tasya yathā kapyāsaṁ puṇḍarīkam evam akṣiṇī |
tasyod iti nāma | sa eṣa sarvebhyaḥ pāpmabhya uditaḥ |
udeti ha vai sarvebhyaḥ pāpmabhyo ya evaṁ veda ||
Chāndogya Upaniṣad || 1.6.7 ||
The above is a rather curious verse from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Scholars have placed the work among the older Upaniṣads. The Wikipedia page places its likely date of composition between the 3rd and 8th centuries prior to the common era. While I am personally reluctant as yet to assign a probable date for the work, it probably dates from same linguistic-conceptual period as the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad, if not slightly later, whenever that was.
But debates concerning its origins aside, the work is more interesting to me for its curious use of the term, kapyāsam, in the first line of the above verse, and the multiple valences this term took on in a famous debate that marks the beginning of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition. The rather heated, even vicious debate (over the Vedic author's original intended meaning) which flared up between the still young yet clever Rāmānuja and the elderly Sanskrit guru, Yādava Prakāśa presents us with a striking example of the problems in reading Sanskrit while lacking an adequate regard for the cosmological setting in which it plays out.
If we refrain for the moment from translating this single term, the rest of the line just states, "Just as a kapyāsam is, His lotus eyes are like this." (The verse is describing God's countenance).
You see, Yādava analyzed the term, kapyāsaṁ, down into what might appear to be, grammatically speaking, the most direct translation, meaning "monkey's derrière" (kapi-āsam). This became an offending vigraha for the young, devoted Rāmānuja. As such, it became this young Sanskritist's mission to outmode his own guru's understanding of Sanskrit.
According to Rāmānuja, the vigraha (analytic form of the compound) gives us kapinā (by the sun) āsaḥ (blossomed). Hence, a "lotus flower." Of course, I am not prone to deny the validity of Rāmānuja's reading. However, it is significant that the Vedas and their various commentarial branches are well known for playing with polyvalence and homophony—meaning that, often times, more than one meaning was probably intended by the author.
You see, the word kapinā is phonetically quite close to kaupīna. Here, we see a bit of Rāmānuja's wit. Even in offering a clever retort to his guru's analysis, Rāmānuja engages in a little "tongue in cheek" grammatology, noting the reference, but also assuaging what he percieved as a "crass" rendering. But the question does remain: how is it that monkeys, behinds, loin-clothes, lotus flowers, and eyes are supposed to be related? Is it that they are supposed to all reflect a similar color of red? Or is something else, something more significant, going on here? I suspect so, for reasons I will shortly make clear.
Let us consider this case in light of archeoastronomy. For one thing, it is well know than much of the literature of the late Vedic period, a period roughly corresponding to the composition of the Chāndogya, displays a complex, flourishing cosmological culture of discourse, much of which included literature dedicated to the transmission of traditions of astronomical heuristics, such as the use of mnemonic narratives to aid in the recognition of complex but relatively stable patterns of stars. And from even the limited research I have already performed, it is already quite clear that this culture of astrological discourse figured prominently in inter-cultural exchanges (for reasons that would be obvious to any Premodern traveller in need of accurate navigation skills). So, in this case, we find that there is a long-known Chinese constellation in the location of Corona Borealis which translates as "coiled thong." And it is easy to understand that kaupīna makes for a quite suitable Sanskrit synonym.
But let us also consider that all Hindus know of a very famous monkey, Hanuman. "Hanu-man" (or in stem form, Hanu-mat), just means, "Possessing [a/the] Jaw." Various commentators have provided various connotations of the name, such as "having a [Broken] Jaw," which we are told came from his brief encounter with Indra, when, as a child, this monkey tried to swallow the Sun whole, thinking it a ripe fruit, and thus expanding his earthly form into a cosmically enormous giant in order to accomplish this end. After knocking him from the sky with a thunderbolt, Indra blocked this power and Hanuman's memory of the event, until such a time which would call for him to utilize it in the cause of dharma. And we suspect (not just a little) that such a narrative is supposed to explain just how an enormous Jaw-shaped constellation hangs in the sky as we see it today, or else, that such a narrative was intended to make those stars memorable in their specific constellar shape and "celestial neighborhood."
