Kål’s Tongue: Shame, Disgust, and the Rejection of Blood and Violence in Vedic and Hindu Thought

Herman Tull

The Image of Kål In all Indian iconography, there is perhaps a no more recognizable image than that of the goddess Kål. In modern Indian poster art, the goddess is garishly depicted standing on the supine, and apparently lifeless body of the great god Çva, her bright red tongue outstretched and reaching downward the length of her chin. She is adorned with a garland of disembodied heads and holds aloft a bloody weapon in one hand and a dismembered demon’s head in another; both still drip blood.1 Her darkly colored visage looks brazenly outward; a look of rage plays on her features. This modern representation is largely in accord with what is perhaps the bestknown Sanskrit text describing the goddess, the Dev Måhåtmya,2 which presents Kål as a terrifying and violent figure: Bearing a brilliant skull-topped staff, adorned with a garland of men’s skulls, with a robe of tiger skin, her dried flesh exceedingly disturbing, her mouth wide open and terrifying with her tongue lolling out, sunken red eyes, and her cries filling all the directions she faces (Mårka~
eya Purå~a 87.6–7).3 This ferocious image of the goddess Kål was long a source of discomfort, if not disdain, for Westerners who engaged with the Hindu tradition. International Journal of Hindu Studies 19, 3: 301–332 © 2015 Springer DOI 10.1007/s11407-015-9181-2 DOI

302 / Herman Tull Thus, the nineteenth-century Indologist Monier Monier-Williams, after freely rendering a description of the goddess found in a Tantric text (“Kål, who lives amongst dead bodies; who is terrible and has fearful jaws; who has uncombed hair and a glowing tongue; who constantly drinks blood; who stands over her husband Mahåkåla and wears a garland of skulls on her blood-besmeared throat”), remarked that the worship of the goddess represented “the worst results of the worst superstitious ideas that have ever disgraced and degraded the human race” (Monier-Williams 1891: 190). In broadly associating Kål with wanton beheadings, bloody animal (and human) sacrifice, and sexual license (Eliot 1921, 2: 287, 186n416; Monier-Williams 1891: 190), the Western scholarly lexicon drew on a range of pejorative terms to describe the goddess: “repulsive”; “depraved”; “grotesque”; “immoral” (Martin 1914: 185; cf. Foulston and Abbott 2009: 34; Humes 2003: 150; Urban 2003: 174–80). By way of explanation, these scholars asserted that Kål must have arisen from the supposed “non-Hindu” sphere of India’s aboriginal or tribal people, a group whose practices and beliefs were generally understood to reflect what one observer referred to as a “gross demonolatry” (Elmore 1915: 12; see also Eliot 1921, 2: 276–77; Farquhar 1913: 396; Keane 1908: 35). Of course, this unfavorable view of the goddess Kål says far more about the Victorian sensibilities of these non-Indian scholars than it does about those for whom this goddess is experienced as part of a larger lived-in world. Nevertheless, for many decades, this view did have the unfortunate effect of consigning studies of Kål to the academic hinterlands. In recent decades, this situation changed with the emergence of a remarkably robust body of work devoted to the study of this goddess (see further McDermott and Kripal 2003: 1–2).4 Here, also, the rise of Kål studies reflects the general trend in the study of religion to seek the divine feminine in all its manifestations (see McDermott and Kripal 2003: 2), a trend supported by a broad methodological shift that has led scholars of religion to embrace interpretive tools drawn from the disparate fields of psychology, anthropology, literary studies, and so forth. Wendy Doniger has famously referred to this methodological strain as the “toolbox approach,” which she explains as a mandate to “carry about with you as wide a range of tools as possible, and reach for the right one at the right time” (O’Flaherty 1980: 5). Though this approach may be fundamentally

Kål’s Tongue / 303 eclectic, it may be argued that it is also fundamentally nonreductionist. For, rather than seeking out simple characterizations—that is, utilizing an “either-or” lens—it approaches the world as a confluence of elements, not all of which may be noncontradictory, as, for example, in Doniger’s famed description of Çiva as the “erotic ascetic.” In the realm of the religious, not only do such contradictions abound, but they often remain unresolved.5 And, here, by employing the “right tool” at the “right time,” scholars may become more attuned to the richness and complexity of the world “as it is” and less likely to reject the coexistence of what may otherwise appear to be logically impossible oppositions. Within this broader strain, David R. Kinsley’s studies stand as the critical starting point in seeking to make sense of Kål’s character—with its emphasis on the elements of violence, death, and destruction—within the broad context of Indian religious experience. For Kinsley, the fierce representation of the goddess (the very image that repulsed an earlier generation of scholars) evokes life at its most elemental, and so too its most unpredictable: “She is growth, decay, death, and rebirth completely unrefined” (1996: 82, cf. 1996: 80, 1988: 120). In so doing, as Kinsley emphasizes, Kål brings the worshiper directly into the “cosmic drama” and thus opens “new possibilities and new frames of references” (1988: 130). Along with his insights into the meaning of the goddess Kål as a primal figure, Kinsley also observed that the goddess appears occasionally in the more constrained and more typical Indian female role of wife and mother. For Kinsley (1988: 126), this identification was a puzzling one, however, and he passed over it as something of an anomaly. However, that Indians do often identify Kål in the role of an “ordinary” Indian female is made clear in a study published in 1994 by Usha Menon and Richard A. Shweder that focuses on the image of Kål’s outstretched tongue,6 an image that stands among the most recognizable elements of Indian iconography. As noted above, this element is featured prominently in the famed description of Kål found in the Dev Måhåtmya, where the goddess is referred to as jihvå-lalana-bh‚a~å (87.7), the one who is “terrifying” (bh‚a~å) with her “tongue” (jihvå) “lolling” or “moving about” (lalana). However, despite the fierce meanings suggested by this image, as Menon and Shweder show, Indians frequently interpret it as a sign of shame, seeing it just as they would if a typical married Indian

