SAUNDARYA LAHARI - VERSE 83

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

VERSE 83

THE UNIVERSAL CONCRETE IS HERE RECOGNIZED

 

पराजेतुं रुद्रं द्विगुणशरगर्भौ गिरिसुते
निषङ्गौ जङ्घे ते विषमविशिखो बाढ-मकृत ।
यदग्रे दृस्यन्ते दशशरफलाः पादयुगली
नखाग्रच्छन्मानः सुर मुकुट-शाणैक-निशिताः

 

parajetum rudram dviguna sara garbhau girisute
nisangau janghe te visama visikho batham akrta
yad agre drsantye dasa sara phalah pada yugali
nakhagra cchadmanas suramakuta sanaika nisitah
 
His quiver duplicating as Your twin legs, looking like pillars
Made by the God of Love, for giving battle to Shiva,
They show at their knees ten arrowheads, simulating nails,
Sharpened only on the whetstones which are the crowns of gods.
.
 
This verse marks the close of a descending series started as early as Verse 42. The next verse contains a tacit signature which has to be added to the four or five others that we have pointed out already under Verse 75. Here the locus of beauty to be kept in mind is the brightness of the nails showing from beneath the feet of the Goddess. The absolute status of the Beauty of these shining nails emerges from the fact that they are to be sharpened exclusively on the crowns of the god, on the numerator side. These gods could be ten in number so that each nail could have one crown for its whetstone. A whetstone has to be harder than the instrument it whets, or at least, equal in hardness. One cannot cut glass with a piece of soap. In point of hardness, therefore, there is implied here a one-to-one correspondence between the crowns and the toenails of the Goddess. When factors of beauty are cancelled out from head to foot, a certain totality of beauty emerges, which, for the present, is the natural terminus of this series of descending Chakras.
 
It might be asked why Kama sharpens the ten toenails. The answer is contained in the second line: it is to give battle to Shiva. It might again be asked where the ten gods range on the numerator side. They are only demiurges, for the toenails representing the arrowheads of Kama do not require the unique Omega Point of intensity or hardness to be effectively sharpened. His arrows are not stern enough stuff to really vanquish Shiva, except on an occasion when Shiva descends somewhat from the height of his own proper Omega Point. Such an occasion does not ordinarily take place. The crowns of the demiurge-gods are hard enough to sharpen the arrows of Kama sufficiently for operations within the lesser value system to which he belongs. Below the level of the nails are the soles of the Goddess´ feet which are going to be referred to in Verse 84.
 
Thus, for the purposes of this verse, the one-to-one cancellation takes place between the sharpness of the toenails, as a denominator factor, and the numerator factor of the hardness of' the whetstones which are the crowns of the gods. Such are some of' the overall features which we have to keep in mind before examining the further details of this verse.
 
In the previous verse, the reference came as far down as the legs, to the beautifully rounded knee region. The legs and feet below the knee region are compared to duplicated pillar-like quivers within which the arrows stand upside down and not in a position ready to be used directly against Shiva, who is placed at the Omega Point by us for the sake of structural consistency. This inversion is not due to any oversight. In a magnet, positive lines of force and negative lines of force face in contrary directions. The five toes have five arrowheads; this is meant to suggest that there is a fivefold structure on which the human body is built.
 
Sankara elsewhere refers to this plan, based on two sets of five tiers of duplicated fives, making one hundred. When these are thought of as flames or fires, they reveal the implied structure referred to as pancagni vidya (the secret knowledge of the fivefold fires), which Nachiketas is to learn from the God of Death in the Katha Upanishad, as one of the lesser wisdom secrets in addition to full-fledged brahmavidya. With this lesser secret knowledge, the God of Death intends to dissuade Nachiketas from asking for the last boon of absolute wisdom. Sankara builds up an eightfold ensemble of cities built on a fivefold plan, consi­sting of five functions, such as speech, etc, five functions, such as hearing, etc. five vital functions, five chief points of the compass (including the upward one), intelligence, with its five subdivisions, the fivefold desires, the corresponding five­fold ignorances and the fivefold tendencies to action, forming eight cities built on a five-fold plan, which, when added to the 100 already given, gives us the 108 syllables of Aum, which are to be repeated when we have to remember gurus, worshippable saints or gods.
 
