An Elemental Thing by Eliot Weinberger

Author:Eliot Weinberger
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2014-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

25: VALMIKI

Empedocles believed that, after the age when love was all and all was contained in a perfect sphere, when the power of strife began to break things apart but love was still dominant, there was an idyllic time among humans. Spring was perpetual, “all things were tame and kindly to man, and loving kindness was kindled abroad.” Among people there was “no war-god Ares worshiped, nor the battle-cry, nor was Zeus their king, nor Kronos, nor Poseidon. Aphrodite was queen, and they propitiated her with pious offerings, painted figures and variously scented unguents, sacrifices of unmixed myrrh and fragrant incense, and they poured on the ground libations of yellow honey.” But as strife ascended, they began to kill animals to eat, and then animals to sacrifice to their gods, and then they began to kill each other. We had reached our present era of triumphant strife.

In India, the killing of an animal was the birth of poetry. The sage Valmiki, disillusioned with the world, had retreated to the forest, and had sat motionless for so many years that a termite hill had grown around him. The god-sage Narada appears, and tells Valmiki he must emerge from his immobility. Valmiki answers that he will, if Narada can name a single man alive today who is honorable and aware. There is indeed one such person, says Narada, and proceeds to tell him the story of King Rama.

Valmiki breaks through the hardened termite hill, and goes with his disciple Bharadvaja to bathe in the beautiful Tamasa river. Their tranquility is shattered when an arrow whizzes through the air and kills a male kraunica bird in the very act of mating. Valmiki sees the drops of blood on the white feathers, the smiling hunter coming out from behind some reeds, and spontaneously curses: “You shall never again know peace, O hunter, since you slew this kraunica bird as it was overcome with passion.” Valmiki is amazed at what he has just said: two lines in a perfect form, and capable of being sung. His grief (soka) has produced a couplet (sloka): the first verses ever written. Bharadvaja, the first person to hear a poem, memorizes it, ensuring its transmission.

Back in his retreat, Valmiki repeats the lines over and over in wonder, and enters a state of deep meditation. Brahma, Creator of the Worlds, appears and tells him that he must use this new form to tell the story Narada has told him of King Rama. Everything he does not know will be revealed to him, and the poem will endure as long as the mountains and rivers.

For days and years, Valmiki sits staring into a little water cupped in his hands. He sees the story of King Rama in its essence and in its details, and he sees things in the life of Rama that have not yet occurred. He chants a poem of 24,000 slokas: the Ramayana.

Among his listeners are Rama’s own twin sons, Kusa and Lava, who were born in the forest after their mother, Sita, was falsely accused of infidelity and banished.

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