The Upper Worlds and the Wheel of Stars

The Sun’s Chariot and the Wheel of Time

“Now hear the sun,” Parashara said, and gave the chariot its measure. It is nine thousand yojanas across, and the pole that runs from its body to the yoke is twice that. Its axle is fifteen million seven hundred thousand yojanas long, and the wheel is fixed on it: one wheel, with three naves, which are forenoon, midday, and afternoon, five spokes, which are the five kinds of year, and six felloes, which are the six seasons, and on that imperishable wheel of the year the whole wheel of time rests. Its seven horses are the seven meters, Gayatri, Brihati, Ushnik, Jagati, Trishtup, Anushtup, and Pankti. The chariot has a second axle, forty-five thousand five hundred yojanas long; the shorter axle, with its half of the yoke, rests on Dhruva, and the wheel of the other axle runs on the mountain Manasottara. Four cities stand on Manasottara: Indra’s Vasvaukasara in the east, Yama’s Samyamani in the south, Varuna’s Sukha in the west, and the Moon’s Vibhavari in the north. Through the whole wheel of lights Bhanu moves south like an arrow already loosed. He orders day and night, and for yogis whose kleshas are spent he is the Devayana, the road of the gods, to liberation by stages. Where people see him at the end of the night, that is his rising for them, and where he vanishes at the day’s end, that is his setting; he himself, one form always, neither rises nor sets. By night his lustre enters fire, so that a fire is seen from far off in the dark, and by day the lustre of fire enters him and he burns the fiercer. His course across the year runs like a potter’s wheel. At the start of uttarayana he goes to Makara, then Kumbha, then Mina, makes day and night equal, and climbs until at the end of Mithuna he reaches Karka, the northern limit, and turns south. A creature on the rim of the wheel is carried fast, and in dakshinayana the sun runs that fast, with a day of twelve muhurtas and a night of eighteen; a creature near the middle goes slowly, and in uttarayana the sun goes that slowly, with a day of eighteen and a night of twelve. The lump of clay at the center barely turns at all, and so Dhruva turns in his own place, slowest of everything in the sky.

Night has the old name usha and day vyushti, and the seam between them is sandhya, and sandhya is a battle. At that fierce hour the rakshasas called Mandehas come to eat the sun. Prajapati’s curse lies on them: their bodies never perish, and they die every day, and every day they come again. Then the best of the Brahmins throw water consecrated with the Omkara, which is Brahma’s own form, and with the Gayatri, and that water falls on the wicked ones like a vajra and burns them; and with the first offering of the agnihotra, poured with the words Suryo jyotih, the thousand-rayed sun blazes up. The Omkara is Bhagavan Vishnu himself, who has three abodes and is lord of all speech, and at its mere utterance the rakshasas perish; the sun is Vishnu’s highest portion, the unchanging light within, Omkara is its name, and the name drives it to slay them. “So the rite of sandhya must never be let go,” Parashara said. “The man who does not perform his sandhya slays Bhagavan Surya.” Then the sun goes on to sustain the world, ringed by the Balakhilyas and the other Brahmins who guard him. Now the measure of time. Fifteen nimeshas make a kashtha, thirty kashthas a kala, thirty kalas a muhurta, and thirty muhurtas one night and day. The day waxes and wanes through its parts, and the sandhya never changes; it is one muhurta always. From sunrise, three muhurtas are the morning; three more are sangava, the forenoon; three are midday; three are afternoon; and the last three are evening. When the sun enters Tula in the middle of sharad or Mesha in the middle of vasanta, that is the vishuva, and day and night stand equal at fifteen muhurtas; in uttarayana the day swallows the night, in dakshinayana the night swallows the day. Fifteen night-days make a paksha, two pakshas a month, two solar months a season, three seasons an ayana, two ayanas a year; and five years, reckoned by the four kinds of month, make a yuga, from which all reckoning of time is drawn. North of Shvetavarsha stands the mountain Shringavan with three peaks, and at the vishuva the sun stands over its middle peak. When the sun is in the first quarter of Krittika and the moon in the fourth of Vishakha, or the sun in the third of Vishakha and the moon in the first of Krittika, that hour is the holy vishuva: then gifts should be given with a controlled mind to the gods, to Brahmins, and to the pitris, for it is the open mouth of the gods, and whoever gives at it is fulfilled. The full moon is of two kinds, Raka and Anumati, and the new moon of two, Sinivali and Kuhu. Magha, Phalguna, Chaitra, Vaishakha, Jyeshtha, and Ashadha are the six months of uttarayana; Shravana, Bhadrapada, Ashvina, Kartika, Agrahayana, and Pausha are dakshinayana.

