Beings, high and low

The Ādityas are the sons of Aditi, a company of gods whom the Vēdas honour and who are tied to the sun and to the months of the year. The oldest hymns name six to eight of them and the later texts fix the number at twelve; the Mahābhārata counts Dhātṛ, Mitra, Aryaman, Śakra (Indra), Varuṇa, Aṃśa, Bhaga, Vivasvat, Pūṣan, Savitṛ, Tvaṣṭṛ and Viṣṇu, and adds that the youngest is greater in merit than all the rest.

The tradition knows the youngest as Vāmana, the Dwarf, in whom the Lord Himself was born to Aditi and her husband Kaśyapa, and so the hymn calls Him Āditya, the Son of Aditi. The same word has another meaning, for in later speech Āditya also means the sun itself, and the first Āditya of the hymn is the Radiant One, the sun that lights the world, in whom the tradition sees the Lord as the Person within the sun's orb. One reading hears Kṛṣṇa too in the name, taking Dēvakī to have been Aditi born again.

The pitṛs are the fathers: the departed forebears of a family, who are held to dwell in a world of their own, the Pitṛloka, and who are remembered with the rite called śrāddha, in which balls of rice and water are offered to them. The older texts also speak of divine pitṛs in classes, seven in the usual count, whose first the Purāṇas make the Prajāpatis.

In the hymn the ancestors stand in a list of beings that all arise from Nārāyaṇa: seers, ancestors and gods, the great elements and the basic substances, and this whole world of moving and unmoving things. The fathers, like the gods, are His creatures and not His rivals. In the name Mādhava the word forefather is used in its everyday sense, of Madhu, the forefather of a line of the Yādavas.

The asuras are the great rivals of the gods. The word is old: in the earliest Vēdic texts it could be given even to a mighty lord, and in later Vēdic texts gods and asuras are called alike the children of Prajāpati; in the later telling the dēvas are the shining and the good, the asuras those who set themselves against them, and the word comes to mean demon. Two kinds are named most often: the daityas, children of Diti, and the dānavas, children of Danu, both wives of the sage Kaśyapa.

In the hymn the asuras are the foes whom the Lord overthrows. The names recall Hiraṇyakaśipu and Hiraṇyākṣa, whom the man-lion and the Boar overcame; Madhu, who rose against Brahmā at the beginning of creation; Kālanēmi, whom the tradition knows as born again as Kaṃsa; Kēśin, who came against Him as a great horse; and Bali, who gave the Dwarf three strides of land. The tradition does not count every asura wicked: Bali kept faith with the Dwarf, and Prahlāda, born in an asura house, is the Lord's devoted child. The closing creed says that gods and asuras alike lie in Kṛṣṇa's power.

The Aśvins are a pair of young gods, twin horsemen of the Vēdas who drive across the sky in a chariot drawn by tireless horses, bringing help to people in danger and healing the sick. They are bound up with the dawn, and are called by the names Nāsatya and Dasra. In the older lists of thirty-three gods they are the two who complete the count.

The hymn does not name them. The epic tells that Mādrī, wife of Pāṇḍu, called on the Aśvins and bore the twins Nakula and Sahadēva. The hymn calls the Lord the Overseer and Lord of all the gods, and the Aśvins are among those who hold their places by that lordship.

In the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition the attendants are the nityasūris, the eternal ones: souls who have never been bound by karma and who serve Lakṣmī and Nārāyaṇa for ever in Vaikuṇṭha, in bodies of pure sattva and with a joy like the Lord's own. The teachers name Śēṣa, Garuḍa and Viṣvaksēna as the chief among them and say that there are countless more. They differ from the freed, who were once bound and have been set free, and from the souls who are still in the round of birth.

The hymn meets them in three ways. The second invocation verse takes refuge in Viṣvaksēna, whose attendants, more than a hundred in number and led by the elephant-faced one, strike down obstacles without ceasing; the verse names no others. The name Suṣēṇa calls the Lord the Lord of the splendid host, made up of the eternal attendants who do His bidding. And the five weapons, the discus, the conch, the mace, the bow and the sword, are counted by the tradition as living attendants who watch over Him, and in many southern temples the discus has its own shrine.

The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition is said to know the elephant-faced one as an eternal servant in the company of Viṣvaksēna, called in Tamil Tumbikkai Āḻvār; the verse itself names no one, and some hear Gaṇēśa in the word.

The daityas are the descendants of Diti, wife of the sage Kaśyapa, as the Ādityas are the sons of his wife Aditi. They are one of the two chief kinds of asura, the other being the dānavas, children of Danu. The name is given above all to the great asura kings of the Lord's stories: Hiraṇyākṣa, whom the Boar slew, Hiraṇyakaśipu, whom the man-lion ended, and Bali, who gave the Dwarf three strides of land.

