Sahasra sirsha purushah sahasrakshah sahsrapad, etc. The Primal Man, Purusha, he is there before anything ever was. The gods were created after Him. The gods wishing to sacrifice, that is made sacred, wished to make the very best offering they could, for sacrifice. And what could that be but the Primal Man, Purusha himself. So, they tied him with sacrificial grass, while spring became the ritual butter, and summer the sacrificial wood, our beloved sharad ritu, the autumn, became the oblation. And from this first sacrifice came all objects: cows and horses, hymns and melodies, chhandas, poetic metres, the sacrificial word.

tasmad yagnyath sarva huta,

Richas samani jagnire,

chhandamsi jagnire,

tasmat yajus tashmat ajayatha, etc. etc.

(Rig Veda 10.90.9)

From that sacrifice, fully offered,

The Rig and Saman (Vedas) were born,

And poetics was of that,

And from that again was the Yajur (Veda) born.

Thus poetics arose out of the sacrificing of sacrifice at sacrifice:

yagnena yagnyam ayajantha devah

The word then ended in pure meaning, in ritual ash, vibhuti. The meaning is Shiva dancing in the crematorium. And there is utsaha there: delight.

* * *

Dusk falls on the Indian earth, south of the Meru, down below the Himalayas, and further still down the Vindhyas, etc., etc., lies the famous capital, called the City of Victory, Vijayanagara, founded by the great sage Vidyaranya, and destroyed by the so-called monotheist Turcoman conquerors. They took five whole months to destroy every temple, tear down the faces of our gods, break the heads of stone elephants at palace entrances, while our women unwilling to be defiled, burnt themselves alive, and their ashes have mingled with the earth, from which today grasses arise. The cows graze between the ruins of this historic city—a city where Venetians came to buy our diamonds and the Conquistadors to sell arms and military training, to this one and then the other, helping to fight, raja and nawab against nawab and raja. Today even the flower-seller street, once half a league long,4 is now lived in by the panther and the porcupine. The sages, so the tradition says, have retired into the immense round hill behind, by the river, once in a while at night, so people say, a cowherd will see lights on the top of the hill moving and circling, and disappearing.