Bhairava's Royal Brahmanicide - Elizabeth-Chalier

Visuvalingam

Bhairava, terrifying aspect of Siva, is the god of transgression par excellence, for he appears only to
cut off the fifth head of Brahmā, Brahmanicide being the most heinous crime in the Hindu tradition.
Yet Bhairava's example was ritually imitated by the gruesome Kāpālika ascetics, who still have their
successors in the modem Aghoris and Nāths, who have greatly contributed to the spread of his cult.
To this day, there are isolated reports in the newspapers of human sacrifices being offered to such
terrifying divinities as Bhairava and his female consort Bhairavi for the attainment of magical powers;
and the undying force of the imagery surrounding them in the Hindu psyche is testified to by its vivid
exploitation in contemporary cinema. In Nepal, as in Bali, he is identified with the bloody epic hero
Bhīmasena, whose acts of sacrificial slaughter are given a tantric interpretation, while his wife
Draupadl is identified with Bhairavi, and their joint cult is very popular among the Newars.

Unlike most other Hindu divinities he enjoys a folk cult that extends to various tribal communities on
the periphery of or even beyond the Hindu cultural universe, and has conversely been instrumental in
the "Hinduization" of bloody tribal divinities. At the same time, in his eightfold manifestation he also
presides, either alone or paired as consort with the eight mother goddesses, over the spatio-ritual
organization of sacred cities like Vārānasl. In this centre of Hindu culture, Bhairava reigns as the
policeman-magistrate (kotwāl), to whom pilgrims swarming in from the furthest reaches of the
subcontinent must necessarily pay obeisance. In Nepal he is practically the national god of many
festivals, so much so that Akāsh Bhairab has been adopted as the emblem of the Royal Nepali
Airlines, and the spatio-ritual organization, although modelled on ancient Kāśī, is far better preserved
in Bhaktapur. He plays a central role during Dasain not only in the Nava Durgā dances, which
dynamically reintegrate the socio-religious community in its spatial extension, particularly in Hindu
Bhaktapur, but also in Buddhist Patan, where the Astamatrkā dance is performed in more pacific
fashion by young Śākya (Buddhist) boys. Though historically a late divinity, he plays a central role in
cosmogonic New Year festivals deriving from an archaic Vedic model, like the Indra-Jātrā of
Kathmandu, and he appears as the axis mundi or primordial world-pillar in the Bisket Jātrā of
Bhatkapur. In one such festival, the Nuwakot Bhairavi Rath Jātrā, he incarnates himself for the sake
of the community and its renewal in the hereditary function of the dhami, through whom he
participates in bloody rites culminating in oracles before the king's representative for the whole of
Nepal. Not only was he worshipped by dynasties of kings and is himself attributed royal traits or
identified with the Hindu king, but his very Brahmanicide is only a legacy of the king of gods, Indra's
decapitation of his royal chaplain (purohita) Viśvarūpa. In the Kathmandu festival of Pachali Bhairab,
he incarnates himself in an impure low caste dancer once every twelve years to renew the power of
the king's sword by ritually exchanging his own sword with the latter. His cult is officiated not only by
the semi-Untouchable Kusle house-holders, the successors of the Kāpālikas, but also by the
Brahman Buddhist tantrics called Vajrācāryas, the priestly elite of the Buddhist half of the Newar
caste society. He has even been adopted by the esoteric currents of Tibetan tantrism and his
anthropomorphic images have iconographically and functionally much in common with the Buddhist
Samvara, Mahākāla, and Yamāntaka.

Yamantaka

In Jain temples of Vārānasl, Ujjain and Rajasthan, he is sometimes simply called "guardian of
territorial limits" (ksetrapâla) or given a new name, Mānabhadra/Manibhadra. Most popular in
Rajasthan is the Jaina Nakoda Bhairava who, by drawing Hindu and Jaina pilgrims from all over the
state, overshadows even the principal shrine of Pārśva-nātha. There are Jaina tantric texts, like the
Bhairavapadmāvatīkalpa (1047 A.D.) of Mallisena (Mysore), dealing with transgressive Bhairava-type
rituals of black magic, which need to be reconciled with the exaggerated role of ascetic self-denial and
non-violence in Jaina orthodoxy. With Mahānātha for her Bhairava, the Hindu Pūrneśvari also
received Jaina worship and the ritual founding of her pitha is described in the Śrīpadmāvatīpūjana, a
Śākta treatise.

Bhairava is the typical ksetrapāla for the more socio-centrally located pure divinities like Viśvanātha
in Kāśi, and also functions as the doorkeeper (dvārapāla) at the temples of such divinities.

'The god of the great temple of pilgrimage is—whatever be his name and his myth—the pure god,
withdrawn into himself, the god of ultimate salvation. His most "terrible" forms are besides considered
at the limit to be not proper for the cult, because dangerous even for the devotees. They are relegated
to the most inaccessible sites, surrounded with all kinds of taboos, pacified with appropriate offerings.
... In short, even though the god is the master of the universe of which the temple is the centre, he
does not have hic et nunc a direct function of protector. This is delegated to an inferior god, Bhairava
being the protector of territory—ksetrapāla—in his classic form. The principal sanctuary does not
pretend to represent the god in his supreme form—contra- dictio in terminis—but suggests to the
maximum his renunciate nature as the final reason of the world"; M. Biardeau, L'Hindouisme:
Anthropologie d'une Civilization (Paris: Flammarion, 1981),

Yet there is not only a constant "confusion," if not identification, between the pure central divinity and
his impure peripheral bodyguard, but even the Vaisnava jagannātha of Puri reveals himself, in the
Śākta interpretation of his rājapurohitas, to be still Bhairava when he unites with Bhairavi in the form
of the devadāsī. F. A. Marglin, Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadāsis of Puri (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1985), 197. While reporting on the secret Kaula (Bhairava-) cakrapūjā being
performed in the Jagannātha temple, Marglin (p. 218) refers to the rumors of a secret underground
chamber located beneath the inner sanctum, pointing out parallels of cakrapūjās being performed
below the sanctum elsewhere (p. 328, n. 4); there is one, now in disuse, in the Banaras Aghori
ashram. During our pilgrimage (June 1985) to Badrīnāth, the Rāwal himself confirmed that there was
a “bhairavī-cakra" beneath the main image, and J. C. Galey informs me (oral communication, Feb.
1986) that formerly the king used to ride to battle wearing the arm-band of Bhairava supposedly kept
beneath the image of Badrīnāth. Such facts only serve to reinforce my earlier solution to the riddle
"Bhairava: Policeman, Criminal or Supreme Divinity of Transgression?" (Kotwāl, 257-9) that Bhairava
is indeed the ultimate form of Viśvanāth. This article aims to demonstrate this from the perspective of
transgressive sacrificial embryogony.

Although his public worship in the Indian temples is nowadays conducted in a purely innocuous
Brahmanical mode, his major temple festival of Bhairavāstamī is wholly derived from the
Brahmanicide myth, all of whose symbolism is strikingly retained in his iconography. There are three
basic iconographie representations of Bhairava which derive from this myth.
 Brahmaśiraśchedaka

As Brahmaśiraśchedaka he grasps by its hair the severed head whose dripping blood is greedily
lapped up by his dog. As Kañkālamūrti he is shown spearing a man or already bearing the latter's
corpse (or skeleton) on his shoulder. In both cases, he is either naked or wearing a tiger or elephant
skin, a garland of human skulls, snakes around his neck and arms, and is grotesque with dark-skin
and monstrous fangs.
 Kankalamurti

Third, as the milder Bhiksātana-mūrti he roams begging for alms (from the wives of the Seven Sages
in the Daru forest).
His vehicle, the dog, with whom he is himself also identified, is the impurest creature of the Hindu
bestiary.
 Bhiksatana

The Jūnā or "Old" Regiment of the militant Dasanāmi Nāga Samnyāsins, supposedly organized by
Śamkarācārya, is also called the Bhairava Akhādā and its tutelary deity, though presently Dattātreya,
was originally Bhairava. Most of their Madhis or sub-units (matha = "monastery") are named after
some "-nāth," like Aghor-, Sahaj-, Rudra- nāth and, as is also the case for the Kānphatās, the most
important thing in the Jūnā Akhādā, some of whose Nāgas (the Gūdads) also wear ear-rings, is the
dhuni (continuous fire). Their evident links with the Nāths, from whom they are outwardly often
indistinguishable, have prompted suggestions that these Dasanāmis were originally Kāpālikas
converted by Śamkara.

The tendency to interpret such phenomena evolutionistically as pointing to Nātha origins, however
justified, must be balanced by the observation that among the Dasanāmi Nāgas, "there are Siddhas,
that is those that have attained supernatural powers, who are always designated Nāths." As in the
case of the relations between the Rudra-Pāśupatas and the Bhairava-Kāpālikas, also called
Mahāpāśupatas, the historical perspective must itself be replaced within a structural approach to the
pantheon and cult system. Apart from the branch Akhādā in Haridwar with its central temple of
Ananda Bhairava, the principal headquarters, which is in Vārānasī, also houses one of the
astabhairavas, the Ruru or "Dog" Bhairava at Hanumān Ghāt.

Ruru Bhairava

Most significant of all, he has been adopted by the Kashmir Śaiva theoreticians, most of them
Brahmans, as the supermost expression of the Divine, symbol of a reality more ultimate than even the
Brahman of Śamkara. Abhinavagupta, the greatest among them, who has provided us the most
synthetic perception we have of Brahmanicalculture, goes so far as to exultantly identify himself with
this terrifying Brahmanicide, even tribal, Bhairava. - "O Death (= Time)! do not cast thy gaze most
terrible with anger on me; (for) steadfast in the service of Sankara and ever meditating on him,
I am the terrifying power of Bhairava!" It is impossible to do justice to all these diverse and often
apparently conflicting aspects of Bhairava within the limits of the present paper. Instead I will
concentrate on demonstrating, primarily through an analysis of his origin myth, the ideology of
transgressive sacrality that forms the very essence of the conception of Bhairava.

A. The Origin Myth of the Brahmanicide Bhairava

Brahmā and Visnu were disputing with each other for the status of supreme God and appealed to the
testimony of the four Vedas, which unanimously proclaimed Rudra-Śiva as the Ultimate Truth of the
Universe. But the disputants were unable to accept that Rudra, endowed with so many revolting
symbols of impurity and degradation, could be identical with the Absolute Reality of Brahman. Brahmā
laughed scornfully: "How could the Brahman, free of all attachment, lustily sport with his wife in the
company of his troops of deformed churn-goblins (pramatha)?" Rudra's supremacy, however, was
finally reconfirmed by the esoteric sound-syllable, Omkāra, quintessence of the Veda and most
condensed symbol of Brahman, who pointed out that Siva's wife is not adventitious to her husband
but, on the contrary, embodies his own blissful essence. Despite its general associations with ritual
purity, the formless Omkara, who assumes (human) form to laughingly reconfirm the eternal sexual
biunity (mithuna) or twin (yamala) nature of śiva, is itself already identified as a Mithuna (sexed
couple) in Chūndogya Upanisad (1.1.6). The conceptions of mithuna and yāmala are indissociable in
tantric doctrine and practice as attested to particularly by the Yāmala group of Tantras, subdivided
into Brahma-, Rudra-, Jayadratha- and other Yāmalas. "Internal evidence suggests that the Yāmalas
were produced by circles which developed a tendency towards Śāktism. P. Ch. Bagchi—perhaps
exaggeratedly—credits the authors of the Yāmalas—by tradition they were the eight Bhairavas,
manifestations of Siva—with some important new developments, among which are the Śākta
orientation and the rendering accessible of their sādhanā to non-Brahmans"

Just then an immense pillar of flame manifested itself in their midst, within which was recognized the
towering figure of the three-eyed Rudra bearing his trident, serpents, and crescent moon. But the fifth
head of Brahmā taunted him: "I know who you are, Rudra, whom I created from my forehead. Take
refuge with me and I will protect you, my son!"

Bhairava and Brahma's Fifth Head

Overflowing with anger, Siva created a blazing Bhairava in human form, addressing this Kālabhairava
as "Lord of Time-Death" (Kāla) for he shone like the god of Death: "You are called Bhairava because
you are of terrifying features and are capable of supporting the universe. You are called Kāla-
Bhairava, for even Time-Death is terrified of you." He ordered him to chastise Brahmā, promising him
in return eternal suzerainty over his city of Kāśī (Vārānasī), the cremation ground of the Hindu
universe, where final emancipation is assured. In a trice, Bhairava ripped off Brahmā's guilty head
with the nail of his left thumb. Seeing this, the terrified Visnu eulogized Siva and devotedly recited his
sacred hymns, followed in this by the repentant Brahmā. Thereby they gained his protection by
realizing and acknowledging the supreme reality of Śiva. The severed head immediately stuck to
Bhairava's hand, where it remained in the form of the skull, destined to serve as his insatiable begging
bowl. Enjoining him to honour Visnu and Brahmā, Śiva then directed Bhairava to roam the world in
this beggarly condition to atone for the sin of Brahmanicide. "Show to the world the rite of expiation for
removing the sin of Brahmanicide. Beg for alms by resorting to the penitential rite of the skull
(kapālavrata)." Creating a maiden renowned as "Brahmanicide" (brahmahatyā), Śiva instructed her to
relentlessly follow Bhairava everywhere until he reached the holy city of Kāśī to which she would have
no access.

Bhiksatana

Observing the Kāpālika rite with skull in hand and pursued by the terrible Brahmahatyā, Bhairava
sported freely, laughing, singing, and dancing with the pramathas. Stealing more than the hearts of all
women, even the chaste wives of the Seven Vedic Sages (saptarsi) as he passed through the Daru
forest, the erotic ascetic arrived at Visnu's door to seek redemption only to find his entry barred by the
guard, Visvaksena. Spearing the latter and heaving the corpse of this Brahman on his shoulder, he
pressed before Visnu with outstretched begging bowl. Visnu split his forehead vein but the outflowing
blood, the only suitable offering, could not fill the skull though it flowed for aeons. When Visnu then
tried to dissuade Brahmahatyā from tormenting Bhairava, the criminal observed that "beggars are not
intoxicated by the alms they receive as (are others) by drinking the wine of worldly honor." Visnu
venerated him as the Supreme Being, untainted by sins like Brahmanicide, and acknowledged that
his dependence and degradation were a mere fancy. Before leaving joyously to beg elsewhere,
Bhairava reciprocated by recognizing Visnu as his foremost disciple and acknowledged the latter's
status as "grantor of boons to all the gods." On arriving at Kāśi, Brahmahatyā sank into the
netherworld, and the holy ground on which the skull fell, freeing Bhairava from his Brahmanicide,
came to be known as Kapālamocana. It was on the eighth day (astamī) in the dark (waning moon)
half of the month of Mārgaśirsa that Lord Śiva manifested as Bhairava. Ever since, by performing
ablution at Kapālamocana one is rid of even the worst sin of brahmahatyā; and whosoever fasts on
this day (Bhairavāstami) in front of Kāla- bhairava (temple at Kāśi) and stays awake at night is freed
from great sins.

