as confirmation of the qualification of the hero to future
jaguar-status. The myth in fact reveals
the (as it were “initiatic”) passage of a socialized human being into a fraternity of habitual and inveterate
taboo-violators. [484] His impurity, incestuous tendency, etc., have already revealed his vocation,
but the crucial passage is yet to occur. The jaguar at the time of the encounter reveals only that ridiculous external face of himself that the common
man is able to approach. Thus
the question—“to laugh or not to laugh?”—inserts itself at that precise boundary where jaguar meets man, and upon it
depends the passage of the hero to the
world of jaguars. Outside of this particular context, the jaguar is not a comic but a terrifying figure (like Bhairava, who
is also sometimes depicted in a comic
aspect, dancing with the deformed Pramathas).
The monkey is this very boundary where jaguar meets man: he is this boundary pure and simple. That is why the
comic character, accidental and
peripheral to the jaguar, is central and essential to the monkey. In this triad of jaguar, monkey and man, it is the jaguar (taboo-violator) and man (living in conformity with the social order) that
are the most diametrically
opposed. As for the “semantic position of the monkey,” L�vi-Strauss’ analysis situates him “between that of the jaguar and that
of man. Like man, the monkey is
opposed to the jaguar; like the jaguar, he is the master of fire, which is unknown to men. The jaguar is the contrary of man;
the monkey is rather his counterpart. The personage of the monkey comes in this way to be constituted with
fragments borrowed now from one term, now from the
other. Some myths permute him with the jaguar, others (...) permute him with man. Finally, one sometimes finds the triangular system in its completion: the Tukunas
explain in a myth that the ‘lord
of the monkeys’ had a human form, although he belonged to a race of jaguars” (Le Cru et le Cuit,
p.140). Of these three terms, it is the monkey, mediator between man
and jaguar, that is between the
strict observance of taboos and their deliberate violation, who like Gaṇeśa, mediator between Brahmā and Bhairava, is an
essentially comic figure. This is due primarily to his straddling the boundary between man and jaguar.
Whereas the jaguar manifests his ridiculous aspect only by virtue of a
particular liminal situation, the monkey,
being symbolic of the situation itself, is comic wherever he is, whether wholly in the world of
human society or in the
wilderness. Wherever he is, the monkey like the vidūṣaka, carries in himself the demarcation and the transition, hence the controlled communication, between the exoteric and the
esoteric realms with their
contradictory values. Those in whom he provokes laughter are denied access to the esoteric [485] realm and those who see only a semblance of
humor (hāsyābhāsa) in his antics, pass through easily. “The same motif is found in the cosmologu of
the Guarayu of Bolivia: on the route which
leads to the Great Grand-Father, the dead have to undergo various tests of which one consists of being tickled by
a marimono monkey with pointed nails. The
victim who laughs is devoured. For this reason perhaps, and like the Kayapo tribe, the Gurayu men disdain laughter, which they consider to be a feminine behavior” (Le Cru et
le Cuit, p.130).
This mediating role of the monkey is clearly underlined in one myth (no. 53, Le Cru et le
Cuit, p.133),
where the hunter strays into the lair of the jaguar, whose daughters explain to him that the monkey he was chasing is
their domestic pet; he ends up being
transformed into a jaguar himself. “Diverse mythical incidents refer to a visit to the monkeys at whom one must not laugh
under the pain of death, and to the
danger of laughing at supernatural spirits....(Le Cru
et le Cuit, p.129). Another myth (no. 38) reveals that this naturally comic aspect of the monkey is rooted in its
violation of fundamental taboo. While
the monkey tries to entertain the human son-in-law in all seriousness with his quasi-human singing, the latter can hardly
restrain himself from
laughter, for which he is abandoned on a tree. Finally, the latter kills all the monkeys except his pregnanat wife who, uniting
incestuously with her son, gives
birth to the whole tribe of guariba monkeys. Here, all this “monkey-business” is intimately linked with incest, and to laugh at
the comic aspect of the monkey
is to laugh at such incestuous and other violatory conduct. When the comic aspect, due to the bisociative aspect, of the
transgressive conduct is
amplified by a general behavior producing the same effect, and the transgression itself is disguised, underplayed,
displaced or even completely
eliminated, we have a
generalization of the comic aspect of transgression, best exemplified by the figure of the monkey. The
monkey, who by his very
resemblance to man gives the spontaneous impression of apeing him, best exemplifies this inherently comic figure who does
not have to do anything in
partcular to provoke laughter. Often, this generalized incongruous behavior is itself further exploited for aesthetic purposes.
This is what happens with the
monkey-like (the incestuous notations of VrS�kapi who attempts to molest his “mother” Indr�N� may be of relevance here) vidūṣaka whose transgressive behavior is extremely disguised
and underplayed. [486]
Unlike Hindu mythology, Amerindian mythology seems to have made abundant use of tickling as a substitute for transgression at the point where it encounters an exoteric perception of
itself (cf. infra, note 4, pp.175-76, for Koestler’s bisociation theory of
tickling). That this tickling indeed
symbolizes the inversion of exoteric norms and values is clearly underlined in certain myths by coupling it with
some other unmistakeable symbol of
inversion. It is the bat that is responsible for the “origin of laughter” in the Kayapo-Gorotir� myth (myth 40, Le Cru et le
Cuit, p.130). At
the moment the hero encounters the bat, the latter is hanging suspended upside-down from a branch and descends to
tickle him eliciting the first
laughter. In fact, it is the inversionof values symbolized by the physical inversion that, in the secret logic of the
myth, provokes the
laughter. This inversion of values is further emphasized in the cavern of the bats (all again suspended upside-down from the
ceiling), the floor of which is covered
with excrements (impurity). Even when a baby bat is captured, the myth emphasizes that it could not adjust to the ways of
the village and continued to sleep
in reverse posture until its premature death.
