Ka

IX

Sukanyā was beautiful and curious. She had left her friends behind and was wandering alone in the forest, when she came across a huge anthill. She went closer to take a look, and felt looked at herself. Behind the ceaseless motion of the laboring ants, she sensed that there was something still. Two reddish points of light glowed in the labyrinth. Two imprisoned fireflies perhaps? Sukanyā took a thorn and pricked them. There came a low moan. Sukanyā walked on lighthearted, thinking nothing of it.

Śaryāti soon noticed that his kingdom had been struck by a scourge: people were unable to void their bowels. Along with everybody else, he tried to find out if some evil deed had been done. One of those he summoned was his daughter Sukanyā. “Do you remember doing anything wrong?” “Nothing,” answered Sukanyā. Her smile was at once sweet and tinged with mockery. “Think carefully,” said her father. “I pricked two firelies with a thorn.” “Where?” “In an anthill.” Śaryāti lowered his eyes and turned pale. Nothing could be more dangerous and delicate than an anthill. It is the earth’s ear. It is the place where the leftovers of sacrifices are left. It is the home of the snake. It is the threshold of the world below the earth. There are temples in whose cells the liṅga rises from an anthill. Śaryāti fell silent. Sukanyā said: “I remember exactly where it was. I’ll take you there, if you want.” “Let’s go,” said the king.

Cyavana was “decrepit and ghostlike” says the Śatapatha Brāhmana, when, having raised the power of their rituals by every possible means, the Bragus finally felt ready to set sail for the sky on the ship of sacrifice. They were impatient to be off — and at the same time knew that it would be a disgrace to leave their old father behind. But Cyavana had seen their embarrassment. Ironic and allusive, he watched them through the narrow slits in his ruined face: “Please go ahead. Don’t worry about me. By all means leave me here with the leftovers. I have the formula of the Lord of the Residues. Perhaps I’ll manage something more uplifting than going to heaven.” He laughed, though nothing but a dry rustle came from his throat. His sons looked at him and hesitated. Then they laid him down like a bundle of bones wrapped in a rag near a tree trunk where the leftovers of their sacrifices had been heaped. Soon he was covered by ants. For years they climbed all over his body.

Śaryāti appeared humbly before the anthill. He saw clots of blood where Cyavana’s eyes had shone their light up toward Sukanyā. Śaryāti said: “My daughter Sukanyá is careless, but she means no harm. Relent, we pray you.” “Sukanyā…,” came a distant voice from the anthill. There followed a few short words: “What can I do but curse her — and all of you with her? Or, alternatively, marry her.” “I shall have to get advice,” said Śaryāti.

They talked it over for a long time. Sukanyā was so desirable that her family had for years been dreaming up plans for gaining the greatest possible advantage from her marriage. Alliances, land, palaces… “Sukanyā would certainly bring us a treasure or two,” said one counselor abruptly. “But the Brahmān’s curse means losing everything. We have no choice.” So Cyavana’s proposal was accepted.

Sukanyā saw father, friends, dogs, and elephants head off in a huge cloud of dust and chatter. Perhaps she was never to see them again. Cyavana, her husband, had crept out of the anthill and appeared in all his ancientness like a sheath of smooth bone. That night Sukanyā tried to run away. But she hadn’t gone a pace or two before she found a shiny black snake in her path. Sliding out of the anthill, it arched up to glue itself to her body. Sukanyā stepped back, her face suddenly mature, and fell silent for long time. Beside her the motionless Cyavana did not even raise his eyes.

Her life with Cyavana was one of unyielding monotony. Having once let her rancor and nausea overflow, Sukanyā was surprised to find herself taking a secret pleasure in looking after her decrepit husband. “Since my father has consigned me to this man, I must do it,” she said to herself at the beginning, gloomily determined. Then she was forced to admit that she wouldn’t give up dressing and undressing. feeding and washing that old man for anything in the world. They spoke only rarely, but Sukanyā felt Cyavana’s eyes on her at every instant of the day. It was as if his gaze gushed up from a glowing well. Even when she indulged in her favorite pastime — that of imagining furious and exhausting lovemaking with splendidly handsome men, whom she had never known, going from one to the next in her fantasies — she knew that Cyavana never left her: on the contrary, it was when Sukanyā pictured the most violent and subtle erotic gestures that he slipped into her mind. And it was not a persecution. Her pleasure was kindled by the presence of that eye, the tightening of that, imperceptible cord that held them together.