304 / Herman Tull woman were making this gesture. The coexistence of these two understandings of Kål, the one which sees her as a fierce and uncontrolled female, as unyielding as any force of nature, and the other that sees her as a wife who is expressing shame, articulates a conflict—deeply embedded in Indian thought—between the constrained world of social propriety and the unconstrained primal world. To say that this conflict exists is perhaps not at all surprising; what is unexpected, however, is to suggest that it can be glimpsed in the figure of Kål. To explore this latter position, however, requires looking beyond the typical understanding of Kål—that is, that she represents uncontrolled power—to see the goddess inhabiting other roles such as that of the constrained wife. In the following, I shall explore the image of Kål’s tongue following two interpretive strains. The first strain follows on the work of Menon and Shweder that explores the notion expressed by their Indian informants that Kål’s tongue expresses shame. In following this interpretative strain, I shall also attend to Jeffery J. Kripal’s work which asserts that beneath the notion that Kål’s tongue expresses shame is the covert sense that the tongue extends forth to “commune with the disgusting and the impure” (1994: 154). Kripal’s view rather unexpectedly receives support from the observations made more than a century ago by Charles Darwin that the extended tongue is first and foremost a sign of disgust. This position leads to a fundamental question; that is, if indeed Kål’s outstretched tongue is a sign of disgust, then what is the object of her disgust? From this point, I shall engage a second strain in this inquiry, focusing on the nature of disgust (and its ancillary element, rejection) and its particular enunciation on the Indian landscape. Here, I shall argue that in the history of Indian religiosity, Kål’s disgust, which is to say her rejection of her own transgressive action, may be understood through broadly examining Indian attitudes toward the practice of animal sacrifice—a practice that dates back to the Vedic period. As we shall see, as it is depicted in the Indian tradition, this practice exists on two planes, the one which necessitates a violent, bloody action, and the other which seeks, at all costs, to avoid it. However, to say that the Vedic attitude toward sacrifice forms the substrate of the Kål mythology clearly runs counter to conventional wisdom. And, indeed, my intent here is not to argue for a Vedic origin of Kål, but

Kål’s Tongue / 305 rather to posit a contextual link between Kål and the Vedic world, a position supported by Madeleine Biardeau’s (2004) work that relates the Vedic sacrificial post to the goddess cult. For, here, I believe the conflicts that so deeply imbue the Vedic attitude toward sacrifice can be seen resonating in Kål’s characteristic feature of the outstretched tongue, a tongue that at once seeks blood and so, too, suggests a violent mode of being, yet also expresses a sense of shame for its urges. Viewed in this way, what on the surface appear to stand as two quite distinct layers of the Indic tradition—Kål’s tongue, on the one hand, and the Vedic sacrifice, on the other—may emerge as oddly aligned; both representing an activity that is sought on the instinctual level but rejected in the lived-in world, a world that is controlled by the mandates of social propriety. In exploring this linkage, however, it is worth emphasizing that what is sought here is not explication per se, but rather evocation—of what Clifford Geertz famously referred to as “thick description”; that is, to engage “culture” (for lack of a better term) as “a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit” (1973: 10). Kål’s Shame and Kål’s Disgust Usha Menon and Richard A. Shweder, in their jointly authored study, “Kali’s Tongue: Cultural Psychology and the Power of Shame in Orissa India” (1994), focus on a notion prevalent in contemporary Orissa that Kål’s tongue is a symbol of shame (lajjå). In making this identification, Menon and Shweder report that their informants in Bhubaneswar invariably point to a well-known and oft-represented episode of the Kål mythology. This episode begins as the goddess Kål enters into a demonkilling rampage of such fury that even the gods cannot stop her. In the hope of placating her, the great god Çiva, who is associated with Kål as a quasi-consort,7 volunteers to lie down in her path. Seeing Çiva, the goddess becomes aware of her actions, and, as one of Menon’s and Shweder’s informants describes it, “When she put her foot on Siva’s chest, she bit her tongue, saying, ‘Oh! My husband!’ ” (Menon and Shweder 1994: 247). When Menon and Shweder asked their respondents what the biting of the tongue here signifies they were told, “What else but shame (lajya)?”

306 / Herman Tull However, as Menon and Shweder correctly point out, there is no scriptural authority for this interpretation that Kål’s outstretched tongue expresses “shame” (1994: 266).8 Indeed, from the scriptural standpoint, it would seem that quite the opposite is the case; as Kinsley has observed, the outstretched tongue strongly indicates excess, rather than restraint, and, as such, suggests an element of the “antifeminine”: “Her tongue lolls out grotesquely, rudely, suggesting an insatiable, indiscriminate hunger and thirst. Kål insults, subverts, and mocks the social status quo, particularly as it defines proper behavior for women” (1997: 7). In the Kål mythos, this subversion of the feminine is further expressed in the image of the foot raised and poised to crush the masculine figure beneath it, an image that is deeply rooted in the iconography of the Indian warrior goddess (see Yokochi 2004: 143–51). Here, the element of feminine power (expressed through the goddess’s rage9) is widely considered to be uncontrollable and most certainly not something subordinate to the male.10 Yet, at the same time that Kinsley asserts Kål’s power is uncontrollable, he also recognizes that the goddess’s nature may be ameliorated by her femaleness, that is, insofar as that femaleness includes the prototypical roles of mother and of wife (see Kinsley 1988: 122, 126). Indeed, it is only as “wife” that Kål finally stops her rampage; as Kinsley describes it: “To stop her rampage, Çiva lay down on the battlefield like a corpse so that when she danced on his body she would stop, recognizing him as her husband” (1988: 130). The notion reported by Menon and Shweder that Kål’s outstretched tongue is widely acknowledged to indicate shame suggests that, despite the scriptural representation of the goddess, Indians do see Kål in the role of wife, a role which in India is defined through a woman’s subordinating relationship to her husband and to her other affines, her father, and her children. Here, the innate power of the female is said to be controlled and restrained by the males in a woman’s life, as expressed in the well-known, and oft-quoted, passage from the Månava Dharmaçåstra: “A father guards her when she is a young girl; a husband guards her when she is a young woman; and the sons guard her when she is in old age; a woman must never be allowed to follow her own desires (svåtantrya)” (9.3). And, here, on the mythological plane of Kål’s restraint, the outstretched tongue loses its significance as an expression of unbridled rage and becomes an expression of shame (lajjå), as Kål is transformed from