L�vi-Strauss could hardly decline our interpretation of this myth of “the origin of
laughter,” when he himself has written elsewhere:
“Several myths of the Carriers (...) speak of a maiden who laughed to death at
the sight of a squirrel descending from a tree.
According to the Hohs and the Quileutes (...) a woman prisoner at the top of a tree was delivered sometimes by a
squirrel, sometimes by a comic
personage. This comicality is attributed to the squirrel or to a creature assuming its role, would it not stem from the fact
that, like its South American congenerate, it
descends
head-down? A Quileute version affirms so (...), and
even attributes the deliverance of its prot�g�
to this behavior of the animal.... In the two hemispheres finally, these paallel beliefs are put into relation
with an ambulatory style proper to the Sciurides,
which descend head-down from the trees”
(L’Homme Nu, pp.497-98). It is within this context of inversion that the first laughter breaks
forth, and this reveals the
intimate connection between the two phenomena in the tribal mind. “Although their connotations are indubitably sinister, the
bats appear everywhere to be masters
of cultural goods, like the jaguar in other G� myths (Le
Cru et le Cuit, p.131).
Yet, it is by not laughing when tickled that one
becomes a jaguar: “The demiurge Nedamik submitted the first humans to a test by tickling them. Those who
laugh are changed into
terrestrial or acquatic [487] animals; the former prey of the jaguar, the latter capable of escaping him by taking refuge in water.
Those men who know how to remain
imperturble become jaguars or human hunters (or vanquishers) of jaguars”(Myth 36, Le Cru et le Cuit, p.128). In
other words, those who are able to completely identify themselves with the “jaguars” in their
violations and hence do not laugh, become
themselves “jaguars.” In myth 37 (Le Cru et
le
Cuit, p.129), the jaguars themselves impose the
tickling test before accepting the candidate.
8)
“If no ethnologist contests that the clown violates rules and interdictions,
it is far from being clearly understood that these violatory acts are not
eccentricities among others, but are the expression of this role of violator
that is the sole reason for the clown to exist insofar as ritual personage, just
as the trickster has no other reason to exist in myth. One and the other, on
different levels, are agents evocative of a fundamental, contradictory
experience, generative of mythologies and religions and whose repercussions on
our psyche are far from having been effaced” (L. Makarius, SVI, p.277). “…the
disquieting reality, that the clowns have however the mission of recalling, are
expressed by them only in a furtive manner, quickly diverted into buffoonery….
This is because the violation of taboo appears as too dangerous to act to be
publicly represented before real men. Now, to the forces of repression which,
allied to oblivion, tend to efface the testimony of certain lived experiences,
is opposed another force (of cultural and traditional nature no doubt, but not
for all that entirely conscious), that seems to want to reinstate obsolescent
customs to guard them present and, through some conventional sign, recognizable.
This reinstatement operates through symbolic means. Expressions are created,
that transparently allow what is hidden to be seen” (ibid., p.293; cf. also
p.295). On the relevance of such ritual clowning to theatrical clowning: “The
pantomimes of the ritual buffoons constitute the first manifestation of the
spectacle: they are generally inserted into a festival and are the popular
diversion par excellence, because they are addressed to the whole of the social
group. An esoteric personage, the ritual clown, in order to fulfill his role,
that is in order to explicate the symbolic system that he represents, has to
present himself [488] before a public comprising
of non-initiates. Contrary to what happens at other festive occasions, women,
young boys and children are present, they even form his elect public. It is true
that he frightens as much as he amuses them, and that his aspects as an amuser
are only the fall-out of the symbolic necessity that compels him to act
inversely. It nonetheless remains that the allure and gesticulations of the
clowns are comic, and considered such by the spectators. Their exhibitions are
at the source of that burlesque vein that will mark the manifestations of the
popular theater, the carnival, the masquerades and of which the circus-clowns
have conserved the essential traits, the inconsequent behavior and the comic
mixed with anguish” (SVI, p.297). What Makarius says of myth, especially the
trickster-myth, is applicable in large measure to the symbolic behavior of the
vidūṣaka
as well: “The myth has thus the functions of operating a kind of rehabilitation
of the repressed and of maintaining and communication its signification through
the formulations it is apt to find. This results in an embarrassed and
incongruous language, but whose pregnance is due to the fact that under the
veneer of the plot is hidden something whose presence is felt, and which can be
divined through the hiatuses, periphrases, unexpected comparisons,
inconsequences of the narrative, or is sometimes brusquely revealed either
through formal procedures, such as repetition, or through symbolic images….the
violation cannot express itself in the clear. It speaks through the ‘mouth of
obscurity’, through the symbols it creates on all the planes, of rite, objects,
behavior, costume, staging, etc., but finds in myths the most direct, the best
articulated means of expression that is also the most free from the constraints
of reality and the most apt to conserve the secrets that it confides to it and
to transmit them in a cryptic form to the auditors of the tribe” (SVI p.254).