In the Tamil transposition of the sacred geography of Śaiva mythology, the fiery liñga appeared in the
temple city of Tiruvannāmalai to become the sacred red mountain of Arunācala, which ritually reverts
to its original form during the Kārttika festival when a blazing fire is lit on its summit. The
Lingodbhavamūrti is generally depicted on the western face of the external face of the sanctum of
Tamil Śaiva temples, with the boar Visnu attempting to fathom its depths and the swan Brahmā
aspiring likewise in vain after its summit. In the Kāñcimāhātmya, Bhairava spears the demon Antaka
("Death"), who was besieging Kailāsa, and fixes his lance on the ground on arriving at Kāñci in order
to remove Antaka. It formed a pit filled with water, Sūlatirtha, where the ceremonies for ancestors are
performed on new or full moon days. Bhairava lets Antaka perform ablutions at the Śiva-Gañgā tank
before granting him salvation and Antaka disappears into the Antakeśa liñga he had erected and
adored. Bhairava likewise removes Visvaksena from his lance and returns him to Visnu, before being
appointed by Siva as the guardian of Kāñci, distributing the blood of the skull to all his ganas. The
Tamil Bhairava is released from his skull at Tirukantiyūr, "holy site of the (head-) cutting," where the
temple of "the Lord of Brahmā's decapitation" (Brahmaśirakhandīśvara), in which Brahmā and
Sarasvatl are worshipped beside Siva, refers to Siva-Liñgodbhavamūrti in this context as
"Annāmalaiyār." The apparently later temple of "Visnu as liberator of Siva (-Kapālin) from his curse"
(Haraśāpavimocana- perumāl), with its own Vaisnava version of the Brahmanicide myth, claims that,
having released Brahmā's greedy skull at Kapālapuskarinī (lotus pond) behind the temple by enticing
it with "blood" (i.e., turmeric mixed with lime) rice, Visnu directed the kapāla to Kāśī where its
insatiable hunger would be satisfied by offerings of Nārāyana-bali (performed especially for those who
die at an inauspicious moment, pañcaka).
 Kapalamocana Tirtha

The original Kāla Bhairava temple was located on the banks of the Kapālamocana Tirtha itself, in the
Omkāreśvara area north of Maidāgin, where Bhairava remained as the "Sin-Eater" (Pāpabhaksana)
par excellence to devour the accumulated sins of devotees and pilgrims. If the pilgrims to Kāśī do not
fear death there, this would be because their pilgrimage to the Mahāśmaśāna is conceived on the
ritual model of Bhairava's own arrival at Kāśī for absolution from his terrible sin and his subsequent
establishment there. The paradox of Bhairava's scapegoat function even after his "purification" can be
explained as a "lawful irregularity" resulting from the two opposing valorizations, diachronically
disjoined in the myth, of his transgressive essence; it matches the complementary paradox of the
pure Kāśi-Viśvanātha himself being identified esoterically with the impure criminal Bhairava.

B. The "Supreme Penance" of the Criminal Kāpālika-

Bhairava
Bhairava's twelve-year wandering as a beggar, bearing Brahmā's skull as public testimony to his
crime and begging from the seven houses of the Seven Sages in the Daru forest, all of these and
other traits, like his exclusion from settlements and inhabiting the cremation grounds, correspond
exactly to the prescribed punishment for Brahmanicide in the Brahmanical law books. But whereas in
Hindu society such Brahmanicides, even if themselves Brahmans, were treated as horrible outcastes
and considered wholly degraded, Bhairava is exalted in the myth as the supreme divinity by Brahmā
and Visnu, the latter even recognizing that he remains untainted by the sin of Brahmanicide. Although
the punishment of Bhairava corresponds perfectly to the norms of Brahmanical orthodoxy, his
simultaneous exaltation corresponds rather to the doctrines and practices of the Kāpālika ascetics,
who took the Brahmanical Bhairava for their divine archetype. Even when themselves not originally
Brahmanicides, these Kāpālikas performed the Mahāvrata or Great Penance bearing the skull-bowl
and skull- staff (khatvāñga) of a Brahman in order to attain the blissful state of spiritual liberation and
lordship (aiśvarya) that confers the eightfold magical powers. Theirs was the "Doctrine of Soma" and,
although the term is reinterpreted to suit the later sex-rites of the Tantras, it still retains the central
Vedic reference to bodily sexual fluids and their spiritual transformation. The Kāpālikas experienced
the spiritual bliss of Bhairava in the felicity of sexual union induced and enhanced by the partaking of
meat and wine.
Cast in the image of his sex partner (Bhairavī), the maiden Brahma-hatyā appears in all her
ambiguity, as both his supreme punishment and his sole means of beatification, and imposes a
causal connection between the two opposed meanings. The obvious explanation is that the sense of
honour and self-respect is the greatest obstacle to spiritual realization, so that the Kāpālika's social
and moral degradation itself assures his complete surrender to his transcendental aim (Lorenzen, p.
77). But why Brahmanicide? Whereas Bhairava is presented in the myth as undertaking the kāpālika
vow as punishment in order to expiate his Brahmanicide, the Kāpālikas in pursuit of their supreme
penance have always been associated with human sacrifices (Lorenzen, pp. 85-7). Right from Vedic
times, the theory of sacrifice presupposes that the consecrated victim should be defectless, pure and
auspicious, and that with the ideal victim being a Brahman, Brahmanicide, or whatever it symbolizes,
would itself be productive of great power. The purifications that the sacrificer had to undergo after the
sacrifice moreover resembled the expiation of the criminal, and the dïksita was in fact equated to a
Brahmanicide. But the sacrificial mechanisms revolved around the identification of the sacrificer, the
victim and the divinity, and ultimately offered the sacrificer the means of sacrificing himself to the
divinity, but through the mediation of the victim with whom he was symbolically identified. The
Kāpālikas' practice of sacrificing their own flesh and blood as oblations probably carries the notion of
self-sacrifice to its logical conclusions.

The Brahman in Hindu society conserves his Brahmanhood only through the observance of a
multitude of interdictions intended to maintain and accumulate his ritual purity. Not only the other
great sins (mahāpātaka) of incest, stealing a Brahman's gold, drinking wine and associating with such
an offender, but any, even trivial transgression, voluntary or involuntary, of the norms of ritual purity is
assimilated by the legal codes themselves to a "Brahmanicide." Thus the utilization of the left (impure)
instead of the right (pure) hand during the ritual procedures of eating, dropping of hair or fingernails
into one's food, splashing of saliva (Bhairava is sometimes described as "drooling-tongued" lalajjihva),
intercourse with low caste women, and so on, are all productive of "Brahmanicide." That the
decapitation also symbolizes the reversal of Brahmanical purity and the disguised valorization of ritual
impurity is confirmed by Bhairava's execution of this transgressive act par excellence with his left
thumb-nail, a trivial detail otherwise unduly emphasized in the myth. If Bhairava could have been so
widely adopted with all his Kāpālika attributes by other left hand currents of Tantrism like the Kaulas
and later Nāths, who, however, did not imitate the Kāpālika model literally, this would be due to the
wider application of the Brahmanicide image to their own transgressive exploitation of disgusting ritual
impurities in order to attain Bhairava-Consciousness. Bhairava's beheading of Brahmā's fifth head is
indeed symbolic of all manner of transgressions of the norms of classical Brahmanism and it is in this
sense that it is "symbolical for the emergence of the Tantra-influenced period in Hinduism."
(Goudriaan, Hindu Tantrism, p. 66; see n. 22).

From a sociologizing angle, it could be asserted that the five-headed Brahmā represents the fourfold
Brahma-Veda with the central fifth head transcending the ritual plane to correspond to the Brahma-
Absolute of the renunciate samnyāsins, still close to Brahmanical orthodoxy in their concern for purity
and self-control. For according to one version of this mythical corpus, Brahmā grew his four heads
because, filled with incestuous desire, he did not want to lose sight of his daughter as she performed
a ritual circumambulation of him. Then, being ashamed, he sprouted the fifth head bearing the traits of
an ascetic above the other four (Kramrisch, pp. 251-2; see n. 2). The opposition between this fifth
head born of shame and the shameless Bhairava would then be the confrontation between two
conceptions of the supreme divinity, two modes of renunciation, that of the orthodox Brahman
samnyāsin and that of the transgressive Saivite ascetic in his hedonistic exploitation of extreme
impurities. The correctness of this interpretation may be judged by the transposition of the mythical
beheading, with no alteration in the basic structure but reinforced by philosophical debate, into the
legendary accounts of the advaitin Śamkarācārya's (abortive) decapitation by the Kāpālika "Fierce"
(Ugra-) Bhairava in the textual traditions of both the opposing currents of renunciation. In both cases,
Śamkara's non-dualistic Vedāntic doctrines of the unreality of the world or of the superiority of inaction
(nonperformance of rites) is turned against its own author who, in a dilemma, is compelled to
voluntarily offer his head to Ugra-Bhairava. In the tradition of Gorakhnāth, in many ways a
deradicalized prolongation of the Kāpālika current, Ugra-Bhairava opposes Śamkara's non-dualism
with his own Absolute that is "beyond both dualism and non-dualism" and finally manifests his true
identity as the fierce god Bhairava to behead the detached propounder of the non-dual Brahman and
his four disciples; and only then, on being revived, did true detachment arise in them (Lorenzen, pp.
31-38; see n. 3).

Using text-critical philological methods, the beheading myth has also been interpreted, on a sectarian
basis and from an evolutionistic historical perspective, as reflecting the power-relation between the
members of the Hindu trinity and showing how different versions in turn exalt the status of either
Brahmā, Visnu or Rudra, depending on the Vaisnava or Śaiva character of the Purāna concerned
(Stietencron, "Bhairava," pp. 865-6; see n. 2). What matters here, however, is that the basic structure
of the episode has been retained in practically all the versions. If its intention could be reduced to a
sectarian exaltation of an extra- or even anti-Brahmanical Bhairava or the deliberate devaluation of
the Brahman, there would have been no sense in Siva instructing Bhairava to strictly conform to the
Brahmanical legal prescriptions for the expiation of Brahmanicide. The fact that Bhairava scrupulously
performs it amounts to a full valorization of the Brahman ( = Brahmā) as demanded by traditional
Hindu society. At the same time, it could not have been intended to glorify Brahmā as such, for the
latter clearly admits the supremacy of Bhairava, and even Visnu lauds him as the Supreme Reality
despite his outward appearance as a criminal beggar steeped in impurity. The real conflict is rather
between the two opposing poles of the sacred, one of interdiction incarnated in the non-violent,
chaste, truthful, pure, self-denying classical Brahman and the other of transgression represented by
the savage, impure, hedonistic Kāpālika-Bhairava who beheads this Brahman or his divinity. The
myth in its ambiguous essence reveals the ambivalent compromise between the social point of view
which must necessarily condemn Bhairava to be an outcaste heretic criminal and the esoteric
valorization of transgressive sacrality that exalts him as the supermost divinity, both precisely
because he has performed the transgression par excellence in Brahmanical society. Although
Bhairava had to publicly proclaim his crime for twelve long years before being absolved of
Brahmanicide at the sacred city of Kāśī, he was rewarded with suzerainty over this socio-religious
centre of Hinduism precisely because he had carried out the order to decapitate Brahmā's fifth head.

C. The Apollonian Visnu and the Dionysiac Bhairava:

Bhakti and Initiatic Hierarchies

Although Visnu, unlike Brahmā, is a supreme divinity of the cult of devotion (bhakti) and even of the
samnyāsin, he still participates in and prolongs the pure, conservative pole of the sacrificial order,
universalizing it in the very process of loosening its links with the material reality of the Brahmanical
sacrifice as performed by the exclusive Srotriyas specializing in its ritual technique. But unlike Visnu
and although also a supreme divinity of asceticism and bhakti, Rudra participates in and prolongs the
highly impure, violent, and dangerous element that the sacrifice sought to productively manipulate
within itself and that it assimilated to all that was destructive and menacing outside the sacrifice. This
contrast between the two gods of bhakti, in terms of their relative proximity and opposition to the pure
sacrificial order (dharma) incarnated in the classical Brahman, is very well expressed in the
Kañkālamūrti episode where it is the Brahman Visvaksena who stands at the threshold barring the
transgressive Bhairava's access to the conservative Visnu. It is by killing Visvaksena, by repeating his
Brahmanicide, that Bhairava comes face to face with Visnu, and it is evidently due to this peculiar
circumstance of their encounter that the Apollonian Visnu favours the Dionysiac Bhairava in a mode
that is more tantric, more transgressive, than socially orthodox. For blood, like saliva and fingernails,
is highly impure. The unwarranted slaying of his faithful Brahman doorkeeper does not at all perturb
Visnu, who rather rewards Bhairava in like manner for his violent transgression. In the form of the
Man-Lion Narasimha, especially popular with the esoteric Pāñcarātras, and also as the equally
tantricized Boar Varâha, Visnu does closely approach Bhairava in character, to the point of emerging
like Bhairava from the sacrificial (stake-) pillar. The myth then reveals two different, but
complementary, faces of the bhakti ideology incarnated in Visnu: an orthodox face linked to
Brahmanism and preoccupations with purity, and the other, secret, face turned towards the
transgressive valorization of impurity symbolized by Bhairava.

The same complicity seems to have existed between the Olympian Apollo and Dionysos, the god of
transgression in ancient Greece. Not only did the impulsion vivifying the Dionysiac cults come from
the Delphic Apollo, but Dionysos himself shared Delphi with Apollo to the point of sometimes
appearing to be the real master of the sanctuary, it being claimed that he even preceded Apollo there.
Similarly, Thebes has its own sanctuary of Dionysos Cadmeios and, although he presents himself as
a stranger before his own natal city, the most powerful of the Theban gods is Dionysos, with Apollo,
again his accomplice. "Apollo wanted this close liaison with his mysterious brother, because their
reigns, despite their abrupt opposition, are, however, in reality bound to each other by an eternal tie";
"the Apollonian world cannot exist without the other. That is why it has never refused it recognition"
(author's trans.). Whereas the royally munificent protector-god Visnu radiates life and prosperity
through the politico-religious order deriving from the union of the two highest castes (Biardeau,
L'Hindouisme, p. 108; see n. 12), the obscure "popular" outcaste destroyer-god Bhairava remains like
Dionysos close to the embryonic potentialities of savage nature and death (-in-life) in order to inspire
the frenzy of possession that has earned him and his adepts the enduring epithet of "Mad" or Unmatta
(-Bhairava). As executioner-cum-victim, both Bhairava and Dionysos are identified with the phallic
sacrificial post drenched in blood, and the embryogonic dimension of Bhairava's Brahmanicide is not
without parallel notations in Dionysos' birth from his dead mother, reflected also in his cult.