This cosmic connotation becomes even more circumspectively apparent, when we recollect several other elements from the narrative cycles of Hanuman, such as that he became a life-long celibate upon swallowing a kaupīna, or else, that he is well known for carrying Rāma (whom I have elsewhere extensively argued as bearing significant connections with the Hercules constellation) and Lakṣmaṇa (who matches exceedingly well with prominent features from the Boötes constellation) upon his shoulders in the famous battle with the fierce rākṣasa, Rāvana. For reasons that are somewhat difficult as of present to make plain (for the complexity of inference and yet other complex narrative structures that must be brought to bear in any "totalizing" proof), I also take it that Hanuman's famous episode of carrying a mountain upon his shoulders in order to save Lakṣmana from Indrajit's poisoned arrow may be traced to a set of discrete constellations (namely, Corona Australis and Ophiuchus).
In any case, we should be able to see by now how the "monkey" and the "coiled thong" make for suggestive polysemes of Corona Borealis. But what about the "lotuses" and "Viṣṇu's eyes"?
Well, this requires us to take a closer look at the constellations local to Corona Borealis. The late Vedic materials take great pains to draw lines of inference and simile between various worldly phenomena, both Earthly and Cosmic. Among these, it has become plain to me that Megasthenes, the ancient Greek doxographer and early tourist of South Asia, was not misconstruing matters in his book, Indica, when he related the cult of Kṛṣṇa as the same as that of Hercules. Indeed, the stories turn out to have so much overlap that a mere coincidence appears to me as highly implausible. Some scholars have even gone so far as to suggest that the name, Hercules, derives from a Sanskrit predecessor, in the neighborhood of "hari-kula-īśa," literally, "Lord of the Dynasty of Hari." I do have reservations about the authenticity or certainty of this derivation, given that it violates a poetic sensibility regarding redundancy, but it is nevertheless a possibility, particularly if we are not required to suppose that the term was coined by a community who knew the poetic tradition intimately.
In any case, if we take Megasthenes' comments as trustworthy doxography, then we contact the very tip of what appears to be a rather massive, polyvalent iceberg of ancient astrological data regarding the original posited position of Viṣṇu-Nārāyana. In the Purāṇic and related literature, Viṣṇu-Nārāyana is very frequently described as laying upon a cosmic serpent (either Draco, Serpens, or even Both!). This provides further evidence for his location in the very place of Hercules, situated directly between Draco and Serpens, laying right along the thick band of the Milky Way which stretches visibly across the night sky.
If we can allow ourselves for the moment to assent, even if only putatively, to the hypothesis that the celestial region of the Hercules constellation is the core locus of Śeṣa-Śāyī-Viṣṇu, then we can ask about his accouterments, such as the cakra (wheel), śaṅkha (conch), padma (lotus), and gada (club). I cannot say with complete confidence where every single one of these is (I have significant suspicions for each, but am hesitant to disclose more until I have more thoroughly processed the broader issues surrounding their cosmological identification), but I am already very confident about the original locus of the lotus; you may well have already guessed that I mean Corona Borealis.
But further, I take it that Corona Borealis is also associated with other "iconic" themes from the Vedic cosmology, such as the Banyan Leaf upon which the infantile Viṣṇu lay while sucking on his own toe, or else the Vaijayanti garland Viṣṇu is often described as wearing, or even the lovely countenance of Subhadrā Devī.
So, it only makes sense that, as the constellation Corona Borealis resembles the shape of a closed lotus flower, it comes to signify this, but alongside a number of other narrative accretions, because it remains comparable to yet other Earthly objects of similar shape (if not size!). And here is where we get to the curious crux of the debate, a debate which I have previously always encountered as between the impersonalist, non-dualist Vedānta school of Yādava in opposition to the personalist, dualist Vedānta school of Rāmānuja: What are they really up to in their interpretations of the Chāndogya's use of the term, kapyāsam? Do they believe that they can control the very quality of the universe merely by debating the grammatical intentions of ancient poets' musings concerning its various constellations? Are they doing this intentionally? Do they even know that they are debating what amounts to the conceptualization of Corona Borealis? Or has this conversation come to signify something entirely different, something that has left almost entirely behind those Vedic-cosmological valences? The tendency to play on the above specific polyvalences in the course of the conversation would seem to suggest otherwise. Yet, if they are so self-aware, in what sense is this debate about transcendental matters? Is it, as Immanuel Levinas suggests in God, Death, and Time, that transcendence has a regard for impossibility long before it becomes a concern for taboos?