For all their elaboration of a theory of the sacred from these ethnological
materials, see their chapter on “The Sacred” (SVI pp.305-42); where their theory
of mana (to which J. Gonda assimilates the Vedic br�hman), of the
dialectic of the pure and the impure within the sacred, Rudolf Otto, etc., are
discussed). Though we have little objection to their account of the dynamic
dialectic of transgression (hardly different from that of G. Bataille), we find
their exclusively magical interpretation of transgression and the fundamental
role accorded to the blood-taboo quite unacceptable.
[489]
9) “The interpretations of Indo-European mythology pursued in the admirable works of Georges Dum�zil (…) correspond to the construction I have developed: the consciously Hegelian theses, antitheses and syntheses of Georges Dum�zil give the opposition of pure violence (of the black and baneful side of the divine world—Varuṇa and the Gandharvas, Romulus and the Luperques) to the divine order that accords with profane activity (Mitra and the Brahmins, Numa, Dius Fidus and the Flamines)….” (Bataille, TR, pp.154-45). “Originally, within the divine world, the benign and pure elements were opposed to the baneful and impure elements, and both one and the other appeared equally removed from the profane. But if one envisages a dominant movement of reflective thought, the divine appears linked to purity, the profane to impurity. In this way is accomplished a shift from a primary state of affairs where the divine immanence is dangerous, where what is sacred is first of all baneful and destroys by contagion what it approaches, where the benign spirits are mediators between the profane world and the unleashing of divine forces—and compared to the black divinities seem less sacred” (ibid., pp.92-93).
10) Cf. especially RV VII.33.10-13 on the birth of Vasiṣṭha: [Sanskrit text]????
Cf. also Kosambi: “…we may use archaeology and anthropology to solve another riddle, namely the multiple account of Vasiṣṭha’s birth in VII.33, where he is born of the apsaras, the lotus or lotus-pond, and also from the seed of Mitra-Varuṇa poured into a jar, kumbha. The answer is very simple, namely that the kumbha is itself the Mother-Goddess… The apsaras in general is a mother-goddess, as would appear from the Av hymns called m�trn�m�ni (Myth and Reality, p.70). “The SBr VII.4.11 tells us that the lotus-leaf is the womb (yoni) and 13 that the puSkara is the lotus-leaf. Thus Vasiṣṭha’s birth has a completely consistent account, multiple only in the symbolism used. The gotra lists mention a PauSkaras�di gotra among the Vasiṣṭhas. The gotra [490] is historical as a Brahmin priest of that gens was a priest of king Pasenadi (D�ghanik�ya 4), and a grammarian of that name is also known. The name means descendant of puSkara-sad, he who resides in the puSkara, which clearly indicates Vasiṣṭha. So does Kundin, from which the KauNDinya gotra of the Vasiṣṭhas is derived…. Significantly, kumbha is still used for harlot by lexica like the Vizvakosha…. The Kath�sarits�gara 70.112 equates the kumbha or ghata explicitly to the uterus” (ibid., pp.72-73). Two observations could be usefully added to Kosambi’s here: 1) The ‘lotus-seated’ divinity par excellence is Brahmā in whom many (most recently G. Bailley) have seen the mythical projection of the purohita or brahm�n-priest; 2) all this embryogonic womb-symbolism—so important for Kuiper’s conception of Varuṇa—can be best understood in terms of Heesterman’s typological equation of this purohita with the pre-classical dīkṣita regressing to Varuṇa’s realm. The idea of a twin-principle being incarnated in the Vasiṣṭhas has been deemed important and significant enough to be retained even in Pur�nic mythology; cf. Vettam Mani (PE ad. Agastya, p.5) where Varuṇa’s sexuality, as opposed to that of Mitra, is presented in a diffuse unstructured manner reminiscent of the ‘lascivious behavior’ (śṛngārana) of the P�zupata ascetic.
11) The best passage where Abhinava underlines the distinction between sankoca and vik�sa as spiritual techniques, demonstrating the complementarity of the two ways even while assimilating the specificity of the Trika (Pratyabhij��) method to the latter superior technique, is found in IPVV vol. III, p.172: [Sanskrit text]????