This comparative excursus merely points to the universality of this complementary opposition
between the interdictory and transgressive poles of the sacred which is prior to and ultimately quite
independent of the bhakti ideology. From the exoteric socio-religious point of view, Visnu is superior
to Bhairava, who is no more than the terrible policeman-god protecting the boundaries of the socio-
religious community and, as doorkeeper, the access to its temples from hostile external forces. He
preserves the socially central divinity, like Viśvanātha in Vārānasī, from any direct contact with impure
elements which are nevertheless vital for the proper functioning of the social whole. The terrifying
divinity of transgression can never become the object of public cult as such, and the only means for
him to receive communal worship is by transforming himself into the equally terrifying protector- god
for a more central pacific and benign divinity. Thus Kālabhairava's promised suzerainty over Kāśī has
been translated in reality into his being the policeman-magistrate of Lord Viśvanātha. The myth
achieves this "conversion" from criminal to kotwāl through Bhairava's purification at Kapālamocana
tīrtha at Kāśī. But if the kotwāl nevertheless remains there as the scapegoat Sin-Eater par excellence,
this is no doubt because even as the criminal Kāpālika, he had already transcended both good and
evil and always remained untainted by them. Yet the pure central Śiva-Viśvanātha of Kāśī has always
been inwardly identified by his priestly vaidika custodians with the transgressive Bhairava of the
impure marginal Kāpālika ascetics, so much so that until very recently he still received secret tantric
worship every morning (nitya- pūjā) in the right hand (daksinācāra) mode with symbolic substitutes of
the "five 'M's" (pañcamakāras: viz. meat, fish, wine, parched beans, and sexual intercourse), from the
pūjārls who used to smear themselves with ashes from the cremation ground. And human heads
were sacrificed to him in the form of pumpkins at the sacrificial stake (yūpastambha) within the
temple. During Kāla-Bhairava's birthday on Bhairavāstamī, he also used to be secretly worshipped as
the destructive Samhāra- Bhairava, and only on that day, seven different fruit and vegetable juices
were mixed together (saptarasa) to constitute nectar (amrta = Soma), with which the śivalinga was
bathed before its distribution to devotees. Depending on availability watermelons, jackfruit or coconuts
were used instead of pumpkins as substitutes for human heads. It is likely that in much earlier times
real blood sacrifices were offered in the temple itself. These secret traditions are being divulged only
because the traditional pūjāris, who have recently been dispossessed of their rights in the Viśvanātha
temple, now feel free to speak about them, especially as they also fear that these rites have been
discontinued.

This should hardly surprise us when, from the esoteric standpoint of transgressive sacrality, Visnu
himself recognizes Bhairava as the supreme divinity. Nevertheless, Bhairava himself is anxious to
"keep up the appearances," to maintain the distinction between what can be described as the exoteric
and esoteric hierarchies, for he recognizes Visnu's supremacy in the socio-religious domain in
exchange for the latter's recognition of his own metaphysical and initiatic supremacy. The collusion
between the two corresponds perfectly to the oft-repeated dictum of the Bhairavāgamas that one
should be a (Bhairava-worshipping) Kaula within, a Śaiva without, a Vaisnava in the public assembly
(sabhā), and an orthodox vaidika (Brahman) in everyday (ritual) life.

D. The Transgressive Fifth Head of Brahmā and the

Paśupata Ultimate Weapon

The sociologizing approach not only cannot account for Visnu's unorthodox reception of Bhairava but
it also fails to do full justice to the symbolic signification of the fifth head of Brahmā himself. For the
majority of versions characterize this fifth head with transgressive notations that we would rather
expect to discover in the Kaula Bhairava. There it is the fifth head, as opposed to Brahmā's normal
four, which proposed incest to his daughter, who indignantly cursed him to always speak contrarily or
bray like a donkey, whereupon the fifth head always spoke evilly and coarsely. Or once when Siva
visited, Brahmā's four heads praised him, but the fifth made an evil sound provoking Śiva to cut it off.
Because his four heads were incapable of lying, Brahmā had to sprout the fifth head in the form of a
she-ass to utter the lie that he had reached the summit of the immeasurable liñga. Elsewhere, it is
generally gluttonous and characterized by loud malicious laughter. All these traits are synonyms
insofar as they signify transgression through parallel codes like the sexual, linguistic, animal, moral,
alimentary, and aesthetic. Contrary, nonsensical or obscene speech and cacophonous sounds
universally signify transgression, and that other "Brahman par excellence" (Mahābrāhmana), the
obscene, gluttonous, laughing Vidūsaka of the Sanskrit drama, also comically reveals his hidden
transgressive function through such disfiguring speech, as his very name implies. The donkey, like
the dog, represents the impure outcaste in Vedic symbolism as is evidenced in the ritual prescription
for the Brahman-slayer to wear the skin of an ass (or dog). And when associated with Brahmā or a
Brahman, it can only signify transgression. The Vidūsaka has a voice resembling that of a donkey and
does not hesitate to swear lies by his sacred thread. Although in the Head Cutting (Śiraśchedaka)
Tantra, Brahmā's fifth head subsequently receives esoteric Tantric doctrines from his decapitator, and
the Vidūsaka himself is depicted in open collaboration with the Kaula preceptor Bhairavāvanda, the
"Case of the Severed Head was already a Vedic mystery, just as the Vidüsaka himself has been
derived from Vedic prototypes with the pre-classical initiate (dīksita) as prime model.

All this converges to show that Brahmā's fifth head itself represents a crucial dimension of
transgressive sacrality in the pre-classical Brahmanical sacrifice whose material reality was slowly
eliminated from the classical reworkings of the same. Hence Brahmā's invariable portrayal with only
four heads in classical iconography, and the occasional chaste purity of the mythical fifth head
corresponding to the purificatory function of the classical consecration (dīksā) as a preparation for the
sacrifice proper. The transgressive fifth head, however, specifically expresses the values of the pre-
classical dīksita who was charged with evil, impurity, and a dangerous sacrality during his regression
into an embryonic deathly condition before he could be reborn as a Brahman. In his incoherent,
abusive obscene speech and through many other such traits, the dīksita belonged to the same type
as the impure militant, even criminal, Vrātya-ascetic, the Vedic predecessor of later "shamanizing"
Śaiva ascetics like the Kāpālikas and (Mahā-) Pāśupatas, and it has been suggested that the human
head beneath the fire altar is a legacy of this consecrated warrior. Brahmā was originally the Vedic
Prajāpati and his beheading by Bhairava is in fact the later Hindu version of Rudra piercing his victim
Prajāpati as the latter, in the form of an antelope, was uniting incestuously with his own daughter.
Prajāpati is equated with the sacrificer (victim, and the sacrifice) and the dîksita during his embryonic
regression wears the black antelope skin conferring the brahman. On being pierced, Prajāpati or his
head became the constellation Mrgaśiras, the Antelope's Head (Orion), and so too is Bhairava's
appearance celebrated, in his temples, on the eighth day of the month of Mârgasirsa, Head of the
Antelope. The festival of Bhairavāstamī probably corresponds to the celebration of the Ekāstaka at a
time and region when the year began with the first (pratipada) lunar day of the dark fortnight of
Mārgaśīrsa, also called agrahāyana, the "commencement of the year." All these notations reinforce
the thesis that Bhairava is in many ways the transposition of the transgressive (royal) dlksita.

The magical powers that the Kāpālika seeks to attain are themselves symbolized by the Pāśupata
missile equated with the Brahmaśiras, or "Head of Brahmā," that his left hand bears in the form of the
skull bowl to justify his and Siva's appellation of Kapālin. The implication is that such powers are
unleashed by the violation of fundamental taboos symbolized here by (the decapitation of) Brahmā's
fifth head.

In the Mahābhārata, the only two heroes to wield this ultimate weapon, to be used only in the most
extreme circumstances and never against human enemies, are Arjuna-lndra, the exemplary Hindu
king, and Aśvatthāman, who got it from his father Drona-Brihaspati, the purohita (chaplain) of the
gods on earth. Preceptor to both the Pāndava-Devas and their Kaurava-Asura cousins, Drona-
Brihaspati belonged nevertheless, like his more powerful homologue śukrācārya, to the demoniac
camp, and yet remained inwardly partial to his favorite pupil, Arjuna, to whom he finally offered the
victorious trophy of his Brahman head. The magical power of transgressive rites features in the
Atharvaveda in which the purohitas specialized, and these Brahmans are credited with the formulation
and systematization of the emerging Tantric traditions, so much so that the Atharvaveda "was often
claimed as the Vedic source of the Tantric tradition and thus the earliest Tantric text 'avant la lettre"'
(Goudriaan, p. 16; cf. p. 30; see n. 22). In one Purānic myth, the Añgirasas, already called vairūpa in
Vedic times, are ridiculed for their deformity, and the likewise virūpa (deformed) Vidüsaka is often
caricatured as a purohita and pretends to magical powers.

Born of a fusion of Rudra, Anger, Lust, Death, and other terrible substances, Aśvatthāman is not only
a Brahman, but is further the only and inseparable son of Dronācārya, incarnation of Brihaspati who,
even more than Brahmā, represents the values of the brahman-priest and purohita. It is the death of
"Aśvatthāman" (the elephant) that makes Drona's decapitation possible, and the terrestrial Rudra's
final punishment for misusing the Brahmaśiras and his infanticide (bhrūna- hatyā = brahmahatyā) of
the unborn Parikshit is to wander eternally in a condition resembling that of the bhiksātana-Bhairava.
As soon as he is born, Aśvatthāman neighs like a horse and his very name (Aśva-) refers to the
horse; and Brahmā's fifth head was also a horse's head, that which in the Vedic esotericism alone
knew the secret of the hidden Agni and Soma. Because it is the Brahman who wields this power by
transgressing, under exceptional circumstances, the very taboos that have made him a Brahman, it is
not surprising that Rudra, the transgressor, is always represented as the son of Brahmā, born of
some impure aspect of the latter like his wrath (as Manyu) or blood (Kramrisch, pp. 114-5).

Notwithstanding secondary sectarian elaborations, the hostility between the two, culminating in the
sudden parricide, is expressive of the sudden rupture that transgression introduces into the mode of
being of the Brahman. Moreover, in conformity with the religion of interdictions, it permits the
presentation of the sacrificial beheading as a (mere) punishment for the primordial incest.

The "sacrilegious" notations of Brahmā's fifth head may be multiplied by comparing it to other figures
of transgression within Brahmanism itself, but my purpose here is to merely emphasize that the
transgressive essence of Bhairava is in many ways bequeathed to him by the very head he
decapitates. Otherwise, the glorification of Bhairava in mythological traditions that remain at heart
Brahmanical and claim to amplify the Vedic doctrines will remain incomprehensible. Unlike the Śūdra
Unmatta-Bhairava resolutely opposed to caste distinctions, the Kāpālikas (re-) converted by Sankara
appear to have been all Brahmans. Epigraphic evidence suggests the existence of Brahman
Kāpālikas specializing in the Atharvaveda, and it is such adepts who must have served as
intermediaries between the Brahmanical sacrifical ideology on the one hand and low caste Kāpālikas
having no access to Vedic texts and resorting entirely to the Bhairavāgamas on the other. Lorenzen
(Kāpālikas, pp. 81-2, 189) has sharply differentiated the Supreme Penance of the Kāpālikas from that
of the Pāśupatas, which conforms rather to the Māhāvrata of Patañjali's Yogasūtra ii.30-31,
prescribing the unconditional practice of the five restraints (yama): nonviolence (ahimsā), truthfulness
(satya), non-theft (asteya), chastity (brahmacarya), and non-possessiveness (aparigraha) regardless
of status, place, time, and occasion, virtures enjoined by later Pāśupata texts like the
Pañcārthabhāsya and the Ratnatīkā, and later cultivated assiduously by their monasticized
successors, the Kālāmukhas, especially in the Deccan area.

But a problem remains. Not only is the Pāśupata weapon, in the form of the Brahmaśiras, identified by
Atharvaśiras Upanisad 67 with the Pāśupata Vow with which the Vedic sages were imbued on Śiva-
Bhairava's appearance in the Deodar forest, but there also exists the troubling category of the
Mahāpāśupatas, who were alternatively identified with the Pāśupatas, Kāpālikas and especially the
Kālāmukhas, and yet generally distinguished from all three categories. The true significance of this
confusing category lies not so much in its elusive historical determinations but rather in the abiguity of
the term Mahāvrata and the (dialectical) continuity between the interdictory pole of the (nevertheless
symbolically transgressive) Pāśupatas and the transgressive pole of the (nevertheless ascetic)
Kāpālika yogins. This intrinsic ambivalence is revealed even in their monastic reorganization as
Kālāmukhas, whose preceptors not only sometimes bore the name Kāla- bhairava but even dedicated
temples to (Vīrabhadra, Kālī, and the Kāpālika-) Bhairava. Tondaimān of Kāñci brought to Tiruvorriyūr
"from the banks of the Ganges 500 Brāhmana Mahāvratins and dedicated several images of Kālī and
Bhairava and one of Siva in the form of a teacher of the Mahāvratins." The Kālāmukhas were not only
mostly erudite Brahman-panditas but also were often expert in both Pāśupata and Vedic traditions, so
much so that their priest Honnaya is praised in the same verse as a Mahāvratin, Mahāpāśupata, and
a Śrotriya. That a Kālāmukha inscription invokes Siva-Lākulīśa as "the heart of Brahma shining as a
stone on which is inscribed the śāsana of the Vedas which extol the abode of Viśvanātha" (p. 114), is
hardly surprising when the Pāśupatasūtra is partly based on the (Kāthaka-) Taittirīya Āranyaka (p.
182, n. 48). Indeed, just before the Kāpālika is addressed as "Mahāpāśupata," the ridiculous
Pāśupata of the Mattavilāsa is himself addressed, like the laughing Vidūsaka, as "Mahābrāhmana."
Likewise, in Ānandarāyamakhin's Vidyāparinayana (IV, after v. 32) the Kāpālika Somasiddhānta
defends his use of wine, meat, etc., prohibited in the (classical) Veda, by affirming "the doctrine of the
authoritativeness of the Veda with compliance to the Bhairavāgamas" (Lorenzen, pp. 88-9).

Although Brahmā's ritual purity matches the extreme asceticism of Siva (-Bhairava) and both are
defined by an essential transgressive dimension, Brahmā expresses these values only within the
context of the Brahmanical sacrifice and Vedic tradition whereas Rudra expresses them even
independently of this context despite his intimate links with the violent, dangerous, transgressive pole
of the Vedic sacrifice. It is on this background that the well known opposition, complementarity and
identity of Brahmā and the five-headed Siva should be analyzed (OTlaherty, Asceticism, pp. 111-138;
see n. 2). The Brahmāstra that Arjuna-Indra receives from the brahman Drona-Brhaspati (purohita) is
no diferent from the Pāśupatāstra he wins through the favour of the outcaste tribal Kirāta-Śiva; and if
Arjuna bears this Brahmaśiras like the Untouchable Kāpālika, this is because Bhairava himself
inherited his Brahmanicide from the Vedic Indra.

E. The Royal Dlksita: Arjuna's Penance and Indra's

Brahmanicide
The exoteric image of the exemplary relation between the royal sacrificer (yajamāna) and his
officiating purohita is mythically represented by the couple Indra-cum-Brhaspati/Brahmā, for it is only
through the preliminary purification of the classical dīksā, amounting to a (temporary but) veritable
Brahmanization, that any (non-Brahman including) warrior from the Ksatriya caste could engage
himself in the sacrifice proper. Whereas the mere ferocious warrior Bhima (-Bhairava) is hardly
distinguishable from a Cāndāla-executioner in his savage acts of sacrificial slaughter (paśumāram),
and is in fact subtly identified with his victim, the demoniac Duryodhana, by the simultaneity of their
births, the model-king Arjuna, although partaking in his elder brother Bhīma's physical force and
military prowess (bala), is nevertheless imbued with ascetic self-denial (indriyajaya), yogic
concentration (ekāgratā), and the whiteness of Brahmanical purity implied in his very name. It is
because this renunciatory dimension is integral to Hindu kingship that it is the Brahman-like Dharma-
Yudhisthira, and not the Ksatriya Arjuna, who is consecreted king by the Mahābhārata to perform its
Rājasūya sacrifice. And if Bhima distinguishes himself from Duryodhana by his subservience not only
to his elder brother Dharma but also to his younger brother, this is because (the "crowned" Kirītin-)
Arjuna synthesizes in himself the antithetical brahman and ksatra of his elder brothers and is himself,
although the very incarnation of imperial Victory (]aya), ever devoted to Dharma.

