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Narada Purana Pt. 1 (AITM Vol. 15): Ancient Indian Tradition And Mythology (Vol. 15) (v. 15)

di J. L. Shastri

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Aggiunto di recente daJimElkins, dscottn, LakshmanDas
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Note: this is a fictional review, intended to conjure the feeling of reading this book. It is part of a friction project in which a woman named Anneliese gives herself the project or reading long books. (In this edition, the Narada Purana is 2,071 pages long.) If you have ideas to make it more expressive, let me know! Also, a "trigger warning": the Narada Purana has explicit passages on sexuality, which I reproduce here.

There are hundreds of ancient books in the Hindu tradition, Anneliese told me, and some of them are over a thousand pages long, but almost none are single books written by individual authors, they are collections, written and rewritten, a great forest of texts, some are philosophical and they are very useful in my work, but others are an enormous mess, for example the thirty-six Puranas, I read one, the Narada Purana, it is five volumes, 2,071 pages long. I doubt many people ever read the entire book because it is like a scrambled encyclopedia, it has chapters on astronomy, cosmology, cosmogony, cosmometry, stories of kings and heroes, it has ten chapters praising the Ganges river, how wonderful that river is, how holy, how clean, imagine, how clean, it has information about the construction of temples, in case you’d ever want to build a Hindu temple, chapters on medicine, grammar, prosody, mineralogy, humorous dialogues, well, they are supposedly humorous, love stories, treatises on dance, music, painting, and sculpture, there are chapters on etiquette, it says a man should never greet a person who is “given to arguing,” or “a fierce person, or one who is vomiting, or one who stands in water,” kings should trim their mustaches every five days, queens should bathe in honey with each change of season, there is advice for students, they should not bite their nails, sleep in the nude, or “muse over heterodox doctrines,” and above all they should never study on holidays, because otherwise “Yama himself will degrade their intellect, undermine their prosperity, break their strength, ruin their health, and destroy their families,” and there are chapters on astrology, apparently the Moon and Venus are female and most other planets are male, except Mercury and Saturn who are eunuchs, that does not mean they are castrated, it means anatomically different, and the Narada Purana explains that Mercury is an “active and passionate” eunuch and Saturn is a “dark, inert, and ignorant” eunuch, but still, if you’re a planet it is not good to be a eunuch because when either Mercury or Saturn are ascendant births are like to be “sub-human beings like animals or birds,” and the Narada Purana has advice for women who are going to give birth, for example if Saturn is in Cancer a woman should give birth “in a pit or a dungeon,” and if Mars is in Sagittarius she should give birth “on a burial ground,” but if Jupiter is in Libra it’s much nicer, she just needs to find “a house with ornaments and decorations,” and the Narada Purana describes what the planets look like, the Moon is fat and phlegmatic and has large attractive eyes, Mercury is always trying out jokes and puns, Venus has a “charming body, darting watery eyes, black curly hair, and enjoys her happiness,” and the Sun “has a square body, pink eyes, a bilious constitution and sparse hair,” and the Narada Purana gives health advice, it’s usually not harmful to hear people sneeze, unless they sneeze behind you, and it is okay for children to sneeze even if they are behind you, but “the sneezing of cows can be deadly” so it is best to avoid places where cows sneeze, which I think is basically everywhere there are cows, so what are farmers supposed to do, and the Narada Purana gives travel advice, if you are just leaving your house and you see a corpse lying on the ground and no one is there mourning it, that means the objective of your trip will be fulfilled, I don’t know why, maybe you were going out to kill someone, but if you’re coming back home and you see a corpse and there are people mourning it, then you’ll turn into a corpse, well, when I read that, I thought maybe I’ll never leave my home again, but then I realized it doesn’t say when you’ll become a corpse, so I guess it’s okay, but if I am trying to avoid people sneezing behind me or hearing a cow sneeze I probably won’t be traveling much