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Charles Malamoud
This paper deals with some aspects of samkalpa and maya as both of these notions are
components of imagination. Imagination is not just fantasy. It is also the representation
of what one expects, wishes or fears and the anticipation of the results of what one undertakes. As such, imagination has a crucial role both in the ritual and in the set of aims
and means that constitutes the kings artha.
* A first version of this paper was presented at the International Conference The Imagination of
the Political and the Politics of Imagination, University of Hyderabad and the Einstein Forum, February 22-28, 2009. I read it after having heard Professor David Shulmans contribution: The King who fell
in Love with Ms. Imagination: Ratnakheta rinivasa Diksitas Bhavana-purusottama.
1 kim kruram strihrdayam kim grhinah priyahitaya daragunah
2 kah kamah samkalpah kim duskarasadhanam praja (ed. Kale, p. 156).
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my manas be made of auspicious samkalpa (tan me manah ivasamkalpam astu): this is the refrain of Vajasaneyisamhita xxxiv 1-6. The semantic field of
samkalpa appears clearly in the magic formula the man who wants to kindle
love in a womans heart must utter, according to Atharvavedasamhita iii 25, 2:
the arrow feathered with longing (adhi), tipped with love (kama), necked with
samkalpa [] let love [kama again] peirce thee in the heart.6 In the vocabulary
of ritual samkalpa, the project of performing a rite, is both the resolve itself
and the mental image, the anticipation of what is to be performed. In that respect, samkalpa is not only an utterance, it is also a manifestation of the might
of manas. In fact, according to the instructions of the rautasutra, the yajamana has to utter his samkalpa formula aloud thrice and to say it mentally,
silently, thrice. When recited aloud samkalpa belongs to the sphere of vak,
speech; being recited silently, samkalpa reveals its affinity with manas. When
associated with vak, manas makes a mithuna, a pair: as it is often the case, the
neuter has the force of the masculine (for instance the neuter saman, melody,
is the sexual partner of the feminine rk, stanza): manas and vak yoked together carry the sacrifice to the gods abode.7 In atapathabrahmana x 5, 3, it is said
that in the beginning, when there was neither being nor non being, manas
was there, manas indeed is neither being nor non being. It wished to get a more
definite and more substantial self (niruktataram murtataram atmanam) [] it
got the vision of the various sacrificial fires, implements and procedures that
were purely mental (manomaya), they were mental constructions (manacit);
rites were performed mentally in these mental fires. And now in the present
world, whatever people conceive with their mind (manasa samkalpayanti) that
is the work of these initial fires and rites []. That means that even when people use material fires to perform material rites, the ritual samkalpa, the mental anticipation which comes along with the resolve and promise is the reflection of this phase of the genesis when everything was mental, when manas,
although endowed with a substantial self, operated with purely mental objects. One can see a remnant or an illustration of this primary or primeval state
of affairs in the rgvedic story of Trita as it is retold in an expanded form in
Mahabharata ix 36: Trita fallen in a dried well and unable to get out decides to
offer a soma sacrifice mentally; he imagines all the implements he needs,
samkalpayam asa, he mentally acts as both yajamana and rtvij, and it works:
the gods are satisfied with Tritas mental sacrifice, a sacrifice consisting in
samkalpa, they come and rescue him. His was an imaginary and yet effective
sacrifice, in which samkalpa is not just the promise and the anticipation of the
process but the whole of the process itself. Tritas imaginary ritual is of course
to be distinguished from the metaphorical sacrifices in which prayers, emotions, meditations, all sorts of penances are deemed to be the substitutes to
the material gestures and offerings of the regular procedure.