12) The clearest statement conceives the movement of sankoca as a progressive disidentification from particular delimited forms in order to identify oneself with the universality of forms (vizva-r�patvam) [491]: Vizva-r�p�vibheditvam zuddhatv�d eva j�yate / niSThitaika-sphuran-m�rter m�rty-antara-virodhatah // Tantrāloka IV.13b-14a. Why? Because identification with one particular form (or limited personal identity) necessarily prevents the identification with a different (opposing) form. (One of the universal characteristics of the clown is his apparent lack of self-identity, which partly accounts for the impression of ‘madness’: Foucault speaks of the madman as “the disordered player of the Same and the Other…” The Order of Things, p.49). To the adept engaged fully in the little-spoken-of vik�sa stage, it is the pure/impure distinction itself that constitutes the final ‘impurity’. The same dialectic of sankoca and vik�sa, with the two contrary meanings of ‘purity’ (zuddhi), is found in the conception of Oṁkāra itself, the presiding symbol of the br�hman and also the vidūṣaka. In his V�kyapad�ya, (from which the Pratyabhij�� metaphysics of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta has largely drawn its theoretical framework), Bhartrhari considers Oṁkāra to be true knowledge, the essence of purity itself, condensed into a single word, and embracing within itself all other mutually conflicting (partial) doctrines. Saty� vizuddhis tatrok� vidyaivaika-pad�gam� / yukt� praNava-r�pena sarva-v�d�-virodhin� // Brahmak�nda 9 //. It is indeed the embodiment of Brahman and the quintessence of the Vedas; but what does its ‘purity’ consist of? “The purity of knowledge consists of its assuming the totality of forms without resorting to any particular form (nirup�zraya); but some say that it has an even superior purity when it is devoid of all form.” Sarv�rtha-r�pat� zuddhih j��nasya nirup�zray� / tato’py asya par�m zuddhim eke pr�hur ar�pik�m // 56. V�kyapad�ya III, Sambandha-samuddesha. The first view, probably Bhartrhari’s own, corresponds to the Tantric vik�sa-standpoint, whereas the second option presumably refers to a Ved�ntin view of the ‘Shankarian’ type (Biardeau has already suggested that Bhartrhari had been deeply influenced by ambient Tantric ideologies of his times); cf. Biardeau, HAC, p.91. In any case, Oṁkāra is in this way perfectly adapted to represent both the completely detached transcendental Brahman-Absolute of the orthodox sanny�sin (represented in some legends by Shankara’s z�nta-brahman head) and the all-inclusive immanent Brahman (Bhairava-Anuttara) of the Trika (likewise represented by the Bhairava-worshipper who cuts of this head). Thus, it is capable of representing both the orthodox brahmin as the pinnacle of ritual purity and the vidūṣaka as mahābrāhmaṇa, including in himself the lowliest and most impure levels of the [492] socio-cosmic manifestation represented by the śūdra (or even c�ND�la). A similar dialectic, evident both in the vidūṣaka and the P�zupata’s śṛngārana (prohibited from speaking to women but obliged to indulge in lewd gestures towards them), of chastity and undifferentiated sexuality parallels the dialectic of the pure and the impure, and can be followed in the successive interpretations of the term brahmacarya from the brahmac�rin-s�kta (AV XI.5; cf. Dandekar VMT pp.207-10) to Kaula tantrism (Tantrāloka XXIX.17-19) through classical brahmanism.
It is also relevant to note that the term ‘vizva-r�pa’ though
used here in a primarily metaphysical or ‘philosophical’ sense, originally had a
primarily socio-ritual incidence and much to do with classificatory order.
Firstly, the mythical prototype of the Vedic ‘royal chaplain’ (purohita) of Indra, beheaded by the
latter, was also called Vizvar�pa. Then, as opposed to the term r�pa (Held pp.117-20, cf. infra,
pp.334-35), the terms vizva-r�pa and
bahu-r�pa “are generally
considered to express the power to assume any shape. In our opinion this
translation gives only a part of the real meaning. With the indication vizva- or bahu-r�pa one wants to express that a god is entitled to
bear the emblems of all clans, and that consequently the things classified with
all those clans can, in a mythical sense, be substituted for him. Vizvar�pa is consequently a distinction
for the gods, comprising the entire system of classification, or for whom one
wants to pay homage in this manner” (Held, p.262). Emblems like the vizvar�pa-nishka
worn by Rudra must thus be
understood in opposition to specific delimited emblems, like the dhvajas ‘flag-poles’ of the Mah�bh�rata, determined by ‘name’ (n�man) and ‘form’ (r�pa).
“When Sa�jaya in the Mah�bh�rata
has to describe the dhvajas, he
does so in accordance with their r�pa,
their n�man, and their
From the psychoanalytic point of view, it is pertinent to note that the
undifferentiated state of vizvar�pat� corresponds to Freud’s
‘oceanic feeling’ (in which J.L. Masson sees the “origins of the religious
sentiment in
13) Cf. infra, pp.336-340. For the Kh�NDava as modaka, see Biardeau, EMH V, p.138 note 1: “however, one may also evoke the sweet delicacy by the name of kh�NDava (…): if one accepts the idea that the forest-conflagration is conceived as a re-absorption of the world in miniature and that the pralaya is a ‘savage’ sacrifice, nothing surprising in seeing the forest (…) transformed through its name [495] into matter for oblation.” Her disciple, Scheuer (note on pp.162-63, Shiva dans le Mah�bh�rata), though accepting her interpretation, observes however that “this reinvigorating sweetmeat is hardly ‘savage’…. It is more important to note that this forest is not unknown to the Vedic texts” (follow references assimilating it to the place of a sacrificial session). For sexual ideas connected with Gaṇeśa’s modakas, cf. Biardeau ad. GaNapati (Dictionnaire des Mythologies, 1981, Flammarion, pp.49-50 of offprint): “his single tusk, unexplained in the myth, is an evocation of the sacrificial pole, whereas his trunk would rather be the fecundating sexual organ, the tusk and the trunk reuniting the double symbolism of the linga of Shiva (…): iconography shows the trunk posed on a sweetmeat borne by the left hand or even on the sexual organ of a goddess seated on his left thigh.”
