Hercules, Jagannātha, Vaiṣṇava Tilaka

 

For those of you who are unfamiliar, these three images (mūrtis) represent primary forms of Viṣṇu. From left to right, they are Baladeva (the "Strong Divinity"), Subhadrā (the "Very Auspicious One"), and Jagannātha ("Lord of the Moving World"). They are among the oldest known deity forms in South Asia, dating at least to the Maurian dynasty, circa 600 BCE. Emic scholars have even suggested far older dates, though we have reason to suspect that Jagannātha's "ascendency" coincides to some extent with cosmological events that can be reconstructed based upon refined measurements of axial precession and so forth. That is, we suspect that the "image" of Jagannātha coincides with the ascendency of Tau Hercules to the position of a polestar.

Jagannātha, just in terms of his esoteric aniconism, remains one of the most striking forms in South Asian deity worship. The culture surrounding his worship, the narratives of his origin, the reconstructive history behind his Mauryan heritage, and the unique form he and his siblings manifest—all these in aggregate signal the unusual origins of this dharu-brahman, this "Wooden Spirit".

Pramā/Pratimā 

The image of Jagannātha seen in temples is a pratimā, or "reflection" of the "original" Jagannātha. The proportions which belong to the original are the pramā, a term signifying the act of measuring a form (pra [forth] + √mā [measure] = "mete out"), while Pratimā (prati [counter-] + mā [measure] = reflection) indicates the reproduction of the original, in the sense of a reflection. In an earlier blog, we discussed how this enables us to draw a direct link between Mount Kailāśa and the form of Ophiuchus-Serpens. This is also seen in the side-by-side placement of Jagannātha, Subhadrā, and Baladeva. 

These constellations also happen to be visible directly overhead in the evening on Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭhami

In particular, we note the commonly Trapezoidal shape of Jagannātha's head, the characteristic Jawlines of all three deities, or in particular, of Subhadrā, as well as the crown shape of Baladeva. the Constellation of Baladeva here is Boötes. Each of these constellations contains a number of features which recommends these specific identifications.

But first, not that the images have been reversed, in keeping with the Pramå/Pratimå thesis, that the temple mūrtis are based upon the shapes of the constellations, like a reflected, as if the Lord of the Universe, Jagannātha, were only looking at Himself in a mirror. It really does suggest something along the lines of Genesis, even: "I have made man in My Image".

Indeed, when Thomas Colebrooke, back in the 1800's posited that Hercules was originally derived form India, he may have well had ample reason to believe this. He postulated that the name "Hercules" originated from the phrase, "Hari-kula-iśa" or "Lord of the Dynasty of Hari-Viṣṇu", meaning, Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa. It seems possible to me, though I am as yet uncertain, and more data on this postulate ought to be gathered and related. Still, the reflection of the deities as seen here is quite striking.

There is another important place that we find this trapezoidal form:

Śrīvaiṣṇava Tīlaka

"Tīlaka" derives from the term, tīla, or sesame seed. Tīlaka, it seems, used to be made with sesame seed paste. This paste was applied as an ornament to various parts of the body, and designates, by its specific shape, the sectarian affiliations of various individuals. The Tenkalai Sect of Śrīvaiṣṇavism bears Tīlaka that is more or less Trapezoidal, and thus, plausibly signifies this same constellation: Hercules.

Old Sadhu in Kathmandu, Nepal. Note the slight variation in the shape of the tīlaka.
Variations are common, but almost always play on a common theme.

Of course, I specialize in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava thought, so why, you might ask, do Gauḍīyas wear the particular tīlaka they do? It's not at all trapezoidal! Well, it is important to remember that many practitioners are likely to be unaware of the original signification of tīlaka so that they will allow for slight variations, here and there. Over time, this can produce the variations we see today.

While searching online for images of tīlaka, I found this old drawing of mine from 1995. Ah, the good old days.  

Moreover, as many of these variants represent distinctive sects, one can appreciate that the form signals the many schisms which have arisen over the centuries between this and that sect which felt the need to use such symbolism to distinguish itself from other versions with which it might otherwise become easily confused. When the geometric options are limited by tradition, the tensions bring about inventive modifications, which can both preserve and alter the original dimensions!

this chart shows just a few of the many Vaiṣṇava tilakas around today. 

You may suspect that all of this has little apparent relation to the concept of Time in South Asian literature. If so, I can't blame you. But this is all part of building an evidentiary case for the identification of Viṣṇu with Hercules. You see, if it is true, that Hercules really just is Viṣṇu, then this gives a very important interpretation to the ancient Ṛg-Veda verse, Oṃ tad Viṣṇoḥ paramam padam sadā paśyanti sūrayaḥ ("Om! That farthest foot of Viṣṇu, is ever gazed upon by the gods!"). This verse appears to be talking about Tao Hercules as a pole star. If that is true, then the narrative tradition from which this verse takes its basic form is arguably more than 9000 years old!

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Update: the Ophiuchus-Kailāśa blog has been temporarily removed. More work needs to be done to clean it up and solidify the arguments. 

Biblical Astrotheology [Part I]: Adam's Rib: Man-made, in the Image of God

Introduction

In this series, I explore the dynamic of comparative Astrotheology which arises from the intersection of the Hebrew Bible and Indo-European culture. Note that I come at this simply from an historian's perspective, i.e., from the angle of view that presumes that the narrative developments of these ancient works were not created in a cultural vacuum, as by Hebrews who knew nothing of Indo-European culture; quite the opposite, I aim to show how their materials were inherited from the ancient IE cosmological and astrological ways of speaking, but that they frequently put an iconoclastic spin on these narratives. The recognition of how these narratives were assimilated to Hebrew values exposes tensions and contensions with popular language in its attempts to account for the world, fate, and history.

I anticipate that this study will also give us further reason to take comparative studies more seriously, as the study discloses elements which have been overlooked by Colonialist and Reconstructionist schools of Indology.


Abraham's World

If we take note of the fact that Abraham was a pagan before he was a Jew—or at least, if we acknowledge that, prior to concluding that his own God was some how different from the gods of those in whose culture he first came to ask the question of who his God was—we are left with the question of how Abraham's language came to signal something different than the wide-spread idea of gods and demons. Was, for example, Adam (of Adam and Eve fame) Abraham's Adam? Or was the image of Adam already a matter of wide-spread cultural narrative? Another way to ask this question: did Abraham, being the first Jew, make Adam up, or did he receive this image from "Pagan" sources?

