The royal character of the Bisket cosmogony becomes explicit in the Indra
Jātrā of neighboring Katmandu where the linga is identified in­stead, as in
the Vedic cosmogony, with the (dhvaja-emblem of the) king of the gods Indra,
who rains on the Valley before the full-moon of Bhādra (September). As
prescribed by the Brhat-Samhitā (chap. 43), the pole is dragged on the 8th
day of the bright half of Bhādrapada into the capital and the festival
begins with its erection on the 12th day. According to the Brhat Samhitā,
the pole should preferably be from an Arjuna tree, and another staff should
also be raised as Indra's mother. Another Grhya-Sūtra prescribes the ‘Indra
sacrifice’ (Indra-yajńa) with oblations to Indrānī, Aja Ekapāda,
Ahirbudhnya, etc., to be performed on the full-moon day itself of Bhādrapada
(see Ekapāda-Bhairava, n.106 below). The Newars refer to the Bisket and
Indra Jatra poles as yalasin, and the ancient name for Patan viz. Yala =
Yūpagrama, along with the representation of the yūpa in accurate detail in
contemporary sculpture, no doubt attests to the early implantation of Vedic
sacrificial ideology from Licchavi times.

Elizabeth Visuvalingam, The
<http://www.svabhinava.org/brahmanicide/Khatvānga/default.htm>
Khatvānga-Bhairava: Executioner, Victim and Sacrificial Stake [ad note #93]

In the earliest Orissan temples, the various forms of Shiva are invariably
depicted with upraised (ūrdhva-) linga, and at one stage of his historical
evolution Jagannātha was apparently identified with Bhairava, the form he
still assumes to symbolically copulate with the ‘dancer-courtesan’ (devadāsī
= Bhairavī) during the evening ritual. It has been suggested that the
ithyphallic ‘single-footed’ Ekapāda Bhairava, whose images are so frequent
in predominantly tribal Orissa, was easily able to assimilate, through his
very iconography, tribal wooden-post divinities accepting blood sacrifices.
But this Tantric divinity associated with the Yoginīs is himself derived
from the Vedic Aja (‘Goat’ = ‘Unborn’) Ekapāda, a multiform of Agni (‘Fire’)
who appears as the central pillar of the world and is juxtaposed to
Ahir-Budhnya, ‘the Serpent of the Deep’ (see note 93). The inherent tension
of the Vedic ‘sacrificial post’ (yūpā), standing ambivalently astride the
sacrificial boundary, could equally permit the pacific assimilation of
bloody tribal posts and the exteriorization of its own sacrificial violence
effaced in classical Brahmanism. It is probably because of Jagannātha's
identity with the tribal Vedic sacrificial post that the wood (dāru) for
Jagannātha's new body during the Navakalevara is cut down from a tree chosen
through such transgressive criteria as the following: on a snake-hole with
creeping snakes, beside an anthill, near a cremation-ground, Shiva temple,
river, pond, surrounded by three mountains, on a crossing of three ways (=
confluence of rivers).

Elizabeth Visuvalingam, The
<http://www.svabhinava.org/brahmanicide/Tribalizing/default.htm>
‘Tribalizing’ Ekapāda-Bhairava and Anuttara in Trika Metaphysics

Dear Antonio,

I don't doubt that the term pada refers to the 'foot' of the Rig-Vedic hymn
as it still does in the metrics of later classical Sanskrit poetry. However,
like its English equivalent, it probably also had the more concrete meaning
of the appendage we stand on from the very beginning. The Rig-Veda already
plays upon this poetic/ritual/metaphysical polysemy in enigmatic expressions
like the 'footless' (apadvī) walking, etc., that Ananda Coomaraswamy has
highlighted in his treatment of some of the chthonian elements in its
mythology. The 'unborn foot' is also the cosmic pillar (the Atharvavedic
skambha), the immeasurable form of the linga that Shiva assumes to confound
Brahmā and ViSNu. The transition to the 'Serpent of the Deep' (Ahir
Budhnya) comes naturally in the light of the merging of the phallic linga
with the rising kuNDalinī.

The short of it, as Kuiper so well understood, is that the best way of
penetrating the secrets of the Veda is to start with Tantric esotericism...

best wishes,

Sunthar

P.S. Looks like LāT-Bhairava has succeeded in (sacrificially?) killing
several snakes (nāga-lingams?) with one hell-of-a-club ;-)

[rest of this thread at Is the snake a
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1158> phallic symbol?
Don't ask Mr. Nāga-lingam!]


-----Original Message-----
From: Sunthar (Yahoo!Mail)
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 12:24 PM
To: Abhinavagupta@yahoogroups.com
Cc: akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com; Hindu-Buddhist; Dia-Gnosis;
Indo-Greek@yahoogroups.com; Indo-Roma; Ontological Ethics
Subject: [Abhinavagupta] The Book as the origin of culture and religion - is
'Hinduism' (the product of) a literate civilization?


Dear Antonio,

>

Elizabeth joins me in thanking you for the appreciation of our work!

Sunthar

>

PPS. Aja also means 'goat' in Sanskrit and the notion of a 'one-footed goat'
seems quite legitimate in terms of its sacrifice at/to the pole (foot).

[Sunthar's full post at The
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1178> Book as the
origin of culture and religion - is 'Hinduism' (the product of) a literate
civilization?]

-----Original Message-----
From: Antonio de Nicolįs
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 2:01 PM
To: Abhinavagupta@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Abhinavagupta] Digest Number 453


Dear Sunthar and friends:

[...] I am inclined to believe that by the simple act of writing down the
oral texts, the writers (whoever they were) interfered with the text. Thus
instead of Agni and the unborn musical measure of one foot "aja eka pada" we
find expressions like "a one footed goat," for in a Semitic language aja
means goat. Look also at the proliferation of "the path of the fathers" and
"semen" in the Mahabharata... [...]


>


OM, SHANTI
Antonio de Nicolas


[Antonio's full post at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1176 ]








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