As she was walking in the forest, gathering what scanty food there was, Sukanyā thought: “Cyavana and I: the people we most resemble are Agastya and Lopāmudrā. Time and again, and for such a long time too, I keep thinking of the words to that hymn I heard as a child: ‘For many autumns I’ve done my best, night and day, for many mornings, that make us older. Age chases beauty from the body. Must men never go to their women?’ But when Lopāmudrā said those words, she could already feel her beauty, her great beauty, fading — and I have only just grown to be a woman. Then Agastya was still a vigorous ṛṣi, while Cyavana is a poor heap of bones. Lopāmudrā could look back on her life as a caravan laden with emotions. I can recall but a few syllables of the hymns I heard people singing in distant rooms. My life begins beside someone who has already seen to much of it — and denies me the intemperance I crave. If anyone were able to watch us here in our solitude, they would say that Cyavana burns his entire self in tapas, and I in my desire for a lover. And that we shall never be able to meet. Yet I feel it is not so. When I touch him undressing him or when Cyavana leans on me, I know that we are lovers. In the web of his wrinkles, I meet his eye and something gives in the middle of my breast. Then I think of the other words of that hymn, words I didn’t understand at all, or frankly even care about, where it says that ‘the powerful ṛṣi had cultivated the two colors.’ Perhaps Agastya knew to attend not just to his own fierce exercises but to Lopāmudrā’s fierce desires too? Was there a way of emerging victorious from the ‘battle of the hundred stratagems’ that desire casts us into — or rather, desires, since ‘the mortal has many desires’? Is it possible to comply with the desire that rises ‘from here, from there, from everywhere,’ without losing oneself? And is it true that the earliest ancients, who spoke of the truth with heavenly beings, never got to the bottom of — the truth? Cyavana and I have never spoken about such things, as if they didn’t exist, as if he were nothing more than a worn-out ascetic and I a restless girl, homesick for her friends’ chatter. Yet I’m constantly speaking about them inside my head, and it’s his voice that answers me. One day I even remembered two lines of the hymn they used to whisper behind my back, because I was still a little girl. But I won a bet with one of my sisters who was already a woman, and as a prize I forced her to tell me what they said. ‘Lopāmudrā makes her man melt, the foolish woman drains the groaning sage dry.’ When I remembered those lines, I thought that I would like to be as foolish as Lopāmudrā myself. And, while I was thinking that, Cyavana, who was sitting in his usual position, smiled at me like a man of the world and asked me for a bowl of water.”

One day Cyavana said to Sukanyā: “What do you think I was doing, while I was under the anthill? I was waiting for you. Not just because I desire you, but because I need you. And you still don’t know why.” The last words were spoken as though to himself. Then he went on: “When you appeared in front of the anthill, I called you, but you didn’t hear me. My voice was too faint, and your mind was elsewhere. But you couldn’t help noticing my glittering eyes, and you tortured them with those thorns. The ants got drunk on my blood. Never had the world sent me such a painful sign. And it was the necessary first step to reaching you. If I hadn’t stared at you from the anthill, you would never have noticed my existence. If you hadn’t wounded me, I wouldn’t have been able to unleash the curse that is the only power I have. If I hadn’t cursed your family, I wouldn’t have had anything to offer in exchange for you. If you did not now belong to me, I couldn’t offer you for…,” Cyavana stopped. Sukanyā didn’t want him to finish the sentence.

As on every other day, Sukanyā went down to bathe in a quiet, delightful bend in the Sarasvatī. While she was in the water, she had the habit of running through variations of her imaginary love affairs, which, by now, were as numerous as they were tangled. It was a private ritual. She celebrated it with the same devotion and diligence she would any other ritual, but with the added pleasure of caprice and mental waywardness. She looked up from the water toward the bank and the familiar screen of trees. That day, for the first time, there was something new. She saw two young men sitting in the same position on two boulders, each the same distance from herself. Both men had one leg slightly raised, one the right leg, the other the left. They formed two points in a perfect triangle. The third point, Sukanyā realized, lay within her own eyes. She immediately noticed that the two strangers were of fearful beauty. But another thought unnerved her: could it be that the visible world had become a double mirror, which she was now looking into? What she saw to her right was the exact inversion of what she saw to her left. Could the world, this place of disorder, be thus — or was the scene before her nothing more than the projection of the story her mind was inventing as she swam? Alarmed, amazed, she didn’t realize that she was climbing out of the water. At which she saw something that left her paralyzed. At the same moment, curling the same corner of two mouths, the young men smiled. And Sukanyā heard these words: “Woman of the lovely thighs, who are you? Who do you belong to? What are you doing in the forest? Speak, we want to know.” Sukanyā blushed, her whole dripping body turned red. She hurried to pick up her clothes, a strip of muslim she never changed. Eyes on the ground, she said in a barely audible voice: “I am the daughter of Śaryāti. I belong to Cyavana.” She felt angry then, because the young men responded with a shrill laugh. “Why on earth did your father give you to a man who’s already a wreck? Even among the gods there’s no one so beautiful as you. You were made to be adorned in the most precious robes, not these rags. Leave Cyavana, he’s not complete, whole, perfect, as you are. There’ll always be something missing in your life, almost everything in fact. Choose one of us. These are your best years. Don’t toss them on a rubbish heap…” Sukanyā no longer felt either amazement or desire, just a cold fury. She didn’t even answer and walked away toward the place she considered her home, a flimsy cane shelter near the anthill.