We have argued that both modaka and kh�NDava (-forest) symbolize the soma (amrta) devoured by the totalizing Consciousness in the form of the fire-at-the-end-of-time (pralay�gni): “Agni is here no longer the domestic (domesticated?) and ritual (‘normalized’, regulated) fire, but fire freed of its limits, the fire reduced to its Rudraic dimension. It is still, if one wishes, the sacrificial and purificatory fire, but then on the condition of seeing in the universal conflagration ‘a sort of savage sacrifice’ (EPHE vol. 79, p.141) of the entire universe” (Scheuer, p.157). The ‘savageness’ of this symbolic sacrifice in fact refers back to the transgressive ideology that lies in the heart of it and which Scheuer has so well brought to the fore through a structural comparison with the figure of the purohita Samvarta, as opposed to the mythical Brhaspati. “Samvarta represents whatever is dangerous ‘for’ or ‘in’ the sacrifice. If one defines the sacrifice (fire; sacerdotal function), in a narrow ay, through Brhaspati, then Samvarta is perceived as a danger ‘for’ the sacrifice and should remain external to it: Brhaspati avoids contact and banishes his brother. If on the contrary one defines the sacrifice in a broader manner, such that Samvarta (as fire, as priest) forms an integral part of it, then Samvarta represents the dangerous aspect ‘of’ the sacrifice. To misappreciate the values represented by Samvarta, to seek to exclude him from the sacrificial economy, amounts to destroying the equilibrium of the sacrifice. The latter can function only if one recognizes ‘Rudra’s portion’…. The dangerous aspect ‘of’ the sacrifice, if it is not integrated, becomes a danger ‘for’ the sacrifice. Samvarta…is the fire breaking out of the limits of dharma (in the narrow sense in which Brhaspati [495] would like to define it), the ‘savage’ fire that, in the epico-pur�nic context, signifies the destruction of the world (pralaya or samh�ra). The very name of Samvarta…signifies (MW) ‘destruction’, in particular the destruction or dissolution at the end of the world; ‘Samvart�gni’, ‘Samvart�rka’ designates the fire or sun that burns up the worlds at the end of a kalpa” (ibid., pp.175-76).
For the incestuous notations of the destructive all-consuming fire, see L�vi-Strauss: “Considered from the logical point of view, the three techniques form a system: the cremation pyre is destructive, the fire kindled by the drill is constructive, and the bush-fire brings together both aspects…” (L’Homme Nu, p.89); “the Yana versions also unite the destructive fire and incest, and make both a function derived from the constructive fire to which they refer directly or through the detour of the instrument that serves to produce it…an ‘incestuous’ instrument if there ever was one, because the fire is born therein from the intimate reunion of related pieces whose reciprocal action recalls coitus (cf. MC p.209)” (ibid., pp.130-31). Often it is the ‘Dame Plongeon’ who is responsible for the destructive fire, and L�vi-Strauss brings us “back to incest, the mainspring of the myth of Dame Plongeon. Now, Sapir’s informer (…) affirms that Dame Fire-Drill (…) is none other than Dame Plongeon who also bears the same name. The other version where she figures as the principal heroine describes her furnished with a drill ‘in which there was fire. She broke the drill, threw half towards the east, the other half towards the south (the inverse of the real technique which employs intact pieces and brings them together). Fires bursts forth where the pieces fell; everything was burnt….’” (ibid., p.130). In the Mah�bh�rata, YudhiSThira’s successful resolution of the ‘riddle-challenge’ (brahmodya) imposed by the Dharma-YakSa is equated to the ‘incestuous’ reunion of the separated, mother and son, parts of the fire-drill (araN�).
14) Though Byrski (CAIT, p.27; cf. Kuiper VV, p.176) had already implied that Oṁkāra, protector of the vidūṣaka, represents Brahmā—which tallies with his inalienable ‘crooked stick’ (kuṭilaka) as present of Brahmā, and his admitted status of ‘great brahmin’ (mahābrāhmaṇa)—, Kuiper has made an unconvincing effort to explain away Oṁkāra as an “euphemism” for Varuṇa (VV, pp. 173-76), and the kuṭilaka as due to the brahmin caste of the Varuṇa-vidūṣaka (VV pp.145-46, 222)—which raises more difficulties [496] than it solves—and completely ignores his mahābrāhmaṇa-hood for e claims to restrict himself to the evidence of the N�Tya Z�stra alone and reserves the right to ignore (selectively?) the evidence of the classical plays.
15) In our personal discussions, Prof. Kuiper admitted that the problem still remains as to why the scapegoat-vidūṣaka has to be involved in a cooperative-contest with the (king-) nāyaka (VV p.222), and as to how both these seemingly disparate aspects are to be reintegrated into Varuṇa’s initiatory function. “Kavi was the specific term to denote an initiate who, as a devotee of Varuṇa, had received his initiation and knowledge of the cosmic mysteries (medh�) in the nether world. This character of the initiation explains how the mortal Uzan� could become the priest of the Asuras” (VV p.96; the purohita-hood of K�vya Uzanas should be noted). If this initiation is understood on the model of the pre-classical dīkṣita’s regression to the embryonic domain of Varuṇa and the transgressive dimension of this regression is recognized, both the scapegoat aspect and the competition with the ‘hero as sacrificer’ (nāyaka-yajam�na) can be easily derived therefrom.
