But what else could he contrive? Brahmā plunged into himself and sensed that melancholy that comes of understanding too much and not knowing whom to say it to. And it was precisely his awareness of this that dazzled him. That was what was missing: someone who would understand. Then from the thumb of his right hand gushed forth Dakṣa. He sat in front of Brahmā and gazed at him with a grave, composed expression, at once knowing and taciturn. One day Dakṣa’s enemies would say that he had a face for every occasion. Brahmā looked on him with affection, as if they were old friends. His eyes rested on his long, thin, nimble fingers. In those fine bones, all ready to fashion an invisible object, he recognized the nervatural of the mind. Intelligence could now undertake its first unnatural mission: to create through sex.
Aware of his own unsuitability for and incommensurability with the affairs of the world, and at the same time of the need to create it according to an order, Brahmā decided to delegate the more delicate and revelatory episodes, those that would bear witness to his presence as far as mankind was concerned, to a priest, to the priest, Dakṣa the brahman, since it was in him that Brahmā once again gave way to brahman and hence also, in freeing himself from the awkwardness of his divine person, became once again rightness itself: Dakṣa, “he who is skillful,” dexter. The ongoing quarrel with Śiva, the burden of sexual creation, the orthodox practice of sacrifice: all these responsibilities fell on Dakṣa’s shoulders. A long, emaciated figure, eyes sunk in deep hollows, long veins in wiry arms, a bony wrist but steady, a white tunic that fell stainless to his ankles — such was Dakṣa when he appeared in the world, and as such he has never left it.
Still callow, but loyal, Dakṣa began his work as Brahmā’s substitute by procreating male children. He used his bed as a workshop. He paid no attention to pleasure, because it would have slowed him down. A thousand sons the first time, a thousand the next, always from the same wife, the robust Vīrinī, strong enough to hold up the three worlds. The sons looked like young heroes, but then they would disappear. They followed the wind, to gain knowledge (they said), they hid in the forest to meditate, they set out in their brothers’ footsteps. Any direction was fine, so long as they didn’t have to mate. Then Dakṣa saw that history could only be born from women, and he generated sixty daughters.
Dakṣa gave twenty-seven daughters to Soma; he gave thirteen daughters to Kaśyapa; he gave Smṛti to Aṅgiras; he gave Khyāti to BhṚgu; he gave Anasūyā to Atri; he gave Ūrjā to Vasiṣṭha; he gave Prīti to Pulastya; he gave Kṣamā to Pulaha; he gave Sannati to Kratu. All seers, ṛṣis of the first or second list, as they say, according to the age of the tradition that concerned them. All eminent practitioners of tapas, all theoreticians of sacrifice, all counselors of the king. His daughters well settled. Dakṣa’s mission was accomplished. Now history’s wheel could start to turn. But that, in the end, was of no interest to him.
Much time had been dedicated to studying his future sons-in-law, much time had gone into gathering information about them. What was essential, for Dakṣa, was that each of his sixty daughters should marry someone of their father’s own level, someone with whom he, Dakṣa, could talk for long hours, sitting by the fire, of ritual-related inexactitudes. That was what mattered. Then, one day, from the bellies of his daughters, all kinds of different creatures would be born, parrots and snakes, the four-legged and the fish. But all would be able to boast an irreproachable ancestry.
The wives of Soma took their place in the sky as the dancing troop of the twenty-seven Nakṣatras, the houses of the moon; the descendants of Kaśyapa alone accounted for the entire gamut of gods and demons; from Aditi, the Boundless, were born the twelve Ādityas, the gods of whom one immediately thinks when one thinks of the gods: Viṣṇu, Indra, Vivasvat, Mitra, Varuṇa, Pūṣan, Tvaṣṭṛ, Bhaga, Aryaman, Dhātṛ, Savitṛ, Aṃśa: but from Diti, likewise one of Dakṣa’s daughters and Kaśyapa’s wives, would be born the Daityas, while from Danu, another of Dakṣa’s daughters and Kaśyapa’s wives, would be born the Dānavas; all demons, the most obdurate enemies of the gods, half brothers who would hound each other for thousands of years. Dakṣa contemplated them all with pleasure: this was creation, these the flavors with which it would be composed, on which it must feed, this the stock to which all must be traced back: his own, the branch of Dakṣa, the perfect priest, executor of those works that Brahmā was reluctant to perform himself.
Thus recounted Kaśyapa: “The gods dctached themselves from the mind, not the mind from the gods. What happened before the birth of the gods, before we ṛṣis were charged by Brahmā to set in motion sexual creation (and there was something incongruous about this: our all turning up together as suitors in one huge palace, its corridors shrill with female voices: and then our becoming, we of all people, the first fathers of families, distracted, capricious, and refractory as we sometimes were, we who were better suited to niceties ceremonial than to matters domestic), was no more than a war within the mind, something that, however many names there may already have been, was fought out ever and only between two actors: the mind and everything without.
“Nothing enchants the mind more than the existence of the outside world, of something that resists it and will not obey. Pampered by its own omnipotence, its own capacity to connect and identify everything with everything, the mind needs an obstacle, at least as big as the world — and desires it. To pursue that obstacle and penetrate it: here was a challenge that could thrill and uplift, the riskiest challenge of all. It was the pursuit of the antelope. It has never stopped.”
Thus recounted Atri: “Why does sex exist? In the beginning we didn’t even know what it was. Born-of-the-mind of Brahmā, accustomed to the multiplication of fleeting images, we were bewildered when Brahmā announced that it would be our task to initiate a new mode of creation. And he said something about the female body. The wedding feast was drawing to a close, and we still hadn’t touched Dakṣa’s daughters. Soon we found ourselves lying in our beds, and for the first time we were not alone. With great naturalness and gravity, we discovered — and they too discovered — what it was we must do. Brahmā hadn’t even mentioned the pleasure. It took us by surprise.
“A few thousand years went by. We had become masters of pleasure. One day when he had called us all together, we asked Brahmā: ‘What’s this pleasure for?’ Brahmā smiled a somewhat embarrassed smile, as when he had called us to Dakṣa’s house. He answered: ‘To preserve the world’s gloss.’ We asked no more, because the gods love whatever is secret. But we began to go around and around those words in our minds. ‘Pleasure is tapas of the without,’ said Vasiṣṭha, the most authoritative among us. ‘The world is like a cloak we must put on, otherwise it would grow dusty. If tapas always drew us back, to the formless place from whence we came, the world would wither too soon. It is well that our wives trouble us, it is well that kings put their daughters in our beds, it is even well that the Apsaras come and make fools of us, play those tricks of theirs, at once so infantile and so effective… Every time we give in to them, we help the world to refresh its gloss.’”
V
The Dakṣa household looked like an aviary. Sixty daughters and even more maids. Just one man, the austere father, immersed in his rites. There was an air of expectancy, preparations for the party, whisperings that some powerful ṛṣis, were already on their way, from the Himālaya, from the banks of the Sindhu and the Sarasvatī. The maids brought word of the suitors, who was the most handsome, who the strongest, who the most rigorous at tapas. Even King Soma was expected, from the moon. Dakṣa knew perfectly well, having spent a long time over the matter, which daughter was destined for which ṛṣi. Everything was going ahead according to plan. But behind the habitual severity, there was a shadow in his eyes. All the time, obsessively, Dakṣa was thinking of just one of his daughters, the one he’d always watched, and not just with a father’s affection either, the only one he would speak to, at night, when all the other women slept: Satī, She-who-is.