She found Cyavana motionless as ever, with his sharp bones and knowing eyes. She told him what had happened, without sparing a single detail. Her voice trembled. Cyavana gazed at her with immense sweetness and a shrewd, almost mocking gleam. He said: “They were the Aśvins, the divine twins. They wander around the earth, helping people here and there, healing them. What they told you is true, but not the whole truth. Tomorrow they’ll be there again, perhaps in the same place, and they’ll say the same thing. They won’t give up. Then you must say: ‘It’s you who are not whole, because you are not allowed to drink the soma.’ You’ll see how they’ll change their tune at that. They’ll ask you who could take them to the soma. You’ll say: ‘My husband. He drinks the soma.’ They’ll follow you like two tame dogs, you’ll see. Bring them here to me.”

All went as Cyavana had foreseen. The twins and the old Cyavana fell to talking with some familiarity. But now the Aśvins’ voices were anxious and urgent. Sukanyā didn’t know if she was supposed to be listening. They were whispering. Then Cyavana’s sharp voice rang out very clearly: “Agreed. This is the deal. I help you get to the soma. All you have to do is find a priest called Dadhyañc. In return, you give me youth. And Sukanyā will choose whichever of us she most desires.”

Taking advantage of a moment when the Aśvins were confabulating together, Cyavana came to Sukanyā and muttered: “We’re going now. When we come back, you won’t be able to tell me from them. The moment I arrive, I’ll lift my hand to my right eye, where you pricked me. That way you’ll know who I am.”

Then he set off toward the Sarasvatī. Standing by the door of their hut, Sukanyā watched the magnificent backs of the Aśvins and, between them, the shrunken, skinny Cyavana. They reached the water and jumped in. When Cyavana reemerged and looked around, the Aśvins were beside him. Deft as devoted servants, they stripped “the skin off his body, like a cloak.” Cyavana felt a sudden exuberance flood in. Without a word they climbed out of the water. They were three prodigiously beautiful young men, with sparkling earrings, all naked and identical. Sukanyā left the bushes where she had been hiding and went to meet them. “Choose which of us you desire,” said a single voice. Sukanyā lowered her eyes, but not so far as not to see one of the three young men rub au eyebrow. She nodded in his direction. As soon as the Aśvins were gone, Sukanyā abandoned herself to the exploration of Cyavana’s body. Thus began their unending embraces, “like those of the gods.”

“How are we to find Dadhyañc?” the Aśvins asked themselves. “How are we to recognize him?” They wandered anxiously around. They had hoped to set off with a resplendent bride on their chariot, as though a new Sūryā. Daughter of the Sun, were traveling with them on the earth. But all they had gotten was a name. They repeated it to themselves as if it were a password: “Dadhyañc, Dadhyañc…”

Still, they were all three quite sure of themselves when they met in the crowd that milled as though at a market in the field of the Kurus, where in times past the gods used to sacrifice. Each knew the other at once. Before being men or gods, they were horses. They recognized each other’s stride and rhythm.

Dadhyañc was used to being alone. He knew his knowledge could not, must not be communicated. Why? Honey cannot flow into the world without turning it upside down. So Dadhyañc was a seer like so many others, he kept himself to himself.

The Aśvins looked him straight in the eye and said: “We want to be your disciples.” Dadhyañc had never seen creatures of such beauty. It was as though they were transparent receptacles for doctrine. But most of all he felt an affinity with them, and this disturbed him. It happened the moment they shook out their hair. He realized he wanted to neigh with them.

“You’re asking me to teach you what the head of the sacrifice is. I’d be glad to. But one day Indra came to tell me that, if ever I revealed it, he would cut off my head. Indra is sovereign among the gods, and he would sense it at once. Nothing escapes him. I must live alone.”

The Aśvins didn’t give up. They looked at Dadhyañc and said: “There is a way. Let us cut off your head.” They waited. “Then we’ll put a horse’s head in its place. With that new head you can teach us the doctrine of the honey.” Dadhyañc was already smiling. “Of course Indra will find you out one day and cut off your head. But he’ll be cutting off the horse’s head. Then we pull out your human head from a safe place. And we stick it back on your neck. We can do that kind of thing. We’re doctors. What we don’t know about is the doctrine of the honey.”

