The Self Possessed

THE TWO GREAT SANSKRIT EPICS, THE MAHĀBHĀRATA (MBh) and the Rāmāyaṇa (Rām), contain extensive material for the study of possession. The MBh, the initial complete text of which was probably completed between the second and fourth centuries C.E.,¹ contains the bulk of this material. It may be argued that the entire plot of the epics, particularly the MBh, is advanced through curses, boons, adventitious synchronicities, and other acts of subtle intervention, as well as by extraordinary acts of various gods and surreptitious identity shifts, including some involving possession.² The material is practically endless; thus an accounting and analysis of it takes on the dimensions of an ethnography, for here, among all Sanskrit source material, the text approaches thick description. For this reason, the MBh assumes a major role in the remaining analysis throughout this volume and is viewed as instrumental in determining the direction of the linguistic and psychological discourse of possession in India for (at least) the two millennia since its composition. The discussion here, however, must be limited to a few important episodes.

Minoru Hara has scoured the MBh for occurrences of ā√viś, ostensibly to shed light on the term śraddhāviveśa (possessed by faith) in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (1.2).³ Indeed, his focus is more on the MBh than on the Upaniṣads, saving the present author considerable labor. He lists sixty semantic contexts in which ā√viś is found in the MBh, in verbal, nominal, and adjectival form. It is clear from Hara’s study that āveśa was a popular and highly developed notion in the MBh. Certain nuances of the word developed more fully later, for example, in tantric and bhakti texts, but its use as a signifier of intense emotional engagement, a specified ontological condition, mental state, or psychological attitude was fully manifested by the time the MBh was redacted. This range of signification has been sustained in Sanskritic and vernacular discourse ever since, a fact that may be attributed to the continuity of the two epics in local and regional culture, including their narrative progression, themes, motifs, moods, and language.

Among these, the motifs, moods, and vocabulary were usually retained in regional non-Sanskritic dramatizations of the MBh and Rām, while the story was often revised according to the dictates of local culture and the predilections of the storyteller.⁴ Indeed, establishing mood and motif was more crucial than absolute fidelity to story line. Not only were the former more fundamental or essential to group and cultural recognition, but their comportment was codified in texts of dramatic and poetic theory (alaṃkāraśāstra, rasaśāstra). Conversely, no śāstra dictated that a story could not be altered. In a sense, a story can be anything (and often was), within reason, of course, but cultures have an inner sense of their own ethos, inclusive of mood, motif, and language. It is likely that, in addition to the contributions of early Tamil culture, the ethos of the two Sanskrit epics, in both their received texts and their many performed versions—the latter, at least initially, under the influence of the codices of rasaśāstra—contributed as much as any other literary and cultural production to the development of the theme of possession in South Asia. Possession gained a dossier, a consensual description and symptomatology, a recognizable look and feel. Among the emotions, states, and attitudes noted in the MBh in which engagement or immersion were not just tantamount to possession but within its very orbit are anger, sexual desire, pity, delusion or confusion, misery or grief, sin or transgression, hunger, happiness, surprise, power, and even intelligence. In a few cases, as we investigate shortly, ā√viś is used for entering fire, a forest, the sky, a cave, or a mountain peak, all of which carry the primary sense of simple entrance, but are also, by no accident, prominent environments of intense emotional weight.

One series of examples, from the Strīparvan, suffices to demonstrate the consistency with which the language of possession is deployed to illustrate extreme emotional engagement. After Vidura delivers a long and moving discourse, though one typically situated for kṣatriyadharma, to Dhṛtarāṣṭra on the nature and dangers of grief (e.g., MBh 11.2.13: “Every day thousands of occasions for grief and hundreds of occasions for fear possess [āviśanti] the fool, but not the learned”), Vaiśampāyana describes to the king at extravagant and equally moving length the wholly justifiable grief of Gāndhārī and the wives of the slain heroes. First, though, the narrator notes that the slaughter was exacted on the Pāṇḍavas, absorbed in sleep in their camp (suptaṃ śibiram āviśya, 11.10.11b), as retribution for the undharmic ways they performed the rituals of battle. In the end, the power of the wives’ grief is wrenching and filled with the language of possession. Traumatized, the wives of the dead faint repeatedly, possessed by grief (asukhāviṣṭā, 11.16.52cd, 25.11cd) at the horrifying sight of the dismembered body parts of their loved ones scattered about the field. The heroes were stretched out on beds of arrows that fully penetrated (āviśya) them, allowing them to achieve exalted status, like gods (11.19.16, 23.18). The emotional weight is too much to bear, it is indeed possession.

Hara presents examples of its use in all these categories, often citing several verses of the MBh. Although in my view he divides ā√viś into too many categories, his analysis is nevertheless instructive.⁹

Let us briefly examine a few passages in which entrance into “natural” places, often regarded as mysterious and sacred, are depicted. The passages illustrate a nexus of place, attitude toward these selective locations, and intensity of mood with respect to these places. The use of ā√viś in these contexts in the sense of pervasion and emotional intensity demonstrates the sense of wonder or mystery associated with such liminal spaces. All these examples are from the Ādiparvan. (1) A cave, with its deep and uncertain recesses: “without that certainty we shall not be able to go into [āviśatum] that hole” (1.222.10cd).¹⁰ (2) A mole or gopher hole: “There’s a mole hole in the ground near this tree. Enter it quickly [āviśadhvaṃ tvaritā]; there you will have no fear of fire” (1.221.15). As early as the Vedic Brāhmaṇa texts, mole holes, termite mounds, and other similar sites of non-human access to the earth were regarded as sites of power.¹¹ Thus, in this and the previous example, it is no surprise that the verb for “entrance” is not merely √viś, but ā√viś, with the additional emotional weight it bears. (3) Fire: “After once again entering [āviśya] the fire, we shall attain auspicious realms; otherwise, the fire will not burn us, and you will again come back to us.” Here, the four infant egg-born sons of the sage Madanapāla, who has abandoned them to the care of their mother, Jaritā, a Śārṇgika bird, are endangered by a fire raging in the Khāṇḍava forest. The reference is not simply to fire but to the divinity Agni, who has already bestowed his favor on Madanapāla. Thus the sons of Madanapāla verbalize their hope that Agni will favor them as well. So, entering the fire here (agnim āviśya) is to enter into an emotionally weighted dialogue with the divinity Agni, because a good deal is at stake. (4) A forest: ‘Again, so that there will be no enmity, enter [āviśa] the Khāṇḍava forest” (1.199.24cd). Dhṛtarāṣṭra requests Yudhiṣṭhira to enter the Khāṇḍava forest and literally possess half that kingdom. Another passage, referring to the sage Kaśyapa, who had just impregnated his two wives, Kadrū and Vinatā, and returned to the Naimiṣa forest to continue his austerities, reads: “Kaśyapa entered [āviśat] the forest” (1.14.11d), rather than the expected prāviśat for such an ordinary entrance. Adding to the mystery, ambiguity, and danger of this forest-dweller is that Kadrū gave birth to a thousand eggs that hatched into snakes. After a gestation period of five hundred years, Vinatā bore two eggs: one was broken in haste, revealing a half-formed embryo that cursed her, while the other half eventually hatched. This second half was Garuḍa (Vainateya), who then freed Vinatā from the curse and consumed the snakes. (5) The sky, a continuation of the tale of the sons of Vinatā, reads:

A sense of pervasion appears in these verses. Although our critical vocabulary appears only in the second verse, the sense may be equally extended to the first verse, where the first-born son, Aruṇa (Red), rises to the sky and pervades it as the red sky at daybreak. Garuḍa, whose size was as epic as the epic itself, not only flew into the sky, but owned, possessed, and pervaded it. (6) A mountain peak: “The bird entered [āviśya] that large mountain cave with his mind” (1.26.18ab). After flying from the great mountain Gandhamādana, “that which gives off an intoxicating scent,” Garuḍa, equal to a mountain in size, flew at the behest of his father, Kaśyapa, to the unidentified, uninhabited mountain cited in this verse, in order to perform austerities. Both the mountain and the cave are weighted with extraordinary significance, both are suitable for penetration by the strong-willed son of Vinatā.

I am not claiming that these examples of scenes depicting entrance are possession or that they even approximate possession. Rather, what I am saying is that, by expressing entrance in terms that are also characteristic of possession—which is, from all the textual and ethnographic evidence at our disposal, a decidedly emotional and risky state—these cases of entrance (to be distinguished from hundreds of others) are freighted with an unusual emotional weight that resonates with what is often found in descriptions of possession. This suggests that entrance into such “natural,” liminally efficacious places shares an aesthetic that is typified in possession states. Because the MBh is the single text in South Asian literary history with the greatest concentration of possession, it is not surprising that features of it, particularly its emotional gravity, should reappear in other descriptive aspects of the text and, conversely, that these other aspects should help culture a narrative edginess that breaks through into states that are almost always characterized by extreme emotion, such as curses, boons, and possession.

In Chapter 5, and throughout this book, examples of possession from the MBh are recounted; thus it is not necessary to be exhaustive here. It suffices to recall that in the MBh possession is closely related to shape-shifting, such as in 3.197, where Indra assumes the shape of a hawk and Agni the shape of a pigeon in order to test Śibi or where Indra in the form of a Cāṇḍāla tests Uttaṇka by offering him nectar (amṛta) in the form of urine (14.55, 58). Similar instances occur in the Rāmāyaṇa, where Hanumān both changes his form and possesses other beings in order to battle inimical beings. For example, he defeats Surasā, the “mother of snakes,” through expanding and contracting in order to enter and exit her mouth, and he kills the rüksßsi Simhikã by entering her with his tiny form and piercing her vital organs (Rām 5.1.130–178). The latter cases are unusual examples of physical rather than mental entrance or entrance with a subtle or intentional body. Physical possession in the sense of a gross body occurs most often in negative possession by spirits whose most substantial forms are already less substantial, or at least differently substantial, than flesh and blood bodies. Examples of this that occur in the MBh depict the birth and exploits of Skanda (3.216–219). This is dealt with extensively below, and in discussions of negative possession in Chapter 12. Most of the instances of possession we encounter there, as well as the examples presented here from the MBh and Rām, may be subsumed under the widespread theme in Sanskrit literature of possession as manifestation or incarnation.