Kål’s Tongue / 307 a raging, powerful female into a deferential wife.11 As Menon and Shweder observe, “To have a sense of lajya is to be civilized; to know one's rightful place in society; to conduct oneself in a becoming manner; to be conscious of one's duties and responsibilities; to persevere in the performance of social role obligations; to be shy, modest, and deferential and not encroach on the prerogatives of others; and to remain silent or lower one’s eyes in the presence of social superiors. Lajya is something that one shows or puts on display, just as one might show gratitude or loyalty through various forms of public presentation. Like gratitude or loyalty, lajya, which a way of displaying one's continuing commitment to the maintenance of social harmony…” (1994: 277). Menon and Shweder note that not all their informants agree with this view regarding the sublimation of Kål’s rage and the outstretched tongue as a symbol of shame. This second perspective, which Menon and Shweder (1994: 271–73) associate with the Tantric tradition, sees the outstretched tongue as symbolizing an unbounded anger that can be both cruel and frightening. In their discussion, Menon and Shweder identify this alternative interpretation as somewhat nonnormative—albeit widely recognized—but beyond noting that there is significant ambivalence toward it, they do not explore it deeply.12 Unlike Menon and Shweder, Kripal (1994) does look to the Tantric tradition to gain insight into the image of Kål’s tongue. Though Kripal acknowledges that the notion commonly expressed in India is that Kål’s tongue represents shame (as Menon and Shweder report), he also notes that oddly, this interpretation “is virtually absent in the Purå~as and Tantras that form the textual and ritual base of the tradition” (1994: 153– 54). The larger framework of Kripal’s study is the appropriation of the image of Kål’s tongue by the nineteenth-century Bengali mystic and saint, Çr Råmak®‚~a, which, in Kripal’s view, draws heavily on Tantric notions of the goddess. According to Kripal (1994: 155–56), a “history” of Kål can be delineated in four distinct stages: the first stage is that of an archaic tribal goddess whose tongue consumes the blood of assorted primal sacrifices; the second stage is that of the Kål of the great Sanskrit mythological tracts, whose tongue is depicted as a destructive force that, in the most bloodthirsty fashion imaginable, consumes the demon horde that threatens the gods; the third stage is that of the Tantric goddess whose extended tongue suggests a highly charged eroticism, one that is empow-

308 / Herman Tull ered in typical Tantric fashion by placing the female in dominance over the male; the fourth is the modern sense that has come to symbolize Kål’s shame. Kripal argues that beneath the modern sense of Kål’s “bitten tongue” remains the highly sensate, if not fully eroticized tongue of the Tantric tradition. Although Kripal has been criticized for presenting a somewhat sensationalized and one-dimensional representation of Tantra (Urban 1998: 319), it does not diminish the point he makes here regarding the tongue’s implicit carnality (Tantric or not). It is this carnal tongue that potentially experiences all those things that, within the repressed and restricted world in which everyday people live out their lives, are ordinarily denoted as “off-limits”; as Kripal observes: “So the tongue extends itself to commune with human meat, fish, wine, polluted rice, and even feces and urine. Again and again, it reaches out to commune with that which society deems disgusting” (1994: 169). Here, through Kål’s tongue, the individual vicariously experiences this world that, though considered “disgusting” by ordinary standards, represents for the tåntrika a realm of unconstrained power. In making this assertion, however, Kripal also acknowledges that this experience of the unrestrained is generally unacknowledged in India and perhaps, as in the case of representations of Råmak®‚~a, even willfully concealed. At the same time, as Kripal astutely notes, this sort of contradiction presents a unique opportunity to glimpse hidden truths, suggesting “that there may be more to a particular cultural form than the culture itself is often willing to acknowledge openly” (1994: 154). Though on the surface, Kripal’s interpretation seems to oppose Menon’s and Shweder’s position that the tongue represents restraint, it is perhaps better to understand this relationship as one of juncture; for, while the outstretched tongue may be the locus of transgressive action, it also symbolizes shame, a shame that is directed at its own offensive behavior. This proposition, that the outstretched tongue embodies the duality of restraint while engaging in disruptive behavior, broadly recalls Freudian theory regarding the id and the ego and the repression of powerful, largely sexual urges through sublimation and reidentification (see, for example, Freud 1962: 18–21). Although the tongue itself was not the object of Sigmund Freud’s observations, as the locus of taste, it is uniquely suited to his observations regarding the instinctual life and its sublimation. Indeed,

Kål’s Tongue / 309 supporting this latter notion, Darwin long ago observed that the tongue when outstretched expresses disgust, an emotion he linked to the sense of taste and the act of rejecting nonpalatable foodstuffs. Although Darwin’s view is today rarely cited, as we shall see, his insights are uniquely suited to the image of Kål’s tongue which encompasses a mass of conflicting meanings in its act of protrusion. Darwin’s insights into the physical element of the tongue, however, do lead back to the world of social and psychological constructions; for it is here that we must seek out the emotional basis for the identification of an object as disgusting. Darwin’s Tongue and the Nature of Disgust Charles Darwin’s last book was a study of how facial features and other physical signs express emotions in both humans and animals. Although it was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1872, within ten years The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was largely forgotten (Ekman 1998a: xxix). As Paul Ekman points out in his introduction to Darwin’s text, chief among the reasons why this work fell into obscurity was Darwin’s radical proposition that “expressions are innate, that these signs of our emotions are the product of our evolution and therefore part of our biology” (1998a: xxxiv). Here, Darwin’s stance conflicted with the dominant late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century understanding of behavior as learned—in other words, that behavior is determined largely by environment (nurture rather than nature)—a notion that was critically important in the rise of nineteenth-century social science with its “insistence that culture completely determines social life” (Ekman 1998a: xxxv). Darwin’s proposition that the forms of emotional expression are biologically innate also means that they must be universal, a notion still much discussed and not universally accepted (see Ekman 1998b: 390; Camras, Holland, and Patterson 1993: 199; cf. Jänig 2003: 176; for the case of India, cf. Hejmadi 2000: 186; Haidt and Keltner 1999). Without entirely dismissing this notion of universality, Shweder (1993: 422)—here, comparing Indian and Western conceptualizations of the emotions—has taken a more nuanced position by suggesting that many different shades of meaning may adhere in the terms used crossculturally for emotional states, particularly as the context becomes less concrete.

310 / Herman Tull In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin devotes but a single paragraph to the “lolling” tongue; the subject he describes is his own five-month old child: I never saw disgust more plainly expressed than on the face of one of my infants at the age of five months, when, for the first time, some cold water, and again a month afterwards, when a piece of ripe cherry was put into his mouth. This was shown by the lips and whole mouth assuming a shape which allowed the contents to run or fall quickly out; the tongue being likewise protruded. These movements were accompanied by a little shudder. It was all the more comical, as I doubt whether the child felt real disgust—the eyes and forehead expressing much surprise and consideration. The protrusion of the tongue in letting a nasty object fall out of the mouth, may explain how it is that lolling out the tongue universally serves as a sign of contempt and hatred (1998: 259; emphasis added). In evidence of the universality of this gesture and its meaning, Darwin cites the work of his younger contemporary Edward B. Tylor (Oxford University’s first professor of anthropology), who notes that the “lolling out the tongue” is a well-known gesture of “hatred and contempt” (Darwin 1998: 259; Tylor 1870: 52). However, whereas Tylor offers no explanation for the gesture, Darwin connects it to the act of eating, which he identifies as the basis of the emotion of disgust, as he states: “the term ‘disgust,’ in its simplest sense, means something offensive to the taste” (1998: 255). Thus, the protrusion of the tongue as well as the associated acts of spitting and making guttural sounds (“ugh!”) are all gestures that “push away…the offensive object”; and, as Darwin further observes, this may be emphasized in cases of “extreme disgust” with its expression through “movements round the mouth identical with those preparatory to the act of vomiting” (1998: 256). Numerous studies show that humans consistently recognize these expressions as showing disgust (Scherer 2003: 443–44; cf. Niedenthal 2007: 1004). Paul Rozin, who agrees with Darwin that “disgust began, both phylogenitically and ontogenetically, as part of a food rejection system,” observes that, although the elements that elicit disgust may have changed over time and may not be identical in different cultural contexts, “the expressive and output side of this system

