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Defining Itihāsa: Correcting Common Mischaracterizations

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Abhimanyu Vadh (The Slaying of Abhimanyu) — Painting From Mahabharat by Nandalal Bose. NOTE TO READER: All references are provided through hotlinks identifiable by underlined words and phrases in the main body of the text. The hotlink opens the relevant page of the citation. There is a peculiar violence in translation. When a word from one civilization is dropped into the vocabulary of another, it rarely arrives unaccompanied — it drags the assumptions of its new home along with it, and those assumptions quietly begin to govern how the word is read. Along with many other indic terms, this is what happened to itihāsa ( इतिहास ). Translated as “ history ,” it was made to answer to the standards of Ranke and the archive . Translated as “ myth ” or “ mythology ,” it was made to answer to Frazer and the comparative anthropologist ’s suspicion of any claim to divine agency in a factual narrative. Neither translation was chosen by the tradition itself. Both were imposed on it, in the sam...
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NAVARĀTRI: Nine Nights of Purification

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Navarātri is here. For nine nights, devotees recite the Devī Māhātmya, also called the Durgā Saptaśatī or Caṇḍī Pāṭha. It has 700 verses in 13 chapters, set within the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa. Over these nights I want to read it slowly, one asura at a time, and ask what each battle asks of the person reciting. The Goddess Ambika leading the mother Goddesses in battle against the demon Raktabija, folio from a Devimahatmya; Kathmandu Valley, Nepal; c. 1725–1750; Opaque watercolour and ink on paper; 11.4 x 20.3 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California Two things need to be kept apart. One is what the text says. The other is the meditative reading that tradition has built on it, in which each asura is an inner obstacle — consistent with the upanishadic explanation of devās . The text itself has no days. Its 13 chapters tell three separate episodes, and the Goddess’s battles are not one continuous campaign. The nine-night scheme here is a devotional arrangement laid over the text, and r...
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Sixteen Guṇas of Rāma

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हे सर्वगुणोपेत श्रीराम ! अस्मिन् शुभे विजयदशमीदिने त्वद्गुणप्रतिपादकमिमं निबन्धं भक्तजनप्रेरणार्थं तव चरणयोः समर्पयामि ॥ O Śrī Rāma, repository of all virtues! On this auspicious day of Vijayadaśamī, I offer at Your feet this essay, which sets forth Your virtues, for the inspiration of Your devotees. Vālmīki's Question Before Vālmīki composed a single verse of the Rāmāyaṇa, he asked a question. Meeting Nārada, the foremost of the learned, he inquired whether there lived in this world a person who embodied a particular set of qualities. The whole epic is, in a sense, the answer. Nārada begins by saying that the qualities Vālmīki has listed are many and hard to find together (१-१-७). He then names Rāma of the Ikṣvāku line. इक्ष्वाकुवंशप्रभवो रामो नाम जनैः श्रुतः । नियतात्मा महावीर्यो द्युतिमान् धृतिमान् वशी ॥ १-१-८ ikṣvākuvaṃśaprabhavo rāmo nāma janaiḥ śrutaḥ | niyatātmā mahāvīryo dyutimān dhṛtimān vaśī || "Born in the line of Ikṣvāku, he is known among people by the name Rāma:...
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Why Paśyantī?

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My blog is called Paśyantī:  pronounced puhsh-YAN-tee (पश्यन्ती), with stress on the second syllable, the “ś” a soft “sh” as in “shine.” The four levels of vāk (speech) This framework comes from Sanskrit grammatical and philosophical traditions, most notably Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya, and echoed in Kashmir Śaiva sources like Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka, which describe speech unfolding in four stages, from subtlest to grossest: Parā vāk (परा): “supreme” speech. The undifferentiated source of all speech, prior to any distinction of word and meaning. Pure potential, identified in Kashmir Śaivism with the highest reality itself. Paśyantī (पश्यन्ती): “the seeing one.” Speech at the stage where it is still a unified, intuitive seeing or vision; an idea grasped as a whole, before it fragments into sequence or grammar. The name comes from “to see”, reflecting that at this level meaning is seen rather than said. Madhyamā (मध्यमा): “the middle one.” Speech that has begun to differentiate in...
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KALINGA — Land of my ancestors Chapter 2: The Maṅgu-Nyāyapati Households Every family carries two kinds of memory. One is written — a gotra recited at a wedding, a temple record, a copperplate somewhere in an archive we have not yet visited. The other is carried on the body — a mark on the shoulder, a name a grandmother would not let us forget, a height, a hunger. This chapter is about both kinds, and about what happens when they don't completely overlap cleanly. I am writing this as a record of our collective memory to be preserved for posterity — for the benefit of curious descendants like myself. I have tried to piece together a probable story based on what I know. Members of the family can provide more details that could make this story tighter, correct any errors, and help me build on this. शङ्खचक्रे Although coming from the Rāmānujācārya sampradaya, I did not receive the śaṅkha-cakra on my shoulders. My father's father did not have one, and did not pass it to my father,...
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