And what of the Flood narrative? If we do not promote any bias toward a particularly Biblical telling of history, how do we account for these narratives? Are they to be taken as semiotic artifacts whose world has long eroded away? A past irrecuperable?

And what of the tower of Babel? Is that too just one more uniquely Jewish image, accountable only by virtue of its relation to the Old Testament?

Or do we have with us today some domain which suggests a common, intelligible origin for all of these narratives? Well, let us discuss the major elements of the narrative, and consider how they might fit together...

Let us go through these elements in the order which Genesis introduces them: 

If these seven days are reduced to Astrological terms, what would each signify?

Also, check out this link. It argues that the "Creation Week" is actually reflected in the Zodiac!

Here then, I forward an important theory, that the narratives of Adam and Eve (in addition to other narratives found in the Bible) can be plausibly traced to the same cultural practices which produced Paganism. By examining these elements carefully, we can develop a concept of whence these elements were composed, and thereby, how they bind the fates of European theistic cosmogony to that of South Asia's.

Seven Days of Creation: accounting for the constellations: the kinds of regions (waters = Tropic of Capricorn, mountain/Eden = Tropic of Cancer), creatures in the sky (cf., Prajåpati's many forms, male and female, and cf., Noah's Ark, Southern Boat, Waters);

Day 1: The Sun, Moon, Planets, Stars and the Night Sky
Day 2: The Summer and the Winter (the Earth and the Year)
Day 3: The Dry Land (repetition of Day 2)? But Ophiuchus and the Banyan
Day 4: The visible "Planets" (including Sun and Moon for total of seven)
Day 5: Which Aquatic and Aqualine creatures survive?
Day 6: Which animals and humans? (Note that if we suggest only Adam and Eve, then God as Bootes is absent?
Day 7: Rest/Death Boötes/Ursa Major

While Creationists get caught up in the imagery of seven literal days, the allegorical character of this description really ought to be obvious to anyone with even a basic astronomical familiarity with the ancient constellations and the basic ideas behind astrotheology.

It helps if we reflect on the conditions of pre-Historic man. "pre-Historic" here does not simply designate the human for whom no historical description is recorded in antiquity, i.e., illiterate man, but rather, designates primarily the human who did not think of the world in Historical terms; i.e., the human who was not yet certain of the ubiquity of Time, and who thus was prone to think of the world in terms of spontaneous generation, or genesis ex nihilo, creation from "Nothing". This idea remains part of contemporary theological discourse, and forms an important counterpart to the saecular (from the Greek saecularus, "pertaining to ages") image of ubiquitous temporality. Those who claim that there survives a self-identical soul, one that can ascend to the "heavens," where it attains to the pure Eternal, freed from the stain of temporality, are prone to fall back to this metaphysical "Nothingness', this "Emptiness" upon which no stain can be ascribed. One can stain a cloth, perhaps, but what can stain empty space, i.e., that which, as a pure passivity, does not cling, does not interfere, does not interact with any force whatsoever? Is Eternity thus the deepest form of passivity, the primary form of the transcendental Nothing? And if so, is not temporality but pure force? Pure activity? Is not Being Pure Activity in the face of impending doom, death (Non-being)? These primary concepts occupied an important place in the discourse of the 20th centuries most prominent hermeneuts of history, i.e., "philosophers".

Many of the extant Astrological forces are accounted for, even if some of them are still unknown: (the Mountain as Ophiuchus [alternatively, the Summit of the Year]

Also, doesn't God actually create the world in six days? On the Seventh Day, he rested, signaling "Death"? Is not the "six day" trope significant of the base-numerical practices found in Calendrical measurements? As such, the Seventh day is a kind of "base-seven", fitting into neither the 24 hour day, nor the 30 day month, nor the 360 day year. It is, as such, a kind of schism in Time, a "different" Time than the "Pagan" schedule invokes. If we take this to reflect "Death" (i.e., Bootes/Yama), does not God walk at every moment with Adam and Eve? Does not he enter into death even prior to Adam or Eve? Or if, in a double role, God is Hercules, as well as Bootes, then He is both the original form of Man and the Grim Reaper (Bone/Conch-Shell), both Life and Death. [Hades and Haladhara?]

Made in the Image of God: Adam's Rib is Corona Borealis, by inference then, Adam is Hercules, and mankind is made in the image of Hercules.

Eve: the "woman" who is both "rib" and "breast": Corona Borealis
The multiple names for Corona Borealis
"Semi-circle": Ardhacandra ("Half-moon"), and the name of a Constellation, acc to Varāha Mihira's Bṛhat-Saṁhitā.
Woman's Breast
Fig Leaf
Rib



The fruits of Eden "eat from all the fruits of this garden, but for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of "good" and "evil"; this 'fruit' is an abstraction, regarding the worship of signs, idolatry, astrological thinking; good and evil here are to be understood as the auspicious and inauspicious, as the conjunction of planets and constellations which portend of fortune and misfortune.
Remnants of The "Fig Tree": Branch, Leaf, Root?

The serpent can be one of many: Hydra, Serpens, Draconus: all of these are "Devilish"; cf., Kāliya, Age of Kali, Draco's foot, and simultaneous the fall of Adam

But why does the Serpent Approach Eve and not Adam? Why does Eve Eat the fruit before offering it to Adam? Does not she fall first as Corona Borealis?

The whirling Fire-brands: stars circling about the Northern Celestial axis:

The Fig Leaf: Chapter 15 of the Gītā, and the Ancient Banyan Tree which stems from the roof of the World

In Future Entries to this Series: 

In Future Entries, we will cover a number of other provocative and suggestive astrotheological narratives from the Old Testament/Toraḥ:

* Abraham's Son and the Ram: (Agni-cum-Ares) or the sacrifice of the Spring Calendar.

* The Tower of Babel: or How the Indo-Europeans Couldn't agree on the Auspice of the Constellations and Planets

* Noah's Ark: Or how Prajāpati's Culture survived a flood by floating in the sky

The "Lunar Controversy": How far away is the Moon, anyway? (And how old is that idea?)

