Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India

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Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India

by Roberto Calasso, Tim Parks (Translator)

4.08 · rating details · 144 ratings · 15 reviews

"A giddy invasion of stories--brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful." --The New York Times Book Review

"So brilliant that you can't look at it anymore--and you can't look at anything else. . . . No one will read it without reward."
--The Boston Globe

With the same narrative fecundity and imaginative sympathy he brought to his acclaimed retelling of t...more

Paperback, 464 pages

Published November 2nd 1999 by Vintage (first published 1998)

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Dec 30, 2008

Jee Koh rated it

The Parasite of Consciousness

Calasso retells the Indian myths in this book, and makes them gripping, probing and mysterious. In the first story, Garuda, the eagle, is born to save his mother from slavery to her own sister. The method of the myths and of the retelling is described by Garuda himself: "So many things happening, so many stories one inside the other, with every link hiding yet more stories . . . And I've hardly hatched from my egg."

After freeing his ...moreThe Parasite of Consciousness

Calasso retells the Indian myths in this book, and makes them gripping, probing and mysterious. In the first story, Garuda, the eagle, is born to save his mother from slavery to her own sister. The method of the myths and of the retelling is described by Garuda himself: "So many things happening, so many stories one inside the other, with every link hiding yet more stories . . . And I've hardly hatched from my egg."

After freeing his mother, Garuda decided to devote himself to reading the Vedas in the Rauhina tree. Reading hymn one hundred and twenty-one in the tenth book of the Rig Veda, he found the question that gave the book its title: "Who (Ka) is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice?"

The next chapter takes up the story of Prajapati who is a kind of Progenitor of all things, including the gods. Prajapati was the mind before anything existed. The mind did not even know whether it existed or not. The mind desired, with a desire that was "continuous, diffuse, undefined." It desired

what was definite and separate, what had shape. A Self, atman--that was the name it used. And the mind imagined that Self as having consistency. Thinking the mind grew red hot. It saw thirty-six thousand fires flare up, made up of mind, made with mind.

This fire was tapas, the same fire that burned in the gods, and in the holy men. Desire, in this myth, is longing for the Other; it is longing for form.

Chapter Three describes the desire of this Father for his daughter Dawn (Usas). Their union was disrupted by a son and god, Rudra, who fired an arrow into his father's groin, causing him to squirt his seed onto the ground. This triangular relationship, according to this chapter, is repeated with different names in different stories down the ages.

In Chapter Four, Brhama takes over the role of Creator and Father. The problem with his creation was that all were born exclusively of the mind, and no one died. Immortality proved to be oppressive. To solve that problem Brahma created Death. To solve the problem of mind, he created sex. When asked by the gods why bother with another mode of production, Brahma answered, "To preserve the world's gloss."

The triangle between father, daughter and son returns in Chapter Five. Daksa, a stand-in for Brahma, loved his favorite daughter, Sati, who, in turn, loves Siva. Whe Daksa refused to invite his son-in-law to his priestly sacrifice, Sati returned to her father's household, and rebuked him by self-combusting. Sati is, of course, the immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. Following his wife's death, Siva wrecked Daksa's sacrifice.

Chapter VI narrates the love affair between Siva and Parvati, the daughter of Himavat (Himalayas?). To capture Siva's heart, Parvati left her royal life to practice tapas in the forest. The god accepted her offer, and united with her, making her a goddess. Kalidasa, the Sanskrit poet, makes an appearance in this chapter. He was sneaking a look at their love-making before chased away by Parvati.

Parvati also discovered Siva had many lovers, one of whom lived as water in his hair, Ganga. In the story-within-a-story, Ganga was initially a proud woman who thought she could sweep Siva away like a straw. She plunged from the Milky Way on top of Siva's head, only to get lost, and spread out among the forest of his hair. The story is enchanting. It is a charming explanation of how the great Ganges came into being. It is a striking extended metaphor. It is also very sexy.

Chapter VII describes the sacrifice of the horse, the "king of all sacrifices," Calasso writes, for he who celebrated it became king of all kings and would obtain everything he desired. Before the horse died, it was allowed to wander any land it wished, protected by four hundred armed guards. During the wait, stories (pariplavas) of the deeds of gods and kings were endlessly recited. Narrative thus became

. . . a way of preventing the relationship with the wandering horse from being broken. The narrative wandered around like the horse. The secret thought of the narrative is the horse. The secret thought of the horse is the narrative.

When the horse returned, it was strangled, and then the king's first wife lay with the dead horse, its phallus introduced into her vulva. When morning came, the queen returned to her feet. The horse was cut up while the priest asked who was cutting it up, and answered himself, Ka.

Chapter VIII is organized as a collection of stories about and sermons by the rsis, the holy men. Here's a beautiful example of the philosophizing of these men, this by Bharadvaja:

Why should the mind be before and after every other thing? Because it can never be found in the world. You can open up any body, any element, with the finest of metal points, you can turn everything inside out and expose all that has been hidden, until matter becomes a whirr of dragonflies. To no end: you will never find so much as trace, not even the tiniest, of the mind. The banner of its sovereignty is precisely this: its not being there.