anyway, and the Narada Purana says every house should have exactly eight gates on the east side, and if you go through the first gate, it means you’ll suffer misfortune, and if you go through the second gate, you’ll lose your wealth, but that’s okay because if you go through the third gate, you’ll be rich again, and if you go through the fourth gate, you’ll be paralyzed by fear, but don’t worry, just go through the fifth gate, because then you’ll be free from all doubt, but definitely don’t go through the sixth gate, because then you’ll starve, or maybe just rush back through the seventh gate, because then you’ll grow fat, and don’t forget not ever to use the eighth gate, because then your family will die and there will be a general “destruction of creatures,” so really, why even build that eighth gate, just build a house with one gate, the best one, the third gate, and label it THE THIRD GATE just to be sure, and the Narada Purana has long lessons in Sanskrit grammar, I am not sure how helpful those are, do I really need to be told I can use the suffix –ra as a diminutive with words like sundara, which means a small trunk of an elephant, not a baby elephant’s trunk, but the trunk of an elephant who has a small trunk, it sounds like an insult or a problem, but the Narada Purana says sundara also means “beautiful” but you cannot use the suffix -ra as a diminutive when it means “beautiful,” apparently there are only beautiful small elephant trunks, there is no such thing as slightly beautiful beauty, or can use the suffix –ra as a diminutive with the word tundibha, which means people whose navels protrude, possibly not a very useful word), or with the word avatita, meaning a person who has a flat nose, or with cipita, another word for a person with a flat nose, why did they need two words for people who have flat noses, but did you you Sanskrit has more words than any other language, because it is agglutinative, its words just string together like bacteria, one site says there are 102.78 billion words in Sanskrit, there is a university in India, in Pune, that has been working on a Sanskrit dictionary since 1976, and now they are on page 6,506 and they are only up to the word abhigamyamānaparadārādi, which means “accessible to adultery,” so I guess they might have many more words for people with flat noses, because why not have lots of words in case you know many people with flat noses and you want to describe each one, and so it may actually be helpful when the Narada Purana says you can use the suffix –ra as a diminutive with the word avanata, which is yet another word for a person with a flat nose, and the Narada Purana has long chapters of honorific titles you can give people, like Abhigamyamānaparadārādi, Accessible to Adultery, or Nandantikarasainyaprakara, She Made the Army Happy, or Yasovitanadhavalikritajagattraya, White-Hot Famous in the Three Worlds, or Baloditabhanumandalagrasana, Takes a Surgeon’s Circular Knife to the Cloth That Covers the Private Parts, or Kumbhakarnadivadhaparayana, Very Interested in Killing Demons Including But Not Limited to Kumbhakarna in the Ramayana, and the Narada Purana has predictions about the future, some of those are horrifying, it predicts a dark age where life expectancy will be sixteen and girls will become pregnant at five years old, and it has advice for writers, it says that if a man wants to be a great poet he should stare at the yoni of a naked woman during her period while reciting one thousand hymns to the ferocious death goddess Kālī, it doesn’t say what a woman poet should do, but it’s probably not much more fun, and there’s a very disturbing passage about how fetuses feel in the womb, it says “when a man and woman come together in sexual intercourse, the embryo is formed in the womb like a calamity visiting the woman,” and from the fetus’s point of view life is pure torture, because it is “defiled by feces and urine present within the mother’s body,” burned by the mother’s “harsh urine and other secretions,” exhausted by the mother’s “blood, bone, germs, suet, marrow, sinews, and hair,” scorched by the hot food the mother swallows, vexed by the “sour, pungent, or saline” flavors of the food she eats, so that it knows it is in a “defiled place” and it writhes “in excessive agony” within the mother’s belly because of the “unbearable heat and pain,” until finally it is time to be born, and then it feels unbearable pain, including the knowledge that it is inflicting pain on its mother, until it is “forced out through the vaginal opening as if it is pulped by a mechanical device,” and as soon as it emerges it “becomes