But the transgressive universalization of the (pre-classical) royal dīksita, charged with the impurity of
death, is expressed not only through his identification with Prajāpati as the sacrificial Year/Universe
but also in the mytheme of Indra's decapitation of his demoniac purohita Viśvarūpa. Arjuna's father,
the king of the gods, undergoes the embryonic "expiation" for his Brahmanicide within the stalk of the
lotus- womb in an island pond, before he is discovered by the feminized Agni in the maternal waters.
"Indra's contamination by evil (anrta, pāpman) recalls the similar state of the sacrificer, who seeks to
transfer this burden to his rival contender (as Indra transfers it to various carriers); both the year-long
trial of the evil-laden god and the period of hiding in diminished form in the lotus pond must be linked
to the gestationlike dīksā of the sacrificial cult. Indra becomes, in effect, the embryo carried in
darkness, surrounded by impurity, awaiting a violent birth." The inherent comic possibilities of royal
transgression are especially exploited in the exemplary Arjuna's disguise as the "virile eunuch,"
Brhannadā, during the Pāndavas' thirteenth embryonic year of exile in the Fish (-Womb) country
Matsyadeśa of king Androgyne (Virāta). "In ritual terms, this year of hiding, like Indra's period of
fearful concealment in the lotus pond, is a kind of dīksā—a moment of ritualized separation,
'regression' to an infantile (or, indeed, embryonic) state, and, at the end, an initiatory rebirth." Just as
this regression is often projected onto the mother figure, like the Gañgā or Vaisno-Devī, the
androgynous fusion of the dīksita with the womb within is conversely also expressed by the maternity
of the king himself. Thus, in the Pañcavaradalcsetramāhātmya, Indra disguises himself as a pregnant
woman to approach his mother for final refuge and on being discovered is transformed into a leper,
who in despair instead embraces his wife Paulomī. In the final analysis, the transgressive dīksā is but
the internalized sacrificial process of the Brahmanized yajamāna giving royal birth to himself (see n.
87).

Arjuna, on receiving the dīksā from Yudhisthira, is endowed with a technique of anamnesis or
''recollection" (pratismrti), and his succeeding quest probably refers to an inward journey to a pre-natal
condition before ascending to a supra-human condition. Like the Brahman Vrātyas consecrated to
Rudra, he is armed not only with yoga and tapas but also with the real equipment of a warrior as if he
were setting out on the sacrifice of battle, in which he is invariably preceded by Rudra. The
Brahmanicidal Vedic homology between the outcaste (niravasita) Rudra and the royal Indra underlies
the epic identification of the initiated Arjuna with the impure Kirāta-Siva insofar as they simultaneously
pierce the demoniac transposition of the sacrificial boar (yajña-varāha). "Dumb" (Mūka) like the dīksita
himself observing his vow of silence, the boar apparently substitutes for Arjuna himself as sacrificial
victim, for the royal dīksita is immediately thereafter bodily crushed by the impure Kirāta into a deathly
embryonic (pinda) condition. It is paradoxically the defiling embrace of the tribal Rudra that renders
Arjuna wholly auspicious and not only confers upon him the transgressive Brahmaśiras but also the
access to heaven (svarga).

This is hardly surprising when it is this same transgressive dimension underlying the sacrificial order
that prompts Yama-Dharmarāja to appear before Yudhisthira himself as a dog, Bhairava's own therio-
morphic form, in order to ensure his entry to svarga. Indeed, it is only after he executes the symbolic
Brahmanicide of his elder brother Dharma, followed by his own symbolic suicide through a
megalomaniac self-exaltation recalling the universalization of the dīksā, that Arjuna actually kills his
eldest brother Karna, the solar hero hidden in Varunic obscurity. Although Aśvatthāman-Rudra,
lacking the yogic and Brah- manical accomplishments of Arjuna-Indra, is incapable of retrieving the
destructive magical power of his Brahmaśiras, he has acquired his sorcerer's techniques only by
virtue of his Brahman parentage, just as the present-day, often gruesome, magical practices on the
folk and popular level still correspond, unknown to their own perpetrators, to the symbolic order,
selfishly perverted, of the Brahmanical sacrifice. The social opposition between the central (divine)
king and the marginal sorcerer lost in the petty possibilities of black magic should not obscure their
mirror-like complementarity and the ultimate identity of self- abnegation and magical violence in the
priestly first-function incarnated in the dual divinity Mitra-Varuna. The "Śivaized" Aśvatthāman's
equine notations assume their full significance only in the light of the identification of the sacrificial
horse of the Aśvamedha with (Agni-) Prajāpati, equated with the dīksita, who sprung as the Rgvedic
Sun from king Varuna's embryonic waters.
F. The Sin-Eating Bhairava: Death and Embryogony in
Kāśī
It is because Bhairava incarnates the transgressive essence of the (royal) yajamàna guilty of
murdering the sacrificial victim, that the Skanda Parana (4.81.1-25) returns the compliment by making
the Vrtra-han-Indra himself expiate his Brahmanicide like a foul-smelling Kāpālika, before finally
freeing himself at Kapālamocana by discharging the Evil Man in himself, in the form of a golden self-
image, onto a reluctant Brahman. For this condescension, the degraded Mahābrāhmana is not only,
like the royal scapegoat Vidūsaka, reviled by the citizens of Banaras for whom he still performs their
rites, especially funerary rites, but also rendered Untouchable, like the Sin-Eating (Pāpabhaksana
Kāpālika-) Bhairava even after his supposed purification at Kapālamocana. This inner identity of the
(Mahā-) Brāhmana and the Untouchable finds its mythical parallel in the identical funerary notations of
Bhairava at Kāñci and Brahmā's fifth head at Kāśī (supra n. 25). And just as the greedy purohita-like
Vidūsaka is constantly pampered with gifts of food (especially pinda-like modakas), jewellery, clothes,
and other valuables, the Mahābrāhmanas too, most of all the Dom-(Yama-) Rāj of today, heap their
fortunes by virtue of their ritual function.

Even on the sociological level, it is the Kusle-Jogī, successor of the Kāpālika, who plays the role of
Mahābrāhmana among the Newars of Nepal, not only by receiving the clothes of the dead at the
chvasa, the ritual stone where the quarter's death-and-birth impurities are deposited, but also by
receiving food offerings including meat, fish, etc., during the nhaynamā-rites on the seventh day after
the death. The mythical justification is the decapitation of Brahmā's fifth head during the inauspicious
pañcaka (dhanista naksatra), the depositing of his clothes at the chvasa to be taken away by
Gorakhnāth, who revives the lifeless Brahmā on the seventh day in the temple of Batuk Bhairava. The
Newars still deposit a five headed Brahmā figure at the chvasa to neutralize the possibility of a chain
reaction of five deaths due to the untimely death during the pañcaka. Thus the impure initiatic death of
the Brahmanized dïksita finds its funerary transposition in the condensed ritual figure of the Banarasi
Mahābrāhmaija who impersonates the dead man's ghost (prêta) and is indeed consubstantial with the
deceased, and this sacrificialization of natural death (-ritual) finds its mythical counterpart in Bhairava,
through his conquest of Death, usurping the very throne of Yama in Kāśī, the cremation ground of the
Hindu universe.
The funerary application of the origin myth finds semi-independent expression in the sneering demon
head of the Brahma-Râksasa (or -Piśāca), apparently a former tirtha-purohita like the Piśāca of the
Kāśī- Khanda, decapitated by Bhairava, and now regularly receiving tirtha- śrāddha offered by
pilgrims on their way to Gaya to fulfill their ritual obligations towards their ancestors (pitr), and also the
tripinda-śrāddha for the calming and exorcism of evil spirits (prêta, piśāca, bhūta, etc.). It is through
such mechanisms exteriorizing the degraded Untouchable dimension of the Mahābrāhmana that the
Brahmā presiding over the pure domain of the classical Vedic sacrifice has been transformed into the
lowly popular village Brahms, hardly distinguishable from the unhewn stone Bhairavas and the
earthen-mound Bīrs. Bhairava's frequent appellation as "Lord of Ghosts" (Bhūtanātha), no doubt owes
a great deal to this universe of death and the manipulation of its shadowy denizens by low caste
specialists like the Ojhas, who gather at Mani-karnikā during Kāla-Rāiri (Diwali) to recharge their
magical powers before the image of Batuka Bhairava. Like Dionysos, whose feet are licked by the
watchdog Cerberus while returning from the kingdom of Hades, with whom he is identified by
Heraclitus, Bhairava is the fullness of Death-in-life. Through his initiatic death, even the Pāśupata
(and no doubt the Kāpālika) was assimilated to the laughing exuberance of a prêta; and the Vrātya,
like the dlksita, was already a dead man even in the midst of life.

Lorenzen suggests that Bhairava's Brahmanicide origin myth is derived, at least in part, from the
Mahabhārata story of the Râksasa head, decapitated by Rāma, sticking to the thigh of the sage
Mahodara who was relieved of it only by bathing at the Auśanas tīrtha on the Sarasvati River, which
thereby came to be known as Kapālamocana, "probably identical with a tank of this name on the
Sarsuti or Sarasvati River ten miles southeast of Saudhara." If the Kāpālikas came to Kāśī instead,
this was because, by flowing north, Mother Gañgā herself strives here to return to her own source,
and even now the sacred tank at Manikarnikā beside the cremation-ghāt is believed to be nourished
directly by the primordial waters of the Himalayan Gaumukh whence she emerges to sanctify the
Hindu subcontinent. The uterine equivalence of the Hindu goddess Gañgā and the Vedic god Varuna
is betrayed in mythico-ritual conjunctions like Varuna having performed penance with Gañgā-devi to
be appointed lord of the waters and aquatic creatures at Kāñci (Kañkāvareccaram). The embryogonic
fusion of diksita with maternal womb permits the projection of traits like androgyny and regression on
the mother symbol itself, as in the case of Vaisno-Devi having spent nine months in her own womb.

This ever-present embryogonic significance, lent to Kāśī by the reverse flow of the Gañgā, literally
engulfs the sacred centre of Hinduism, when her flood waters likewise reverse the flow of her
tributary, the Varuna, and its seasonal sub-tributary, the Matsyodarī, to encircle the entire city and its
inhabitants in its womb, thereby transforming it into the primordial mound of archaic cosmogony. The
Omkāra temple on its hillock on the banks of the former Kapālamocana at the heart of the sacred city
was transformed by this primeval deluge into an island, just like its prototype, the Omkāra jyotirliriga of
Central India in the middle of the sacred Narmadā River. It was during this rare but exceedingly
auspicious "Fish-Womb Conjunction" (Matsyodarī- Yoga), when the Gañgā itself is the Fish-Womb (-
Lake), that the Brahmanicide Bhairava plunged into the amniotic waters of Kapālamocana originally
situated at the confluence of the Matsyodail and the backward-flowing Mother Gañgā. Hindu kings
apparently continued to imitate the example of the Kāpālika-Bhairava right up until the final short-lived
efflorescence of Vārānasī before the Muslim conquest, for a Gāhadvāla inscription records that in the
twelfth century king Govindacandra bathed in the Gañgā at Kapālamocana in (during) the Fish-Womb
(conjunction) and made a land-donation to a Brahman.

But for his exceptional socio-political status, the Hindu king is no more than the sacrificer par
excellence. And indeed the perpetual cremation of corpses at Manikarnikā, the navel of Kāśī,
reproduces the embryogonic implications of Bhairava's initiatic death, thereby transforming the "Great
Cremation Ground" (mahāsmaśāna) into the cosmogonic centre transcending the spatio-temporal
order of the Hindu sacrificial universe that ceaselessly (re-)emerges from its womb to (re-)dissolve in
this microcosmic pralaya modelled on the fire sacrifice. Discus (cakra) and lotus pond (puskarinī) are
equivalent womb symbols, and the primordial Cakrapuskarini that Vishnu dug with his discus and
filled with his sweat in the course of his cosmogonic austerities (tapas) is ultimately identical with the
lotus pool behind the Visnu temple at Tirukantiyūr where the brahmakapāla of the Tamil Bhairava fell.
This embryogonic significance of the Cakrapuskarinī, renamed Manikarnikā when the nectarine
(amrta-) Soma concentrated in Siva's ear-ring fell into it from his ear (-womb), is confirmed by the
proximity of Visnu's Foot (pada), the mysterious source of the Gañgā beyond even Gaumukh,
receptacle of Visnu-Trivikrama's renowned "third stride," where the most eminent corpses are burnt.
As a prêta, the dead man, represented by the Mahābrāhmana, returns to the womb, represented by a
water pot hanging from a sacred pipal tree, and his new body is nourished with a daily modaka-like
rice ball (pinda) so that on the tenth day it is fully formed like a newborn baby, and it is ready to be
transformed into an ancestor (pitr) on the eleventh day, when the Mahābrāhmana is worshipped, fed,
given gifts, and departs having smashed the water pot dwelling of the prêt. This embryogonization of
death, not specific to cremation, is equally applicable to the Harappan funerary urns and burial
elsewhere: "burial in the embryonic position is explained by the mystical interconnection between
death, initiation, and return to the womb. In some cultures this close connection will finally bring about
the assimilation of death to initiation—the dying man is regarded as undergoing an initiation."

Even quite independently of the Kāpālika-Bhairava's entry into Kāśī within the fish-wombed Gañgā
and his dip at Kapālamocana, Bhairava's begging from the Seven Sages in the Daru forest ritually
imitated by the Brahmanicide Kāpālikas' begging from seven houses during their twelve-year
wanderings as prescribed by the law-books, is already charged with the embryonic notations and
impurity of the diksā. It is akin to the twelve-year exile of the Pāndavas accompanied by the
menstruating Draupadī, which culminates in their thirteenth year incognito as embryos in the Fish-
Country of king Matsya. For the forest is already the "womb of Brahman" (brahmayoni) in the
Brāhmanas and seven is the embryogonic number par excellence right from the Vedas, as
exemplified especially by the seven-holed anthill substituted for the severed head of the Agnicayana,
which in fact assimilates the decapitation to an embryonic regression. The present-day Dārānagar
was settled after the cutting-down of the Dāruvana within Kāśī near Vrddhakāla and Haratirath. This is
why, even after having lost its paradisaical forest-hermitages, Kāśī still remains Ānandavana, "The
Forest of (the) Bliss (of Brahman)"; and its seven concentric circles, corresponding to the seven yogic
spinal centers, are guarded by fifty-six divinized icons of the Mahābrāhmana appointed as eight
Ganeśas to the cardinal points of each circle, serving again thereby as mediators between him and
the eight traditional ksetrapāla Bhairavas.