The hymn meets them in two verses. The meditation that pictures the whole world as His body lists gods, men, birds, cattle, serpents, gandharvas and daityas all revelling within Him. And the nyāsa bows to the Lord who puts an end to the daityas, 'however many their forms' (anēkarūpadaityāntaṃ): they come in many shapes and ranks, and He is the end of them all.

Not every daitya is an enemy. Prahlāda, son of Hiraṇyakaśipu, was born among them and is remembered as one of the Lord's most steadfast devotees, and the generosity of Bali is remembered.

The old scheme of the Vēdic texts and the epic speaks of four varṇas, a word that began by meaning colour and came to mean class: the brāhmaṇa, who learns and teaches the Vēdas and keeps the rites; the kṣatriya, who rules and protects; the vaiśya, who farms, keeps cattle and trades; and the śūdra, who serves. Varṇa is not the same as jāti, the many birth-groups of later life, and the old texts speak chiefly of the four.

The hymn uses the scheme in its closing verses, where a fruit is named for each class: the brāhmaṇa comes to the end of the Vēdas, the kṣatriya wins victory, the vaiśya grows rich in wealth and the śūdra finds happiness. In the names the word brāhmaṇa is used of the Lord Himself: He is Brāhmaṇa, the true knower and teacher of brahma, and Brāhmaṇapriya, dear to the brāhmaṇas who know brahma and live by the Vēda. When He came as Vāmana, the tradition tells, He came as a small boy of the brāhmaṇas.

The gandharvas are a class of heavenly beings, the singers and musicians who play and sing at the feasts of the gods and dwell in Indra's heaven with the apsarases, their dancers. The oldest Vēdic hymns speak of a single Gandharva who guards the heavenly soma; later texts make a whole race of them, with Citraratha named among their chiefs and Tumburu famed as one of the best.

The hymn names them in two verses, both as part of the whole creation that is in the Lord's power. The meditation that pictures the universe as His body says that gods, men, birds, cattle, serpents, gandharvas and daityas revel within it; the closing creed says that the whole world, with gods and asuras, gandharvas, yakṣas, serpents and rākṣasas, abides under the sway of Kṛṣṇa. Even the finest singers of heaven belong to Him, as every other being does.

The gods are the dēvas, from the root div, to shine: the shining ones of the Vēdas, among them Indra, Agni, Varuṇa and Vāyu, each with a place in the ordering of the world. The older lists count thirty-three of them, made up as the table shows, though the lists differ from text to text. The word is also used of the Lord Himself, as the God of the gods.

In this hymn the gods are never the Lord's rivals but His servants. He is their Lord and Overseer, as the names Surēśa, Surādhyakṣa, Dēvēśa and Tridaśādhyakṣa say; He is the Joy of the gods and the slayer of their foes, and the Sustainer who bears them up in their places. He is the First God, from whom the rest have their being, and the Great God, and Bhīṣma's opening answer calls Him the God of the gods. Dēva is also 'one who is praised', and the hymn hears in this that every praise given to any god comes at last to Him.

The Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers hold that the gods, however great, are His creatures, set in their offices by Him and sustained by Him, and that He is God of gods in the plainest sense. So the hymn can speak of the gods with honour and still bow to Him alone; the meditation that pictures the world as His body counts gods, men, serpents, gandharvas and daityas alike as living within Him.

The Maruts are the wind and storm gods of the Vēdas, a troop who go with Indra. Some texts call them the sons of Rudra and Pṛśni, others the sons of the sage Kaśyapa and Diti; they are often counted with the Rudras.

The hymn does not name them, but one reading of the name Vāyuvāhana, the Lord who moves the wind, speaks of His governing the air in seven regions, and the seven Maruts are said to hold those regions by His gift; the wind itself is part of His body in the meditation on the world as His body.

Prajāpati is prajā, the born, and pati, lord: the lord or guardian of creatures. In the Vēdic texts the word is a name of the creator and of several gods, and in the epic and the Purāṇas the Prajāpatis are a company of great beings set by Brahmā to father the generations. One list gives Marīci, Atri, Aṅgiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, Vasiṣṭha, Dakṣa, Bhṛgu and Nārada, and the lists of other texts run from seven to twenty-one.

The hymn uses the word twice. The first Prajāpati is plain: the Lord is the father and protector of every creature. The second gives it the larger sense, the Lord of the lords of creatures, who is the Self within Brahmā and the rest and rules them from within, the Prajāpati of the Prajāpatis.

The rākṣasas are a race of powerful beings who can fly, vanish and take any shape, and who in the old tales often trouble the sacrifice and the sages. One Purāṇic telling explains the word from a vow to guard, made by some of the hungry beings whom Brahmā brought forth; in the Rāmāyaṇa their king Rāvaṇa carries off Sītā and is slain by Rāma, though some rākṣasas, like Vibhīṣaṇa, are good, and in the great war of the Mahābhārata rākṣasa heroes fought on both sides.