Perhaps the best-known instance of possession in all of Sanskrit literature is that of King Nala in the story of Nala and Damayantī from the Āraṇyakaparvan of the MBh (3.50ff). In an incisive analysis of this tale, David Shulman notes that the story deals with three “general, quasi-philosophical problems,” which, in addition to other concerns, are helpful to understanding the general significance of possession states in India. These problems are “the boundaries of the self (and, within this arena, the problem of the locus of evil); the meaning of human agency and autonomy (the issue of fate); and the possibilities and implications of real self-knowledge.”¹² The story of Nala and Damayantī is, in many ways, a snapshot or reduction, a brief analogue, of the main epic, Nala’s own mini-Mahābhārata. Nala was as perfect and virtuous a man as could be found. Like Yudhiṣṭhira, he was a king and an incarnation of dharma (MBh 3.50.1ff., 3.55.8–9). And, again like Yudhiṣṭhira, he was fond of dice (akṣapriyaḥ, 3.50.3c). Furthermore, like the Pāṇḍavas, he married a thoughtful and assertive princess, then gambled away his kingdom (but stopped short of staking his wife) to an evil sibling, Puṣkara, assuming the role of Duryodhana.

Nala’s defeat at the hands of his brother occurred, as the epic tells it, because he was suddenly possessed by the jealous divinity Kali, Strife or Entropy personified, the embodiment of one-legged dharma, who was late for Damayantī’s svayaṃvara, the ritual in which she, as a wealthy, beautiful, and powerful princess, selected a husband from among many eligible (and ineligible) kings and divinities. Resentful of the outcome, Kali plotted revenge, vowing, “I shall dwell in Nala” (nale vatsyāmi, 3.55.12). Kali stalked his prey for twelve years until finally he stumbled upon his moment of opportunity. After Nala committed a minor ritual lapse, which had the inadvertent effect of weakening both his purity and his resolve, Kali, the incarnation of the lowest throw of the dice and the personification of self-destruction, entered Nala and orchestrated his fateful defeat. The text tells us: “After urinating and touching water with his hands, the Niṣadha king sat for his twilight rituals [saṃdhyā] without washing his feet; it was there that Kali possessed him [āviśat]” (3.56.3). Nala’s purity was breached, nullifying his virtue, and instantaneously he was stripped of his dharma. After possessing (samāviśya, 3.56.4) Nala, Kali approached Puṣkara and informed him that the time was ripe for a dice competition with Nala. Kali was here not the sole agent of possession, however. His marginally less-baneful sibling, Dvāpara, the manifestation of two-legged dharma, the penultimate unlucky throw of the dice, served as Kali’s assistant, and, at the beckoning of the latter, he entered into and possessed (samāviśya) the dice (3.55.13cd).

Thus the evil duo, Kali and Dvāpara, drove Nala to lose his entire kingdom and all his possessions, even the clothes off his back, to Puṣkara. All that remained was Damayantī, ever faithful, her beauty unfading. But one night, homeless in the forest, Nala slipped away, in part for Damayantī’s own good: better that she should be on her own in the wilderness than with an abject failure like him. This touching scene demonstrates the fragility of Nala’s situation: Although he was possessed, the possession was not complete. Kali was “in” him, but he also was there. He battled liminality and loss of self, uncertain of his footing in the world, his confidence shattered. As a result he was weaker and less decisive than if he had been completely possessed or, of course, if he had not been possessed at all. He left Damayantī, prodded by Kali, but as Nala he was compelled to go back for a last glimpse of his sleeping wife. Even from this low ebb, the situation deteriorated as Damayantī was snared by a boa constrictor. Just as she was caught in its maws, a hunter happened by, slew the boa, and freed Damayantī. But, eschewing gallantry and adding insult to injury, the hunter then tried to rape Damayantī. She was forced to kill him with a curse, then fled, and, after many adventures, including nearly getting trampled to death by a herd of rutting elephants, ended up as a chambermaid in a royal court. As for Nala, wandering aimlessly and with nothing more to lose, he heard a voice beckoning him to enter a blazing forest fire. Upon entering it, he discovered that he was protected by Karkoṭaka, the King of Serpents (nāgarāja), who had been cursed by an angry sage to remain rooted to that spot. In return for Nala’s rescuing him, the Nāgarāja bit Nala on the heel, changing his tall, regal, and handsome form into that of Bāhuka (Arm), an ugly, short hunchback.

But the poison went straight to Kali while the enforced shape-shifting ensured Nala’s secrecy, guaranteeing him the anonymity that enabled him to free himself from this befuddling mid-life crisis. Nala, now unrecognizable, managed to find a job as a charioteer and horse trainer in a royal court, which he undertook in exchange for the local king’s imparting to him the highest secrets of dice. After Nala concluded this transaction with the king, the power of his new-found knowledge of dice combined with the effects of the poison, leading Nala to violently expectorate the demon Kali. As he donned special celestial robes bestowed on him by the Nāgarāja, Nala’s original form was then restored. Kali, defeated but not terminated—consistent with Indic doctrine that nothing ever truly dies—is recycled: He still required a host. Thus, he took possession of a vibhītaka tree, whose nuts were used to make the dice. Nala, with remarkably bumptious naïveté, galloped off into the sunset to rejoin Damayantī, admitting tearfully, if reluctantly, and with no accounting for his actions, that she was responsible for his rescue. “Kali, who dwelt in my body, has been burning with your curse” (3.74.18).¹³ After a few trials, they lived happily ever after, Damayantī wiser for this episode and a good deal more wary about men, and Nala wiser and more constrained in his actions.

This episode features both possession and shape-shifting. Unlike the Pāṇḍavas, who merely wandered in disguise in the forests and kingdoms of Bharatavarṣa during their years in exile, Nala completed his penance undetected because of the shape-shifting conferred by the Nāgarāja. In his shape-shifting, Nala was very much “himself,” but only to himself, the possession under increasing control as the slow-acting poison of the Nāgarāja began to show its effects. This self-presencing in physical disguise may be contrasted with his tortured absent self and eclipsed personality under the mesmerizing sway of Kali, in which he was out of character and out of control, though physically very much “himself.”

Thus, Nala resembled another flawed hero, Odysseus. Bruno Snell comments, “Odysseus returns to his home in the guise of a wretched old beggar, and yet remains the strong hero; but his wretchedness is merely a mask behind which Athena has hidden her favourite so that he will not be recognized.”¹⁴ As with Odysseus, Nala’s appearance and virtue are contrasted; but his virtue remains unchanged, at least in the end, after he has conquered his temptation. As an inner rather than an outer mask or disguise, possession cruelly and ironically allows the external form to endure unprotected in its full recognition. Nala, possessed, was a marked man, stigmatized because of his possession. Shape-shifting, however, is a modality of nonrecognition that is convenient and protective, but often forces the inner constitution to remain concealed. Nala, with his shape-shifting, was protected, but he could not manifest his inner qualities, except under partial eclipse.

This perplexed sense of identity can, again, be compared to that of Odysseus, who conceals his identity on the island of the Cyclops by using the name “No-man.” Further along in his journeys, he continues to guard his identity closely. He stays for seven years with the goddess Calypso (“the hidden one”), who offers him the gift of immortality at the price of remaining with him for eternity. In the long run, this strips him of his true identity, and he grieves for his wife and son, “gazing out at the imprisoning sea.”¹⁵ Like Nala and the Pāṇḍavas, “[h]e does not wish to remain hidden, but he cannot return home without concealing himself.”¹⁶ For both Nala and Odysseus, after the persona is revealed, the body must become a secret, so they must assume names and forms of anonymity and disfigurement. Thus, Nala becomes the hunchback Bāhuka and Odysseus the beggar No-man. Shape-shifting, then, is, in these cases at least, a defensive strategy employed to prevent recognition. Possession, on the contrary, is most often an offensive strategy engendered from within, leaving the outer form intact. As Shulman argues, Nala’s possession lifted him from his tireless but innocuous perfection and thrust him squarely into the world of men. With his body largely intact, he nevertheless experienced his own incipient fragmentation and recognition of his own self as other, demonstrating that, during possession (as is often the case in life), the body serves as an instrument for concealment. As a corollary to the risk of the dice, the possession forced Nala to develop strategies for recomposing his “disarticulated universe.”¹⁷ In another sense, the possession was cooperative, as Kali is the demon of entropy and self-destruction, who cannot strike in the absence of the victim’s own weakness. But it was also negative and destructive, requiring forced shape-shifting as part of an antidote, eclipsing one aspect of the person while another part healed, illuminating the “desperate fantasy of fullness”¹⁸ that highlights the human condition.

I end this section with a brief story from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, (BhP), a text redacted eight to ten centuries after the MBh that reflects the influence of the tale of Nala. Not only is there a cursed and cornered king, but there is a possession of more or less the same nature. Purañjana, a king of great renown (bṛhacchravāḥ, BhP 4.25.10), was a good man madly in love with hiswife; indeed, he was possessed within fatuation for her (pramadāparigrahaḥ, 4.27.3), overcome with darkness (tamo ’bhibhūtaḥ, 4.27.4c). He ruled his kingdom judiciously and sired thousands of sons, who in turn sired many thousands of sons of their own. But he was cut off from higher spiritual attainment because of his attachment to his family and was wooed by the passion-intoxicated (kāmamohitā, 4.27.21d) daughter of Kāla. Eventually, he was defeated by the Yavanas, in league with the daughter of Time. In great distress as death approached, he was possessed by darkness (tamasāviṣṭaḥ, 4.28.25) and, in this liminal state, was mercilessly chopped to bits by the spirits of animals (later revived) that he had earlier offered in sacrifice for the weal of his kingdom. Because of an infatuation with his wife, even on his deathbed, Purañjana was reborn as a woman, the beautiful daughter of the king of Vidarbha. She eventually wed Malayadhvaja, the king of the Pāṇḍya country. After a life of loyal devotion to him, indeed after she had lain down on his funeral pyre, she was recognized as King Purañjana by a self-realized brahman (4.28.51), who conferred on her/him knowledge of the singular identity of all beings (4.28.62–63).