Dadhyañc had big, trembling nostrils, which stood out in his long, pale face. “They look like ours,” said the Aśvins. Observing this person who had accepted them as disciples, they shared a feeling of inexplicable familiarity. They had come to the aid of the blind and the crippled, of widows, aging spinsters, imprisoned seers. They had always had a goddess beside them, whether visible or invisible, third wheel to their cart. But they had never known their father. And they couldn’t ask their mother about him, for she had abandoned them. People said she was the immortal woman the gods would not let mortals see. There were all kinds of stories about their birth, none of them entirely convincing. The gods claimed to have cut them off from the soma because they helped men too much and traveled too much around the earth. But the Aśvins were convinced that this was a pretext. “Perhaps it’s our past we need…,” said one of the Aśvins. “Perhaps it has to do with the doctrine of the honey…,” said the other.

The Aśvins sat next to Dadhyañc. He still had a pinkish scar around the top of his neck, where a new white head had been attached, topped by a glossy mane. Dadhyañc spoke as if he had finally found his own voice and his own face.

He said: “Before ending up as a papier-mâché sign over the door of some boucherie chevaline, I know I have to speak to you. The doctrine you want from me is not human, that’s why it is I who reveal it to you. And you too are more horses than gods. Your mother, Saraṇyū, was a mare who practiced tapas. She saw a stallion approaching her and chose at first to move away, thinking it was one of the many who wanted to mount her and disturb her spiritual exercises. Then she saw that the stallion was still coming toward her, and was dazzling. She decided to go to him. The important thing was to cover her back from attack. Thus their muzzles met, and rubbed together. The stallion was Vivasvat, the Brilliant One, or rather the sun, or rather the amorphous, white-hot husband who had always desired her but whom Saranyū had quickly abandoned. That desire was a burning well within the stallion: his seed streamed out from warm nostrils. And it was immediately sucked into the mare’s nostrils; it was the only way she could touch her partner’s body now. That is how you two were conceived.”

Another day Dadhyañc said to the Aśvins: “Here’s something else you ought to know: Viṣṇu was standing still, deep in thought — half asleep perhaps? — his chin resting on the tip of his bow. Strewn around him were a pink shell, a sharp discus, a hammer. On his bare chest glittered the Kaustubha gem. The gods crouched in a circle around him, and were hostile. Watching Viṣṇu and seeing his enigmatic, self-sufficient repose, they had the suspicion that he had something in him that was about to escape all of them, something that they would never know. Viṣṇu had seized the splendor that shines out at the end of the sacrifice, and he wanted to keep it to himself. The gods had tried to overpower him, but in vain. Alone, Viṣṇu kept them at a distance. Indeed, and this was the ultimate insult, he smiled. That smile spread out across the surrounding grass. But it is dangerous to smile like that. The bright force is frittered away. That is why an initiate must cover his mouth when he smiles, to preserve the bright force, say the texts.

“What were they to do? A deal with the ants. They promised the ants that they would always find water wherever they dug. A line of white ants set off toward the bottom of Visnu’s bow, where it was thrust into the ground. They worked in silence. Viṣṇu was still on his feet, motionless and radiant. The ants began to gnaw at the bowstring. How long did it take? There were Visnu’s half-closed eyes — and there were the gods’ greedy eyes, staring at the ants. The sun was setting, the days came and went. The white ants never ceased their gnawing. One team took over from another. The silence was full of menace. Then there was a hiss, a new sound: grn. The bowstring had been bitten through. Springing open, the bow whipped off Visnu’s head. Lymph poured down on the grass. The gods leapt at it like dogs. But Indra threw himself on Visnu’s acephalous body. He placed his own hands, torso, legs, and feet over Visnu’s. He wanted to cover his whole body, to be what Viṣṇu had been. Then they resumed the sacrifice. It was a dull, demanding, useful sacrifice, but they did not conquer the celestial world, because it was a sacrifice without a head.”

Dadhyañc went on speaking: “The world was sad then, but it did work. Indra took care of the wheel of sacrifice, kept it perennially turning, like the year, like the rains. He was a reliable administrator. No one thought any more about conquering the sky.

“One day, Indra appeared before me. Even before speaking, he knew. He’d felt my eyes go right through him. ‘You know the doctrine of the honey…,’ said Indra, looking around, to make sure no one was listening. ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘If you reveal it to anyone, I’ll cut off your head,’ said Indra, his voice full of hate.”