Chapter IX recounts the story of the old rsis Cyavana who got the divine twins the Asvins to return him his youth, in exchange for a chance to win the favor of his wife, Sukanya.

Chapter X is about the soma, the drink that gives gods and men immortality, the "one quantity that was also quality." "The stories of the soma tell of repeated conquest, repeated loss," writes Calasso, and as an instance he narrates the quest of Indra, king of the gods, for that divine substance. The soma in Chapter X is associated with knowledge, as conveyed through a parable strikingly similar to Plato's cave. In Chapter XI, the soma is linked to desire, imaged in circulating waters. So the most beautiful of Apsaras, Urvasi, distracted the gods Mitra and Varuna from their ritual, and so was cursed to fall in love with a mortal, Pururavas.

In Chapter XII, Krsna (Krishna) is the protagonist. He steals butter from his mother, and hearts from the gopis, the cowgirls. In Chapter XIII the mature Krsna joined Arjuna as a bosom friend, but not before Arjuna won Princess Draupadi for his wife, and the enjoyment of all five Pandava brothers. All that is preface to the Indian epic Mahabharata. Of its narrative frame, Calasso writes, quite wonderfully:

The war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas is a "knot" (and the books that make up the Mahabharata are called parvans, "knots"), just one of the innumerable stitches in the weave of everything with everything. Going back in time to what came before it, or forward a little, after it ended, we encounter a net that brushes against us on every side--and immediately we are struck by the conviction that we will never see the edges of that net, because there are no edges.

Again, on the beginning of stories:

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge looked like a single tree: when the branches rustled, that was the Vedas who were its leaves, speaking; hen the air was still soma dripped from its trunk, offering life without end. Look at that huge plant carefully, you saw that there was in fact two trees, inextricably twisted together. One thrust its branches upward, the other towards the ground. They were a sami and an asvattha. It was hard to see which was which. On opposite branches, at the same height, two birds could be made out, "inseparable friends." One was eating a berry, the other was watching it intensely. To light a fire you need to rub a twig of asvattha against a twig of sami. Pushing out its aerial roots, the asvattha slowly strangles the sami. Consciousness slowly strangles life. But life exists--or is perceived to exist--only to the extent that it allows the parasite of consciousness to grown upon it.

In a later passage, Calasso links Krsna and Arjuna to these two birds of the Vedic hymn, no longer on opposite branches of the same tree, but on a war chariot. Arjuna the archer was the bird that ate the berry, while Krsna the charioteer watched, like the other bird, "without eating."

The second to last chapter is about the Buddha. Try as Calasso may, to show how the Buddhist teachings flow from, and react against, the Hindu myths, Chapters XIV is just not as interesting as the earlier ones. The problem seems to be the lack of stories, the emptiness of characters. Nirvana, in other words. The story of the Buddha's awakening is a well-trodden path, and Calasso adds little that is new. The aridity of these chapters is consonant with the Buddha's avoidance of imagery, and his love for analysis, repetition and numbers: four noble truths; the path is eightfold; the objects of grasping are five. In Calasso, what makes the Buddha humanly graspable is his blundering disciple and cousin, Ananda. It was Ananda who persuaded the Buddha to admit women into the priesthood. It was Ananda who feared death and lusted after women. Ananda means joy.

Chapter XV, the final chapter, is a brief recapitulation of the themes: earth, beginning, residue, the Self, being, wakefulness. The book ends with its beginning, Garuda awakening from his sleep, his claws still grasping hymn number 121 of the tenth book of the Rg Veda, his eyes still focused on the syllable from which everything had issued forth: Ka.

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Nov 28, 2011

Gopal MS rated it

Simply brilliant. Most Indians would have heard almost all the tales that are mentioned in this book. But this book strings all the mythological tales together very intelligently and with a perspective that only someone with a wider perspective of human nature and thought processes can give.

There is also something different about Italian writers. They write in a rich and often difficult language that takes time to get used to. But once you are comfortable with the translation, you wi...more

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May 18, 2010

Keram rated it

Shelves: awareness

Some of the most beautiful prose I have read, let alone in what appears to be a non-fiction book, though that is an impossible qualification considering it is exploring the origins of Hindu mythology. Reading this made my brain feel effervescent, and I often had to put the book down after a paragraph simply to savor what I had just read. And sometime this would last for weeks before I could return to it.

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Sep 29, 2011

Oanh rated it

· review of another edition

Less wonderful (for me) than Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony but still great. Perhaps the problem was my lesser familiarity with Hindi mythology / cosmology etc.

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May 14, 2011

Rajendra Dave rated it

A well researched book written in an unusual style. I found it to be very very interesting. Though some of my coreligionists my find it offensive in parts

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Dec 24, 2008

Mary Evelyn rated it

some beautiful writing; however, hard to follow at times
after having read this though i want to read his others.

