[Reader-list] Shameless Hyaenidae Indians Touring Sarai (acronym?)

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear A.R.K.P

Ever since some of us have been called Hyenas on this list, I have 
rediscovered my old interest in Hyenas.

Wikipedia of course has an excellent entry on Hyaenidae.
see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyenas

And they are in fact very interesting creatures. (I am paraphrasing here 
from the Wikipedia entry) Female spotted hyenas, for instance possess 
the largest clitorises in the animal kingdom, and their The anatomical 
position of the genitalia gives females total sexual control over who is 
allowed to mate with them. This means that every one of us who believes 
in complete gender equality should have the Hyena as their mascot.

Also, Hyenas are highly intelligent animals. One indication of hyena 
intelligence is that they will move their kills closer to each other to 
protect them from scavengers; another indication is their strategic 
hunting methods.

I have noticed how often the A.R.K.P conglomerate cluster their posts 
together in response to somethign that someone says on the list, 
actually making them easy to track down, and to hit all of them by 
striking at one or two. And I am also glad that Kshemendra has noticed 
that we have highly evolved strategic hunting methods. Why else would he 
have called us Hyenas.

Apart from being skilled hunters and highly social animals, most hyena 
species are also efficient scavengers. They have extremely strong jaws 
in relation to their body size and have a very powerful digestive system 
with highly acidic fluids, making them capable of eating and digesting 
their entire prey, including skin, teeth, horns, bones and even hooves. 
Since they eat carrion, their digestive system deals very well with 
bacteria.

Now as any ecologist will tell you. Scavengers are vital to the health 
of an ecosystem. They prevent infection and disease by digesting and 
disposing of what would be otherwise quite lethal to others. If this 
list is an ecosystem, and we the S.H.I.T.S are its scavengers, then I 
have no hesitation in pointing out precisely where the carrion, the dead 
meat of exhausted arguments and contagion are. Intelligent readers will 
understand the import of my suggestions. As hyenas, by chewing on, and 
digesting, the bits of carrion and dead meat that finds its way into 
this list we are maintaing its health and ecology.

In Hindu society, the lowest castes, those who disposed of dead meat, 
cadavers and carried fecal matter actually kept the whole social order 
clean. They were often referred to colloquially as 'hyena's. While it 
was common for the highest castes to abuse those below them as hyenas, 
pigs, dogs and jackals. What the twice born sometimes forgot, and 
continue to forget, is that if no one cleans the shit, including that 
excreted by the twice born themselves, epidemics spread. The 'hyenas' of 
the hindu social order.

Perhaps, we, who question the automatic assumption of the naton state, 
who do not want to see military occupations continue in the name of the 
integrity of the republic, are the hyenas of this list. And some of us 
are currently engaged in cleaning fecal matter. We are prepared to do 
this quite cheerfully. And though I do not know M. Yousuf personally, 
neither who he or she is, or where he or she comes from, I am happy to 
recognize the solidarity that binds us sanitation workers. I am happy to 
whistle a tune with him while we clean the latrines, together.

But lets get back to the Hyena as an animal. Apart from the fact that 
there are lots of stories and folklore pertaining to the magic power of 
hyenas, and that they are recognized in many societies as mischievous 
tricksters who bring sudden justice by overturning the social order with 
their raucous laughter and their healthy appetite for the erotic, 
Hyenas also bring good health, fertility, love, luck. Wearing a hyena's 
tooth in North Western India, brings good fortune in love. Hyenas are 
often seen as animals endowed with special magic prowess in Africa as well.

For those interested in Hyena folklore relevant to the South Asian 
subcontinent, please see

- The Magicality of the Hyena: Beliefs and Practices in West and South 
Asia by Jürgen W. Frembgen, Asian Folklore Studies > Vol. 57, No. 2 (1998)

Finally, let me turn to the corpus of Sanskrit literature, something 
that Kshemendra's illustrious eleventh century namesake (the Sanskrit 
poet and satirist whom I admire) might have been more familiar with than 
our latter day Kshemendra (the K of A.R.K.P)

The myth of Indra and the Yatis, mentioned in the Black Yajur Veda 
Samhitas and the Brahmanas of the Sama Veda, features Indra, the sky 
god, handing over a pack of errant ritualists, who intone the same 
mantras over and over again, to the Salavrakeyas (Hyenas). The precise 
sloka is - 'indro vai yatint salavrkeyebhyah prachyat'.

[Purists will please forgive me for the absence of diacritics when I 
render Sanskrit into a roman font, but I am writing on a non html based 
list, so I can't use diacritics.]

  The myth concerns a group of ritualists, 'yatis' a priestly group not 
unlike the Bhrigus, in the corresponding meta- vedic literature. The 
yatis, having committed ritual flaws, are eaten/sacrificially offered to 
the young cubs of a female hyena (salavrki), who are identified with 
Indra, whereupon they are reborn as rain and food.

There is a very interesting book on the subject - 'The Ravenous Hyenas 
and the Wounded Sun: Myth and Ritual in Ancient India' Stephanie W. 
Jamison, published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1991

On page 112 of the book, Jamison writes, and I cannot resist quoting 
her, "the myth of Indra, the Yatis and the Salavrkeyas (hyena cubs) 
seems to represent a model of Vedic sacrifice, perhaps recounting the 
origin of the animal sacrifice itself, and as such can be reckoned among 
Indra's beneficial cosmogonic activities'

In her treatment of the myth of Indra and the Yatis, Jamison argues 
that, far from engaging in a callous act of violence, Indra may well be 
acting as a transformed female hyena, nurturing her young with food. The 
Yatis, moreover are not simply innocent victims of slaughter, but 
fulfill certain ritual activities by virtue of their asociation with the 
Uttraravedi, the ritual where animals are sacrificed and where rain 
making rituals are performed. True to the life giving capacity of Vedic 
ritual, the Yatis are transformed into plants that ensure rain.

If this list (like any internet forum) is a kind of sky full of thunder 
and lightning - an Indrajal (an early metaphor for the Internet) 
presided over by a distant Indra - whom we could playfully transpose on 
to the emergent collective consciousness of this list, Then A.R.K.P are 
its Yatis, the errant ritualists, and we whom they call the S.H.I.T.S 
are its hungry hyena cubs, its Slalvrkeyas. We will (metaphorically, not 
literally) dig into them, and all that they have to offer with our very 
sharp teeth, consume them in our own proto Vedic sacrifice, digest them 
whole  and transform the sacrificial offering into a rain of words, of 
arguments and of discourse.

As I write this, it is raining outside, inside, everywhere. Indra 
thunders. And listen, all the hyenas are laughing.

regards,

Shuddha,