Dadhyañc added: “The world is a broken pot. Sacrifice tries to put it back together, slowly, piece by piece. But some parts have crumbled away. And even when the pot is put back together, it’s pitted with scars. There are those who say this makes it more beautiful. To know the head of the sacrifice also means to know the sacrifice that happens in the head, that cannot be seen, that has no need of gestures, implements, calendars, liturgies, victims — or even words.”

The Aśvins spoke some more with Dadhyañc. They told him that, despite bringing relief to the world, they themselves felt orphaned and alienated. The gods would not accept them in their circle, said they had no dignity because they were forever moving around. And even accused them of connivance with men. The woman they had most desired had preferred her decrepit husband. Now, at last, they knew something of their birth. But what had happened before that mare and stallion rubbed their muzzles together? The brighter they appeared, the greater the haze that stretched behind them.

Sitting between the Aśvins, Dadhyañc lightly inclined his long nose and again began to speak: “I know what you are feeling. You have always loved horses — and now you discover that your mother was a mare. You have always yearned for the soma—and now I am about to tell you that the lord of the soma was your grandfather Tvaṣṭṛ, the Craftsman, father of your mother, Saraṇyū. It is with him that the endless chain of twins began. Saraṇyū was herself a twin. Of Triśiras, the insolent Tricephalous, whom Indra decapitated. This too, perhaps, will be useful for you to know,” added Dadhyañc, mildly smiling. “It’s not clear why there began to be twins. Perhaps because the moon reflects the sun. Perhaps because reeds are reflected in the water they grow in. Perhaps because the Craftsman’s mind reflected a shape as yet unmanifest. Perhaps because the cup the Craftsman forged reflected the cup that resides in his mind. But perhaps for another reason too: in order to breathe, to branch out, life needed the help of beings in whom sameness and diversity were simultaneous and inseparable, to the point, almost, of being exactly superimposed, one over the other. Otherwise we wouldn’t know how to know. Every apparition would leave us overwhelmed and speechless. Whereas sameness and diversity allow us to travel far, very far — as you travel on your cart. And men follow in your tracks.

“But let’s get back to your complicated family: Saranyū herself was born as a reflection. Tvaṣṭṛ couldn’t break away from her. They slept in the same bed.” Dadhyañc’s voice dropped. “I can’t rule out the possibility that one of you may be his son.” Dadhyañc resumed: “Tvastr knew that he ought to break off with his daughter. But his choice of a husband for her was governed by malice. Tvaṣṭṛ possessed all the forms there are (indeed they called him Viśvarūpa, the Omniform One), and so as his daughter’s husband he chose he who has no form, the shapeless solar globe, whom they now call Vivasvat, the Brilliant One. It’s time you knew this as well: the Sun, at first, was a Dead Egg, Mārtānda. And that’s what they called him. He was stillborn from Aditi’s womb. Never trust nature. It’s never simple. It’s never natural. But back to Tvaṣṭṛ. Was his choice a punishment? A bad joke? No doubt there was jealousy. Physical contact with her husband must be a torture, for thus Saranyūwould yearn only for her first lover, her father. Embracing her, Vivasvat scorched Saranyū’s tender, opalescent skin. But all the same she gave him two children. Yama and Yamī. Twins again. In the bed where she had given birth, Saranyū felt she would never be able to bear her husband’s embraces again. Her mind formed a simulacrum, identical to herself, called Samjñā. If her father was the master of forms, it was she who would evoke copies. And we’ve been beset by them, enchanted by them, ever since. Saranyū told Samjñā what to do: she must take her place, look after the little ones, sleep with her husband. ‘You can do it,’ she told her, ‘because you are a shadow. Not even he can burn you. You can survive anything.’ Then Saranyū left. ‘They hid the immortal from mortals,’ the hymns say. When men lose their heart for a beloved, it’s Saranyū they are seeking, but they embrace a copy. Vivasvat didn’t realize that he was dealing with an identical copy, not with Saranyū. He was merely amazed to find her so accommodating. Foolishly, he imagined that motherhood had calmed her down. At last their life seemed to be running smoothly.

“That’s how Manu, first among men, was procreated. That’s why men always go after simulacra. They are born of a simulacrum. That’s why they are never sure if they really exist. And never will be. Meanwhile Saranyū wandered around and meditated. She had taken the form of a mare. One day Vivasvat opened a door and caught Samjñā scolding the little Yama quite bitterly. It was as though she were a servant taking advantage of her mistress’s absence. ‘She can’t be his mother.’ The thought forced itself upon Vivasvat’s mind. He ran outside, overcome by rage. As he was running, he heard the drumming of hooves. He was a stallion. In the distance, in the middle of a meadow, he saw a mare, motionless, immersed in tapas. As soon as she caught sight of the stallion, she became nervous. She fled. She did everything not to turn her back to him. You already know the end of the story.”