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Mar 25, 2009

Ryan rated it

Shelves: mythology

Beautifully poetic. My expectation (or hope?) that it would unravel the overlapping, intertwining, irreducible complexity of the vedas, upanishads, mahabarata, and buddhism was not destined for fulfillment ... but could I trust anything or anyone that irons flat such essential wrinkles?

Calasso is part of that astounding pool of Europe's poetic essayists, bringing unbelievable, polymathic erudition to the level of high-art ... think Michel Serres, Elias Cannetti, Claudio Magris, etc....more

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Nov 26, 2011

Phil rated it

Shelves: lit-general

Dense and impenetrable. It was only stubbornness that got me through this book. I'm fascinated by mythology and casually interested in India, but I soon got the impression that a deep background in Hindu myth is required to make any sense of the book. Choked with Vedic jargon and a huge cast of interchangeable characters, this book left me no more enlightened than before I read it.

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Dec 25, 2008

Megan rated it

Some words I would use to describe this book (and the other book of his I read, the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony): circuitous, philosophical, obfuscated, illuminated. Enjoyable. Weird. I don't know where the myths stop and he begins. This is as intriguing as it is stumping.

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Sep 06, 2007

John rated it

I can't say that I learned anything; mostly I let his books seep in over a period of years, kind of like Milorad Pavic. Mostly I just jot down anytime he raises a question, such as "But how did it all begin?"

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Jun 12, 2008

Paulina Rendón Poujol rated it

· review of another edition

"Cuántos acontecimientos, cuántas historias una dentro de la otra, en cada juntura esconden otras historias...Y apenas acabo de salir del huevo".
Lo dijo Garuda volando al Norte.

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Sep 04, 2007

sudeshna rated it

Recommends it for: anyone interested in epic

If you think you know anything about hindu mythology, take another look. If you dont, start a fresh one. Went on to read his marriage of Cadmus and Harmony;equally fascinating

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Aug 03, 2008

Jenifer added it

Shelves: started-but-not-finished

This was the weirdest book. I couldn't even finish it. There was no story to follow. I finally gave up and took it back to the library.

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Mar 05, 2008

Angela rated it

Absolutley one of my favorite books. Some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read. I have read at least 5 times.

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Jul 01, 2008

Mindy rated it

I am moving this book to the read shelf, as I feel I may not actually finish it...

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Shelves: xanadu_lib

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Shelves: literature, myth, religion, indian

Jan 19, 2012

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· review of another edition

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Shelves: novel

Dec 27, 2011

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About Roberto Calasso

Roberto Calasso (born 30 May 1941 in Florence) is an Italian publisher and writer. He was born into a family of the local upper class, well connected with some of the great Italian intellectuals of their time. His maternal grandfather Giovanni Codignola was a professor of philosophy at Florence University. Codignola created a new publishing house called La Nuova Italia, in Florence, just like his ...moreRoberto Calasso (born 30 May 1941 in Florence) is an Italian publisher and writer. He was born into a family of the local upper class, well connected with some of the great Italian intellectuals of their time. His maternal grandfather Giovanni Codignola was a professor of philosophy at Florence University. Codignola created a new publishing house called La Nuova Italia, in Florence, just like his friend Benedetto Croce had done in Bari with Laterza. His uncle Tristano Codignola, partigiano during the Resistenza, after the war joined the political life of the new republic, and was for a while Minister of Education. His mother Melisenda – who gave up a promising academic career to raise her three children – was a scholar of German literature, and had worked on Hölderlin’s translations of the Greek poet Pindar. His father Francesco was a law professor, first at Florence University and then in Rome, where he eventually became dean of his faculty. He has been working for Adelphi Edizioni since its founding in 1962 and became its Chairman in 1999. His books have from 1990 been translated into most European languages. After a successful career in publishing he has become a leading intellectual.[citation needed]

He is the author of a work in progress, that started with The Ruin of Kasch in 1983, a book welcome by Italo Calvino, dedicated to the French statesman Talleyrand and to a reflection on the culture of modernity. This was followed in 1988 by The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, a book where the tale of Cadmus and his wife Harmonia becomes a pretext for re-writing the great tales of Greek mythology and reflect on the reception of Greek culture for a contemporary readership. The trend for portraying whole civilizations continues with Ka (where the subject of the re-writing is Hindu mythology). K. instead restricts the focus to one single author(Franz Kafka); this trend continues with Il rosa Tiepolo, inspired by an adjective used by Proust to describe a shade of pink used by Tiepolo in his paintings. With his latest book, La folie Baudelaire, Calasso goes back to the fresco of whole civilisations, this time re-writing the lives and works of the artists that revolutionised our artistic taste, the symbolist poets and impressionist painters.

His essaystic production is collected in a few books: I quarantanove gradini (The Forty-nine Steps, a collection of essays about major authors and thinkers in European modernity addressed to Pierre Klossowski and his wife). His Oxford lessons are collected in Literature and the Gods. In 2005 Calasso published La follia che viene dalle ninfe, a collection of essays on the influence of the nymph in literature, which is discussed through authors ranging from Plato to Nabokov.(less)

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