Kathasaritsagara (the Ocean of Story)

by Somadeva | 1924 | 1,023,469 words | ISBN-13: 9789350501351

This is the English translation of the Kathasaritsagara written by Somadeva around 1070. The principle story line revolves around prince Naravāhanadatta and his quest to become the emperor of the Vidhyādharas (‘celestial beings’). The work is one of the adoptations of the now lost Bṛhatkathā, a great Indian epic tale said to have been composed by ...

Note on deisul (deiseal) or circumambulation

Note: this text is extracted from Book II, chapter 14.

The practice of walking round an object of reverence with the right hand towards it (which is one of the ceremonies mentioned in our author’s account of Vāsavadattā’s marriage) has been exhaustively discussed by Dr Samuel Fergusson in his paper, “ On the Ceremonial Turn called Deisul (Deiseal),” published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy for March 1877 (vol. i, Ser. II., No. 12). He shows it to have existed among the ancient Romans as well as the Celts. One of the most striking of his quotations is from the Curculio of Plautus (I, i, 69). Phædromus says: “Quo me vortam nescio.” Palinurus jestingly replies: “Si deos salutas dextrovorsum censeo.” Cf. also the following passage of Valerius Flaccus (Argon, viii, 243):—

Inde ubi sacrificas cum conjuge venit ad aras
Æsonides, unaque adeunt pariterque precari
Incipiunt. Ignem Pollux undamque jugalem
Prætulit ut dextrum pariter vertantur in orbem
.”

The above passage forms a striking comment upon our text. Cf. also Plutarch in his Life of Camillus:

Ταῦτα εἰτὼν, καφὰτερ ἐστὶ ‘Ρωμαίοις, ἐρενξαμένοις καὶ τροσκυνήσασιν ἐτὶ δεξιὰ ἐξελίτειν, ἐσφάλη τεριστρεφόμενοσ.”

It is possible that the following passage in Lucretius alludes to the same practice:—

Nec pietas ulla est velatum sæpe videri
Vertier ad lapidem atque omnes accedere ad aras
.”

Dr Fergusson is of opinion that this movement was a symbol of the cosmical rotation, an imitation of the apparent course of the sun in the heavens. Cf Hyginus, Fable CCV:

Arge venatrix, cum cervum sequeretur, cervo dixisse fertur: Tu licet Solis cur sum sequaris, tamen te consequar. Sol, iratus, in cervam earn convertit

He quotes, to prove that the practice existed among the ancient Celts, Athenæus, IV, par. 36, whoadduces from Posidonius the following statement:—

Τοὺς θεοὺς προσκυνοῦσιν ἐτὶ δεξιὰ στρεφόμενοι

The above quotations are but a few scraps from the full feast of Dr Fergusson’s paper. See also the remarks of the Rev. S. Beal in the Indian Antiquary for March 1880, p. 67.

See also Henderson’s Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, p. 45:

“The vicar of Stranton (Hartlepool) was standing at the churchyard gate, awaiting the arrival of a funeral party, when to his astonishment the whole group, who had arrived within a few yards of him, suddenly wheeled and made the circuit of the churchyard wall, thus traversing its west, north and east boundaries, and making the distance some five or six times greater than was necessary. The vicar, astonished at this proceeding, asked the sexton the reason of so extraordinary a movement. The reply was as follows :—

‘Why, ye wad no hae them carry the dead again the sun; the dead maun aye go with the sun.’”

This custom is no doubt an ancient British or Celtic custom, and corresponds to the Highland usage of making the deazil, or walking three times round a person according to the course of the sun. Old Highlanders will still make the deazil round those whom they wish well. To go round the person in the opposite direction, or “withershins,” is an evil incantation and brings ill fortune. Hunt in his Romances and Drolls of the West of England, p. 418, says: “If an invalid goes out for the first time and makes a circuit, the circuit must be with the sun, if against the sun, there will be a relapse.” Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 322, quotes from the Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. v, p. 88, the following statement of a Scottish minister, with reference to a marriage ceremony:— “After leaving the church, the whole company walk round it, keeping the church walls always on the right hand.”

Thiselton Dyer, in his English Folk-Lore, p. 171, mentions a similar custom as existing in the west of England. In Devonshire blackheads or pinsoles are cured by creeping on one’s hands and knees under or through a bramble three times with the sun—that is, from east to west. See also Ralston’s Songs of the Russian People, p. 299.

See also the extract from Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland in Brand’s Popular Antiquities, vol. i, p. 225: “When a Highlander goes to bathe or to drink out of a consecrated fountain, he must always approach by going round the place from east to west on the south side, in imitation of the apparent diurnal motion of the sun. This is called in Gaelic going round the right, or the lucky way. The opposite course is the wrong, or the unlucky way. And if a person’s meat or drink were to affect the wind-pipe, or come against his breath, they would instantly cry out, ‘ Desheal,’ which is an ejaculation praying it may go by the right way.” Cf the note in Munro’s Lucretius on v, 1199, and Burton’s Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. i, p. 278.—Here Tawney’s note ends. As it deals almost entirely with circum-ambulation in the West, I will confine my remarks chiefly to the East.