16) Dum�zil, in his now repudiated Flamen-Brahmin (p. ???), not only understands the original function of the purohita to be the scapegoat of the king but also interprets the jumbaka, in this respect, as being identified with the royal dīkṣita himself.
17) VrS�kapi is labeled ‘evil-doer’ (duS-krt) by the infuriated Indr�N� on account of his repeated ‘despoiling’ (also vid�shana) if her charms (X.86.5: na sugam duSkrte bhuvam…). The theme of gluttony, characteristic of the vidūṣaka, has been emphasized with respect to the ‘mischievous monkey’—repeatedly called duSTa-v�nara—which had escaped from the king’s stable causing panic among the women by its impetuousness. It is this monkey, addicted to rice and curds (dadhi-bhakta-lampaTa), that is responsible for throwing open the cage of the ‘talking-bird’ (s�rik�) allowing it to escape to the Bakula tree. When the vidūṣaka approaches at precisely this moment, S�garik�, terrified on account of his deformity and raucous laughter, mistakes him for the mischievous monkey returning, until her maid laughingly reassures her that it is only “the noble Vasantaka, inseparable companion of our lord, the king” (bhartuh p�rzva-vart� khalv eSa �rya-vasantakah). The same symbolic formula, assimilating the vidūṣaka to a brown monkey, recurs in both K�lid�sa’s M�lavik�gnimitra (in similar [497] context) and in his Vikramorvaz�ya. Such repetitive procedure can only be accounted for by an intentional allusion to VrS�kapi as model dictated by non-aesthetic ritual considerations.
18)
“The wild and brutal confraternity that appears
in this interlude of the religious life of Rome, is of a type that
ethnography has well clarified: it is one of these ‘men’s societies’—societies
characterized by disguise, initiation, exceptional magical powers—as is observed
among almost all the so-called half-civilized peoples; societies that merit at
least in part the name ‘secret’ and which flourish (but then sovereignly) in the
public religion only to rune counter to the normal operation of this religion”
(Dum�zil, Mitra-Varuṇa, p.33).
“The brahmin consecrates his life to sacrifice and the meditation on Vedic hymns
and commentaries; no arts, no human science, nothing original, nothing that
stems from inspiration and fantasy; in particular singing, dance and music are
forbidden to him (Manu
IV.64). On the contrary the Gandharvas are specialists of all this” (Mitra-Varuṇa, p.45). Though Mitra-Varuṇa is among those works
that Dum�zil has categorically disowned, others like Delpech (see Dedication,
p.vi) and myself have been able to find much valuable and valid materials
therein, whatever the viability of Dum�zil’s own main theses. In my personal
discussion with the latter, he pointed out especially the tenuousness of the
link between Varuṇa and the Gandharvas (on textual grounds). In our opinion,
this does not affect the reality of the parallelism between the structural
oppositions: Mitra/Varuṇa and (orthodox) brahmin/Gandharva. “It is not by chance
that the restorer of Varuṇa’s (lost) virility is ‘the Gandharva’ (Atharvaveda, IV.4)” (Mitra-Varuṇa p.53: ???? [Sanskrit
text].) Cf. also Eliade: “In
In Ratn�val� II, the vidūṣaka Vasantaka raises his ‘crooked stick’ (kuṭilaka) angrily and is about to strike the ‘talking-bird’ (s�rik�) with the following words (cf. infra, pp.380-81, 413 and note 17 above): “Ah! S�rik�, you daughter of a whore, do you think that Vasantaka is really afraid? Just you wait, till I strike you with my brahmanical staff (daNDa-k�STha) which is crooked like the heart of a perverse (pizuna) fellow, and fell you to the ground like a ripened wood-apple (kapittha) from this Bakula tree.” The phallic symbolism of the kuṭilaka suggests that the abortive striking of the s�rik� is an act of sexual aggression in a symbolic mode, in conformity with his obscene abuse of her. In the �zvamedhika-parvan version of the Uttanka episode of the Mah�bh�rata, the brahmin par excellence Uttanka uses his brahmanical staff (daNDak�STha) to strike down bilva fruit from a tree (to appease his blazing hunger) and these are symbolically assimilated to a pair of ear-rings (kundala) representing the amrta/Soma, wrapped up in the black-antelope skin which the dīkṣita of the brahmanical sacrifice wears during his embryonic regression to the womb). In the sequel, this daNDak�STha is used to dig a way down into the ‘world of snakes’ (n�ga-loka) through an anthill (itself a womb-symbol in the Br�hmaNas, cf. Heesterman AIRC p.19, and n.22) in an act assimilated to sexual intercourse in order to retrieve these ear-rings from the underworld (= womb). In our interpretation of this episode, it is evident that what is actually involved here is a sexual transgression equivalent to a ‘brahmanicide’ (brahma-haty�), viz. union with the preceptor’s wife amounting to a (maternal) ‘incest’ of sorts. An immediate confirmation of our interpretation is found in one of the manuscripts of the play which interpolates, immediately after the king restrains the vidūṣaka, the following words in the mouth of the latter: “It (the s�rik�) is saying ‘offer a meal to this br�hmaNa!’”—to which the king is aptly made to reply: “Everything is transformed for the glutton into food. So tell me the truth. What does the s�rik� say?” (the first sentence—sarvam apy audarikasy�bhyavah�ra eva paryavasyati—has been rejected to the notes of the N.B. Purohit edition of 1939, for it is a literal echo of Pur�ravas’ reply to his [499] vidūṣaka when the latter compares the rising moon, the king of the twice-born, to a ‘sweet-meat’ modaka). The vidūṣaka’s relation to S�(ga)rik� is thereby underlined as being determined by (whatever is signified by) gluttonous ‘eating’. For the equivalence of food and sex, see infra p.365, n.22.