Here, when we come to the lower levels of action at least, there is the duplication of the left and right legs, which can be abolished if we turn the structure by 180 degrees. The question of whether each arrowhead needs the separate crown of a distinct god could be kept open, because there is no specific refer­ence to such duplication on the numerator side.
 
The first line further refers to the lower part of the legs as pillars. Stable support for the body is the chief function of this lower half of the leg, justifying this analogy. The pillars are described as “made by the God of Love”. In what sense is eroticism interested in making pillars for the body? Activity means movement, and erotic persons have to seek their mates, male or female, in a place other than the one in which they find themselves. Thus, the organ of locomotion has a direct bearing on the function of eroticism in its most basic sense. But true eroticism is not of this basic kind. It contains verticalized inner principles of attraction and repulsion within the peripheral or horizontal outer shell.
 
It is in the brightness of the nails that the existence of these arrows pointing negatively downward could be discerned, because they are hardly visible to a superficial view of the legs. The arrowheads are said, in the third line, to be more real than the nails. The nails are only real in a two-dimensional sense, but the arrowheads are real in a three-dimensional sense and could even attain to a fourth-dimensional absolutist status when their one-sided brightness is increased by being whetted on their own proper counterparts, the crowns of gods. A three-­dimensionally real arrow needs to be whetted upon a more than three-dimensionally hard crown to increase its brilliance and to make it tend, by such a cancellation, toward the Absolute Beauty that is to result from this situation. It is true that the nails are hard, but the arrowheads are harder. They can only be whetted on something harder than themselves, approaching the ultimate hardness of a diamond.
 
All these grades of hardness belong to the context of a universal concrete hardness in an absolute overall sense, so as to be fitted without inconsistency into the highly ontologically-biased picture of bright beauty that is still presented in this, the last verse of the series.
 
The second line of our translation underlines the fact that it is the God of Love who is responsible for making the two pillars out of the legs of the Goddess. Man is a two-legged animal. Procreation of his kind is for him a basic function, and Kama is the presiding deity for such a function. He is an absolute in his own domain, as far as it can reach upward, but his arrows cannot always fly high and vertically enough to defeat Shiva.
 
God, in trying to create the brightest and most beautiful part of a woman's body, is said by Kalidasa to have lavished his greatest artistic ability on creating that unique heel of Parvati, who is depicted as walking to a lake so that she could stand in water for forty days to prove her love for Shiva. Shiva's heart can only be conquered by such unique and absolute devotion. In another sense, therefore, we could say that the stability and beauty of the legs of Parvati were conferred by the creator of beauty itself. The heel and the sole do not yet figure in this verse; it must be for that reason that the two pillars and their stability are represented as being the handiwork of the God of Love, Kama. In the next verse we shall pass on to the deeper implications of the feet of the Goddess.
 
The force of the word “solely” in the last line of this verse is justified because the one-to-one correspondence between the arrowheads of Kama and the rows of gods attains to a self-sufficient cancellability, which marks the limits within which erotic tendencies can live and move. A more verticalized version, as in Verse 84, would put Kama out of commission altogether. There, instead of Shiva as a target for Eros´ arrows, we have Sankara as a student of wisdom presented as a supplicant at the Alpha Point. From Verse 84 through to the end of the work it is the sole of the feet touching its lowermost limit, reaching even into the subhuman world that comes into the various pict­ures presented. The wisdom supplicant is directly referred to in the next verse as well as in Verse 98, while the intervening verses are meant to clarify further structural implications.

.