Long ago, when I was still a wee lad and of meager literacy, I heard a few stories that profoundly seized my artistic imagination. One of these was the image of an older Kṛṣṇa, revealing his "universal form" to Arjuna in the midst of two vast armies; another, of a younger Kṛṣṇa lifting a small mountain with naught but his pinky finger, holding it aloft for seven full days; and yet another, when Śiva drank an ocean of poison, retaining it within his throat. In each of these narratives, the everyday feeling of the possible is mocked and symbols come into play whose obscure meanings challenge the listener to understand by rethinking the very nature of possibility. So taken up was I by this fantastic narrative imagery that I soon turned to the traditional forms of study in Hinduism: I accepted ordination into the practices of a brahmācārin sādhaka in the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition.

It wasn't long before my Western education was being assaulted by traditional Vaiṣṇava authorities. After only a few weeks of practice, a devotee revealed to me that he believed that the Moon (candra) was further from the Earth than the Sun (sūrya). I found this view shocking and not just a little hard to swallow. Now, I had already been exposed to the fathomless horror of contemplating the limits of my own knowledge, and found my self-certainty about a wide range of matters deeply unsatisfying. I had always intuited that Darwin was right, before ever having been told that he was wrong, and I had assumed that NASA really had sent astronauts to the moon and back. But this seemed to fly in the face of Vaiṣṇava cosmology, since, to Vaiṣṇavas, the Moon is a heavenly realm, candra-loka, inhabited by higher entities, all of whom have vast lifespans, and superior bodies in every respect. Thus, on the authority of Prabhupada, I was to eject my confidence in the technological achievements of the West. Let us recall his teaching:

"They have gone to the moon planet? Then our whole propaganda, Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, becomes bogus. Therefore I always protest."

Conversation in Sydney, Australia, April 1, 1972.

It is clear that the threat to Vaiṣṇava cosmology was not just meager in Prabhupada's eyes. Thus he declared war on the very idea of the technological excellence embodied in Western science.

"It is my firm conviction that they did not go to the moon. Neither they'll be able to go to the Mars as they have planned it." 

Room Conversation, July 6th, 1976, Washington D.C.

One wonders then, how thousands upon thousands of scientists, all of whom apparently actually believe that they have successfully launched and completed several missions to both the Moon and Mars have managed to keep the wool so thoroughly pulled over their own eyes, particularly given their well-established reputations as being difficult to convince of anything without proof! But apparently, Prabhupada was more or less unflappable on this issue. At one point, he poses a radical hypothesis, that there was another planet in the way!

"They have not gone to the moon planet. . . It is far, far away. Their calculation is wrong. They are going to a wrong planet." 

Morning walk, June 4th, 1976, Los Angeles.

Elsewhere, Prabhupada further specifies the nature of the issue of distance:

"It is above the sun planet."

So, in various ways, Prabhupada protested (and this is somewhat important to focus on) the authenticity of the technological achievements of the West, rooted as they are in advanced mathematics. For anyone interested in further exploring Śrīla Prabhupada's views, I recommend taking a look at this link.

Prabhupada wasn't the only person who denied the Moon Landing. An abridged version of Bill Kaysing's hoax theory can be found here.

Personally, I have long since stopped entertaining the view that the Moon Landing was a hoax. But what is more significant for Vaiṣṇavas, neither do I find it necessary for others to do so in order to maintain the core of Śrī Kṛṣṇa's teachings. It's not actually necessary to go to all the trouble of arguing that the Moon is "further away", when what really matters to Vaiṣṇava cosmology is that it is uttara. This significant Sanskrit term has two pertinent meanings: the first is "higher"; the second meaning is "further North", relative to the uttama, the North Pole.

This is easy to imagine if we regard "up" and "down" in a bodily way while lying on the ground. Imagine yourself then, if you will, lying upon your back, in a wide, flat field somewhere in the Northern hemisphere, with your feet to the South, and your head to the North, staring up at the sky, watching with unbroken attention. Suppose that you were able to lay like this for many days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, even eons, undistracted, attending only to the relative passing of the various visible celestial bodies. It is important to take note of what you will see from this perspective. For one, you will see that the Sun and the Moon are either lower or higher than each other. Sometimes, when the Moon is in the ascending half of its cycle, it passes into a region of the sky "uttara" or "higher" than the Sun (i.e., further North). Or, on those rare occasions, when the moon happens to be directly on either of the "nodes" while passing in front of the Sun or behind the Earth, a Solar or Lunar eclipse occurs, respectively (most of the time, it is either "above" or "below" the Sun, which is why eclipses of either kind are a little bit rare). And it doesn't require for us to talk about the distances of planets in an absolute spatial sense. "Higher" here simply means higher degree of celestial latitude. 

Here, I have illustrated the ascending and descending Lunar nodes (Rāhu and Ketu) intersecting Solar plane of the Ecliptic at the Eastern and Western Horizons, while the Sun travels over the terrestrial zenith,  somewhere in the Northern hemisphere.  The Moon here is in its New moon phase, taken together indicating the maximal latitudinal "distance" between the Moon and Sun. In this instance, though not constantly, the Moon has a "superior", or uttara, celestial latitude with respect to the North Pole. The black arc expresses the South to North in degrees of latitude.

Indeed, when we reflect on the Purāṇic cosmology, we see that this sort of mapping does give us a suggestion about how the ancients saw the Heavenly realms. The "uttama" or "North-most" realm was just the Polestar, or "Druva-loka, the "fixed world". In fact, the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa treats Druva-loka as a Vaikuṇṭha planet, a realm not subject to "birth and death." However, this celestial immortality needs to be understood in the context of Indo-European astrotheology and myth. The Greeks, for example, often related narratives in which a constellation's setting below the Western horizon was tantamount to its death (and for which reason, the afterlife is frequently referred to as the "below"). And consequently, a star's rising above the Eastern horizon was tantamount to its birth, or rebirth. As such, the devatas, i.e., the "heavenly divinities" were related as subject to birth and death by the end of the late Vedic period, much the same as the Greek gods (who in a number of cases even retain the same names!).

It is important to understand this in a cosmological relief, where "appearance" (vyakti) and "disappearance" (avyakta) are among the primary characteristics of birth and death. What results from this interpretation is a more coherent understanding of the Epic-Purāṇic cosmos. We are closing in on a view of the world which conflates the "higher" with the "Northern". This is to be contrasted against an interpretation which regards the Earth as flat, and which takes the sole direction of "height" to be the local zenith.