Dhruva, the Lokapalas, and the Ganga

On the Lokaloka mountain, at the rim of the world, four lokapalas keep their vows, one on each side: Sudhama, Shankhapada the son of Kardama, Hiranyaroma, and Ketuman, free of pride, of sloth, and of possessions. Two roads of the sun run above them. North of Agastya and south of the Ajavithi lies the Pitriyana, the southern road, and on it live the great munis who keep the agnihotra and set the work of yajna going. Age after age, when the Vedic dharma has broken, they set it up again through tapas and the bounds of varna and ashrama; the founders of dharma are born again in the houses of their own descendants, and the descendants are born as teachers in the families of their pitris, and so these rishis come and go on the southern road for as long as the moon and the stars endure. North of the Nagavithi and south of the Saptarshis lies the northern road, the Devayana, and on it live the pure, self-mastered brahmacharis who wanted no children and so conquered death: eighty-eight thousand munis of upraised seed, who stay there until the pralaya. They touched no greed, gave up sex, took up no karma, and saw the fault in every object of sense, and so won immortality, which means staying until the dissolution of beings, when everything from the earth up to Dhruva’s station is destroyed; the sin of brahmahatya and the merit of the Ashvamedha last that same span. Above the Saptarshis, where Dhruva stands, that brilliant place in the sky is the third divine abode of Vishnu; munis who have spent their punya and papa go there, and with every cause of a body destroyed they never grieve again. There Dharma and Dhruva and the other witnesses of the world live; there the whole world, past, future, and present, is woven warp and weft; to absorbed yogis it appears like the disc of the sun shining in the sky. That is the parama pada of Vishnu. In it stands Dhruva, the support of all; in Dhruva stand all the nakshatras, in the nakshatras the clouds, in the clouds the rain, and by that rain the whole creation is fed. Then Agni, satisfied by the offerings of milk and ghee the cows yield, becomes the cause of rain once more, and the circle closes. So this stainless third world of Vishnu, Dhruva’s, holds up the three worlds and brings the rain.

From this Vishnu-pada rises Shri Ganga, who takes away every sin, pale as if with the body-paste of the goddesses. She flows from the nail of the big toe of Bhagavan Vishnu’s left lotus foot, and Dhruva bears her on his head day and night, with devotion. In her water the Saptarshis stand intent on pranayama, their matted locks swaying in her waves, reciting the aghamarshana, the mantra that grinds sin away; in her broad flood the moon’s orb, after it has waned, takes back a greater lustre than before. From the moon’s orb she falls on the summit of Meru and goes out in the four directions to purify the world, one river in four branches: Sita, Alakananda, Chakshu, and Bhadra. The southern branch, Alakananda, Bhagavan Shankara held on his head with great love for more than a hundred years, and when she came down out of his locks she bathed the ash of the bones of Sagara’s sinful sons and carried them to heaven. A bath in her water destroys all sins at once; tarpana offered in her stream to the pitris with faith for a single day gives them a satisfaction rare even in a hundred years; on her banks kings worshiped Purushottama, the lord of yajna, with great yajnas and won the highest siddhi here and in svarga; and yatis made sinless by bathing in her, their minds fixed on Keshava, reached the supreme nirvana. Heard of, longed for, seen, touched, drunk, bathed in, praised, she purifies beings every day. “Even from a hundred yojanas away,” Parashara said, “the name spoken, Ganga, Ganga, destroys the sins gathered over three births.” And the place from which this Ganga arose, who can purify the three worlds, is the Lord’s third parama pada.