Kål’s Tongue / 311 remained more or less constant” (2003: 849). The classical Indian description of the physical expression (anubhåva) of disgust (jugupså) includes the contraction of the limbs, spitting, narrowing the mouth, and other gestures that indicate an encounter with something that offends the sense of taste, such as covering the nose, turning aside the face, and even vomiting (Tarlekar 1991: 70; Sinha 1986: 201). Although the protrusion of the tongue is not directly mentioned here, it is associated with one of disgust’s ancillary states, that of extreme intoxication (mada) (Tarlekar 1991: 71; Sinha 1986: 202). It is also worth noting here that the Indian tradition reserves a special category of disgust for blood and body substances, for these objects also generate a mental reaction, such as becoming afraid, feeling aversion, and so forth (Sinha 1986: 201; Shweder 1993: 422). To again move cross-culturally, these notions are reminiscent of the anthropologist Mary Douglas’s observation (1966: 122) that humans respond strongly to things “out of place,” as seen, in particular, in the human response to bodily substances (blood, feces, and so forth) when they are outside their “normal” context—that is, the confines of the body. Rozin, perhaps the best-known contemporary theorist in this area, locates the etiology of disgust as a response to any experience “that reminds us that we are animals” (Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley 2008: 761). The implications of this notion are broad, for it invokes a wide range of body elements that are suggestive of the human “animal”: blood, excreta, viscera, bone, and so forth, as well as the base instincts for food and sex. Death, also, is a particularly potent reminder of a human’s underlying animal being. Here, Rozin’s notion of the intermingling of the animal and the human as the locus of disgust recalls the “breaking of boundaries” critical to Douglas’s theory (see also Nussbaum 2004: 93–94). Taken together, Douglas’s and Rozin’s positions are highly relevant to the figure of Kål, who, in myth, ritual, and iconography, is invariably associated with blood (Kinsley 1996: 83). Exemplifying this association is the image of the goddess found in the Dev Måhåtmya, where Kål is not only awash in blood, but fights a demon, Raktabja, whose being (as his name indicates) is defined by the element of blood and who bears the power of giving birth to a demon horde from drops of his blood. Moreover, as will be explored further below, Kål’s thirst for blood occurs not merely

312 / Herman Tull as a literary motif, but is also well known as an essential element of her cult (see, for example, Fuller 1992: 83; cf. Gupta 2003: 69). Following this line of reasoning, however, we are left with the supposition that Kål’s outstretched tongue signifies her disgust or rejection of the blood that invariably defines her being as a quintessentially bloodthirsty goddess. The quandary seen here—that is, the seemingly simultaneous existence of a desire for and rejection of blood—is not without precedent within the broad landscape of Indian religiosity, but has a deep history in the ancient Indian rituals of sacrifice and the attendant violence they require. Indeed, this conflict between the bloody and the nonbloody (expressed in terms of a conflict between violence and nonviolence) receives a remarkably full articulation in the Vedic texts, with their overwhelming emphasis on rituals of sacrifice. In broaching the issue of Kali’s disgust, a disgust seemingly at odds with her essential nature as a bloodthirsty demon-slayer, the positions espoused in these ancient texts strongly suggests that this conflict is not without a deep foundation in India. Violence and Nonviolence in the Vedic Sacrifice The slaughter of animals as a means of breaking through to the unseen world—that is, to the world of the gods, spirits, and ancestors—is deeply embedded in human culture (see, for example, Burkert 1983: 1; 35; de Heusch 1985: 148; Hubert and Mauss 1964: 33–36). Though the practice is in evidence throughout the ancient world (from Greece to the Near East, to India), its origins and even its fundamental purposes are beyond our reach (see van Baal 1976). In India, by at least the end of the second millennium BCE, animal sacrifice was firmly ensconced as a central element of the Vedic tradition. Although the Vedic ritualists cite a wide range of animals that might be sacrificed, the primary victims offered in the Vedic sacrifice were domesticated animals—horse, cattle, sheep, and goats (see ¸gveda 10.90.10)—as is the case in a great many cultures that practice animal sacrifice (Smith 2004: 149).13 It is worth noting here that, unlike the case of modern European farm animals, in small societies, domesticated animals commonly live closely with people. Milkproducing bovines, in particular, are often found living within the confines of the house; that is, they are not just domesticated animals, but literally

Kål’s Tongue / 313 “domestic” animals. This practice is well known in Africa among the Maasai (Saitoti 1986: xxv) and it was also common throughout village India; as one contemporary author writes of her Gujarati great-grandmother: [Ma] like most housewives of her time and place, kept a water buffalo in a room inside the family compound. Ma milked her buffalo every morning and evening, fed her, watered her, and gave her special treats from the kitchen. She doted on her buffalo, and the animal returned her affection in full (Kamdar 2000: 3). In the Vedic world, the existence of a close relationship between humans and domesticated bovines is seen in the omnipresent cattle terminology that was part of everyday life: thus, a person of wealth is a gopati (“lord of cattle”); one of the divisions of the day is named saμgava (“the coming-together of the cattle”); a clan is a gotra (“cowpen”); and a word frequently used for battle is gavi‚†i (“desire for cattle”) (Macdonell and Keith 1958, 1: 237, 48–50, 223, 235–36). Moreover, that humans were intimately involved with their cattle is seen in the presence of more than a dozen specialized words in the Vedic language for cattle: “heifer, barren cow, cow that has ceased to bear after having one calf, four-year old ox, three-year old ox, large castrated ox” (Brown 1957: 30). Given this almost intimate relationship between humans and cattle, it is not at all difficult to see that their slaughter can be understood—and perhaps even experienced—as being tantamount to the slaughter of a human, if not a family relation (cf. Heesterman 1993: 31). In fact, the intimate connection between humans and cattle—considered the quintessential sacrificial animals (Brown 1957: 29; Tull 1996: 232)—forms an important part of the ancient Indian sacrificial ideology (this element of sacrifice is by no means limited to India; see van Baal 1976: 175). In breaking through to the world of the gods, the ancient Indian sacrificer sought to create a channel whereby the goods of life, whether in the form of rain, crops, or progeny, could be moved from the world of the gods to the world of man. Here, the sacrifice became a vehicle of exchange; by offering a single cow, the sacrificer sought to win back an abundance of cows (see, for example, Çatapatha Bråhma~a 11.7.1.1; Heesterman 1978: 87). However, this notion of calibrating the rewards sought through the

