Of the sons of donkeys and sows (a note on bureaucratic vulgarity)

Perhaps because of having dealt with so many wonderfully absurd bureaucratic situations Thor bu loves a bit of vulgarity in official documents. Apparently those good old Biharis (and Tibetans, on which a bit later) also loved a non-veg joke in their documents. This image comes from a grant dating to the early 13th century. A local king, the rather nebulous Aśokacalladeva, and/or his ministers built a small vihāra and left some endowments. The language of the document is pretty horrible. If you want to read more about it I suggest you download Epigraphia Indica 12. There are several other publications on this inscription, but unfortunately they are not available to me at the moment.

If you are reading Tsukamoto's Indo bukkyo himei no kenkyu ('A Comprehensive Study of the Indian Buddhist Inscriptions') you will perhaps get excited at the sight of one Kashmiri Abhayaśrī being mentioned. Unfortunately he is not. I still can't figure out what the name of Kashmiri fellow is, but I'm willing to wager a good bottle of wine that it is not Abhayaśrī.

Back to the image. Here is the bigger picture:

Apparently those good old Victorian gentlemen did not share the sense of humour of the people they were studying. Here is the same inscription in Sir Alexander Cunningham's Mahābodhi:

Notice the difference? Indeed, no more unlawful carnal knowledge between... but what are they? Well, we could argue about it, but I'm pretty sure it is a donkey and a sow (or more precisely a wild boar sow). But it's not because I'm so good at zoology; I could not tell you the difference between a boar and a badger (whatever those are). It's because the - I think rather well-executed - sketch is a somewhat unusual representation of an imprecation, which is, however, almost standard at the end of land grants. An inscription dating from 32 years later from the same location says:

vaṃśe madīye yadi ko 'pi bhūpaḥ
śiṣṭo 'thavā duṣṭataro vinaṣṭaḥ |
vyatikramaṃ cātra karoti tasya
tātaḥ kharaḥ sūkarikā ca mātā ||

"And should any king of my lineage,
be him learned/superior or wickedly damned,
violate [the terms of] this [donation], his
father is a donkey and his mother a sow."

So, what the image is saying is: 'I gently remind you to respect this here donation' (take that, semiotics!). Other standard verses, more common on Pāla grants, promise rebirth as a worm in excrement. Why can't we have things like this on our contracts? [sigh]

What about the Tibetans? Well, I came across this image some time ago in here.

I even remember having somehow deciphered some of the writing under the smudge, but I lost the higher resolution images some time ago. Maybe you will have more luck. The young scribe no doubt expressed how he felt about scribbling for the zhang blon, or for the other chap, who had nothing better to do but bother him with dictating a letter about how his yearly crops went on what I imagine to have been a sunny afternoon.

Gautama 'Buddha' Siddhārtha, M.Phil. (Nāl.)

Nālandā is being rebuilt, which is good news.

The bad news is that:

- one can write in a [semi-]prestigious newspaper that the Buddha was a visitor here (visiting research fellow?) and an alumnus (I gave him an M.Phil. by default);

- that there does not seem to be too much money for this;

- that the revival project is trying to get past bureaucrats; 

- not to speak of the fact that "Chinese sensibilities will have to be respected" (whereas one usually does not? or is it the case that one does not respect other nations' sensibilities?) or else " the university will be a non-starter";

- that the Bihari government promises to provide security;

- that the as yet non-existent university already revives the Bengal-Bihar/Mithila thing;

- that Amartya Sen seems to think that Nālandā taught economics and public health;

zhes bya ba la sogs

Māraṇa on live TV

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Rationalist International, challenged a Tantric magician to kill him on live TV by supernatural means. This went on for some time...



And then some more (notice the invocation of Bagalāmukhī to up the game a notch):



Then the homa pit comes out. The uttarasādhakas seem a bit confused for they recite mantras to paralize the man's speech, tongue, and mind (oṃ hrīṃ hrīṃ klīṃ bagalāmukhe sarvaduṣṭānāṃ vācaṃ mukhaṃ pādaṃ stambhaya jihvāṃ kīlaya 2 buddhiṃ vināśaya 2 hlīṃ oṃ phaṭ svāhā):



This may come as a surprise to some, but Surendra Sharma failed miserably. The explanation, in my humble opinion, is tantalizingly simple: Sanal Edamaruku was obviously protected by even more powerful mantras! Besides, every fool knows that a māraṇahoma is to be done in a triangular kuṇḍa...

Rats and luminaries

Here is a nice quote from Vijay Prakash, secretary of the Welfare Department in Bihar, on his new proposal to alleviate local food shortages:

We can save about half of our food-grain stocks by catching and eating rats. [They're] quite rich in nutrition.

[source: originally this week's Newsweek 'Perspectives', but I now also found it on BBC, the Telegraph, etc.]

The Cult of Trināth

How long before a cult becomes established? Strangely enough, there seems to be an answer: fifteen years or less [see UPDATE below for correction]. Witness the cult of Trināth [Satindra Narayan Roy, "The Evolution of a New Hindu God" in JBORS, vol. II, part I.].

Roy's account informs us that in the early part of the twentieth century the worship of a new god called Trināth emerged in certain parts of Orissa. Trināth was supposed to embody Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. His worship was very simple, affordable, and there was no necessity of a family priest to officiate. The implements were bought with three paisa and three paisa only: one for some oil, one for some betel leaves, and one for a small amount of cannabis.

The cult, although only fifteen years in the becoming, already had a lengthy scripture (called the Trināth Charita Akhan) with stories of Trināth with marked emphasis on the misfortunes of those who refused to worship him and the returned favours for those who eventually gave in. This article basically gives us two important factors for the emergence of a new cult:

1. The new cult should not be too new, but ought to recycle something from the older traditions. (here: Trināth embodies the three major gods)

2. It ought to have an attractive social agenda. (here: giving the option to exclude the family priest and the affordability of the pūjā implements)

This is most likely not a special and isolated case. Hence, perhaps we should reconsider the unfounded idea that a scripture has to acquire 'vintage' (estimated by some to centuries) before the exegetes come around.


UPDATE: it seems that Roy was slightly misinformed about the dates. There is a report of Trināth worship from as early as 1867. Read here.