unconscious” and “loses all its memory.” I never had a child, but if I had read this when I was a teenager I would have been frightened out of my mind. I asked my doctor about this, if any of it could be true, maybe just the part about the fetus being crowded and overheated, and he said, “I have a degree,” and he pointed to it on the wall. You know, Samuel, I am not an idiot, I realize the Narada Purana was written long ago, in a culture very different from ours, and I recognize that it was not written for me, but for heaven’s sake, what kind of a book is it? Some of the things in the Narada Purana are just disgusting. It tells men what to do when they urinate or defecate, it says “after answering the call of nature a man should hold the penis and get up. For the purificatory process he should bring some good mud. It should not be from holes dug up by rats or other rodents,” I mean, if I was looking for mud to use to clean myself, and why in the world would I do that, but I guess it is old-fashioned toilet paper, so if I was, would I say to myself, I think I’d better go look over there where rats have dug holes in the ground, that will save me time, and then it says “no one should take mud from wells, tanks, or lakes,” so now supposedly I have relieved myself in some field, and I’m wandering around looking for mud, and I think, Oh, great, there’s a well or a tank, I can climb down inside, and maybe dive to the bottom and grab some mud, it’ll be worth it because I really need to clean myself, and that mud will be really high quality mud, so much better than mud from holes dug up by rats, I’m sick of using that kind of mud, and then the Narada Purana says, “The cleaning process after passing urine or feces is as follows: divide the mud into sixteen parts. Smear one part over the penis, one over each of the testicles, three parts over the anus, seven over the left leg, and three over the right leg. This is the purificatory process on discharging fecal matter so that the bad odor and the sliminess can be removed.” There are no directions for women, maybe the men who wrote the Narada Purana did not want to think where women get their mud from. I asked my doctor if any of that could be true, and how did people clean themselves before bidets and toilet paper? What did they do in the middle ages, did they use rags or maybe grass or leaves? I told him I read that Rabelais recommended using a live goose’s neck, but seriously, I said to my doctor, could that business about mud possibly be true? What if people really had to go to the toilet, and they were in a place where there is no toilet tissue, no bidet, no mud, and no goose’s necks? What could they do? And he looked at me for a while and then he pulled a couple of sheets of tissue from a dispenser and handed them to me. The Narada Purana also describes what happens if a man doesn’t give his semen to his wife, if he “discharges his semen in those who are destitute of a vagina,” they are called viyonis, meaning people without a yoni, which must mean men, or “in the uterus of animals,” those are called pasu-yonis, meaning beat-yonis, or if he discharges his semen anyplace that isn’t a vagina, the word for that is ayoni, which means “anyplace that isn’t a vagina,” I think that might be a very useful word, many people would use that word, but the author of the Narada Purana means any ordinary masturbation, then such a person will go into a special hell where he has to “subsist on semen.” Again there’s nothing about women, I suppose because we have no seed to scatter, so whatever we do is okay. So in this special hell where the man will “subsist on semen,” first he is “filled with oil,” and then he falls into a “deep and narrow well of fat.” It doesn’t take a psychoanalytic genius to guess what the “deep and narrow well” is supposed to be. He stays there for seven years. “That man,” the Purana says, “has semen for his diet. He becomes the most despicable man in the world.” The Narada Purana isn’t the kind of book you can read easily, nodding and taking notes, bobbing along from one page to another like a complacent sailor on the placid waves in Proust or a determined sailor on the choppy waves in Joyce or a mesmerized sailor on the dreamlike ocean in Burton, the Narada Purana is a minefield of weirdness, but it was mainly intended as a guide for prayer, most of it is prayers, there are hymns and prayers to hundreds of gods, in fact hundreds of hymns and prayers to hundreds of gods, in fact hundreds of prayers and hymns to hundreds of gods with hundreds of names, for instance the goddess Lalita, who has exactly a thousand names, and