The element of possession by darkness is repeated here; Kali is the manifestation of the age of darkness, thus a close colleague of the daughter of Time. Tamas, of course, is darkness itself. Purañjana and Nala were both happy and benevolent rulers, thoroughly dedicated to their kingdoms and wives. Both abided in liminal existences and were forced to undergo terrible ordeals before their re-enlivenment into the orbit of true dharma and true knowledge. The legend of Nala reached mythically into far-flung corners of Indian literature, in no small measure because of the pathos of his possession. The story of Purañjana aptly illustrates this, reiterating both the human dimension of the possessed king and the conflict over dharma that often lay at the heart of possession.

Before addressing the issues Shulman raises, let us note a few more tales of possession in the MBh and, to demonstrate thematic continuity, an episode from the Liṅga, Purāṇa. An instance that stands out because it is consistent with many other tales of possession in Sanskrit literature is found in the Anuśāsanaparvan of the MBh (13.40–43). In this story Vipula Bhārgava protects Ruci, the wife of his guru, Devaśarman, against the sexual advances of the lecherous Indra by using his yogic power to enter Ruci’s body (yogenānupraviśya, 13.40.50a). Like Śaṅkara entering the body of the dead king Amaruka, this possession is a benign takeover intended to accomplish a specific goal. As in the case of Śaṅkara’s possession, the verb (anu)pra√viś is used, signifying an externally rather than internally induced entrance and pervasion.

The story begins two chapters earlier, when Yudhiṣṭhira asks the virtuous and celibate Bhīṣma to tell him about the nature of women, who, adds the King of Dharma, are the source of problems (mūlaṃ doṣāṇām), in addition to being small-minded (laghucittāḥ) (13.38.1). Bhīṣma, expatiating from his bed of arrows, patiently lying in wait for death, answers in two painfully misogynistic chapters placed largely in the mouth of a courtesan (puṃścalī) named Pañcacūḍā (Five Tufts). The message to Yudhiṣṭhira is that women are lascivious by nature, will sleep with anyone who shows them the slightest attention or respect, and are in serious need of protection by men. That introduction completed, Bhīṣma proceeds to the episode of Ruci and Vipula. Devaśarman, a famous sage, decided to leave his home for a short trip away to perform a sacrifice. It was probably not a śrauta sacrifice, as that requires the presence of the wife of the sacrificer, and Bhīṣma has already informed us that women have no ritual acts prescribed for them (13.40.11). Rather than leave Ruci as easy prey for the unscrupulous Indra, the master shape-shifter, who was known to be enamored of the beautiful Ruci, Devaśarman assigned his loyal pupil Vipula, of the Bhṛgu clan, the job of protecting Ruci in his absence.

Vipula, we are reminded, was an ascetic whose senses were under control (13.40.24). He acquiesced to his guru’s command and, after Devaśarman’s departure, pondered how he would accomplish his task. His difficulty was that he knew Indra could not be kept out by erecting physical barriers, because of his prowess at shape-shifting, nor could he be defeated in one-on-one combat. Thus, he decided to possess Ruci, disabling her mind, which was already weakened by the fact of her being a woman. He remained there in wait (saṃpraviśya, 13.40.44), reasoning that, through his yogic strength (yogabalāt, 13.40.46), he could prevent Ruci from succumbing to Indra’s attractions. He then entered her body (anupraviśya, 13.40.50), as the text is careful to inform us, with his mind controlled, directed only toward dharma, the Vedas, and his own and his guru’s austerities. This excessive emphasis on brahmanical purity informs the reader that possession is acceptable in these circumstances. After taking a seat next to Ruci, Vipula gained her attention by telling her stories. Then he stared into her eyes, a seductive gesture but for his well-advertised self-control, uniting the rays of light emanating from her eyes with those emanating from his.¹⁹ Through the open channel of the eyes, Vipula proceeds to enter her body as wind enters empty space (13.40.56cd). Then, entering her limbs and face with the corresponding parts of his subtle body, the sage Vipula remained within her, unmoving, invisible, like a shadow.²⁰ Thus he was able to constrain (viṣṭabhya, 13.40.58a) her entire body, to protect her from Indra’s certain advances because she was now stripped of her volition.²¹

And, predictably, Indra appeared, having lain in wait for his prey, like Kali stalking Nala. He donned the most exquisitely seductive form and was met with the sight of not only the beautiful Ruci, wife of Devaśarman, but Vipula as well, unmoving, his eyes frozen, still as a picture.²² The lustful Indra, ignoring the odd company, decided to make his move. His sweet, enticing words caught Ruci’s attention, which Vipula suppressed, unknown to Indra. She attempted to respond positively to Indra, but this merely intensified the luminous Vipula’s yogic power, which he deployed to restrain her sense organs (13.41.11). Thus, Indra was caught off-guard when she responded to his seductive beckoning with elegant Sanskrit,²³ uncharacteristic for a woman, “Oh, what is the purpose in your coming?” (bhoḥ kim āgamane kṛtyam, 13.41.14a). Suddenly, Indra caught on and resorted to his own power of divine sight (divyena cakṣuṣā, 13.41.16d). He saw Vipula in possession of Ruci’s body, like a reflection in a mirror (pratibimbam ivādarśe, 13.41.17c). He trembled, frightened of being cursed by the young sage. Vipula then returned to his own body and, rather than pronounce another curse on Indra, reminded him of a previous curse leveled by Gautama for just such behavior toward his wife, Ahalyā, and gave him a severe tongue-lashing, after which the King of the Gods disappeared (antaradhīyata, 13.41.27d), realizing the greatness of the power of Vipula and his guru, Devaśarman.

This would be the end of the story, except that after several other events in the lives of Vipula and Devaśarman, Vipula became aware that he had committed a sin of omission, equivocation. He understood that he had neglected to inform Devaśarman exactly how he had protected Ruci from Indra; he was not confident that Devaśarman would approve the method to which he had resorted, namely, possession. This omission, Vipula learned through inadvertently overhearing casual conversation around him, condemned him to hell. Devaśarman, however, learned of Vipula’s method from Day, Night, and Six Seasons and eventually confronted him with it. Vipula confessed, and Devaśarman forgave him; in fact, it was never problematic for Devaśarman, because he recognized that Vipula’s maintenance of self-control while possessing his wife was a commendable yogic accomplishment. This small matter cleared up, the three of them, Devaśarman, Ruci, and Vipula, ascended to heaven and enjoyed great bliss (13.43.16).²⁴

This episode reveals a great deal about possession in India two thousand years ago. Not only is one of the yogic processes by which possession occurs clarified (we address this further in the discussion of yoga texts in Chapter 7) and the image of possession as a reflection in a mirror introduced, but we can infer a few fragments about the deep social background of possession as well. It is clear from the repeated emphasis on Vipula’s brahmanically managed self-control that possession invited the possibility of sexual abuse. This, of course, was present, though framed slightly differently, in the story of Śaṅkara and the dead king Amaruka. Furthermore, it is clear that there was at least some degree of social opprobrium associated with possession, perhaps for this reason. This is considered again below, in discussion of the seventh-century Sanskrit drama Bhagavadajjukāprahasanam (Chapter 8). Vipula’s reticence was occasioned by fear of Devaśarman’s condemnation. The penetrability associated with possession rendered it ripe for deep and violable levels of intimacy that were viewed as personally dangerous. However, it was never a topic of legislative or śāstraic proscription. Thus, the known possibility of abuse or violation merely sent out danger signals or raised eyebrows. These objections were not strong enough to condemn the practice of possession, much less undermine the perception of its usefulness. The dangers also illustrate the fluidity of personhood as it was construed in India at the time. Although the story makes it clear that Ruci must have been aware of Vipula’s occupation of her body, at least after Indra’s arrival, there is no suggestion that she objected to it or found it surprising. Of course, the requirements of brahmanically biased narrative, related by the celibate male Bhīṣma, might have been enough to dismiss or censor her reactions. Nevertheless, it is revealing of the unsurprising possibility of possession and the ambiguous position it occupied in the gamut of socio-spiritual practices.