The Shishumara Wheel and the Sun’s Rain

In the sky there is a form of Bhagavan Vishnu made of stars, called the Shishumara, which lies across the heavens like a great lizard, a chameleon or a monitor, and in its tail stands Dhruva. Dhruva turns himself, and turning he turns the moon, the sun, and the other planets, and the nakshatras wheel with him like the rim of a wheel. Every light in the sky is bound to Dhruva by a cord made of wind, as many cords as there are stars, and bound by them they all turn themselves and turn Dhruva too. As oil-men walk their circle and the press goes round with them, so the planets go round, bound by wind; and because the wind drives them like the circle of fire a boy makes by whirling a lit brand, it is called Pravaha, the one that carries. Inside that starry Shishumara, at its heart, Narayana is himself the support; Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada, won his place in its tail by worshiping the lord of the world. So Janardana holds up the Shishumara, the Shishumara holds up Dhruva, and in Dhruva the sun stands. The body of the creature can be read star by star. Uttanapada is its upper jaw and yajna the lower; Dharma has taken its head; Narayana is in its heart; the two Ashvins are in its front feet, Varuna and Aryama in its hind thighs; Samvatsara, the year, is its organ of generation, and Mitra sits in its vent; and in its tail are Agni, Mahendra, Kashyapa, and Dhruva, four stars that never set. Whatever sin a man commits by day, the sight of this form at night frees him of it, and he lives one more year for every star it holds.

This whole world of gods, asuras, and men rests on the sun, and Parashara told how. For eight months the sun draws up water with his rays, water carrying the six tastes, and for four months he rains it down; from that comes grain, and by grain the whole world is fed. With his sharp rays he lifts the water of the world and feeds the moon with it, and the moon sends it on through channels of wind to the clouds, which are smoke and fire and wind in form; because that water does not fall quickly from the clouds it is called abhra, and refined by time it comes down clean on the earth. The sun draws four kinds of water, from rivers, from the ocean, from the earth, and from living creatures. And he takes a fifth with his rays, the water of the akasha-ganga, the river of the sky, and pours it on the earth at once, with no cloud between; at its touch the mire of a man’s sin is washed off and he does not go to naraka, which is why it is called the divine bath. Rain that falls out of a clear sky while the sun is visible is that water; under the odd nakshatras, Krittika and the rest, the elephants of the quarters rain it, and under the even ones the sun’s own rays do; both kinds take away a man’s sin and his fear. The rain the clouds give is amrita to living things; by it the grains grow that feed the people, and with those the wise perform the daily yajnas and satisfy the gods. So all yajnas, the Vedas, the varnas, the gods, and every being rest on rain, and that rain arises from the sun. The sun’s support is Dhruva, Dhruva’s is the Shishumara, and the Shishumara rests on Shri Narayana, who stands in its heart, the eternal first Purusha, the sustainer of every being.

The Twelve Adityas, the Nine Planets, and the Close

The whole road the sun travels in a year, between his two limits, is a hundred and eighty mandalas, and each month a different company presides over his chariot: an Aditya, a rishi, a gandharva, an apsara, a yaksha, a serpent, and a rakshasa. The Adityas take the chariot in turn, Dhata in Chaitra, Aryama in Vaishakha, Mitra in Jyeshtha, Varuna in Ashadha, Indra in Shravana, Vivasvan in Bhadrapada, Pusha in Ashvina, Parjanya in Kartika, Amsha in Margashirsha, Bhaga in Pausha, Tvashta in Magha, and Vishnu in Phalguna, and with each of them a different six. These sevenfold companies, made brilliant by Vishnu’s shakti, live month by month in the sun’s orb, each with its office: the munis praise the sun, the gandharvas sing before him, the apsaras dance, the rakshasas walk behind the chariot, the serpents fit it out, the yakshas hold the reins, and the Balakhilyas surround it on every side. Present in their turns, these seven companies are the causes of cold, heat, and rain. Here Maitreya stopped him. “If those seven companies cause the cold and the heat and the rain, what is the sun’s own purpose? And if the work of the seven is equal, why do people say the sun has risen, the sun stands at midday, the sun is setting?” Parashara answered that the sun is one of the seven and is set apart as their chief, and then he said what sits inside it. Bhagavan Vishnu’s all-powerful highest shakti is called Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the triad of the Veda; it gives the sun its heat, and worshiped it destroys the sins of the world. In that form Vishnu dwells within whichever sun holds the chariot that month: in the forenoon the Rik verses praise him, at midday the Yajus, in the evening the Sama chants. This triad is Vishnu’s own limb, and it does not stop at the sun: at the start of creation Brahma is made of Rik, through its continuance Vishnu is made of Yajus, and at its end Rudra is made of Saman. Presided over by that sattvik shakti the sun blazes and destroys the darkness of the whole world. Vishnu in the form of the Veda-triad never rises and never sets; the seven companies are separate from him. A man who steps before a mirror fixed on a pillar sees his own face in it; in that way the Vaishnavi shakti never moves from the sun’s chariot, and each month the sun who takes his station in it becomes its presiding lord.

