The Presence of Siva by S. Kramrisch;

Author:S. Kramrisch;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

2. THE SEVERED HEAD: THE CAUSE OF ITS FALL

The fifth head of Brahmā had to fall, for more than one reason. The Skānda Purāna remembers the one fundamental, primordial cause. It says that formerly, in the very beginning of the Kṛta Yuga, the golden age, Brahmā was enamored of his youthful daughter and was about to cohabit with her. Seeing this, Śiva cut off with a sword the fifth head of Brahmā (SkP.2.3.2.3-4; cf. 3.1.40.5-16). The primal scene, at the beginning of days, is staged here in the costume of a later age, when the figure of the Father Prajāpati had acquired the features of Brahmā, including the fifth head, the physiognomical projection skyward of his lust that had gone to his head. Rudra, in this setting, did not direct his arrow toward the sex of Prajāpati. Instead, he wielded a sword by which he cut off the obnoxious head.4 But for the change in costume and iconography, the primordial scene has remained intact.

According to other accounts, the site of the decapitation of Brahmā was not the stark vastness of a nascent world but the sublime peak of Mount Meru, the cosmic mountain (KūP.2.31.3). There, the great sages asked Brahmā which god was the imperishable, supreme reality. Deluded by Śiva’s māyā, Brahmā declared himself as the supreme reality (KūP.2.31.4-6). Viṣṇu made the same claim for himself (KūP.2.31.8-10). The Vedas declared Śiva to be the ultimate reality in whom all beings reside, the highest reality that the yogis know, the Great Lord who makes the wheel of existence revolve, Sankara, the bringer of peace, Mahādeva, the Great God, Puruṣa, the primal being, Rudra (KūP.2.31.13-16). Hearing these words, Brahmā in his delusion laughed and asked: “How is it that the Supreme Spirit, the Brahmān, free of all attachment, lustily sports with his wife and the very haughty Pramathas, the churn-spirits?” (KūP.2.31.17-18; cf. ŚP.3.8.31-32; SkP.3.1.24.16).

Brahmā, in this contest of supremacy, assumed an aggressive stance against Śiva, who was not present in the assembly of the gods and sages on the peak of Mount Meru. It was under the spell of the mäyä of Lord Śiva that the two demiurges acted as they did. Brahmā inveighed against Śiva for the same reason that—in the opinion of some of the gods—Rudra had attacked Prajāpati in the primordial scene. The intercourse of Prajāpati and his daughter, however, had been a signal only that the wholeness of the absolute was being ruptured by the flow of its substance into creation. Subsequently, the meaning of the symbol sank into, and was submerged in, its sexual impact. It rose to Brahmā’s uneasy and deluded mind when he attacked Śiva, the Great Yogi, apparently in the thrall of lust and thus disqualified from being supreme reality, free from all attachment.

The final word in the assembly of gods and sages was spoken by a formless one that had taken on a form, the sound AUM, the primordial sound, the praṇava, the source of all mantras (KūP.2.31.19). Praṇava said, “Never does the Great Lord Rudra-Śiva take delight in any wife who would be separate from his own self.

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