Another example of this type of controlled, externally induced possession, using the characteristic pra√viś, is from the Linga, Purāṇa, a text composed several centuries after the completion of the core text of the MBh.²⁵ This brief episode, from among a large number in the vast Purāṇic literature, may be interjected to illustrate the attractiveness of possession to the storyteller of the time. The agent of possession was Śiva, a major deity whose yogic power the author(s) untiringly certified (apparently, omnipotence was not an assumed condition for gods); it was not a human with similar abilities (which would have been achieved through severe discipline, rather than as the result of a “natural” condition). According to this text, the Lord (bhagavān) became Lakulīśa, an incarnation of Śiva, through the act of possessing a dead brahman: “After seeing the body [of a brahman] cast aside carelessly in the burning ground, he entered it by virtue of his yogic power [praviṣṭaḥ yogamāyayā] for the benefit of brahmans.”²⁶ That burning ground [śmaśāna], added Śiva, will become a sacred place frequented by perfected beings [siddhakṣetram]. It will be known by the name of Kāyāvatāra, “Descent into a Body,” and will last as long as the earth itself.”²⁷

This passage, like the MBh before it, continues the Upaniṣadic theme of incarnation, or more precisely embodiment, as possession. On many occasions, either a body, usually that of a king or another member of a semidivine contesting royal family is usurped by a deity (though more often by an asura, daitya, dānava, gandharva, or rākṣasa, to be used for their specific purposes) or, as the MBh asserts, one of these entities is born in a man or woman as a partial incarnation (aṃśāvataraṇam, 1.61.99).²⁸ The MBh explores the phenomenon of these beings’ taking birth as partial incarnations in virtually every prominent member of the cast of characters in the epic. More generally, the MBh states that Viṣṇu possessed (āviveśa) kings by resorting to power gained from his austerities,²⁹ yet another example of a divinity engaged in practices familiar to humans.³⁰ More specifically, though, the MBh explores at length the identity of these beings and the various members of the Pāṇḍava and Kaurava clans and their allies whom they inhabit. This massive infusion of celestial blood into the epic’s characters is Brahmā’s response to pleas from the goddess Earth, feeling overpowered and oppressed. Brahmā thus requests the gods to manifest on Earth: “With parts of yourselves, take birth among men as it pleases you” (1.58.47cd). It is not important here to provide a list of these men, except to note—because it is relevant to our subsequent discussion—the celestial bloodline of Aśvatthāman, said to be a combination of Mahādeva (Śiva), Death (antaka), Lust, and Anger.³¹

A further example of this type of possession is found in the fifteenth parvan, titled Āśramavāsika (Residence in the Hermitage). Vidura, it was predicted, would possess (pravekṣyati) Yudhiṣṭhira, and as a single person they would obtain heaven (15.26.20). Vidura, arguably the least-sullied and best-intentioned embodiment of Dharmadeva, then uses his yogic skills to leave his body and enter that of Yudhiṣṭhira, his powerful younger counterpart and half-brother in the lineage of Dharma; indeed, it was because of this brotherhood that they were able to merge. “The intelligent Vidura entered [the body of Yudhiṣṭhira] limb by limb, placing his breaths in the breaths and senses in the senses [of Yudhiṣṭhira]. Vidura, fully established in the power of yoga, as if ablaze, entered [viveśa] the body of the king, Dharmarāja. When the king saw Vidura’s body, its consciousness gone, its gaze intact, leaning against a tree, he realized that he himself, Dharmarāja, already of great splendor, had become more powerful, and had acquired additional virtues” (15.33.25–28).

We may now return to Shulman’s concerns, first as they relate to Nala, then as they pertain to the remaining examples cited here. His first concern is determining boundaries of the self, especially in relation to the problem and locus of evil, which in this context may be defined as subversion, and consequent inversion, of a naturalized order (anṛta, adharma). Although Shulman separates this from his next two concerns, those of human agency and its relation to fate, and the possibilities and implications of self-knowledge, the three should be read together because they do not operate independently. The types of possession described in the preceding paragraphs are all externally induced, in theory at least. However, the externality of the possession of Nala by Kali is open to question. To describe this possession, the author(s) employ forms of ā√viś and sam-ā√viś, rather than pra√viś. the former, as we have seen, more generally indicate a self-induced possession with high emotional stakes. The question thus arises immediately as to whether Nala invited his own possession. His ritual lapse was unintentional; given human nature and the severe demands of brahmanical ritual, it is inevitable that lapses will occasionally occur. As a result of both the exactitude of ritual and the analogical nature of the Nala story, one might say Nala was due for a fall. He was, in a sense, asking for it, inviting it, tempting fate. The name of the deity, Kali, and his unusual appearance here suggest that the author(s) did not truly envisage an embodiment, but a symbolic force of destruction. Nevertheless, these tales can be summarized in two ways.

First, considering the Nala story, agency is individual, as he regains both his kingdom, after defeating his evil brother in a rematch with the dice, and a facsimile of his regal persona (illustrating the dicey nature of both kingdoms and persons). In spite of final victories, though, Nala could no longer deny his vulnerability; the possession rendered him more human: he was forced to serve as a cook and horse trainer in his shape-shifted form during his exile and was repentant toward Damayantī at least in part. Stripped of his protective (and seductive) sheen of innocence and beauty, he emerged with a newfound cautiousness and became a smarter and more mature gambler. It was his possession-induced (or possession-revealed) multiple self that lay at the basis of the dharmic inversion he wrought upon himself, Damayantī, and his kingdom, and that, in the end, forced him to recognize and negotiate within himself an unembellished and commonplace complexity. He was awakened, as Shulman explains, “through intoxication and madness, to this fragmented alienness within us and to the process of self-consummation, in a double sense, that is felt to be constitutive of human experience.”³² After this lesson was absorbed, order, dharma, and peace again prevailed. But it was no longer such a “natural” order; that order, revealed to be an unstable environmental simulacrum of Nala’s innocence, beauty, and perfection, was like a virgin forest. Once clear-cut, it could only be replanted, cultivated, and pruned; Nala’s own kṛtayuga could never be fully reclaimed. Self-induced possession led initially to a confusion over boundaries and agency but, in the end, induced a greater self-possession, an individuation, a self bounded by the discomfiting shock of the other, an alien presence without and within, irretrievably beyond the grasp of childhood’s innocence.

This, at least, is what we see at first glance. Perhaps, however, it is not so simple, not so readily transactional. The complexity, even necessity, of possession is underscored by the Jain version of Nala’s story, in which possession is completely expunged, rendering it, instead, a formulaic and predictable moral tale of Jain virtue and mendicancy.³³ Without the possession, there is little reason for Nala’s fall; his heroic vulnerability is siphoned away, and as a character he holds little appeal precisely because we do not recognize ourselves in him, which is to say that we do not recognize in him the unpredictable surge of alienness and possession that the reader or listener quietly feels. It is the possession that confers a center to both the narrative and the persona and adds a sense of intimacy to the transactions within ourselves that defy simplicity. It defies or grates on our own private self-recognition. Possession for Nala, as for all of us who do not embrace it as a practice, splinters the relentlessly self-justifying and self-validating mechanisms that drive us toward self-idealization. Nala’s idealization of his own agency is, from the outset, at least partially a product of his semidivine pedigree, which is, like that of Yudhiṣṭhira, a partial incarnation as Dharmadeva. Replicating all the major (and many minor) characters in the epic, genealogy is an important determinant of action and agency, and they all appear to be aware of their semidivine status and the manner in which this impinges on their agency. Nala, like other great kings, does not act alone, unmediated; his possession has enabled him to understand, while wandering alone in exile in the jungle, that his solitary persona is fighting an uphill battle for “his” survival, for retrieval of his “personal” history.

Second, let us consider Vipula Bhārgava’s yoga, which enabled him to maintain his self-possession, even if that extended beyond the body. For a yogin, the body presents no apparent barriers to self-possession, self-knowledge, or agency. But this is not the same as one deity possessing another, as Śiva enlivening the brahman’s corpse in order to establish its identity as Lakulīśa. The difference between a deity possessing and a yogin possessing is that the deity, with a different kind of body or degree of substantiality, can, in the Indic view of things in which ontological reality is accorded equally to humans and non-humans, place its consciousness in another body while maintaining its own self-presence, while the yogin maintains self-presence in only one body at a time. Thus, what separates humans from gods is that, for humans, the self is irrevocably bounded in space and time; it is subject to the dictates and mutations of local environment. The yogin’ body (deha) is, despite strenuous efforts, unable to maintain itself without its inhabiting personality (dehin, jīva). Correlatively, the autonomy and self-knowledge of the human, whether perfected and controlled yogin or willful and sensually out-of-control victim, are constantly spun around his or her own shifting center and appear to be limited to this mutating environment.

One of the problems of possession as described in ethnographies and depicted in classical and modern literature is that of deception. Ethnographies often reveal a keen sense by local communities of authentic versus faked possession, in the same manner in which communities throughout South Asia debate endlessly whether certain saints or other religious figures are “genuine.” However, this discourse of authenticity does not link the theme of possession to that of shape-shifting or other magical phenomena, linkages found frequently in literature, where a narrative of temporal remoteness (revealed grammatically, for instance, in the proliferation of the perfect tense) gives freedom to these linkages and generates strong mythic sentiments. This discourse of authenticity found in common parlance is paralleled by a sense—not quite a discourse—of deception in classical literature. This sense is found in narratives of both shape-shifting and possession in the MBh. However, the discourse is construed quite differently for each one of them. Indeed, one of the key distinctions between possession and shape-shifting revealed in the episodes under discussion and found with nearly total consistency in Indian literature is that shape-shifting is associated with deception while possession is not; objectively, however, we should immediately moderate this statement to say that the deception that in part constitutes certain modalities of possession is of a different nature from that which lies closer to the center of shape-shifting. The latter, much more than possession, is founded on the requirement and the act of forging a new, or at least an alternate, identity. Nala straddled both domains in that he was both the victim of possession and underwent a major episode of shape-shifting. In shape-shifting he obscured his identity in order to gain the anonymity that he needed to overcome his possession; while donning his Bāhuka mask he was more unreservedly himself. The possession induced him to act foolishly and selfishly, but did not render him deceitful. Neither did it render Kali, the possessor, deceitful; he remained true to his nature.