The sun, cause of day and night, turns without rest and feeds the pitris, the gods, and men, and he feeds them through the moon. The moon’s chariot has three wheels and ten horses white as kunda flowers, born from the womb of the ocean and yoked once for a whole kalpa; resting on Dhruva, the moon runs in it along the Nagavithi through the nakshatras. In the bright fortnight the sun feeds him through the one ray called Sushumna, a digit a day, and in the dark fortnight the gods drink his nectar down, digit by digit, for nectar is the food of the gods; thirty-six thousand three hundred and thirty-three gods drink the moon. When two digits remain, the moon enters the sun’s orb and lives in his ray called Ama, and that tithi is amavasya. On that day and night the moon first enters the water, then the trees and the creepers, and then goes to the sun; and whoever cuts a tree or a creeper while the moon is in them, or plucks so much as a leaf, takes on the sin of brahmahatya. When only a little of the fifteenth digit is left, the pitris gather round the waned moon in the afternoon and drink that last digit, and the three kinds of pitris, Saumya, Barhishad, and Agnishvatta, stay satisfied on it for a month. So the moon feeds the gods in the bright fortnight and the pitris in the dark, and raises the plants with his cool nectar; and the sun gives the gods their satisfaction fortnightly, the pitris monthly, and men every day. The other planets have chariots of their own. Budha, the moon’s son, rides one made of wind and fire, behind eight tawny horses. Shukra’s great chariot, with its guard and its banner, is drawn by horses born of the earth. Mangala’s golden chariot, born of fire, is drawn by eight horses the color of ruby. Brihaspati sits in a golden chariot behind eight pale-yellow horses and stays a year in each rashi. Shanaishchara, the slow one, goes slowly behind dappled horses born of the sky. Rahu’s chariot is dusky, drawn by eight horses black as bees; on the full moon he crosses from the sun to the moon, and on the new moon from the moon to the sun. Ketu’s eight horses are smoky as burning straw and red as lac. These are the chariots of the nine planets, and all nine are bound to Dhruva by cords of wind.

“So I have told you the form of the earth and the planets, the dvipas, the oceans, the mountains, the varshas, and the rivers, and all who live in them,” Parashara said. “Hear it once more, in brief.” From the water, which is Bhagavan Vishnu’s own form, the lotus of the earth arose with its mountains and oceans. The stars, the three worlds, the forests and mountains, the rivers and the oceans, all of it is Bhagavan Vishnu, and whatever is, and whatever is not, he alone is all of it; for he is made of knowledge, and these mountains and oceans and this earth are the play of knowledge. When the jiva, freed of faults by knowledge of the self, with all its karmas spent, rests in its own pure form, the differences between objects, those fruits of the tree of sankalpa, no longer appear to it. Is there a pot anywhere, or any such thing? Consciousness, without beginning or end, one form always, pervades everything; what changes again and again, what reality is in that? Watch the earth. It becomes a pot, the pot becomes a shard, then powder, then dust, then atoms; and what real thing do men see in it, forgetting the self and swayed by their own karma? There is no substance apart from vijnana; minds that differ by their karmas take the one vijnana in many ways, and that vijnana, pure, stainless, free of sorrow, the one ever-real, is Parameshvara Vasudeva, apart from whom there is nothing. “That is the paramartha,” Parashara said. “One knowledge alone is true, and everything else is false. What I told you besides is vyavahara, the working of the three worlds. And I have pointed you to the path of karma too: the yajna, the beasts, the fire, the ritviks, the soma, the gods, the desire for svarga; every enjoyment of Bhurloka and the worlds above is the fruit of those rites. The jiva under karma wanders through these three worlds. Knowing this, a man should grow dispassionate and do that by which he merges into Bhagavan Vasudeva, who is steady, unmoving, and forever of one form.”