6 Whitney 1905: i.130.
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piness and virtue result from the fact that specific lifestyles and duties adjust
to each other without conflict or overlapping, sure enough, but also that there
are moments when boundaries between nature and rite smoothly vanish (for
instance Kumarasambhava v).8
3. The ways of the world
Now let us come to Kautilyas Arthaastra. At first glance it is quite the opposite of an utopia. It is not a dystopia either. Still it deals with what the king
should do. Then, what is the difference from the descriptions of the perfect
realm? Life in the forest and wilderness aramas of dharmic utopia is the
theme of descriptions encapsulated in narratives; these descriptions refer to
a past, be it mythical or legendary: these events, these situations took place
somewhere once upon a time; utopia in this context is *eu-topia rather than
*ou-topia. In the Arthaastra, on the contrary, there is practically no narrative
whatever, references to past events are extremely rare. Kautilya does not look
for examples to illustrate his instructions: this is a major difference with
Machiavelli. In the Arthaastra, verbs are predominantly in the indicative present in sentences consisting in maxims or general truths, or in the optative in
sentences stating what the king or his agents should do or what is likely to
happen. All the Arthaastra is in fact a series of answers to the question: what
are the means the king should use to reach the aim the pursuit of which defines him as a king? At first glance, there is no substantial discrepancy between
the rules of action in the Arthaastra and the rajadharma as it is taught in the
texts of Smrti. In fact, there are differences in approach and perspective. The
texts on rajadharma as well as the Arthaastra include violence, tricks and deceit as means of government and warfare, but in the rajadharma these methods are alluded to in generic terms, whereas in the Arthaastra they are thoroughly described, discussed, qualified. Moreover, some acts of warfare, such
as burning the crops of the enemy, are forbidden in the Smrti (Mahabharata
xii 104, 39), allowed in the Arthaastra (ix 1, 35-36).9 But the specificity of the
Arthaastra is that the king is repeatedly referred to as vijigisu one who wants
to conquer. There is no limit to his conquest, which means that he is always
in the process of using devices before he reaches the ultimate aim and also
that there are no natural or traditional boundaries to his realm. It is a ksetra
plus all the earth he is able to conquer. It is not just by chance that there are
no details in the Arthaastra which could give us an idea of the size and location of the Kautilyan state. This endless conquest needs no justification. To
conquer what he does not have yet and keep and protect what he has, this is
8 Malamoud 2005 (chapter 8) and 1995 (chapter 4).
9 In Daakumaracarita, end of the third ucchvasa (p. 122 of Kales edition), it is said that the right moment to attack the ennemies is when his crops are ripe: then, one can destroy them, proceed to mustivadha, sasyavadha.
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it is acts of divine and human agency that make the world go (lokam yapayati) []; what is manusa can be thought of (it is cintya), daiva cannot be
thought about, it is incalculable (acintya).13 Now the king is not passive in
front of acintya: he is a Hindu king, he performs rites, including magic rites
(maya), to avert or limit calamities coming from daiva. One can do that without having to imagine, to guess or understand the divine causes of these
events. It is remarkable and rather surprising in the Indian context that the
king does not trust astrologers: the object (artha) slips away from the foolish
person who is continuously consulting the stars; for achieving an object this
object itself is the auspicious constellation; what will the stars do? (ix 4, 26).14
This passage follows immediatly an enumeration of labhavighnah hindrances
to gain: among many other psychological weaknesses, there are paralokapeksa regard for the other world and dharmikatva piousness, along with
fondness for auspicious days and constellations (mangalatithinaksatrestitva).
But while the king refuses to guess the unthinkable, he is fully aware that people (his subjects, his ennemies) need to imagine the supernatural and are
ready to believe in the reality of the kings maya. The wonderful inventivity
with which the king imagines magical devices meets the credulity of the men
he wants to impress. The book xiii describes very complicated plots, very
imaginative tricks the king uses in the psychological warfare. Roughly, the
king wants to show that he is conversant with gods (he produces devasamyoga, x 6, 48; xiii 1, 1-6) and other supernatural beings or powers, that he always
knows everything of what people do or intend to do, that he is always able to
achieve what is called elimination of thorns (kantakaodhana). It is worth
noticing that the king while using tricks of elaborate deceit in the maya of his
own fabric is familiar with a large set of occult practices and magic recipes,
which he genuinely believes able to produce effective adbhuta, supernatural
results, such as making one able to fast for one month (xiv 2, 3) or to move
about with shadow and form invisible (xiv 3, 14). Moreover, he faithfully worships the gods he otherwise so cynically manipulates, and even is confident in
the genuine maya of the gods he is able to evoke or to conjure thanks to appropriate rites, formulas and prayers, taken from the Atharvaveda.
This puzzling attitude of the king towards maya is related to the double nature of maya itself, that is, to the double meaning of the word. On the one
hand, maya is the art, the capacity of creating illusions: images of what is
thought of as real but is not real. It is produced by magics. It consists in tricks.
On the other hand, maya is the power to project forms, especially for a god
the ability to change his own appearence at will and to bring changes in the
world around him. This capacity is a part of his supernatural power; Indra for
instance is famous for that. His various appearences are genuine manifestations of himself. No wonder that, as far as etymology is concerned, the word
13 Arthaastra vi 2, 6-12.
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maya can be derived either from a root ma(y)- to alter or from a root ma- to
measure in order to build. Actually, according to Renou, we have perhaps to
consider that there were originally two different words maya that have
merged into the very complex and polysemic notion we find in the texts.15
Anyway, it requires some imagination to figure out what exactly is the kings
religion and what is his idea of power.
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