Similarly, Indra never lost control of his identity while he was forging a new physical form as the charming would-be seducer of Ruci. Kali’s and Indra’s acts were consciously deceitful, not least because their motivation was to subvert the natural and moral orders for selfish temporary gain. By contrast, Vipula, perhaps distressingly like Kali, did not engage in deceit; he too was true to his nature. Ruci, possessed but retaining partial self-awareness, did not easily cede her autonomy. Although she was possessed, her suppressed thoughts and efforts, known only to Vipula, strongly suggested that she might have fallen for Indra’s wiles had her sense organs not been straightjacketed by Vipula. Thus Kali’s and Vipula’s possessions, as well as that of Śiva of the brahman’s corpse, were not premeditated deceit in the way that Indra’s shape-shifting was or, more mildly, that Nala’s was in assuming the identity of Bāhuka. Rather, their possessions were deceitful in a formal sense in that they were coercive, transgressive, and unexpected. All three of these—coerciveness, transgressiveness, and unexpectedness—emanate from an exhibition of personal power, hence bear an aura of authenticity regardless of any moral judgments foisted on them. As the anthropologist Rosalind Morris comments, on her observation of possession in northern Thailand, “The verisimilitude of the possession performance depends on the unexpected detail that reveals a secret knowledge; this verisimilitude then constitutes the authenticity of the possession.”³⁴ In all the cases considered here, the secret knowledge is of the nature and extent of one’s own power and the ideologies (and cosmologies) that lay behind it. But in the MBh and the Purāṇas, these exhibitions did not constitute abuse of power. Externally motivated possession, most often indicated by the verb pra√viś, should perforce contain an element of surprise (an exception being Vidura’s possession of Yudhiṣṭhira, again proving that the use of these terms is generally rather than fully consistent).

Yet Viṣṇu’s possession of the bodies of kings (expressed through ā√viś) signifies a more “natural,” less coercive, and perhaps less unexpected order. It also expresses one of the differences between possession as incarnation and possession as a temporary vehicle for the achievement of a specific task. Perhaps most important, the former partakes of the special arrangement between higher deities and royalty and more closely resembles the Upaniṣadic act of creation as possession than other, more familiar, modes of possession. In the MBh and the Purāṇas, kings were regarded as gods, and even as the earth itself (cf. the names Pārtha, Pṛthu, etc., for kings). Adopting a word from the Liṅga, Purāṇa, (1.70.48), parasparānupraveśa (interpenetration), we might say, then, that kings possessed deities as much as deities possessed kings.³⁵

Behaviors labeled deceitful and coercive must, perforce, introduce moral questions to the discourse of aberrant and irregular psychophysical events like possession and shape-shifting. What may be asked here, based on these tales, is whether a morality of escape dwells in the shadows of possession. This is essentially what I. M. Lewis and others argue when they assert that possession (and, perhaps to a lesser degree, shape-shifting, if it could be documented) is a highly specialized and learned, but ecstatic, experience through which the powerless express social, economic or political oppression. The possession, then, constitutes a kind of empowerment that compensates for this oppression. Much of Lewis’s discourse is, as we have seen, inadmissible in these early Indic texts and contexts; but in one area it is helpful. If we examine possession from the perspective of escape, of compensation, we must ask: What is it that possessors and possessed escape from or to, and is this escape undertaken because they are in fact fundamentally dispossessed? This is a big question that must be answered piecemeal, but it demands intrusion here because both possessors and possessed appear to engage escape variously.

As a practical matter, Vipula escaped from his body to prevent Ruci from fleeing her dharmic confines, and Śaṅkara, as we saw earlier, escaped the constraints of his ritually purified but also ritually oppressed body to a state of temporary freedom. Acts of bodily surrender, whether willful or forced, are always double-edged. They commence with the outward movement of self-objectification, a churning that leaves in its wake a subjectivity in which the objectified self is distanced to a state of transaction and exchange with its interior other. Lifting and reframing a comment by Don Handelman and David Shulman in a different context, we can say that after this “self-objectification begins, once the fragments of continuous innerness splinter and escape,” the possessing entity expends itself “in the pursuit of shadows; and every step back, every act of deexternalization, or reinternalization, is susceptible to a reversal, a diversion, or a seductive countermove. No solution on the level of externalities can really work.”³⁶ This is what confers on possession an edge of uncertainty. The shadow may be within oneself—Nala employed his possession to explore the dimensions of his own unexplored self-possession—or within the other—Vipula employed his possession to explore, then resist, the darkness within Ruci. We may brandish words like “deceitful” and “coercive” here because of the person’s tendency to trick him or herself or to trick the other (which may be within or beyond one’s person). Given its transgressive capacity, the self can usually trick or deceive itself. Thus possession may be viewed as deceitful in this way: It awakens the trickster within. It raises moral questions of the most intimate kind. Hence, it is not surprising that one of the most visible and puzzling themes in the MBh is that of deception, as the stories of the deaths of virtually all the heroes constantly remind us. But because possession engages different and shifting parts of internal and external shadow worlds, as well as internal and external embodiments and instantiations, it cannot have a single definitive moral fiber, though the hot buttons of deception and escape are never very far away.

The MBh (1.166–68) describes another characteristic form of possession in a tale that recapitulates the age-old feud between the families of the brahman sage Vasiṣṭha (Superior) and the kṣatriya sage Viśvāmitra (Universal Friend). Once upon a time, the powerful king Kalmāṣapāda (Speckled Foot) of the Ikṣvāku clan went hunting in the forest. The king’s party, hungry and thirsty, wandered onto a narrow densely forested path. There they encountered a mahātmā named Śakti (Power), son of the brahman sage Vasiṣṭha, coming from the opposite direction. The king, undefeated in battle, ordered the mahātmā off the path. The firm but gentle Śakti, who walked the straight and narrow (dharmapatha, 1.166.6b), refused to budge, setting up another round in the eternal confrontation, as old as the Vedas themselves, between sage and king, brahman and kṣatriya, religious and secular power and authority. King Kalmāṣapāda, pushed to anger by the sage’s insolence, treated him to a solid whipping. By now hurt and angered, Śakti responded by cursing the good king to “roam the earth and feed on human flesh” (1.166.10). But they were not alone in the forest. The royal sage Viśvāmitra happened to be trailing the king. Sensing his chance to defeat the Vasiṣṭhas, Viśvāmitra sneaked behind the king, but remained hidden, as the latter was trying to apologize to Śakti, as he realized the power of his curse. From his hiding place, Viśvāmitra summoned a rākṣasa and set it upon the king. This rākṣasa, called Kiṃmkara (Slave), proceeded to possess (viveśa) the king (1.166.17cd). Seeing that the king was seized (gṛhītaṃ) by the rākṣasa (1.166.18n), Viśvāmitra, who apparently had no use for King Kalmāṣapāda except as he might prove useful in eliminating the Vasiṣṭhas, left. Tormented by the rākṣasa, King Kalmāṣapāda encountered a hungry brahman on his way home, begging for a meal with meat (samāṃsam bhojanaṃ, 1.166.20b). Loyal to the rules of royal dharma, but forced to return from the hunt empty-handed, he promised to send food. However, the king was soon absorbed (saṃviveśa) in his harem (1.166.23cd) and forgot. In the middle of the night, when he finally remembered his promise, he sent word to his kitchen staff to dispatch meat to the brahman at once. The cook was unable to locate any, so the king, possessed by the demon (rākṣasāviṣṭaḥ, 1.166.27a), demanded of the cook, “Then send him human flesh!”³⁷ Unable to find any, the cook went to the home of a known assassin (sūd, 1.166.28a) and procured some from him. After feeding it to the brahman ascetic, the latter realized that he had been fed forbidden food (abhojyam annam, 1.166.30, 31). He became enraged and, like Śakti before him, condemned the king to feed on human flesh (sakto mānuṣmāṃseṣu, 1.166.32). Cursed doubly, and fully possessed (samāviṣṭaḥ) by the power of the rākṣasa, the king lost his capacity for sound judgment (1.166.33ab). As fate would have it, he soon met up with Śakti once again. He “instantly separated him from his lifebreath [prāṇaiḥ vipra-yujya, 1.166.36b] and devoured Śakti as a tiger does its favorite prey” (1.166.36cd). Thereafter, on Visvamitra’s order, “he ate the other hundred sons of the mahātmā Vasiṣṭha as a lion eats small game” (1.166.38).³⁸

Vasiṣṭha became extremely depressed about the slaughter of his sons and attempted suicide many times, only to be saved by fortuitous acts of nature. After realizing that he would be unable to die, Vasiṣṭha learned that his daughter-in-law, Adṛśyantī (Invisible), the wife of his late son Śakti, was pregnant. The gestation period of this fetus was twelve years, so long that it learned the Vedas in utero. Indeed, Vasiṣṭha learned of the extended pregnancy when he heard the sounds of Vedic mantras emanating from the womb of Adṛśyantī. This restored his mood and, together with his pregnant daughter-in-law, he set out in search of King Kalmāṣapāda. They found the king sitting alone in a desolate wilderness (vijane vane, 1.167.16a). Adṛśyantī became frightened at the sight of this terrifying rākṣasa of a king, who charged at the two, intending to eat them. But Vasiṣṭha stopped him in his tracks, shouting the mantra hum, and then sprinkled ensorcelled water (mantrapūtena vāriṇā) on the king to liberate him from the rākṣasa (1.168.3–4). As a reward, the king—a good man after his dark shadow dissipated—allowed Vasiṣṭha to sow his seed in his own wife, thereby providing extra insurānce for Vasiṣṭha’s own lineage, assuring Vasiṣṭha of his patronage, and dealing a blow to Viśvāmitra.

The dimensions of possession in this tale are standard, perhaps even prototypical. A hubristic king violates the space and body of a brahman sage. The king is then laid low by a malevolent but forgettable rākṣasa who is under the control of another powerful and well-pedigreed sage. The king’s fondness for women and meat, as well as his disregard for brahmans in his path, are exploited by the storyteller as weaknesses that predispose him to malevolent possession. No doubt, these subplots are part of the moral of the story, as is the winning of a sage’s blessings to rectify a curse and a string of bad luck. This is an excellent example of the dialogical process of a resolution emerging out of the tension between curse and blessing, which so thoroughly shapes the MBh. But this is also not without a trace of local mordant humor; one can well imagine this story being woven with great wit around a community fire at night to tease, edify, moralize, and entertain children. This was facilitated by a canned trope of possession by an anonymous bogeyman, a king with the funny name, rampant cannibalism, and a happy brahmanized ending.

