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

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

One inadvertent error in my posting

The line that ends with a full stop saying 'The 'hyenas' of  the hindu
social order.' should read 'Those called the 'hyenas'of the hindu social
order, performed, and (and in some cases continue to perform) this task. 
though not necessarily with their own consent.'

Thanks,

Shuddha


Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote:
> 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,
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>