314 / Herman Tull sacrifice to the nature of the offering also means that, above all else, the offering that will win the goods of life for the sacrificer is the sacrificer. This notion clearly underlies the well-known Vedic tale of Çunaªçepa, which tells of a boy who is nearly sacrificed due to the childless King Hariçcandra’s promise to the god Varu~a that, should Varu~a grant Hariçcandra offspring, he would in return offer his offspring in sacrifice to Varu~a (Aitareya Bråhma~a 7.13–18). Although the Çunaªçepa tale is in some ways more about the avoidance of a human sacrifice than it is about its performance (in the end, Çunaªçepa is not sacrificed, though he is tied to the sacrificial post and watches as the sacrificial knife hovers above him), it yet stands as an emphatic reminder of the deep identification that is made between the victim and the sacrificer and the possible consequences of this identification. And, indeed, in other contexts, the ritualists were not averse to expressing this correlation as a fundamental reality of the sacrifice, and what it might ultimately entail, as they openly declared: “The sacrificial fires become determined for the flesh of the sacrificer when he sacrifices; they think about the sacrificer; they desire the sacrificer…” (Çatapatha Bråhma~a 11.7.1.2; cf. Lévi 1898: 133). Yet self-sacrifice is an impossibility; rather than renewed life, the sacrificer would find only death, suggesting the failure rather than the success of the ritual act (Heesterman 1987: 105). To ameliorate this otherwise impossible situation, the Vedic ritualists established an elaborate system through which the sacrificer closely identified himself with the sacrificial victim, yet remained apart from it—in a sense, becoming the victim without actually being the victim.14 This identification was established on several levels, from mythologies that spoke of deep connections between men and animals (see Tull 1996: 232–34), to the physical replication of the sacrificer’s own body in creating the sacrificial arena—a feat achieved through constructing the offering area, the offering implements, and, in particular, the sacrificial stake to which the animal victim is tied, in proportion to the physical dimensions of the sacrificer (Çatapatha Bråhma~a 1.2.5.14, 10.2.1.2; Taittirya Saμhitå 5.2.5.1; see Eggeling 1882: 78). These notions in turn supported the establishment of an equation between the animal victim and the human sacrificer, such that, as the ritualists observe, offering the one is tantamount to offering the other: “By its likeness (pratimå), it [the offering] is indeed a man” (Kau‚taki Bråhma~a 10.3); and, again, “Now when he offers the animal

Kål’s Tongue / 315 sacrifice (pa‚ubandha), it is as if he ransoms himself—a male by a male; indeed, for the animal is a male and a male is the sacrificer” (Çatapatha Bråhma~a 11.7.1.3; see also Heesterman 1987: 105; Smith and Doniger 1989: 199–205).15 Just as the Vedic ritualists avoided the act of self-sacrifice through the subterfuge of a “replacement” victim, so, too, they sought to soften the brutality that lies at the heart of the sacrificial offering; that is, the necessary dismembering of the animal. Thus, in the Vedic sacrificial ritual, the slaughter of the animal victim is obscured by suffocating it prior to its dismemberment; an act the Vedic ritualists declared, in pious fiction, did not “lead [the animal] to death” (Çatapatha Bråhma~a 3.8.1.10). That the suffocation is understood in some sense to be mere subterfuge is also seen in the ritualists’ declaration that the correct expression of the victim’s fate is that it is “quieted” and that it “went forth” (saμjñapayån u agan) (Çatapatha Bråhma~a 3.8.1.15; see further Houben 1999: 117–20). The identification of the human sacrificer with the animal victim also had deep ramifications for the communal meal that was an essential part of the Vedic ritual (Heesterman 1993: 188). That this conflict weighed heavily on the minds of the ritualists can be seen in the famed description of how, in the other world, cattle eat men, an apparent act of revenge for men having eaten them in this world (Kau‚taki Bråhma~a 11.3; Jaiminya Bråhma~a 1.42–44; cf. Månava Dharmaçåstra). Taken further, however, the identification of the human sacrificer with the animal victim implies that the sacrificial meal is at some level an act of cannibalism, if not autocannibalism; accordingly, the ritualists declare with an obvious sense of unease: “The offering is indeed a ransom for oneself; in the case of such an offering he should not eat. The ransom for oneself he should not eat” (Kau‚taki Bråhma~a 10.3; cf. Aitareya Bråhma~a 2.3; Taittirya Saμhitå 6.1.11.6). Eventually, the demands of the sacrifice—that is, the need to slaughter and ingest an animal victim poignantly understood to be in some sense human—has an almost paralytic effect, as the ritualists find themselves simultaneously advocating the practice while at the same time proscribing it; thus, a well-known passage from Månava Dharmaçåstra first enjoins the practice of eating the meat of the sacrificial animal, declaring that priests who fail to do so will fall victim to twenty-one rebirths in the animal world (5.35), but then also (within the space of a

316 / Herman Tull few verses) states that meat should be avoided since “meat can never be obtained without causing violence (hiμså) to animals, and the killing of living creatures does not lead to heaven…” (5.48). At least by the time of Açoka, this equivocation can be seen extending beyond the confines of the sacrificial arena into the rising sentiment that the slaughter of animals and the ingestion of their meat should be curtailed, if not completely rejected as a general dietary practice. Thus, an Açokan rock edict records that the practice of slaughtering “many hundreds of thousand living creatures…every day for curries in the kitchens of His Majesty” had been reduced to the daily killing of three living creatures, “two peacocks and a deer, and the deer is not slaughtered regularly,” and that even this practice would soon be ended (Nikam and McKeon 1959: 55). Although the sentiments expressed here were further bolstered by Indian notions of compassion and nonviolence (developed, in particular, within the context of Jain and Buddhist thought)—notions that continue to exert a strong influence in India—the actual practice of rejecting meateating (and the attendant slaughter it requires) never became truly widespread. For, despite the intellectual and emotional rejection of these practices, the desire for animal flesh in the human diet and the slaughter of animals (especially through the ritual act of sacrifice) remain deeply entrenched behaviors. The coexistence of these two positions of avoidance and engagement, however, leads back to the parallel expressions of rejection and empowerment seen in the image of Kål’s tongue. Here, that the rejection response is embedded in a complex of eating (recalling Darwin’s notion that the pushing out of the tongue originates in a rejection of something ingested), on the one hand, and in the uneasy evocation of the human-as-animal (recalling Rozin’s position that humans seek to deny their animal nature), on the other, brings us full circle from the Vedic world to the modern experience of Kål. The Two Faces of India The preeminent form of Kål worship is decapitation. Although goats predominate as the sacrificial victims, buffalo are also used. At the Kålghå† temple in Bengal, among the chief sites for Kål worship in India, it is reported that more than seven hundred goats may be sacrificed on a festival day and as many as several dozen are offered on nonfestival days