An Admittedly Unsolicited Word of Advice for Devotees

When Prabhupada originally published the Fifth Canto of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, many devotees fled the movement, their faith in Prabhupada's teachings irreparably blemished. It may be that Prabhupada simply failed to understand the historical complexities underlying the development of this many-layered cosmological model, and so posed an intellectual's opinion, rather than one equivalent to śāstra. By acknowledging that the Vedic cosmos is constituted by an historical manner of development, one affirms Kṛṣṇa's ubiquity as Eternal Time, as the cause of all causes. Thus, we can begin to peel back the historical layers of cosmological discourse, and can clarify and secure a critical, coherent, causal history of that development. Such development depends upon our willingness to regard all cosmological discourse as subordinated to the higher metaphysical revelation that Kṛṣṇa is Time itself (kālo 'smi, loka-kṣāya-kṛt). This is a harrowing task, no doubt, and might best be left to trained scholars. Yet without the best Vaiṣṇava intellects taking this issue up with all due seriousness, I worry that the future of Vaiṣṇavism will only increase in dogma, and will result in the gradual erosion of God-given reason, rather than its further advancement.


Further Implications

The particular way of looking at the Vaiṣṇava cosmos outlined above also gives us crucial insights into the constellar locations of the 14 heavenly realms, and discloses a provisional, critical method for determining the ages of the various elements that gradually accrued of this cosmological paradigm. If the Heavenly realms (listed below) are actually visible segments of the night sky, we may be able to piece together a "who's who" that identifies the regions by relating them to who resides in them (i.e., Brahmā living in Satya-loka, taken together with our knowledge of Brahmā's vehicle as a swan, the identification of Cygnus as a swan constellation, the antiquity of the Northern zenith's connection with the Cygnus realm of the celestial dome, and so on, and so forth). Mapping out the sky in this way will become a self-evident and secure process if it is done the right way, by giving all due care to the strengths and weaknesses of the postulates under consideration. Moreover, it may give us that ever-so-rare-and-precious calendrical data we've long been after, helping us to finally securely date the Vedic texts with a higher degree of precision than was previously possible.

In future blogs, we will inquire into who resides in each realm and what this reveals about the locations of specific constellations, and when possible, how old these elements appear to be.

borrowed from Wikipedia:[Loka]. Also, the Earth is not flat. 

Update (Jan 22, 2015): this blog entry has undergone numerous minor revisions for precision of language, and the like. I also added details to help visualize the issue in layman's terms.

Rudra, Śiva, Ophiuchus (Updated Feb 17, 2014)

Update: I cleaned up some of the arguments, dropped some of the weaker materials, and added a link to the Mount Kailāśa comparison! (Feb 17, 2014)

For a while now, I have suspected that the original eleven Rudras mentioned in the Vedic Saṁhitās were originally associated with and, to some extent, even derived from, different constellations.  Indeed, these eleven are mentioned as among the original 33 god pantheon, all of whom I strongly suspect to populate the sky as seen from the Northern hemisphere. 

These three and thirty divinities, related as a single group, are mentioned at least as early as the Śatapatha Brāhamaṇa, a text that I'm presently analyzing in order to draw out whatever calendrical data is embedded in the text. I have already discerned that at least one of the calendrical components of this text dates to circa 2800 BCE, given that it uses the term, muhūrta, that taken together with the most plausible cosmological significations of the traditional names of the 30 muhūrtas. This would make the eleven Rudras very old figures indeed (but that is a discussion for another time).

While I have some tentative opinions on the matter, I hesitate to postulate here the identities of all eleven Rudras with specific constellations as yet. Yet there is a "coupled" constellation which already shows great promise, and indeed may well be the "primary" Rudra, given what we can already say about it: Ophiuchus-Serpens.

Below, then, I present a number of points which are suggestive of this association:

a) the form is reflective of Śiva sitting in meditation:

The inner core of the constellation is shaped like a slightly irregular trapezoid, i.e., a capstone, or else a hexagon. This central form places  Śiva's śikhara (the "peak" of his head) in close proximity to the "eye" of Hercules (whom I have elsewhere identified with Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa). The image above shows the right "shoulder" elevated, so that the trapezoidal figure is somewhat irregular. Yet, circa 2800 BCE, the trapezoidal form was much more regular/symmetrical.

b) Ophiuchus is in contact with Serpens, while the image of shiva is always draped in serpents:

Note that the above image shows the serpent head carved into the sculpture as on the same side as the "head" of the constellation, Serpens.

c) Opheuchus is associated with the power to raise the dead, while Śiva is the source of mṛtyu-sañjīvani: 

Sañjīvani is described in Valmīki's Rāmāyaṇa, and elsewhere, as an herb that can raise the dead. Hanuman, Rāma's faithful servant, is commanded to fetch a whole mountain containing the herb from the Himālayas. Hanuman fulfills this commandment by bringing the whole mountain through the air, all the way to South India. This constellation is very probably that mountain (my reasons for suggesting this involve a few dozen points which I won't go into here; suffice it to say that the identification is highly plausible). 

In other narratives, usually involving the resurrection of demons (asuras), Śiva teaches Śukrācarya the secret art of raising the dead in a complex purāṇic narrative. A part of this narrative involves Śukra actually passing through the body of Śiva, which itself is suggestive of a constellar involvement, given Śukra's identification with the planet, Venus. 

In Greek iconography, Ophiuchus is signaled as a Pillar or a Staff, often encircled by one or two serpents. In some ancient works, this image has been associated with an ancient healer, named Ascelepius; a similar symbol is also associated with Hermes, messenger of the gods, for reasons which are not yet apparent.

Ascelepius is often coupled together with his daughter, Hygeia (cognate with the term, hygiene).