 

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

 

WORD FOR WORD
Parajetum rudram - to give battle to Shiva
Dviguna shara garbhau giri sute - his quiver duplicated, O Mountain Daughter
Nishangau - (they are) a pair of pillars
Janghe te - these legs of Yours
Vishama vishikoh - the one of keen arrows (Eros)
Batham akrta - he surely made
Yad agre - at their tips
Drshyante - they are seen
Dasha shara phalah - ten arrowheads
Pada yugali nakha agra cchadmanas - simulating the toenails of the twin feet
Surama kuta snaika nishitaha - sharpened solely on whetstones which are the crowns of gods.

 

Another version:

WORD FOR WORD
Parajetum rudram - to defeat Rudra
Dvi guna saragarbhau - filling the two quivers, receptacles, doubly
Girisute - o daughter of Giri (the mountain)
Nisanghau (te) - two pillars of yours
Janghe te - your two lower legs
Visama visikho - the one of tragic flame (Eros, libido)
Badham akrta - surely he made
Yad agre - at their tips
Drsyante - are seen
Dasa sara phala - the ten arrow heads
Pada yugali nakha gracchad manah - having the semblance of the nails of the two feet
Suramakuta sanaika nisitah - sharpened well on the whetstones consisting of the crowns of gods.

.

Another version:

 

TRANSLATION
- To defeat Rudra (Shiva, the hypostatic function)
- Filling the two arrow receptacles (quivers) doubly (referring to the lower part of the legs - a reference to Eros
- five arrows in each of the quivers)
- O Daughter of the Himalayas
- Like two pillars the two pillars are yours)
- Your two lower legs
- The one of tragic flame (Eros- libido)
- Surely he made these arrows
- At their tips
- Are seen (there is seen)
- The ten arrow heads
- Having the semblance of the nails of the two feet
- Sharpened well on the whetstone (solely by these crowns) consisting of the crowns of Devas


  
This is equivalent to the wife sharpening her wits on various professors and psychologists to defeat her husband.
The Devi's legs: actually he is describing the calves and not the thighs - see previous verse.
 
 
The psyche is being structurally analyzed - the psyche means a woman.
Shiva has no mathematical equivalent.
 

A woman is a complete psyche.


The Devi is against Shiva's nominalism :
"I am the creative principle - I will not allow you to evaporate".
 
(Nominalism is a metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not exist. ED)
 

If you want to send arrows, they must be sharp.
She sharpens her arrows on the crowns of demigods.
The sharp arrows of destruction correspond to the flames on Shiva's crown, to defeat Rudra.

There are two legs - vertical copulation is referred to.
In any case the arrows are ineffectual against Shiva, as a sort of hydrogen principle.
(Hydrogen is the lightest element and the most abundant chemical substance. ED)
The arrowheads are harder than the crowns of the Devas.
 
In Verse 83 we find:
Selectionism
Structuralism
Subjectivism
 
(Selectionism: a system or theory based on the doctrine of natural, artificial, or social selection.
Structuralism is the dialectical methodology adopted in this work.
Subjectivism is the philosophical tenet that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience",
cf. Descartes. ED)
.

 

 

Back to back is vertical;
belly to belly is horizontal.

 

 

The toenails are arrowheads which are sharpened on the whetstones which are the crowns of gods.
 
Here poetic fancy overleaps itself.
 
 
The head of the total situation is a hydrogen or helium flame which can sharpen her nails.

Again, there is cancellation between Numerator and Denominator factors.
 

"Make a quiver into pillars into legs with arrowheads."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Let Eros not find a place to sharpen them, until he finds the crowns of gods.
 
 
 
There is an inversion between the feet and the crowns, like the hanging man in the Tarot.
 

There is a polarity between the ontological richness of the Devi's feet on the negative side and the positive teleological richness of the gods' crowns.
This is a vertical inversion in grades of ambivalent values.

Let there be no distinction within the Absolute; this is an axiomatic truth.
The arrowheads are aimed at Shiva.