Reflected also in the pilgrimage cult at Vaisno-Devī, the symbolic identity of the transgressive
Bhairava in the womb of the Gañgā with the demon-devotee as sacrificial victim, is worked out in the
founding myth of the Bisket Jātrā at Bhaktapur, where the Kāla Bhairava of Kāśī lost his head forever
to Vaisnavi appearing as Bhadrakāll. The bloody obstetrics of the dlksā is particularly evident in
Andhra Pradesh where Añkammā dismembers the foetus of her homonym, the queen- mother Gañgā
(Gañgammā), at the twelfth year of her pregnancy, and the sacrificial scenario finds its prolongations
on the folk level in the Tamil cremation ground cult of the infanticide Añkālamman where Irujappan,
the child-Siva, is not only the dark-one like Kāla-Bhairava but is also identifiable with his royal father
(Kāśī-) Vallājarājan. Having torn open the belly of her alter ego, Añkājamman cradles "her"
dismembered child, like the baby Dionysos-Lyknitès, in the womb of the winnowing fan. Killing his
mother Semele by his very birth, the terrible Dionysos is likewise his own victim, not only driving the
Maenads to devour the cubs of savage beasts, but himself lacerated as live bull (=Zagreus) in Crete.
And in Tenedos he was sacrificially axed to death in the form of a newborn calf of a cow treated like a
mother who had only just delivered. Dionysos was clearly identified with the sacred king when he
united ritually with the queen Basilinna, in the name of the entire city, during the Athenian "death-
festival" of the Anthesteries.

Suvarnakalā-Bhairava is worshipped beside Natarāja in the sanctum of the Cidambaram temple;

more significantly, a daily secret cakrapūjā is performed towards noon for the Akāśa-liñga itself,
where the divinity is first of all invoked with the appropriate yantras and mantras in the form of Ākāśa-
Bhairava by the officiating dīksitas. Expressed through such symbolic equivalences as the embryonic
intercalary thirteenth month containing within itself the ritual (Prajāpati-) Year as a totality, the
universalization of the sacrificer through the dīksā has been displaced from Bhairava, charged with
the impurity of death, to his purified alter ego Kāśī-Viśvanātha, the "Lord of the Universe," who
remains the implacable indifferent witness to the violent scenario enacted by his surrogate; hardly
unexpected when the reformed classical sacrifice has already concentrated the cosmic Prajāpati
within the renunciate nature of the pure yajamāna who has conquered Death, but only symbolically.

At Puri, however, the divinized king, although still retaining his inner purity as in his ritual substitute of
a young Brahman celibate (Mudra Hasta), remains "Lord of the Universe" (Jagannâtha) only through
the operations of death and rebirth performed upon him by impure "tribal" Śabara-priests, whose
mythic ancestor won this prerogative by his sacrilegious killing of a bull at the instigation of the king's
minister. This dlksā-like "Body- Renewal" (Navakalevara) of the royal Visnu, already prefigured in his
yearly "sickness" (anavasara) followed by the chariot-drive (ratha-yātrā) inaugurated by the king
transformed into an Untouchable sweeper, is presided over by the Bhairava-like Narasimha, and
occurs only during an intercalary month of Asādha. All this serves as sufficient preparation for the
eventual revelation of the probably transgressive connotations of the mysterious brahmapadārtha that
vivifies Jagannātha from within and is transferred by the blind-folded Śabaras in so uncanny an
atmosphere.

The royal character of the pure central divinity, even in the absence of a real king, is also seen at
Tiruvannāmalai where once every year Śiva-Annāmalaiyār is informed of the death of the virtuous
king Vallāja, and after a mourning ceremony is crowned son-successor to the childless king. A
historical Ballāla stands in the Añkālamman myth behind the demoniac Vallālarājan, whose seven-
walled palace, equated with the cremation ground at whose centre lies the pregnant queen-goddess,
is but an image of Annāmalaiyār within the womb (garbha-grha) of the Tiruvannāmalai temple with its
seven concentric enclosures. Moreover, at Kumbhakonam, where the Kāśī-Viśvanātha temple stands
on the Mahāmagha lake formed from the amrta spilled from Brahmā's primordial pot (-womb), and
wherein the nine most sacred rivers of India led by the Gañgā mix their waters once every twelve
years, Vallālarājan is even promoted to the king of Kāśī, embryogonic center of the Hindu sacrificial
universe. Would this not be precisely because the dīksā underlies all legitimate kingship in India? It is
in the polar axis formed by the epi-central Tiruvannāmalai temple-capital and the peripheral cremation
ground of Mel Malaiyanūr, substituted for the Mahāśmaśāna, that the pan-Indian Brahmanicide myth
(kapparai) centred on Kāśī and the regional historically determined myth of Vallālarājan (pregnant
cremation-figure) would have fused to provide the mythical background to the ritual complexities of
the cult of Añkālamman. The kapparai received from the Kapālin is itself identified with Añkālamman
who then "takes the avatāram of Brahmā and goes to the cremation-ground;" and the pregnant
cremation-figure of the goddess-victim is itself identified with a Brahman woman. Bycdonating the
transgressive fifth head of Brahmā to the goddess before fusing with her as a child to form the
primordial androgyne, (Siva-) Kapālin indeed mediates between the blood-thirsty Añkālamman of the
low caste Cempatavar fishermen and the purified Brahmanical milieu of Annāmalaiyār, the Tamil
transposition of Viśvanātha as the fiery axis mundi that originally manifested itself at Kāśi.

G. The Khatvāñga-Bhairava: Executioner, Victim, and

Sacrificial Stake
The immeasurable world pillar traversing and uniting the three cosmic levels of netherworld, earth,
and heavens, from which Bhairava emerges to appropriate Brahmā's central head, is reduced to more
handy ritual proportions in the cranial staff (khatvāñga) which the Kāpālika wields as a weapon. On
the basis of the explicit textual evidence of Tibetan Buddhist tantras further elucidated by the oral
traditions of their lamaistic practitioners, the khatvāñga, surmounted successively by a fresh moist
head, a half decomposed one, topped by a dry skull, and provided with a Brahmanical cord
(yajñopavita), has not only been identified with the world-tree, also called Amrta and growing in the
cremation ground, but the entire symbolic complex has been derived from esoteric psycho-physical,
especially sexual, techniques centering on the production of the ambrosia of "supreme felicity"
(mahāsukha), through a process of alternating ascent and descent within the susumnā. This ritual
system, comprising other implements like the sacrificial dagger (phur-bu = kīla) and the alchemical
fireplace- skull standing on three heads, refers back to the liberating murder by (a Buddhist divinity
like Heruka assimilated to) Bhairava of the demonized, and still terrible, Rudra, but in a scenario that
deliberately underlines the consubstantiality of divine killer and demoniac victim amidst the
transgressive valorization of impurities (like excrement, etc.) converted into nectar. Although
philosophically elaborated in the light of specifically Buddhist tenets, the underlying techniques and
formal symbolic system are clearly derived from the Hindu, and even Vedic, universe.

The theatrical irony achieved by Euripides in The Bacchae through the mirror-like symmetry of the
masked Dionysos confronting the royal Pentheus, travestied as a Bacchant before falling from the
tree top to be torn apart by the Maenads led by his own mother, reveals itself in the Corinthian ritual,
where the bloody tree honoured as a divinity is carved into effigies of Dionysos, to be a veritable
identity. Hardly had the tree bearing the "unequaled" (like Dionysos) Pentheus, whose glory should
rise to heaven, straightened itself to aim upwards at the sky; no sooner had Dionysos himself
disappeared letting his victim fall to his sacrificial fate, than from the earth a divine fire-ball streaked
heavenward. In the sixth Act of Śākuntala, the Vidūsaka, violently twisted by Indra's charioteer in
three places (tribhañga), like his own crooked staff (kutilaka), explicitly compares himself to the
immolated sacrificial victim, and the kutilaka itself is a caricature of the Brahmanical staff dandakāstha
(= brahmadanda), which is assimilated even in the Buddhist tantras to the tripartite axis mundi.
Planted on the border of the sacrificial altar (vedi), precisely half-within and half-without, the yūpa
represents the neutralization of the opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), especially evident in the
conditions governing the bloody sacrifice performed by Narasimha on emerging from the (cosmic)
pillar. This aspect is fused with its phallic dimension, evident in its later transposition as the śivaliñga
emerging from the yoni, especially in the impure phallic names of the three brothers of whom only the
middle one Śunahśepa is designated as the Brahman sacrificial victim. Although no longer the site of
the actual immolation in the purified classical ritual, the sacrificial stake, still expressive of the
essential identity of the Vedic sacrificer and his divinized victim, is described in a Vedic hymn as
stained with blood.

During the cosmogonic New Year festival of Bisket Jātrā at Bhakta-pur, Bhairava is erected as the
liñga in the form of the cross-shaped pole bearing two long cloth-banners representing the two
slaughtered serpents from which the festival derives its name. The copulation between the pole and
supporting mound of earth is also enacted in the ritual collision of the chariots of Ākāśa-Bhairava and
Bhadra-Kālī, who comes specially to witness the erection of the liñga and the death of the snakes.
She is probably no different from the lusty but deadly princess of the founding legend from whose
nostrils the snakes emerged every night to slay her lovers until an unknown prince slew them instead
through his exceptional vigilance and even married her. On the last day of the year (Caitra masant), a
buffalo is sacrificed at the pitha of Bhadra-Kālī and the Untouchables (Pore) bring its head up to the
central Taumadhi square where the Ākāśa-Bhairava temple is situated and destroy it as soon as the
New Year pole is erected. From there a "death-procession" consisting of a traditional bier carrying a
pot (bhājā- khahca, the first term ‘bhāja meaning not only "pot" but also the large "head" of a thin
person), instead of a real corpse, returns to the liñga late the same night. After being left beside the
neighbouring Bhadra-Kālī pītha, the bier is then brought back to Taumadhi, when the pole is pulled
down on the evening of the first day of Baisākh. The bier, which was formerly used to collect from the
palace the suitors killed by the twin snakes, comes in vain for the corpse of the victorious prince and
returns instead with the substituted "pot-head" to the pitha beside the cremation ghāt. The erection of
the liñga, often associated with a snake (like Ganeśa's trunk or the Vidüsaka's kutilaka), signifies
above all the neutralization and annihilation of the opposing vital breaths (prāna/apāna) resulting in
the raising of the serpentine kundalinī up the median channel (susumnā) in the very act of sexual (and
even incestuous) intercourse. Like Mahākāla, the susumnā is said to devour Kāla (death) represented
by the alternating lateral breaths; and in the Tibetan tantras Rudra "eats" or is "eaten" by his mother in
the cremation ground beside the cosmic tree called Amrta or Khatvāñga and especially "Fornication,"
and ultimately attains deliverance to become Mahākāla. The sacrificed buffalo ritually actualizes the
initiatic death of not only the royal lover but also of Kāla-Bhairava who came from Kāśī out of curiosity
to see the pole-festival, originally consecrated to Bhadra-Kāll alone, only to be discovered by the
Tantric priests and to be decapitated before he could escape. Even now, a very secret, closely-
guarded bundle accompanies Ākāsh-Bhairab as he goes to regularly unite with his demanding
consort, and it is understood that its contents are linked to the severed head.

With the assimilation of the greenery at its extremity to fecundating semen eagerly sought by barren
couples, the pole is no different from the imposing erect liñga of the Unmatta-Bhairava at the
Paśupati- nāth temple, which newly married couples touch reverentially in order to be assured of
offspring. The sexual identity of the victim and executioner is clearer in the founding myth of the
festival of Indreśvar Mahādev at Panauti where, pursued by the insatiable Bhadra-Kālī, śiva plunged
into the confluence of two rivers defining the site of the temple only to emerge, like the invisible
median river, as the perpetually ithyphallic Unmatta-Bhairava to take her three times from behind. The
phallic identity of the yūpa is especially evident in the buffalo sacrificed to Thampa (=Stambha)
Bhairava, "just before the temple precincts of Indreśvar. The animal is destined for Unmatta Bhairava,
but as this god is situated within the pure sacred precincts of Indreśvar, its throat is slit outside, before
Thampa Bhairava conceived here to be his double." At Paśupatināth, animal sacrifices are offered on
particular occasions to Unmatta-Bhairava himself, within the precincts, and the pure central Śiva
participates indirectly through a ritual cord linking him with Bhairava.

The royal character of the Bisket cosmogony becomes explicit in the Indra Jātrā of neighbouring
Kathmandu where the liñga is identified instead, as in the Vedic cosmogony, with the (dhvaja-emblem
of the) king of the gods Indra, who rains on the Valley before the full moon of Bhādra (September). As
prescribed by the Brhat-Samhitā (chap. 43), the pole is dragged on the 8th day of the bright half of
Bhādrapada into the capital and the festival begins with its erection on the 12th day. Like the dīksita
bound in Varuna's noose, wooden statues of Indra bound in cords are placed, often in prison-like
cages, at the foot of the pole(s), or, like a thief with outstretched arms on high scaffolds. The actual
role of sacrificial victim is assumed rather by the Kirāta king Yālambara whose head, violenty chopped
off by Krishna before he could join the losing side in the Mahābhārata war, landed at Indra Chowk,
where it is still worshipped as Ākāsh Bhairab, even after being reinstated as the official emblem of the
Royal Nepali Airlines. The founding myth, however, suggests that it is Indra himself who undergoes
the sacrificial death. For Indra's mother, having secured the release of her son from the Valley people
who had bound him for stealing their pārijāta flowers, was leading back to heaven the dead of the
previous year, when the chain of the procession broke and the souls fell into the lake Indra Daha. In
the ritual, on the evening before the full moon a farmer costumed as a Dagini (dakini: female demon)
emerges from Maru Hiti, where Indra had been imprisoned, to lead a procession of women from
households where death had occurred and search for the fallen souls, and hundreds of them
subsequently make the eight mile pilgrimage to bathe on the dawn of the full moon in the Indra lake,
believing that they are accompanied by Indra himself.

Although Indra's mother does not appear as such in the funeral procession, the royal Nepali mother
goddess Taleju emerges in procession the same afternoon as the pre-pubertal virgin Kumārl,
escorted by two boys representing Ganeśa and Bhairava. On the full moon evening, i.e., the second
day of the procession, the Kumāri, after having paused before the black Ākāsh Bhairab at Indrachowk
and the Sweto Bhairab at Hanuman Dhoka, (re-)legitimizes the king's rule for the following year by
placing the sacred red fikū mark on his forehead. More light is shed on its significance by the cruel
slaughter of an enraged buffalo during the Sawo Bhaku demon dance within the old royal palace,
where it is the blood of its decapitation by Ākāsh Bhairab (dancer), attended by Candi and Kumārl,
that is used for the tikā on the witnessing king. One would be justified in juxtaposing it to the offering
of Kāla-Bhairava's alias, Kāśl-Viśvanātha's own head, during the Bisket-Jātrā to Bhadra-Kālī. The full
moon marks the beginning of the dark half of Āśvina (of Bhādrapada in the amānta reckoning) when
the most potent Mahālaya-śrāddha is performed for the departed ancestors (pitr), particularly when
the Sun is in Kanyā (Virgo). The calendrical determinations clearly reveal the funerary rites to be a
popular transposition of the royal dīksita's mortal regression into the virgin- womb of the mother (-
goddess) to be reborn afresh for a New Year of legitimate sovereignty.