Here we have superimposed an ancient bas relief over the constellation. There is a remarkable degree of symmetry between the stone-cut image and the constellation. The red lines show just how closely one can draw the image from the visible stars in that region. The artist who carved this stone was clearly careful to replicate the dimensions of Ophiuchus/Hygeia as closely as possible. Yet he seems not to have cared so much for the constellation Serpens. 

d) Rasalhague, a blue star at the "head" of Ophiuchus resonates with Śiva's fame as holding poison in his throat:
The color and location of the star provide a provocative lead for considering the origins of Śiva's nomenclature as nīla-kaṇṭha, the "Blue-necked" one. Note again in the picture immediately above that Rasalhague is in the position of Ophiuchus' throat, just as another major star is in the throat of Hygeia. Rasalhague is not alone in its semiotic role, however. The hala-hala poison generated during the churning of the milk ocean is said to be the material cause of Śiva's fame as the blue-throated one. If we can continue then along the same line of cosmological imagery for our causal explanation, then it would make sense to suppose that this halahala is none other than the dark dust clouds which obscure portions of the Milky Way galaxy in the region of Ophiuchus. 

e) Ophiuchus is sometimes represented as a female: 
Umā, or Parvatī, is described as the daughter of the king of the mountains in Kālīdāsa's famous Kumara-Sambhavam. This imagery resonates again with the double role of Ophiuchus as both human and mountain. It plays the role of mountain in at least two, and possibly three different narratives. for one, it is the "herbal" mountain fetched by Hanumān; for another, it is the mountain used to churn the ocean for ambrosia; further, it may well be one of those "flying mountains" whose wings were cloven by Indra's thunderbolt (but that is a matter for another blog). The double-gendered character of the constellation carries associations with ardha-naranari, the half-male, half-female image of Śiva-Śakti. 

Note also that there are two animals, a cow to the right, and a lion to the left. This carries into associations with Ophiuchus and the Bull, Nandi, as well as Virgo/Leo (Who sometimes signifies Durga!); it seems that the associations are rather unfixed, so that the female is incorporated in a distinctive manner in the Greek image from that used in the Hindu version. Which brings us to our next point:

f) Ophiuchus is often depicted in Uranography as staring to his left, casting his gaze on Virgo: 
This imagery correlates strongly with the Mohini-Mūrti myth, itself interwoven with the Ocean-churning episode in the Purāṇas. In the Vaiṣṇava myths, Śiva is said to have become bewildered by the beautiful form of Viṣṇu, become female. For reasons that will be discussed in my future blog on the Churning of the Milk Ocean, I have taken Mohini-Mūrti to be Virgo.  

g) The constellation is also similar in shape to Mount Kailāśa:

Note that the mountain is usually viewed from this face in particular, in the midst of this valley. The image reminds one of both Ophiuchus and of Serpens, so that one might be led to believe Mt. Kailāśa were the terrestrial incarnation of the Constellation. For more on that, take a look here.

h) Ophiuchus is depicted with a cow on his shoulder in older Uranographic depictions: 
The bull/cow has fallen out of popular depiction in contemporary images, but he/she did evidently exist once upon a time (cf., above illustration). In one puranic myth, Rudra is said to have been born from the coitus of Brahmā and Kāma-denu, the wish-fulfilling cow. Kāma-dhenu may well be the cow who sits on the shoulder of Opheuchus in these older Uranographies. It is also significant then, that she is said to have been born from the ocean of milk during the churning, given that the bovine constellation sits directly over the Milky Way galaxy.

While it is not perfectly clear which stars originally belonged to the "cow" constellation, we suspect it to be a play on the Taurus constellation, so that the prominent stars in that region produce an image something like this:

The stars forming this pattern are in the region of Ophiuchus' right shoulder (if he is depicted as facing us). 

i) Ophiuchus intersects with the Milky Way Galaxy: 
The narrative of Śiva capturing the celestial Gaṅgā in his dreadlocks resonates strongly with the image of the galaxy swirling amidst the dark clouds of dust. 

j) Opheuchus resembles an erect penis: 

I will let the reader contemplate that as suits them, but basically, this is just intended to draw a parallel between the popular use of a liṅgam as the aniconic form of Śiva. This is not the only place we see such abstract correlations, as I will go into in my future blog on Jagannatha, Subhadrā, and Baladeva. 

k) if the image is regarded upside down, we get another Icon of Śiva as Natha-rāja:

I have identified Hercules as Trivikrama, elsewhere. This resonates with the famous icon of Natha-rāja, dancing on a dwarf, reflecting symbolic tensions between Vaiṣṇavas and Śaivas. 

Admittedly, this is less compelling than other elements we have related. 

Of course, while we want the evidence to be as strong as possible, not all evidence should be taken as equally impressive. And still, there is merit to this association. We see that, using the prominent stars in the region of Ophiluchus, we are able to construct a series of allignments, which reflect the general geometries in the sculpture. This can be regarded as somewhat speculative, and so shouldn't be taken alone. One additional element that does recommend the matter as evidence: The star belonging to the eye of the dwarf (Vāmana) is in the same locus as the eye of Hercules, for whom I have extensive evidence in association with Trivikrama, the avatāra of Viṣṇu who ascends to the highest position in the universe on his third step. Moreover, many of the lines do match well with the shapes of the dance. We also note that the hand holding a flame contains a very prominent star. In general, the lines form strong parallels with the organic geometry of the icon without having to introduce many of the dimmer stars. Indeed, this image may be a commentary on Vaiṣṇavism, suggesting theological tensions between Śaivas and Vaiṣṇavas that came to be expressed in their respective aesthetics. The image of the dwarf is treated here as 'false ego', perhaps informing us of some remembered hubris on the part of ancient Vaiṣṇavas.   

l) Śiva's Drum (ḍamaru) and Trident (triśūla) resemble two local Constellations:

The ḍamaru resembles the "torso" of Hercules in its shape, While Ophiuchus, drawn with different lines, does indeed resemble a triśūla. 

Note that one can make these shapes using only prominent stars. 

m) We are actually not the first to publish this sort of comparison: 

The more I dig into these issues of representation, the more I find evidence that these sorts of comparisons are variously covered in previous Indological scholarship. I came across the following in the Wikipedia article on Askelepius (Asklépios), who is something like an avatāra of Ophiuchus. At least if we are to judge from the title alone, it is evident that Rudra has already been compared to Asklepios:

"H. Grégoire (with R. Goossens and M. Mathieu) in Asklépios, Apollon Smintheus et Rudra 1949 (Mém. Acad. Roy. de Belgique. Cl. d. lettres. 2. sér. 45), explains the name as 'the mole-hero', connecting σκάλοψ, ἀσπάλαξ 'mole' and refers to the resemblance of the Tholos in Epidauros and the building of a mole. (Thus Puhvel, Comp. Mythol. 1987, 135.) But the variants of Asklepios and those of the word for 'mole' do not agree." 

n) The Harrapan "Paśupati" seal: 

This image is one of the oldest icons to be associated with Śiva. It was discovered in the Indus Valley, and has been associated with the Harrapan civilization, widely considered to be pre-Aryan. Beyond the basic associations of form, we not also that there is, again, a cow to the right, a feline to the left. Is this not a depiction of the very same constellation? 

