MOON MAGIC

With India’s second Chandrayaan mission launch eagerly awaited, 50 years after humans first walked on the moon, VITHAL C NADKARNI looks for lunar magic in music, scriptures and the popular imagination

Fifty years ago, to celebrate Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s historic landing on the Moon, Pandit Dinkar Kaikini, the Agra Gharana doyen of Hindustani classical music, composed a piece in Raga Bhairav:

Ayo hai jitaake manav Chandralok Chakit bhayo vishwa Brahmanda saro ‘Men have returned after conquest of the Moon-world.’ 

The second stanza saluted the global rhapsody that greeted the feat: Dhana dhana Prithvi-jan/ jina racho hai yana

‘The world marvels (the stellar coup) as does the Cosmos Hail to the earthlings who built the spaceship.’ The concluding line toasted Neil Armstrong — Aurdhana Neil Shashirajaa layo hai— as the first human to bring Moon-dust to Earth. The choice of the raga was also a nuanced tribute to the Moon-shot: Bhairav is Shiva Himself, the Lord whose diadem is the Moon. Hence, he is also known as Chandrashekhara or Shashidhara. 

Notice how this space-age poem also ropes in the primordial metaphor of Brahmanda, the Cosmic Egg. Known as Hiranayagarbha, this blazing Golden Orb brings forth the universe in a cosmic convulsion, says Varahamihira, the 6th-century polymath, in his celebrated astronomical encyclopaedia, Brihat Samhita. Varahamihirawrote several authoritative texts on astronomy and astrology. He also mastered the Greek language and praised the yavanas for being ‘welltrained in the sciences.’ 

The astronomer was associated with Ujjain, a centre of astronomical learning, then renowned the world over for its excellence. He’s said to have bridged oriental and occidental knowledge systems, and reintroduced key concepts like zodiacal signs and predictive calculations into the Indian tradition from a foreign perspective. 

The sixth verse of Brihat Samhita also alludes to an Indian version of the Big Bang.‘ From its debris rose the Creator,’ Varahamihira writes, ‘with Sun and Moon for eyes’. The lunar metaphor goes back thousands of years to the Rig Veda, to a cosmic theophany called Purusha Sukta

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More remarkably, Rig Vedic seers proclaim that the world that we see now always existed and it shall endure forever in the future. Such a view accords well with the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s famous Last Paper, in which he claims with his colleague Thomas Hertog that there is only one universe and no multiverses; and that it never had a singular moment of creation!

 Vishvarupa, the Cosmic Man epithet has also been used for several Rig Vedic deities such as Prajapati, the Creator, and Soma, who started out as the Elixir of Life, which later became embodied as our own pockmarked Moon. As for the discovery that the Moon’s face had water, and not chalk or cheese, we have to thank our own Chandrayaan-I mission, which made world history in 2008. 

Now, 50 years after the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969, the second Chandrayaan mission is all ready to take off from Sriharikota. The mission, which is scheduled to spend 14 earth days prospecting for more water reserves on the Moon, was postponed from its original blast-off date due to a technical glitch. 

The Apollo 11 Moon-shot year also evokes another cultural epiphany in India — the release of Mrinal Sen’s film, Bhuvan Shome. The movie that heralded a brave New Wave in Indian cinema, gets its name from the protagonist, an old-fashioned Bengali Babu. There is, however, a lunar or astral connection as well: ‘Bhuvan’ refers to one of the triple worlds, where the Moon and his retinue of stars shine. 

As said earlier, in his cultural incarnation the Moon was known as Soma. This used to be a famous Vedic ritual drink, also called Haumain Avestan by the Indo-Iranians. In Pauranicmythology, Soma became conflated with a medicinal deity as well as the Moon. 

The moniker also refers to Vishnu, and to Shiva — as Somanatha, after the eponymous temple in Gujarat, which has the reputation of rising Phoenix-like after every epoch of eclipse and destruction — as also to Yama and Kubera who are also guardians of directions. 

Texts such as the Brihad Jataka state that the Moon is lit by the Sun and that it is the Moon, which is the divine repository of the nectar of immortality. 

A stirring evocation to the deity comes from the 13th century polymath Bopadeva. He was a court-jewel of the Devagiri Yadavas and is sometimes credited as the author of Srimad Bhagavatam, the most popular and intensely poetic of our puranas. 

The invocation to Bopadeva Shatakam, an ayurvedic masterwork, refers to the Moon God as ‘The head of herbals, brahmins

, and the stars; who protects those who surrender to him; and who, in turn, surrenders to his devotees!’ 

Not surprisingly, Bopadevais also regarded as the first person who considered Bhagavatbhaktias a separate rasa. The Bhakti Rasa theory pioneered by the poet found a most congenial home in Bengal, where it was nurtured by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his illustrious followers. On a more whimsical note, a New Scientist story asserts, tongue firmly in cheek, that ‘werewolves aren’t the only thing that the Moon is supposed to affect: the movement of plant leaves may be partially governed by the gravitational pull of the Moon, just like ocean tides. 

So what about the Moon’s effect on the human body? After all, an average adult human is supposed to be 50% to 65% water. Surely it’s not voodoo science, therefore, to say that the Moon, which pulls the Earth like a magnet, sways her seas, also affects our inner tides. But does that also create this timeless bond we all seem to share with Chanda Mama, the maternal uncle, in the sky? ■

Lunar Felicity 

Chandra, literally ‘shining’ in Sanskrit, is the most commonly used name for the Moon. Included in the list of nine planets, Navagraha, the lunar deity is also called Indu, bright drop or Sashanka — hare’s body supposedly seen on Selene’s orb — along a host of other appellations. 

Indian mythology regards the Moon as having sired Budha, the planet Mercury upon Tara, wife of the preceptor of the gods, Guru/Brihaspati, that is, Jupiter. 

Another myth traces his waxing and waning to a polygamous alliance with 27 daughters of Daksha Prajapati. The Moon’s excessive if exclusive fondness for Rohini gets him into trouble with his father-inlaw’s curse. 

The resultant wasting away of the Moon is only partially overcome with exemplary worship of Shiva done at Prabhas (shining) Kshetra, where the Somnath temple is presently located near Veraval in Saurashtra. 

As an inner source of lifesustaining amrita, ambrosia, the Moon is worshipped/cultivated in Hatha Yoga with esoteric chakra- or lotus-opening kriyas. 

Ultimately, leave it to the daughters of India to completely domesticate this silvery satellite of Mother Earth! The Moon is the traditional focal face of Mama, the maternal uncle who peers through the window at the lonesome bride pining for her mother’s home. Only kids at a loss to tie the customary wristband during Bhai-dooj ceremonies can sublimate their sorrow by projecting their love and lights upon Brother Moon. 

Can any lunacy last in the face of such felicity? 

■— VCN

Vithal C Nadkarni is former science editor of The Times Of India Post your comments at speakingtree.in