Kål’s Tongue / 317 (Samanta 1994: 782).16 As a literary motif, human sacrifice is mentioned (Kinsley 1975a: 190), and the primary method employed is decapitation. This latter practice is linked in particular to the group known as the Thugs, a loose association of highway criminals who were believed to have kidnapped travelers, garroted, and then beheaded them in acts of worship to Kål. Although it is uncertain whether the activities of the Thugs was real or imagined (see van Woerkens 2002: 1–6), that their reputed existence was widely accepted suggests a natural association in Indian thought between Kål and the beheading of victims offered to her.17 Moreover, numerous textual traditions suggest that the highest form of Kål worship is self-sacrifice, enacted through an act of selfdecapitation (Kinsley 1997: 151; cf. Kripal 1995: 39; Justice 1997: 44– 45; Vogel 1931: 541–42). Despite the seeming impossibility of such an act, it forms the basis of the well-known tale of the two brothers-in-law who enter a Durgå temple and, in a state of religious zeal, cut off their own heads as offerings to the goddess (Kathåsaritsågara 80.163.6; in the West, this tale became the basis for Thomas Mann’s The Transposed Heads). It is tempting to assert that the forthrightness of the sacrifices to Kål hearkens back to the elemental form of the early Vedic sacrifices. Yet, the seemingly separable cultural strands that run through India’s long history oppose this simple characterization: Kål worship is generally acknowledged to have arisen outside the Vedic tradition (recalling Kripal’s history [1994: 155–56], Kål arises as an archaic tribal goddess), and through the goddess’s close association with Tantrism, her origins would seem to stand apart from the Vedic tradition. But this too is an oversimplification; for, when carefully examined, the “named” streams that scholars identify within the overall Indian tradition—“Tantric”; “Vedic”; “Bråhma~ic”; even “Tribal”—appear to be not so much discrete elements as they are part of an agglomeration that at any given moment may conjoin and diverge from each other. Thus, Tantrism, with its emphasis on transgressing the well-known boundaries of Indian life— whether in the consumption of illicit foods (meat, wine, and so forth), or in its celebration of open, casteless, sexual intercourse—is considered to be “anti-Vedic”; yet Tantrism’s philosophical base, which emphasizes the identification of microcosm and macrocosm, the mystical nature of sound (mantra), and the quest for freedom, clearly hearkens back to

318 / Herman Tull Vedic models (see Coburn 1991: 123–25). This depiction of the Indian tradition as being inherently permeable is, to the scholar, a confounding one; for, by its nature, the scholarly enterprise seeks limits, boundaries, and definitions as a means of creating knowledge (knowledge must always be knowledge of some defined thing). The study of India has long been dominated by the notion of distinct “layers,” the nature of which receive further definition through the assertion of various binary oppositions: “Dravidian” and “Aryan”; “Great” and “Little”; “Sanskritic” and “Vernacular.” Although scholars have questioned the nature of the separation—as well as the degree of interpenetration—that exists between these layers of belief and practice, the broad depiction of the Indian tradition through the delineation of separable, if not opposed aspects of its “culture” (for lack of a better word), has largely endured in one form or another as a scholarly model. Here, there is perhaps not a more widely presumed model than that which posits a firm separation between “Vedic” and “non-Vedic.” On the one hand, the separation between these two worlds derives from a simple matter of chronology: the Vedic period precedes the rise of modern Hinduism by at least a millennium; its beliefs, practices, and even its language appear largely to be relics locked in the deep past. On the other hand, however, the Vedic tradition remains highly visible in India; its texts—passed down through the generations by an arduous process of memorization—are still widely maintained; its rituals, particularly in rites of passage and in certain domestic practices, remain in evidence; and its heritage continues to confer high status on a significant fraction of Indian society. More subtly, and so too far more difficult to elicit a clear portrayal of, is the enduring legacy for modern Hinduism of Vedism’s conflicted view of violence and nonviolence in the ritual performances. This view is enunciated in what appears to be the simultaneous celebration and denial of animal sacrifices among the Vedic ritualists. In developing this latter position, the Vedic ritualists moved away from the physical performance of sacrifice, replacing it with an “internal” sacrifice that emphasized renunciation in place of outward violence. In a similar vein, modern Hinduism centers on the ritual of p¨jå, a nonanimal offering that according to Madeline Biardeau and C.J. Fuller (1992: 88–89) recasts the Vedic sacrifice, from its originally violent form into a modern nonviolent one. Yet,

Kål’s Tongue / 319 bloody sacrifice seems not to have been entirely withdrawn here, for the modern p¨jå ritual exists in complement to the animal sacrifices associated with the host of gods that require such offerings—among them Kål (Fuller 1992: 89). Here, we must move beyond the limits imposed by the world of textual representation to capture the everyday “lived-in” world of religious behavior, where neat logical boundaries accede to the gestalt nature of human existence in which oppositional elements—the raw and the cooked, the violent and the nonviolent, the instinctual and the restrained—coalesce as parts of a single whole. The coalescence of oppositional elements is fundamental to the figure of Kål. As Sanjukta Gupta notes, Kål is seen all over India as the epitome of demonic ferocity and cannibalism, as is clearly depicted in her iconography: corpse-earrings; the long necklace of freshly severed heads and the belt made of amputated forearms; her nakedness or tiger’s skin loincloth; her dress and ornaments dripping blood; and her grotesque habit of tearing apart the live bodies of her victims, lapping up their gushing blood with her lolling tongue and getting drunk on it…[,] while at the same time she is also the life-giving and life-protecting cosmic mother whose breast milk sustains the world and regenerates her creatures, weakened by the process of life and death and wearied by suffering (2003: 61). Coordinate with her “dual” nature, worship of Kål typically entails both the beheading of animals and offerings of fruits and sweets. These two elements do not normally share the same ritual spaces; the animal beheadings occur outside the main temple, though almost always in view of it (and positioned so that the goddess in the main sanctuary can witness these ceremonies), and separate sets of priests perform the different rites. And, though the priests performing these separate rites seem to ignore one another, as if they belong to two utterly distinct worlds, as Gupta (2003: 69–73) and others have pointed out, there are rituals that combine elements of both the bloody and nonbloody offerings. These rites are invariably performed behind closed doors, as if in an attempt to conceal