Arguably the most dramatic example of possession in all of Sanskrit literature occurs in the Sauptikaparvan, the tenth book of the MBh. This was the possession of Aśvatthāman by Śiva, who slaughtered the bivouacked armies of the Pāṇḍavas, their victory nevertheless assured, in one nocturnal (sauptikd) attack. This possession of a warrior by a ferocious spirit (in the present case, the spirit of the deity Śiva), in a demonstration of egregious, uncontrolled violence, was not, as we have just seen, an isolated instance in the MBh.³⁹ The following excerpt from the Āraṇyakaparvan demonstrates that this was a counterpossession of a great deity with the power to destroy lesser deities and spirits:

The succession of Kaurava commanders-in-chief had passed from Bhīṣma to Droṇa to Karṇa to Śalya as each of these great and sage leaders was killed or disabled in turn by the Pāṇḍavas. Finally, the Kaurava leadership devolved to Droṇa’s son Aśvatthāman, and the slaughter, which was already of epic proportion for seventeen days, became truly apocalyptic on the eighteenth and final day of the battle. Droṇa, who was not only the father of Aśvatthāman but the guru of the Pāṇḍavas as well, took charge on the tenth day, after the Pāṇḍavas shot down Bhīṣma in what was to be the first in a series of breaches of kṣatriyadharma, the warrior’s code of fair battle. Although this code was ruptured first by the Pāṇḍavas (here and subsequently at the urging of Kṛṣṇa, thus conferring a divine sanction on selective forms of deception), the Kauravas soon followed their example. On the fifteenth day, the advantage began to shift to the Kauravas as Droṇa’s armies routed the Pāṇḍavas and their allies. At Kṛṣṇa’s behest, the Pāṇḍavas lied to Droṇa, telling him that Aśvatthāman had been killed in battle. To prove the point, Bhīma killed an elephant named Aśvatthāman, then announced Aśvatthāman’s death to Droṇa (7.164.73ff.). This was verified to Droṇa by the zealously truthful Yudhiṣṭhira, who, again at Kṛṣṇa’s behest, departed from the truth, albeit mildly, by inaudibly muttering the word “elephant” after confirming the death of Aśvatthāman to Droṇa. As punishment for following Kṛṣṇa’s advice, the purpose of which was to save his kingdom, Yudhiṣṭhira was forced to suffer an illusory moment of stinking hell after his own death many years later, although he had already ascended to heaven. Droṇa, victim of Yudhiṣṭhira’s deceit, fell into a state of deep depression at the news, set aside his weapons, entered into a yogic trance, and ascended to brahmaloka. With Droṇa in this unguarded bodily state, the Pāṇḍava warrior Dhṛṣṭadyumna chopped off his head. Aśvatthāman, a partial incarnation of Śiva, was overcome by rage and vowed to destroy the Pāṇḍavas because of this wholesale flaunting of dharma (7.166).

One of the rules of kṣatriyadharma was that battles must be fought during daylight. With rare exceptions, this was observed scrupulously during the first seventeen days of the war, while nighttime was reserved for the opposing sides to visit each other’s camp. Thus, Aśvatthāman’s nocturnal raid on the Pāṇḍavas caught the latter off-guard. The first omen was Aśvatthāman’s sighting an owl, the archetypal bird of ill fortune, in full ferocity (ulūkaṃ ghoradarśanam, 10.1.36), preying on innumerable crows peacefully sleeping in a banyan (nyagrodha) tree.⁴¹ The carnage is described in grim detail—beheadings, wings sliced, and so on—foreshadowing and inspiring Aśvatthāman’s own epic slaughter. In league with Kṛtavarman and Kṛpa (who had unsuccessfully tried to talk him into seeking a second opinion from Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī, and the wise Vidura), Aśvatthāman entered the Pāṇḍava camp. This was not before noting, however, that he was a brahman and that Prajāpati bestowed on brahmans imperturbable self-control (brahmaṇe damam avyagram, 10.3.19). (Recall Gombrich: “brahmanism inculcates control.” Was he aware that he was quoting Aśvatthāman?) However, fate now forced him to relinquish this control. This, he reasoned, was in fulfillment of his duty to his fallen comrades, slain by the Pāṇḍavas after breaching the rules of kṣatriyadharma. His intrinsic brahmanical status (brāhmaṇya, 10.3.22), he says, would be worthless under the circumstances. Standing at the gate of the Pandava’s camp, Aśvatthāman saw a great-bodied spirit (bhūtaṃ mahākāyam, 10.6.3), vividly described by the narrator as the very embodiment of Śiva in all his frightening and destructive splendor. Aśvatthāman, however, did not recognize this gigantic spirit (sumahadbhūtam, 10.6.29) and tried in vain to destroy it with his entire armamentarium. Finally, he recognized his indestructible adversary as the skull-garlanded (kapālamālinam, 10.6.33) Rudra and decided to place himself under his control. His gesture of subservience was ostentatious and thorough. He offered himself in sacrifice to Śiva, a sacrifice of cosmic dimensions and unprecedented destructiveness. The end result was a self-identity so seamless—after all, Aśvatthāman was already a partial incarnation of Śiva—that it became a full possession. The text reads: “Having thus spoken to the great archer, the Lord possessed his body and gave him the best stainless sword. Then, possessed by the Lord, he again blazed up with splendor. With that splendor fashioned by the deity, he assumed a body for battle” (10.7.64–65).

And the bloodbath began. Aśvatthāman, the Terminator (antaka, 1.61.66), set about his gruesome business of slaughtering the Pāṇḍava army.⁴² “He split the feet of one, the hips of another; he broke the ribs of others like the Terminator set loose by Time” (10.8.71).⁴³ It was carnage on a millennial scale, yet it was an unusual millenarianism, at least for a Sanskrit epic, in that it was not adorned by the telltale signs of doomsday often specified in the MBh. These include brahmans behaving like crows, oppression by slaves, and lethal taxation at the hands of evil kings (3.188.61); overpopulation, foul smells, and lousy food (3.186.34); women who cast off morals (śīlācāravivarjitaḥ, 3.186.35), sport spiked hairdos (keśaśūlāḥ striyaḥ, 3.186.36), and engage in oral sex (mukhebhagāḥ striyaḥ, 3.186.35). Finally, Kalki appears on a white horse, and dharma is made safe for brahmans. All this is missing from the Sauptikaparvan. Aśvatthāman’s massacre is presented as a sacrificial session in which the central offering, the Pāṇḍava army, multiplies like an unstoppable chain reaction, cut loose from the “controlled chaos” of the classical Vedic sacrifice, as Heesterman puts it. It is possession, termination, and extermination without any mitigating force.

W. J. Johnson’s elegant translation and discussion of this parvan offers keys to interpreting both the possession and the actions of Aśvatthāman. Particularly relevant are Johnson’s remarks on fate. Following John Smith’s observation that the events of the MBh “must make sense as deeds performed by human beings, and they must make sense as components of the cosmic plan,” Johnson states that “in theory, any single epic event must have two motives: a human motive looking to the past (in this case, as in many, revenge—the payment of a ‘debt’ due to one’s slaughtered kinsmen and allies), and a cosmic motive looking to the future (ultimately the restoration of universal order and dharma) … fate and the will of God are shown to be one.”⁴⁴

This, perhaps, is the central dialectic in all possession, from the MBh to oracular possession among nonliterate people in India to trance channeling in America, as well as possession in Africa, Micronesia, and elsewhere. Possession is always, at least to some degree, a millenarian event. It is partially, and often thoroughly, self-effacing; the person, except as a body, is voided. Yet possession happens to bodies; symbolic though it doubtless is, the millennium is an embodied event, as the characteristics of the MBh millennium (pralaya) testify. Thus it is important to note this qualification: In the absence of the personality, the body is the most accessible signifier of the possessed person. This is perhaps especially so in the MBh, where idiosyncratic reality is generated ubiquitously, and spun out with or through bodies, as the cosmos in its frightening millennial grandeur is generated and viewed through and within the mouth of Kṛṣṇa. The body is visible, so it anticipates a deep familiarity that possession suddenly scrambles. Possession disassembles this familiarity, this assumed identity, this known person, but we continue to say it is Aśvatthāman who is possessed, it is the daughter of Patañcala Kāpya who is possessed, and so on. We hang our hats on bodies, but there comes a moment when the body is all that remains, occupied by an alien presence. The anticipation—more strongly, the inevitability—of possession is the kaliyuga before the embodied pralayic firestorm of possession. It is of central significance to our story that it is the body of Aśvatthāman that Śiva possesses, rather than Kṛta, Kṛtavarman, Bhīṣma, a randomly possessed foot soldier, or no body at all. A direct, shape-shifted, manifestation of Śiva would not do either. Just as the pralaya follows kaliyuga as a necessary continuity into the free-fall of discontinuity, so it must be Aśvatthāman’s body that becomes Śiva’s vehicle into the jolting, compelling discontinuity of incomprehensible carnage, and with good reason. The firestorm, the discontinuity, the free-fall, follows a fixed logic. In the MBh, as elsewhere, there is a certain adhikāra or standard of eligibility for possession. Here it is lineage: Aśvatthāman descends in part from Śiva and now returns fully into his orbit; the essential Śiva is now the essential Aśvatthāman. Nevertheless, this possession was not simply a portent of the inevitability of lineage, but an end product of the escalating cycle of destructiveness, of breached kṣatriyadharma as well. This possession, unlike the others considered here, even that of King Kalmāṣapāda with its voracious cannibalism, was beyond known and controllable boundaries. It was a cosmic counterpart to disease-producing possession (grahaṇa, rather than āveśa) that destroys the individual and his or her world, and there too it is Śiva who is at the helm.

