I MAGI NAT ION, RIT UAL, POLIT IC A L D E V IC E S *

Charles Malamoud
This paper deals with some aspects of samkalpa and maya as both of these notions are
components of imagination. Imagination is not just fantasy. It is also the representation
of what one expects, wishes or fears and the anticipation of the results of what one undertakes. As such, imagination has a crucial role both in the ritual and in the set of aims
and means that constitutes the kings artha.

1. Imagination, a mythological character

itragupta, one of the heroes of Dandins Daakumaracarita, when his
turn comes to tell the king Rajavahana the story of his wanderings, recalls how he had to face a very ugly and powerful demon, a brahmaraksasa,
who threatened to devour him if he would not find the right answers to a list
of four questions. The demons questions and Mitraguptas answers are combined in a nice stanza: What is cruel? A womans heart. What brings happiness and success to a householder? His wifes virtues. What is love? Imagination. What is the means to achieve an extremely difficult task? Wisdom.1
Mitragupta illustrates each answer by an example, the life story of a woman.
The idea that love is imagination is proved by what happened to Ratnavati.
It is rather elliptic. We understand that her wedding night with her husband
Balabhadra was a failure, so that her husband disliked her and since then
stayed away from her. Ratnavati puts the blame on herself and, full of shame
and sorrow, looks for a device to win her husbands affection. It so happens
that she has a dear friend, Kanakavati, who resembles her very much. Ratnavati takes the appearence of Kanakavati and manages to be seen by Balabhadra who, mistaking her for Kanakavati, falls in love with her at first
glance and takes her off. They both move to another town and live for some
time a very pleasant life. Eventually some circumstances compell Ratnavati
to tell the truth to Balabhadra: surprisingly enough, by doing so she becomes
exceedingly dear (ativallabha) to him (shall we understand that he doubly enjoys her?) since while knowing that the woman he loves is Ratnavati (that
very Ratnavati who had the reputation once of being so bitter that she was

* A first version of this paper was presented at the International Conference The Imagination of
the Political and the Politics of Imagination, University of Hyderabad and the Einstein Forum, February 22-28, 2009. I read it after having heard Professor David Shulmans contribution: The King who fell
in Love with Ms. Imagination: Ratnakheta rinivasa Diksitas Bhavana-purusottama.
1 kim kruram strihrdayam kim grhinah priyahitaya daragunah
2 kah kamah samkalpah kim duskarasadhanam praja (ed. Kale, p. 156).

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nicknamed Nimbavati!) he keeps imagining (bhavayati) her as Kanakavati.

Therefore it is correct to say that love is imagination.
The word I translate by imagination is samkalpa. Actually imagination
is just one of the meanings of samkalpa, and samkalpa is one of the words for
imagination. In this passage of the Daakumaracarita, M. R. Kale, following
the commentaries where samkalpa is interpreted as nicaya, translates
samkalpa by resoluteness of purpose.2 I dont think he is right. Resoluteness of purpose would refer to Ratnavatis endeavour. It makes more sense
if we consider that samkalpa here describes what happens in Balabhadras
mind: what started for him as an illusion becomes a mental construction.
Therefore I think that O. Bhtlingks translation Einbildung is appropriate.3
A synonym of samkalpa is bhavana. David Shulman invites us to meet a Ms.
Bhavana, Ms. Imagination, a character in a drama by rinivasa Diksita. Well,
I would like to introduce another member of the family, Mr. Samkalpa, a very
remote ancestor of Ms. Bhavana. We know him from the hymn xi, 8 of the
Atharvavedasamhita. I quote Whitneys translation: When fury (manyu)
brought his wife from the house of contrivance (samkalpa), who were the
groomsmen (janya)? who the wooers (vara)? who also the chief wooer?.4 This
is the first stanza. The answers to these questions are given in stanzas 2 and 3.
In stanza 4 we learn that all these people verily brought design (akuti). Akuti then is Samkalpas daughter. Manyu is fury, but in the Veda it is also the aggressive form of the Creators impetus when he wants to create. According to
Sayana, the theme of this hymn is the creators desire to become many: his
desire (kama) hardens up and becomes akuti, intention. Actually the Creators
urge to create is embodied in three related characters: Samkalpa; his daughter
Akuti; his son in law, Manyu, a divinised form of mind (manas). The wedding of Manyu with Samkalpas daughter recalls the close association of manas with samkalpa in the ritual: when a man intends to offer the solemn sacrifice called agnistoma, he must announce his intention and promise to perform
this very rite precisely with the whole programme of gestures, recitations and
also expenses it involves. This statement is called samkalpa (Baudhayanarautasutra ii, 1).5 The verb sam-klp- means arrange things so that they hold together. In everyday language (so to speak!) samkalpa means desire, intention, resolve. It refers to the capacity of producing images of what one
resolves to accomplish. In the vocabulary of psychology or psychogenesis it
refers to the main activity of manas. It is through samkalpa that manas coordinates the data of the sense organs in order to build mental images; or
samkalpas are these mental images produced by and located in the manas. Let
2 Kale 1966: 110 (transl.).
3 Bhtlingk 1966: i.335 (n 1738).
4 Whitney 1905: ii.647.
5 Cf. Caland, Henry 1906: 1ff.; Malamoud 2005: 97ff. On samkalpa at the establishing of vedic
sacrificial fires (agnyadheya), Kane 1941: 989; Krick 1982: 51.

