Decohesion, the new hexalogy by Luci Sher is soon to be published. The six books in this series explore the sophisticated architecture of the Hindu temples of northern India through the lives and conversations of people whose worlds are in some way related to them. These buildings are poorly understood outside the Hindu culture of India and its fascinating, wider cultural sphere. Luci Sher takes the puzzles presented by these buildings and presents them as a rich fabric of human relationships and individual strengths and frailties. Expect a challenging and fulfilling read!
The six books are soon to be published in sequence – the first is Parvati’s Footprint, the Imprint of Innocence, LB Cunningham. More information will be shared as we rapidly approach launch date. In the meantime, we are releasing weekly snippets on this platform. The first of these is offered here for your enjoyment:
Parvati's Footprint
Part 1
RBDS Publications
eBook :
soft/hardback + eBook :
Amazon
Waterstones
Blackwell
Foyles
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Blake’s mind went on straight to the epicentre of the physical expression of the union: ‘Concerning the Nagara temples, I have wondered if the great ribbed disk, the amalaka, on the top of the śikhara is emblematic of the part of the feminine anatomy the male part engages with, or aspires to, at the extent of its penetration – it is actually the womb. The pot or urn showing as a finial over both parts of the building is of equal or near equal design weight, even where the mandapa is a lower structure. The detail may be different but the urns are placed over both the prasada and the mandapa.’ ‘Strange, in some ways, that a similar finial is used,’ responded Pranavi, ‘I remember going on family holidays and once stopping in Varanasi. In two of the temples there, I remember watching milky liquid dripping, actually trickling, from a pot exactly the same shape as the finial onto the lingam. The pot was suspended from the ceiling. ‘When I asked what it was all about, my father took me by the hand and we walked away. I asked again and he said that it was a way of worshipping the godhead, a way of keeping the stone cool. ‘I thought about it for years afterwards and learned the milky liquid was soma. I asked a priest when I went to a temple with my school group,’ she paused. ‘It is indicative of semen,’ she concluded, quietly. Blake continued: ‘I saw that in Varanasi too, in a small temple placed in the ground floor of a building on the ghats near a huge tree with the trunk wrapped in sacred thread.’ ‘That’s the one!’ ‘I’ve never talked about it with anyone. I couldn’t help puzzling to myself when I saw it – not because I thought it strange but because I couldn’t believe such a thing could be placed in such a public space: something so… vivid. But it was stunning and unexpectedly relevant. The urns contain the ingredients of life. The two parts of the temple each have this urn as a finial. It suggests understanding that the female has a genetic role in procreation and is not just fertile medium.’ ‘Fertility for women, like fields. Virya for men. The hero.’ Pranavi responded. ‘Although the architecture may demand the urn over the mandapa, we’ve already discussed that the lingam is not housed in the mandapa, well usually, and therefore the “cooling liquid” would not be poured down at that point. Also, the amalaka is either smaller, or not used over the Mandapa – in the Dravida styles, there is the upturned lotus. But even in the North, it is difficult to follow the line of argument to its conclusion, that these two urns would symbolically contain the ovum and the sperm, each one half, each hemi-potential.’ ‘Where we were before with the combined item of the prasada and the absent charge of potential in the mandapa suggests that the urn contains something different,’ Blake posed, feeling his way through the difficulties. ‘The tension! Even so,’ blurted Pranavi. ‘The two distilled, dependent aspects held apart in that way – one fecund, the other nourishing. The dramatic tension!’ ‘It is nerve-wracking, I admit,’ said Blake. The significance of the idea was not lost on either of them, but neither was completely sure they had found the answer to the riddle of the two urns, even less when the urns on the projections and extensions were considered. There was a hint of wickedness in their conversation, as if they were aware of Ashoka’s discomfort. ‘There is union and the union is fruitful,’ said Pranavi, summing up almost with a sigh. ‘Otherwise, the focal emblem would not be what it is.’ ‘That’s it,’ exclaimed Blake. ‘The union is fruitful. I think the mandapa urn is to do with the spark of fertility which is somehow remote from the two participants in the prasada.’ ‘It is that, isn’t it?’ agreed Pranavi. ‘It is the fruitfulness which only attends when there is…’ Pranavi found herself unable to finish. It was to do with the rightness of the relationship, but she didn’t know how to say it. Morality somehow entered her line of thought and she didn’t want it to; morality had nothing to do with it, but she didn’t want to say as much in front of Ashoka. It was to do with the match of the man and the woman – some indefinable attraction and match. Compatibility, but also unbridled access. Blake witnessed her hesitation and offered a way out of the momentary silence. It was the prescience he felt concerning the strictures that prevent or, at least, delay access to such happy union: ‘I’m sorry for talking about things which are not really acceptable…’ ‘No, it’s not that. Really.’ Pranavi wanted to say what she hadn’t said but opted for politeness. ‘It’s just that the stream of ideas seemed to take the conversation away. I know what you mean about the mystery of attendance…’ He coughed quietly and looked awkwardly over towards Ashoka, who leant back in his chair eyeing Blake keenly. ‘For my part, no. The conversation, I mean. Is not not acceptable. I mean, is acceptable. Is fine. So much so,’ interrupted Pranavi, suddenly pushing the conversation back to the impersonal subject and away from the fraught ground of compatibility. ‘I fell into a reverie for a few moments, reflecting. I’m sorry. I really want to think about these things. I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to…’ ‘I just love talking about these things…’ Blake was going to add ‘with you’ but stopped himself in Ashoka’s presence. He began to feel wretched, wondering how he could recover the situation, not with Pranavi, but with Ashoka who, he thought, must have been able to see the almost adolescent immediacy between Pranavi and him. He was also suddenly chilled by the fear that Pranavi could be teasing him. Given their conversational compatibility, this could only have come from the awkwardness he felt at Ashoka’s reactions to them. But his years of suffering so many minute forms of rejection and false interest suddenly intruded. A cold casing had formed around his inner person for self-defence. Discourse he usually made absurd, light-hearted, occasionally bawdy, if the occasion demanded it, to deflect away from issues he preferred to dwell on, but for which he had been pilloried. And there, with Pranavi, he had shed his protection and suddenly felt unprotected. It was not Pranavi he needed fear, it was everything surrounding them and this was summed up in Ashoka’s steely look. Blake did not know it, but Ashoka was only concentrating on the subject. He wasn’t, in his heart, in the slightest critical. When Pranavi said how much she loved the discussion, she meant it. She meant it personally and she meant it in isolation, even irrespective of the persons involved. It was the conversation that took over, the tandem construction of an idea. She and Blake seemed, at moments, inconsequential. Her expression of enjoyment was a punctuation point and the moment the two had become aware of Ashoka. The innocent man was only observing, listening without interrupting, as would a perspicacious instructor listen to the full gamut of a thesis.
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Blake, very lit up and also strangely wary, as astrophysics was a subject he’d been exposed to by Laetitia, carried on with the idea: ‘And the couple is captured in stone at the instant of inflexion between expansion and contraction or actually, why not, expansion and acceleration. Just as the tide turns or the tidal bore raises, just as the gravitational force begins the achingly slow ebb, or the frightening whoosh. You know, I think some of those scientists are chasing this unified theory out of a semi-religious fervour which is misplaced. There is no reason why there should be one force. I much prefer the idea that there are two in eternal union, sometimes opposing, sometimes combining.’ ‘This sort of thing,’ stage whispered Pranavi, ‘actually gets me right here,’ putting her hand over her right breast. ‘But the quest is probably right. You are the ones in love with the grail or a singular deity, even. In any case, they wouldn’t have known about accelerating expansion.’ Blake looked down. ‘Probably not. The architecture says not, which is why everyone is so surprised now. But they understood about heat, heat and energy and perhaps mass.’ He paused and Pranavi waited. ‘And the point about the male principle containing the womb. There are some instances where Śiva is portrayed being born from the side of the male phallus – we saw one at Ellora¬–’ ‘You were there together?’ Ashoka cut in, astute as to such slips. ‘Oh…’ started Blake. ‘We met and stayed with my cousin. Nothing seedy, Uncle. All totally above board.’ ‘Uncle?’ ‘You know we call you Uncle! So, Blake and I met up almost by accident. I slept with my cousin, in her room.’ Blake wanted to get the subject away from the little speck of inattention that had alerted Ashoka more than the conversation itself. He realised that it was actually his second slip, the first cut off but perhaps sharpening Ashoka’s awareness without alerting him, the second ready primed. Blake picked up exactly where things had been left so his words had an evasive meaning: ‘I know there have been sculptors in the past who have thought about this. Will you forgive me if I say something deeply personal and potentially embarrassing?’ ‘Alright,’ chipped in Ashoka, relaxed and apparently satisfied by Pranavi’s previous explanation. ‘You’ll have to be outrageous to embarrass me,’ assured Pranavi. ‘Pranavi, sometimes I have doubts about you and youth in general,’ remarked Ashoka, quite uncritically. ‘You needn’t. We are quite capable you know,’ Pranavi responded. Blake set out on his thesis: ‘Sometimes an erection can feel like the core of a feminine companion. It’s a feeling that the phallus belongs to the female body. It suggests that the female principle can exist within the male and vice versa.’ ‘Fits in with the examples of Śiva.’ ‘What?’ Ashoka blurted, his discomfort with the conversation evident, the word unfortunately suggesting clarification. ‘Being born from the side of a penis,’ Blake confirmed matter-of-factly. ‘Is it a companion you carry around with you, or a sense of fecundity?’ Pranavi asked and was then quiet for a few moments, thinking about it, about her body being complicit with a man’s. ‘I cannot see where you two are leading us. I really can’t. A man is a man and a woman is just that. It sounds to me like you don’t understand the facts of life. You cannot surely suggest that a woman is merely an embellishment of a man’s penis. That she is an elucidation of it, in some ways the agent of it who engages and then carries out its purpose. To suggest that is to provide an impetus for rough handling and rape,’ put in Ashoka. ‘We are not exploring the true nature, merely the perceived nature and you may have identified an unfortunate perception that resides in the intemperate male psyche. I, for one, do not support it,’ responded Pranavi with firmness. ‘That may indeed be it,’ ignoring Ashoka’s last leap of intuition. ‘If the facts of life are a mystery, then the power of the meeting between man and woman will have incalculable overtones of power and tabu. Hence the weird things that societies do in connection with sexual relations. What I am trying to understand is the iconography of Hindu thinkers as expressed in the Vedas et al and seen in the sculptures.’ Blake was in no mood to be derailed. ‘You mean the ambiguity with regard to the sexes and the nature of the lingam?’ asked Pranavi. ‘Yes. In order to understand these things, one has to plumb hints of feeling in one’s own thoughts and reactions to things. I simply said that I have this feeling that the penis is female probably by virtue of association and perhaps by inference.’ ‘Inference?’ ‘That passing semen is a form of birth… if done in the right place… at the right time. ‘Can’t we move on now? I don’t think this is getting anywhere,’ protested Ashoka. ‘In any case, I think you are ignoring the obvious plant references in the buildings.’ ‘The thing is, there are still asymmetries in the ideas. If the prasada is an emblem of the lingam yoni union, both as a symbol within and as a manifestation at the greater scale, how can the mandapa, being the outward manifestation of the female principle, embody the male principle? It doesn’t appear to.’ Blake was re-stating an unresolved and contrary train of thought coming from the inconsistencies he had long wrestled with. He hadn’t ignored Ashoka’s interjection, just hadn’t been able to digest the suggestion at that moment. ‘The mandapa, finely adorned, is full of symbolism. The act of realisation perhaps requires greater elaboration or is valued highly or requires to be gratified. In some temple groups, the mandapa has a chain of extensions. The group at Abu is an interesting example, isn’t it? It takes you a moment to realise that the actual mandapa and prasada are quite small and the huge majority of the main Dilwara space seems to be a vast, beautifully carved and ornate mandapa, but isn’t. Here the outer space for the worshippers is far more elaborate than the sanctum or prasada.’ Pranavi’s words found their way into the subject. ‘It’s more lovely and more highly adorned,’ offered Blake. ‘But that is strange, isn’t it?’ returned Pranavi. ‘I wonder if the answer is in the embodiment of the idea of client, or maker. You said earlier that the mandapa equates to the Deccan which suggests “maker”, but also because this is where the act of living is carried out.’ ‘Maybe,’ said Blake appreciatively, wanting nothing but to talk on and on with her, aimlessly if necessary. ‘I get a bit uncomfortable with gender assumptions. Perhaps the super-sexuality of the prasada is balanced by sexual neutrality in the mandapa. In the one, the two opposites combine and become hyper-charged; in the other, the two negate each other and the effect is one of background, without which nothing would exist.’ ‘Well Blake, old chap, you’ve got your work cut out,’ Ashoka interposed. ‘Where? Gender?’ ‘No, the temple, the architecture of temples,’ clarified Ashoka. ‘But Blake, why do you think there are expressions on both parts which are common, like some of the wall decoration of the Kailasa Temple at Ellora to the more developed buildings at Khajuraho?’ continued Pranavi, not noticing Ashoka’s blithe sweep expressed partly from a sense of frustration that the conversation had got tangled, was bound in a restrictive gossamer. ‘Do you think this is an attempt to render an equality of status on the two parts?’ she wondered. ‘Perhaps it is an example of sophisticated architecture which unifies the two parts into one work. Like two hands, one open like this,’ and he held one hand open, palm upwards, ‘and one closed like this,’ and he held the other closed as a fist on the heel of his hand, the thumb pointing upwards, ‘and the two are juxtaposed. The two parts of the building are complementary aspects of the same thing: at once multiplying, at once dividing. ‘The early temples of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu have the two parts as quite distinct buildings of completely different style, set apart. Then at Bhubaneswar in Orissa, the two parts are joined but quite dissimilar. By the time we reach Khajuraho, it is the upper parts where the dialectic is expressed.’ ‘There is something poignant about the separate buildings. Something expressive of the future, of potential for momentous events, of coming together. A self-denial about them. And then with the later examples, we feel we are experiencing the heat of the present.’ Pranavi had the same inner response to the positioning of the temple components as Blake did.