The tension between the royal "Aryan" sacrificer and his impure alter ego finds festive dramatization
in the ritual conflict between the incoming procession of Indra and the inhabitants who display their
hereditary masks of Bhairava before their homes, like the famous Ākāsh Bhairab itself outside his
temple at Indra Chowk, a scenario that is cast in the image of tribal Yālambara's legendary capture of
the invading Aryan chief. But their ultimate identity is evident not only in the merger of the essentially
black (Kāla-) Bhairava and white (Arjuna) Indra in the intermediate figure of the royal Sweto or White-
Bhairab who reveals himself before the royal palace only during the Indra Jātrā, but also at the very
end of the festival when a funeral-like procession drags the Indra-pole to be immersed in the sacred
waters of the Bagmati river before being retrieved and hacked into splinters to feed the sacred flame
at the nearby shrine of Pacali Bhairab beside the cremation ground. And once every twelve years,
Pacali Bhairab, whose name has been derived from the Vedic Licchavi institution of the pañcāli,
assumes the form of an impure Mālākār (gardener) to renew, through their exchange of swords, the
King's waning power. It certainly cannot be accidental that the cosmogonic marriage of Lāt-Bhairo's
pillar to the well at Kāśi coincides with Indra-Jātrā and is celebrated exactly on the full moon of
Bhādra, which is most inauspicious for marriages for it signals the beginning of the death rituals of the
pitri-paksa.

Although nowadays identified with the Purānic Kapāli-Bhairava, originally located to the northwest of
Vāsukikund in the present day Nāg-Kuān area, Lāt-Bhairo is in fact the ancient Kula—no different
from the Mahāśmaśāna-Stambha (pillar) where the original Kāla- Bhairava used to not only devour
the sins of pilgrims but also administer the "punishment/suffering" of Bhairava (bhairavī yātanā), alone
conferring final emancipation (moksa) even on the worst of sinners (see plates 15 and 16). The
policeman-magistrate (Kotwāl) apparently presided over the public ritual execution of criminals in
what probably was a significant cremation ground, which would account for the terrible character even
of its metaphysical transposition. But if the most virtuous of saints cannot aspire to that salvation
which even and especially Brahmanicides are assured of in Kāśī, this is only because Bhairava as
executioner-cum-victim is identical with the all-devouring Fire of Consciousness (also called Kula) that
consumes all the impurity of sin, and because the sacrificial death was itself assimilated to its fiery
ascent up the susumnā as the (mahā-) śmaśāna (pillar), now remaining as the Lāt-Bhairo. The
perpetual cremation at Manikarnikā, where three streams unite(d) to flow out as the Brahmanāla or
Pitā- mahasrotas into the milky way of the Gañgā, confirms that all death in Kāśī is (modelled on) the
initiatic process whereby this flame of consciousness pierces through the sinciput at the "aperture of
Brahmā" (brahmarandhra) to be freed forever.

Even the apparently alternative fate, reserved especially for those who sin in Kāśī itself before dying
there, to be transformed into ghoulish Rudras (rudrapiśāca) before undergoing the rudrayātanā at the
Mahā- śmaśāna-stambha, conforms rigorously to the above model of initiatic death. The (mystic)
decapitation of the Tibetan adept, corresponding to the kapālakriyā performed on the Banaras corpse,
when the divine life-force escapes through the brahmarandhra, also corresponds to the murderous
liberation of Rudra by a Bhairava-like (Jigs-byed) divinity who penetrates the demon at the base of the
spine to flash like an arrow or comet through "the opening of the Door of Heaven." Rudra had already
received the tantric initiation in his original incarnation as the master "Deliverance-Salvation/Black,"
whose name "alludes to his ambiguous nature: he will do evil, but will be finally delivered with the
status of the god Mahākāla." This salvation often occurs in the explicit context of copulation belonging
to the same symbolic complex, which is not foreign to the Hindu cremation rites. Since the annual
festival of the Kula-Stambha was already being celebrated, in order not to become a Rudrapiśāca, on
the full moon of Bhādra, this must have in all probability already been in the form of a cosmogonic
marriage, in which case the bridegroom must have come from his original temple on the western bank
of Omkāreśvara. The figure of the Rudrapiśāca would itself appear to be a mythic projection of the
ghostly (pretavad) Rudra-Pāśupatas who had their chief center at Omkāreśvara, where they had
many āśramas and haunted the Aghoreśvara (or Srī- mukhi) cave. Since Bhairava functioned as Sin-
Eater at both the Mahā- śmaśāna-Stambha where as Kotwāl he executed the ultimate punishment,
and also Kapālamocana where as Kapālin he was freed of the ultimate crime of Brahmanicide, it is
perfectly logical that, in the wake of the Muslim occupation of Omkāreśvar, Kapālamocana has come
to be (re-)identified with Lāt-Bhairo tirtha, where the Kapālin remains as executioner, victim, and pillar
of the world.

The variants on the Ghāzī Mīya story, retold by the Muslims around the area of the Lāt, seem to have
grafted onto the martyred warrior many significant fragments of this archaic Hindu mythico- ritual
universe of sacrificial death. A bridegroom discovered that he had been chosen to be the next victim,
on the very day of his imminent marriage, at the problematic temple of Somnāth near the confluence
of the Varanā with the Gañgā at Rājghāt, where human sacrifices were once regularly offered to the
divinity. Responding to the hysterical condition of the victim's mother, Ghāzī Mīya bathed in the
Gañgā and took his place, but the image started sinking as soon as he placed one foot across the
threshold. The Muslim hero nevertheless managed to seize the head by its tuft and kick it, before
dispersing the hair which grew as a type of grass wherever it fell. In a common variant, Ghāzī Mīya
removed his own head to avoid seeing and being seduced by the hundreds of naked women sent by
the king's astrologer in order to destroy the power of his purity and thereby render him an easy
sacrificial victim. Nowadays, it is the Lāt which is popularly held to be sinking into the ground, and
Kāla Bhairab was decapitated at the Bhaktapur cosmogony when he had almost completely
disappeared into the earth on his underground escape route to Banaras. Through that resilience and
adaptability so characteristic of Hindu genius, Kāla-Bhairava still makes his annual pilgrimage as the
royal bridegroom from his present-day temple to re-enact, in the middle of the Muslim Idgāh, his
fateful marriage by crowning (mukut) the Lāt-Bhairo with his own head. The popular wisdom of
colloquial (Hindi) language still refers to the cremation (ground) as the "place of the bride" (dulhan kā
sthān) and as the "last marriage" (ākhirī śādī), and if the Newars can be so confident that the head of
Kāla-Bhairava at Kāśī is not his real head, this is probably because he had already been regularly
surrendering it to the Mahāśmaśāna-Stambha even before offering it to Bhadrakālī at Bhaktapur.

H. The "Tribalizing" Ekapāda-Bhairava and Anuttara in

Trika Metaphysics
The Mhaskobā, worshipped by the pastorals and tribals of Maharashtra at such places as Javalī,
Mhasvad, Borban, Vīr, and, especially, the supreme position of pan-Indian gods of pilgrimage. Lord
Jagannātha of Puri is believed to have evolved from an original tribal divinity, worshipped by the
mythic Viśvāvasu, and the "tribal" Sahara priests, who even now officiate alongside the orthodox
Brahmans, are alone charged with the ritual impurity of the fatal obstetrics they perform on the
divinized king, himself then identified with the demonic daitās. Their transgressive śabarī-pūjā is
supervised by the only Brahman, the Pati Mahāpātra, who also inserts the brahmapadārtha into Lord
Jagannātha. Born of the union of the Āryan king Indradyumna's Brahman Vidyāpati with the tribal
Viśvāvasu's daughter Lalitā, the Pati Mahāpātra, like the Mahābrāhmana, incorporates in himself the
opposing poles of the pure and the impure. In fact, the three main divinities actually become Ganeśa
during the bathing festival that marks the onset of their "illness."

In the earliest Orissan temples, the various forms of Siva are invariably depicted with upraised
(ūrdhva-) liñga, and at one stage of his historical evolution Jagannātha was apparently identified with
Bhairava, the form he still assumes to symbolically copulate with the devadāsī (=Bhairavī) during the
evening ritual. It has been suggested that the ithyphallic single-footed Ekapāda Bhairava, whose
images are so frequent in predominantly tribal Orissa, was easily able to assimilate, through his very
iconography, tribal wooden post divinities accepting blood sacrifices. But this Tantric divinity
associated with the Yoginis is himself derived from the Vedic Aja Ekapāda, a multiform of Agni who
appears as the central pillar of the world and is juxtaposed to Ahir-Budhnya, "the Serpent of the
Deep". The inherent tension of the Vedic yūpa, standing ambivalently astride the sacrificial boundary,
could equally permit the pacific assimilation of bloody tribal posts and the exteriorization of its own
sacrificial violence effaced in classical Brahmanism. It is probably because of Jagannātha's identity
with the tribal Vedic sacrificial post that the wood (dāru) for Jagannātha's new body during the
Navakalevara is cut down from a tree chosen through such transgressive criteria as the following: on
a snake hole with creeping snakes, beside an anthill; near a cremation ground, Siva temple, river,
pond; surrounded by three mountains, on a crossing of three ways (= confluence of rivers).

Even the tribal goddess represented by the primitive forest posts fits in well with the female Tantric
identity of Jagannātha as Kāll; and the androgynous pillars on the fringes of the Hinduizing process
correspond to the feminization of the (royal) dlksita as he regresses into the forest-womb. The
wooden posts representing Pôtu Rāju, often identified with Bhairava in Andhra Pradesh, are made of
the fiery wood of the female—indeed maternal—śamī tree. The inner tension would seen to have split
the yūpa model so that the post is doubled into a peripheral Pôtu Rāju before the village goddess
temple at the very limits of the agglomeration, and an identical isolated post, also of śamī, often at the
very centre of the village under (the marriage of) a pipal (aśvattha) and nīm (substituting for the śamī)
tree. The ritual identity of centre and periphery becomes evident only when Pôtu Rāju, identical with
Mahisāsura, is brought from the marginal post as a buffalo to be sacrificed to the goddess beside the
central pillar of the village world. Arjuna becomes a eunuch only after having placed his fiery weapons
in the womb of the śamī tree on the cremation ground hillock identified with (the corpse of) their "dead
mother." The "tribalization" of Vedic embryogony through such womb-symbols as river, pond, snake
hole, etc., is especially striking in Maharashtra where Mhasobā, Birobā and especially Khandobā as
Mārtanda-Bhairava live as a snake within the anthill; their mother, who is identified with Gañgā-
Sūryavantī, the place of the hidden Sun, where the Agni-Soma treasure is retained in the symbolic
value of turmeric powder.

Bhairava represents all that terrifies the caste Hindu by violating the fundamental socio-religious
norms that govern his life, and thereby functions as the natural focus and melting pot for the
assimilation of countless local and regional tribal divinities outside these norms, but none of whom—
not even Pôtu Rāju who has played a similar role in South India—can claim the pan-Indian, even pan-
South Asian, and indeed Brahmanical credentials of Bhairava. If the "Kashmir Śaiva" Brahman
theoreticians have preferred Bhairava among all possible divinities to represent the absolute
(Anuttara) more absolute than the Brahman of Śamkara, this is no doubt because his criminal
and tribal associations correspond perfectly to the ritual violations of Kaula praxis through the
exploitation of extreme impurity in order to accede to this absolute. Although the transgressive
ideology itself is Vedic and certainly Brahmanical, the exoteric classical image of the Brahman as the
pivot of the system of socio-religious interdictions centered on purity necessitated the assumption of
the transgressive function by another divinity who would appear as outside this socio-cultural
universe, as wholly "Other." And when this current assumes an institutionalized form, as in Tantrism,
that would admit even outcastes and tribals and must hence necessarily appeal to extra-Vedic
authority, it is clear that the fifth head of Brahmā, who for all his transgressive notations still remains
strictly a god of the Brahmans and even then hardly worshipped, could no longer serve this purpose.
Despite the numerous popular, folk, tribal, and even non-Indian elements that have contributed to the
genesis and development of Tantrism, one recognizes "within the tantric systems the same
fundamental notions as in the rest of Hinduism: the structure, identicial in its elements, is entirely
overturned through a different utilization" based on an esoteric reading reversing the accepted values
of the tradition.

Much of the symbolic universe of the Kāpālika-Bhairava has been retained, minus the actual imitation
of the Brahmanicide penance itself, in the ritual praxis of the later Kaulas, many of them Brahman
householders, who based their practices, like the Kāpālikas, on the Bhairavāgamas. In terms of
spiritual orientation, however, the difference between the two currents appears to be primarily one of
degree, although that would have been sufficient to necessitate a considerable deradicalization of the
actual practice of the cult. The Kāpālikas were extremists in the sense that, although courting sensual
pleasures, they had renounced normal life in the world and pushed asceticism and degradation to its
very limits. In contrast, the householder Kaulas, precisely because they continued to live in the world
and participate in the values of the caste society, had to cultivate and elaborate a closed private
rather than an ostentatious public mode of the ideology of transgression. Unlike the unbridled almost
disincarnate eroticism of Bhairava and his Kāpālika followers, the sexual transgression of the Kaula
householder is especially modelled on that of Brahmā's fifth head: incest. Abhinavagupta attributes
his highest metaphysical realization to his initiation into the technique of the "Kula-sacrifice"
(kulayāga), also called "Primordial Sacrifice" (ādiyāga), consisting primarily in the bliss of
transgressive sexual union, reinforced by the exceptional consumption of meat, wine, and even more
impure reproductive and disgusting substances, like menstrual blood. He specifically recommends the
choice of mother, sister, daughter, etc., as sexual partner (dūtī) and as in the case of the Vidūsaka,
the projection of the goddess incarnated in the partner as "hunch-backed" (kubjā), lame or otherwise
deformed, underlines through a geometric, ambulatory or visual code the transgressive character of
the union. The aim is to establish oneself in the absolute Bliss of Bhairava-Consciousness through the
exploitation of the latter's partial and conditioned manifestation in the joy of sexual union, which is,
however, more total and self-absorbing than the other pleasures of ordinary life, especially as it
involves the participation of all the five senses and the mind resulting in their unification. All the
incoming sensory impressions serve as food to kindle and fuel the sexual fire that blazes forth to
serve as the vehicle for the expansion of the unsullied all-devouring Consciousness.