“But now let’s go back a bit,” said Dadhyañc. “No sooner had the gods been born than a cloud of dust arose. Within it: a shuffling sound. On the ground: the first footprints, which immediately became mixed up. Seven beings were dancing. They felt they had been freed, because born of Aditi, She-who-loosens-bonds. But Aditi had given birth to eight children. Seven were dancing, one was an amorphous fetus, a piece of flesh as broad as it was long. The mother had pushed it away, with a kick. The dust of the gods, who had already gone, sifted down onto Mārtānda, the abortion. Then the dead egg rolled slowly in the waters. Nature swelled with lymph. Surrounded it. The gods remembered their brother, and they said to themselves: ‘We mustn’t waste him.’ They pulled him out of the water and tried to give him a form. So Mārtānda became Vivasvat, the Sun. But they couldn’t rid him of Death, who dwells within him and in every descendant of his son, Manu: in men.”

Dadhyañc went on: “It’s not so surprising that Death dwells within the Sun. What is surprising, when you think of how he first appeared, kicked away as trash by his mother, is that the Sun is alive. It was his brothers, born before him and all well-formed, who saved him. They didn’t want him to be lost. So they gave Vivasvat his shape. One day he would generate the line of those who procreate and die.

“Left alone, abandoned by Saranyū and aware now that he had been tricked by her simulacrum, Samjñā (also called Chāyā, Shadow), Vivasvat thought back to the day of his birth. He suspected Saranyū might have returned to her father’s house, out of nostalgia for her real lover. He would look for her there. Tvaṣṭṛ greeted him calmly. He said that yes, it was true, Saranyū had come back, but they hadn’t let her stay, on the contrary, they had chided her for this rash decision. Then Tvaṣṭṛ looked up at Vivasvat and said: ‘You’ll never find her again, the way you are now. Saranyū lived in terror when she was with you, ever afraid of your touch. If you’ll let me, I could try to make you more suitable, more tolerable to living beings.’ Even as he was speaking, he had started to clear a big bench strewn with tools. He invited Vivasvat to lie down on it. Then he set to work with a grinding wheel. First he used a liquid to grease down Vivasvat’s limbs, then he went over them with that strange tool. Vivasvat found it a relief to suffer. Bright shreds fell away from him to roll into the corners of the workshop, where they continued to shine on their own. Losing light came as a relief, gave him an uplifting thrill. And at the same time he felt the agony of those parts of his body that left him. Tvaṣṭṛ worked away like a craftsman absorbed in his task. He’d begun with the shoulders and trunk. Now he was grinding down his thighs. When he touched a knee, Vivasvat felt he had to do something. With one hand he grabbed Tvaṣṭṛ’s wrist and said: ‘No further that way. It doesn’t matter if my feet stay shapeless. No one will know what they’re like when I’m standing on my chariot. There will always be a charioteer to hide me. I’ll wear boots when I have to walk. But no one will have to see my feet. The formless is part of me. I can’t abandon it. You all feed on the formless. Even you wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my formless feet, which you vainly sought to grind down. The world is held together by something left over beyond it, that overwhelms it. But if that something weren’t there, there wouldn’t be anything. Now leave me be. And thank you. I’ll be on my way once more to find my only bride.’”

The Aśvins listened, their eyes on the ground. They were discovering the many branches of their family, after having long wandered the world as orphans. But above all they wanted to know more about one of their stepbrothers: Mṛtyu, Death. Dadhyañc realized even before they asked. He went on: “The more thoughtful, loving, and delicate her husband was with her, the more terrified Saraṇyū felt. A hem of the robe he took off coming to bed could set fire to a continent. Yet it wasn’t that that frightened Saraṇyū. It was the freezing cold. She didn’t want to be inside Vivasvat because she felt an enormous, silent cavity open up within him, echoless, empty of all vibration. She felt that in getting to the bottom of Vivasvat she would come across an invasive guest, who refused to leave the house, or perhaps was its master. She didn’t want to meet him. But she couldn’t help reproducing him. When she gave birth to twins — everything for her came in couples or copies — she recognized Death’s features in the male child, Yama. It was as if that son had come from the last receptacle of Vivasvat’s substance and then, in his mother’s womb, met his copy, his twin sister, Yamī. Now at last he would agree to go down into the world and have a history like so many other gods. He would no longer be merely the black shadow that forms behind all that dazzles. But he couldn’t have become manifest unless together with Yamī. There was a pact, so it seemed, between death and duplication.” Here Dadhyañc fell silent. Then he went on: “Before becoming Yama, Death didn’t have a proper name, as if he were a thing rather than a person. Yet the most terrifying thing about Death was his appearance as a person. A figure with indistinct features, who would not let himself pass incognito. You recognized him in the pupil of whoever came to meet you, be it lover or enemy. Or you glimpsed him behind the burning screen of the Sun, like a black silhouette that penetrated the eye of whoever saw it, and for a long time refused to go away, an intrusive guest.

