Throughout this article, we have alluded to, even played upon, the contradiction between Bhairava being at the same time chief policeman-magistrate [kotwâl] of Kâshî and also a heinous criminal divinity adored especially by anti-social ascetics who flagrantly transgressed even the most fundamental socio-religious norms and rules. It is now necessary to pose this paradox explicitly. For a kotwâl expected to punish criminals for their sins, Bhairava has the truly bizarre function in Kâshî of taking upon himself or devouring the sins of the pilgrims so much so that one of his titles is ‘Sin-Eater’ (Pâpa-bhakshana). “Here in Kâshî the place called Kapâlamocana comes to symbolize the power to make sins fall away, for here ‘Where the Skull Fell’ the worst of sins was shed” (Eck p.119). The temple of Kâla Bhairava itself was, according to the Kâshî-Khanda (31.138), located on the banks of the Kapâlamocana Tîrtha, in the Omkârezvara area north of Maidâgin. “Bhairava stands right there,” says the text, “facing Kapâlamocana Tîrtha, devouring the accumulated sins of devotees” (cited from Eck, p.193). Bhairava is the ‘sin-eater’ par excellence not because of his newly found office of policeman but by virtue of having himself been the worst of criminals, for Kapâlamocana is the very place where the skull of the murdered Brahmâ fell from him along with the sin of brahmanicide that had been relentlessly pursuing him in his wanderings. “The one freed from the worst sin now devours the sins of others” (Eck, p.192).
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| Kapalamochana Tirtha |
The most important festival dedicated to this guardian policeman-magistrate of Kâshî is Bhairavâshtamî, which, instead of celebrating his investiture with the office of kotwâl , on the contrary, celebrates the birth of Bhairava, born only to perpetrate his brahmanicide immediately. “On this day alone, the cloth apron that covers all but Kâla-Bhairava’s face is removed. He is garlanded with a necklace of solid silver skulls. People crowd in for the darzana of his complete image on this day” (Eck, p.274). Not only do the priests officiating at the temple know the origin-myth of the brahmanicide Bhairava by heart, it is also inscribed in Hindi on a marble slab on the wall (Eck, pp.194-95), and forms of Bhairava are painted on the temple-walls bearing the bleeding head of Brahmâ. One is never sure whether it is the kotwâl that is being worshipped or rather the brahmanicide kâpâlika-Bhairava. The myth, and along with it the ordinary worshipper, seeks to rationalize and minimize the two incompatible identities of Bhairava by inserting a diachrony between them: Bhairava becomes kotwâl of Kâshî only after he has purified himself from the crime of brahmanicide at Kâpâlamochana. Does this mean that he has completely lost his criminal character? Why could not a non-criminal god, like Hanumân or Ganeza, have been elected as kotwâl of this most sacred of cities? It could perhaps be claimed that, having been an ex-criminal, Bhairava was ideally suited to fulfill the role of (reformed) policeman. But a synchronic view necessarily imposes itself because, even while Bhairava has remained kotwâl of Vârânasî (and kshetra-pâla all over India), there have always been and still are tantric sects like the Kâpâlikas, Kaulas and Nâthas which worship him primarily as a Transgressor and certainly in a transgressive mode (for example, with the pañca-makâra [‘5 Ms’]…). I have elsewhere demonstrated (see note 1 above) that Bhairava’s lopping off Brahmâ’s fifth head with his left thumb-nail is symbolic as all manner of transgressions of brahmanical socio religious norms (assimilated in the dharma-zâstra [‘law-books’] to ‘brahmahâtyâ’).
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| Bhairava near Kapalamochana Tirtha |
Moreover, if Bhairava has already once and for all been purified of his terrible sin, how could he continue to play the impure role of scapegoat by taking over, tainting himself with, the sins of others? True such a scapegoat role is also played by the mask of Âkâsh Bhairab during the Gjhantakarna festivalin Katmandu when all the evil of the locality is discharged upon him at the crossroads of Indra-Chowk. But the fact that at all the other crossroads exactly the same function is performed by effigies of real demons who are subsequently expelled, reveals that it is through his quasi-demoniacal aspect that (Âkâza-) Bhairava has come to play this role. The paradox is raised to a second order when we realize that, whereas after his absolution Bhairava is worshipped as a mere kotwâl subservient to a higher divinity like Vizvanâtha or his consort Annapûrnâ, before his absolution Bhairava is already recognized, even in his degraded condition, as the Supreme Divinity, second not even to Brahmâ and Vishnu.