The terms of this dialectic, the human motive looking to the past and the cosmic motive looking to the future, work well with another one, at least in India: It prefigures the tension between union (saṃyoga) and separation (viprayoga, viraha), which increasingly became the central dialectic in Indian religion, modeled, surely, on life itself. In the devotionalism that became ascendant in Indian religion, human concerns were fulfilled during moments of separation, while spiritual concerns required severing one’s immersion in these concerns, indeed sundering the separation itself and entering into a personal dialogue with divinity. This was possible only after the human personality dissolved, and the latter was possible only when it was replaced by another personality capable of bridging that gap or, more accurately, of acting through the dissolution of that gap. Thus, possession fulfilled human motives by allowing words and action to arise that commanded the authority to complete unfinished business in a past both paradigmatic and lived, while engaging universal or divine order. This is where the millenarian possession of Aśvatthāman and the bhakti-induced possession that we explore later meet. Aśvatthāman’s saṃyoga with Śiva brought an end to the deceit, as well as to the violence of the war, to the viprayoga or dissention that so visibly marks this text. The irony, of course, is the unspeakable helplessness of recognizing that it is erasure of personality in its blinding incipient destruction and freakishly logical discontinuity that allows the personal to become fulfilled, to initiate the resolution of dharmic irregularity. Aśvatthāman realized this, and his reward was to be condemned to wander the earth in anguish for three thousand years.

One of the most prominent varieties of possession in Indian literature is demonic, disease-producing possession. This topic is largely the province of the classical medical tradition (Āyurveda), where it undergoes visible development from the earliest texts of Caraka and Suśruta in the first few centuries C.E. to the later compendia in the early to mid-second millennium. These texts describe exogenous (āgantuka) diseases caused by grahas (graspers), whose numbers grow and assume more specific identities over the centuries. Thus, a bhūtavidyā (science of spirits, or demonology) was developed to make sense of these afflictive conditions. Bhūtavidyā is articulated not only in the medical literature but in the MBh as well, reminding the reader of the MBh’s brandishing of its own grandeur: “With respect to dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa, what is found here may be found elsewhere, but what is not here is nowhere at all.”⁴⁵ Or again: “No story exists on earth that does not reside in this epic [ākhyānam],”⁴⁶ a claim with far-reaching implications for our present subject and to which we return in Chapter 13. Although I examine notions and categories of demonology in greater detail in Chapter 12, it is necessary to include traces of it here as well, in order to illustrate the range of possession phenomena noted in the MBh.

The story of the birth of Skanda and his potent pedigree is much elaborated in the MBh.⁴⁹ The dominant story is that he was born from the womb of the goddess Svāhā, the personified utterance of celebration in a Vedic sacrificial offering, who was the embodiment of six of the wives of the “seven ṛṣis” (saptarṣayaḥ; excepting Arundhatī, the incorruptible wife of Vasiṣṭha) and sired by Agni, the sacrificial fire that consumes the oblation. Agni became potentiated for this act by consuming the semen of Mahādeva, who, as discussed earlier, is intimately involved in the generation of spirits.⁵⁰ Because of their illicit relationship with Agni, the seven ṛṣis divorced these six wives. The birth of Skanda was not easy; it continued for four nights, and the babe was born with six heads, twelve arms, one neck, and a single trunk. The six mothers, now separated from the singular personality of Svāhā and bereft of their husbands, appealed to Skanda to dispense his grace and grant them an eternal heavenly home. This he did, and they became the constellation Kṛttikā (the Pleiades, with six stars), which then nurtured the child Skanda, thus giving rise to Skanda’s names Kumāra and Kārttikeya. This, however, was not an entirely satisfying solution to the six single mothers craving for exclusive motherhood. Indeed, they still regarded themselves as devoid of offspring, at least of their own, so Skanda granted them the ability to take children who did not worship either himself or the Kṛttikās. In order to assist them, Skanda gave them a wild (raudra [Rudra-like]; 3.219.23) replica. “Thereupon a powerful golden-hued spirit [puruṣa] flew out of Skanda’s body to devour the offspring of mortals. It fell to the ground, senseless and starving, and with Skanda’s leave it became a Grasper [graha] in a Rudra-like form.”⁵¹

What follows is a summary account of the forms or pathogenic incarnations of this graha (3.219.25–58), no longer six but now eighteen, known by the best of the twice-born (dvijasattamāḥ) as skandāpasmāra (Skanda’s forgetfulness or convulsion). Eighteen is the MBh number par excellence, often associated with the fateful, ominous side of human order. Not only are there eighteen books to the MBh and eighteen chapters to the Bhagavadgītā, but there are eighteen armies and a war of eighteen days. All eighteen of these skandāpasmāras are fond of flesh and strong liquor (māṃsamadhupriyāḥ, 3.219.35b) and occupy the womb for ten nights. Among the forms that grasp children below the age of sixteen are Vinatā, the ominous bird grasper (śakunigrahaḥ), a demonic female night-stalker (niśācarā) called Pūtanā-graha, and a piśācī who aborts fetuses, called Śītapūtanā. One of them, Kadrū by name, becomes a subtle body (sūkṣmavapuḥ) and enters (praviset) the wombs of pregnant women and eats the fetus, causing the mother to give birth to a snake. Many others, including Raivata, Mukhamaṇḍikā, Surabhi, Saramā, the Mother of Gandharvas, the Mother of Apsarasas, and a class of mothers called Kumārīs, also snatch or eat fetuses (garbhabhujaḥ, 3.219.30; bhuṅkte śiśūn, 3.219.32). Two of them live in trees, including the Mother of Trees (padapānāṃ mātā), who lives in a karañja tree, and the Daughter of the Blood Sea (lohitasyodadheḥ kanyā), who as Lohitāyanī lives in a kadamba tree. These two demand worship in order to ward off miscarriage or deformity. The final member of this grisly enumeration is Āryā, who resides in women, just as Rudra resides in men, and is to be worshipped in order to obtain desires. All these skandagrahas should be pacified (praśamanam) with water, incense, collyrium, sacrificial offerings and gifts, especially the sacrifice to Skanda (3.219.43).⁵²

But this is not all. The section does not end with a predictable account of ritual minutiae or brahmanical moralizing that bluntly deflates the narrative. The prescription of ritual pacification is also a rhetorical interlude preceding an account of “seizers” who grasp men after their sixteenth year. Some of these seizers are striking in that they reveal a type of “grasping” explicitly related to insanity. A man who sees gods, whether awake or asleep, quickly becomes insane and is called “god-grasped” (devagrahaḥ). One who sees one’s deceased ancestors goes mad and is called “ancestor-grasped” (pitṛgrahaḥ). One who hates perfected beings (siddhas) is cursed by them and becomes “siddha-grasped” (siddhagrahah). One who smells scents and tastes flavors that are not accurate goes mad and is known as “demon-grasped” (rākṣasagrahaḥ). One whom heavenly gandharvas touch (saṃspṛsanti) is “gandharva-grasped” (gandharvagrahaḥ) and becomes insane. Yakṣas may possess (āviśanti) a man, known as “yakṣa-grasped” (yakṣagrahaḥ), who then slowly becomes insane. The category of yakṣa is disputed, some saying it is of non-Aryan origin, and others countering that view. It is likely that yakṣas were, in fact, Indo-Aryan deities, a general term for local divinities.⁵³ A “pisāca-grasped” man (piśācagrahaḥ) becomes insane quickly, as does one whose humors (doṣas) are completely out of balance. Finally, we are told that these grahas are of three types: playful (krīḍitukāmaḥ), gluttonous (bhoktukāmaḥ), and lustful (abhikāmaḥ). Over the age of seventy, fever becomes the equal of a graha. But grahas never touch those who are pure, faithful, and devotees of the god Maheśvara.

In striking contrast to the MBh, the Rāmāyaṇa does not comprehend or explicate a diversity of possession states. In the Rāmāyaṇa possession is employed entirely as a descriptor, sometimes as a metaphor of emotional engagement, not as an indicator of hostile or friendly takeover of a body by a spirit, deity, or yogin. This reflects the divergent nature of the two epics. The MBh is defined by its ambiguities of character and plot, of good and evil, and of dharma. It pits brother against brother, shaking the very foundations of culture, expectation, and familiarity. The Rāmāyaṇa, as many have noted before me, is the opposite of this; it is a story of brothers coming together, of clear resolution of evil.⁵⁴ The good characters are always good, always the exemplars, while the bad are nearly always unambiguously bad. An unswerving honesty and straightforward moral nobility were inscribed into this epic, and these along with the story itself have never lost their appeal in India. Nevertheless, the later Sanskrit and regional language renditions and adaptations amplified and caricatured this morality, draining it of its heady immediacy, and stripped away much of the complexity of Vālmīki’s characters. This, however, only continued what Vālmīki began, as even in his great epic moral dilemmas were nipped in the bud. As for the characters, with the exception of a few unexpectedly friendly demons,⁵⁵ the most complex characters, Sītā and Hanumān, extraordinary in the Sanskrit epic, were idealized and caricatured in the later versions.⁵⁶

Unlike the MBh, the Rāmāyaṇa rarely presents its main characters in a state of moral uncertainty, ambiguity, or complexity; Rāma, perhaps, in a moment of doubt as to the fate of Sītād being the exception. Perhaps more important, personal identity was not constantly at stake in the Rāmāyaṇa; the characters were not penetrable or permeable in a manner that created moral ambiguity or self-alienation, as in the MBh. The attraction of simplicity, the constancy of defined character, and the imperative of maintaining established moral structures and historical validations are likely reasons the Rāmāyaṇa was preferred by vernacular literati⁵⁷ over the MBh, in spite of several popular Sanskrit dramas depicting parts of the latter (e.g., Bhāsa’s Urubhaṇgam). As in the Rāmāyaṇa, the main elements of the plot of the Sanskrit MBh were, for the most part, retained in later classical literature (recall, however, that the Jain tale of Nala and Damayantī exorcised the possession), though in the latter these elements were heavily transfigured in the non-elite folk traditions, for example, in Tamilnadu and Garhwal, in a manner that intensified, rather than reduced, the pre-existing ambiguities, while in the former personal identities were rarely questioned even though the many Rāmāyaṇa variants were uniquely textured and contextualized, as A. K. Ramanujan astutely notes.⁵⁸

A question that arises immediately is whether such possession is attributable exclusively to the modern demeanor and attitude (bhāva) taken by religious storytellers or whether it may be traceable to a more distant practice of possession in Rāmāyaṇa performance and tradition. The answer is both: Audiences expect a visible intensity of self-identification with the characters they portray, a self-identification that crosses the line into possession, as Ramanujan has noted. But there is also evidence that this is part of an acting tradition dating back several centuries, as we see (Chapter 9) in examining bhakti-induced possession.