320 / Herman Tull the “illogical” world—a world in which all is seemingly possible—from the rational world with its adherence to strict boundaries. The dual nature of Kål’s worship leads back again to the Vedic world, with its deeply conflicted view of animal sacrifice. Here, it must be emphasized that in asserting Kål’s relationship to this world, what is sought here is not Kål’s “origin” (which is likely a fruitless quest), but rather what this possible link reveals about the broader landscape of the Hindu tradition (following Doniger’s observation that “the question to ask is not where the disparate elements originated, but why they were put together, and why kept together” [O’Flaherty 1973: 12]). That such a linkage exists has been strongly asserted by Biardeau (2004) in her extensive study of the sacrificial post in India. As Biardeau astutely observes, there are no clear, obvious lines of development that might lead the historian from modern Indian sacrificial practices to the Veda, but rather “an inexplicable historic collusion between heterogeneous facts,” one that in Biardeau’s case is built “more [on] a fragile intuition than a hypothesis” (2004: 2). Here, historical “fact” is far less important than the resonances that can be discerned between Kål’s nature—in particular, that which incongruously conjoins bloodthirstiness with its rejection—and the Vedic world. In linking Kål to the Vedic world, the tongue also recalls the figure of Agni, who as god, priest, and the element of fire itself stands at the very center of the Vedic sacrificial world. Although Agni’s physical features are only minimally described (unlike many of the other Vedic gods with whom Agni is associated, who are thoroughly anthropomorphized), the Vedic texts contain frequent references to his tongue, or tongues— typically counted as seven, a number represented throughout Vedic thought as having great significance (¸gveda 8.61.18; Våjasaneyi Saμhitå 17.79; Macdonell 1897: 88). Here the tongue is both an element of the physical fire as well as that which reaches out to “lick” the oblation (see ¸gveda 1.140.2–3). In the Mu~
aka Upani‚ad (1.2.4), Agni’s seven tongues are named; but oddly with feminine appellations (the word “tongue” is itself a feminine substantive). On the one hand, the list includes names which might be expected in describing a flame: “fire-spark” (sphuliga), “smoky-colored” (sudhumravar~a), and “the red” (sulohitå); on the other hand, there is also “the terrible” (karål), “the goddess” (dev), and perhaps most noteworthy of all, “the black one” (kål).18

Kål’s Tongue / 321 Although a mere name does not, in and of itself, denote a firm connection (for, in Sanskrit, what occurs as a “name” in one context may be a mere substantive in another), it is intriguing that the Mu~
aka passage that describes Agni’s tongues as females appears in an extended form, but still employing the same seven names found in the Mu~
aka, in the Mårka~
eya Purå~a (99.46–60), the text which contains the Dev Måhåtmya.19 Here, in the context of a fairly lengthy meditation on, and supplication to Agni (Mårka~
eya Purå~a 99.1–70), the tongues are described as being at once both malevolent and benevolent, again recalling the goddess Kål and her dual nature: Thy tongue which is called Kálí brings about the conclusion at the fated time, O lord; by it preserve us from fear, from sins and from the great tenor of this world! Thy tongue, which is named Karáli is the cause of the great dissolution of the world; by it preserve us from sins and from the great terror of this world….O yellow-eyed, red-necked, black-pathed consumer of oblations, save me from all faults…(Pargiter 1904: 543–44; emphasis in original). Despite this suggestion of a link between the figure of Kål and the world of the Vedic sacrifice through a possible identification with Agni’s tongues, the notion of the divine as feminine clearly runs counter to the main lines of the Vedic tradition.20 Here, however, we must return to Biardeau’s insightful remark that the connection between Kål and the Vedic world is not a linear development, but rather one built on a “historic collusion between heterogeneous facts,” a notion that leads us to seek evocation and resonance rather than overt succession. More than anything else, as has been repeatedly suggested throughout this study, this evocation, from the Vedic tradition to the figure of Kål, centers on the duality that exists between the raw and the instinctual (focused in the presence of the bloody offering) on the one hand, and the refined and the restrained (reflected in the vegetal, nonbloody offering) on the other.21 Amidst all this, Kål’s tongue stands out as a powerful symbol of convergence; that is, both the convergence of Kål’s world with the Vedic world as well as the convergence of the unrestrained with the restrained that these two worlds share. In terms of this latter sense, the tongue itself embodies two seemingly opposed experiences: on the one hand, it reaches

322 / Herman Tull out to touch and to taste, but on the other, it pushes outward to reject. And, here, Kali’s outstretched tongue signifies the continued recognition in the Indian tradition that human existence must cross two irreconcilable modalities of being. Deeply embedded in the Indian tradition is the articulation of these two modes through the Vedic sacrifice, with its bloody offering seen as something that is at once desired and rejected. The figure of Kål continues to articulate this conflict, while adding layers upon layers of meaning to it: from the expression of the unbridled power of the feminine that is embodied in mythologies that tell of the bloodthirsty destruction of the animal-like asura to its control in the goddess’s encounter with her spouse and in rituals that cross bloody sacrifice with vegetal offerings. And, here, Kål’s outstretched tongue expresses both a partaking of the bloody offering and its rejection; though taken together these positions may defy logical comprehension, taken together they are also emblematic of the deep conflicts that lie at the heart of the human condition. From the standpoint of the India that seeks to experience the unrestrained life—what might even be termed the experience of the id or the instinctual—Kål’s tongue expresses unbridled power. In one of her best-known mythological tirades, Kål seizes scores of demons in her mouth, devours them, and laps up their blood (Mårka~
eya Purå~a 88.56–59). Here, leaving aside swords or weapons that might suggest rules of propriety and practiced skills, Kål is pure id; her tongue, uncontrolled, reaches forth to taste a world forbidden to the socially chaste. Yet, at the same time, this instinctual world must contend with the everyday world of social propriety, a world that demands and values restraint. Here, Kål’s outstretched tongue is seen as symbolizing the rejection of the elemental world, if not an outright shame at having touched it. Notes 1. Michael Lewis, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, set me on the path leading to this study. Loriliai Biernacki (University of Colorado, Boulder) and Patricia Dold (Memorial University of Newfoundland) shared critical insights with me based on their work on Kål. Earlier versions of