Outside of this esoteric technique and its soteriological intention, such fundamental transgressions
are unequivocally condemned. They presuppose the tantric physiology by attempting during sex to
redirect the dispersed energies of ordinary consciousness and the laterally opposed vital airs to the
base of the spine before channelling their flow upwards along the axial susumnā, expressed mythico-
ritually by the meeting of three ways, confluence of three rivers, killing of two snakes, opening of the
third eye and so on. Embryogonic notations are also not lacking, as in the invocation of Ānanda-
Bhairav(ī) in the wine pot (which also explains the fertile fishlets placed in them by the Newars during
their Bhairava festivals), and especially in the androgynization of the officiant through wearing female
attire and ornaments just after his consumption of the female reproductive substance (kulāmrta) from
the Śrl-Pātra which thereby transgressively fills him with Brahman. For the bhrūna is an embryo
before its sex can be determined. The funerary notations from ancestor worship also suggest the
initiatic death in the very act of intercourse, as is underlined by the recommended performance of this
cakrapūjā in the cremation ground and by the initial invocation of Kālī engaged in inverted sexual
union astride the corpse (śava = Siva) of Mahākāla-Bhairava, sexual union with the deceased being
optionally prescribed for the wife in certain Brahmanical funerary texts. The final picture that emerges
is that of the deathly embryonic regression of the wholly sexualized consciousness to the base of the
spine before its upward ascent towards final liberation. The blissful state of Bhairava-Anuttara thereby
realized is an indescribable indeterminate fusion of the twin-state (yāmala) of the quiescent
transcendent (śānta) and emergent immanent (udita) poles of the supreme consciousness. Those
intent on final emancipation concentrate exclusively on the former dimension, whereas those seeking
the lordship of creative (magical) powers and longevity particularly cultivate the latter aspect. This
integral mode of conceiving the bio-sexual and metaphysico-spiritual dimensions of the "primordial
sacrifice" has permitted the claim that a child born of such an experience (yoginībhū) would be
endowed with the innate disposition and extraordinary aptitude for reclaiming it for himself.

The continuity between the trances due to possession by the lowly folk or tribal divinity accompanied
by savagery and miraculous feats made possible by the enhanced regenerative capacity of the body,
and the deliberate metaphysical identification with the awesome mystery of the absolute, also called
"possession by Bhairava" (bhairavāveśa), within the context of the Kulayāga or even independently
through purely gnostic exercises, reveals itself even in the Trika retention of terms meaning
"trembling, swooning," etc., which derive from that primitive base. The union of the highest gnostic
Brahmans with the lowest impurest castes, associated with such public rites of possession, within the
closed circles of orgiastic transgression, renders problematic any purely evolutionistic explanation of
the tension within the term āveśa, "possession." Except for the intermediate zone where the external
determinations of the caste society have imposed the central image of Brahmanicide on Bhairava, the
symbolic configurations at the tribal level continue to reflect the esoteric psycho-physical techniques
that have conferred the highest metaphysical realization on Abhinavagupta at the summit of the Hindu
universe.

Although initially distorted by a structuralizing gaze, Lévi-Strauss' Amerindian Mythologiques, on

careful rereading, progressively reveal a shamanistic world composed of the same or similar
naturalistic symbols of transgression, embryogony, nectarine honey (or maple syrup), all-devouring
fire, the "symplegades" motif, ascent up the world tree through the door of heaven, etc., that could be
restored to its true dimensions by a hermeneutic based on the phenomenology of transgressive
sacrality. "This ecstatic experience is not in opposition to the general theory of Brahmanic sacrifice,
just as the shaman's trance fits in perfectly into the cosmo-theological system of the Siberian and
Altaic religions. ... It remains to inquire if Indian religious life, as a whole and with all the symbolisms
that it includes, is a creation— 'degraded' in a measure, in order to become accessible to the
profane— produced by a series of ecstatic experiences on the part of a few privileged persons, or if,
on the contrary, the ecstatic experience of the latter is only the result of an effort toward
'interiorization' of certain cosmo-theological schemas that precede it. The problem is pregnant with
consequences . . . More precisely, it would be premature to claim that the tribal symbolic order owes
these common structures to a tribalizing Hindu Bhairava, when the latter could himself have been
born from the fusion of numerous tribal "Bhairavas" with the symbolic projection of the Brahman(ized)
dīksita. The social distancing between orthodox Brahman and outcaste is only the permanent fixation
of the opposition between the pure and the impure, which in primitive societies and in pre-classical
Brahmanism are defined rather in terms of alternation. In predominantly tribal and less thoroughly
Brahmanized Nepal, where, to my knowledge, the Brahmanicidal origin myth is hardly retold and the
corresponding Bhairavâçfamî not celebrated, Bhairava comes as often from Lhasa as from Vārānasī;
and through the transgressive mytheme of his own decapitation, he has been enthroned as national
god, a public status he has yet to attain in Hindu India.

I. Mitra-Varuna and the Niravasita-Bhairava: The Royal

Mahābrahmana
The dialectic of transgressive sacrality provides us with fresh insights into the complex structural
transformation of the Vedic dualistic universe dominated by the opposition between the deva Indra
and the asura (Mitra-)Varuna into the subsequent Hindu trinity of Brahmā, Visnu, and Rudra, each of
whom is in his own way a "god of the Totality" The term Asura, used only in the singular in the earliest
portions of the Rig Veda, seems to have originally referred to a "Lord" of peoples hostile to the Indra-
worshipping Aryans and probably characterizes this Lord as endowed, like the later brahman, with
mana-like magical power (māyā). Although Mitra-Varuna, the Asura(s) par excellence, and the chief
of the Devas, Indra, stem from two different cultural worlds, and perhaps even two opposing
civilizations, they already reveal in the Vedic religion a significant structural opposition which can be
defined just as well in terms of priestly "first" versus warrior "second" function or as sacred versus
profane king- ship. Mitra-Varuna is a dual divinity because it expresses the complementarity of the
pure interdictory Mitraic and the impure transgressive Varunic poles of Vedic sacrality, also translated
into the opposition between the upper and nether worlds of a dualistic cosmos. This internal
opposition is retained in the later Brahmā of the ritual texts, for he is primarily the mythical projection
of the purohitas, the foremost among whom, the Vāsisthas, are explicit incarnations (maitrā- varuni) of
Mitra-Varuna.

Nevertheless, the overlapping functions of Indra and the Indian (and Iranian) Mit(h)ra, who shows the
greatest reluctance to strike at Vrtra (and bears the vazra like Indra's vajra), requires that we replace
the notion of a spatial structure defined by fixed terms with a dynamic dialectic that seeks to define
each mythico-ritual entity in terms of the vectors that determine its transformations. Such a dialectic,
already implicit in the pre-classical diksā, may be described as an upward movement of purification of
the profane (royal) sacrificer represented by Indra, who accedes to the sacred (only) through the
mediation of the Mitraic pole of Brahmā before his transgressive plunge as the diksita into the impure
womb of Varuna. That this entire dialectic can be internalized within a single personage is indicated
by the identification of sacrifice as Prajāpati with both Brahmā (officiant) and yajamāna or sacrificer
represented by Indra (Heesterman, IC, pp. 27, 33, 50, 94; see n. 49). The mythic interferences and
the hybrid figures that correspond to them on the socio-religious level must be reduced to their
ideological coordinates in order to arrive at their Hindu transformation.

Brahmā represents the isolative domain of the sacred within the late Vedic cultural universe (madhya
deśa) as opposed to non-Vedic India, which it could absorb and assimilate only by expanding and
reorientating its profane pole so as to counter the secularizing tendency on its geographical borders,
such as gave rise to post-axial Buddhism with its separation of a revalorized profane kingship finding
its apogee in the Mauryan empire and Aśoka on the one hand and the exaggerated religious
renunciation of the monastic order on the other. Thus the Vedic Mitra practically disappears and
Varuna is relegated to a subsidiary position, but without losing his embryonic associations with the
subterranean waters and the demonized Asuras even in the epic (Kuiper, VV, pp. 74-93). Brahmā,
although omnipresent, recedes to the background along with the this-worldly mythico-ritual sacrality of
the pre-classical Brahman. Instead, the gods of bhakti rise to prominence with Visnu embodying the
vector uniting the profane Ksatriya with the pure pole of Brahmā to generate the religious image of the
king as the protector and even pivot of the socio-religious order (dharma), and Rudra incarnating the
vector linking him with the transgressive pole of Brahmā to generate the equally religious image of the
king as the savage destroyer in the impurity of the hunt and the violence of battle. This explains how
the model of the profane Hindu king, Arjuna son of Indra, can nevertheless be alternatively identified
with Visnu-Krsna and also with Rudra-Śiva. But if instead of Arjuna, the Mahābhārala crowns as king
the "Brahman" Yudhisthira, identified as Dharma with his impure Śūdra alter ego Vidura, born "equal
to Mitra-Varuna" who ruled over the earlier Vedic rta, this is because Yudhisthira expresses most fully
the hidden (transgressively) sacred dimension of Hindu kingship that still underlies its secularized
prolongation. Any total picture of Hindu kingship must necessarily integrate the sacred kingship of
Yudhisthira and the profane kingship of Arjuna-Dhanañjaya as the complementary poles of a single
model.

If the Brahmanical tradition has succeeded in retaining its specific symbolic universe and the
continuity of its cultural identity even in the process of ''colonizing'' the subcontinent, this has,
however, been achieved only at the cost of reducing the public image of the ideal Brahman to his
primarily ritual (and not racial) purity so as to confer upon him the social preeminence of the world-
renouncer, even while he continues his ritual traditions. This classical reform of the Vedic sacrifice is
epitomized by the transformation of the transgressive pre- classical dīksā into a purification of the
sacrificer conferring upon him the temporary status of a Brahman. The Vedic-Brahmanical universe of
values occupies primarily the top-right triangle of the oversimplified transformative diagram below:

If we nevertheless find certain Hindu figurations like the ksatrasama (=Ksatriya) purohita beside the
king, the impure sin-eating Mahābrāhmana as representing the priestly Brahman, Dharma incarnated
in the Śūdra Vidura, and the more problematic Brahmanicide and even tribal Bhairava, projected
beyond the Brahman-Varuna axis onto the lower left triangle (where the vectors are represented by
broken lines) enclosing the extra-Brahmanical universe, this is because these "lawful irregularities,"
although they each have their Vedic counterparts on the right half of the diagram, cannot be
satisfactorily accounted for by the system of values of classical Brahmanism alone. That these
disconcerting projections are not mere vestiges of the pre-classical system but serve a positive
function is immediately evident in the key figure of the lowly ksetrapāla extra-Vedic Bhairava, who has
been exalted to occupy the transgressive position corresponding to that of Varuna in Vedic religion.
That Bhairava should appear in the guise of Cāndāla is natural in view of the latter's ritual functions of
being excluded (niravasita) from the village, having dogs and donkeys for his wealth, wearing the
garments of the dead and carrying corpses, and appropriating the belongings (clothes, ornaments,
beds) of the criminals they execute, suggesting an identification. The under- worldly seat of Varuna's
cosmo-ritual rta becomes the impure foundation of the socio-religious Dharma incarnated in the Śūdra
Vidura and in Yudhisthira's dog before the latter reveals its transgressive dimension fully as
Bhairava's theriomorphic form; and all these figures retain their essential identity with Yama, Dharma-
Rāja, lord of Death.

From a purely sociological standpoint, the Mahābrāhmana as funerary priest is a category which is
not pure enough to be ranked as a proper Brahman, and yet not so impure, like the Dom cast in the
image of Yama-Rāja, as to cease being a Brahman. But I use the term Mahābrāhmana here, still in
accordance with Hindu usage, rather as a dialectical figure, extending to other personages like the
purohita, Vidūsaka, Pāśupata, and even the Brahman Kāpālika, who contains within himself the
opposing extremes of the pure and the impure, Mitra-Varuna having become the transgressive
conjunction of Brahman and outcaste. Rāmānuja condemns the Kāpālikas because they claimed that
even a Śūdra could instantly become a Brahman by receiving the dīksā to ascetically undertake the
Mahāvrata, and the Kusle descendants of the Kāpālikas play the role of Mahābrāhmanas among the
Newars. Even the Dom-Rāja of Banaras claims descent from a fallen Brahman in an ancestral myth
that simultaneously accounts for the origin of the Manikarnikā tank. It is in this context of lawful
irregularities generated by the suppressed affinity of Brahman and outcaste, that paradoxical
sociological phenomena, inexplicable in terms of a purely linear non-cyclic hierarchy, like that of (only)
the lowest outcastes (Cāndāla) being contaminated by contact with Brahmans and not accepting food
even from them, must ultimately be explained.

The broken vectors reveal that, far from being symptomatic of the inner contradictions of the reformed
classical system, its irregular projections serve as receptacles and tentacles governed by an implicit
intentionality: assimilation of the non-Brahmanical universe without surrendering the continuity of
Hindu identity with its roots in the Vedic Revelation. Thus we see two opposing yet complementary
movements. On the one hand, there is the process of Hinduization or Sanskritization whereby tribal
divinities are identified with Bhairava, who is himself whitened as he ascends the social hierarchy, just
as entire groups of Śūdras and even tribals can acquire sufficient power and influence to receive
Ksatriya status, before receiving the purifying classical dīksā to become (temporary) Brahmans. And
on the other hand the tantric Brahmans, like the Kāpālikas and Kaulas, descend through the dīksā to
identify themselves, in the midst of egalitarian transgressive rituals, with Bhairava incarnated in the
niravasita- Cāndāla.

Also revealed in the diagram is that, from a socio-religious point of view, Hindu bhakti primarily serves
the historically determined function of bridging the profane with the pure and impure poles of the
sacred, which, however, survives independently of bhakti in the figure of the five-headed Brahmā
whose fifth head is now borne by Bhairava. It is in this way that Visnu and especially Rudra-Śiva, in
whom the impure sacred can appear in the guise of the profane and vice versa, could have played a
crucial role in the process of Hinduization by countering, on the religious level, the Buddhist tendency
to desacralize the world in favour of renunciation and transcendence alone. Although each of the
Hindu trinity occupies only one face of the triangular Vedic structure, they are all equally entitled to be
gods of the totality only by symbolically incorporating the opposing apex of the triangle and thereby
revealing the dialectical movement of their interlocking identities. Thus Rudra finds his purified
counterpart in the ascetic and auspicious Siva, and Arjuna's very name "Bībhatsu" identifies him not
only with the "Brahman" Ajātaśatru but also with the white foeless Mitra disgusted at the thought of
doing violence to Vrtra. Visnu, like Arjuna, finds his black Varunic counterpart in the name Ksrna he
assumes in the Mahābhārata; and Brahmā becomes profanized in the figure of the royal purohita
projected as the martial Drona, or even the Brahmanized warrior Bhīsma-Pitāmaha. The goddess,
apparently eclipsed from this male-dominated scenario, participates as the tripled consort of the trinity
and finds her centre of gravity at the womb-like Varunic pole as the menstruating Krsnā-Draupadī
projected towards the effeminate long-haired Keśava as the auspicious Śrī-Laksmī. It is no doubt for
this reason that she is identified in the Newar Bhimsen temples with the blood-thirsty Bhairavi and
placed between the vegetarian Arjuna and the bloody Bhīma-Bhairava.
Just as the passive sacred kingship of Dharmarāja is overshadowed by the active central role of
Arjuna-Dhanañjaya intent on the conquest of the quarters (Jaya), it is the profanized public image of
the Hindu king that occupies the mediating role in our diagram not only between the synchronic
opposition of the pure and the impure but also dia- chronically between the Vedic heartland traced by
the peripatetic sacrificial black antelope and the Hindu subcontinent with its imperial South East Asian
expansion. His temporal power continues to participate in the legitimizing spiritual authority of the
sacred only through the ritual bi-unity he forms with the royal purohita who always precedes him, just
as the Ksatriya Pārthasārathi (Krsna) stands before Pārtha (Arjuna) as two Krsnas on the same
chariot equipped for the sacrifice of battle.129 Unlike his royal patron who is actively involved in the
mundane preoccupations of his ephmeral realm, and although apparently on the same profane level
as his indispensable but polluting partner, the Brahman purohita still remains primarily a specialist of
the sacred, incorporating in himself the extreme tension between the pure Mitraic and the impure
Varunic poles of Brahmā.

