The world was dense. Prajāpati empty, feverish. He lay on his back, unable to get up. Even his breathing grew heavier. He felt all the breaths that had animated him drift away and disappear. There were seven of them, and he bade farewell to each one, calling them by name. He felt he had “run the whole race.” No one came near to moisten his lips. The gods left Prajāpati to die like an old man people have no more time for than a bundle of rags.
Of all Prajāpati’s body, the only part left attached was the sacrificial stone. It alone stood upright amid the desolation. In the silence, the wind blew little eddies of sand off it. There was no end to them. That sand is what has been lost of Prajāpati, forever.
What did Prajāpati look like when he was torn apart at the joints and scattered throughout the world? To one side there was a cold, empty cooking pot.
That was Prajāpati.
When Prajāpati was exhausted, a white horse appeared, its muzzle bent to the ground. For a year it never lifted that muzzle. Slowly, from the horse’s head, aśva, a fig tree grew, aśvattha. The white horse, the fig tree: Prajāpati.
The gods were too plainly present to understand their Father, Prajāpati. They existed — that was all. They told the truth. They weren’t complicated enough. They didn’t know the death that “doesn’t die, for he is within the immortal.” They didn’t grasp the skein’s loose end dangling from the asat (which, whatever it may be, is the negation of what is: a-sat). Prajāpati thought he would never speak to anyone now. But one day one of his sons, the most solitary and melancholy, eyes gray and distant, came to speak to the Father instead of running away from him. It was Varuṇa. He said: “Father, I want to be your pupil. I want sovereignty.” At the time Prajāpati was a dry old man who talked to himself and to animals. He laughed when he heard the word “sovereignty.” He said: “Son, you saw how much your brothers and sisters respected me. I was lucky they didn’t trample all over me. I know only what is of no use to you people…” “The only thing I care about is what you know,” said Varuṇa, undaunted. “Teach me for a hundred years.” The years passed swiftly and were the happiest of times for Father and son. When Varuṇa went back to his brothers, they got up from their seats, baffled and afraid. “Don’t be afraid, we are equals,” said Varuṇa. “The sovereignty you see in me is in you too. The only difference is that you don’t know it.”
Prajāpati’s numbers were thirteen, seventeen, thirty-four. Thirteen and seventeen were the numbers of surplus, that extra above a whole (twelve, sixteen) where Prajāpati found refuge. Everyone was careful to avoid them. Nobody wanted to meet him. Indeed, so determined were they not to that they forgot that they would meet him in those numbers. They avoided them and ignored him without even asking themselves why. But what of thirty-four? There were thirty-three gods. Prajāpati came before the gods and after the gods. In front of them and behind them. Always a little to one side. He was the shadow that precedes the body. The gods were born of him, but they didn’t want to remember that “all the gods are behind Prajāpati.” Transported by sacrifice, intoxicated, the gods conquered the sky, as if it had always been theirs. They didn’t design so much as a glance at the earth, where Prajāpati was left behind, a herdsman abandoned by his herd.
Unlike the gods, who have a shape and a story, or even many shapes and many stories, who overlap perhaps, perhaps merge together, or swap over, but always with names and shapes — unlike the gods, Prajāpati never lost his link with the nameless and shapeless, with that which has no identity. They didn’t know what to call him, apart from Lord of the Creatures, Prajāpati — and even that was too definite. Behind that, his secret name was Ka — Who? — and that was how he was invoked. Prajāpati was to the gods as the K. of Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle is to the characters of Tolstoy or Balzac. His stories were always the stories of a stranger, unknown to gods and men, the origin of gods and men.
No one was more uncertain about his own identity than Prajāpati. He who gave names to others found his own name undermined by the interrogative and indefinite: Ka. Anirukta, aparimita, atirikta: “inexpressible,” “boundless,” “overflowing”: that was what they called him. Even those who knew him best never saw his extremities, which ever receded — and were finally lost in infinity. Perhaps that was another reason why none of his children thought of making a portrait of their Father. When they celebrated or invoked him, the only sound was an indistinct murmuring. Otherwise they worshiped him in silence. They said the silence belonged to Prajāpati.
Prajāpati was mind as power to transform. And to transform itself. Nothing else can so precisely be described as overflowing, boundless, inexpressible. Everything that exists had been in Prajāpati first. Everything remained attached to him. But it was an attachment that might well go unnoticed. Where was it? In the mind, buried in our being like a splinter no one can dislodge.
Although Prajāpati liked to tell himself that the gods had deserted him at once, without any consideration for their Father, there had been a moment when some of them asked him the question he least wanted to hear: “When you created us, why did you create Death immediately afterward?” On that occasion Prajāpati answered by going straight into detail and avoiding the crux of the question: “Compose the meters and wrap yourselves in them. That way you’ll be rid of the evil of Death.” Then he explained how the best meter for the Vasus was the gāyatrī and the best for the Rudras the triṣṭubh. These gods immediately composed the appropriate meters and wrapped themselves in them. Then the Adityas started up with the jagatī meter. By now they were all busy earnestly talking about problems of meter. As if the whole world were a question of alternating meters. The meters were like sumptuous garments. By wearing them, placing one over another, the shape of the body was hidden. Thus they believed they could hide their bodies from Death. Suddenly, they had the intoxicating sensation that they were sufficient unto themselves. Even their harrowed, mysterious Father ceased to be of interest. They didn’t remember that Prajāpati hadn’t answered their question, “Why?” And in the end even Prajāpati himself felt that he had answered the question — that he had offered the most effective help. But they deserted him all the same. Mean-while Death could still see their bodies, as though they were immersed in transparent liquid.
Prajāpati’s children thought about the Father. They hadn’t wanted to know him. Now they felt his absence. His legacy to them was everything there was, but a fragmented, elusive everything. Only Death, who was part of that legacy, was everywhere. He dwelled in every moment of the year, a flood that swept over them. They tried rites, they tried the agnihotra, they tried sacrifices to the new moon and the full moon, offerings to the seasons, animal sacrifices, soma. They measured their gestures, their words. But to no end. Then they remembered how Prajāpati, the death rattle in his throat, had called upon Agni, the firstborn. The two had whispered a few words to each other, but no one had heard. Thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and taking Agni as a go-between, they went down to talk to Prajāpati.
Unrecognizable now, overgrown with vegetation, the Father said: “You do not know how to recompose me in all my forms. You go to excess or you fall short. As a result you will never be immortal.” He fell silent, while the gods were overcome by despair. Then Prajāpati spoke again, with the calm, sober voice of a learned master builder. “Take three hundred and sixty border stones and ten thousand, eight hundred bricks, as many as there are hours in a year. Each brick shall have a name. Place them in five layers. Add more bricks to a total of eleven thousand, five hundred and fifty-six…” That day Prajāpati announced how the altar of fire was to be built.