lakshmi-nrismha-karAvalamba-stOtram- 13

[Guest guest]

Dear bhAgavatOttamA-s,

 

In Verse#6 of the "lakshmi-nrismha-karAvalamba-stOtram" Sankara

bhagavathpAdA cries out:

 

"samsAra-Bheekara-kareendra-karABhiGhAta-nishpishta-marma-vapushaha

sakalArti-nAsha…

prANa-prayANa-bhava-bheethi-samAkulasya….".

 

The terrors of life and the pain of death…

The mysteries of life evermore --

Like an ireful tusker in the wilds --

Have maimed me in their hold.

 

*** ******* ***********

 

In this verse there are 2 expressions which, if you notice, immediately

attract our attention:

 

(1) "prANa-prayANa-bheethi" i.e "the fear of death…"

 

and,

 

(2) "Bheekara-kareendra" i.e. "ireful tusker"

 

By conjoining "Bheekara-kareendra" and "prANa-prayANa-bheeti" in the same

verse of the LNKS Sankara skilfully summons up a rather unusual metaphor,

the "tusker", to predicate the deep and primal "fear of death" that lurks

beneath the human psyche.

 

Rarely, if ever, is the elephant seen as a symbol of Death. Since the god of

Death in the Hindu pantheon, Yama rides it, it is the buffalo that is widely

considered to be an icon of death in the popular imagination of India. A

pigeon is said to serve as Yama's personal courier. Yama is also known

mythically to have two four-eyed black dogs guarding his doorway. (This is

perhaps why, I guess, orthodox Hindu families never allow dogs into their

homes… not even as pets! Also, I have always liked to think Yama's watchdogs

are perhaps the philological inspiration behind coining the English word

"blackguard"!)

 

In the mythology of the Christian/Semitic cultures it is usually the raven

or the werewolf that are quite often regarded as the dark symbols of Death.

 

A tusker, on the other hand, is generally regarded as a benign giant

("saadhu", in Tamil). Even in the wild this particular pachyderm is hardly

ever seen to be vicious or predatory in its behaviour. In fact so gentle and

retiring is this animal that both in the jungles of Africa and the Asian

sub-continent, where it once prospered, it is today rapidly approaching

extinction thanks to poaching by humans who ruthlessly hunt it down for

ivory.

 

Why then, we may well ask ourselves, why does Sankara bhagvatpAdA choose to

invoke the horrible spectre of Death through the metaphor of the docile

elephant… apparently, a rather inappropriate archetype?

 

The elephant is, no doubt, by nature a benign giant. Man has in fact

domesticated it so easily to serve him as a beast of burden in several ways…

The creature is today put to the hard labour of pulling logs or stacking

them up in the timber industry, to carry loads or perform tricks in the

circus, to carry kingly palanquin and temple idol….

 

But when aroused to rage a tusker is known to easily turn into a terrible

death-dealing machine. In Tamil there is a well-known proverb,

"saadhu-mirandaal, kaadu-kOLLaadhu!"… "When the tame go berserk, no force on

earth can contain them!". A "tame" tusker normally weighs 8 to 10 tons; it

is 10 to 12 feet tall at the shoulder; it eats daily close to 350 to 400 kgs

of food. You can well imagine what an animal with such formidable statistics

characterising it, is capable of doing when it becomes angry and runs amuck!

You better not be anywhere around it when that happens… Not if you don't

want to witness utter mayhem!

 

Those of you who have read about him, and his wonderful poetry, will surely

remember how the great Tamil poet, Subramanya Bharati met with death. One

day in Triplicane, Madras, where he was residing near the Parthasarathy

Temple, he walked past the temple-elephant. It suddenly scooped him up and

clubbed him to death with its trunk before anyone even noticed what had

happened.

 

In the Hellenic and Roman periods of European history, when bloody

gladiatorial fights were staged for public entertainment in amphitheatres,

it is said elephants were used as "executioners". Defeated slave-warriors

were buried to their necks in the ground and then crazed bull-elephants were

allowed to tread on their heads… the animals then proceeded to do to skulls

what housewives do with potatoes --- they mashed them!

 

In the "purAn-ic" story of the Nrsimha-avatAra, we all know how

Hiranyakashippu ordered his courtiers to have the palace elephants brutally

trample Prahalada to death.

 

In the great epic, the Mahabharatha, in the chapters relating the War

between the Pandavas and Kauravas, there are many memorable accounts of how

hundreds of infantry and horsemen on both sides were stomped and mauled by

advancing hordes of battle-crazed elephants. When you read Vyasa's vivid

accounts of that great mayhem you cannot but help recall the lines of the

English poet describing the scene of death on a war-field (in a different

context, though, and at an entirely different time in the history of man):

 

"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the (soldiers) waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.

 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride,

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf."

(Lord Byron, "The destruction of Sennacherib")

 

Now, for a brief minute, if you were to mentally transport yourself through

Time to the killing fields of Kurukshetra, and were to borrow Byron's lines

above to describe what you saw there, then your "Angel of Death" would

surely be an enraged, blood-smeared elephant, tearing and lashing, right and

left, through ferocious battle-fields, and mowing down, as it were, both

Pandava and Kaurava alike that came in its way…!

 

****** ******* *********

 

It is the impression of precisely that kind of awesome, death-dealing

ferocity displayed by the elephant in the above instances that Sankara

bhagavathpAdA seeks to evoke in Verse#6 of the LNKS and in the poetic

expression, "Bheekara-kareendra-karABhiGhAta-nishpishta-marma-vapushaha

sakalArti-nAsha…!".

 

"prANa-prayANa-bheethi"… Man's fear of Death too, the bhagavatpAdA tells us,

is of the same nature as an elephant running amuck.

 

We will discuss this verse further in the next post.

 

adiyEn dAsAnu dAsan,

Sudarshan

 

 

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