This year, I was invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival to converse with Roberto Calasso, author of the famous book, Ka, that introduced Indian thought dramatically to Western audiences a few years ago
This year, I was invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival to converse with Roberto Calasso, author of the famous book, Ka, that introduced Indian thought dramatically to Western audiences a few years ago.
Last year, we spoke on the esoteric dialogue between Janaka and Yagnavalkya. This year it was about his new book, written in Italian, called L'Ardore (Ka is also in Italian. What we read was an English translation approved by Roberto). I asked him what the title of the book meant, and he said, "Tapas".
So here in an elderly Italian aristocratic scholar in conversation with a not-so-young-anymore Indian mythologist at a literature festival that, despite accusations of racism (too many white writers and too few local writers) and the omnipresence of our very own William (White Mughal) Dalrymple, remains an intellectual delight. 
Illustration/ Devdutt Pattanaik
We spoke for an hour, before an audience of 300, on the finer details of the Shatapatha Brahmana, an obscure ritual manual, 2,500 pages long, written 3000 years ago, rarely read in entirety, and often dismissed as complex and crazy writings of ritualists.
'Tapas' is commonly translated (wrongly) as penance, mortification, even austerity by early European translations. But Roberto pointed out to the more correct translationu00a0-- heat generated when one reflects on life. Reflection, introspection, contemplation, deliberation are uniquely human traits. For thousands of years, after the evolution of man, Roberto said, man was the naked prey who lived in fear of the predator.
Then, man discovered the ability to domesticate fire and create weapons. He became the supreme predator, master of the world around him. With this shift in power came guilt and shame and wonderment, which spurred reflection.
Though such reflections were universal, only in India were these thoughts revered, recorded and transmitted through rituals and gestures and stories, and have been kept alive, in some measure, till today.
One of the most profound ideas that emerges from this reflection is the idea of consciousness. Very subtly, it appears in an enigmatic form, in the earliest of Indian scripturesu00a0-- the Rig Veda itselfu00a0-- as the tale of two birds in a tree. One eats the fruit while the other watches the bird eating the fruit. The two are very similar yet different.
In later texts, the fruit-eating bird is identified with Aham (the self that seeks validation from the external world), and the bird-watching bird is identified with Atman (the self that does not seek validation from the external world).
Roberto spoke at length about how modern neuroscience is just beginning to understand the idea of consciousness, which is the bird behind the bird. He believes what now exists is only a 'stammering' of wisdom.
Why, he wonders, do these scholars not look at the vast literature written by ancient Vedic Indians 3,000 years ago on this theme. Unlike most religious scriptures which tend to be prescriptive, these texts were reflective, contemplative, and meditative. Ritual and gestures were merely the medium of expression. Later, this medium became stories.
Rarely does an audience hear a writer speak of the pelt of the black buck on which the Vedic sacrificer had to sit in order to perform yagna. Or the practice of libation, pouring milk into fire during the ritual of Agnihotra. Or the visualisation of the sacrifice as a sexual act, with the altar shaped like the body of a beautiful woman.
Wisdom, said Roberto, in modern time is reduced to a prosthetic that can be separated from the body, like dentures. We, despite all our technological advances, are afraid to accept it, internalise it. Wisdom can be a frightening thing. It is fire that incinerates the soul.
The author is Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group, and can be reached at devdutt@devdutt.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.
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