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my manas be made of auspicious samkalpa (tan me manah ivasamkalpam astu): this is the refrain of Vajasaneyisamhita xxxiv 1-6. The semantic field of
samkalpa appears clearly in the magic formula the man who wants to kindle
love in a womans heart must utter, according to Atharvavedasamhita iii 25, 2:
the arrow feathered with longing (adhi), tipped with love (kama), necked with
samkalpa [] let love [kama again] peirce thee in the heart.6 In the vocabulary
of ritual samkalpa, the project of performing a rite, is both the resolve itself
and the mental image, the anticipation of what is to be performed. In that respect, samkalpa is not only an utterance, it is also a manifestation of the might
of manas. In fact, according to the instructions of the rautasutra, the yajamana has to utter his samkalpa formula aloud thrice and to say it mentally,
silently, thrice. When recited aloud samkalpa belongs to the sphere of vak,
speech; being recited silently, samkalpa reveals its affinity with manas. When
associated with vak, manas makes a mithuna, a pair: as it is often the case, the
neuter has the force of the masculine (for instance the neuter saman, melody,
is the sexual partner of the feminine rk, stanza): manas and vak yoked together carry the sacrifice to the gods abode.7 In atapathabrahmana x 5, 3, it is said
that in the beginning, when there was neither being nor non being, manas
was there, manas indeed is neither being nor non being. It wished to get a more
definite and more substantial self (niruktataram murtataram atmanam) [] it
got the vision of the various sacrificial fires, implements and procedures that
were purely mental (manomaya), they were mental constructions (manacit);
rites were performed mentally in these mental fires. And now in the present
world, whatever people conceive with their mind (manasa samkalpayanti) that
is the work of these initial fires and rites []. That means that even when people use material fires to perform material rites, the ritual samkalpa, the mental anticipation which comes along with the resolve and promise is the reflection of this phase of the genesis when everything was mental, when manas,
although endowed with a substantial self, operated with purely mental objects. One can see a remnant or an illustration of this primary or primeval state
of affairs in the rgvedic story of Trita as it is retold in an expanded form in
Mahabharata ix 36: Trita fallen in a dried well and unable to get out decides to
offer a soma sacrifice mentally; he imagines all the implements he needs,
samkalpayam asa, he mentally acts as both yajamana and rtvij, and it works:
the gods are satisfied with Tritas mental sacrifice, a sacrifice consisting in
samkalpa, they come and rescue him. His was an imaginary and yet effective
sacrifice, in which samkalpa is not just the promise and the anticipation of the
process but the whole of the process itself. Tritas imaginary ritual is of course
to be distinguished from the metaphorical sacrifices in which prayers, emotions, meditations, all sorts of penances are deemed to be the substitutes to
the material gestures and offerings of the regular procedure.
6 Whitney 1905: i.130.

7 Malamoud 2005: 51ff.

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2. The dharmic background for imagining society