the Narada Purana gives all of them, you have to pray like this: Oh goddess (1) Lalita, (2) Shakti, (3) Bhagamalini, (4) Tripura Sundari, (5) Rajarajeshvari, (6) Shodashi, (7) Kamakshi, and so on, lots of names for her, and then her attributes, (38) the one who is bowed to, (39) one who causes agitation, (40) one who causes madness, (41) one who wanders in the void, and then more of her names, (59) Ananga Kusuma, (60), Ananga Mekhala, (61), Ananga Madana, (62) Ananga Natura, (63) Ananga Rekha, (64) Ananga Vegini, lots more names, and then more attributes, (98) powerful wishes, (99) supreme intellect, (100) singing voice, (101) beautiful breasts, (102) perfect thighs, (103) one who causes yawning, (104) one who causes delight, (105) one who causes puzzlement, (106) one who causes madness, (144) one who is hidden, (145) one who is secret, (146) one who is absent, and then more names, (147) Jayini, (148) Vimala, (149) Kamesi, (150) Vajrini, (151) Bhaga, (152) Tripura, (153) Tripuresi, and then (165) one who takes the form of space, (166) one who takes the form of time, (167) one who takes the form of shape, (168) one who takes the shape of form, and (202) one who causes the madness of love, (203) one who makes people rejoice, (204) one who makes people spin, (205) one who wets, (206) one who returns and wets, (207) one who dries up, (208) one who makes a jingling sound, (215) prosperity, (216) gentle, (217) ray, (218) spike, (219) spark, (220) halo, (221) light burst (222) glow, and then, (267) one who sweats from desire, (268) one who drips ichor from rutting, (269) one who breathes deep in the lungs, (270) one whose limbs tremble, (270) one who is ruined by intoxication, (271), one who is swollen with desire, (272) one who is sick with sexual urges, (273) one with matted hair, and then more names, (287) Sakini, (288) Lakini, (289) Kakini, (290) Rakini, (291) Maha-Rakini, (292) Yaksini, and then (317) Aries, (318) Taurus, (319) Cancer, (320) Leo, (321) Virgo, (322) Gemini, (323) Libra, (324) Scorpio, (325) Sagittarius, (326) Capricorn, (327) Aquarius, (328) Pisces, (329) Rahu the shadow planet, (330), Ketu the second shadow planet, and then more names, (351) Kuttini, (352) Kamala, (353) Kamini, (354) Kalpa, (355) Kala, (356) Kalita, (357) Kaukuta, (358) Kirata, (359) Kusa, (360) Kadana, (361) Kali, (362) Maha-Kali, and then (386) coward, (387) deceitful, (388) virgin, (389) one who has a saffron birthmark, (390) one who smiles, (391) grim, (392) eager, (393) holy, (394) has no form, (395) ancient, (396) one who pours, (397) one who is velocity, (398) the peculiar, (399) the giver, (400) the oreful, (401) the unexampled, (402) the edmede, (403) the eleemosynous, (404) the humble, (405) the reposeful, (406) the lown, and later (436) one who has a name with a hundred syllables, which is One who is continuously darkened in the directions between the lotuses, by slow improvement, in drops, concentrated, dense, in dense clusters, by doubtful hands, flowing, in honey, in drops, with friends, for longer, the lotus, the tree, the bed, the mountains, the roots, the nets, complex, the abysses, the deserts, far shorter, sweeter, cooler, more liquid streams, accepting the words of thirsty travelers, spreading the lines of the beams of her pure eyes, (437) one who is unspoken language, (438) one who has the nature of the letters ha, la, and ksa, (439) one who has the nature of a sentence, composed of a finite verb together with indeclinables, kārakas, and qualifiers according to the Pāṇinian system, (440) one whose name is composed of all the disordered letters, (441) one whose name may be recited most fully in the kali yuga, the age of quarrel and misery, in one thousand divine years or four hundred thirty-two million human years, (442) one whose name is the form of atoms of the universe when preceded by the letter ha, and then (502) whose throat is black, (503) who is tremendously terrifying, (526) fond of sexual intercourse, (529) a celestial beauty, (53) capricious, (532) a heroic goddess, (538) who has a short swan neck, (539) fingers like a monkey, (540) who has a cat’s clever eyes, (542) who has a cat’s damp nose, (549) who has a placid elephant’s face, (555) who has the dull face of a buffalo, (556) who has the fierce face of a chicken, (557) who has a deformed face, (558) who has a big belly, (559) whose teeth are short, (560) who has magically deformed ears, (561) who has poison in the neck, (562) who is in misery, and then, (717) whose eyes are tremulous, (718) whose tongue is tremulous, (719) who is covered in blue flowers, (720) who is poured in lac juice, (721) who is