Kål’s Tongue / 323 this paper were presented at a seminar, “Approaching God: A Symposium On Hindu Devotion,” held at Princeton University (February 2009) and at a panel discussion at the Conference on Human Development held at Fordham University (April 2010). I am indebted to seminar participants Isabelle Clark-Decès, Wendy Doniger, David M. Knipe, Linda Hess, Robin Rinehart, Donna M. Wulff, Ann Grodzins Gold, Shubha Pathak, and Alf Hiltebeitel for their insightful comments, as well as to Sushil Mittal, the editor of this Journal, and to the anonymous reviewers whose observations (both in matters of commission and omission) contributed significantly to this essay. 2. The Dev Måhåtmya consists of seven hundred verses and is contained within the well-known Mårka~
eya Purå~a (ca. 300–600 CE). The Dev Måhåtmya is almost certainly a later interpolation to the Mårka~
eya Purå~a, and its provenance is not known with certainty (see Pargiter 1904; cf. Coburn 1984: 17). The extent of the Dev Måhåtmya’s popularity was noted long ago by the Indologist Horace Hayman Wilson, in a lecture delivered at the University of Oxford on February 27, 1840, who characterized it as being “amongst the most popular works in the Sanskrit language” (cited in Colburn 1985: 59). Throughout this study verse citations to the Dev Måhåtmya are enumerated by their location in the Mårka~
eya Purå~a. 3. vicitrakha†vågadharå naramålåvibh‚a~å| / dvpicarmapardhånå çu‚kamåμsåtibhairavå\ / ativiståravadanå jihvålalanabh‚a~å| / nimagnåraktanayanå nådåpritadimukhå\ Unless otherwise noted, translations from Sanskrit texts are my own. 4. This variety is best represented in McDermott’s and Kripal’s collection Encountering Kål (2003). Other notable studies focused on Kål are Kinsley 1975a, 1975b; Caldwell 1999; and McDermott 2001. Other works, such as Pintchman 1994, 2001; Biernacki 2007; Coburn 1991; Kinsley 1988; Hawley and Wulff 1996; Kinsley 1997; and Erndl 1993, explore the larger fabric of the goddess tradition in India and thus include some discussion of Kål. 5. Fundamental to the religious imagination is the notion of the “mysterious.” The centrality of this notion to the Indic tradition is apparent from the oft-repeated phrase: “the gods love the mysterious” (paro ’k‚a, literally, that which lies “beyond the eye”; Çatapatha Bråhma~a 14.1.1.14, 6.1.1.2, 6.7.1.23, 7.4.1.10).

324 / Herman Tull 6. As will be referenced below, another study of Kål’s tongue was published in 1994 by Kripal. Unpublished is Rachel Fell McDermott’s “Kål’s Tongue: Historical Reinterpretations of the Blood-Lusting Goddess” (paper presented at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of the American Academy of Religion, Barnard College, New York, March 21, 1991). Kripal (1994: 153n1) acknowledges his debt to McDermott’s work. 7. Although Çiva is not Kål’s consort in fact, within the broader context of Indian goddess mythology, Çiva effectively stands in the role of Kål’s husband (see Kinsley 1988: 122). 8. Although it is ubiquitous in Indian iconography, the notion that Kål dances on Çiva’s inert body does not occur in the early Sanskrit texts that describe the goddess (such as the Dev Måhåtmya), but it is well-represented in Tantric sources (Donaldson 1991: 108; Kinsley 1975b: 109; Monier-Williams 1891: 189; Biernacki 2013) as well as later medieval texts (see Dold 2003: 50; Grierson 1926: 26). 9. Kål’s rage is both her modus operandi in battle as well as that which literally gives Kål her birth; see Mårka~
eya Purå~a 87.4–5: “The goddess’s face, [full of] anger, [its] color like black soot…from the knitted brow on her forehead, immediately came forth Kål.” 10. As Kinsley notes of the Çiva-Kål relationship in another mythological context: “Although Çiva is said to tame Kål in the myth of the dance contest, it seems clear that she is never finally subdued by him; she is most popularly represented as uncontrollable, more apt to provoke Çiva himself to dangerous activity than to renounce her own wildness” (1997: 74, 1988: 120; cf. Menon and Shweder 1994: 278). 11. Though it may be the case that within the context of the Kål mythos, it is Kål who chooses to restrain herself, it is still the case that her restraint shows her recognition of the role of family and its constitution through the subordination of the female in India; see further Menon and Shweder 1994: 277. 12. In a later study, Menon and Shweder revisit the Tantric elements in the Kål story, arguing that “this…extreme representation of female power has been almost completely assimilated into mainstream Hinduism” (2003: 80). 13. Worldwide, only a dozen or so animals were domesticated; the “core” group found in India and elsewhere were domesticated sometime between 8000 and 4000 BCE (see further Diamond 1997: 167).

Kål’s Tongue / 325 14. As Heesterman astutely observes, “It seems, however, doubtful whether we do justice to the situation when we view it as a simple ‘substitution.’ Rather, it is a matter of tangled and blurred identity” (Heesterman 1993: 31). 15. Here, also, the notion of sacrificing another human must be taken into consideration. Although such rituals are described in the Vedic texts in detail, whether or not human sacrifices actually occurred (or, if they did occur, the extent of the occurrences) remains inconclusive. Keith famously noted that human sacrifices existed only “as a reasonable complement to the theory of sacrifice” (1925: 347, 262–63; see also Tull 1996: 23; Biardeau 2004: 63; Houben 1999: 121–23). However, in an extensive discussion of human sacrifice in India, Collins has recently noted: “It seems to me unjustified to rule out the existence of human sacrifice in India and relegate it to the realm of the purely metaphorical in light of the significance that human sacrifice has in the Sanskritic imagination” (2014: 238). 16. On bloody sacrifices in South India, see Bolle 1983: 41–47. 17. Though they are not overtly related, this motif resonates with the well-known Indian mythology of Dak‚a’s beheading. According to Klostermaier (1984: 140), Kål does appear in a version of the Dak‚a myth found in the Mahåbhågavata Purå~a. 18. The list also occurs in the G®hyasaμgrahapariçi‚†a of Gobhilaputra (1.13). 19. On the relationship of the Mårka~
eya Purå~a to the Dev Måhåtmya, see above, note 2. 20. Although, as Jamison (1996: 3–4) has ably demonstrated, the element of the feminine is deeply embedded in the Vedic tradition, its place is largely kept to the background, if not to the margins. 21. Here, we may push beyond the confines of this study to suggest that, in the figure of Kål, this evocation quickly extends past the boundaries of the Vedic sacrificial world. For, here, in the figure of the divine feminine, we must also take into consideration the element of fertility; for the blood that surrounds Kål suggests not only the element of sacrifice, but also that of menstruation, and her engagement with the supine figure of Çiva suggests sexual activity. Yet, along with these elements of fertility intrude elements of death, including the minions she defeats as well as the near-death of Çiva.

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HERMAN TULL is Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania. [email protected]