“Death sank up to his thighs in the substance of the Sun. His torso emerged from the red-hot mass and looked downward. If you raised your eyes from the earth, behind the barrier of light you could sometimes glimpse a dark outline, as though of someone greeting you from afar. No one was eager to answer that greeting. They said they didn’t want to look at the Sun so as not to be blinded. The truth is they didn’t want to acknowledge the greeting of that silent, unknown being, to whom, in whispers, they would sometimes allude, in the name ‘black sun.’

“Death is sunk up to his thighs in the Sun and in the heart, as in a soft and burning pastry. From afar people would see his shadow fording the Sun as if it were a ditch. All of a sudden the shadow seemed to reach a shallow spot, because more and more of it appeared. You could see the thighs, the knees. When you could see Death’s feet someone would say: ‘He’s been cut off — and at that moment someone else would die.

“Death is that person half buried in the Sun, who slowly devours it. Just as the ‘person,’ purusa, who can be seen at the center of the pupil — and it is the one, barely perceptible sign the mind allows us of its existence — slowly devours the body in which it has been set. Death is to be found wherever some substance is consuming itself. Death is the act of eating. Thus we are a debt owed to Death. We pay that debt every passing moment, cunningly stretching it out and breaking it up with the strength Death itself gives us, stingily conceding, moment by moment, to the Person in the Eye a particle of ourselves to devour.

“The Person in the Eye is not born alone, cannot exist alone. The first couple were the two Persons in the Eye. In the right eye was Death. In the left eye his companion. Or again: in the right eye was Indra. In the left eye his partner Indrāṇī. It was for these two that the gods made that division between the eyes: the nose. Behind the barrier of the nose two lovers hide, as though separated by a mountain. To meet, to touch, they must go down together into the cavity that opens up in the heart. That is their bedroom. There they twine in coitus. Seen from outside, the eyes of the sleepers are hidden by the eyelids as though by a curtain around a bed. Meanwhile, in the heart’s cavity, Indra and Indrāṇī are one inside the other. This is the supreme beautitude. That’s why you mustn’t wake a sleeper suddenly, so as not to disturb Indra and Indrāṇī’s lovemaking. That’s why whoever is woken finds his mouth sticky, because those two divinities are emptying their seed, while in the sleeper’s mouth the liquids of Indra and Indrāṇī mingle.

“Death and duplication go together. Never the one without the other. The science of reflection and scission, the unleashing of doubles, systematic substitution, simultaneous glances, both inward and outward: all these are the works of duplication. Only he who encourages them can gain access to knowledge. But duplication comes together with Death. And only knowledge can defeat Death. This is the circle.”

They were sitting on three stools. Dadhyañc had a view of the Aśvins’ almost identical profiles as they focused their attention elsewhere. One of them said: “When we were still children, we were given certain words that were attributed to Prajāpati and that none of the Devas or Asuras claimed to have understood, though they had committed them to memory. These were the words: ‘The ātman, the Self, released from every evil, subject neither to age, nor death, nor suffering, nor hunger, nor thirst, whose desires and whose thoughts are reality, this one must seek, this one must strive to know. He who achieves that ātman, that Self, and knows it, shall possess all worlds and all desires.’” Then the other Aśvin said, as though taking over from where his twin had left off: “Could it be that the sovereign of all words is this ātman, a reflexive pronoun that declines like a masculine noun, a word we’ve used every day without thinking, without sensing that this was the secret, that it was to this we must come?” The more baffled they felt, the more they wanted to learn — they told Dadhyañc. He looked them in the eye and said: “The ātman comes before the aham. The Self comes before the I: the reflexive pronoun comes before the personal pronoun: why? The most basic thing is not that a being says ‘I’: all animals say ‘I’ from the first moment they emit a sound. Between Self and I there is but one difference: the Self watches the I, the I does not watch the Self. The I eats the world. The Self watches the I eating the world. They are two birds, they sit on opposite branches of the same tree, at the same height, at the same distance from the trunk. To anyone watching them, they are almost the same. Like yourselves. No one can separate them. The first words the Self said were: ‘I am.’ Nothing existed as yet when the Self said: ‘I am.’ The I owes its existence solely to the fact that it was pronounced by the Self. From the start the two had the shape of a person, puruṣa. Even though the whole world would later appear from the Self and the Self would sink into it right to the tips of his fingernails, still the Self and the I too preserved the form of a person. Which is why we speak to them and they to us.”