In the civilization of ancient India (at least as we know it from Sanskrit texts)
social and political utopias are to be found mainly in the description of two
kinds of human communities: the realm of the perfect king (for instance the
realm of Atithi, Ramas grandson, in Kalidasas Raghuvama, canto xvii); the
ermitage in the forest arama, tapovana, dharmaranya (for instance, Vasisthas arama to which Dilipa and his wife Sudaksina pay a visit in a kind of
honeymoon trip, in Raghuvama canto I). Actually these two kinds of utopia
are closely connected: each of them is what makes the other possible.The perfect prosperity of the realm, what allows us to call it an utopia, rests upon the
fact that ascetics gathered in tapovanas or aramas perform rituals and recite
appropriate mantras. Conversely these ascetics can live a perfect life only if a
powerful and perfect king not only protects but also cherishes them. Generally speaking perfect society is characterised by harmony, solidarity, interdependance of all the parts of the whole: the king at least can be deemed perfect only if all his subjects are perfect each according to his own dharmic
lifestyle. Every single feature of this society is simultaneously the cause, the
consequence and the symbol of the whole. However what is remarkable in
the arama of vanaprasthas is that features from opposed lifestyles are combined there: it is a gathering of individual ascetics who are there with their
family, a kind of village in the wilderness; it is a society, although people dont
have to till the land to subsist since the rule for them is to feed on what nature yields spontaneously. Work is not absent, but it is mainly meant to make
possible and even attractive to the animals of the forest cohabitation and loving familiarity with humans. Otherwise, or rather at the same time, the inhabitants are mainly busy with rites: ritual is the core of their social life, which
makes a radical difference with the samnyasins who have gone away from society and renounced performing of rites in so far as it involves for them cooperation with other people and the usage of implements other than their
own body.
What is the role of imagination in the building of these utopias, that is in
the description of these utopian societies by the poets? Working out these
utopias does not imply creation of models. It is not a matter of invention.
Models are already there at hand: one finds them in the normative texts of
the Smrti that teach us what are the kings duties and the general rules everyone has to obey as well as the specific rules one has to follow according to
ones caste and age. Poetic imagination in this context is at work when the
poet figures out the gestures, the feelings, the thoughts involved in the application of these principles, and when he presents them as living and subtle illustrations of the universal harmony. But the most genuine feature of utopic
imagination in the description of these perfect societies is that universal hap-

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piness and virtue result from the fact that specific lifestyles and duties adjust
to each other without conflict or overlapping, sure enough, but also that there
are moments when boundaries between nature and rite smoothly vanish (for
instance Kumarasambhava v).8
3. The ways of the world
Now let us come to Kautilyas Arthaastra. At first glance it is quite the opposite of an utopia. It is not a dystopia either. Still it deals with what the king
should do. Then, what is the difference from the descriptions of the perfect
realm? Life in the forest and wilderness aramas of dharmic utopia is the
theme of descriptions encapsulated in narratives; these descriptions refer to
a past, be it mythical or legendary: these events, these situations took place
somewhere once upon a time; utopia in this context is *eu-topia rather than
*ou-topia. In the Arthaastra, on the contrary, there is practically no narrative
whatever, references to past events are extremely rare. Kautilya does not look
for examples to illustrate his instructions: this is a major difference with
Machiavelli. In the Arthaastra, verbs are predominantly in the indicative present in sentences consisting in maxims or general truths, or in the optative in
sentences stating what the king or his agents should do or what is likely to
happen. All the Arthaastra is in fact a series of answers to the question: what
are the means the king should use to reach the aim the pursuit of which defines him as a king? At first glance, there is no substantial discrepancy between
the rules of action in the Arthaastra and the rajadharma as it is taught in the
texts of Smrti. In fact, there are differences in approach and perspective. The
texts on rajadharma as well as the Arthaastra include violence, tricks and deceit as means of government and warfare, but in the rajadharma these methods are alluded to in generic terms, whereas in the Arthaastra they are thoroughly described, discussed, qualified. Moreover, some acts of warfare, such
as burning the crops of the enemy, are forbidden in the Smrti (Mahabharata
xii 104, 39), allowed in the Arthaastra (ix 1, 35-36).9 But the specificity of the
Arthaastra is that the king is repeatedly referred to as vijigisu one who wants
to conquer. There is no limit to his conquest, which means that he is always
in the process of using devices before he reaches the ultimate aim and also
that there are no natural or traditional boundaries to his realm. It is a ksetra
plus all the earth he is able to conquer. It is not just by chance that there are
no details in the Arthaastra which could give us an idea of the size and location of the Kautilyan state. This endless conquest needs no justification. To
conquer what he does not have yet and keep and protect what he has, this is
8 Malamoud 2005 (chapter 8) and 1995 (chapter 4).
9 In Daakumaracarita, end of the third ucchvasa (p. 122 of Kales edition), it is said that the right moment to attack the ennemies is when his crops are ripe: then, one can destroy them, proceed to mustivadha, sasyavadha.

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the vijigisus duty or at least his scope. I quote Scharfes translation of xv 1, 2:

The earth is inhabited by men [whose lives depend on her]; thus [the earth]
is the [secular] goal (artha).The science (or: manual) which is the means of attaining and protecting that earth is [hence] the science of [secular] goals
(artha-astra).10 This is the real meaning of artha in this context. The upayas,
the means to reach this goal, actually the subject matter of the book, are the
domain of lokayatra the way(s) of the world. Lokayatra is the locus for niti
politics. Various derivatives of the root ni- are key words of this treatise: in
order to be able to practice good niti the king must be vinita trained, he has
to acquire vinaya. The correct policy, the result of sound niti, is naya, whereas errors in niti result in apa-naya.11
Is there room for imagination in this realm of means, in this world defined
by lokayatra? Imagination is never explicitly referred to, although there are
quite frequently considerations on ways of thinking and feeling. That does
not mean that Kautilya does not take imagination into account. First we have
to point out the role of imagination in the very concept and composition of
the Arthaastra. The king being a vijigisu, it is no wonder that imagination
bears on the means, aspects and phases of the process of conquering rather
than on the description of the final result. But the very act of conquering is
by itself an aim.
More generally, most of the chapters do not consist in descriptions or
analyses of what there is, they are explorations, conjectures of what is likely
to occur. Quite often, successive paragraphs in a chapter begin with a sentence containing va or, another possibility. This includes also the range of
options of appropriate responses to a given situation. While the ritual
samkalpa is the mental visualisation of devices already well known, Kautilya
or rather the king figure out eventualities. One needs indeed imagination, a
compulsive inventivity to anticipate the range of situations that can occur and
the list of means one can use to make the best of them. In the Mudraraksasa
a drama by Viakhadatta in which one of the main characters is no other
than Canakya, another name for Kautilya the painful effort of the minister
who has to bring off his designs is explicitly compared to the task of a playwright when he prepares his plot:12 in both cases buddhi is at work to anticipate, therefore to imagine, the reality or the fiction one wants to create.
Now it is clearly stated that there are limits to this exploration. The king is
a mortal. There are two kinds of events in general, more specifically two
kinds of calamities (vyasana): some calamities come as the result of acts of
human agency (manusa) and some are caused by fate or divine agency (daiva). Acts of human agency are good policy (naya) or bad policy (apa-naya),
whereas acts of divine agency are good fortune (aya) or misfortune (an-aya);
10 Scharfe 1993: 266.
12 Mudraraksasa iv 3.

11 Cf. Arthaastra i 2, 11; vi 2, 6 and 11.

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it is acts of divine and human agency that make the world go (lokam yapayati) []; what is manusa can be thought of (it is cintya), daiva cannot be
thought about, it is incalculable (acintya).13 Now the king is not passive in
front of acintya: he is a Hindu king, he performs rites, including magic rites
(maya), to avert or limit calamities coming from daiva. One can do that without having to imagine, to guess or understand the divine causes of these
events. It is remarkable and rather surprising in the Indian context that the
king does not trust astrologers: the object (artha) slips away from the foolish
person who is continuously consulting the stars; for achieving an object this
object itself is the auspicious constellation; what will the stars do? (ix 4, 26).14
This passage follows immediatly an enumeration of labhavighnah hindrances
to gain: among many other psychological weaknesses, there are paralokapeksa regard for the other world and dharmikatva piousness, along with
fondness for auspicious days and constellations (mangalatithinaksatrestitva).
But while the king refuses to guess the unthinkable, he is fully aware that people (his subjects, his ennemies) need to imagine the supernatural and are
ready to believe in the reality of the kings maya. The wonderful inventivity
with which the king imagines magical devices meets the credulity of the men
he wants to impress. The book xiii describes very complicated plots, very
imaginative tricks the king uses in the psychological warfare. Roughly, the
king wants to show that he is conversant with gods (he produces devasamyoga, x 6, 48; xiii 1, 1-6) and other supernatural beings or powers, that he always
knows everything of what people do or intend to do, that he is always able to
achieve what is called elimination of thorns (kantakaodhana). It is worth
noticing that the king while using tricks of elaborate deceit in the maya of his
own fabric is familiar with a large set of occult practices and magic recipes,
which he genuinely believes able to produce effective adbhuta, supernatural
results, such as making one able to fast for one month (xiv 2, 3) or to move
about with shadow and form invisible (xiv 3, 14). Moreover, he faithfully worships the gods he otherwise so cynically manipulates, and even is confident in
the genuine maya of the gods he is able to evoke or to conjure thanks to appropriate rites, formulas and prayers, taken from the Atharvaveda.
This puzzling attitude of the king towards maya is related to the double nature of maya itself, that is, to the double meaning of the word. On the one
hand, maya is the art, the capacity of creating illusions: images of what is
thought of as real but is not real. It is produced by magics. It consists in tricks.
On the other hand, maya is the power to project forms, especially for a god
the ability to change his own appearence at will and to bring changes in the
world around him. This capacity is a part of his supernatural power; Indra for
instance is famous for that. His various appearences are genuine manifestations of himself. No wonder that, as far as etymology is concerned, the word
13 Arthaastra vi 2, 6-12.

14 Transl. Kangle 1963: 485.

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maya can be derived either from a root ma(y)- to alter or from a root ma- to
measure in order to build. Actually, according to Renou, we have perhaps to
consider that there were originally two different words maya that have
merged into the very complex and polysemic notion we find in the texts.15
Anyway, it requires some imagination to figure out what exactly is the kings
religion and what is his idea of power.
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15 Renou 1948: 290-298.