Other Stellar Associations

We mention here briefly just a couple more of the most provocative identifications between Rudras and ancient constellations. The constellation, Boötes, bears variegated associations, but one of these appears to be an ancient Rudra, evident from the fact that, in the Arabic system, there is a star, ρ Boö, known also as "the Howler" (Al-'awwa/Al hava). The Sanskrit term, Rudra, means approximately the same.

I have considered only a few of the hypothetical Rudras, consisting only of those which have the strongest evidence I have yet to come across. Truly, much of the other speculative materials I am working with are not as yet publication worthy. The other Rudras are in general not so clearly designated. But at least we can admit that we have a few other research leads, though we don't wish to let the cat out of the bag before we have compiled stronger evidence. At the moment, we will also keep in mind other possibilities.

Another matter that might be worth exploring: the 49 Maruts might correlate to a windy season that coincides with the appearance of one or more specific constellations. 

Additionally, the Rudras are in some places regarded as sons of Āditi and Kaśyapa. As such, we might also look at the locations of these two in order to better fix the locus of Rudras.  And let us not fail to consider that it could turn out that a different interpretation of the 11 takes these to be 11 stars which constitute one single constellation. 

Reflections

The imagery we have been considering here is part of a wider attempt to map out the sky in terms of Vedic and Puranic deities. This is only a partial attempt, but is it already suggestive of how a number of iconic symbols may have come into being. The associations developed by way of astrotheological hermeneutics are an important component of the history of thinking about the ontology of the heavenly divinities venerated in Hinduism today. These deities survive by way of an astrological sensibility that persists in South Asian culture, one that locates the constellations by way of narrative relationships based upon each one's proximity, or angle of incidence with respect to other constellations. The concealing or divorcing of these iconic representations from their celestial sources does concretize the images in a way that creates a new, terrestrial platform for discussion, so that theological contemplations are no longer formed by way of a direct connection to the stars; yet this also interrupts the historical character of their formation, leading to an pratimā without a pramā, a mirror reflection whose origins is lost in the shadows. Here, history is threatened by concealment, by the illusive discourse which imposes a fate dictated to each individual by the stars. Nothing is certain—not identity, not history, nor fate. This illusive character shows us how Time remains enigmatic within the Hindu context. Its form, like the form of the universe, is imaginative, tentative, elliptical. The few poets and hermeneuts that were able to penetrate into these obscure connections did manage to evolve the collective understanding of these cosmic divinities, and today, one hardly sees anymore a fundamental reliance upon the constellar sources, which have taken on a concrete, terrestrial "life" in the mūrtis, the arca-vigrahās. But does not the divorcing of Earth and Sky also signal a divorcing of man from the historical? Is deity worship today a kind of amnesia? 

Applied Archeoastronomy: Prajāpati's Tears, The Horse, and Brāhmaṇic Hermeneutics (or, a Reply to Michael Witzel's "Magical Thinking" Essay)

"Students of the history of ideas are often preoccupied exclusively with the tracing of connections between ideas. This approach is too narrow and does not allow for the proper appreciation of some of the most influential men. A good deal of history, and of the history of ideas, too, consists in the untiring efforts of posterity to do justice to some individuum ineffabile (to use a phrase of Goethe’s). Socrates and Jesus, Napoleon and Lincoln are cases in point. So is Goethe." 

Walter Kaufmann: From Shakespeare to Existentialism

This short opening passage in Kaufmann's essay on Goethe and the History of Ideas is profoundly significant in further advancing our enquiry into the nature of the problem of traditional historiology in India. Indians are very often quick to trace various historical connections from Europe to India; they may do this by pointing to the "Arabic numerals", the Number Zero (śūnya), to early calculations of pi (π), or various forms of astronomical and mathematical genius, and so forth. This intellectual "heritage" of Indian literary culture remains in some sense valuable to historians today, but does little to enhance the basic existential condition of Indians living in an economically depressed, densely populated state.
If the history of ideas—or, if we can say, in the same breath, the idea of history—is to break free from a mere fossil record of past events, and is rather to become a living practice of enhancing the dignity of existence, then it must be admitted that Indian literature needs to be investigated with the partial aim of breaking away from the ossification of thought—to wit, from the uncritical thoughtlessness of super-stitions. Such a radical or critical take on Indian literature has already been initiated by the Western Academy and is well underway yet, to my reading, it has stalled out, or rather, has advanced in such a way that the meaning of the most ancient of these works has remained deeply obscured for those whose significance it intersects closest with (i.e., "Hindus"), and thus, the history of Indian literature—again, meaning in the same breath, the literature of Indian history— itself has gotten, to some extent, lost in the rhetoric of skeptical reconstructive efforts which fail to take the pursuit of the meaning of these texts with adequate sensitivity to the worldview related therein. This can only result in the further perpetuation—and indeed, ossification—of misunderstanding. 

How is it that Indian literature has lost its historical (or should we say, aitihāsika) voice? Why does the Western academy still for the most part disregard all classical Sanskrit historiography as specious and unreliable in its own right (cf., Pollack, Sheldon. Mīmāṁsā and the Problem of History in India)? More importantly, in our Postcolonial phase of Indological studies, can this situation finally be rectified? Certainly there are elements in the classical historiography of South Asia which present complications, elements of mysticism so seamlessly blended in with terrestrial events that one finds it naturally quite difficult to tell where one starts, and where the other ends. But if we were to have, at the very least, a consistent sense of the domains of being to which we could ascribe our narrative structures, or rather, if we might take the ontology of Indian literature as critical post-sign, pointing us to these domains, then we are well on our way toward disclosing the presence of data which indicate a discernible concrete sensibility in the classical works. Securing the elements of these domains are not light work, but depart from the enigmatic condition which generated the existential concerns to compose these ritual works in the first place. 