Dadhyañc went on explaining the doctrine of the honey to the Aśvins. His speech spread through them from pores to marrow. The world was the same as before. Nothing was the same as before. One day Dadhyañc said: “Śaryāti wants to celebrate a soma sacrifice with both gods and men. Do you know who he is? He is the father of Sukanyā, the girl who rejected you. And he is the son of Manu. Thus Sukanyā is your niece, through the simulacrum, Samjñā. But at this point you would hardly be surprised by any relationship… You must come to the sacrifice too. This is the last time you shall see me with my horse’s head. Now, go…”

The Aśvins wept. Although they hadn’t yet savored the soma, they knew that the best part of their lives was coming to an end.

Given that the Aśvins were born of a mare, given that they always traveled by land and sea — and even in the sky — on a chariot drawn by white horses, given that they learned the doctrine of the honey from a being who had a horse’s head, it would seem obvious that their name should derive from aśva, “horse.” But the etymologists of ancient times did not restrict themselves to such obvious reflections. The name also derived, they said, from aś- “to gain.” Why? Because they were the first to gain the Daughter of the Sun, Sūryā, when they won her in a contest; because they “gained everything.” How so? “One with wetness, the other with light,” says the etymologist.

Sons, lovers, husbands, brothers, friends, paranymphs, conquerors, chosen ones: such, simultaneously, were the Aśvin for the woman they traveled with, or who traveled with them. It might be Uṣas — or Sūryā. And they would have liked it to be Sukanyā. They were the “Lords of Ornament,” Śubháspátis — and there was no other god who could boast that name. Which is why women were drawn to their chariot, as if to a jar full of honey. The two of them were never alone, even though they were to fill the world with duplication. There was always a third, as their chariot had three wheels, a girl between them, often invisible. In her they communed.

The “honey whip,” káśā mádhumatī, darted from the Aśvins’ hands and cracked down on the earth. Who can be sure what it was made of? What is sure is that people wanted nothing better than to feel its edge. A goatskin bursting with honey poked out from the Aśvins’ three-wheeled chariot. They would dip their whip in it before cracking its dripping sweetness all around them. Where did the whip come from? From the mother of all mothers, from Aditi, the Unlimited One, from she who has no need of a husband to bring forth fruit. The supreme moments of the Aśvins’ lives always had to do with a female figure: when they awoke — and all they saw was Uṣas’s tawny hair bowed over them; when Aditi silently placed that whip in their hands; when, at the end of a wild chariot race — the time their fourth wheel was lost forever — Sūryā stood waiting for them on a rostrum beside the finish line and climbed onto their chariot, “for such was her wish,” she said. Only a mortal, Sukanyā, whom they had seen rise from the waters like a goddess, rejected them. And that rejection — they thought — had been their salvation, because it had led them to Dadhyañc. Thus they had gained what had always been lacking, the one element that is ever the thing we lack: knowledge. From the honey to the doctrine of the honey. Isn’t this the only step we can ever make? All others depend on it — or are illusory. They smailed into emptainess and set off on their way again.

A great crowd had gathered. In a circle, in the middle, were the gods, mingling with the ṛṣis. The Aśvins kept to one side, like travelers who have happened upon a scene by chance. The ceremony began, very slowly. The Aśvins watched the celebrants. There was a familiar face among the ṛṣis. But who was it? He resembled themselves, with a more solemn expression. “Cyavana…,” they both whispered. The rite went on. They saw Cyavana lift a cup. They heard his clear voice: “This is for the Aśvins…” There was a sudden whirlwind. Indra was on his feet, furiously tearing the cup from Cyavana’s hands: “I do not recognize this cup…,” he said. Clouds of dust made it impossible to see what was going on. “Who dares to wrench the cup of soma from a ṛṣi?” boomed a voice. The Maruts shook their spears. In the uproar, Agni went to Indra and said: “It’s not in our interests to provoke the ṛṣis. In the end, they are better than we are. We were born of them. Swallow your anger.” But even had they wanted to, there wasn’t much the gods could do. Summoned up by the ṛṣis, Mada, the demon, was intoxicating them. Nothing was clear anymore, in sky or on earth. Eyes lowered, Indra stood still. The whirlwind settled. The Aśvins found themselves beside Cyavana, who had the cup in his hand again. Thus the Aśvins at last brought the soma to their lips. Then they looked around: the gods had slunk off. “That was the last time that men and gods drank the soma together.” And one day someone would add the gloss “In ancient times they drank together visibly, now they do so in the invisible.”