Ka

This is a desert island book. You know the game wherein you have to choose ten books or items you would take with you if you were going to be marooned. This book is definitely a prime choice. In fact if you had the choice of only one book about India then this should be the book. It is an opinion that a very formidable voice concurs in. Wendy Doniger flatly calls it, "The very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written." That, believe you me, is the 20th century equivalent of a direct endorsement from Saraswati.

This is a dazzling book, an energetic book, a powerfully erudite book that does not intimidate but sweeps you along in its exuberant rush. The words are measured in their simplicity, but they meld together to produce a snap, bang and crackle that resonates in your mind - like peals from a Beethoven anthem.

"Masters of the goaded, greased, hard-brushed, well-honed word, the rishis were dazzled by one revelation: the elementary fact of being conscious. There was no need to drink soma or develop techniques to be inspired. The bare fact of being conscious was enough in itself."

Lines like that cause one to pause and wonder as the routine and predictable is suddenly infused with magic. The author, Roberto Calasso, is that rare bird, an intellectual who can make ideas vibrate with passion and writes beautifully to boot. This book is an ambitious overview of all of India's mythology and religious beliefs and it is remarkable how well he has pulled it off.

Obviously quantity cannot be covered by one man, so he makes the wise decision to go for quality. He compresses the entire history of the life spiritual into one fabulous narrative, a steel-cable integrating idea that snakes through the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, the Buddhist and Jain traditions and all the popular movements of faith. Philosophic texts are seamlessly welded to flights of hyperbole and he explores the connections within them. Ka is the most magnificent - and audacious - job on integration and synthesis it has been my privilege to come across.

Ka - the secret name Of the Unknown God as expounded in the Upanishads. This book is about the less explored aspects of the Hindu faith, about the Ka in all things. To me, Calasso himself is a Ka of sorts. To begin with - Who he? And why have we not heard of him before? Apparently, he has done the same remarkable job on Greek mythology before - The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. He lives in Milan, publishes books and wins literary Prizes in Europe. But who is he? Like the Hindu authors he illuminates, Calasso remains elusive, an impactful transformatory force rather than a limited human being.

What gives Ka its peculiar potency is the comfort Calasso has in many disciplines. It undoubtedly aids in your reading pleasure if you alredy have working knowledge of Indian mythology for the sheer scale of Ka's achievent is thus apparent. History, mythology, sociology, anthropology, psychology and literature supply Calasso abundant frameworks to hang his narrative on, and by shifting his spotlights according to the inner logic of each discipline he is able to illuminate obscure corners that contained treaures of great psychological and spiritual depth.

For instance, his description-expositon of the Horse-Sacrifice, the Ashwamedha-Yagna is simply the best writing on the topic. He has managed to effortlessly top even Macdonald's Vedic Mythology version and that takes some calibre. Calasso has captured the spirit of the "hard-brushed, well-honed word" only too well, the book is a volcano spewing dazzling phrases, crackling epigrams and koan-like ruminations. I won't spoil the experience by quoting overmuch though I am tempted to.

"The rishis were sometimes called vipras, a word that suggests vibration, throbbing, trembling. Motionless, shut up in the cage of the mind, they vibrated."

Elsewhere, you can read page after interminable page on the rishis but you wont get anything so succinctly illuminating about their nature as that.

On the lack of actual physical artifacts that could help define the Vedic period: "No artifacts have come down to us from the Vedic era. Nothing that those who intoned the hymns of the Rig Veda touched with their hands has survived. Not merely because wood rots faster in a tropical climate. Not merely because they chose not to build in stone. Not merely because they decided not to have temples. The hymns speak of palaces with a hundred gates. They speak of well-crafted jewels. Of bronze palisades. They list the paraphernelia of ritual. They speak of arms and chariots. It is as if everything had been pure mental reality that allows the object to appear, and then reabsorbs it. What remained were the forests, scarred here and there where the fire had burned. And the hymns, the meters, the names. They preserved words and fire. What else did one need?"

This paragraph too is more illuminating than the mountains of controversy over the Vedic period. And every page goes on like this.

Obviously Ka is a book that you will need to read many, many times. Once, at full tilt like a runaway force so that you savour the excitement, and later, bit by bit, building on each preceding block of understanding, unfolding your awareness of the Hindu experience.

In a sense the best possible thing a reviewer can do is to tell the reader to stop reading this and get started on Ka immediatly. For if it has any flaws, I couldn't see them. The grasp of concepts is as good as those of the professional philosophers and more insightful too in most cases. The research is impeccable, vigourous and thorough. It takes a lot to excite me. I read - too much, too soon and everything. Very little is new and almost nothing surprises me. This book however is like a stick of dynamite under you. It may not be too much to say that nobody who claims to be Hindu can do so without first experiencing Ka.

It is also a matter of tremendous regret that India has not managed to produce a work like this, a combination of talent, intelligence, hard work and knowledge. In short, genius. It would be no surprise if Ka is destined to be the text that will power the Hindu mythos into the new millenium.

Reviewed by Rohit Arya