God Inside Out Siva's Game of Dice

by Handelman, Don; Shulman, David; Berkson, Carmel

• ISBN13: 9780195108446
• ISBN10: 0195108442
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-06-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book offers a new exploration of the mythology of the Hindu god Siva, who spends his time playing dice with his wife, to whom he habitually loses. The result of the game is our world, which turns the god inside-out and changes his internal composition. Hindus maintain that Siva is perpetually absorbed in this game, which is recreated in innumerable stories, poems, paintings, and sculptural carvings. This notion of the god at play, arguee Handelman and Shulman, is one of the most central and expressive veins in the metaphysics elaborated through the centuries, in many idioms and modes, around the god. The book comprises three interlocking essays; the first presents the dice-game proper, in the light of the texts and visual depictions the authors have collected. The second and third chapters take up two mythic "sequels" to the game. Based on their analysis of these sequels, the authors argue that notions of "asceticism" so frequently associated with Siva, with Yoga, and with Hindu religion are, in fact, foreign to Hinduism's inherent logic as reflected in Siva's game of dice. They suggest an alternative reading of this set of practices and ideas, providing startling new insights into Hindu mythology and the major poetic texts from the classical Sanskrit tradition.

Table of Contents

I When Siva Plays	3	(110)
1 Bhrngin's Scream	3	(4)
2 The Elephanta Panels	7	(10)
3 On Losing: Kedarakhanda 34-35	17	(8)
4 Minor Victories	25	(7)
5 How to Play	32	(5)
6 The Boundary between Not-Play and Play	37	(8)
7 Metaphysics of the Fluid Indic Cosmos	45	(16)
8 Generating the Expected: The Rajasuya Dice Game and the Modeling of the Cosmos	61	(7)
9 Generating the Unexpected: The Mahabharata Dice Game	68	(6)
10 The Elimination of the Androgyne Outcome	74	(19)
11 Excursus: When Visnu Plays Dice	93	(3)
12 Unfettered, the Trickster Who Plays with God	96	(10)
13 One More Game	106	(7)
II The Andhaka Outcome	113	(46)
1 Withered Clown	113	(3)
2 Mistress of Play	116	(6)
3 Birth, Body, Transformation	122	(9)
4 Andhaka at Ellora	131	(14)
5 Andhaka of Arcot	145	(10)
6 Adi and Viraka: Becoming a Rock	155	(4)
III Melting and Marrying	159	(26)
1 Color and Heat	159	(5)
2 On Redness	164	(3)
3 The Self Disguised	167	(9)
4 Spaces and Gaps	176	(9)
IV Conclusion	185	(18)
1 Fullness	185	(4)
2 Hunger	189	(4)
3 Signs	193	(5)
4 Selves	198	(5)
References	203	(10)
Index	213