In the hymn they stand only in the closing creed, among the beings that the world holds, high and low, friendly and fierce: gods, asuras, gandharvas, yakṣas, serpents and rākṣasas all abide under the sway of Kṛṣṇa. The tradition tells that the Lord overcame Rāvaṇa, the best known of them, as Rāma, and the creed says that even the fierce stand in His power.

Here Rudra is the Lord Himself. The name comes from rud, to weep: He is the One who puts weeping to flight, driving out the sorrow of those who take refuge in Him. Bhaṭṭar, whose commentary on the names is the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition's own, hears the same root another way: He is Rudra because His beauty and His deeds make His devotees weep for joy. Ādi Śaṅkara's commentary also hears the giver of good and the destroyer of misery and its cause.

Rudra is also the name of a company of gods. The Rudras are eleven in the older lists, storm gods of the Vēdas who are closely bound up with the Maruts and are called the sons of Rudra; they are numbered among the thirty-three gods with the twelve Ādityas, the eight Vasus and the two Aśvins, though their number differs from text to text. A reader who knows Rudra as a god in his own right should know that the hymn, and the two great commentaries it is read with, take Rudra, Śiva, Śarva and the like as names of the one Lord, each giving a quality of Him.

In the Śrīvaiṣṇava reading, then, nothing is taken from the Lord by these names and no other god is set beside Him. Each is a word that shows what He is: the One who removes sorrow, the Auspicious One, the Steadfast One.

A serpent in this hymn is a nāga: not an ordinary snake but one of a divine race of serpents, born, the tradition says, of the sage Kaśyapa and his wife Kadrū, who live in the lower worlds and can take a human shape. The meditation on the whole world as His body counts them among the beings who revel within Him, beside gods, gandharvas and daityas, and the closing creed lists them among those who abide under Kṛṣṇa's sway.

Two serpents matter most here. The first is Śēṣa, also called Ādiśēṣa and Ananta, the Endless: the thousand-headed one, eldest of the nāgas, on whose coils the Lord rests on the Milk Ocean. The tradition counts Śēṣa among the Lord's eternal servants, and the commentators hear Śēṣa in the names Bhujagōttama, the best of serpents, and Mahōraga, the Great Serpent. The second is Takṣaka, the serpent king whose bite killed King Parīkṣit and whom Janamējaya's sacrifice was meant to destroy; the whole epic, with this hymn in it, is told in the pauses of that rite.

A serpent also lends its likeness to a name. As a great serpent cannot be seized, so the Lord is Vyāḻa, the Untamable: no one can lay hold of Him by force, and only love binds Him.

The Vasus are eight gods, one of the four groups that make up the thirty-three gods of the older lists, with the twelve Ādityas, the eleven Rudras and the two Aśvins. The word is the plural of vasu, wealth or the good. The hymn uses vasu in that plain sense, of the Lord, who dwells in every being and is the treasure beyond all treasures, and who is also the giver of wealth; the gods are not meant in those names.

The epic tells that eight Vasus, cursed by a sage to be born as men, were born to the river-goddess Gaṅgā and King Śantanu. She kept only one, Dēvavrata, who grew up to be Bhīṣma, the speaker of this hymn.

Viṣvaksēna is the chief of the Lord's attendants, known to Tamil devotees as Sēnai Mudaliyār, the Chief of the Host: the commander of His forces and the keeper of the gate of Vaikuṇṭha. The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition calls on him at the start of rites and festivals so that no obstacle stands in the way, and in the great temples his image goes first in the festival procession. The Śrīvaiṣṇava line of teachers is traced from the Lord down to Rāmānuja, and Viṣvaksēna stands in that line.

He stands in two places in the hymn. In the second invocation verse the reciter takes refuge in Viṣvaksēna, because the more than a hundred attendants under him, led by the elephant-faced one, strike down obstacles without ceasing. And the word itself is one of the thousand names, Viṣvaksēna, 'He whose hosts go everywhere', from viṣvak, in every direction, and sēnā, an army.

Bhaṭṭar reads that name of the Lord Himself: He is Aniruddha, the protecting array of the Lord, with His host always about Him and ever ready to guard. Others also hear in it the commander of the host. So the invocation takes refuge in the servant who stands at the gate, and the name praises the Master whose hosts are everywhere.

The yakṣas are a wide class of nature spirits, dwelling by trees, forests, springs and mountains and thought to guard the treasure beneath the earth. Their king is Kubēra, the god of wealth. Most are kindly, some are wayward, and in some tellings a darker kind waylays travellers in the wilds. In the Mahābhārata a yakṣa of a forest lake puts his questions to Yudhiṣṭhira.

In the hymn they stand once, in the closing creed, among the beings of every kind that abide under the sway of Kṛṣṇa; the introduction carries the same list.