smeared with musk, and then (722) whose diversion is love, (723) whose knit eyebrows are an unbreakable bow in which she fits the arrows of side-glances, (724) who cannot be seen when her eyes peer from underneath her shawl, (725) who has no companion, (726) who has an strong inclination to destruction, (727) whose glances should not be returned, (723) whose language you cannot understand, (724) who must not be thought about, (725) who fascinates the universe, and then more names, (730) Amrita, (731) Manada, (732) Pusa, (733) Pusti, (734) Tusti, (735) Rati, (736) Dhriti, (737) Sasini, and then (876) moonlight, (877) radiant, (878) wholesome, (879) fabulous, (880) embalmed, (881) tame, (882) frenzied, (883) innumerable, (884) tiny, (885) restless, (886) fraudulent, (887) deceitful, and later (907) one who lives in your stomach like a worm, (908) one who lives in your throat like a word, (909) one who lives on your hard palate like a sore, (910) one who abides under your tongue like chewed food, (911) one who abides in your teeth like a wet infection, (912) one who abides in your nostrils like mucus, (913) one who abides in your eye like sand, (913) one who lives in your house in silence like a flower, and so on up to one thousand, and then the Purana says that if you recite all one thousand names of Lalita every day at dawn you will become a yogin, which I think is a little yogi or yogini, that is a woman yogi, so maybe a beginner woman yogi is a yoginini, anyway if you recite the thousand names twice every day you will be wealthy, and three times you’ll be something else, and four times you’ll be something else, all the way up to sixteen times a day, if you repeat all one thousand names of the goddess Lalita sixteen times a day, if you pray until you have exhausted the last puff of your breath and your eyes are cups of milk and your tongue is cracked, then you will be able to create, sustain, and annihilate universes, and all that is just one prayer to just one goddess, the Narada Purana clearly never had an editor, they just kept adding until they had 2,017 pages, clearly no editor ever looked at a line like “in this life, undoubtedly misery is more pleasing than happiness,” or a line like, “just as a tiger pounces on a small unhappy animal, the god of death picks out and snatches away anyone whose desires are unclear,” because an editor would have said, Wait a minute, that can’t possibly be right, and the editor would have called in the author of the Narada Purana, I imagine he was a poor scholar, a holy man caked in mud from depositing feces in fields, and to tell the truth, probably coated in oil and semen too, the editor would have sat him down and said, “Excuse me, saddhu, but what does that mean? Aren’t everyone’s desires unclear? Isn’t a lack of clarity pretty basic to what it is to be human? And besides, what if a person has a very clear desire, and it’s to kill as many people as possible, then will the god of death say, ‘You’re good to go, no problem, you want to kill everyone, that’s crystal clear,’ is that what you mean?” but I really doubt the author of the Narada Purana would know what to make of a babbling editor, and besides, some passages are just total nonsense, pure nonsense, like this one, this is my favorite, “in sexual intercourse, the man sprays out his seed, and obtains from it some issue, and the child thus brought forth indulges in the act of copulation in due course,” that is absolute useless mindless nonsense, and really, the Indian literature is hopeless. I spent time wandering in it. I got lost almost immediately and it was very difficult to find myself again, I might have never escaped, but finally I got to page 2,017, where the book ends. It ends by praising itself! The author says, “Just as the best prayer is the presentation of offerings in a pit of deceased ancestors on the eleventh day after their death, as the Ganges is the most holy of all rivers, as Vrindavan, where little Krishna played, has the best forest in India, as Pushkar Lake is the most excellent lake in the universe, so this is the best of all Puranas, the end.” So I ask you, Samuel, is it good that there are books like the Narada Purana that can remind us the world is larger and stranger than we knew, and that people once had very scrambled ideas, and were afraid of sneezes and untrimmed mustaches, and not so secretly attracted to eunuchs and eating semen, and even though they were very devout and prayed until their tongues cracked?
Yes, I said, because it seemed like the right answer.
  JimElkins | Jun 18, 2023 |
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