It is tempting here to suggest a broad affinity between the practice of possession of Hanumān by Ramnarayan Shukla and the possession and exorcistic practices at Bālājī. Hanumān is clearly a deity whose connections to humans are felt to be closer than those of many other deities. He is the archetypal devotee, indeed the only devotee to be widely worshipped as a deity.⁶⁰ As the primary deity of wrestlers he signifies physical strength, and is often depicted with the physique of a body-builder.⁶¹ He is also a healer, revered for his flight across Bharatavarṣa to acquire the sañjīvanī herb that cures the ailing Lakṣmaṣa in the Rāmāyaṇa. Thus, Hanumān is a paragon, an archetypal figure, of the three attributes of devotion, strength, and health. Perhaps of greater immediacy—and conceptually related to these attributes—is Hanumān’s oft-told exploit as a sojourner into the underworld to rescue the Ayodhyan princes, kidnapped and held prisoner there by Mahīrāvaṇa/Ahīrāvaṇa, a subterranean relative of Rāvaṇa’s. Although this tale has no textual basis in either the Rāmāyaṇa or the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsīdās, it has wide popular currency and demonstrates to devotees across north India Hanumān’s adeptness “in the shadowy realms below the ground as he is soaring through the sky.”⁶² It is no wonder that as a thoroughly virtuous expert in shamanic travel he is invoked, even possessed, by devotees, wrestlers, healers, and those in need of otherworldly assistance, and that as Bālājī he presides over an ever-expanding horde of dūts who, like him, are healing spirits.

We should now survey the derivatives of the verbal root ā√viś in the Rāmāyaṇa and evaluate the extent to which these usages agree with the findings from the MBh. Most of the material betrays a range of emotive situations conceptually similar to those noted in the MBh: virility (vīryam āviveśa, 5.1.33), anger (krodha, manyu);⁶³ delight, anger, and pity as a single unit (harṣo dainyaṃ ca roṣaś ca);⁶⁴ brahman killing (brahmahatyā);⁶⁵ psychic darkness (tamas);⁶⁶ confusion (moha);⁶⁷ fear (bhayam);⁶⁸ and sorrow (śoko).⁶⁹ In one instance pra√viś indicates entrance into a general state of ferocity and transgression: “In battle, the Indrajits were possessed [prāviśan] by great and fierce transgression” (6.80.4cd).⁷⁰ Twice ā√viś refers to the action of arrows, weapons that penetrate deeply into both body and quiver: “Rāvaṇa’s son, victorious in battle, pierced his arrows firmly into all Rāma’s and Lakṣmaṇa’s critical bodily points” (sarvamarmabhidaḥ … āveśayāmāsa, 6.35.7). Later, in the same “War Book” (Yuddhakāṇḍa), we learn that “after killing Rāvaṇa, that arrow, soaked in blood, its job well-done, was again replaced [āviśat] in his quiver, as if undisturbed” (6.97.19). Beyond these examples, we find ā√viś in the sense of absorption into the precepts of dharma,⁷¹ and a concern with order (yathākramāveśita).⁷² These demonstrate that regulation from within or without was imposing to the point of possession. Similarly, wrapping oneself in armor (kavacam) was an imposing state of transformation tantamount to possession.⁷³ Other states labeled possession are fainting (dharaṇyāṃ samupāviśat),⁷⁴ sleep (nidrā) brought on by anxiety or exhaustion,⁷⁵ and exhaustion (śrantā) itself.⁷⁶ Twice in the Bālakāṇḍa it is employed in the sense of leaving a person or kingdom in the care of another, indicating that a shift of ownership or responsibility is a variety of possession.⁷⁷ Like the MBh, the Rāmāyaṇa employs ā√viś to indicate entrance into the sky (ākāśa) and other “natural” places of emotional gravity. Several times ā√viś is used for entering, disappearing into, or flying through the sky; for example, “Kuśa went away, then became absorbed [āviśya] in the ethereal realm, the eternal brahmaloka” (1.33.4).⁷⁸ Similarly, it may indicate arrival at important mountains such as Kailāśa,⁷⁹ entering a forest,⁸⁰ or seizing or occupying deeply meaningful constructed spaces, such as private chambers or citadels.⁸¹

It is also significant to note in this context that in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the Hindu nationalist movements that have achieved widespread prominence hearken back to the Rāmāyaṇa rather than the MBh as their paradigmatic epic. These contemporary movements, like the Rāmāyaṇa, have expunged or censored much of popular religious praxis in favor of a more formal (and, not incidentally, upper-class), Śaṅkarized presentation. Recall Gombrich’s statement: “Later brahmanism, however, denied all value to possession states and they were screened out of brahmanical religion.”⁸³ The Sanskrit epic of Vālmīki has a consistency that permits the censorship of which Gombrich speaks, while at the same time the diverse (and genuinely noncontested) regional forms of the epic have allowed popular religion, including possession, back into the epic, like water seeping into the cracks in a shiny but weather-beaten and scarred surface. Yet the pervasive and tremulous ambiguities of the MBh could never have allowed censorship into the text without denuding it practically beyond recognition. With the ambiguities and uncertainties of the text intact, it has become, for the most part, the dominant epic only sporadically throughout South Asia.

9. For most of these words Hara supplies multiple references, though here one suffices. All references are from the MBA unless otherwise stated: adharma (12.251.17), ahaṃkāra (13.102.10), alakṣmī (3.33.39), anartha (12.171.23), asukha (11.25.11), asura (3.240.11), avamāna (3.246.20), avṛṣṭi/ativṛṣṭi (12.91.35, ārti (6.15.4), bhaga (3.163.35), bhī (3.168.16), cintā (Harivaṃśa 109.23), darpa (1.189.17), dānava (3.240.13), duḥkha (4.18.8), durbhikṣa (12.68.29), dainya (12.149.105), ghṛnā (3.36.18), harṣa (3.162.10), hrī (9.62.54), jvara (12.27.12), kali (3.56.3), kaśmala (7.144.7), kāma (1.204.15), kautūhula (3.20.75), kopa (3.11.30), krodha (12.249.5), kṛpā (5.180.36), kṣudh (14.57.19), lobha (12.170.14), mada (16.4.31), manmatha (Rām 4.65.15), manyu (1.204.17), māna (12.253.38), mātsarya (12.12.29), moha (7.31.32), mṛtyu (12.149.41), nidrā (Rām 4.26.7), pāpman (12.17.2), pauruṣa (9.10.24), pipāsā (13.70.6), prajagara (7.56.7), rajas (12.329.29.2), rāga (14.42.51), rākṣasa (3.240.33), roṣa (3.21.18), ruṣ(ā) (9.25.25), sambhrama (1.73.25), sattva (6.40.10), śoka (3.2.15), śrama (13.70.6), tamas (4.55.24), tuṣṭi (1.187.5), vepathu (5.85.13), vismaya (3.289.23), viṣṇu (3.195.12, cf. 12.159.130), vyādhi (12.91.34), yakṣa (3.219.51), yakṣman (12.329,46.25). It should be noted that in this survey I am leaving out hundreds of references to pra√viś in its usual sense of “entrance.” On the differences between krodha and manyu, see Hara 2001.

39. This ferocity in which embattled warriors entered states of possession and were said to alter their appearances was not limited to India or the MBh, but may be seen elsewhere in the Indo-European world. See Cahill 1995:82–84, for an account from the twelfth-century Irish prose epic “Tain Bo Cuailnge, the Cattle Raid of Cooley.” This account has a striking resemblance to the MBh (though I am not suggesting any kind of direct influence). The Irish referred to their possession and shape-shifting as “warp-spasm.” Cahill writes: “The Romans, in their first encounters with these exposed, insane warriors, were shocked and frightened. Not only were the men naked, they were howling and, it seemed, possessed by demons, so outrageous were their strength and verve. Urged by the infernal skirl of pipers, they presented to the unaccustomed and throbbing Roman sensorium a multimedia event featuring all the terrors of hell itself” (pp. 82–83). Cahill’s translation of the passage from the “Tain” is well worth consulting.

52. For a more “medically” detailed account, see a section from the Kaśyapasaṃhitā translated by Wujastyk (1998:212–230). Also very important is White 2003:35ff., which locates the balāgrahas of the MBh in the art and culture of the Kuṣāṇas. White provides a number of cognate passages in the Purāṇas and in temple architecture, and in his effort to historicize these “seizers,” provides a number of epidemiological explanations. For example, he interprets Pūtanā, “Stinky,” with the pustulant sores of chicken pox, Śītapūtanā, “Cool Stinky,” as evocative of the later smallpox goddess Śītalā, and Saramā, the mother of dogs in the ṚV, Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa, and elsewhere as carriers of epilepsy, because mad dogs, like epileptics, can foam at the mouth (pp. 51ff). Also relevant are White’s comments on the avian nature of many of these seizers, which he reads semiotically as fearful bearers of contagious diseases and carrion-eaters (pp. 43 [with a figure of a Nepalese bird-headed grāhī of the late fifteenth century], 58).