In India the custom of walking round objects as part of sacred or secular ritual is known by the name of pradakṣiṇa. In our text Vāsavadattā walks round the fire keeping it on her right— i.e. sunwise or clockwise. This in accordance with the Laws of Manu, where the bride is told to walk three times round the domestic hearth. Sometimes both bride and bridegroom do it, or else they walk round the central pole of the marriage-shed. Similarly in the Gṛhya Sūtras Brāhmans on initiation are to drive three times round a tree or sacred pool.

Before building a new house it is necessary to walk three times round the site sprinkling water on the ground, accompanying the action with the repetition of the verse, “O waters, ye are wholesome,” from the Rig-Veda. (See Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxix, p. 213.) Pradakṣiṇa is also performed round sacrifices and sacred buildings or tombs. In the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa it is set down that when walking round the sacrifice a burning coal is to be held in the hand. When sacrifices are offered to ancestors, the officiating Brāhman first walks three times round the sacrifice with his left shoulder towards it, after which he turns round and walks three times to the right, or sunwise. This is explained in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa as follows:—“ The reason why he again moves thrice round from left to right is that, while the first time he went away from here after those three ancestors of his, he now comes back again from them to this, his own world; that is why he again moves thrice from left to right.” This anti-sunwise movement is called prasavya in Sanskrit, and corresponds to the Celtic cartuasul, or withershins.

The movement from left to right is almost universally considered unlucky and ill-omened, and the English words “sinister” and “dexterous” show how the meaning has come to us unaltered from the Latin.

In his excellent work, The Migration of Symbols, 1894, Count D’Alviella has shown in his study of the swastika or gammadion that the “right-handed” variety is always the lucky one. Sir George Birdwood mentions that among the Hindus the “right-handed” swastika represents the male principle and is the emblem of Gaṇeśa, while the sauwastika (or "left-handed”) represents the female principle and is sacred to Kālī, and typifies the course of the sun in the subterranean world from west to east, symbolising darkness, death and destruction.

The magical effect on objects repeatedly circumambulated is exemplified in the Mahā Parinibbāṇa Sutta. We read that after the pyre on which lay the body of Buddha had been walked round three times by the five hundred disciples it took fire on its own account. Readers will naturally think of Joshua and the walls of Jericho.

The pradaksliiṇa rite was also performed by the ancient Buddhists, and still is, by the modern Hindus for the purpose of purification. In India, Tibet, China and Japan we find galleries, or walls round stūpas or shrines for circum-ambulation of pilgrims. The same idea is, of course, connected with the Ka’bah at Mecca (which we shall discuss shortly) and the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

It has often been suggested by Indian students that the reason for walking round an object three times is connected with the traditional "three steps” of Viṣṇu, as God of the Sun. Evidence does not, however, seem sufficient to attempt any decisive statement on that point.

Three is considered a lucky number among the Hindus, and with seven forms the two most lucky numbers throughout the world.

Turning to the Moslem world we find that in circumambulating the Ka’bah at Mecca, the pilgrims walk from left to right, which is nearly always considered unlucky. The “Tawaf,” as it is called, has been described by Burton (Pilgrimage, 1st edition, 1855-1856, vol. iii, pp. 204, 205, 234-236). He gives full details of the seven circuits with all the elaborate sunnats, or practices, involved. In a note we read the following:—

“Moslem moralists have not failed to draw spiritual food from this mass of materialism.

‘To circuit the Bait Ullah,’

said the Pir Raukhan (As. Soc., vol. xi, and Dabistan, vol. iii, ‘Miyan Bayezid’),

‘and to be free from wickedness, and crimes, and quarrels, is the duty enjoined by religion. But to circuit the house of the friend of Allah (i.e. the heart), to combat bodily propensities, and to worship the angels, is the business of the (mystic) path.’

Thus Saadi, in his sermons, —which remind the Englishman of ‘poor Yorick,’

‘He who travels to the Kaabah on foot makes a circuit of the Kaabah, but he who performs the pilgrimage of the Kaabah in his heart is encircled by the Kaabah.’

And the greatest Moslem divines sanction this visible representation of an invisible and heavenly shrine, by declaring that, without a material medium, it is impossible for man to worship the Eternal Spirit.”

Further references to the deiseil, deasil or deisul in Greece, Rome and Egypt, among the Celts and Teutons, in England, Scotland and Ireland, and among savage tribes will be found in D’Alviella’s article, “ Circum-ambulation,” in Hastings’ Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. iii, pp. 657-659, from which several of the above references have been taken.— n.m.p.

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