He appears problematic only because this deathly sin-eating pole has been systematically obscured
in the classical image of the ideal Brahman. For the same reason, his symbolic counterpart in the
deformed "Brahman par excellence" with his exaggerated (jumbaka) Varunic dimension now appears
in the Sanskrit drama as the ridiculous extra-Vedic (avaidika) Vidūsaka, with so many tantricized
traits. Yet the Vidūsaka, protected by Omkāra, is not only a Srotriya through all his abundant Vedic
symbolism. Even his sexuality reveals the triangular sacrificial dialectic: chastely warding off all the
symbols of lust with his crooked stick on the one hand, and obscenely indulging in symbolic incest
with the same upraised phallic kutilaka on the other, this "counsellor in the science of love"
(kāmatantrasaciva) nevertheless furthers the royal hero's marriage with the heroine, herself
incarnating the prosperity of the kingdom. The (not only sexual) universalization offered to the king's
profane individuality by the opposing poles of the sacred in the (brown-)monkey-like joking-companion
(narmasaciva) is also reflected in the awesome multiform monkey-banner (Jcapidhvaja) of Arjuna's
chariot, and finds its metaphysical expression in the terrifying "Universal Form" (viśvarūpa) assumed
by Krsna, himself elsewhere identified with the Vedic Vrsākapi or "Virile Monkey."

Although the twin gods of bhakti occupy and even encompass the two royal or profanizing faces of
the sacrificial triangle, the dialectic of transgression is impossible without the vertical dimension of the
sacred in Brahmā, in whom the opposing yet complementary poles of the pure and the impure are
both separated and united. Indeed, not only does the dialectic of transgressive sacrality wholly
encompass the universe of bhakti, it also finds independent and prior symbolic expression in the
mytheme of Indra's Brahmanicide of his purohita Viśvarūpa. If Bhairava later decapitates Brahmā with
his left thumb-nail, he is only following the illustrious example of the ambidextrous royal Arjuna, who
was not only guilty of Drona's Brahmanicide but also wielded, as Savyasācin, his infallible bow
Gāndīva with his unerring left hand. There has been hardly any need, until now, for an abstract Indian
term corresponding to the complex concept of transgression when the Hindu vocabulary had already
captured its dialectic in the vivid image of Indra's royal and Bhairava's criminal Brahmanicide, defining
it with such mythico-ritual and even juridical precision. If it is Brahmā's inability to create that is
responsible for his decapitation by the filial Siva, this is only because the Brahmanical sacrifice is
ultimately the process of winning life out of death. Although subordinated to the classical Brahman
through his public image as the profane Indra, as the divine protector Visnu and even perhaps as the
ascetic yogin and destructive warrior Śiva-Rudra, the ambivalent Hindu king reasserts his
independent magico-religious power as Lord of the Universe through his hidden tantric identity as the
Brahmanicide Bhairava, but only because he thereby creatively incorporates in himself the dialectical
Vedic figure of the universalizing royal Mahābrāhmana.

J. Bhairava Worship Today in North India and Nepal

Bhairava is no longer such a focus of transgressive practices as he was in the past, for his cult in
India has been "Brahmanized," in the sense of purified, to such an extent that it nowadays differs little
from the temple cult of any other orthodox Hindu divinity. This may be attributed to various socio-
cultural transformations, especially the political domination of proselytizing and puritanizing Islam after
the 12th century, followed by the socio-economic domination of the modern rationalizing mentality that
has interrupted even the process of syncretic assimilation at the folk level reflected in the cult of Ghāzī
Mlya and the Five (Muslim) Saints (Pāñco Pir) in the North, in such transgressive figures as Muttāl
Rāvuttan, alias Muhammad Khān, in the southern Draupadi cult, and in Mallu Khān's sacrilegious
"pilgrimage" to Mecca in the Central Indian cult of Mallanna.

Although the Brahman priests offer meat, fish, and wine on behalf of their devotees to the divinity
during special (visera) as opposed to "ordinary" (sāmūnya) worship in the major "nuclear" temples, as
in the Kālabhairava temples of Ujjain and Vārānasi, and connive at animal sacrifices performed by
devotees sometimes in the compound, they do not offer blood sacrifices themselves (at least publicly)
at these temples. Nevertheless, the dynamic head (mahant) of the Kamacchā Batuka-Bhairava
temple (relatively recent, it is not included in the asta- bhairavas of Kāśi), next in popularity only to the
Kāla-Bhairava temple, regularly offers goat sacrifices to the renowned goddess Vindhyāvāsini at the
Vindhyācal hills. She is guarded by Ānanda, Ruru, Siddhanātha and Kapāla Bhairavas to the east,
north, west, and south, respectively, of the town, while Lāl Bhairava stands before the police station
on the main road leading to her shrine. In all these temples, offerings of limes are presented as
substitutes for human sacrifice. Within the compound of the goddess herself are images of
Pañcagañgā, Kapāla, and Kāla- Bhairavas, and in April, 1986 I accompanied an all-male party led by
the Mahant from Banaras in order to celebrate his restoration of the temple of Bhūta-Bhairava in the
monkey-infested jungle behind the Kāll temple frequented by Ojhas (spirit mediums) on the other side
of Vindhyācal. The popular and influential Mahant has himself composed a "Hymn to Batuka-
Bhairava" (stotram in Sanskrit), and is actively involved in the celebration of Bhairavâçfaml and "Lāf
kā Vivāh" (marriage) and other festivals at the Kālabhairava and Lāf-Bhairo temples. Indeed, such is
his activity that it is now rather Bafuka Bhairava who plays the role of the traditional Krodhana
Bhairava rather neglected in the nearby temple of the goddess Kāmākhya, whose own Mahant from
the Nirvānī Akhādā is quite ailing. Batuka is in fact the sāttvika double of the less imposing but original
Adi (Krodhana-)Bhairava in a separate room of his temple, who still receives essentially tāmasika pūjā
every evening on the model of the pañcamakāra performed by one of the most fervent, blissfully
intoxicated (unmatta), disciples with fish, wine, meat, puris (mudrā) and vadas symbolizing mithuna.
Although the Mahant himself performed the goat sacrifice for Bhūtanātha Bhairava in the forest, the
party of revelers was subsequently offered two different modes of feasting (bhoj): vegetarian and non-
vegetarian. Sometimes accompanied by a devotee seeking the fulfillment of particular desires
(kamya-pūjā), he still performs solitary worship in the cremation ground of the Hariścandra ghāt on
the Gañgā by pouring wine on the śiva-lirtga, etc.

The founding story, retold by him, tells of an ascetic guru named something like Batuk or śiva-Rām
Puri who, having quarrelled with his disciple at Allahabad, decided to settle here at Kamacchā with his
image of Krodha Bhairava in order to continue his sadhana. There his renown grew to the point of
attracting the attention of the childless Balvant Singh. The royal embryogonic dimension is thus
retained in the king of Banaras receiving a blessed fruit from the sādhu to beget his successor Rājā
Chet Singh, and rewarding his new-found preceptor with land and properties. When the envious
disciple came to rejoin his guru, the latter shed his mortal coils in a fit of anger and his samadhi is
supposed to be beneath the shrine of the present "Original- Angry-Bhairava." The disciple, having
assumed ownership of the properties, later rediscovered through a dream the image of Batuka
Bhairava, which was excavated with the help of king Balavant Singh in the compound of the present
temple built by the king in 1733 to commemorate the birth of his son. The present lineage of Mahants,
descended from that rebellious disciple, found peace only after having observed a rigorous sādhanā
for seven generations before Krodhana Bhairava, who is still worshipped as (the union of?) Ānanda
Bhairava and Bhairavi. The mythical version of the goddess Candi having discovered Batuka-
Bhairava as a child (batu) at the bottom of a lake during the universal dissolution (pralaya) and
adopting him with compassion, which the Mahant attributes to the Mārkandeya Purāna, probably
reflects the initiatory scenario of the baby Krsna swallowing the eternal youth Mārkandeya during the
pralaya. Batuka is indeed considered the child of Sahasracandi, whose image is found within his
sanctum.
 Vikranta Bhairava

The resilience of the cult, even quite independently of fixed institutionalized frameworks of
transmission, may be judged from the example of an adept of Vikrānta-Bhairava at Ujjain. Living in a
modern city environment and employed in the Vikram University, he has succeeded in attracting
devotees from all walks of life, including university lecturers, government officials, journalists who
make it their duty to report on its evolution, etc. Although originally an exclusive goddess-worshipper
before establishing himself with his family at Ujjain, he had then visions of Bhairava and was directed
by the goddess to meditate on Vikrānta-Bhairava. On the banks of backward flowing Ksiprā, he kept
nightlong vigils in the cremation ground beside the ruined and derelict temple of Vikrānta-Bhairava on
the ancient city- pilgrimage route (pañcakrośī) around the outskirts of the city, whose sacred
geography is modelled on that of Kāśi. Thereby he has acquired spiritual powers (siddhi) which permit
him to exercise his clairvoyance gratis every morning for the general public that flocks to him. A
regular weekly cult has now spontaneously revived at this temple, not far from the major temple of
Kāla Bhairava once patronized by the Mahā- rājas, and his devotees gather there, despite its great
distance, in the late evening for worship in a rather "neo-Vedic" mode with havan, etc. What is most
interesting is that he has received no regular initiation into the worship of Bhairava, and has instructed
himself into the appropriate ritual utterances (mantra), gestures (nyāsa), mystic diagrams (yantra),
procedures (paddhati), etc., only after having received his vocation through visions. However,
although it is his assiduous psycho-physical discipline (sādhana) that has reanimated the cult, the
transgressive element is, as far as I can tell, completely effaced.

But the original character of Bhairava worship may be appreciated much better by balancing this
picture with his various roles in Nepal, where he has always enjoyed Hindu royal patronage, first
under the Licchavis like the famous Amśuvarman, then under the Newar Mallas, and now under the
Gorkha Shāhs, patrons of the syncretizing Nāth cult. During the Bhairavi Rath Jātrā festival, the
dhāml of Nuwakot is possessed by, or rather becomes, Bhairava, and his wife likewise incarnates
Bhairavi who has an important temple there and is said to have conferred the Nepal Valley upon her
devotee, the Gorkha conqueror Prithvi Nārāyan Shāh, creator of modern Nepal. The entire Newar
community, with tribals from distant parts and the onlooking Gorkha people, participates in this Hindu
festival, officiated over especially by Brahman Buddhist priests who now come all the way from
Kathmandu. It climaxes in the sacrifice, especially when the "Sindūr Procession" reaches Devi-Ghāt
on the confluence of the Tadhi and the Triśūlī-Gañgā, of numerous goats and buffaloes, from whose
gushing throats the dhāml as Bhairava gulps down the fresh blood, just like the Bhairava dancer
during the "Nine Goddess" (Navadurgā) dances of Bhaktapur. Then, before the shrine of Jālpa Devi at
the confluence and in secret before the representative of the king of Nepal, he proclaims oracles for
the entire kingdom which are then communicated to the king. Once in twelve years the dhāmī visits
the king at Kathmandu in order to receive a new set of ritual attire and insignia. Pacali Bhairab himself
is often represented in myth as a king with impure traits, sometimes from VārānasI or Lhasa, who had
the habit of frequenting the cremation ground beside the Bāgmatl (-Gañgā) before becoming petrified
there after wrapping himself in a funeral mat. At Bhaktapur it is the used funeral mat of the highest
Brahman, the rājapurohita, that serves as the canvas for painting the ritual mask of Ākāsh Bhairab
that is affixed on the outer wall of his temple to receive public worship.

The Buddhist Mahākāla used to fly, it is said, between Kāśī and Lhasa, but was immobilized in mid-air
by a powerful Tibetan Lama and forced to settle down at the edge of the Tundikhel royal parade
ground. "In his role as defender and guardian, Mahākāla is one of the chief protectors of all the other
Valley gods, a task he shares with Śañkata Bhairava of Tebahal, Kathmandu. In the Kathmandu
Valley, representations of Mahākāla rarely conform to his textual description, and often incorporate
aspects that are rightly those of other divinities: Samvara, Hevajra, and Heruka, emanations of
Aksobhya. Conceptually related to Bhairava, from whom he probably derives, the Buddhist deity is
teamed with Bhairava in practice, shares some aspects of his iconography, and the name Mahākāla,
one of Bhairava's epithets. Like Bhairava, too, Nepalis conceive of Mahākāla as a pītha devatā, the
temple of the Tundikhel Mahākāla, Kathmandu, for example, representing his pītha, which is paired
with a companion deochem inside the town. Thus it is often difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish
the two deities. Iconographically, even the famous Kāla Bhairava of the Kathmandu Darbar Square
conforms as much to Samvara as to Bhairava." The spontaneity with which Tibetan pilgrims make it a
point to venerate this Kāla Bhairab at Hanumān Dhoka is no doubt due to this identification. It is
significant that the Newar Vajrācāryas, for whom Bhairava is to all appearance not the kuladevatā, are
nevertheless custodians of his secrets and sometimes even central officiants at his public cult for the
Hindu community. Particularly venerated within the Gelugpa sect, the Vajra-Bhairava mentioned in an
inscription of Śivadeva II is another name of the fierce Yamāntaka, and the history of his lineage
worship is found in the Tibetan text entitled "Jam-Doyangs Bzhao-Pai Rdorje," where the revelation is
attributed to Mahāsiddha Lalitavajra of Uddyāna. The Kāśī-Lhasa axis so constant in the Newar
ethnography of Bhairava is probably to be explained by Tibetan Buddhism having played, after his
original adoption from Hindu India, a preponderant role in the spread of his cult in Nepal.

Also known as Adālata (Court) Bhairava, the towering black solitary image of Kāla Bhairab before the
palace gate at Hanumān Dhoka was the chief witness before whom government servants were
annually sworn into office, a function that corresponds perfectly to his now practically defunct role of
policeman-magistrate of Kāśī. Litigants and accused criminals also swore while touching Bhairava's
foot, and he who bore false witness vomited and died on the spot. As late as the nineteenth century
he was the occasional recipient of human sacrifices, such as (Mitra-) Varuna had earlier demanded in
order to paradoxically maintain the awesome rta hidden firmly within the heart of the Vedic socio-
cosmic order. Although much of the symbolism surrounding Bhairava is no longer understood even by
his most ardent devotees and the cult itself is being rapidly effaced, one has only to replace these
symbols in their original context to recognize the transgressive mode of sacrality that inspires them.
And although this symbolic constellation, an integral part of the galaxy of criminal gods and demon
devotees, is typically and in many of its elements exclusively Indian, it is the vehicle of a dialectic of
transgression that flourishes under different modalities in archaic and primitive religions and is not
wholly absent in the other world religions. Increasingly claimed to be both historically and principally
the original sacred, this ideology assumes in India the form of the terrifying Bhairava to pose awkward
questions that we modernists, as ethical and rational humanists, would have no doubt preferred to
leave unanswered, had not the secular countersciences of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and
linguistics converged in the ever-widening and deepening archaeology of contemporary scientia to
insistently proclaim with Michel Foucault the inevitable and imminent dissolution of an already
shrunken Man.