MIKOLAJEWSKA & LINTON • VIOLENCE

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MIKOLAJEWSKA & LINTON • VIOLENCE

Set in Times New Roman using

Microsoft Office Premium 2000,
these pages were produced on an
HP LaserJet LJ-4500-DN printer.
 51

Bibliography

[M] The Mahābhārata, 1. The Book of the

Beginning, translated and edited by J.A.B. van
Buitenen. The University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle, Sri Ranga-

Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, depicting snake deities and other
natha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
creatures and divinities Mahabalipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

51

Bibliography

[M] The Mahābhārata, 1. The Book of the

Beginning, translated and edited by J.A.B. van
Buitenen. The University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle, Sri Ranga-

Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, depicting snake deities and other
natha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
creatures and divinities, Mahabalipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 50

yet another chain of mimetic rivalry and revenge –

but cloaked in the apparent respectability of a
sacred sacrificial ritual. The solution here,
however, as Āstika offers it, is not to accept the
bad, but to stop it: in this instance, to force the
“Good” Violence
vengeance-bent King to renounce his desire for
revenge. And the basis for this solution seems to
versus “Bad”
live in the example Garuda provides.
The Garuda episode, in addition, seems to A Girardian Analysis of
illustrate a full cycle of the Girardian mimetic King Janamejaya’s Snake Sacrifice
mechanism. Even before Garuda’s birth, mimetic and Allied Events
desire, mimetic rivalry, mimetic revenge are
rampant. Garuda himself is depicted in mimetic
roles that are various and almost contradictory: he With 18 full-color illustrations
starts as victim in relation to his snake-siblings; he
becomes destroyer of “bad” violence when he
devour the monstrous doubles of elephant and Barbara Mikolajewska
turtle; he is the sacrificial one against whom all the in cooperation with
Gods under Indra are arrayed; he is the former F. E. J. Linton
victim deified by his snake-siblings upon his return
with the Soma; but primarily, for us, his is the
example how to end “bad” violence, in his choice
to let go his damaged feather and to forgo
vengeance against Indra for causing that damage.
It is this lesson of renunciation of vengeance
that Āstika succeeds in peaceably forcing upon
King Janamejaya, bringing the King’s “bad”
violence to an end before it could fully attain the
apocalyptic proportions it intended. Here, at last,
truly “bad” violence masquerading as “good” has The Lintons’ Video Press
been unmasked and successfully thwarted. New Haven
2004

50

yet another chain of mimetic rivalry and revenge –

but cloaked in the apparent respectability of a
sacred sacrificial ritual. The solution here,
however, as Āstika offers it, is not to accept the
bad, but to stop it: in this instance, to force the
“Good” Violence
vengeance-bent King to renounce his desire for
revenge. And the basis for this solution seems to
versus “Bad”
live in the example Garuda provides.
The Garuda episode, in addition, seems to A Girardian Analysis of
illustrate a full cycle of the Girardian mimetic King Janamejaya’s Snake Sacrifice
mechanism. Even before Garuda’s birth, mimetic and Allied Events
desire, mimetic rivalry, mimetic revenge are
rampant. Garuda himself is depicted in mimetic
roles that are various and almost contradictory: he With 18 full-color illustrations
starts as victim in relation to his snake-siblings; he
becomes destroyer of “bad” violence when he
devour the monstrous doubles of elephant and Barbara Mikolajewska
turtle; he is the sacrificial one against whom all the in cooperation with
Gods under Indra are arrayed; he is the former F. E. J. Linton
victim deified by his snake-siblings upon his return
with the Soma; but primarily, for us, his is the
example how to end “bad” violence, in his choice
to let go his damaged feather and to forgo
vengeance against Indra for causing that damage.
It is this lesson of renunciation of vengeance
that Āstika succeeds in peaceably forcing upon
King Janamejaya, bringing the King’s “bad”
violence to an end before it could fully attain the
apocalyptic proportions it intended. Here, at last,
truly “bad” violence masquerading as “good” has The Lintons’ Video Press
been unmasked and successfully thwarted. New Haven
2004

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Mikolajewska
All rights reserved
Technical and editorial advisor: F. E. J. Linton
Published in the United States in 2004 by
The Lintons’ Video Press
36 Everit Street, New Haven, CT
06511-2208 USA
e-mail inquiries: tlvpress@yahoo.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1-929865-29-1
ISBN-10: 1-929865-29-5
Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Mikolajewska
All rights reserved
Technical and editorial advisor: F. E. J. Linton
Published in the United States in 2004 by
The Lintons’ Video Press
36 Everit Street, New Haven, CT
06511-2208 USA
e-mail inquiries: tlvpress@yahoo.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1-929865-29-1
ISBN: 1-929865-29-5
49
We began this metaphoric analysis of King
Janamejaya’s Great Snake Sacrifice with a study
of the curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by the
vengeful sage Bhrgu. The point the Mahabharata
makes in this episode is that “good” violence can
somehow be contaminated by “bad” – the
Mahabharata even reveals portions of the classic
Girardian mechanism of mimetic desire,
consequent mimetic rivalry, and subsequent
unrestrained revenge and retaliation as the source
of such contamination. And Brahma’s “solution”
to the resulting failure of the sacred rituals, the
advice, in effect, to accept the bad with the good,
as a necessary price for the good, only further
obscures the distinction between “good” violence
and “bad,” no matter how joyfully it is first
welcomed as a resolution of the problem of failed
sacrifice.
The Snake Sacrifice itself, in particular, is an
extreme example of the consequences of such
confusion between “good” violence and “bad.” For
it is in reality the worst kind of “bad” violence –
the final almost apocalyptic, retaliatory response in
49
We began this metaphoric analysis of King
Janamejaya’s Great Snake Sacrifice with a study
of the curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by the
vengeful sage Bhrgu. The point the Mahabharata
makes in this episode is that “good” violence can
somehow be contaminated by “bad” – the
Mahabharata even reveals portions of the classic
Girardian mechanism of mimetic desire,
consequent mimetic rivalry, and subsequent
unrestrained revenge and retaliation as the source
of such contamination. And Brahma’s “solution”
to the resulting failure of the sacred rituals, the
advice, in effect, to accept the bad with the good,
as a necessary price for the good, only further
obscures the distinction between “good” violence
and “bad,” no matter how joyfully it is first
welcomed as a resolution of the problem of failed
sacrifice.
The Snake Sacrifice itself, in particular, is an
extreme example of the consequences of such
confusion between “good” violence and “bad.” For
it is in reality the worst kind of “bad” violence –
the final almost apocalyptic, retaliatory response in
 48

Table of Contents
Foreword 7
1. The Sacrificial Fire 13
2. Garuda 21
3. The Snake Sacrifice 35
Afterword 47
Bibliography 51

Turmeric-dusted votive idol.
Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
Table of Illustrations
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Kanchipuram Cover
Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, Mahabalipuram 2
Small roadside temple with cobra (Karnataka) 6
Sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 8
Cobra idol in figure-eight knot, Mannarasala 12
Votive fire, Hanuman Temple (Karnataka) 14
Shivalingam with cobra and Krishna, Kanchipuram 18
Garuda guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple, Madras 20
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Mysore 22
Krishna battling cobra, Vishnu temple, Cochin 26
Krishna seated on cobra, Kesava Temple, Mysore 27
Garuda as festival vehicle, Mysore 34
Snake at edge of fire pit, Durga Temple, Mysore 36
Vāsuki at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple 40
Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja 41
Snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 46
Turmeric-dusted votive idol, Mannarasala Temple 48
Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle 51

48

Table of Contents
Foreword 7
1. The Sacrificial Fire 13
2. Garuda 21
3. The Snake Sacrifice 35
Afterword 47
Bibliography 51

Turmeric-dusted votive idol.
Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
Table of Illustrations
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Kanchipuram Cover
Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, Mahabalipuram 2
Small roadside temple with cobra (Karnataka) 6
Sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 8
Cobra idol in figure-eight knot, Mannarasala 12
Votive fire, Hanuman Temple (Karnataka) 14
Shivalingam with cobra and Krishna, Kanchipuram 18
Garuda guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple, Madras 20
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Mysore 22
Krishna battling cobra, Vishnu temple, Cochin 26
Krishna seated on cobra, Kesava Temple, Mysore 27
Garuda as festival vehicle, Mysore 34
Snake at edge of fire pit, Durga Temple, Mysore 36
Vāsuki at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple 40
Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja 41
Snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 46
Turmeric-dusted votive idol, Mannarasala Temple 48
Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle 51
6 47

Afterword

Offering place with cobra. Small roadside temple

between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India.

6 47

Afterword

Offering place with cobra. Small roadside temple

between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
 46 7

Law in furtherance of one powerful ruler’s

personal vendetta, are so out of control that only
“letting go” of them, as Garuda let go his injured
feather, can forestall the devastating harm they are
apt to cause. This, then, may be the Mahabharata’s
current lesson regarding the twin problems of how
“good” violence can turn to “bad,” and how to
make it “good” again.

Foreword

Banyan tree with sandstone snake idols, Varadaraja-

perumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

46 7

Law in furtherance of one powerful ruler’s

personal vendetta, are so out of control that only
“letting go” of them, as Garuda let go his injured
feather, can forestall the devastating harm they are
apt to cause. This, then, may be the Mahabharata’s
current lesson regarding the twin problems of how
“good” violence can turn to “bad,” and how to
make it “good” again.

Foreword

Banyan tree with sandstone snake idols, Varadaraja-

perumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 8 45

his lifelong dedication to the discipline of “good”

violence in the form of devoted study, deep
meditation, and determined self-sacrifice and
abstemiousness – that the King simply end the
Ritual – issued from the conviction that even the
King must take inspiration from the example
Garuda provided in ending his symmetric violence
with Indra, when, in a single grand gesture, he let
go both his injured feather and with it any
lingering desire for further retaliation: the King,
too, must put aside his evil desire for revenge. And
put it aside he does.
Takşaka, of course, was spared, as was Āstika’s
uncle Vāsuki, whose nephew’s spiritual powers
were able to protect him in any event from all
harm. And King Janamejaya was able to continue
his rule without further displays of vengeance. The
“bad” violence, which admittedly did result in the
tragic death of a multitude of snakes in the all-
consuming flames of the sacrificial fire, was once
again contained, thanks to the timely arrival of
Indra, the helplessness of Takşaka, whom Indra
proved unable to protect, and the Brahminic
wisdom of Āstika. The sacrificed snakes were,
somehow, the price to be paid for learning, once
again, how to purge the sacrificial ritual of its
“bad” violence.
The rituals of sacrifice, first threatened with
becoming ineffective through the contamination of
the once pure sacrificial fire as a result of Bhrgu’s
curse, and now shown to be doubly capable of
“bad” violence as a result of the priests’ readiness
Detail of sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple,
to turn the letter of the Law against the spirit of the
Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

8 45

his lifelong dedication to the discipline of “good”

violence in the form of devoted study, deep
meditation, and determined self-sacrifice and
abstemiousness – that the King simply end the
Ritual – issued from the conviction that even the
King must take inspiration from the example
Garuda provided in ending his symmetric violence
with Indra, when, in a single grand gesture, he let
go both his injured feather and with it any
lingering desire for further retaliation: the King,
too, must put aside his evil desire for revenge. And
put it aside he does.
Takşaka, of course, was spared, as was Āstika’s
uncle Vāsuki, whose nephew’s spiritual powers
were able to protect him in any event from all
harm. And King Janamejaya was able to continue
his rule without further displays of vengeance. The
“bad” violence, which admittedly did result in the
tragic death of a multitude of snakes in the all-
consuming flames of the sacrificial fire, was once
again contained, thanks to the timely arrival of
Indra, the helplessness of Takşaka, whom Indra
proved unable to protect, and the Brahminic
wisdom of Āstika. The sacrificed snakes were,
somehow, the price to be paid for learning, once
again, how to purge the sacrificial ritual of its
“bad” violence.
The rituals of sacrifice, first threatened with
becoming ineffective through the contamination of
the once pure sacrificial fire as a result of Bhrgu’s
curse, and now shown to be doubly capable of
“bad” violence as a result of the priests’ readiness
Detail of sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple,
to turn the letter of the Law against the spirit of the
Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 44
possible means to coax Āstika into changing his
wish, for he would sooner even break his royal
promise than grant such a boon. But the priests,
“knowing their Veda” ([M], p. 120), compel the
King to relent, to follow the Law, to grant the boon
he has promised, to let go, as Garuda let go his
feather, his desire for revenge, to call a halt to the
sacrifice, and thus both to spare Takşaka, with all
his remaining kin, and to desist from further
enmity with Indra. Again we have the parallel: just
as Garuda, in contention with Indra over the Soma,
ultimately relinquishes the Soma to Indra again, so
King Janamejaya is to relinquish Takşaka to the
protection, however imperfect, of Indra, and to
renounce all further desire of revenge.
This premature termination of the Sacrificial
Session, like the release of Garuda’s feather,
becomes the source of great satisfaction to all the
participants: all are relieved that an improper and
unworthy revenge, sanctimoniously garbed as a
Great Ritual Sacrifice, but in fact the very worst of
a devastatingly bad violence, corrupt and impure at
its very core, was being nipped in the bud. Only
perhaps the ravenous sacrificial fire, cheated of yet
further serpentine morsels, may have been
disconsolate, but the Mahabharata does not say.
What is clear is that this Sacrificial Session truly
was the epitome of “bad” violence, a senseless
mass extermination motivated only by a base
desire for retribution and not by any religious
principles at all. Equally clear is that the selfless
boon sought by the Brahminic snake-sage Āstika,
whose highly advanced spirituality stemmed from
44
possible means to coax Āstika into changing his
wish, for he would sooner even break his royal
promise than grant such a boon. But the priests,
“knowing their Veda” ([M], p. 120), compel the
King to relent, to follow the Law, to grant the boon
he has promised, to let go, as Garuda let go his
feather, his desire for revenge, to call a halt to the
sacrifice, and thus both to spare Takşaka, with all
his remaining kin, and to desist from further
enmity with Indra. Again we have the parallel: just
as Garuda, in contention with Indra over the Soma,
ultimately relinquishes the Soma to Indra again, so
King Janamejaya is to relinquish Takşaka to the
protection, however imperfect, of Indra, and to
renounce all further desire of revenge.
This premature termination of the Sacrificial
Session, like the release of Garuda’s feather,
becomes the source of great satisfaction to all the
participants: all are relieved that an improper and
unworthy revenge, sanctimoniously garbed as a
Great Ritual Sacrifice, but in fact the very worst of
a devastatingly bad violence, corrupt and impure at
its very core, was being nipped in the bud. Only
perhaps the ravenous sacrificial fire, cheated of yet
further serpentine morsels, may have been
disconsolate, but the Mahabharata does not say.
What is clear is that this Sacrificial Session truly
was the epitome of “bad” violence, a senseless
mass extermination motivated only by a base
desire for retribution and not by any religious
principles at all. Equally clear is that the selfless
boon sought by the Brahminic snake-sage Āstika,
whose highly advanced spirituality stemmed from
9
If we try to understand the significance of the
vindictive curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by
the vengeful sage Bhrgu, and of its consequences –
if we seek to grasp the meaning of the circum-
stances surrounding the birth of the great bird
Garuda, his struggle against his snake siblings, his
successful quest for the divine Soma, and his
conflict and ultimate accommodation with Indra –
and if we examine the vicious Snake Sacrifice of
King Janamejaya, how these prior events led up to
it, and how it is surprisingly aborted – we find
ourselves in the presence of metaphors and
imagery whose content is not easy to grasp.
We shall argue, following the well-developed
complex of insights that René Girard has
developed in his extensive studies on violence and
the sacred, that everywhere their focus is on the
differentiation of “bad” violence from “good,” and
on the necessity to block the “bad” violence of
uncontrolled reprisal (which Girard’s mimetic
theory describes as part of a mimetic cycle of
desire, rivalry, revenge, and retribution) by means
of the controlled “good” violence of appropriate
9
If we try to understand the significance of the
vindictive curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by
the vengeful sage Bhrgu, and of its consequences –
if we seek to grasp the meaning of the circum-
stances surrounding the birth of the great bird
Garuda, his struggle against his snake siblings, his
successful quest for the divine Soma, and his
conflict and ultimate accommodation with Indra –
and if we examine the vicious Snake Sacrifice of
King Janamejaya, how these prior events led up to
it, and how it is surprisingly aborted – we find
ourselves in the presence of metaphors and
imagery whose content is not easy to grasp.
We shall argue, following the well-developed
complex of insights that René Girard has
developed in his extensive studies on violence and
the sacred, that everywhere their focus is on the
differentiation of “bad” violence from “good,” and
on the necessity to block the “bad” violence of
uncontrolled reprisal (which Girard’s mimetic
theory describes as part of a mimetic cycle of
desire, rivalry, revenge, and retribution) by means
of the controlled “good” violence of appropriate
 10
sacred ritual – which, alas, despite religion’s
meticulous care to distinguish the good from the
bad, can all too easily degenerate, thanks to the
mimetic mechanism Girard has uncovered, into
“bad” violence all over again.
Certain manifestations of mimesis or mimetic
rivalry will already be familiar, such as ducklings
following their mother, children imitating their
parents’ behavior, apprentices learning from their
masters, or again neighbors outdoing each other in
the care of their lawns, the size of their TV’s, or
the luxury of their automobiles. The fabled blood-
feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys is
another example, one rather more to our point, in
that the violence involved, each act of retribution
mimetically triggering a fresh reprisal, cannot end
until the two families succeed in completely
annihilating one another.
René Girard, a French-American scholar now
Professor Emeritus at Stanford University in
California, has developed a rich mimetic theory
that finds such mimetic mechanisms at work in the
Bible, in the works of Shakespeare, and elsewhere.
In his mimetic analyses of violence and the sacred,
Girard sees the principal aim of religion as being
putting an end to violence, stopping all “bad”
violence by means of suitable “good” violence,
incorporated into religious rituals in a form often
so highly sublimated or purely symbolic that the
generative violence it is based on becomes
virtually imperceptible. He reveals an endless
cycle of mimetic desire, rivalry, revenge, and
retribution, leading in a self-catalyzing cascade to
10
sacred ritual – which, alas, despite religion’s
meticulous care to distinguish the good from the
bad, can all too easily degenerate, thanks to the
mimetic mechanism Girard has uncovered, into
“bad” violence all over again.
Certain manifestations of mimesis or mimetic
rivalry will already be familiar, such as ducklings
following their mother, children imitating their
parents’ behavior, apprentices learning from their
masters, or again neighbors outdoing each other in
the care of their lawns, the size of their TV’s, or
the luxury of their automobiles. The fabled blood-
feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys is
another example, one rather more to our point, in
that the violence involved, each act of retribution
mimetically triggering a fresh reprisal, cannot end
until the two families succeed in completely
annihilating one another.
René Girard, a French-American scholar now
Professor Emeritus at Stanford University in
California, has developed a rich mimetic theory
that finds such mimetic mechanisms at work in the
Bible, in the works of Shakespeare, and elsewhere.
In his mimetic analyses of violence and the sacred,
Girard sees the principal aim of religion as being
putting an end to violence, stopping all “bad”
violence by means of suitable “good” violence,
incorporated into religious rituals in a form often
so highly sublimated or purely symbolic that the
generative violence it is based on becomes
virtually imperceptible. He reveals an endless
cycle of mimetic desire, rivalry, revenge, and
retribution, leading in a self-catalyzing cascade to
43
lust for vengeance so far as to include even Indra
in its scope, shouting ([M], p. 119),
‘Priests! If Takşaka the Snake is in Indra’s keeping,
then hurl him into the fire with Indra himself!’
So once again we have two Indras in opposition
against each other, with who knows what
disastrous calamity in the offing, two monstrous
doubles, not this time Garuda, the Indra of birds,
but King Janamejaya, the Indra of his earthly
subjects, facing off against the celestial Indra, who
had, after all, looked approvingly upon Takşaka’s
killing of Parikşit – for the sake not this time of the
Soma, but of Takşaka.
Poor Takşaka, meanwhile, though hidden in
Indra’s robe, and ostensibly under Indra’s
protection, becomes so confused and weakened by
the magical incantations that he falls out of his
hiding place within Indra’s garments, raises his
head to the skies, and, in his weakness and
confusion, is nearly about to fall into the sacrificial
fire. This, then – so decree the priests – is the
moment for Āstika to make known the boon he
wishes, and for the King to grant it. Alas for the
King, but not a moment too soon for Takşaka,
Āstika utters his wish ([M], p. 120):
‘I choose that your Session be stopped and no
more Snakes come down.’
Thus would this “bad” violence be brought to an
end, the unthinkable calamity averted, and the
King’s will, to have Takşaka and the remaining
snakes all reduced to mere ashes, thwarted.
Furious at such a request, the King tries by all
43
lust for vengeance so far as to include even Indra
in its scope, shouting ([M], p. 119),
‘Priests! If Takşaka the Snake is in Indra’s keeping,
then hurl him into the fire with Indra himself!’
So once again we have two Indras in opposition
against each other, with who knows what
disastrous calamity in the offing, two monstrous
doubles, not this time Garuda, the Indra of birds,
but King Janamejaya, the Indra of his earthly
subjects, facing off against the celestial Indra, who
had, after all, looked approvingly upon Takşaka’s
killing of Parikşit – for the sake not this time of the
Soma, but of Takşaka.
Poor Takşaka, meanwhile, though hidden in
Indra’s robe, and ostensibly under Indra’s
protection, becomes so confused and weakened by
the magical incantations that he falls out of his
hiding place within Indra’s garments, raises his
head to the skies, and, in his weakness and
confusion, is nearly about to fall into the sacrificial
fire. This, then – so decree the priests – is the
moment for Āstika to make known the boon he
wishes, and for the King to grant it. Alas for the
King, but not a moment too soon for Takşaka,
Āstika utters his wish ([M], p. 120):
‘I choose that your Session be stopped and no
more Snakes come down.’
Thus would this “bad” violence be brought to an
end, the unthinkable calamity averted, and the
King’s will, to have Takşaka and the remaining
snakes all reduced to mere ashes, thwarted.
Furious at such a request, the King tries by all
 42
these, Vāsuki by name, had the good fortune to
raise up the hybrid sage-snake child of his own
sister Jaratkaru and a certain celibate ascetic, the
solitary sage likewise named Jaratkaru, who
accepted Vāsuki’s sister as bride only because
Vāsuki had offered her in the manner one offers
any other alms, and because his own ancestors had
implored him to beget a son, lest they wither away
in the absence of any living progeny at Jaratkaru’s
own death.
This child Āstika, raised by his uncle Vāsuki
and his sister (the celibate father having abandoned
both mother and child over some trespass by the
mother), has advanced to Brahmin status, with
spiritual powers so great that he is fully protected
against the magical spells sweeping other snakes to
their fiery deaths. His will be the miraculous gift to
put an end to the bad violence of this ritual
slaughter. Arriving at the place of the sacrifice, he
so skillfully praises the sacrifice and so flatteringly
lauds the King and his sacrificial priests that the
King is moved to grant him as boon whatever wish
he will make known just as the King’s prime target
Takşaka is about to drop into the flames.
But Takşaka has not yet been seen. Indeed,
Takşaka had sought and obtained the protection of
Indra, confessing and repenting of all his evil
deeds and ways. And Indra, meaning to visit the
great sacrifice, yet not willing to leave Takşaka
behind and unprotected, bid Takşaka hide himself
within Indra’s robes. Only then did he make his
appearance at the great ritual. King Janamejaya,
aware that Indra is protecting Takşaka, extends his
42
these, Vāsuki by name, had the good fortune to
raise up the hybrid sage-snake child of his own
sister Jaratkaru and a certain celibate ascetic, the
solitary sage likewise named Jaratkaru, who
accepted Vāsuki’s sister as bride only because
Vāsuki had offered her in the manner one offers
any other alms, and because his own ancestors had
implored him to beget a son, lest they wither away
in the absence of any living progeny at Jaratkaru’s
own death.
This child Āstika, raised by his uncle Vāsuki
and his sister (the celibate father having abandoned
both mother and child over some trespass by the
mother), has advanced to Brahmin status, with
spiritual powers so great that he is fully protected
against the magical spells sweeping other snakes to
their fiery deaths. His will be the miraculous gift to
put an end to the bad violence of this ritual
slaughter. Arriving at the place of the sacrifice, he
so skillfully praises the sacrifice and so flatteringly
lauds the King and his sacrificial priests that the
King is moved to grant him as boon whatever wish
he will make known just as the King’s prime target
Takşaka is about to drop into the flames.
But Takşaka has not yet been seen. Indeed,
Takşaka had sought and obtained the protection of
Indra, confessing and repenting of all his evil
deeds and ways. And Indra, meaning to visit the
great sacrifice, yet not willing to leave Takşaka
behind and unprotected, bid Takşaka hide himself
within Indra’s robes. Only then did he make his
appearance at the great ritual. King Janamejaya,
aware that Indra is protecting Takşaka, extends his
11
wave upon escalating wave of mimetically inspired
reciprocal violence, ever broadening in scope, that
does not end until one ultimate victim succumbs to
all the rest. Only then does a new order come to
pass, again mimetically sustained, in which the
same mimetic imperative now compels religiously
approved ethical behavior.
The death of this victim is what Girard
therefore calls the “founding murder” of the new
order – it is somehow the “last word” of violence,
so climactic that by its example all further violence
is stopped dead in its tracks. Indeed it is the death
of this solitary victim, who, though demonized
before being slain, becomes deified thereafter, that
serves as model for subsequent rituals of sacrifice,
being the archetype of the “good” violence that
will serve as curative against the “bad” symmetric
violence that the mimetic mechanism of Girard’s
theory would otherwise repeatedly engender, as it
will should ever the distinction between “good”
and “bad” violence become ambiguous.
Indeed, an implicit preoccupation with the
distinction between “good” violence and “bad”
and, for that matter, an innate awareness of the
whole Girardian mechanism, underlie much of the
Mahabharata, rising most conspicuously to the
surface in the telling of the following three
interconnected episodes: the curse of the sage
Bhrgu upon the sacrificial fire, the birth and early
adventures of Garuda, and the Great Snake
Sacrifice of King Janamejaya.
11
wave upon escalating wave of mimetically inspired
reciprocal violence, ever broadening in scope, that
does not end until one ultimate victim succumbs to
all the rest. Only then does a new order come to
pass, again mimetically sustained, in which the
same mimetic imperative now compels religiously
approved ethical behavior.
The death of this victim is what Girard
therefore calls the “founding murder” of the new
order – it is somehow the “last word” of violence,
so climactic that by its example all further violence
is stopped dead in its tracks. Indeed it is the death
of this solitary victim, who, though demonized
before being slain, becomes deified thereafter, that
serves as model for subsequent rituals of sacrifice,
being the archetype of the “good” violence that
will serve as curative against the “bad” symmetric
violence that the mimetic mechanism of Girard’s
theory would otherwise repeatedly engender, as it
will should ever the distinction between “good”
and “bad” violence become ambiguous.
Indeed, an implicit preoccupation with the
distinction between “good” violence and “bad”
and, for that matter, an innate awareness of the
whole Girardian mechanism, underlie much of the
Mahabharata, rising most conspicuously to the
surface in the telling of the following three
interconnected episodes: the curse of the sage
Bhrgu upon the sacrificial fire, the birth and early
adventures of Garuda, and the Great Snake
Sacrifice of King Janamejaya.
 12 41

Cobra idol in figure-eight knot. Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja: main idol in other principal sanc-
Harippad – 32 km. from Alapuzha (Kerala), India. tuary at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.

12 41

Cobra idol in figure-eight knot. Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja: main idol in other principal sanc-
Harippad – 32 km. from Alapuzha (Kerala), India. tuary at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
 40 13

Chapter 1

The Sacrificial Fire

Vāsuki (Nagaraja), main idol in one of two principal sanctuaries at

Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.

40 13

Chapter 1

The Sacrificial Fire

Vāsuki (Nagaraja), main idol in one of two principal sanctuaries at

Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
 14 39

revenge by informing King Janamejaya of

Takşaka’s role in the murder of Parikşit, the
King’s father, and urging the King to avenge his
father’s death by dealing death in turn to Takşaka.
The King’s cabinet of priests and sages, however,
find such a primitive revenge far too unworthy: the
far more sanctified course of action they advise is
that it be the King who bring to fruition the
original curse of Kadru, that King Janamejaya
organize the Great Sacrificial Session that will
extirpate all snakes, Takşaka just one more among
them all. They do not see that, far from purifying
the violence of the King’s desire for revenge, they
are instead amplifying it into a bad violence of
absolutely stupefying scope and magnitude. It will
be another instance of sacrifice, defiled by bad
violence, gone horribly wrong.
And so everything is dutifully prepared. The
bright flames of the great sacrificial fire, who now
can consume anything, lick out in eager
anticipation, the priests and sages casts their spells,
and, gradually, caught up in these spells, weakened
and confused by them, snakes from all around
begin falling to their deaths in the sacrificial
flames, much as the Gods under Indra, disoriented
by the flailing wings and snatching talons of a
seemingly omnipresent and indestructible Garuda,
had begun slaughtering each other.
Meanwhile, as has been mentioned, some of the
snakes have been seeking to transcend their
reptilian nature, to attain higher spiritual values
through study, self-mortification, and following
Votive fire before a relief of Hanuman, Hanuman Temple
the path of the Law. One of the most advanced of
between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India

14 39

revenge by informing King Janamejaya of

Takşaka’s role in the murder of Parikşit, the
King’s father, and urging the King to avenge his
father’s death by dealing death in turn to Takşaka.
The King’s cabinet of priests and sages, however,
find such a primitive revenge far too unworthy: the
far more sanctified course of action they advise is
that it be the King who bring to fruition the
original curse of Kadru, that King Janamejaya
organize the Great Sacrificial Session that will
extirpate all snakes, Takşaka just one more among
them all. They do not see that, far from purifying
the violence of the King’s desire for revenge, they
are instead amplifying it into a bad violence of
absolutely stupefying scope and magnitude. It will
be another instance of sacrifice, defiled by bad
violence, gone horribly wrong.
And so everything is dutifully prepared. The
bright flames of the great sacrificial fire, who now
can consume anything, lick out in eager
anticipation, the priests and sages casts their spells,
and, gradually, caught up in these spells, weakened
and confused by them, snakes from all around
begin falling to their deaths in the sacrificial
flames, much as the Gods under Indra, disoriented
by the flailing wings and snatching talons of a
seemingly omnipresent and indestructible Garuda,
had begun slaughtering each other.
Meanwhile, as has been mentioned, some of the
snakes have been seeking to transcend their
reptilian nature, to attain higher spiritual values
through study, self-mortification, and following
Votive fire before a relief of Hanuman, Hanuman Temple
the path of the Law. One of the most advanced of
between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India
 38
renouncing their former harshness and
quarrelsomeness, and choosing instead a path of
meditation, spirituality, study of the sacred
writings, austerity, self-improvement, and self-
mortification as the way to their salvation. The
most advanced of these even aspire to Brahmin
status. Yet others, however, remain wholly
unregenerate, Takşaka, the King of the Snakes,
most notable among them.
It is Takşaka, for example, who steals from the
sage Utanka, much to that sage’s everlasting
annoyance, the earrings that he had gone to great
lengths to procure so as to present them to his guru
as a token of his gratitude for all his guru’s
teachings. And it is Takşaka who takes it upon
himself, with the approval of Indra, to kill Parikşit,
father of King Janamejaya, in fulfillment of the
curse laid upon Parikşit by the outraged son of an
ascetic seer whom Parikşit had once humiliated by
draping as a necklace around his neck and
shoulders the corpse of a dead snake, in repayment
for the seer’s having been so engrossed in his
meditations as to have failed utterly to respond to
Parikşit’s attempt at conversation. Clearly, envy,
hostility, retaliation, and retribution have not yet
vanished from the scene.
And it is vengeance against this Takşaka that
constitutes the primary motivation for King
Janamejaya’s great sacrifice. For the very sage
Utanka from whom Takşaka stole those earrings,
still nursing his old grudge against Takşaka despite
having ultimately recovered those precious
earrings and presented them to his guru, seeks
38
renouncing their former harshness and
quarrelsomeness, and choosing instead a path of
meditation, spirituality, study of the sacred
writings, austerity, self-improvement, and self-
mortification as the way to their salvation. The
most advanced of these even aspire to Brahmin
status. Yet others, however, remain wholly
unregenerate, Takşaka, the King of the Snakes,
most notable among them.
It is Takşaka, for example, who steals from the
sage Utanka, much to that sage’s everlasting
annoyance, the earrings that he had gone to great
lengths to procure so as to present them to his guru
as a token of his gratitude for all his guru’s
teachings. And it is Takşaka who takes it upon
himself, with the approval of Indra, to kill Parikşit,
father of King Janamejaya, in fulfillment of the
curse laid upon Parikşit by the outraged son of an
ascetic seer whom Parikşit had once humiliated by
draping as a necklace around his neck and
shoulders the corpse of a dead snake, in repayment
for the seer’s having been so engrossed in his
meditations as to have failed utterly to respond to
Parikşit’s attempt at conversation. Clearly, envy,
hostility, retaliation, and retribution have not yet
vanished from the scene.
And it is vengeance against this Takşaka that
constitutes the primary motivation for King
Janamejaya’s great sacrifice. For the very sage
Utanka from whom Takşaka stole those earrings,
still nursing his old grudge against Takşaka despite
having ultimately recovered those precious
earrings and presented them to his guru, seeks
15
The first of our three episodes is an attempt to
describe the etiology of the phenomenon,
presumably a familiar one, that sacrificial rituals
can fail, and to prescribe how to avert such failure.
It focuses on the sacrificial fire burning amiably in
its hearth in the abode where dwell the sage Bhrgu
and his wife Pulomā. Bhrgu himself is introduced
as “foremost of those who carry on the Law,” and
his wife characterized as “impeccable” – even the
sacrificial fire, “striving for the Law” and speaking
only truth, is dedicated solely to consuming with
his many tongues of flame the oblations offered
unto the Gods (and ancestors), whose mouth he is.
This fire is the epitome of “good” violence. And
yet the fire’s very dedication to virtue alone
contains within it the seed of cancerous disorder
that is about to engulf this well-ordered universe,
contaminating it with “bad” violence, and so
corrupting the sacrificial rituals that they will fail.
Here is how the Mahabharata tells it.
While Pulomā was heavy with Bhrgu’s unborn
child, but on a day that the sage himself was away,
a certain wandering Rakshasa, or demon,
15
The first of our three episodes is an attempt to
describe the etiology of the phenomenon,
presumably a familiar one, that sacrificial rituals
can fail, and to prescribe how to avert such failure.
It focuses on the sacrificial fire burning amiably in
its hearth in the abode where dwell the sage Bhrgu
and his wife Pulomā. Bhrgu himself is introduced
as “foremost of those who carry on the Law,” and
his wife characterized as “impeccable” – even the
sacrificial fire, “striving for the Law” and speaking
only truth, is dedicated solely to consuming with
his many tongues of flame the oblations offered
unto the Gods (and ancestors), whose mouth he is.
This fire is the epitome of “good” violence. And
yet the fire’s very dedication to virtue alone
contains within it the seed of cancerous disorder
that is about to engulf this well-ordered universe,
contaminating it with “bad” violence, and so
corrupting the sacrificial rituals that they will fail.
Here is how the Mahabharata tells it.
While Pulomā was heavy with Bhrgu’s unborn
child, but on a day that the sage himself was away,
a certain wandering Rakshasa, or demon,
 16
coincidentally named Puloman, happens upon
Bhrgu’s abode, enters, and seeing Pulomā,
instantly becomes “possessed by love.” Desire
having come upon this “love-struck Rakshasa,” he
means to abduct Pulomā. Puloman implores the
pure, bright sacrificial fire to confirm whether
Pulomā is not in fact the Rakshasa’s own “chosen”
and once-promised bride, whose father later broke
that troth when he “married her off to Bhrgu.”
Thus is this desire revealed as a mimetic desire,
perhaps even the mirror of an earlier mimetic
desire that had come upon Bhrgu. For if so, he
goes on, he will ([M], p. 57)
‘carry her off … . For a fury has been burning my
heart that Bhrgu should have got the slim-waisted
wife that was mine first!’
And thus does the triangle of desire engender
the first violent stage of a cycle of revenge:
Puloman would do unto Bhrgu as Bhrgu had done
unto Puloman, abscond with Pulomā.
The fire, of course, though speaking only truth,
is somewhat stayed by discretion, and therefore
hesitates long before answering, cryptically, and in
a whisper ([M], p. 57), “I am no less fearful of
speaking untruth than of Bhrgu’s curse.” Hereupon
the Rakshasa seizes Pulomā, but, before he can
carry her off, Pulomā is delivered of Bhrgu’s son:
“wrathfully,” he “falls from his mother’s womb to
set her free.” And indeed, at the mere sight of this
babe, shining bright as the blazing sun, the demon
Rakshasa is turned into ashes. The cycle of
revenge has passed unto the second generation.
But the reciprocal violence does not end here.
16
coincidentally named Puloman, happens upon
Bhrgu’s abode, enters, and seeing Pulomā,
instantly becomes “possessed by love.” Desire
having come upon this “love-struck Rakshasa,” he
means to abduct Pulomā. Puloman implores the
pure, bright sacrificial fire to confirm whether
Pulomā is not in fact the Rakshasa’s own “chosen”
and once-promised bride, whose father later broke
that troth when he “married her off to Bhrgu.”
Thus is this desire revealed as a mimetic desire,
perhaps even the mirror of an earlier mimetic
desire that had come upon Bhrgu. For if so, he
goes on, he will ([M], p. 57)
‘carry her off … . For a fury has been burning my
heart that Bhrgu should have got the slim-waisted
wife that was mine first!’
And thus does the triangle of desire engender
the first violent stage of a cycle of revenge:
Puloman would do unto Bhrgu as Bhrgu had done
unto Puloman, abscond with Pulomā.
The fire, of course, though speaking only truth,
is somewhat stayed by discretion, and therefore
hesitates long before answering, cryptically, and in
a whisper ([M], p. 57), “I am no less fearful of
speaking untruth than of Bhrgu’s curse.” Hereupon
the Rakshasa seizes Pulomā, but, before he can
carry her off, Pulomā is delivered of Bhrgu’s son:
“wrathfully,” he “falls from his mother’s womb to
set her free.” And indeed, at the mere sight of this
babe, shining bright as the blazing sun, the demon
Rakshasa is turned into ashes. The cycle of
revenge has passed unto the second generation.
But the reciprocal violence does not end here.
37
But let us move on to the Great Snake Sacrifice
authorized by the King Janamejaya. This will be
the event fulfilling the prophecy Kadru
incorporated into the curse she laid upon her
thousand snake children when they initially
refused her order to go turn the white horse’s tail
black. But that refusal, and that curse, will not be
primary among King Janamejaya’s motivations.
Nor will he be motivated, even nominally, by all
the snake traits Brahma himself found so repulsive
at the time of Kadru’s curse – their numerousness,
their quarrelsomeness, their random killing of too
many innocent victims, their general character as
public nuisance. In point of fact, the snakes, or at
least some of them, have become less repugnant.
For these, emulation of it is Garuda, their former
slave now deified upon his triumphant return with
the miraculous Soma – of his mastery over self, of
his readiness to remain unprovoked to vengeful
retaliation – that holds out the only remaining
viable hope, now that the Soma is back in Indra’s
possession, for freeing themselves of their mother
Kadru’s curse. They therefore turn to religion,
37
But let us move on to the Great Snake Sacrifice
authorized by the King Janamejaya. This will be
the event fulfilling the prophecy Kadru
incorporated into the curse she laid upon her
thousand snake children when they initially
refused her order to go turn the white horse’s tail
black. But that refusal, and that curse, will not be
primary among King Janamejaya’s motivations.
Nor will he be motivated, even nominally, by all
the snake traits Brahma himself found so repulsive
at the time of Kadru’s curse – their numerousness,
their quarrelsomeness, their random killing of too
many innocent victims, their general character as
public nuisance. In point of fact, the snakes, or at
least some of them, have become less repugnant.
For these, emulation of it is Garuda, their former
slave now deified upon his triumphant return with
the miraculous Soma – of his mastery over self, of
his readiness to remain unprovoked to vengeful
retaliation – that holds out the only remaining
viable hope, now that the Soma is back in Indra’s
possession, for freeing themselves of their mother
Kadru’s curse. They therefore turn to religion,
 36
Edge of pit for sacrificial fire, with approaching snake.
Chamundeshwari (Durga) Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
36
Edge of pit for sacrificial fire, with approaching snake.
Chamundeshwari (Durga) Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
17
When Bhrgu learns of this encounter, and hears
from Pulomā how the fire had betrayed her to the
Rakshasa by not concealing that she was Bhrgu’s
wife, he becomes so enraged at its indiscriminate
telling of truth that he lays a curse upon the
sacrificial fire, condemning it, henceforth, likewise
to consume not only the specially prepared
sacrificial offerings that had hitherto been its diet,
but also absolutely anything at all. In this way the
ambit of retribution has gotten displaced from its
proper target, the Rakshasa, to the truthful fire,
contaminating its “good” violence with “bad.”
The fire is aghast. How can it remain pure and
bright, how can it serve as the undefiled mouth of
the Gods, if it will be compelled to consume
absolutely anything? It will indiscriminately be
dispensing both “good” and “bad” violence,
without any distinction between them. Utterly
dismayed by the fate Bhrgu has cursed it with, but
too respectful of the Law to wish to continue the
cycle of revenge, say, by pronouncing a retaliatory
curse upon the sage, and perhaps aware that a
simple abstinence from speech would have served
better in response to the Rakshasa than speaking
truth, the fire now resolves to abstain entirely from
consuming anything, to consume nothing at all, to
refrain utterly from accepting the oblations offered
it. This decision, too, however, has bad
consequences: it so impoverishes the sacrosanct
rituals that they can no longer function effectively.
The rituals fail, and all creatures suffer. The root
cause of this failure, of course, is plainly the
escalating reciprocal violence, erupting from the
17
When Bhrgu learns of this encounter, and hears
from Pulomā how the fire had betrayed her to the
Rakshasa by not concealing that she was Bhrgu’s
wife, he becomes so enraged at its indiscriminate
telling of truth that he lays a curse upon the
sacrificial fire, condemning it, henceforth, likewise
to consume not only the specially prepared
sacrificial offerings that had hitherto been its diet,
but also absolutely anything at all. In this way the
ambit of retribution has gotten displaced from its
proper target, the Rakshasa, to the truthful fire,
contaminating its “good” violence with “bad.”
The fire is aghast. How can it remain pure and
bright, how can it serve as the undefiled mouth of
the Gods, if it will be compelled to consume
absolutely anything? It will indiscriminately be
dispensing both “good” and “bad” violence,
without any distinction between them. Utterly
dismayed by the fate Bhrgu has cursed it with, but
too respectful of the Law to wish to continue the
cycle of revenge, say, by pronouncing a retaliatory
curse upon the sage, and perhaps aware that a
simple abstinence from speech would have served
better in response to the Rakshasa than speaking
truth, the fire now resolves to abstain entirely from
consuming anything, to consume nothing at all, to
refrain utterly from accepting the oblations offered
it. This decision, too, however, has bad
consequences: it so impoverishes the sacrosanct
rituals that they can no longer function effectively.
The rituals fail, and all creatures suffer. The root
cause of this failure, of course, is plainly the
escalating reciprocal violence, erupting from the
 18 35

Chapter 3

The Snake Sacrifice

Shivalingam with coiled, many-headed cobra and dancing Krishna.

Varadarajaperumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

18 35

Chapter 3

The Snake Sacrifice

Shivalingam with coiled, many-headed cobra and dancing Krishna.

Varadarajaperumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 34
for sacrifice, remains as a palpable indication,
within the Mahabharata, of an actual death of a
real scapegoat, a real victim of collective violence,
victim the other ingredients of this tale all hint,
circumstantially, might be personified by Garuda,
while the bickering snakes may well represent the
violence-riddled culture that claimed this victim.
Garuda as festival vehicle, Sri Ranganatha Swamy
Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
34
for sacrifice, remains as a palpable indication,
within the Mahabharata, of an actual death of a
real scapegoat, a real victim of collective violence,
victim the other ingredients of this tale all hint,
circumstantially, might be personified by Garuda,
while the bickering snakes may well represent the
violence-riddled culture that claimed this victim.
Garuda as festival vehicle, Sri Ranganatha Swamy
Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
19
triangle of desire centered around Pulomā, in
complete conformity with Girard’s mimetic theory.
Out of their concern that “the innocent three
worlds have lost their rites and lost the way” ([M],
p. 59), the seers and the Gods approach the Lord
Brahma to appeal to him to lift Bhrgu’s curse so
that the holy sacrificial fire might once again fuel
the rituals. But a curse may never be lifted, not
even by a God. It may only be revised, modified,
amended, as it were, by a footnote, or a clarifi-
cation; Brahma’s clarification was this: that while
one of the fire’s many tongues of flame might be
condemned to consume absolutely anything, the
others would not be, but would continue to be fed
only sacrificial offerings, as before; and that even
the tongue that would consume anything would not
cause defilement of the sacrificial fire, because that
tongue would actually purify everything it came in
contact with, no matter how impure that matter
might previously have been. In this way the
benefits of the “good” violence of the sacrificial
rituals are restored again, but not in an entirely
satisfactory way, as the distinction between “good”
violence and “bad” has become blurred: it becomes
impossible to be sure which is the “good” violence
and which the “bad.” Nonetheless, thus reassured,
the fire consents once again to take up its role as
devourer of sacrificial offerings, as perpetrator of
“good” violence, and to accept without further
complaint the “bad” violence it must also
perpetrate because of Bhrgu’s curse.
Gods and seers alike rejoice at this diplomatic
compromise, as do all the creatures of the earth;
19
triangle of desire centered around Pulomā, in
complete conformity with Girard’s mimetic theory.
Out of their concern that “the innocent three
worlds have lost their rites and lost the way” ([M],
p. 59), the seers and the Gods approach the Lord
Brahma to appeal to him to lift Bhrgu’s curse so
that the holy sacrificial fire might once again fuel
the rituals. But a curse may never be lifted, not
even by a God. It may only be revised, modified,
amended, as it were, by a footnote, or a clarifi-
cation; Brahma’s clarification was this: that while
one of the fire’s many tongues of flame might be
condemned to consume absolutely anything, the
others would not be, but would continue to be fed
only sacrificial offerings, as before; and that even
the tongue that would consume anything would not
cause defilement of the sacrificial fire, because that
tongue would actually purify everything it came in
contact with, no matter how impure that matter
might previously have been. In this way the
benefits of the “good” violence of the sacrificial
rituals are restored again, but not in an entirely
satisfactory way, as the distinction between “good”
violence and “bad” has become blurred: it becomes
impossible to be sure which is the “good” violence
and which the “bad.” Nonetheless, thus reassured,
the fire consents once again to take up its role as
devourer of sacrificial offerings, as perpetrator of
“good” violence, and to accept without further
complaint the “bad” violence it must also
perpetrate because of Bhrgu’s curse.
Gods and seers alike rejoice at this diplomatic
compromise, as do all the creatures of the earth;
 20
even the fire, “his guilt wiped out,” is content.
Still, things are no longer as they were. For the fire
is no longer the purveyor of “good” violence
unalloyed, but of unpredictable, uncontrollable
“bad” violence as well. In fact by the time Garuda
is born, the fire will be more feared for his
unpredictable violent appetite than revered for his
role in sacrificial ritual, as we are about to see, and
still later a sacrificial ritual will be undertaken –
King Janamejaya’s Sacrifice – that will be revealed
to be so full of “bad” violence and so devoid of
“good” – not sacrificial offering but extirpatory
massacre – that it must be stopped before it can
fully run its course.
Garuda, guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple (dedicated
to Krishna as charioteer of Arjuna), Madras, India.
20
even the fire, “his guilt wiped out,” is content.
Still, things are no longer as they were. For the fire
is no longer the purveyor of “good” violence
unalloyed, but of unpredictable, uncontrollable
“bad” violence as well. In fact by the time Garuda
is born, the fire will be more feared for his
unpredictable violent appetite than revered for his
role in sacrificial ritual, as we are about to see, and
still later a sacrificial ritual will be undertaken –
King Janamejaya’s Sacrifice – that will be revealed
to be so full of “bad” violence and so devoid of
“good” – not sacrificial offering but extirpatory
massacre – that it must be stopped before it can
fully run its course.
Garuda, guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple (dedicated
to Krishna as charioteer of Arjuna), Madras, India.
33
following ([M], p. 90):
‘It was with some purpose in mind that I stole this
Soma. I shall not give it to anyone to partake of.
But, God of the thousand eyes, when I myself shall
put it down anywhere, you can take it at once and
carry it off.’
Accordingly, and true to his word to the snakes,
Garuda then bears the Soma back to the snakes,
who now therefore revere him as a god, and,
before allowing them to partake of it, urges them
all to cleanse themselves appropriately in a nearby
river. Next, true to his word to Indra, and while the
snakes are still engaged in their ablutions, Garuda
sets the Soma down upon the ground, so that Indra
can come reclaim it for the good of the Gods.
When the snakes return, of course, they must set
Garuda and Vinata free, even though the Soma is
no longer theirs, while Indra, out of gratitude for
the Soma, with which he can restore to life all the
slain Gods, rewards Garuda with the right to feed
upon snakes; and Garuda, free now, and Indra’s
best friend, occupies a position higher not only
than Indra, but higher even than Vishnu himself, to
preside, as in his battle against the Gods, over the
tumultuous processes of destruction at the end of
an Eon and creation in the beginning of a new.
And only perhaps the feather Garuda yielded to
Indra’s thunderbolt, the feather whose ends he
predicted Indra would never fully explore, that
feather whose incomparable beauty caused all the
creatures seeing it to exclaim, “He must be the
Fair-winged Bird,” only this feather, this
scapegoat-like offering, chosen quite haphazardly
33
following ([M], p. 90):
‘It was with some purpose in mind that I stole this
Soma. I shall not give it to anyone to partake of.
But, God of the thousand eyes, when I myself shall
put it down anywhere, you can take it at once and
carry it off.’
Accordingly, and true to his word to the snakes,
Garuda then bears the Soma back to the snakes,
who now therefore revere him as a god, and,
before allowing them to partake of it, urges them
all to cleanse themselves appropriately in a nearby
river. Next, true to his word to Indra, and while the
snakes are still engaged in their ablutions, Garuda
sets the Soma down upon the ground, so that Indra
can come reclaim it for the good of the Gods.
When the snakes return, of course, they must set
Garuda and Vinata free, even though the Soma is
no longer theirs, while Indra, out of gratitude for
the Soma, with which he can restore to life all the
slain Gods, rewards Garuda with the right to feed
upon snakes; and Garuda, free now, and Indra’s
best friend, occupies a position higher not only
than Indra, but higher even than Vishnu himself, to
preside, as in his battle against the Gods, over the
tumultuous processes of destruction at the end of
an Eon and creation in the beginning of a new.
And only perhaps the feather Garuda yielded to
Indra’s thunderbolt, the feather whose ends he
predicted Indra would never fully explore, that
feather whose incomparable beauty caused all the
creatures seeing it to exclaim, “He must be the
Fair-winged Bird,” only this feather, this
scapegoat-like offering, chosen quite haphazardly
 32 21

beginning with the polished and diplomatic words

of Garuda ([M], pp. 89-90):
‘I pay honor to the seer from whose bone the
thunderbolt has sprung, and to the thunderbolt, and
to you yourself, God of the Hundred Sacrifices.
Here I let go of one feather, and you will never
explore its ends. For the blow of your thunderbolt
did not hurt me at all.’
Chapter 2
And, seeing the beauty of the feather, all creatures
exclaimed, astounded: ‘He must be the Fair-Winged
Bird!’ And upon witnessing this marvel, (Indra) the
Sacker of Cities of the thousand eyes reflected that
the Bird was a great being, and he said: ‘I wish to
learn the farthest limit of your incomparable
strength; and I want eternal friendship with you,
Garuda
greatest of birds!’
Twice the target of the hostility of all, once on
earth from all his snake-brothers, once in the
heavens from all the Gods, but now master of the
divine elixir of immortality, Garuda has become
the highest deity of all: with the Soma under his
control, it is his good will on which depend the
lives of both Gods and snakes. Indra himself,
seeing in that elixir his only hope for the
restoration of the slain Gods, is reduced to begging
for the Soma’s return. Now Garuda has no need of
it himself, Vishnu having granted him the boon of
immortality in recognition of his heroism in
dealing with Indra and the Gods under him. So,
mindful of his bargain with the snakes, calling for
him to bring the Soma back to them, and yet quite
content to see it ultimately in Indra’s hands, so that
the slain Gods may be revived, he proposes the

32 21

beginning with the polished and diplomatic words

of Garuda ([M], pp. 89-90):
‘I pay honor to the seer from whose bone the
thunderbolt has sprung, and to the thunderbolt, and
to you yourself, God of the Hundred Sacrifices.
Here I let go of one feather, and you will never
explore its ends. For the blow of your thunderbolt
did not hurt me at all.’
Chapter 2
And, seeing the beauty of the feather, all creatures
exclaimed, astounded: ‘He must be the Fair-Winged
Bird!’ And upon witnessing this marvel, (Indra) the
Sacker of Cities of the thousand eyes reflected that
the Bird was a great being, and he said: ‘I wish to
learn the farthest limit of your incomparable
strength; and I want eternal friendship with you,
Garuda
greatest of birds!’
Twice the target of the hostility of all, once on
earth from all his snake-brothers, once in the
heavens from all the Gods, but now master of the
divine elixir of immortality, Garuda has become
the highest deity of all: with the Soma under his
control, it is his good will on which depend the
lives of both Gods and snakes. Indra himself,
seeing in that elixir his only hope for the
restoration of the slain Gods, is reduced to begging
for the Soma’s return. Now Garuda has no need of
it himself, Vishnu having granted him the boon of
immortality in recognition of his heroism in
dealing with Indra and the Gods under him. So,
mindful of his bargain with the snakes, calling for
him to bring the Soma back to them, and yet quite
content to see it ultimately in Indra’s hands, so that
the slain Gods may be revived, he proposes the
 22
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu.
Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
22
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu.
Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
31
… the celestials, armored and led by Indra, all
rained blows on him with their three-bladed spears,
clubs, pikes, bludgeons, and all manners of swords,
and with sharp-edged disks that resembled the sun.
On all sides assailed by the onslaught of these
weapons, the Kings of Birds remained unshaken and
waged a tumultuous battle.
Where once all the snakes had been arrayed in
opposition to Garuda, now it is all the Gods. But
Garuda’s gigantic and indomitable presence so
confuses the Gods that they cannot quite find him;
consequently, aware only that they must do battle,
they wind up doing battle amongst themselves,
wounding and maiming and slaughtering each
other, a community in mimetic crisis, undergoing
Girardian paroxysms of reciprocal violence, until
none among them remains to oppose Garuda as he
negotiates the last physical obstacles, whirling
razor-studded wheel among them, separating him
from the Soma.
Once in possession of that magical elixir,
Garuda is beset by none other than Indra himself,
two Indras now in battle over the elixir: the
original divinity Indra, and Garuda, his double, the
Indra of birds. The battle is a stand-off – it finally
ends when Indra smites Garuda forcefully with his
most fearsome weapon, his thunderbolt, “greater
than all that flies,” and, to his astonishment,
succeeds only in loosening of one of Garuda’s
feathers – which Garuda, in an uncharacteristic act
of self-sacrifice, unpredictably plucks free and lets
go, thereby magically ushering in a new peace.
Here is how the Mahabharata describes it,
31
… the celestials, armored and led by Indra, all
rained blows on him with their three-bladed spears,
clubs, pikes, bludgeons, and all manners of swords,
and with sharp-edged disks that resembled the sun.
On all sides assailed by the onslaught of these
weapons, the Kings of Birds remained unshaken and
waged a tumultuous battle.
Where once all the snakes had been arrayed in
opposition to Garuda, now it is all the Gods. But
Garuda’s gigantic and indomitable presence so
confuses the Gods that they cannot quite find him;
consequently, aware only that they must do battle,
they wind up doing battle amongst themselves,
wounding and maiming and slaughtering each
other, a community in mimetic crisis, undergoing
Girardian paroxysms of reciprocal violence, until
none among them remains to oppose Garuda as he
negotiates the last physical obstacles, whirling
razor-studded wheel among them, separating him
from the Soma.
Once in possession of that magical elixir,
Garuda is beset by none other than Indra himself,
two Indras now in battle over the elixir: the
original divinity Indra, and Garuda, his double, the
Indra of birds. The battle is a stand-off – it finally
ends when Indra smites Garuda forcefully with his
most fearsome weapon, his thunderbolt, “greater
than all that flies,” and, to his astonishment,
succeeds only in loosening of one of Garuda’s
feathers – which Garuda, in an uncharacteristic act
of self-sacrifice, unpredictably plucks free and lets
go, thereby magically ushering in a new peace.
Here is how the Mahabharata describes it,
 30 23

as follows: the snakes will release Garuda and

Vinata from their bondage if Garuda will foray
forth into the heavens to find, purloin, and bring
back to the snakes the Gods’ Soma, their divine
elixir of immortality, with which the snakes hope
to ensure their survival. Is this the snakes’
perfidious way of condemning Garuda, slave who
wants his freedom, to certain death, by sending
him on a fool’s errand that he would surely never
come back from alive? In any event, with all his
snake-siblings arrayed against him, it is a mission Let us turn now to Garuda, the magnificent bird
Garuda readily undertakes. deity acclaimed early on ([M], p. 78) as
So Garuda, born to be Indra’s undefeated “the finisher of all that is, … firelike, destroying
perfect rival, and indeed an Indra himself, takes off and ending the revolution of the Eon.”
into the heavens, or rather, begins to do so, but is
Garuda is a complex, multi-faceted figure, in
suddenly overcome by pangs of hunger. On the
whose story are manifested all the phenomena of
advice of his father Kaśyapa, he betakes himself to
“bad” violence that go into the Girardian mimetic
a certain lake where are to be found an enormous
theory, not the least of which will be the ultimate
elephant and equally outsize turtle, once two
sacrificial (generative) violence that finally stops
brothers, so joined in a circle of “bad” symmetric
the “bad” violence and provides a model for the
violence, so hostile one toward the other, that each
“good.”
has changed the other into his current animal form,
the better to destroy him. Sure enough, Garuda On the one hand, he is the deity fulfilling the
finds these violent monstrous doubles, “mad with prophecy, uttered in curse against Indra by certain
battle fury, each out to vanquish the other” ([M], ascetic Valakhilyas retaliating for a perceived
pp. 82-83), gathers them up, devours them, and humiliation in the course of preparing a sacrificial
continues on his mission. session that, long before Garuda’s birth, Garuda’s
father Kaśyapa had commissioned in order to
Garuda, in feeding on their violence, both
assure the birth of a worthy son ([M], p. 86):
destroys the “bad” symmetric violence of these
monstrous doubles and fortifies himself for the ‘There shall be another Indra to all the Gods with
violence to come, once he reaches the heavens, every power at his call, and with every rage at his
where he will now find all the Gods, headed by will, who shall be the terror of Indra.’
Indra, arrayed against him ([M], p. 88): More exactly, according to this prophecy whose

30 23

as follows: the snakes will release Garuda and

Vinata from their bondage if Garuda will foray
forth into the heavens to find, purloin, and bring
back to the snakes the Gods’ Soma, their divine
elixir of immortality, with which the snakes hope
to ensure their survival. Is this the snakes’
perfidious way of condemning Garuda, slave who
wants his freedom, to certain death, by sending
him on a fool’s errand that he would surely never
come back from alive? In any event, with all his
snake-siblings arrayed against him, it is a mission Let us turn now to Garuda, the magnificent bird
Garuda readily undertakes. deity acclaimed early on ([M], p. 78) as
So Garuda, born to be Indra’s undefeated “the finisher of all that is, … firelike, destroying
perfect rival, and indeed an Indra himself, takes off and ending the revolution of the Eon.”
into the heavens, or rather, begins to do so, but is
Garuda is a complex, multi-faceted figure, in
suddenly overcome by pangs of hunger. On the
whose story are manifested all the phenomena of
advice of his father Kaśyapa, he betakes himself to
“bad” violence that go into the Girardian mimetic
a certain lake where are to be found an enormous
theory, not the least of which will be the ultimate
elephant and equally outsize turtle, once two
sacrificial (generative) violence that finally stops
brothers, so joined in a circle of “bad” symmetric
the “bad” violence and provides a model for the
violence, so hostile one toward the other, that each
“good.”
has changed the other into his current animal form,
the better to destroy him. Sure enough, Garuda On the one hand, he is the deity fulfilling the
finds these violent monstrous doubles, “mad with prophecy, uttered in curse against Indra by certain
battle fury, each out to vanquish the other” ([M], ascetic Valakhilyas retaliating for a perceived
pp. 82-83), gathers them up, devours them, and humiliation in the course of preparing a sacrificial
continues on his mission. session that, long before Garuda’s birth, Garuda’s
father Kaśyapa had commissioned in order to
Garuda, in feeding on their violence, both
assure the birth of a worthy son ([M], p. 86):
destroys the “bad” symmetric violence of these
monstrous doubles and fortifies himself for the ‘There shall be another Indra to all the Gods with
violence to come, once he reaches the heavens, every power at his call, and with every rage at his
where he will now find all the Gods, headed by will, who shall be the terror of Indra.’
Indra, arrayed against him ([M], p. 88): More exactly, according to this prophecy whose
 24
gradual fulfillment proceeds from the moment
Garuda is born until he has become even more
than the equal of Indra himself, he is to be “an
Indra of birds.” Indeed, Garuda hatches from an
egg, emerging fully grown, a great bird, utterly
splendid in mass and coloration, and immediately
takes wing into the heavens where, “ablaze like a
kindled mass of fire,” he so dazzles and transfixes
the Gods that, cowering before him, fearing him as
they have come to fear the sacrificial fire, they
plead with him not to burn them. It is finally the
Fire, not Garuda, who laughingly explains ([M], p.
78), “The case is not as you deem it, Gods and
Dānavas. This is the powerful Garuda, who is my
equal in fieriness.” At this the assembled Gods
hail Garuda with the acclamation already cited
above.
Back at home, on the other hand, Garuda begins
as little more than slave to his thousand
contemptuous siblings, or more accurately,
cousins, or perhaps still more accurately, step-
brothers, born earlier, as snakes, to his mother’s
sister. Or again, at one particularly critical
juncture, he must momentarily contract his body
into a very diminutive form so as to pass unscathed
through a particularly fiendish celestial obstacle, a
whirling razor-studded wheel that would have
sliced him to ribbons had he not been able so to
diminish his size and to synchronize his flight with
its motion as to merge into a space between its
blades and emerge unharmed in the space beyond.
As tiny creature before this death-dealing
obstacle, and as slave to his snake-siblings, Garuda
24
gradual fulfillment proceeds from the moment
Garuda is born until he has become even more
than the equal of Indra himself, he is to be “an
Indra of birds.” Indeed, Garuda hatches from an
egg, emerging fully grown, a great bird, utterly
splendid in mass and coloration, and immediately
takes wing into the heavens where, “ablaze like a
kindled mass of fire,” he so dazzles and transfixes
the Gods that, cowering before him, fearing him as
they have come to fear the sacrificial fire, they
plead with him not to burn them. It is finally the
Fire, not Garuda, who laughingly explains ([M], p.
78), “The case is not as you deem it, Gods and
Dānavas. This is the powerful Garuda, who is my
equal in fieriness.” At this the assembled Gods
hail Garuda with the acclamation already cited
above.
Back at home, on the other hand, Garuda begins
as little more than slave to his thousand
contemptuous siblings, or more accurately,
cousins, or perhaps still more accurately, step-
brothers, born earlier, as snakes, to his mother’s
sister. Or again, at one particularly critical
juncture, he must momentarily contract his body
into a very diminutive form so as to pass unscathed
through a particularly fiendish celestial obstacle, a
whirling razor-studded wheel that would have
sliced him to ribbons had he not been able so to
diminish his size and to synchronize his flight with
its motion as to merge into a space between its
blades and emerge unharmed in the space beyond.
As tiny creature before this death-dealing
obstacle, and as slave to his snake-siblings, Garuda
29
their intertwined bodies. In anger at her sons’
initial reluctance to obey, Kadru lays a curse upon
them all, condemning them and their eventual
progeny to total annihilation in a future Great
Snake Sacrifice. And even Brahma finds these
snakes so “harsh,” so excessively numerous, so
given to violent bickering amongst themselves, so
unconcerned with their own spiritual development,
and so frequently killing innocent creatures with
their venom, that apart from contemplating a
possible exception for such snakes, if any, as might
be striving for greater spirituality, he takes no real
action, as he sometimes does, to have Kadru
somehow temper this curse, but simply thinks,
with a certain relief, the Mahabharatan equivalent
of “Good riddance.” Now accursed, they accede to
their mother’s wish, and on the morrow, when both
sisters witness this white horse with its
unexpectedly black tail, Vinata must concede she
has lost the wager and is now her sister’s slave.
This, then, is the rivalry-ridden, violence-torn
world into which Garuda is born.
For Garuda is born just while his mother is
away learning the sad outcome of her wager.
Returning to his mother after his first fledgling
flight into the heavens, he learns he has inherited
his mother’s status of slave to Kadru and to her
snake-sons. So now we have all the snakes, and
their mother, aligned against Garuda, and his
mother, to keep them both in bondage. And yet, in
time, the snakes’ hopes for a remedy against their
own mother’s curse become aligned with Garuda’s
hopes for liberation from his condition of slavery,
29
their intertwined bodies. In anger at her sons’
initial reluctance to obey, Kadru lays a curse upon
them all, condemning them and their eventual
progeny to total annihilation in a future Great
Snake Sacrifice. And even Brahma finds these
snakes so “harsh,” so excessively numerous, so
given to violent bickering amongst themselves, so
unconcerned with their own spiritual development,
and so frequently killing innocent creatures with
their venom, that apart from contemplating a
possible exception for such snakes, if any, as might
be striving for greater spirituality, he takes no real
action, as he sometimes does, to have Kadru
somehow temper this curse, but simply thinks,
with a certain relief, the Mahabharatan equivalent
of “Good riddance.” Now accursed, they accede to
their mother’s wish, and on the morrow, when both
sisters witness this white horse with its
unexpectedly black tail, Vinata must concede she
has lost the wager and is now her sister’s slave.
This, then, is the rivalry-ridden, violence-torn
world into which Garuda is born.
For Garuda is born just while his mother is
away learning the sad outcome of her wager.
Returning to his mother after his first fledgling
flight into the heavens, he learns he has inherited
his mother’s status of slave to Kadru and to her
snake-sons. So now we have all the snakes, and
their mother, aligned against Garuda, and his
mother, to keep them both in bondage. And yet, in
time, the snakes’ hopes for a remedy against their
own mother’s curse become aligned with Garuda’s
hopes for liberation from his condition of slavery,
 28
paltry contribution (a single dry leaf) to the stock
of fuel for the ritual Kaśyapa has organized that,
despite their piety, they avenge their honor by
cursing Indra, prophesying his loss of ascendancy.
The two sisters Kadru and Vinata, daughters of
Prajapati, vie, as wives of Kaśyapa, over which
will have more or better sons, Kadru wishing for a
thousand sons, Vinata for just two, but each
superior to her sister’s. Impatient to see how her
sons (who have not hatched yet) will compare with
her sister’s (who have, all thousand of them
snakes), Vinata helps crack her first egg’s shell,
causing her first son, Aruna, to hatch only half-
formed, before his time. This son, so piqued at his
mother for interfering with his full development,
abandons her to become the rosy dawn, but not
before laying a curse upon her, condemning her to
become her sister’s slave. And the rival sisters
Kadru and Vinata themselves, each eager to
dominate the other, enter into a wager whose
outcome will determine which of them is to
become the slave of the other.
The wager, incidentally, is whether, once they
go to see him in his distant land across the ocean
the next day, a certain fabled horse, famous among
other things for his pure-white coat, will prove in
fact to be the color one of them is now to predict.
Vinata, naive, and eager to dispel Aruna’s curse,
predicts he is white. Kadru, equally bent on
winning, but more duplicitous, and ready to stand
truth on its head, instructs her snake sons to swim
overnight to land of this horse and so intricately to
braid themselves into its tail as to blacken it with
28
paltry contribution (a single dry leaf) to the stock
of fuel for the ritual Kaśyapa has organized that,
despite their piety, they avenge their honor by
cursing Indra, prophesying his loss of ascendancy.
The two sisters Kadru and Vinata, daughters of
Prajapati, vie, as wives of Kaśyapa, over which
will have more or better sons, Kadru wishing for a
thousand sons, Vinata for just two, but each
superior to her sister’s. Impatient to see how her
sons (who have not hatched yet) will compare with
her sister’s (who have, all thousand of them
snakes), Vinata helps crack her first egg’s shell,
causing her first son, Aruna, to hatch only half-
formed, before his time. This son, so piqued at his
mother for interfering with his full development,
abandons her to become the rosy dawn, but not
before laying a curse upon her, condemning her to
become her sister’s slave. And the rival sisters
Kadru and Vinata themselves, each eager to
dominate the other, enter into a wager whose
outcome will determine which of them is to
become the slave of the other.
The wager, incidentally, is whether, once they
go to see him in his distant land across the ocean
the next day, a certain fabled horse, famous among
other things for his pure-white coat, will prove in
fact to be the color one of them is now to predict.
Vinata, naive, and eager to dispel Aruna’s curse,
predicts he is white. Kadru, equally bent on
winning, but more duplicitous, and ready to stand
truth on its head, instructs her snake sons to swim
overnight to land of this horse and so intricately to
braid themselves into its tail as to blacken it with
25
is an insignificant nothing. As great brilliant bird,
terror to the Gods in his fieriness, and challenger to
Indra, he is powerful deity. At other moments we
will see him feeding upon “bad” violence,
engaging ferociously in “bad” violence, inciting
others to “bad” violence amongst themselves, and
finally, with one gesture, stopping all the violence
at once.
These conflicting images begin to suggest that
behind the figure of Garuda there lies hidden an
oblique reference to a now-forgotten scapegoating
victim, first belittled, then demonized, later
“sacrificed,” and finally deified; certainly, they
quite explicitly reveal the first and last stages, and
they at least hint provocatively at the intermediate
ones, hints reinforced by the nature of the further
events he is involved in, which we view as a
classic illustration of the Girardian mechanism by
which “bad” violence progress from the rudi-
mentary violence of ill will, through the violence
of all against one, beyond even the cataclysmic
paroxysm of violence in which all battle all, to the
ultimate “good” violence, the symbolic violence of
restrained self-mortification or self-sacrifice, that
finally puts an end to all “bad” violence.
How can this be? Consider, to begin with, the
world into which Garuda was born. In social
relations of all sorts, ethical standards of behavior
have been displaced by “bad” violence – by a
readiness to take offence, by vengeful retaliations,
by rivalry, by duplicitous manipulation of the
truth. The Valakhilyas, though ascetic sages, take
such deep affront at Indra’s jesting ridicule of their
25
is an insignificant nothing. As great brilliant bird,
terror to the Gods in his fieriness, and challenger to
Indra, he is powerful deity. At other moments we
will see him feeding upon “bad” violence,
engaging ferociously in “bad” violence, inciting
others to “bad” violence amongst themselves, and
finally, with one gesture, stopping all the violence
at once.
These conflicting images begin to suggest that
behind the figure of Garuda there lies hidden an
oblique reference to a now-forgotten scapegoating
victim, first belittled, then demonized, later
“sacrificed,” and finally deified; certainly, they
quite explicitly reveal the first and last stages, and
they at least hint provocatively at the intermediate
ones, hints reinforced by the nature of the further
events he is involved in, which we view as a
classic illustration of the Girardian mechanism by
which “bad” violence progress from the rudi-
mentary violence of ill will, through the violence
of all against one, beyond even the cataclysmic
paroxysm of violence in which all battle all, to the
ultimate “good” violence, the symbolic violence of
restrained self-mortification or self-sacrifice, that
finally puts an end to all “bad” violence.
How can this be? Consider, to begin with, the
world into which Garuda was born. In social
relations of all sorts, ethical standards of behavior
have been displaced by “bad” violence – by a
readiness to take offence, by vengeful retaliations,
by rivalry, by duplicitous manipulation of the
truth. The Valakhilyas, though ascetic sages, take
such deep affront at Indra’s jesting ridicule of their
26 27

Krishna doing battle with many-headed cobra. Krishna seated on protective many-headed cobra.
Vishnu temple, outskirts of Cochin (Kerala), India. Kesava Temple, outskirts of Mysore (Karnataka), India.

26 27

Krishna doing battle with many-headed cobra. Krishna seated on protective many-headed cobra.
Vishnu temple, outskirts of Cochin (Kerala), India. Kesava Temple, outskirts of Mysore (Karnataka), India.
26 27

Krishna doing battle with many-headed cobra. Krishna seated on protective many-headed cobra.
Vishnu temple, outskirts of Cochin (Kerala), India. Kesava Temple, outskirts of Mysore (Karnataka), India.

26 27

Krishna doing battle with many-headed cobra. Krishna seated on protective many-headed cobra.
Vishnu temple, outskirts of Cochin (Kerala), India. Kesava Temple, outskirts of Mysore (Karnataka), India.
 28
paltry contribution (a single dry leaf) to the stock
of fuel for the ritual Kaśyapa has organized that,
despite their piety, they avenge their honor by
cursing Indra, prophesying his loss of ascendancy.
The two sisters Kadru and Vinata, daughters of
Prajapati, vie, as wives of Kaśyapa, over which
will have more or better sons, Kadru wishing for a
thousand sons, Vinata for just two, but each
superior to her sister’s. Impatient to see how her
sons (who have not hatched yet) will compare with
her sister’s (who have, all thousand of them
snakes), Vinata helps crack her first egg’s shell,
causing her first son, Aruna, to hatch only half-
formed, before his time. This son, so piqued at his
mother for interfering with his full development,
abandons her to become the rosy dawn, but not
before laying a curse upon her, condemning her to
become her sister’s slave. And the rival sisters
Kadru and Vinata themselves, each eager to
dominate the other, enter into a wager whose
outcome will determine which of them is to
become the slave of the other.
The wager, incidentally, is whether, once they
go to see him in his distant land across the ocean
the next day, a certain fabled horse, famous among
other things for his pure-white coat, will prove in
fact to be the color one of them is now to predict.
Vinata, naive, and eager to dispel Aruna’s curse,
predicts he is white. Kadru, equally bent on
winning, but more duplicitous, and ready to stand
truth on its head, instructs her snake sons to swim
overnight to land of this horse and so intricately to
braid themselves into its tail as to blacken it with
28
paltry contribution (a single dry leaf) to the stock
of fuel for the ritual Kaśyapa has organized that,
despite their piety, they avenge their honor by
cursing Indra, prophesying his loss of ascendancy.
The two sisters Kadru and Vinata, daughters of
Prajapati, vie, as wives of Kaśyapa, over which
will have more or better sons, Kadru wishing for a
thousand sons, Vinata for just two, but each
superior to her sister’s. Impatient to see how her
sons (who have not hatched yet) will compare with
her sister’s (who have, all thousand of them
snakes), Vinata helps crack her first egg’s shell,
causing her first son, Aruna, to hatch only half-
formed, before his time. This son, so piqued at his
mother for interfering with his full development,
abandons her to become the rosy dawn, but not
before laying a curse upon her, condemning her to
become her sister’s slave. And the rival sisters
Kadru and Vinata themselves, each eager to
dominate the other, enter into a wager whose
outcome will determine which of them is to
become the slave of the other.
The wager, incidentally, is whether, once they
go to see him in his distant land across the ocean
the next day, a certain fabled horse, famous among
other things for his pure-white coat, will prove in
fact to be the color one of them is now to predict.
Vinata, naive, and eager to dispel Aruna’s curse,
predicts he is white. Kadru, equally bent on
winning, but more duplicitous, and ready to stand
truth on its head, instructs her snake sons to swim
overnight to land of this horse and so intricately to
braid themselves into its tail as to blacken it with
25
is an insignificant nothing. As great brilliant bird,
terror to the Gods in his fieriness, and challenger to
Indra, he is powerful deity. At other moments we
will see him feeding upon “bad” violence,
engaging ferociously in “bad” violence, inciting
others to “bad” violence amongst themselves, and
finally, with one gesture, stopping all the violence
at once.
These conflicting images begin to suggest that
behind the figure of Garuda there lies hidden an
oblique reference to a now-forgotten scapegoating
victim, first belittled, then demonized, later
“sacrificed,” and finally deified; certainly, they
quite explicitly reveal the first and last stages, and
they at least hint provocatively at the intermediate
ones, hints reinforced by the nature of the further
events he is involved in, which we view as a
classic illustration of the Girardian mechanism by
which “bad” violence progress from the rudi-
mentary violence of ill will, through the violence
of all against one, beyond even the cataclysmic
paroxysm of violence in which all battle all, to the
ultimate “good” violence, the symbolic violence of
restrained self-mortification or self-sacrifice, that
finally puts an end to all “bad” violence.
How can this be? Consider, to begin with, the
world into which Garuda was born. In social
relations of all sorts, ethical standards of behavior
have been displaced by “bad” violence – by a
readiness to take offence, by vengeful retaliations,
by rivalry, by duplicitous manipulation of the
truth. The Valakhilyas, though ascetic sages, take
such deep affront at Indra’s jesting ridicule of their
25
is an insignificant nothing. As great brilliant bird,
terror to the Gods in his fieriness, and challenger to
Indra, he is powerful deity. At other moments we
will see him feeding upon “bad” violence,
engaging ferociously in “bad” violence, inciting
others to “bad” violence amongst themselves, and
finally, with one gesture, stopping all the violence
at once.
These conflicting images begin to suggest that
behind the figure of Garuda there lies hidden an
oblique reference to a now-forgotten scapegoating
victim, first belittled, then demonized, later
“sacrificed,” and finally deified; certainly, they
quite explicitly reveal the first and last stages, and
they at least hint provocatively at the intermediate
ones, hints reinforced by the nature of the further
events he is involved in, which we view as a
classic illustration of the Girardian mechanism by
which “bad” violence progress from the rudi-
mentary violence of ill will, through the violence
of all against one, beyond even the cataclysmic
paroxysm of violence in which all battle all, to the
ultimate “good” violence, the symbolic violence of
restrained self-mortification or self-sacrifice, that
finally puts an end to all “bad” violence.
How can this be? Consider, to begin with, the
world into which Garuda was born. In social
relations of all sorts, ethical standards of behavior
have been displaced by “bad” violence – by a
readiness to take offence, by vengeful retaliations,
by rivalry, by duplicitous manipulation of the
truth. The Valakhilyas, though ascetic sages, take
such deep affront at Indra’s jesting ridicule of their
 24
gradual fulfillment proceeds from the moment
Garuda is born until he has become even more
than the equal of Indra himself, he is to be “an
Indra of birds.” Indeed, Garuda hatches from an
egg, emerging fully grown, a great bird, utterly
splendid in mass and coloration, and immediately
takes wing into the heavens where, “ablaze like a
kindled mass of fire,” he so dazzles and transfixes
the Gods that, cowering before him, fearing him as
they have come to fear the sacrificial fire, they
plead with him not to burn them. It is finally the
Fire, not Garuda, who laughingly explains ([M], p.
78), “The case is not as you deem it, Gods and
Dānavas. This is the powerful Garuda, who is my
equal in fieriness.” At this the assembled Gods
hail Garuda with the acclamation already cited
above.
Back at home, on the other hand, Garuda begins
as little more than slave to his thousand
contemptuous siblings, or more accurately,
cousins, or perhaps still more accurately, step-
brothers, born earlier, as snakes, to his mother’s
sister. Or again, at one particularly critical
juncture, he must momentarily contract his body
into a very diminutive form so as to pass unscathed
through a particularly fiendish celestial obstacle, a
whirling razor-studded wheel that would have
sliced him to ribbons had he not been able so to
diminish his size and to synchronize his flight with
its motion as to merge into a space between its
blades and emerge unharmed in the space beyond.
As tiny creature before this death-dealing
obstacle, and as slave to his snake-siblings, Garuda
24
gradual fulfillment proceeds from the moment
Garuda is born until he has become even more
than the equal of Indra himself, he is to be “an
Indra of birds.” Indeed, Garuda hatches from an
egg, emerging fully grown, a great bird, utterly
splendid in mass and coloration, and immediately
takes wing into the heavens where, “ablaze like a
kindled mass of fire,” he so dazzles and transfixes
the Gods that, cowering before him, fearing him as
they have come to fear the sacrificial fire, they
plead with him not to burn them. It is finally the
Fire, not Garuda, who laughingly explains ([M], p.
78), “The case is not as you deem it, Gods and
Dānavas. This is the powerful Garuda, who is my
equal in fieriness.” At this the assembled Gods
hail Garuda with the acclamation already cited
above.
Back at home, on the other hand, Garuda begins
as little more than slave to his thousand
contemptuous siblings, or more accurately,
cousins, or perhaps still more accurately, step-
brothers, born earlier, as snakes, to his mother’s
sister. Or again, at one particularly critical
juncture, he must momentarily contract his body
into a very diminutive form so as to pass unscathed
through a particularly fiendish celestial obstacle, a
whirling razor-studded wheel that would have
sliced him to ribbons had he not been able so to
diminish his size and to synchronize his flight with
its motion as to merge into a space between its
blades and emerge unharmed in the space beyond.
As tiny creature before this death-dealing
obstacle, and as slave to his snake-siblings, Garuda
29
their intertwined bodies. In anger at her sons’
initial reluctance to obey, Kadru lays a curse upon
them all, condemning them and their eventual
progeny to total annihilation in a future Great
Snake Sacrifice. And even Brahma finds these
snakes so “harsh,” so excessively numerous, so
given to violent bickering amongst themselves, so
unconcerned with their own spiritual development,
and so frequently killing innocent creatures with
their venom, that apart from contemplating a
possible exception for such snakes, if any, as might
be striving for greater spirituality, he takes no real
action, as he sometimes does, to have Kadru
somehow temper this curse, but simply thinks,
with a certain relief, the Mahabharatan equivalent
of “Good riddance.” Now accursed, they accede to
their mother’s wish, and on the morrow, when both
sisters witness this white horse with its
unexpectedly black tail, Vinata must concede she
has lost the wager and is now her sister’s slave.
This, then, is the rivalry-ridden, violence-torn
world into which Garuda is born.
For Garuda is born just while his mother is
away learning the sad outcome of her wager.
Returning to his mother after his first fledgling
flight into the heavens, he learns he has inherited
his mother’s status of slave to Kadru and to her
snake-sons. So now we have all the snakes, and
their mother, aligned against Garuda, and his
mother, to keep them both in bondage. And yet, in
time, the snakes’ hopes for a remedy against their
own mother’s curse become aligned with Garuda’s
hopes for liberation from his condition of slavery,
29
their intertwined bodies. In anger at her sons’
initial reluctance to obey, Kadru lays a curse upon
them all, condemning them and their eventual
progeny to total annihilation in a future Great
Snake Sacrifice. And even Brahma finds these
snakes so “harsh,” so excessively numerous, so
given to violent bickering amongst themselves, so
unconcerned with their own spiritual development,
and so frequently killing innocent creatures with
their venom, that apart from contemplating a
possible exception for such snakes, if any, as might
be striving for greater spirituality, he takes no real
action, as he sometimes does, to have Kadru
somehow temper this curse, but simply thinks,
with a certain relief, the Mahabharatan equivalent
of “Good riddance.” Now accursed, they accede to
their mother’s wish, and on the morrow, when both
sisters witness this white horse with its
unexpectedly black tail, Vinata must concede she
has lost the wager and is now her sister’s slave.
This, then, is the rivalry-ridden, violence-torn
world into which Garuda is born.
For Garuda is born just while his mother is
away learning the sad outcome of her wager.
Returning to his mother after his first fledgling
flight into the heavens, he learns he has inherited
his mother’s status of slave to Kadru and to her
snake-sons. So now we have all the snakes, and
their mother, aligned against Garuda, and his
mother, to keep them both in bondage. And yet, in
time, the snakes’ hopes for a remedy against their
own mother’s curse become aligned with Garuda’s
hopes for liberation from his condition of slavery,
 30 23

as follows: the snakes will release Garuda and

Vinata from their bondage if Garuda will foray
forth into the heavens to find, purloin, and bring
back to the snakes the Gods’ Soma, their divine
elixir of immortality, with which the snakes hope
to ensure their survival. Is this the snakes’
perfidious way of condemning Garuda, slave who
wants his freedom, to certain death, by sending
him on a fool’s errand that he would surely never
come back from alive? In any event, with all his
snake-siblings arrayed against him, it is a mission Let us turn now to Garuda, the magnificent bird
Garuda readily undertakes. deity acclaimed early on ([M], p. 78) as
So Garuda, born to be Indra’s undefeated “the finisher of all that is, … firelike, destroying
perfect rival, and indeed an Indra himself, takes off and ending the revolution of the Eon.”
into the heavens, or rather, begins to do so, but is
Garuda is a complex, multi-faceted figure, in
suddenly overcome by pangs of hunger. On the
whose story are manifested all the phenomena of
advice of his father Kaśyapa, he betakes himself to
“bad” violence that go into the Girardian mimetic
a certain lake where are to be found an enormous
theory, not the least of which will be the ultimate
elephant and equally outsize turtle, once two
sacrificial (generative) violence that finally stops
brothers, so joined in a circle of “bad” symmetric
the “bad” violence and provides a model for the
violence, so hostile one toward the other, that each
“good.”
has changed the other into his current animal form,
the better to destroy him. Sure enough, Garuda On the one hand, he is the deity fulfilling the
finds these violent monstrous doubles, “mad with prophecy, uttered in curse against Indra by certain
battle fury, each out to vanquish the other” ([M], ascetic Valakhilyas retaliating for a perceived
pp. 82-83), gathers them up, devours them, and humiliation in the course of preparing a sacrificial
continues on his mission. session that, long before Garuda’s birth, Garuda’s
father Kaśyapa had commissioned in order to
Garuda, in feeding on their violence, both
assure the birth of a worthy son ([M], p. 86):
destroys the “bad” symmetric violence of these
monstrous doubles and fortifies himself for the ‘There shall be another Indra to all the Gods with
violence to come, once he reaches the heavens, every power at his call, and with every rage at his
where he will now find all the Gods, headed by will, who shall be the terror of Indra.’
Indra, arrayed against him ([M], p. 88): More exactly, according to this prophecy whose

30 23

as follows: the snakes will release Garuda and

Vinata from their bondage if Garuda will foray
forth into the heavens to find, purloin, and bring
back to the snakes the Gods’ Soma, their divine
elixir of immortality, with which the snakes hope
to ensure their survival. Is this the snakes’
perfidious way of condemning Garuda, slave who
wants his freedom, to certain death, by sending
him on a fool’s errand that he would surely never
come back from alive? In any event, with all his
snake-siblings arrayed against him, it is a mission Let us turn now to Garuda, the magnificent bird
Garuda readily undertakes. deity acclaimed early on ([M], p. 78) as
So Garuda, born to be Indra’s undefeated “the finisher of all that is, … firelike, destroying
perfect rival, and indeed an Indra himself, takes off and ending the revolution of the Eon.”
into the heavens, or rather, begins to do so, but is
Garuda is a complex, multi-faceted figure, in
suddenly overcome by pangs of hunger. On the
whose story are manifested all the phenomena of
advice of his father Kaśyapa, he betakes himself to
“bad” violence that go into the Girardian mimetic
a certain lake where are to be found an enormous
theory, not the least of which will be the ultimate
elephant and equally outsize turtle, once two
sacrificial (generative) violence that finally stops
brothers, so joined in a circle of “bad” symmetric
the “bad” violence and provides a model for the
violence, so hostile one toward the other, that each
“good.”
has changed the other into his current animal form,
the better to destroy him. Sure enough, Garuda On the one hand, he is the deity fulfilling the
finds these violent monstrous doubles, “mad with prophecy, uttered in curse against Indra by certain
battle fury, each out to vanquish the other” ([M], ascetic Valakhilyas retaliating for a perceived
pp. 82-83), gathers them up, devours them, and humiliation in the course of preparing a sacrificial
continues on his mission. session that, long before Garuda’s birth, Garuda’s
father Kaśyapa had commissioned in order to
Garuda, in feeding on their violence, both
assure the birth of a worthy son ([M], p. 86):
destroys the “bad” symmetric violence of these
monstrous doubles and fortifies himself for the ‘There shall be another Indra to all the Gods with
violence to come, once he reaches the heavens, every power at his call, and with every rage at his
where he will now find all the Gods, headed by will, who shall be the terror of Indra.’
Indra, arrayed against him ([M], p. 88): More exactly, according to this prophecy whose
 22
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu.
Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
22
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu.
Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
31
… the celestials, armored and led by Indra, all
rained blows on him with their three-bladed spears,
clubs, pikes, bludgeons, and all manners of swords,
and with sharp-edged disks that resembled the sun.
On all sides assailed by the onslaught of these
weapons, the Kings of Birds remained unshaken and
waged a tumultuous battle.
Where once all the snakes had been arrayed in
opposition to Garuda, now it is all the Gods. But
Garuda’s gigantic and indomitable presence so
confuses the Gods that they cannot quite find him;
consequently, aware only that they must do battle,
they wind up doing battle amongst themselves,
wounding and maiming and slaughtering each
other, a community in mimetic crisis, undergoing
Girardian paroxysms of reciprocal violence, until
none among them remains to oppose Garuda as he
negotiates the last physical obstacles, whirling
razor-studded wheel among them, separating him
from the Soma.
Once in possession of that magical elixir,
Garuda is beset by none other than Indra himself,
two Indras now in battle over the elixir: the
original divinity Indra, and Garuda, his double, the
Indra of birds. The battle is a stand-off – it finally
ends when Indra smites Garuda forcefully with his
most fearsome weapon, his thunderbolt, “greater
than all that flies,” and, to his astonishment,
succeeds only in loosening of one of Garuda’s
feathers – which Garuda, in an uncharacteristic act
of self-sacrifice, unpredictably plucks free and lets
go, thereby magically ushering in a new peace.
Here is how the Mahabharata describes it,
31
… the celestials, armored and led by Indra, all
rained blows on him with their three-bladed spears,
clubs, pikes, bludgeons, and all manners of swords,
and with sharp-edged disks that resembled the sun.
On all sides assailed by the onslaught of these
weapons, the Kings of Birds remained unshaken and
waged a tumultuous battle.
Where once all the snakes had been arrayed in
opposition to Garuda, now it is all the Gods. But
Garuda’s gigantic and indomitable presence so
confuses the Gods that they cannot quite find him;
consequently, aware only that they must do battle,
they wind up doing battle amongst themselves,
wounding and maiming and slaughtering each
other, a community in mimetic crisis, undergoing
Girardian paroxysms of reciprocal violence, until
none among them remains to oppose Garuda as he
negotiates the last physical obstacles, whirling
razor-studded wheel among them, separating him
from the Soma.
Once in possession of that magical elixir,
Garuda is beset by none other than Indra himself,
two Indras now in battle over the elixir: the
original divinity Indra, and Garuda, his double, the
Indra of birds. The battle is a stand-off – it finally
ends when Indra smites Garuda forcefully with his
most fearsome weapon, his thunderbolt, “greater
than all that flies,” and, to his astonishment,
succeeds only in loosening of one of Garuda’s
feathers – which Garuda, in an uncharacteristic act
of self-sacrifice, unpredictably plucks free and lets
go, thereby magically ushering in a new peace.
Here is how the Mahabharata describes it,
 32 21

beginning with the polished and diplomatic words

of Garuda ([M], pp. 89-90):
‘I pay honor to the seer from whose bone the
thunderbolt has sprung, and to the thunderbolt, and
to you yourself, God of the Hundred Sacrifices.
Here I let go of one feather, and you will never
explore its ends. For the blow of your thunderbolt
did not hurt me at all.’
Chapter 2
And, seeing the beauty of the feather, all creatures
exclaimed, astounded: ‘He must be the Fair-Winged
Bird!’ And upon witnessing this marvel, (Indra) the
Sacker of Cities of the thousand eyes reflected that
the Bird was a great being, and he said: ‘I wish to
learn the farthest limit of your incomparable
strength; and I want eternal friendship with you,
Garuda
greatest of birds!’
Twice the target of the hostility of all, once on
earth from all his snake-brothers, once in the
heavens from all the Gods, but now master of the
divine elixir of immortality, Garuda has become
the highest deity of all: with the Soma under his
control, it is his good will on which depend the
lives of both Gods and snakes. Indra himself,
seeing in that elixir his only hope for the
restoration of the slain Gods, is reduced to begging
for the Soma’s return. Now Garuda has no need of
it himself, Vishnu having granted him the boon of
immortality in recognition of his heroism in
dealing with Indra and the Gods under him. So,
mindful of his bargain with the snakes, calling for
him to bring the Soma back to them, and yet quite
content to see it ultimately in Indra’s hands, so that
the slain Gods may be revived, he proposes the

32 21

beginning with the polished and diplomatic words

of Garuda ([M], pp. 89-90):
‘I pay honor to the seer from whose bone the
thunderbolt has sprung, and to the thunderbolt, and
to you yourself, God of the Hundred Sacrifices.
Here I let go of one feather, and you will never
explore its ends. For the blow of your thunderbolt
did not hurt me at all.’
Chapter 2
And, seeing the beauty of the feather, all creatures
exclaimed, astounded: ‘He must be the Fair-Winged
Bird!’ And upon witnessing this marvel, (Indra) the
Sacker of Cities of the thousand eyes reflected that
the Bird was a great being, and he said: ‘I wish to
learn the farthest limit of your incomparable
strength; and I want eternal friendship with you,
Garuda
greatest of birds!’
Twice the target of the hostility of all, once on
earth from all his snake-brothers, once in the
heavens from all the Gods, but now master of the
divine elixir of immortality, Garuda has become
the highest deity of all: with the Soma under his
control, it is his good will on which depend the
lives of both Gods and snakes. Indra himself,
seeing in that elixir his only hope for the
restoration of the slain Gods, is reduced to begging
for the Soma’s return. Now Garuda has no need of
it himself, Vishnu having granted him the boon of
immortality in recognition of his heroism in
dealing with Indra and the Gods under him. So,
mindful of his bargain with the snakes, calling for
him to bring the Soma back to them, and yet quite
content to see it ultimately in Indra’s hands, so that
the slain Gods may be revived, he proposes the
 20
even the fire, “his guilt wiped out,” is content.
Still, things are no longer as they were. For the fire
is no longer the purveyor of “good” violence
unalloyed, but of unpredictable, uncontrollable
“bad” violence as well. In fact by the time Garuda
is born, the fire will be more feared for his
unpredictable violent appetite than revered for his
role in sacrificial ritual, as we are about to see, and
still later a sacrificial ritual will be undertaken –
King Janamejaya’s Sacrifice – that will be revealed
to be so full of “bad” violence and so devoid of
“good” – not sacrificial offering but extirpatory
massacre – that it must be stopped before it can
fully run its course.
Garuda, guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple (dedicated
to Krishna as charioteer of Arjuna), Madras, India.
20
even the fire, “his guilt wiped out,” is content.
Still, things are no longer as they were. For the fire
is no longer the purveyor of “good” violence
unalloyed, but of unpredictable, uncontrollable
“bad” violence as well. In fact by the time Garuda
is born, the fire will be more feared for his
unpredictable violent appetite than revered for his
role in sacrificial ritual, as we are about to see, and
still later a sacrificial ritual will be undertaken –
King Janamejaya’s Sacrifice – that will be revealed
to be so full of “bad” violence and so devoid of
“good” – not sacrificial offering but extirpatory
massacre – that it must be stopped before it can
fully run its course.
Garuda, guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple (dedicated
to Krishna as charioteer of Arjuna), Madras, India.
33
following ([M], p. 90):
‘It was with some purpose in mind that I stole this
Soma. I shall not give it to anyone to partake of.
But, God of the thousand eyes, when I myself shall
put it down anywhere, you can take it at once and
carry it off.’
Accordingly, and true to his word to the snakes,
Garuda then bears the Soma back to the snakes,
who now therefore revere him as a god, and,
before allowing them to partake of it, urges them
all to cleanse themselves appropriately in a nearby
river. Next, true to his word to Indra, and while the
snakes are still engaged in their ablutions, Garuda
sets the Soma down upon the ground, so that Indra
can come reclaim it for the good of the Gods.
When the snakes return, of course, they must set
Garuda and Vinata free, even though the Soma is
no longer theirs, while Indra, out of gratitude for
the Soma, with which he can restore to life all the
slain Gods, rewards Garuda with the right to feed
upon snakes; and Garuda, free now, and Indra’s
best friend, occupies a position higher not only
than Indra, but higher even than Vishnu himself, to
preside, as in his battle against the Gods, over the
tumultuous processes of destruction at the end of
an Eon and creation in the beginning of a new.
And only perhaps the feather Garuda yielded to
Indra’s thunderbolt, the feather whose ends he
predicted Indra would never fully explore, that
feather whose incomparable beauty caused all the
creatures seeing it to exclaim, “He must be the
Fair-winged Bird,” only this feather, this
scapegoat-like offering, chosen quite haphazardly
33
following ([M], p. 90):
‘It was with some purpose in mind that I stole this
Soma. I shall not give it to anyone to partake of.
But, God of the thousand eyes, when I myself shall
put it down anywhere, you can take it at once and
carry it off.’
Accordingly, and true to his word to the snakes,
Garuda then bears the Soma back to the snakes,
who now therefore revere him as a god, and,
before allowing them to partake of it, urges them
all to cleanse themselves appropriately in a nearby
river. Next, true to his word to Indra, and while the
snakes are still engaged in their ablutions, Garuda
sets the Soma down upon the ground, so that Indra
can come reclaim it for the good of the Gods.
When the snakes return, of course, they must set
Garuda and Vinata free, even though the Soma is
no longer theirs, while Indra, out of gratitude for
the Soma, with which he can restore to life all the
slain Gods, rewards Garuda with the right to feed
upon snakes; and Garuda, free now, and Indra’s
best friend, occupies a position higher not only
than Indra, but higher even than Vishnu himself, to
preside, as in his battle against the Gods, over the
tumultuous processes of destruction at the end of
an Eon and creation in the beginning of a new.
And only perhaps the feather Garuda yielded to
Indra’s thunderbolt, the feather whose ends he
predicted Indra would never fully explore, that
feather whose incomparable beauty caused all the
creatures seeing it to exclaim, “He must be the
Fair-winged Bird,” only this feather, this
scapegoat-like offering, chosen quite haphazardly
 34
for sacrifice, remains as a palpable indication,
within the Mahabharata, of an actual death of a
real scapegoat, a real victim of collective violence,
victim the other ingredients of this tale all hint,
circumstantially, might be personified by Garuda,
while the bickering snakes may well represent the
violence-riddled culture that claimed this victim.
Garuda as festival vehicle, Sri Ranganatha Swamy
Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
34
for sacrifice, remains as a palpable indication,
within the Mahabharata, of an actual death of a
real scapegoat, a real victim of collective violence,
victim the other ingredients of this tale all hint,
circumstantially, might be personified by Garuda,
while the bickering snakes may well represent the
violence-riddled culture that claimed this victim.
Garuda as festival vehicle, Sri Ranganatha Swamy
Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
19
triangle of desire centered around Pulomā, in
complete conformity with Girard’s mimetic theory.
Out of their concern that “the innocent three
worlds have lost their rites and lost the way” ([M],
p. 59), the seers and the Gods approach the Lord
Brahma to appeal to him to lift Bhrgu’s curse so
that the holy sacrificial fire might once again fuel
the rituals. But a curse may never be lifted, not
even by a God. It may only be revised, modified,
amended, as it were, by a footnote, or a clarifi-
cation; Brahma’s clarification was this: that while
one of the fire’s many tongues of flame might be
condemned to consume absolutely anything, the
others would not be, but would continue to be fed
only sacrificial offerings, as before; and that even
the tongue that would consume anything would not
cause defilement of the sacrificial fire, because that
tongue would actually purify everything it came in
contact with, no matter how impure that matter
might previously have been. In this way the
benefits of the “good” violence of the sacrificial
rituals are restored again, but not in an entirely
satisfactory way, as the distinction between “good”
violence and “bad” has become blurred: it becomes
impossible to be sure which is the “good” violence
and which the “bad.” Nonetheless, thus reassured,
the fire consents once again to take up its role as
devourer of sacrificial offerings, as perpetrator of
“good” violence, and to accept without further
complaint the “bad” violence it must also
perpetrate because of Bhrgu’s curse.
Gods and seers alike rejoice at this diplomatic
compromise, as do all the creatures of the earth;
19
triangle of desire centered around Pulomā, in
complete conformity with Girard’s mimetic theory.
Out of their concern that “the innocent three
worlds have lost their rites and lost the way” ([M],
p. 59), the seers and the Gods approach the Lord
Brahma to appeal to him to lift Bhrgu’s curse so
that the holy sacrificial fire might once again fuel
the rituals. But a curse may never be lifted, not
even by a God. It may only be revised, modified,
amended, as it were, by a footnote, or a clarifi-
cation; Brahma’s clarification was this: that while
one of the fire’s many tongues of flame might be
condemned to consume absolutely anything, the
others would not be, but would continue to be fed
only sacrificial offerings, as before; and that even
the tongue that would consume anything would not
cause defilement of the sacrificial fire, because that
tongue would actually purify everything it came in
contact with, no matter how impure that matter
might previously have been. In this way the
benefits of the “good” violence of the sacrificial
rituals are restored again, but not in an entirely
satisfactory way, as the distinction between “good”
violence and “bad” has become blurred: it becomes
impossible to be sure which is the “good” violence
and which the “bad.” Nonetheless, thus reassured,
the fire consents once again to take up its role as
devourer of sacrificial offerings, as perpetrator of
“good” violence, and to accept without further
complaint the “bad” violence it must also
perpetrate because of Bhrgu’s curse.
Gods and seers alike rejoice at this diplomatic
compromise, as do all the creatures of the earth;
 18 35

Chapter 3

The Snake Sacrifice

Shivalingam with coiled, many-headed cobra and dancing Krishna.

Varadarajaperumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

18 35

Chapter 3

The Snake Sacrifice

Shivalingam with coiled, many-headed cobra and dancing Krishna.

Varadarajaperumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 36
Edge of pit for sacrificial fire, with approaching snake.
Chamundeshwari (Durga) Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
36
Edge of pit for sacrificial fire, with approaching snake.
Chamundeshwari (Durga) Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
17
When Bhrgu learns of this encounter, and hears
from Pulomā how the fire had betrayed her to the
Rakshasa by not concealing that she was Bhrgu’s
wife, he becomes so enraged at its indiscriminate
telling of truth that he lays a curse upon the
sacrificial fire, condemning it, henceforth, likewise
to consume not only the specially prepared
sacrificial offerings that had hitherto been its diet,
but also absolutely anything at all. In this way the
ambit of retribution has gotten displaced from its
proper target, the Rakshasa, to the truthful fire,
contaminating its “good” violence with “bad.”
The fire is aghast. How can it remain pure and
bright, how can it serve as the undefiled mouth of
the Gods, if it will be compelled to consume
absolutely anything? It will indiscriminately be
dispensing both “good” and “bad” violence,
without any distinction between them. Utterly
dismayed by the fate Bhrgu has cursed it with, but
too respectful of the Law to wish to continue the
cycle of revenge, say, by pronouncing a retaliatory
curse upon the sage, and perhaps aware that a
simple abstinence from speech would have served
better in response to the Rakshasa than speaking
truth, the fire now resolves to abstain entirely from
consuming anything, to consume nothing at all, to
refrain utterly from accepting the oblations offered
it. This decision, too, however, has bad
consequences: it so impoverishes the sacrosanct
rituals that they can no longer function effectively.
The rituals fail, and all creatures suffer. The root
cause of this failure, of course, is plainly the
escalating reciprocal violence, erupting from the
17
When Bhrgu learns of this encounter, and hears
from Pulomā how the fire had betrayed her to the
Rakshasa by not concealing that she was Bhrgu’s
wife, he becomes so enraged at its indiscriminate
telling of truth that he lays a curse upon the
sacrificial fire, condemning it, henceforth, likewise
to consume not only the specially prepared
sacrificial offerings that had hitherto been its diet,
but also absolutely anything at all. In this way the
ambit of retribution has gotten displaced from its
proper target, the Rakshasa, to the truthful fire,
contaminating its “good” violence with “bad.”
The fire is aghast. How can it remain pure and
bright, how can it serve as the undefiled mouth of
the Gods, if it will be compelled to consume
absolutely anything? It will indiscriminately be
dispensing both “good” and “bad” violence,
without any distinction between them. Utterly
dismayed by the fate Bhrgu has cursed it with, but
too respectful of the Law to wish to continue the
cycle of revenge, say, by pronouncing a retaliatory
curse upon the sage, and perhaps aware that a
simple abstinence from speech would have served
better in response to the Rakshasa than speaking
truth, the fire now resolves to abstain entirely from
consuming anything, to consume nothing at all, to
refrain utterly from accepting the oblations offered
it. This decision, too, however, has bad
consequences: it so impoverishes the sacrosanct
rituals that they can no longer function effectively.
The rituals fail, and all creatures suffer. The root
cause of this failure, of course, is plainly the
escalating reciprocal violence, erupting from the
 16
coincidentally named Puloman, happens upon
Bhrgu’s abode, enters, and seeing Pulomā,
instantly becomes “possessed by love.” Desire
having come upon this “love-struck Rakshasa,” he
means to abduct Pulomā. Puloman implores the
pure, bright sacrificial fire to confirm whether
Pulomā is not in fact the Rakshasa’s own “chosen”
and once-promised bride, whose father later broke
that troth when he “married her off to Bhrgu.”
Thus is this desire revealed as a mimetic desire,
perhaps even the mirror of an earlier mimetic
desire that had come upon Bhrgu. For if so, he
goes on, he will ([M], p. 57)
‘carry her off … . For a fury has been burning my
heart that Bhrgu should have got the slim-waisted
wife that was mine first!’
And thus does the triangle of desire engender
the first violent stage of a cycle of revenge:
Puloman would do unto Bhrgu as Bhrgu had done
unto Puloman, abscond with Pulomā.
The fire, of course, though speaking only truth,
is somewhat stayed by discretion, and therefore
hesitates long before answering, cryptically, and in
a whisper ([M], p. 57), “I am no less fearful of
speaking untruth than of Bhrgu’s curse.” Hereupon
the Rakshasa seizes Pulomā, but, before he can
carry her off, Pulomā is delivered of Bhrgu’s son:
“wrathfully,” he “falls from his mother’s womb to
set her free.” And indeed, at the mere sight of this
babe, shining bright as the blazing sun, the demon
Rakshasa is turned into ashes. The cycle of
revenge has passed unto the second generation.
But the reciprocal violence does not end here.
16
coincidentally named Puloman, happens upon
Bhrgu’s abode, enters, and seeing Pulomā,
instantly becomes “possessed by love.” Desire
having come upon this “love-struck Rakshasa,” he
means to abduct Pulomā. Puloman implores the
pure, bright sacrificial fire to confirm whether
Pulomā is not in fact the Rakshasa’s own “chosen”
and once-promised bride, whose father later broke
that troth when he “married her off to Bhrgu.”
Thus is this desire revealed as a mimetic desire,
perhaps even the mirror of an earlier mimetic
desire that had come upon Bhrgu. For if so, he
goes on, he will ([M], p. 57)
‘carry her off … . For a fury has been burning my
heart that Bhrgu should have got the slim-waisted
wife that was mine first!’
And thus does the triangle of desire engender
the first violent stage of a cycle of revenge:
Puloman would do unto Bhrgu as Bhrgu had done
unto Puloman, abscond with Pulomā.
The fire, of course, though speaking only truth,
is somewhat stayed by discretion, and therefore
hesitates long before answering, cryptically, and in
a whisper ([M], p. 57), “I am no less fearful of
speaking untruth than of Bhrgu’s curse.” Hereupon
the Rakshasa seizes Pulomā, but, before he can
carry her off, Pulomā is delivered of Bhrgu’s son:
“wrathfully,” he “falls from his mother’s womb to
set her free.” And indeed, at the mere sight of this
babe, shining bright as the blazing sun, the demon
Rakshasa is turned into ashes. The cycle of
revenge has passed unto the second generation.
But the reciprocal violence does not end here.
37
But let us move on to the Great Snake Sacrifice
authorized by the King Janamejaya. This will be
the event fulfilling the prophecy Kadru
incorporated into the curse she laid upon her
thousand snake children when they initially
refused her order to go turn the white horse’s tail
black. But that refusal, and that curse, will not be
primary among King Janamejaya’s motivations.
Nor will he be motivated, even nominally, by all
the snake traits Brahma himself found so repulsive
at the time of Kadru’s curse – their numerousness,
their quarrelsomeness, their random killing of too
many innocent victims, their general character as
public nuisance. In point of fact, the snakes, or at
least some of them, have become less repugnant.
For these, emulation of it is Garuda, their former
slave now deified upon his triumphant return with
the miraculous Soma – of his mastery over self, of
his readiness to remain unprovoked to vengeful
retaliation – that holds out the only remaining
viable hope, now that the Soma is back in Indra’s
possession, for freeing themselves of their mother
Kadru’s curse. They therefore turn to religion,
37
But let us move on to the Great Snake Sacrifice
authorized by the King Janamejaya. This will be
the event fulfilling the prophecy Kadru
incorporated into the curse she laid upon her
thousand snake children when they initially
refused her order to go turn the white horse’s tail
black. But that refusal, and that curse, will not be
primary among King Janamejaya’s motivations.
Nor will he be motivated, even nominally, by all
the snake traits Brahma himself found so repulsive
at the time of Kadru’s curse – their numerousness,
their quarrelsomeness, their random killing of too
many innocent victims, their general character as
public nuisance. In point of fact, the snakes, or at
least some of them, have become less repugnant.
For these, emulation of it is Garuda, their former
slave now deified upon his triumphant return with
the miraculous Soma – of his mastery over self, of
his readiness to remain unprovoked to vengeful
retaliation – that holds out the only remaining
viable hope, now that the Soma is back in Indra’s
possession, for freeing themselves of their mother
Kadru’s curse. They therefore turn to religion,
 38
renouncing their former harshness and
quarrelsomeness, and choosing instead a path of
meditation, spirituality, study of the sacred
writings, austerity, self-improvement, and self-
mortification as the way to their salvation. The
most advanced of these even aspire to Brahmin
status. Yet others, however, remain wholly
unregenerate, Takşaka, the King of the Snakes,
most notable among them.
It is Takşaka, for example, who steals from the
sage Utanka, much to that sage’s everlasting
annoyance, the earrings that he had gone to great
lengths to procure so as to present them to his guru
as a token of his gratitude for all his guru’s
teachings. And it is Takşaka who takes it upon
himself, with the approval of Indra, to kill Parikşit,
father of King Janamejaya, in fulfillment of the
curse laid upon Parikşit by the outraged son of an
ascetic seer whom Parikşit had once humiliated by
draping as a necklace around his neck and
shoulders the corpse of a dead snake, in repayment
for the seer’s having been so engrossed in his
meditations as to have failed utterly to respond to
Parikşit’s attempt at conversation. Clearly, envy,
hostility, retaliation, and retribution have not yet
vanished from the scene.
And it is vengeance against this Takşaka that
constitutes the primary motivation for King
Janamejaya’s great sacrifice. For the very sage
Utanka from whom Takşaka stole those earrings,
still nursing his old grudge against Takşaka despite
having ultimately recovered those precious
earrings and presented them to his guru, seeks
38
renouncing their former harshness and
quarrelsomeness, and choosing instead a path of
meditation, spirituality, study of the sacred
writings, austerity, self-improvement, and self-
mortification as the way to their salvation. The
most advanced of these even aspire to Brahmin
status. Yet others, however, remain wholly
unregenerate, Takşaka, the King of the Snakes,
most notable among them.
It is Takşaka, for example, who steals from the
sage Utanka, much to that sage’s everlasting
annoyance, the earrings that he had gone to great
lengths to procure so as to present them to his guru
as a token of his gratitude for all his guru’s
teachings. And it is Takşaka who takes it upon
himself, with the approval of Indra, to kill Parikşit,
father of King Janamejaya, in fulfillment of the
curse laid upon Parikşit by the outraged son of an
ascetic seer whom Parikşit had once humiliated by
draping as a necklace around his neck and
shoulders the corpse of a dead snake, in repayment
for the seer’s having been so engrossed in his
meditations as to have failed utterly to respond to
Parikşit’s attempt at conversation. Clearly, envy,
hostility, retaliation, and retribution have not yet
vanished from the scene.
And it is vengeance against this Takşaka that
constitutes the primary motivation for King
Janamejaya’s great sacrifice. For the very sage
Utanka from whom Takşaka stole those earrings,
still nursing his old grudge against Takşaka despite
having ultimately recovered those precious
earrings and presented them to his guru, seeks
15
The first of our three episodes is an attempt to
describe the etiology of the phenomenon,
presumably a familiar one, that sacrificial rituals
can fail, and to prescribe how to avert such failure.
It focuses on the sacrificial fire burning amiably in
its hearth in the abode where dwell the sage Bhrgu
and his wife Pulomā. Bhrgu himself is introduced
as “foremost of those who carry on the Law,” and
his wife characterized as “impeccable” – even the
sacrificial fire, “striving for the Law” and speaking
only truth, is dedicated solely to consuming with
his many tongues of flame the oblations offered
unto the Gods (and ancestors), whose mouth he is.
This fire is the epitome of “good” violence. And
yet the fire’s very dedication to virtue alone
contains within it the seed of cancerous disorder
that is about to engulf this well-ordered universe,
contaminating it with “bad” violence, and so
corrupting the sacrificial rituals that they will fail.
Here is how the Mahabharata tells it.
While Pulomā was heavy with Bhrgu’s unborn
child, but on a day that the sage himself was away,
a certain wandering Rakshasa, or demon,
15
The first of our three episodes is an attempt to
describe the etiology of the phenomenon,
presumably a familiar one, that sacrificial rituals
can fail, and to prescribe how to avert such failure.
It focuses on the sacrificial fire burning amiably in
its hearth in the abode where dwell the sage Bhrgu
and his wife Pulomā. Bhrgu himself is introduced
as “foremost of those who carry on the Law,” and
his wife characterized as “impeccable” – even the
sacrificial fire, “striving for the Law” and speaking
only truth, is dedicated solely to consuming with
his many tongues of flame the oblations offered
unto the Gods (and ancestors), whose mouth he is.
This fire is the epitome of “good” violence. And
yet the fire’s very dedication to virtue alone
contains within it the seed of cancerous disorder
that is about to engulf this well-ordered universe,
contaminating it with “bad” violence, and so
corrupting the sacrificial rituals that they will fail.
Here is how the Mahabharata tells it.
While Pulomā was heavy with Bhrgu’s unborn
child, but on a day that the sage himself was away,
a certain wandering Rakshasa, or demon,
 14 39

revenge by informing King Janamejaya of

Takşaka’s role in the murder of Parikşit, the
King’s father, and urging the King to avenge his
father’s death by dealing death in turn to Takşaka.
The King’s cabinet of priests and sages, however,
find such a primitive revenge far too unworthy: the
far more sanctified course of action they advise is
that it be the King who bring to fruition the
original curse of Kadru, that King Janamejaya
organize the Great Sacrificial Session that will
extirpate all snakes, Takşaka just one more among
them all. They do not see that, far from purifying
the violence of the King’s desire for revenge, they
are instead amplifying it into a bad violence of
absolutely stupefying scope and magnitude. It will
be another instance of sacrifice, defiled by bad
violence, gone horribly wrong.
And so everything is dutifully prepared. The
bright flames of the great sacrificial fire, who now
can consume anything, lick out in eager
anticipation, the priests and sages casts their spells,
and, gradually, caught up in these spells, weakened
and confused by them, snakes from all around
begin falling to their deaths in the sacrificial
flames, much as the Gods under Indra, disoriented
by the flailing wings and snatching talons of a
seemingly omnipresent and indestructible Garuda,
had begun slaughtering each other.
Meanwhile, as has been mentioned, some of the
snakes have been seeking to transcend their
reptilian nature, to attain higher spiritual values
through study, self-mortification, and following
Votive fire before a relief of Hanuman, Hanuman Temple
the path of the Law. One of the most advanced of
between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India

14 39

revenge by informing King Janamejaya of

Takşaka’s role in the murder of Parikşit, the
King’s father, and urging the King to avenge his
father’s death by dealing death in turn to Takşaka.
The King’s cabinet of priests and sages, however,
find such a primitive revenge far too unworthy: the
far more sanctified course of action they advise is
that it be the King who bring to fruition the
original curse of Kadru, that King Janamejaya
organize the Great Sacrificial Session that will
extirpate all snakes, Takşaka just one more among
them all. They do not see that, far from purifying
the violence of the King’s desire for revenge, they
are instead amplifying it into a bad violence of
absolutely stupefying scope and magnitude. It will
be another instance of sacrifice, defiled by bad
violence, gone horribly wrong.
And so everything is dutifully prepared. The
bright flames of the great sacrificial fire, who now
can consume anything, lick out in eager
anticipation, the priests and sages casts their spells,
and, gradually, caught up in these spells, weakened
and confused by them, snakes from all around
begin falling to their deaths in the sacrificial
flames, much as the Gods under Indra, disoriented
by the flailing wings and snatching talons of a
seemingly omnipresent and indestructible Garuda,
had begun slaughtering each other.
Meanwhile, as has been mentioned, some of the
snakes have been seeking to transcend their
reptilian nature, to attain higher spiritual values
through study, self-mortification, and following
Votive fire before a relief of Hanuman, Hanuman Temple
the path of the Law. One of the most advanced of
between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India
 40 13

Chapter 1

The Sacrificial Fire

Vāsuki (Nagaraja), main idol in one of two principal sanctuaries at

Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.

40 13

Chapter 1

The Sacrificial Fire

Vāsuki (Nagaraja), main idol in one of two principal sanctuaries at

Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
 12 41

Cobra idol in figure-eight knot. Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja: main idol in other principal sanc-
Harippad – 32 km. from Alapuzha (Kerala), India. tuary at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.

12 41

Cobra idol in figure-eight knot. Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja: main idol in other principal sanc-
Harippad – 32 km. from Alapuzha (Kerala), India. tuary at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
 42
these, Vāsuki by name, had the good fortune to
raise up the hybrid sage-snake child of his own
sister Jaratkaru and a certain celibate ascetic, the
solitary sage likewise named Jaratkaru, who
accepted Vāsuki’s sister as bride only because
Vāsuki had offered her in the manner one offers
any other alms, and because his own ancestors had
implored him to beget a son, lest they wither away
in the absence of any living progeny at Jaratkaru’s
own death.
This child Āstika, raised by his uncle Vāsuki
and his sister (the celibate father having abandoned
both mother and child over some trespass by the
mother), has advanced to Brahmin status, with
spiritual powers so great that he is fully protected
against the magical spells sweeping other snakes to
their fiery deaths. His will be the miraculous gift to
put an end to the bad violence of this ritual
slaughter. Arriving at the place of the sacrifice, he
so skillfully praises the sacrifice and so flatteringly
lauds the King and his sacrificial priests that the
King is moved to grant him as boon whatever wish
he will make known just as the King’s prime target
Takşaka is about to drop into the flames.
But Takşaka has not yet been seen. Indeed,
Takşaka had sought and obtained the protection of
Indra, confessing and repenting of all his evil
deeds and ways. And Indra, meaning to visit the
great sacrifice, yet not willing to leave Takşaka
behind and unprotected, bid Takşaka hide himself
within Indra’s robes. Only then did he make his
appearance at the great ritual. King Janamejaya,
aware that Indra is protecting Takşaka, extends his
42
these, Vāsuki by name, had the good fortune to
raise up the hybrid sage-snake child of his own
sister Jaratkaru and a certain celibate ascetic, the
solitary sage likewise named Jaratkaru, who
accepted Vāsuki’s sister as bride only because
Vāsuki had offered her in the manner one offers
any other alms, and because his own ancestors had
implored him to beget a son, lest they wither away
in the absence of any living progeny at Jaratkaru’s
own death.
This child Āstika, raised by his uncle Vāsuki
and his sister (the celibate father having abandoned
both mother and child over some trespass by the
mother), has advanced to Brahmin status, with
spiritual powers so great that he is fully protected
against the magical spells sweeping other snakes to
their fiery deaths. His will be the miraculous gift to
put an end to the bad violence of this ritual
slaughter. Arriving at the place of the sacrifice, he
so skillfully praises the sacrifice and so flatteringly
lauds the King and his sacrificial priests that the
King is moved to grant him as boon whatever wish
he will make known just as the King’s prime target
Takşaka is about to drop into the flames.
But Takşaka has not yet been seen. Indeed,
Takşaka had sought and obtained the protection of
Indra, confessing and repenting of all his evil
deeds and ways. And Indra, meaning to visit the
great sacrifice, yet not willing to leave Takşaka
behind and unprotected, bid Takşaka hide himself
within Indra’s robes. Only then did he make his
appearance at the great ritual. King Janamejaya,
aware that Indra is protecting Takşaka, extends his
11
wave upon escalating wave of mimetically inspired
reciprocal violence, ever broadening in scope, that
does not end until one ultimate victim succumbs to
all the rest. Only then does a new order come to
pass, again mimetically sustained, in which the
same mimetic imperative now compels religiously
approved ethical behavior.
The death of this victim is what Girard
therefore calls the “founding murder” of the new
order – it is somehow the “last word” of violence,
so climactic that by its example all further violence
is stopped dead in its tracks. Indeed it is the death
of this solitary victim, who, though demonized
before being slain, becomes deified thereafter, that
serves as model for subsequent rituals of sacrifice,
being the archetype of the “good” violence that
will serve as curative against the “bad” symmetric
violence that the mimetic mechanism of Girard’s
theory would otherwise repeatedly engender, as it
will should ever the distinction between “good”
and “bad” violence become ambiguous.
Indeed, an implicit preoccupation with the
distinction between “good” violence and “bad”
and, for that matter, an innate awareness of the
whole Girardian mechanism, underlie much of the
Mahabharata, rising most conspicuously to the
surface in the telling of the following three
interconnected episodes: the curse of the sage
Bhrgu upon the sacrificial fire, the birth and early
adventures of Garuda, and the Great Snake
Sacrifice of King Janamejaya.
11
wave upon escalating wave of mimetically inspired
reciprocal violence, ever broadening in scope, that
does not end until one ultimate victim succumbs to
all the rest. Only then does a new order come to
pass, again mimetically sustained, in which the
same mimetic imperative now compels religiously
approved ethical behavior.
The death of this victim is what Girard
therefore calls the “founding murder” of the new
order – it is somehow the “last word” of violence,
so climactic that by its example all further violence
is stopped dead in its tracks. Indeed it is the death
of this solitary victim, who, though demonized
before being slain, becomes deified thereafter, that
serves as model for subsequent rituals of sacrifice,
being the archetype of the “good” violence that
will serve as curative against the “bad” symmetric
violence that the mimetic mechanism of Girard’s
theory would otherwise repeatedly engender, as it
will should ever the distinction between “good”
and “bad” violence become ambiguous.
Indeed, an implicit preoccupation with the
distinction between “good” violence and “bad”
and, for that matter, an innate awareness of the
whole Girardian mechanism, underlie much of the
Mahabharata, rising most conspicuously to the
surface in the telling of the following three
interconnected episodes: the curse of the sage
Bhrgu upon the sacrificial fire, the birth and early
adventures of Garuda, and the Great Snake
Sacrifice of King Janamejaya.
 10
sacred ritual – which, alas, despite religion’s
meticulous care to distinguish the good from the
bad, can all too easily degenerate, thanks to the
mimetic mechanism Girard has uncovered, into
“bad” violence all over again.
Certain manifestations of mimesis or mimetic
rivalry will already be familiar, such as ducklings
following their mother, children imitating their
parents’ behavior, apprentices learning from their
masters, or again neighbors outdoing each other in
the care of their lawns, the size of their TV’s, or
the luxury of their automobiles. The fabled blood-
feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys is
another example, one rather more to our point, in
that the violence involved, each act of retribution
mimetically triggering a fresh reprisal, cannot end
until the two families succeed in completely
annihilating one another.
René Girard, a French-American scholar now
Professor Emeritus at Stanford University in
California, has developed a rich mimetic theory
that finds such mimetic mechanisms at work in the
Bible, in the works of Shakespeare, and elsewhere.
In his mimetic analyses of violence and the sacred,
Girard sees the principal aim of religion as being
putting an end to violence, stopping all “bad”
violence by means of suitable “good” violence,
incorporated into religious rituals in a form often
so highly sublimated or purely symbolic that the
generative violence it is based on becomes
virtually imperceptible. He reveals an endless
cycle of mimetic desire, rivalry, revenge, and
retribution, leading in a self-catalyzing cascade to
10
sacred ritual – which, alas, despite religion’s
meticulous care to distinguish the good from the
bad, can all too easily degenerate, thanks to the
mimetic mechanism Girard has uncovered, into
“bad” violence all over again.
Certain manifestations of mimesis or mimetic
rivalry will already be familiar, such as ducklings
following their mother, children imitating their
parents’ behavior, apprentices learning from their
masters, or again neighbors outdoing each other in
the care of their lawns, the size of their TV’s, or
the luxury of their automobiles. The fabled blood-
feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys is
another example, one rather more to our point, in
that the violence involved, each act of retribution
mimetically triggering a fresh reprisal, cannot end
until the two families succeed in completely
annihilating one another.
René Girard, a French-American scholar now
Professor Emeritus at Stanford University in
California, has developed a rich mimetic theory
that finds such mimetic mechanisms at work in the
Bible, in the works of Shakespeare, and elsewhere.
In his mimetic analyses of violence and the sacred,
Girard sees the principal aim of religion as being
putting an end to violence, stopping all “bad”
violence by means of suitable “good” violence,
incorporated into religious rituals in a form often
so highly sublimated or purely symbolic that the
generative violence it is based on becomes
virtually imperceptible. He reveals an endless
cycle of mimetic desire, rivalry, revenge, and
retribution, leading in a self-catalyzing cascade to
43
lust for vengeance so far as to include even Indra
in its scope, shouting ([M], p. 119),
‘Priests! If Takşaka the Snake is in Indra’s keeping,
then hurl him into the fire with Indra himself!’
So once again we have two Indras in opposition
against each other, with who knows what
disastrous calamity in the offing, two monstrous
doubles, not this time Garuda, the Indra of birds,
but King Janamejaya, the Indra of his earthly
subjects, facing off against the celestial Indra, who
had, after all, looked approvingly upon Takşaka’s
killing of Parikşit – for the sake not this time of the
Soma, but of Takşaka.
Poor Takşaka, meanwhile, though hidden in
Indra’s robe, and ostensibly under Indra’s
protection, becomes so confused and weakened by
the magical incantations that he falls out of his
hiding place within Indra’s garments, raises his
head to the skies, and, in his weakness and
confusion, is nearly about to fall into the sacrificial
fire. This, then – so decree the priests – is the
moment for Āstika to make known the boon he
wishes, and for the King to grant it. Alas for the
King, but not a moment too soon for Takşaka,
Āstika utters his wish ([M], p. 120):
‘I choose that your Session be stopped and no
more Snakes come down.’
Thus would this “bad” violence be brought to an
end, the unthinkable calamity averted, and the
King’s will, to have Takşaka and the remaining
snakes all reduced to mere ashes, thwarted.
Furious at such a request, the King tries by all
43
lust for vengeance so far as to include even Indra
in its scope, shouting ([M], p. 119),
‘Priests! If Takşaka the Snake is in Indra’s keeping,
then hurl him into the fire with Indra himself!’
So once again we have two Indras in opposition
against each other, with who knows what
disastrous calamity in the offing, two monstrous
doubles, not this time Garuda, the Indra of birds,
but King Janamejaya, the Indra of his earthly
subjects, facing off against the celestial Indra, who
had, after all, looked approvingly upon Takşaka’s
killing of Parikşit – for the sake not this time of the
Soma, but of Takşaka.
Poor Takşaka, meanwhile, though hidden in
Indra’s robe, and ostensibly under Indra’s
protection, becomes so confused and weakened by
the magical incantations that he falls out of his
hiding place within Indra’s garments, raises his
head to the skies, and, in his weakness and
confusion, is nearly about to fall into the sacrificial
fire. This, then – so decree the priests – is the
moment for Āstika to make known the boon he
wishes, and for the King to grant it. Alas for the
King, but not a moment too soon for Takşaka,
Āstika utters his wish ([M], p. 120):
‘I choose that your Session be stopped and no
more Snakes come down.’
Thus would this “bad” violence be brought to an
end, the unthinkable calamity averted, and the
King’s will, to have Takşaka and the remaining
snakes all reduced to mere ashes, thwarted.
Furious at such a request, the King tries by all
 44
possible means to coax Āstika into changing his
wish, for he would sooner even break his royal
promise than grant such a boon. But the priests,
“knowing their Veda” ([M], p. 120), compel the
King to relent, to follow the Law, to grant the boon
he has promised, to let go, as Garuda let go his
feather, his desire for revenge, to call a halt to the
sacrifice, and thus both to spare Takşaka, with all
his remaining kin, and to desist from further
enmity with Indra. Again we have the parallel: just
as Garuda, in contention with Indra over the Soma,
ultimately relinquishes the Soma to Indra again, so
King Janamejaya is to relinquish Takşaka to the
protection, however imperfect, of Indra, and to
renounce all further desire of revenge.
This premature termination of the Sacrificial
Session, like the release of Garuda’s feather,
becomes the source of great satisfaction to all the
participants: all are relieved that an improper and
unworthy revenge, sanctimoniously garbed as a
Great Ritual Sacrifice, but in fact the very worst of
a devastatingly bad violence, corrupt and impure at
its very core, was being nipped in the bud. Only
perhaps the ravenous sacrificial fire, cheated of yet
further serpentine morsels, may have been
disconsolate, but the Mahabharata does not say.
What is clear is that this Sacrificial Session truly
was the epitome of “bad” violence, a senseless
mass extermination motivated only by a base
desire for retribution and not by any religious
principles at all. Equally clear is that the selfless
boon sought by the Brahminic snake-sage Āstika,
whose highly advanced spirituality stemmed from
44
possible means to coax Āstika into changing his
wish, for he would sooner even break his royal
promise than grant such a boon. But the priests,
“knowing their Veda” ([M], p. 120), compel the
King to relent, to follow the Law, to grant the boon
he has promised, to let go, as Garuda let go his
feather, his desire for revenge, to call a halt to the
sacrifice, and thus both to spare Takşaka, with all
his remaining kin, and to desist from further
enmity with Indra. Again we have the parallel: just
as Garuda, in contention with Indra over the Soma,
ultimately relinquishes the Soma to Indra again, so
King Janamejaya is to relinquish Takşaka to the
protection, however imperfect, of Indra, and to
renounce all further desire of revenge.
This premature termination of the Sacrificial
Session, like the release of Garuda’s feather,
becomes the source of great satisfaction to all the
participants: all are relieved that an improper and
unworthy revenge, sanctimoniously garbed as a
Great Ritual Sacrifice, but in fact the very worst of
a devastatingly bad violence, corrupt and impure at
its very core, was being nipped in the bud. Only
perhaps the ravenous sacrificial fire, cheated of yet
further serpentine morsels, may have been
disconsolate, but the Mahabharata does not say.
What is clear is that this Sacrificial Session truly
was the epitome of “bad” violence, a senseless
mass extermination motivated only by a base
desire for retribution and not by any religious
principles at all. Equally clear is that the selfless
boon sought by the Brahminic snake-sage Āstika,
whose highly advanced spirituality stemmed from
9
If we try to understand the significance of the
vindictive curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by
the vengeful sage Bhrgu, and of its consequences –
if we seek to grasp the meaning of the circum-
stances surrounding the birth of the great bird
Garuda, his struggle against his snake siblings, his
successful quest for the divine Soma, and his
conflict and ultimate accommodation with Indra –
and if we examine the vicious Snake Sacrifice of
King Janamejaya, how these prior events led up to
it, and how it is surprisingly aborted – we find
ourselves in the presence of metaphors and
imagery whose content is not easy to grasp.
We shall argue, following the well-developed
complex of insights that René Girard has
developed in his extensive studies on violence and
the sacred, that everywhere their focus is on the
differentiation of “bad” violence from “good,” and
on the necessity to block the “bad” violence of
uncontrolled reprisal (which Girard’s mimetic
theory describes as part of a mimetic cycle of
desire, rivalry, revenge, and retribution) by means
of the controlled “good” violence of appropriate
9
If we try to understand the significance of the
vindictive curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by
the vengeful sage Bhrgu, and of its consequences –
if we seek to grasp the meaning of the circum-
stances surrounding the birth of the great bird
Garuda, his struggle against his snake siblings, his
successful quest for the divine Soma, and his
conflict and ultimate accommodation with Indra –
and if we examine the vicious Snake Sacrifice of
King Janamejaya, how these prior events led up to
it, and how it is surprisingly aborted – we find
ourselves in the presence of metaphors and
imagery whose content is not easy to grasp.
We shall argue, following the well-developed
complex of insights that René Girard has
developed in his extensive studies on violence and
the sacred, that everywhere their focus is on the
differentiation of “bad” violence from “good,” and
on the necessity to block the “bad” violence of
uncontrolled reprisal (which Girard’s mimetic
theory describes as part of a mimetic cycle of
desire, rivalry, revenge, and retribution) by means
of the controlled “good” violence of appropriate
 8 45

his lifelong dedication to the discipline of “good”

violence in the form of devoted study, deep
meditation, and determined self-sacrifice and
abstemiousness – that the King simply end the
Ritual – issued from the conviction that even the
King must take inspiration from the example
Garuda provided in ending his symmetric violence
with Indra, when, in a single grand gesture, he let
go both his injured feather and with it any
lingering desire for further retaliation: the King,
too, must put aside his evil desire for revenge. And
put it aside he does.
Takşaka, of course, was spared, as was Āstika’s
uncle Vāsuki, whose nephew’s spiritual powers
were able to protect him in any event from all
harm. And King Janamejaya was able to continue
his rule without further displays of vengeance. The
“bad” violence, which admittedly did result in the
tragic death of a multitude of snakes in the all-
consuming flames of the sacrificial fire, was once
again contained, thanks to the timely arrival of
Indra, the helplessness of Takşaka, whom Indra
proved unable to protect, and the Brahminic
wisdom of Āstika. The sacrificed snakes were,
somehow, the price to be paid for learning, once
again, how to purge the sacrificial ritual of its
“bad” violence.
The rituals of sacrifice, first threatened with
becoming ineffective through the contamination of
the once pure sacrificial fire as a result of Bhrgu’s
curse, and now shown to be doubly capable of
“bad” violence as a result of the priests’ readiness
Detail of sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple,
to turn the letter of the Law against the spirit of the
Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

8 45

his lifelong dedication to the discipline of “good”

violence in the form of devoted study, deep
meditation, and determined self-sacrifice and
abstemiousness – that the King simply end the
Ritual – issued from the conviction that even the
King must take inspiration from the example
Garuda provided in ending his symmetric violence
with Indra, when, in a single grand gesture, he let
go both his injured feather and with it any
lingering desire for further retaliation: the King,
too, must put aside his evil desire for revenge. And
put it aside he does.
Takşaka, of course, was spared, as was Āstika’s
uncle Vāsuki, whose nephew’s spiritual powers
were able to protect him in any event from all
harm. And King Janamejaya was able to continue
his rule without further displays of vengeance. The
“bad” violence, which admittedly did result in the
tragic death of a multitude of snakes in the all-
consuming flames of the sacrificial fire, was once
again contained, thanks to the timely arrival of
Indra, the helplessness of Takşaka, whom Indra
proved unable to protect, and the Brahminic
wisdom of Āstika. The sacrificed snakes were,
somehow, the price to be paid for learning, once
again, how to purge the sacrificial ritual of its
“bad” violence.
The rituals of sacrifice, first threatened with
becoming ineffective through the contamination of
the once pure sacrificial fire as a result of Bhrgu’s
curse, and now shown to be doubly capable of
“bad” violence as a result of the priests’ readiness
Detail of sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple,
to turn the letter of the Law against the spirit of the
Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 46 7

Law in furtherance of one powerful ruler’s

personal vendetta, are so out of control that only
“letting go” of them, as Garuda let go his injured
feather, can forestall the devastating harm they are
apt to cause. This, then, may be the Mahabharata’s
current lesson regarding the twin problems of how
“good” violence can turn to “bad,” and how to
make it “good” again.

Foreword

Banyan tree with sandstone snake idols, Varadaraja-

perumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

46 7

Law in furtherance of one powerful ruler’s

personal vendetta, are so out of control that only
“letting go” of them, as Garuda let go his injured
feather, can forestall the devastating harm they are
apt to cause. This, then, may be the Mahabharata’s
current lesson regarding the twin problems of how
“good” violence can turn to “bad,” and how to
make it “good” again.

Foreword

Banyan tree with sandstone snake idols, Varadaraja-

perumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
6 47

Afterword

Offering place with cobra. Small roadside temple

between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India.

6 47

Afterword

Offering place with cobra. Small roadside temple

between Mysore and Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
 48

Table of Contents
Foreword 7
1. The Sacrificial Fire 13
2. Garuda 21
3. The Snake Sacrifice 35
Afterword 47
Bibliography 51

Turmeric-dusted votive idol.
Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
Table of Illustrations
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Kanchipuram Cover
Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, Mahabalipuram 2
Small roadside temple with cobra (Karnataka) 6
Sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 8
Cobra idol in figure-eight knot, Mannarasala 12
Votive fire, Hanuman Temple (Karnataka) 14
Shivalingam with cobra and Krishna, Kanchipuram 18
Garuda guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple, Madras 20
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Mysore 22
Krishna battling cobra, Vishnu temple, Cochin 26
Krishna seated on cobra, Kesava Temple, Mysore 27
Garuda as festival vehicle, Mysore 34
Snake at edge of fire pit, Durga Temple, Mysore 36
Vāsuki at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple 40
Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja 41
Snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 46
Turmeric-dusted votive idol, Mannarasala Temple 48
Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle 51

48

Table of Contents
Foreword 7
1. The Sacrificial Fire 13
2. Garuda 21
3. The Snake Sacrifice 35
Afterword 47
Bibliography 51

Turmeric-dusted votive idol.
Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple, Harippad (Kerala), India.
Table of Illustrations
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Kanchipuram Cover
Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, Mahabalipuram 2
Small roadside temple with cobra (Karnataka) 6
Sandstone snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 8
Cobra idol in figure-eight knot, Mannarasala 12
Votive fire, Hanuman Temple (Karnataka) 14
Shivalingam with cobra and Krishna, Kanchipuram 18
Garuda guarding Sri Parthasarathy Temple, Madras 20
Garuda as vehicle of Vishnu, Mysore 22
Krishna battling cobra, Vishnu temple, Cochin 26
Krishna seated on cobra, Kesava Temple, Mysore 27
Garuda as festival vehicle, Mysore 34
Snake at edge of fire pit, Durga Temple, Mysore 36
Vāsuki at Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple 40
Sarpa Yakshi, consort of Nagaraja 41
Snake idols, Varadarajaperumal Temple 46
Turmeric-dusted votive idol, Mannarasala Temple 48
Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle 51

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Mikolajewska
All rights reserved
Technical and editorial advisor: F. E. J. Linton
Published in the United States in 2004 by
The Lintons’ Video Press
36 Everit Street, New Haven, CT
06511-2208 USA
e-mail inquiries: tlvpress@yahoo.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1-929865-29-1
ISBN-10: 1-929865-29-5
Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Mikolajewska
All rights reserved
Technical and editorial advisor: F. E. J. Linton
Published in the United States in 2004 by
The Lintons’ Video Press
36 Everit Street, New Haven, CT
06511-2208 USA
e-mail inquiries: tlvpress@yahoo.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1-929865-29-1
ISBN: 1-929865-29-5
49
We began this metaphoric analysis of King
Janamejaya’s Great Snake Sacrifice with a study
of the curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by the
vengeful sage Bhrgu. The point the Mahabharata
makes in this episode is that “good” violence can
somehow be contaminated by “bad” – the
Mahabharata even reveals portions of the classic
Girardian mechanism of mimetic desire,
consequent mimetic rivalry, and subsequent
unrestrained revenge and retaliation as the source
of such contamination. And Brahma’s “solution”
to the resulting failure of the sacred rituals, the
advice, in effect, to accept the bad with the good,
as a necessary price for the good, only further
obscures the distinction between “good” violence
and “bad,” no matter how joyfully it is first
welcomed as a resolution of the problem of failed
sacrifice.
The Snake Sacrifice itself, in particular, is an
extreme example of the consequences of such
confusion between “good” violence and “bad.” For
it is in reality the worst kind of “bad” violence –
the final almost apocalyptic, retaliatory response in
49
We began this metaphoric analysis of King
Janamejaya’s Great Snake Sacrifice with a study
of the curse cast upon the Sacrificial Fire by the
vengeful sage Bhrgu. The point the Mahabharata
makes in this episode is that “good” violence can
somehow be contaminated by “bad” – the
Mahabharata even reveals portions of the classic
Girardian mechanism of mimetic desire,
consequent mimetic rivalry, and subsequent
unrestrained revenge and retaliation as the source
of such contamination. And Brahma’s “solution”
to the resulting failure of the sacred rituals, the
advice, in effect, to accept the bad with the good,
as a necessary price for the good, only further
obscures the distinction between “good” violence
and “bad,” no matter how joyfully it is first
welcomed as a resolution of the problem of failed
sacrifice.
The Snake Sacrifice itself, in particular, is an
extreme example of the consequences of such
confusion between “good” violence and “bad.” For
it is in reality the worst kind of “bad” violence –
the final almost apocalyptic, retaliatory response in
 50

yet another chain of mimetic rivalry and revenge –

but cloaked in the apparent respectability of a
sacred sacrificial ritual. The solution here,
however, as Āstika offers it, is not to accept the
bad, but to stop it: in this instance, to force the
“Good” Violence
vengeance-bent King to renounce his desire for
revenge. And the basis for this solution seems to
versus “Bad”
live in the example Garuda provides.
The Garuda episode, in addition, seems to A Girardian Analysis of
illustrate a full cycle of the Girardian mimetic King Janamejaya’s Snake Sacrifice
mechanism. Even before Garuda’s birth, mimetic and Allied Events
desire, mimetic rivalry, mimetic revenge are
rampant. Garuda himself is depicted in mimetic
roles that are various and almost contradictory: he With 18 full-color illustrations
starts as victim in relation to his snake-siblings; he
becomes destroyer of “bad” violence when he
devour the monstrous doubles of elephant and Barbara Mikolajewska
turtle; he is the sacrificial one against whom all the in cooperation with
Gods under Indra are arrayed; he is the former F. E. J. Linton
victim deified by his snake-siblings upon his return
with the Soma; but primarily, for us, his is the
example how to end “bad” violence, in his choice
to let go his damaged feather and to forgo
vengeance against Indra for causing that damage.
It is this lesson of renunciation of vengeance
that Āstika succeeds in peaceably forcing upon
King Janamejaya, bringing the King’s “bad”
violence to an end before it could fully attain the
apocalyptic proportions it intended. Here, at last,
truly “bad” violence masquerading as “good” has The Lintons’ Video Press
been unmasked and successfully thwarted. New Haven
2004

50

yet another chain of mimetic rivalry and revenge –

but cloaked in the apparent respectability of a
sacred sacrificial ritual. The solution here,
however, as Āstika offers it, is not to accept the
bad, but to stop it: in this instance, to force the
“Good” Violence
vengeance-bent King to renounce his desire for
revenge. And the basis for this solution seems to
versus “Bad”
live in the example Garuda provides.
The Garuda episode, in addition, seems to A Girardian Analysis of
illustrate a full cycle of the Girardian mimetic King Janamejaya’s Snake Sacrifice
mechanism. Even before Garuda’s birth, mimetic and Allied Events
desire, mimetic rivalry, mimetic revenge are
rampant. Garuda himself is depicted in mimetic
roles that are various and almost contradictory: he With 18 full-color illustrations
starts as victim in relation to his snake-siblings; he
becomes destroyer of “bad” violence when he
devour the monstrous doubles of elephant and Barbara Mikolajewska
turtle; he is the sacrificial one against whom all the in cooperation with
Gods under Indra are arrayed; he is the former F. E. J. Linton
victim deified by his snake-siblings upon his return
with the Soma; but primarily, for us, his is the
example how to end “bad” violence, in his choice
to let go his damaged feather and to forgo
vengeance against Indra for causing that damage.
It is this lesson of renunciation of vengeance
that Āstika succeeds in peaceably forcing upon
King Janamejaya, bringing the King’s “bad”
violence to an end before it could fully attain the
apocalyptic proportions it intended. Here, at last,
truly “bad” violence masquerading as “good” has The Lintons’ Video Press
been unmasked and successfully thwarted. New Haven
2004
 51

Bibliography

[M] The Mahābhārata, 1. The Book of the

Beginning, translated and edited by J.A.B. van
Buitenen. The University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle, Sri Ranga-

Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, depicting snake deities and other
natha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
creatures and divinities Mahabalipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.

51

Bibliography

[M] The Mahābhārata, 1. The Book of the

Beginning, translated and edited by J.A.B. van
Buitenen. The University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Coiled snake and elephants: festival vehicle, Sri Ranga-

Fragment of Arjuna’s Penance, depicting snake deities and other
natha Swamy Temple, Mysore (Karnataka), India.
creatures and divinities, Mahabalipuram (Tamil Nadu), India.
 MIKOLAJEWSKA & LINTON • VIOLENCE

Set in Times New Roman using

Microsoft Office Premium 2000,
these pages were produced on an
HP LaserJet LJ-4500-DN printer.

MIKOLAJEWSKA & LINTON • VIOLENCE

Set in Times New Roman using

Microsoft Office Premium 2000,
these pages were produced on an
HP LaserJet LJ-4500-DN printer.