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| Bhairava with a head of Brahva - wall of Kalabhairav Mandir |
Bhairava's twelve-year wanderings as a beggar, bearing Brahmâ's skull as public testimony to his crime and begging from the seven houses of the Seven Sages in the Daru forest, all of these and other traits, like his exclusion from settlements and inhabiting the cremation-grounds, correspond exactly to the prescribed punishment for Brahmanicide in the Brahmanical law-books (Stietencron 1969, p.867; Lorenzen pp.74-76). But whereas in Hindu society such brahmanicides, even if themselves brahmins, were treated as horrible outcastes and considered wholly degraded, Bhairava is exalted in the myth as the supreme divinity by Brahmâ and Vishnu, the latter even recognizing that he remains untainted by the sin of brahmanicide. Though the punishment of Bhairava corresponds perfectly to the norms of brahmanical orthodoxy, his simultaneous exaltation corresponds rather to the doctrines and practices of the Kâpâlika ascetics, who took the brahmanicidal Bhairava for their divine archetype. Even when themselves not originally brahmanicides, these Kâpâlikas performed the Mahâvrata or ‘Great Penance’ bearing the skull of a brahmin in order to attain the blissful state of spiritual liberation and lordship that confers the eight-fold magical powers (Lorenzen, pp.92-95). Following the ‘doctrine of Soma’, the Kâpâlikas experienced the spiritual bliss of Bhairava in the felicity of sexual union induced and enhanced by the partaking of meat and wine. Whereas Bhairava is presented in the myth as undertaking the ‘kâpâlika vow’ as punishment in order to expiate his brahmanicide, the Kâpâlikas in pursuit of their ‘supreme penance’ (mahâ-vrata) have always been associated with human sacrifices (Lorenzen, pp.85-7), the ideal victim being a brahmin, and it is clear that brahmanicide or, rather, whatever it symbolizes, was itself supposed to be productive of great power.
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| Kslabhairav Mandir |
If the intention of the brahma-ziraz-ccheda [‘cutting of the head of Brahmâ’] myth could be reduced to a narrow sectarian exaltation of an extra-brahmanical Bhairava or the deliberate devaluation of the brahmin, there would have been no sense in Shiva instructing Bhairava to strictly conform to the brahmanical legal prescriptions for the expiation of brahmanicide. The fact that Bhairava scrupulously performs it amounts to a full valorization of the brahmin (= Brahmâ, cf. Eck, note on p.108) as demanded by traditional Hindu society. At the same time, it could not have been intended to glorify Brahmâ as such, for the latter clearly admits the supremacy of Bhairava, and even Vishnu lauds him as the Supreme Reality despite his outward appearance as a criminal beggar steeped in impurity. The real conflict is rather between the two opposing poles of the Sacred, one of interdiction incarnated in the non-violent, chaste, truthful, pure, self-denying classical brahmin and the other of transgression represented by the savage, impure, hedonistic Kâpâlika-Bhairava who beheads this brahmin or his divinity. The myth in its essence reveals a compromise between the socio-religious point of view which must necessarily condemn Bhairava to be an outcaste criminal and the esoteric valorization of transgressive sacrality that exalts him as the supreme divinity, both precisely because he has performed the transgression par excellence in brahmanical society. From the exoteric socio-religious point of view, Bhairava is no more than the terrible policeman god protecting the boundaries of the socio-religious community and, as door-keeper, the access to its temples from hostile external forces. He preserves the socially central divinity, like Vizvanâtha in Kâshî , from any direct contact with impure elements which are nevertheless vital for the proper functioning of the social whole. The terrifying divinity of transgression can never become the object of public cult as such and the only means for him to receive communal worship is by transforming himself into the equally terrifying protector-god for a more central pacific and benign divinity (with whom he is nevertheless often subtly identified). Thus Kâla-Bhairava's promised suzerainty over Kâshî has been translated in reality into his being the policeman-magistrate for Lord Vizvanâtha. The myth achieves this ‘conversion’ from criminal to kotwâl through Bhairava's ‘purification’ at Kapâlamocana Tîrtha at Kâshî. But if he remains there, even in his capacity as kotwâl, as the scapegoat ‘sin-eater’ par excellence, upon whom devotees and pilgrims can shed all their evil, would this is not be because even as a criminal Kâpâlika, he had already transcended both good and evil and always remained untainted by them.
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