19) “The obligatory laughter of the young men at the Lupercal, remaining unexplained by Dum�zil, ‘due to lack of parallels among other peoples’ (p.69), is clarified through comparison with ritual laughter in different folkloric traditions” (V. Ivanov, ES, p.334). Cf. V. Propp, “Ritual ‘nyj smech v folklore” (Ritual Laughter in Folklore) and R. Jakobson, “Medieval Mock Mystery.” However, Propp has neglected the transgressive signification attributed to ritual laughter by S. Reinach in his earlier article: “sexual taboos have the object of curbing the vitality in its most powerful form: this explains vitality, of which laughter is a manifestation, being unleashed so to speak by the violation of one of these taboos” (“Le Rire Rituel,” p.118, note 2); “the priestess breaking into laughter has the aspect of a woman who violates a taboo” (ibid., p.120). In both P�zupata’s (śṛngārana) and Luperques, explosive laughter is accompanied by sexual license. Propp instead concentrates exclusively on the association of non-laughter with death and laughter with rebirth to life: “If with the entry into the reign of death every manifestation of laughter comes to be suspended and prohibited, on the contrary, the entry into life is accompanied by laughter. In this way, if there the prohibition of laughter is in force, here laughter becomes a duty, a real and proper obligation. Thought even proceeds further: to laughter is attributed the faculty not only of accompanying, but also of resuscitating it” (“Il riso rituale nel folklore,” Edipe alla luce de folklore, pp.54-55). Yet he admits that “in order to pronounce an absolutely exact judgment, the material is still insufficient. However, the materials cited give the right to affirm that laughter is a magical means to create life” (ibid., p.60). For a similar appreciation of laughter in Vedic religion, cf. Kuiper AIC pp.208-12 on Vedic narm�- and nariSTh�-: “laughter and dance…were also productive of a new vital strength…a certain inference to be drawn from RV X.18.3” (p.212). But Propp’s observations, unless modified, contradict the repressive attitude to laughter, underlined by L�vi-Strauss, in all traditional societies. The P�zupata-initiate is assimilated to the dead (preta-vad, pitr-vad) and not to the ordinary living, and we know that the initiate is generally assimilate to a [500] symbolically dead man (cf. for example, Heesterman, “Vr�tya and Sacrifice,” passim). The initiated transgressor, characterized by explosive laughter, belongs rather to a category all to himself, that of the ‘living dead’. Compare, from the psychoanalytic standpoint, D. P�rard, “Le Rire en majeur”: “if transgression is that which simultaneously bears the work of the pulsions of death and of life, it is perhaps the precise moment where, each of the pulsions riding on the other, the pulsional twining is the most equilibrated. Moment when that which is of life masters that which is of death, and that which is of death masters that which is of life” (p.31, L’interdit et la transgression). L�vi-Strauss has completely overlooked the transgressive signification of the ‘scared laughter’ so brilliantly isolated by him from the ‘profane laughter’ to be repressed in the face of animal representatives of the transgressor (jaguar, monkey, bat, etc.) in South American mythology. The association of explosive laughter with transgression is so firmly implanted in the Indian psyche that it has been retained with little modification in the ‘imaginaire’ of Premchand’s Prem�zram: “A notation so gratuitous, in appearance, and so hardly probable as the surprising bursts of laughter with which Kamal�nand receives the admissions of his son-in-law, assume here all their meaning: laughter is one of the terrible manifestations of the divinity when he assumes his ugra [fierce] form, one of the symptoms announcing the unleashing of his violence” (C. Thomas, L’ashram de l’amour, p.75; cf. also pp.85-87 for the tantric resonances and impure aspects of the episode).