We are told that Vedic literature is, at its core, sacrificial, meaning, putatively—a concern with ritual activities bent on magically giving rise to desired fruits, or karma-phala. The early parts of the Vedic canon are for this reason often described as karma-kaṇḍa, or the "division of action", ritual action, to be precise. Yet the bases of the engine of sacrifice is to a large extent not given enough attention—at least, insofar as these bases constitute the original metaphysical  threads upon which the whole efficacy of the ritual was conceived to rely. Brian K. Smith, In his work, Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion, has spoken of jāmi ("family relation"; cf., Wittgensteinian notions of "family resemblance") as a critical thread for ritual efficacy, and certainly, this element does play into the larger picture of Vedic ritual. Yet, there are other components whose hitherto underestimated contributions have prevented scholars of Vedic materials from clarifying such works as the Brāhmaṇa texts. Even Michael Witzel, one of the world's premier Indologists, admits to a number of obscure passages for which he is unable to find a completely sensible meaning. Witzel provides us one such example from the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa:

'The horse is connected with Prajāpati'; 'The horse is connected with the waters'; 'The horse (aśva) has 'tear' (aśru) as its secret name'." 

Witzel is perplexed by the meaning of these "connections", as he states:

"When coming across the sentence 'The horse is connected with the waters', this seems to be an unintelligible statement as many of the equations referred to above. As far as I can see, no relevant noem, no important concept of our encyclopedic knowledge connects 'horse' with 'water'." Now, in essence, I do think that he has hit upon the right sensibility, as when he quotes: " "The gods love the hidden, the non-apparent" (parokṣapriyā hi devāḥ)" Yet I think he goes awry when he then considers this hiddenness to consist merely in the similarity of sounds. "aśva 'horse' is aśru 'tear' because they share, as in the earlier example of dakṣiṇā = dakṣiṇaḥ, a similarity in sound."

Of course, it may be that this "symphony" matters, in the sense of jāmi, i.e., the sounds being neither identical nor entirely different, but just "similar". Yet there are other elements that we wish to weigh in here. 

Witzel recalls the following myth to connect the horse with Prajāpati:

"This still leaves the relationship of the horse and Prajāpati unaccounted for. The solution, once luckily found in the texts themselves, is a rather simple one: A myth is related: 'Prajāpati (the lord of creation) wept. His tear fell down. Out of this, the horse developed. It neighed. It let some dung fall down, turned around, and sniffed at it' (- a good observation of the boundary marking habits of horses). Probably, this story would be remembered by a Vedic Indian if he were to explain the relationship of the three sentences about the horse mentioned before. The myth unifies these statements: The horse is related to Prajāpati, it is of Prajāpati- nature (prājāpatya) because it developed from his tear; it is related to the waters as it was born from salty water, from Prajāpati's tear. As it happens, both 'horse' and 'tear' sound similar in Sanskrit: therefore the hidden, secret name of 'horse' can be 'tear'."

Now, at this point, Witzel's explanation falls entirely to referring the meaning of one passage to another. And in this, we do find some sensibility. But we haven't discovered as yet anything which makes it feel compelling. I mean only to add this additional ingredient. Witzel himself admits that this explanation isn't really compelling but still appears as if a fabrication: "The problem is whether this explanation really answers the question posed by these three sentences. The myth which unifies them looks more like a fabrication in the fashion of the other varified tales about Prajāpati, which always come in handy as explanations, (cf. also H.-P. Schmidt 1979 p. 278). One could even suspect that the myth had been created because of the similarity of the two words denoting 'horse' and 'tear'." While Witzel leans on a rather phonological, noematic explanation, we have discovered an "missing link" of sorts, a hermeneutical cypher which signals the associations in more compelling terms. The problem again is that there is nothing very compelling about the noematic explanation; we, so far, don't feel that the Brāhmaṇas make any sense, even if they are apparently self-referential. It seems vaguely possible that Witzel's explanation is correct, but we simply don't have any motive that compels us to regard this as a good or plausible explanation. The phenomenality of the whole comparison seems more or less still lacking. 

But in fact, there is one domain in which this connection drawn between a "horse" and "the waters" seems to us almost strikingly plausible. For this, we need only look to the ancient obsession with Uranography.  In order to signal the somewhat idiomatic style with which the Ancient Vedic Brāhmaṇas undertook this practice, I coin the term, "Varuṇography," on the strength of Dumezile's Ouranos-Varuna essay. Among the earliest ontologies in the Vedas gives us the basic divisions of bhūḥ, bhuvas, and svar, or "Earth", "Atmosphere," and "Heaven". Sky, has been divided into two divisions, one seen during the day, one seen at night. Svar is "higher than" bhuvas, the atmosphere. And it is in the Svar, the heavens, that the devas, the divinities live. This alone already suggests that very many of the Vedic and Hindu deities (if not all of them) are directly associated with constellations. The work and method of determining these associations, I term as Varuṇology.  

It needs to be underscored that the methods I employ are a little bit elusive to the "uninitiated". It will not always be obvious where best to start, not least, because every postulate I will make here relies in turn upon yet other postulates which are not immediately self-evident. It is rather in the coherence of these postulates that I find the strongest form of evidence for the overall truth. No postulate here will stand on its own ground, but in every case, must be seen in light of the other postulates. Each postulate, moreover, is but one of several competing postulates, so that the identity of a given "connection" (to use Witzel's language) is not to be taken as total or exhaustive of the possible identifications. That one constellation is identified in a particular way in one passage in no way prevents that same constellation from taking on a whole new identity, even sometimes within the same narrative. Sometimes, constellation may play two or more roles so that it will seem as if talking to itself!  Hence, one finds that the rational process for securing the most plausible sensibility of the Brāhmaṇas' esoteric connections requires a bit of conceptual meandering, sometimes from one narrative to another, sometimes from one constellation to another, sometimes from one concept to another. We will, of necessity, short-cut some of this, and so, it may appear to our reader, for a time, that some of our putative postulates go inadequately substantiated. We beg the reader's patience in this regard, as we do have evidence which will become apparent in due course to those who are adequately familiar with Uranography, but which will require the reader to take up the study of these constellations as a crucial part of understanding the rationality of the "system". 

