Beheading Is Seldom Fata; Poem by gershon hepner

In Hindu myth beheading,
says Doniger, is seldom fatal,
comparable to bedding
a gal who won’t need a pre-natal.
Sex, too, may not be final,
when it is practiced with restraint,
for what may seem vaginal
on some occasions really ain’t.

Inspired by a review by David Arnold, Professor of Asian and Global History at the University of Warwick, of Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus” (“Fresh Horses, ” TLS, July 31,2009) :

People lose their heads quite often in Hindu mythology. On a father’s whim, a son cuts off his mother’s head; demons are decapitated to expel the chaos-threatening poison lurking in their throats; the fidelity of wives and the faith of devotees are tested by beheading; and, in the rituals myth sustains, animals lose their heads to satisfy sacrificial imperatives. But, as Wendy Doniger reassures us in her courageous and scholarly book, in Hindu myth “beheading is seldom fatal”. Nor is it without meaning and purpose, for decapitation proves a means of achieving a creative fusion between apparently incongruous parts. Heads are restored, but they are also misplaced. Doniger recounts a South Indian tale in which the wife of a sage is sentenced to death by her husband. At the moment of execution, the Brahmin wife, from the highest of castes, embraces a Pariah, a woman from the very lowest of castes, an “untouchable”, and in the confusion, both women lose their heads. The sage relents, pardons both women and restores their heads, but one woman now bears a Brahmin head on a Pariah body, the other a Pariah head on a Brahmin body. This story is full of the kinds of multiple meanings that flash throughout this fascinating book. In the anxious world of the “Brahmin imaginary”, it articulates high-caste fears about the “confusion of classes”, the miscegenation of types that constantly threatens in this mixed-up, decadent age. But the tale also hints at male violence (against women) , feminine sympathy (here a cause of calamity) and the misguided authority of a man who, in seeking to restore order, is in fact responsible for creating even greater confusion.

8/15/09