20) The second instance occurs in the ninth Act of the MrcchakaTik�. C�rudatta is being charged before the court with the (supposed) murder of Vasantasen�, at the instigation of the real (attempted) murderer, the villain Zak�ra. The judge is extremely sympathetic, like everyone else, to C�rudatta and is seeking some legal outlet that will permit the hero to escape execution through the evil designs of Zak�ra. It is at this moment that Maitreya, the vidūṣaka, makes his appearance and, learning of the false charges, attacks Zak�ra with his raised kuṭilaka repeatedly alluding to its crookedness: “Wait, you the son of a bawd, just you wait! I will break your head into a hundred pieces with this my staff which is as crooked as your heart." Zak�ra protests in the midst of this scuffle abusing the vidūṣaka as a "crow-foot-pated, slave-born evil-minded brat" (duSTa-baṭuka). If the kuṭilaka is as crooked as the villain's heart, the vidūṣaka's own heart must be equally, if not more, crooked for, after all, it is the latter who is always [501] characterized as its bearer and possessor. The real bearing of the infantile perversity ascribed to Maitreya by Zak�ra is revealed by the former in the very act of striking the latter, for it is this gesture that permits Vasantasen�'s ornaments to drop down from under the vidūṣaka's armpit thus supplying the crucial incriminating evidence that, by supplying the motive, condemns his master C�rudatta to the stake. The judge's despairing comment effectively aligns the vidūṣaka's intervention, however honorable it is made to appear before us, with the cause of the villain bent on destroying his master: "By the side of Jupiter (C�rudatta), powerless and opposed by Mars (Zak�ra), there has appeared this another planet, like a smoke-trailing comet (vidūṣaka)" (IX.33). The perversity here would consist in the vidūṣaka serving the forces opposed to the ‘hero’ (nāyaka), even while ostensibly furthering the latter’s aims. In fact, in his earlier mention (Act I) of the crookedness of his kuṭilaka, the term of reference is the vidūṣaka himself: asm�drza-bh�gadeya-kuTilena daNDa-k�STena…
The first instance clearly reveals what is implied by his above reference to the kuṭilaka while dropping the jewels.
Already in Act III C�rudatta had entrusted to him, before they doze off to
sleep, the same jewels, given to him as a deposit by Vasantasen� at the end of
Act I. When the thief Sarvilaka breaks in during the night, the vidūṣaka betrays his keeping of the
ornaments in his (apparent) sleep-talking and even offers them to him under the
pretext of mistaking him for C�rudatta, though he claims to see "something like
a hole (in the wall), someone like a thief." When the thief decides not to
deprive a poor brahmin like himself of his gold, Maitreya literally threatens
him (in his sleep) to curse him, for not complying with the sacred wish of a
brahmin, if he does not accept the gold-casket. The thief, relieved by the
pleasant obligation imposed upon him by the ‘great brahmin’, seizes the casket
and blesses him: "O mahābrāhmaṇa, may you sleep for a hundred years.” That a
transgression of sorts has been deliberately committed by the vidūṣaka is probably the intention
behind the ‘contrary speech’ with which he responds when the maid Radanik�
reports immediately thereafter that a thief has cut a hole in the wall and
escaped: “What do you say, you daughter of a whore? A hole has cut a thief and
escaped?” Like C�rudatta, we would be more than willing to attribute the gentle
Maitreya's shocking behavior to his characteristic imbecility, but he himself
protests: “Friend, you are always saying that [502]
Maitreya is a fool, that Maitreya is a blockhead. But I acted wisely in that I
delivered over the golden casket into your hands. Otherwise that son of a
slave-girl would have stolen it.” When C�rudatta admonishes him: “Enough of
joking,” he replies: “Though I may be a fool, still do I not know even the time
and place for joking?” There is a subtle interplay here between the bungling
innocence of the fool and the diabolical calculation of a crooked will, so
curiously combined in the figure of the untrustworthy vidūṣaka, who
now advocates dishonesty by abjuring: “By whom was it given? who accepted it?
where is the witness?” For just before dozing off, he had complained of the
casket: “Why, is there not even a thief in
If one is still not convinced that the vidūṣaka in part connives with the forces opposed to the purpose of the hero (nāyaka), one has only to refer back to his jubilation on receiving the ornament which he mistakes for his personal present from Vasantasen�. When C�rudatta chastises him with the clarification that it is not a gift, he openly wishes that the deposit entrusted to them be stolen by thieves. We see then that he fulfils this wish at the earliest opportunity. The technique whereby this contrary wish of the vidūṣaka is made manifest is a variety of pat�kasth�na, whereby the speech of one character interrupted by that of another serves to convey a meaning that is wholly different, suggesting parts of the story, to the audience. In the crossing of words between C�rudatta and his vidūṣaka, we may see the crossing of their purposes.
CAR: Maitreya, take that ornament.
VAS: I am indeed obliged (hands over the ornament)
VID: (receiving the jewels) May your ladyship be happy!
CAR: Fie you fool, it is only a deposit!
VID: (Aside) If so, then may thieves steal...
CAR: In a very short time...
VID: this deposit entrusted to her by us...
CAR: I will return it.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to further scrutinize this crossing of words and purposes, for the result is of capital importance for a true appreciation of the vidūṣaka’s perversity. If we take their speeches separately, the vidūṣaka says: “May thieves steal this deposit;” whereas the hero says: “In a short time I will return it to her”—the two purposes are as wholly opposed as are two enemies. But when combined in the pat�kasth�na, the vidūṣaka’s opposition dovetails into the hero’s design, interrupting and delaying it no doubt, but also contributing will-nilly to its perfect accomplishment. “It is a brahmin, and he is a friend of the nāyaka, of the principal hero, whom he wants to help, but always in such a clumsy way that everything is spoiled, until the final success to which his gaffes finally [503] contribute: and this moreover is the explanation of the name vidūṣaka given to him” (Biardeau, review of Varuṇa and vidūṣaka, p.298). As we have seen, from the standpoint of the ritual model—of ‘sacrificer’ (yajam�na) and brahm�n—if the hero’s design is fulfilled and the drama-sacrifice comes to a successful termination, this is precisely because he has submitted himself to the contrariness of his vidūṣaka.
[this concludes the End-Notes to the Thesis Introduction ]