With that in mind, let us now turn to the constellations which, to my reading, provide us the most plausible lead for rendering sensible Witzel's own chosen example of "magical thinking" in the Vedas:

Of immediate significance are three constellations: Cygnus, Pegasus, and Equuleus. These three form a crucial trace of the original sense of this earstwise enigmatic passage from the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa. Here we see that they are in close conjunction. Moreover, these three constellations rest in a portion of the sky known to antiquity as the "Deluge". We will not concern ourselves immediately with the original cause of such a name, but will only indicate the immediate symbolic sense of the term; this very large region of the sky is populated with constellations that are of an aquatic character. Among the "aquatic" constellations, there are, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Cygnus, Delphinus, and others. The earliest historical origins of such identifications for these constellations are to myself still a mystery, but they do make clear one possible meaning of "the waters" in Witzel's example (note also that "Winter" is derived from an older term meaning the "Waters", given that the Sun inhabits this part of the sky during the Northern Winter). This becomes more evident when we note that Equuleus' head is "alligned" with two prominent stars in Cygnus. This alignment provides us with one possible sense of "tear", for if we take these two stars in Cygnus—namely, Sadr (Sindhi for "heart") and η (pronounced "eta") Cyg—as "eyes" of Prajāpati, then certainly there are two traceable lines which form the "sides" of the "tear" by falling in a straight line from these eyes.  

Moreover, this image might suggest that Prajāpati gave birth to this Deluge with his own tears! We have elsewhere (forthcoming) made note of over 80 elements of convergence which collectively signal the identification of Prajāpati-Brahmā-deva with Cygnus. We will here mention just a few prominent indicators, which stand more well on their own, and so do not require further tracing to other postulates. For one, Brahmā is said to have a Swan vehicle (haṁsa). Another important signal, Brahmā is said to have four heads (catur-mukha) which correlates well with the four branches of Cygnus, generally drawn in a cross-like figure. Further, Cygnus is superimposed upon the core of the Milky Way Galaxy, suggesting its identification of the celestial Ganges, which is said to usher from Satya-loka, Brahmā's heavenly abode. The Astronomer, Raghava Rao, has also made this particular identification of the celestial Ganges. There are many other such postulates which further strengthen this single identification of Prajāpati-Brahmā with Cygnus, but many of them require delving into very complicated semiotic systems, so I will avoid entering further into that matter just at present. 

There is another interesting connection to consider here, in relation to Pegasus. It is notable that Pegasus is "upside down", a strange formation which occasionally catches the attention of archeoastronomers (this same curiosity is found in the constellation of Hercules, for example). If this was the product of an inversion in prehistory, we might expect what is now taken to be Pegasus' front as rather his behind! And this would further strengthen our reading of the "horse-head = Prajāpati-tears = horse-dung = Equuleus" thesis. Let us recall the brief myth which Witzel relates: "Prajāpati (the lord of creation) wept. His tear fell down. Out of this, the horse developed. It neighed. It let some dung fall down, turned around, and sniffed at it' " Note that the horse defecates, and then turns around to sniff it! Here, we see the Brāhmaṇa attempting to describe how it is that the Horse is upside down! Thus, this upside-down horse, Pegasus, indeed is quite old!

Now, if I were to be required to proved the identity of any of these mythic elements, without drawing evidence from other mythic elements, I would be left with a much more difficult—nay, impossible, task. But we do see here, a sensible, compelling reading of these Brāhmaṇa passages relating the horse to the tears of a creator God, and to horse dung.

Indeed, I will go so far as to argue that astronomical information is very frequently embedded in the passages of the Brāhmaṇas. When these elements are all taken together and identified, we will find that the texts are not as obscure or difficult to interpret as they were previously. Simply by attending to the question of the domain we are to investigate, Svar, we know where to look for further phenomenal data. This has the potential to constitute a paradigm shift for interpreting the semiotics of the Brāhmaṇa texts. How much more is in these works which we have hitherto failed to recognize in its phenomenal originality, only because we lacked the right sort of hermeneutic sensitivity, and were unable to previously determine the primary domain of inquiry, i.e., comparative archeoastronomy? 

A comparative archeoastronomy is thus greatly in need here. My research into this domain indicates that a treasure-trove of narrative tropes may be traced to astronomical—or rather, astrotheological—conversations held between various civilizations in hoary antiquity: elements which today survive in Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and Norse astronomical narratives apparently pervade the Vedic works. Thus, close attention to comparative constructions can still greatly advance our collective awareness of the sense and meaning of the Vedic hymns, and may for the first time, hone the precision with which these hymns can be dated, using nothing more than semiotic evidence. In the end, this may prove one of the most precise ways to date the hymns of the Vedic Saṁhitās; if the ancient ṛṣis were being attentive to the general problem of describing the positions of the stars in the sky, perhaps they left us crucial clues to the historical origins of a calendar embodied in the sacrificial act. Did they acknowledge the ancient pole-stars? Which? With what hymns did they adorn them? Indeed, these being the "high-est" or "North-most" (ut-tama), can we say that the ancients, even prior to Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190BCE - 120 BCE), were able to understand the nature of axial precession? To determine this, we would need to be reasonably certain of the relationship drawn between the polestars and the yugas. And to do this, we would need to know the celestial who's-who of the Vedas. Here, we have managed to enhance the identification of Prajāpati with Cygnus, as well as Ucchaiḥśravas with Pegasus/Equuleus.
But this project ultimately rests upon the prior identification of hundreds of personas, objects, and narratives in the Vedic canon. Slowly, slowly, the Vedic world is resolving its identifications. Slowly, slowly, it is becoming evident why Viṣṇu, Brahmā, and Śiva "ascended" to the height of Monotheistic importance. Pandora's Box is opened, and there is no undoing what has become evident. What then can we say for the future of Astrotheology—to wit, the future of Hinduism? Time alone may tell. 

Bibliography:

Dumezile, Georges. Ouranos-Varuna: Essai de mythologie comparée indo-euroéene, 1932.

Kaufmann, Walter.  From Shakespeare to Existentialism. Princeton University Press, 1980.

Pollack, Sheldon. Mīmāṁsā and the Problem of History in India, Journal of Oriental Studies, 1989.

Raghava Rao, Gobburi Venkatananda. Scripture of the Heavens, Potti Sree Ramulu Telugu University, 1997.

Smith, Brian K. Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion. Oxford University Press, 1989.

Witzel, Michael. On Magical Thought in the Veda. 1979.

Author Unknown. Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa.