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The Rajasthani oral narrative of Devn¡r¡ya¸

 Textual Narrative...

After reading about verbal and visual narratives or even an "oral-visual" narrative in the foregoing chapters, the use of the word text in the heading of this chapter may come as a surprise. After all the oral-visual narrative is not a text in the strict sense of the term: its meanings emerge only in the interactive contexts of different oral renderings and are therefore not bound by the apparent limitations of the written or printed word¹⁶ Thus the oral-visual narrative is not, like the printed text or written word, held within the physical constraints of letters and pages that give the interpreter of texts the feeling of being able to dispassionately examine a motionless, well-defined object. But by choosing the medium of the written word to represent an oral-visual narrative, I am involved in transforming it precisely into a text.¹⁷ The presentation of the narrative in transcription and translation is thus, on one level, an attempt to render it "manageable", to "catch" its runaway meaning. Thus the emergent and ephemeral nature of an oral recitation is locked into lines, passages, pages - into a book. Simultaneity, spontaneity, and non-linearity are reshaped into controlled, linear discourse. However, it is not my aim here to delve into the limitations and politics of scholarly representation. The purpose of this brief exercise in self-reflection is to remind the reader (and the writer!) that the interpretations made below are not intended to be binding and final. They are offered as a particular way of imagining the narrative of Devn¡r¡ya¸.

Thus to imagine a text is not only to perceive it in a distinct manner, but also to think of it as something unbounded and open, as a series of perspectives caught within an "ocean of interpretations". As Barthes (1981: 135) in his most original reading of a story by Edgar Allen Poe has remarked:

We are then going to take a narrative text, and we're going to read it, as slowly as necessary, stopping as often as we have to (being at ease is an essential dimension of our work), and try to locate and classify without rigour, not all the meanings of the text (which would be impossible because the text is open to infinity: no reader, no subject, no science can arrest the text) but the forms and codes according to which meanings are possible. We are going to locate avenues of meaning. Our aim is not to find the meaning, nor even a meaning of the text,... Our aim is to manage to conceive, to imagine, to live the plurality of the text, the opening of its 'signifiance.¹⁸

Definitions

One of the challenges facing the kind of approach to texts suggested above is that of definitions. To define is to outline, to make clear, but also to bind and limit. Definitions, like words, "throw up" associations, qualities, ways of seeing things. Although in the normal course of events we can hardly avoid classifications and definitions, it is still worthwhile to critically reflect on some of the issues at hand. In the sections to follow I thus discuss certain questions relevant to our understanding of the narrative of Devn¡r¡ya¸ as a text: What kind of text is it? Can or should we name It in terms of a particular genre? For example, is it right to call it an epic? What are some of the problems that beset such a definition? What if we did not call it an epic or legend or myth etc. etc.? Supposing that instead of trying to define it, we were to concentrate on listening to the kinds of discourses that are expressed through it? What if, instead of searching for its 'origins' in the historical past - as scholars of epic texts tend to do - we were to place it within a network of texts with no real beginning or end excepting for a series of interrelationships? What if it is the quality of these interrelationships, and the discourses articulated through the narrative that actually define and characterize it? - Define, not as belonging to a class of texts, but in a particular sense of revealing its "significance" and meaning?

Thus if there is one thing that can be said in certain terms about the narrative text of Devn¡r¡ya¸, then this is that it is a narrative: It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Moreover, the end and the middle are entailed in the beginning. In other words the beginning contains a prefiguration of things to come. The unfolding of this prefiguration provides the narrative with a plot or rather a number of subplots that finally culminate in the completion of the narrative's objective. However, to move beyond this tautologous-sounding description and to specify or determine the exact genre the narrative belongs to, is to tread uncertain grounds. The reason for this uncertainity does not lie in the complex nature of the narrative or in a lack of discussion on the question of genres and their definitions. As pointed out above, the reason lies in the deliberate avoidance of rigid classifications and typologies that often narrow down the ways in which a text can speak to us.

We are not subtle enough to perceive the probably absolute flow of becoming; the permanent exsists only thanks to our coarse organs which summarize things and reduce them to common levels, when in fact nothing exists in that form. The tree is at each instant a new thing; we assert form because we do not grasp the subtlety of an absolute movement.¹⁹

The text is likewise this tree to which we can (provisionally) give a name only because of the coarseness of our organs.²⁰

Of course the problem of definitions could be easily solved by saying - as has been frequently done - that the narrative of Devn¡r¡ya¸ is an epic narrative.²¹ But by labelling it an epic we would conjure up a set of questions considered relevant to what we understand to be the content, structure, and significance of narratives classified as 'epic'. The same issue would arise were we to call it a myth or a legend or a historical account, or a ballad etc. The use of each of these labels would naturally open up certain areas of enquiry, at the same time they would also conceal aspects of the narrative. Thus, for example, while broadly speaking the term epic brings to mind the 'heroic', the term myth would suggest the divine or the supernatural. Legend on the other hand would suggest a concrete historical context. For as Hiltebeitel (1990: 31-32) points out:

Epic, whatever its stylistic features and its origins as a narrative and poetic genre, should be regarded, in terms of context as falling under the heading of legend. And legend, with epic as a subcategory, should be distinguished from myth....

Myths are stories which take place in the fullest expanses of time and space (they articulate a cosmology); they deal with the origin, nature, and destiny of the cosmos, and their most prominent characters are gods....

Legends are stories which take place at a specific time and on a specific terrain; they deal with the origins, nature and destiny of men, and their most prominent characters are heroes.

Hiltebeitel adds that in the context of Indo-European epic and mythic tradition "only in a few cases is there a sustained interaction between the figures of myth and epic: for instance, in Rome, Greece, and India.". (ibid., p. 30). But he concludes by stating that "Only in India, then, are the epic poets not only fully aware of, but deeply involved in, a living mythology." (ibid., p. 31). There are, thus, overlappings, borrowings, and transfers between the mythic and the epic. This is particularly the case in the examples of the two great epics MBh. and R¡m., but also strongly characteristic of the narrative text of Devn¡r¡ya¸. The narrative is, on the one hand, firmly situated in a particular epochal and historical time as well as regional geography and landscape; on the other hand themes, characters, and events are permeated with mythological personages and structures also found in the Pur¡¸¡s, the MBh., and the R¡m. In fact, the temporal and spatial locale of the narrative cannot be understood without the mythological framework which accompanies it. However, to limit the narrative's scope to the mythic and epic would be to undermine its significance as a living text in association with a cult. Although mythic may suggest a religious connotation it does not fully bring out the contextual meaning of the narrative. As part of the cult of Devn¡r¡ya¸, the narrative thus has an important religious significance. By this I do not only mean that its performance is connected to the worship' of Devn¡r¡ya¸; to the fulfilment of vows; or to the concrete involvement of Devn¡r¡ya¸ in his devotees' lives. The narrative in itself creates a discourse about things 'religious': divine testimony, sacred territory, divine power, sacrifice, devotion etc. The narrative therefore articulates and constructs a world in which the sources, objects and subjects of religious power are defined and identified. This fundamental concern of the narrative is what provides a linkage between the 'mythic' and the 'epic' elements of the narrative. But, in fact, in terms of the devotees' own perception of the narrative, no such distinction between mythic and epic is maintained. The borders between the 'asituated" (divine) and the 'situated' (heroic) are blurred. The narrative is 'simply' about dharam. Dharam is thus the overarching factor that spans the mythic and the epic.

Myth, Legend, or History?

Given the connections and the distinctions postulated between epic, legend, and myth, one of the questions repeatedly asked by scholars of epics²²- both written and oral - has been about 'historical origins': What are the historically 'testifiable' events that underly the formation of an epic narrative? Who are the historically 'real' characters the epic narrative takes up and weaves into its heroic and divine web? How is physical, social, and historical 'reality' transformed and represented through the edifice of an epic. ²³ In short, how do epics evolve from concrete events located in time and space to the grand narratives that they are, incorporating both the legendary and the mythical? This historically oriented, evolutionistic approach to our understanding of epics - whether in India or elsewhere - has, as mentioned above, also permeated our understanding of oral epics. The strongest case for this has been articulated in S. H. Blackburn's work on oral epics in India. Blackburn (1985: 259f.) suggests a scheme in which the divine hero/heroine of an epic regularly originates from a 'real' person who has suffered a premature or violent death:

To the well-known Hindu perspectives on death, the cults of the deified dead add something new. In the Pur¡¸¡s (and in ancient Tamil poetry) death is deified, but in these [folk] cults it is the dead themselves who are deified... not just any death has this effect; only a special kind makes the dead hero an object of worship. First, the death must be premature, an end that cuts short a person's normal life span. Second, and more important, the death must be violent, an act of aggression or a sudden blow form nature.. . Lastly, the death that deifies is undeserved; the person killed is an innocent (if often fated) victim.

Blackburn arrives at this threefold criteria from his reading of narratives in South India, particularly those belonging to the Bow Song tradition. Whereas these particular elements surrounding the death of a victim./ hero lie, according to Blackburn, at the core of such folk cults, the stories themselves reveal a pattern that seems to conceal the human origins of the hero / heroine:

Stories (especially epics) about folk heroes/gods in India seem to develop in a particular pattern by adding two primary motifs: a supernatural birth and then an identification with a pan-Indian god or hero. The effect of this pattern is that the human history of the deified hero is gradually absorbed into a divine pedigree; often his birth and his death are forgotten or simply explained away as a consequence of a prior curse, vow, or boon from Kail¡sa. ...Even the stories of áakyamuni Buddha, Mah¡v¢ra, and áa´kara were constructed to establish the prior divinity of these 'historical' figures, to show that they were, from the very beginning, manifestations of a transcendental reality.²⁴

This developmental hypothesis of Blackburn's has been further elaborated upon in the Introduction and First Chapter of "Oral Epics in India". Moreover, his developmental understanding of oral epics has been taken up in studies conducted in other regions of India.²⁵ In the case of Rajasthan, it is J. D. Smith who applies the hypothesis most stringently to his study of the epic of P¡b£j¢. Chapters four and five of his book on P¡b£j¢ are entitled: "P¡b£j¢: the man" and "P¡b£j¢: the god". The chapter headings themselves suggest a division between the 'historical' and the 'mythical' or 'legendary' P¡b£j¢. In the chapter entitled "P¡b£j¢: the man" Smith attempts to sift out historical evidence for the existence of P¡b£j¢ from various sources, literary and other. The center piece of the analysis is the comparison of a 17th century chronicle (Khay¡ta) in which the story of P¡b£j¢ is recounted by the chronicler, Nai¸as¢, with present-day versions of the epic:

...Nai¸as¢'s version of it [the epic] bears important and deep-seated similarities to that of the modern epic singers. The possibility of a direct connexion between the two is further enhanced by the near certainty that Nai¸as¢'s own story was oral in origin... it seems likely that these two forms of the story are earlier and later versions from the same tradition, or perhaps from two closely connected traditions.²⁶

Smith suggests that divergences between the two forms of the story, i.e. Nai¸as¢'s and present-day epic singers', hinges on the effects of "a single process" which he characterizes as "the inflation of history" (ibid., p. 73). Smith warns us, while concurring with Henige (1974: 52-3,78-81,201-6), of "the unreliability (in terms of 'our' history) of traditional orally transmitted history in general, and of the treatment of early material in the Rajasthani chronicles in particular." (Smith 1991: 73). Then, after reviewing historical sources and the evidence from topology, he finally concludes that:

In the end, then, we can say that the likelihood is that P¡b£j¢ did exist, probably in the early fourteenth century A. D., and that some parts of Nai¸as¢'s account of him. . .may well approximate to the truth. . .what we are told of him corresponds closely with what we should expect of a small Rajp£t chief in early medieval times: he was a brigand who lived by his wits and his weapons. What, exactly led to his deification we shall never know.. it is important to remember that traditional orally transmitted history and conventional history are informed by two very different conceptions of what history is... Traditional history is not concerned with facts as such; it is concerned not with the right story but with the best story.²⁷

In the subsequent chapter entitled "P¡b£j¢: the god", Smith, following the general hypothesis that (oral) epic narratives must have an historical core, attempts to explain how the figure of P¡b£j¢ develops from that of a 'noble brigand' (or bandit) to an avat¡ra or manifestation / incarnation of god (or a god; in this case P¡b£j¢ is considered to be an reincarnation of R¡ma's brother, LakÀma¸a). According to Smith (and Kothari 1989), P¡b£j¢ belongs to a category of minor deities in Rajasthan called bhomiyos: "These are local heroes who are venerated after their death, the classical case being the hero who dies in the act of rescuing stolen cows." (ibid., p. 90). Not only is P¡b£j¢'s narrative similar to those of bhomiyos, but also his iconography, which, on memorial stones, depicts him on a horse carrying a spear "with the sun and moon at the top as witness to his glory." (ibid., p. 90). But in contrast to narratives centering around bhomiyos, P¡b£j¢'s epic is steeped in 'background mythology'. In other words the characters in the epic, including p¡b£j¢'s are incarnations (avat¡ra) or reincarnations of deities of 'classical' mythology. Thus, for example, P¡b£j¢ is an avat¡ra of LakÀma¸a, his faithful companion Dh®bo, an avat¡ra of Hanum¡n, his bride Phulvanti, an avat¡ra of R¡va¸a's sister á£rpa¸akh¡, his brother-in-law and enemy Jindr¡v Kh¢c¢, an avat¡ra of R¡va¸a; his horse Kesar K¡½am¢, an avat¡ra of the Goddess; and Lady Dev¡½, the C¡ra¸ woman whose cows he protects, also an incarnation of the Goddess. Not only are a number of characters informed by a notion of avat¡ra, but many events too have a 'cosmic significance': "The existence of this mythological background to the epic of P¡b£j¢ is crucial... A 'drama' of cosmic importance is being played out on earth, and human actions are now doubly accountable: they must simultaneously further both human aspiration and the cosmic plan." (ibid., p. 94). This double accountability is expressed in a tension "between free will and determination" (ibid., p. 95). This tension - one between daiva and pauruÀa - is also well-known in the Sanskrit epics. ²⁸ In the concluding section of the chapter Smith is explicit about the 'evolutionary' nature of the mythological background to the events and characters of p¡b£j¢'s epic:

There can be little doubt that the provision of a mythological background to the story of P¡b£j¢-with all its consequences for the meaning of that story was originally motivated by the desire to secure a higher status for the god by linking him to the gods of the 'Great Tradition'. I am not...suggesting that once a particularly cunning and devious bhopo consciously invented the account of the incarnation system...no doubt the idea evolved slowly and unconciously. But evolution is generally purposeful, whether conscious or not. The priests of P¡b£j¢ have used their epic as a medium for the theophany of their god.²⁹

Smith thus endorses Blackburn's view that oral epics evolve from historical events and historical figures, which are then gradually nourished with epic and pur¡¸ic mythologies invariably to raise the status of their respective heroes and cults.

The approach outlined above would thus appear to me to assume the inevitability of historical processes underlying the formation of complex folk narratives, which at a final stage of development assimilate or 'borrow' the notion of the avat¡ra from 'classical' sources. Folk epics according to this view are thus not generated in an environment which 'already always knows' of avat¡ras and so-called 'classical' mythology, but in a supposedly isolated or rarified literary and religious environment in which the corporeal existence of heroes and heroines is foremost in the minds of hypothetical storymakers. Rather than propose that the idea of the avat¡ra may in fact be a 'key' concept reworked and applied by different religious and literary streams, Smith and Blackburn suggest that the notion is 'grafted' onto folk narratives in order to provide legitimacy in the context of the so-called 'Great Tradition'. Beneath this conjecture there appears to be not only a desire (albeit unconscious!) to sift fact from fiction, and history from myth, but also to view the growth of texts in a linear manner moving from simpler to complex, local to regional, regional to transregional etc. along the analogy of evolutionary theories found in both the natural sciences and anthropology: literary and cultural traditions are thus implicitly represented in teleological fashion.

In terms of a general theory of texts, the position formulated by Smith and Blackburn also seems to unreflectingly draw on an epistemology at home in Jewish-Christian theological traditions, which in turn has given philology its theoretical underpinnings. As Hiltebeitel (1995: 27f.) aptly points out there have been two important influences on the study of (oral and) 'classical' epics. The first concerns A. B. Lord's oral-formulaic theory, which has been applied to Homeric studies and the other, which has been.

...drawn from the higher criticism of nineteenth-century scholarship on sources, strata, and interpolations, [and] has prevailed a critical orthodoxy in modern biblical studies... these methods...grew organically from within scholarly traditions that were addressed to questions raised about distinctive features of Homer and the Bible, but not of Indian epics. Yet they have become virtually axiomatic in scholarship on Indian epics, and have served as vehicles for imagining them in terms that globalize the methods without addressing the distinctiveness of the texts.³⁰

According to Hiltebeitel "the same historically effected conciousness" ("wirkungsgeschichtliches BewuBtsein")³¹ that drives and permeates the interpretation of classical epics also affects scholarship on India's oral epics." Hiltebeitel's observations raise critical questions regarding the appropriateness of approaches generally adopted for the analysis of folk epics: Are the linkages between 'classical' and 'folk' epics only limited to 'borrowing' and 'legitimizing' on the part of the latter? Are folk epics always about heroes and heroines who were historically 'real'? Do folk epics necessarily deal with the death of a single ('real') hero or heroine? Is it at all relevant (or even possible) to determine a 'real', historical core for complex literary objects such as folk epics? Moreover, if such narratives are about formulating different discourses, then are we not missing the point by searching for underlying historical reality? Finally, since in Indian cultural thought there is no cleavage between 'history', 'legend', 'story' etc. - all being subsumed under one conceptual category namely itih¡sa -is it not critically important to develop an interpretative framework informed by an 'Indian' instead of a 'western' historiography and ideas about texts? As Shulman (1989: 9) points out:

We can continue to cling to the path of Herodotus, categorically sifting fact from fable, myth, or legend, but with rather unsatisfactory results. At some point our understanding of Hinduism should incorporate an Indian epistemology as well - a sensitivity to the inner world of the actors...If India blurs the boundary between 'history' and 'myth' (all itih¡sa)... do we not distort by drawing in sharp contours?

Clearly, then, the meaning of a folk narrative cannot be appreciated by disengaging an historical core from a mythic or legendary overlay. Nor can its construction be understood in terms of textual implantations and amplifications. Thus the very notion of 'text', specially in the Indian folk (and classical) context needs to be restated.³² This is more than necessary since there has been a general criticism carried out in literary studies against the notion of a pure, self-existent, well-defined, 'authentically' created text. Texts are considered as being heavily saturated with the language of other texts, as being links in a network of texts, as being nothing more and nothing less than intertexts in "an ever-flowing river."³³ Thus if, according to this view, no texts exist in isolation, then folk narratives too, even at their very inception, could not have arisen in a literary and cultural vacuum. The implication is that the mythologies which are supposed to have been added on later, actually form part of the fundamental matrix in which folk narratives are conceived right from the very beginning. And, basic to this matrix are the ideas of birth, rebirth, death, avat¡ra, 'sacrifice', bhakti, warriorhood, asceticism and so on.³⁴ These ideas along with a universe of narrative motifs constitute something of a 'common pool' of the culture (s) from which both "folk narratives" and "classical texts" draw on for their sustainance.

Text and Intertext

The vast variety of Indian literature, oral and written, over the centuries, in hundreds of languages and dialects, offers an intricate but open network of such relations, producing families of texts as Well as texts that are utterly individual in their effect, detail, and temporal/regional niches. But these relations are perceived by native commentators and by readers. To them, texts do not come in historical stages but form a "simultaneous order," where every new text within a series alters the whole order ever so slightly, and not always so slightly.³⁵

Rather than examine the narrative text of Devn¡r¡ya¸ in terms of the distinction between history, legend or myth in the following section I shall suggest that we view it as a part of a network of texts that mutually reflect and define each other in different ways. The idea upon which this approach primarily rests is that of intertextuality.

The basic idea (if there is one!) ³⁶ behind the notion of the intertext or intertextuality is that any communicative situation in language, be it verbal, written or visual is primarily, interactive or dialogic. ³⁷ Dialogic not only in the sense of invoking an interchange between two parties, as in a conversation, but in the sense in which all 'utterances' can, in fact, be considered to be polyphonic in nature, i.e., "they 'echo' and 'reverberate' other utterances". As M. Bakhtin (1986:91-92) in his radical understanding of language and textuality points out:

Any concrete utterance is a link in the chain of speech cornmunication of a particular sphere... Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one another. These mutual reflections determine their character. Each utterance is filled with echoes and reverberations of other utterances... Every utterance must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding utterances of the given sphere... Each utterance repeats, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account... Therefore each utterance is filled with various kinds of responsive reactions to other utterances. Both whole utterances and individual words can retain their alien expression, but they can also be re-accentuated. Other's utterances can be repeated with varying degrees of reinterpretation... The utterance is filled with dialogic overtones.

Although Bakhtin in the above passage focuses on 'speech events', one can use his notion of an 'utterance' as a metaphor for the individual elements of an intertextual field or matrix of narratives. There are, however, at least two possible senses in which the intertextual elements of any given text can be envisioned and investigated. The first sense is that in which intertextuality manifests in the form of 'unconscious quotation marks':

Intertexuality, the condition of any text whatsoever, cannot, of course, be reduced to a problem of sources or influences; the intertext is a general field of anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation-marks. Epistemologically, the concept of intertext is what... makes sure the text has the status not of a reproduction but of a productivity.³⁸

In other words the occurrence of semantic units from other texts in any given text arises from the fact that the text belongs to and exists along the intersection of a semantic field that permeates each utterance. This could be called a 'grammar' of intertextuality, in which questions related to the quantity, quality, distribution, and frequency of intertextual elements in any given text can be investigated. The second sense of intertextuality takes us closer to the communicative situation involving "sender, receiver, code, place, time, medium, function etc." (Plett 1991: 12f.). Here we become concerned less with 'unconscious quotation marks' as with the 'agency' of producers and receptors of texts; of 'authors', speakers, listeners, and readers. By turning to this dimension of intertextuality, namely the pragmatics of intertextuality we can begin to place the phenomenon of text production within its appropriate literary, cultural, and historical context. The task of understanding the 'intertext' is therefore to investigate "the specificity of different textual arrangements by placing them within the general text (Culture) of which they are a part and which is in turn, part of them."³⁹ The production of texts or narratives thus embraces both a specific time and place, a specific literary and cultural context, as well as a more general shared, ideational 'pool' of motifs, narrative elements and images, etc.

Clearly, then, the production of folk narratives need not necessarily be grasped in terms of a 'vertical' path of textual augmentation, but as A. K. Ramanujan astutely observes, in terms of a "simultaneous order". The hub around which this simultaneous order revolves is built up of the many manifestations of reflexivity:

...awareness of self and other, mirroring, distorted mirroring, parody, famil resemblances and rebels, dialectic, antistructure, utopias and dystopias, the many ironies connected with these responses and so on... Reflexive elements may occur in various sizes: one part of the text may reflect on another... a whole tradition may invert, negate, rework, and revalue another... encompassment, mimicry, criticism and conflict, and other power relations are expressed by such reflexivities. ⁴⁰

In the course of the present study it will become evident that the narrative of Devn¡r¡ya¸ creates a tradition within itself by reflecting on and reworking parts of pur¡¸ic and epic traditions. While at times there is a conscious reference to pur¡¸ic, 'folk', and epic motifs and characters, there is also a wide range of motifs that occur in a seemingly fragmented arrangement if one takes the pur¡¸ic and epic motifs to be the 'original' models. ⁴¹ These motifs, which are closer to a 'grammar' of intertextuality than a 'pragmatics', make sense, however, within the overall structure and purpose of the narrative. A brief example of what I mean by this is borne out by two incidents that occur towards the end of the narrative. In the first a Patel sent by the R¡¸¡ to Devn¡r¡ya¸'s capital of Causl¡ gets to take a look into Devn¡r¡ya¸'s mouth:

He saw all the three worlds" (v¡h v¡h)/. In his mind he thought: "Hey, how's my master going to win over him? (Yes) How can he defeat him? He's carrying the three worlds in his mouth! (said.) / He can't defeat him! (v¡h v¡h). ⁴²

In the second incident there is a dialogue between a cowherd (Gu¡l) and Surem¡t¡, a divine cow in Devn¡r¡ya¸'s herd of a 980,000 cows. The cowherd refuses to believe in Surem¡t¡'s claims of divinity:

What did Surem¡t¡ do? She took the 'five-faces' form and gave dar¿an to the Gu¡l. (v¡h v¡h)/ One [face] she took on of the mare. (mhe)/ One of the uda¸mer¢.⁴³/ One of Surem¡t¡ of the cow - was there anyway. (mhe)/ One she took on of áakti./ "By god's grace, look inside the face of áakti Gu¡l! See, what play there is!" (Yes, "look" [she] said.)/ So, over there, in áakti's mouth the discus was whirling. (v¡h v¡h)/ [He] looked inside the cow's mouth./ The way the entire world is created. (Yes, "everything was visible.")/ All the three worlds [she] showed in the cow's mouth./ The horses and riders were all there. The cow was standing near Dev Mah¡r¡j. (v¡h v¡h). The Gu¡l folded his hands together, (mhe)/ [and] stood in front [of her]: "Mother, I didn't know./ (Yes, "all these days I didn't know that you were like this. I thought you were a cow amongst cows!"). ⁴⁴

Both the scenes narrated above are strongly reminiscent of a wellknown scene from the Bh¡gavata Pur¡¸a in which K¤À¸a's mother looks into the boy's mouth:

One day when R¡ma and the other little sons of the cowherds were playing, they reported to his mother, "K¤À¸a has eaten dirt." Ya¿od¡ took K¤À¸a by the hand and scolded him, for his own good, and she said to him naughty boy, why have you secretly eaten dirt?... K¤À¸a said: "Mother, I have not eaten. They are all lying. If you think they speak the truth, look at my mouth yourself." "If that is the case, then open your mouth", she said to the Lord Hari,... She then saw in his mouth the whole eternal universe, and heaven, and the regions of the sky, and the orb of the earth with its mountains, islands, and oceans; she saw the wind, and lightening, and the moon and the stars, and the zodiac; and water and fire and air and space itself; she saw the vacillating senses, the mind, the elements, and the three strands of matter. She saw within the body of her son, in his gaping mouth, the whole universe with all its variety, with all the forms of life and time and nature and action and hopes, and her own village, and herself. Then she became afraid and confused..." ⁴⁵

Admittedly, the passages in the oral narrative are not as detailed and breathtaking in their description of the cosmos as the written passage from the Bh¡gavata Pur¡¸a is, but the important point is their appearance in the oral narrative, and the place where they occur. In the first instance the emissary (the Patel) of Devn¡r¡ya¸'s archenemy, the R¡¸¡, is allowed to look inside the god's mouth. Seeing the triple world resting in the mouth of what he took to be a young, naive, boy of eleven, he realizes that Devn¡r¡ya¸ is a manifestation of divinity, and that his royal master, the R¡¸¡, cannot in any way match him in terms of strength and power. Proving one's divinity is again the theme of the second instance in which the divine cow Surem¡t¡ manifests her five-fold countenance to the disbelieving cowherd.⁴⁶ Here it is not Devn¡r¡ya¸, but a manifestation of áakti, who is shown as containing the universe within her. The symbolism is decidely 'martial': 'horses and riders', 'the discus whirling'. In addition to this there is the self-reflexive vision of Surem¡t¡ positioned next to Devn¡r¡ya¸, which explains both her status, and the reason for her manifestation along with Devn¡r¡ya¸. Given the strong bond between áakti and Devnarayan⁴⁷ there is no contradiction felt in depicting both the former and the latter as receptacles of the cosmos. The form, content and purpose of the two passages are undoubtedly far simpler than the passage from the pur¡¸ic text. Whereas the former are concerned with providing a message as well as proving Devn¡r¡ya¸'s and Surem¡t¡'s divinity to two relatively unimportant figures in the narrative, the latter brings about a deep transformation in the self-perception of K¤À¸a's own mother Ya¿od¡: "...he through whose power of delusion there arise in me such false beliefs as 'I', 'This is my husband', 'This is my son', 'I am the wife of the village chieftain and all this wealth is mine, including these cowherds and their wives and their wealth of cattle." ⁴⁸

In the oral narrative there are no explicit allusions to Devn¡r¡ya¸'s greatness in terms of other texts: "She considered Hari - whose greatness is extolled by the three Vedas and the UpaniÀads and the philosophies of S¡´khya and Yoga and all the S¡tvata texts - she considered him to be her son." ⁴⁹ The vision of the triple world does not result in any ground-breaking, metaphysical awakening on the part of either the Patel or or the Gu¡l. In keeping with the directness and simplicity of the narrative, both merely acknowledge the presence of Devn¡r¡ya¸'s and Surem¡t¡'s divinity. Divinity is thus directly perceived and felt without the philosophical distinctions drawn in S¡Ækhya and Yoga.⁵⁰

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