6 I § Käla-mukha
In the course of the study referred to in the last chapter, [1] Coomaraswamy incidentally examines another symbol, the meaning of which relates to the Janua Cæli. This is a 'monster's head' which, in various forms, often more or less conventionalised, is to be found in the most widely different lands where it has received correspondingly diverse names, such as Käla-mukha and Kirti-mukha in India and T'ao t'ieh in China; it is likewise to be found not only in Cambodia and Java, but also even in Central America, nor is it alien to European art of the Middle Ages. What is important to note before all else is that this representation is generally placed on the lintel of a doorway or on the key of the vault of an arch (torana) containing the image of a divinity. In one way or another, it most often appears as linked to the idea of the door, which clearly determines its symbolic value. [2]
A number of explanations of this figure have been given (we are not,
needless to say, speaking of those which see in it no more than a mere decorative motif), which may contain part of the truth, but which for the most part are insufficient, if only because they cannot be applied without distinction in every case. Thus, K. Marchal has remarked that, in the representations he has studied in greatest detail the lower jaw was almost always missing. Adding to this fact the round shape of the eyes [3] and the prominence of the teeth, he concludes that it must have been originally the image of a human skull. [4] The lower jaw, however, is not always absent, and it exists for example in the Chinese T'ao t'ieh, even though it there has quite a singular appearance, as if it were cut into two symmetrical parts that were folded back on each side of the head, which Carl Hentze explains as corresponding to the stretched hide of a flayed tiger or bear. [5] That may be accurate in this particular case, but it cannot hold in other instances, where the monster has a normally shaped mouth more or less widely open; and even as regards the T'ao t'ieh, this explanation has only an 'historical' value after all, and naturally in no way touches the symbolic interpretation.
The T'ao t'ieh, moreover, is really neither a tiger nor a bear, nor is it any other determinate animal, and Hentze describes the composite character of this fantastic mask thus: 'mouth of a carnivore armed with great fangs, horns of a buffalo or of a ram, face and tufts of an owl, wing stumps and claws of a bird of prey, frontal ornament in the form of a cicada'. This figure is very ancient in China, as it is found almost constantly in the bronzes of the Chang dynasty. [6] The common translation of the name T'ao t'ieh, 'glutton' or 'ogre', seems to have been given it only much later; but this appellation is no less exact, for it is indeed a question of a 'devouring' monster. This is also true for its equivalents belonging to other traditions which, even if they do not exhibit so composite a character as the T'ao t'ieh, in any case seem never to be reduced to the representation of a single animal. Thus, in India, it may be a lion (and there, conventionally, it is given the name of Käla especially), or a Makara (symbol of Varuna, which should be kept in mind in view of the considerations which are to follow), or even an eagle, that is to say a Garuda; but under all these forms the essential meaning remains always the same.
As to this meaning, Hentze (in the cited article) sees in the T'ao t'ieh a 'demon of darkness'. This may be true in a certain sense, but on condition of being explained and made more precise, as he has himself done in a subsequent
work. [7] This was not at all a 'demon' in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather in the original sense of the Vedic asura, and the darkness in question is in reality the 'higher darkness'; [8] in other words, it is a symbol of the 'Supreme Identy' insofar as it absorbs and sends forth by turns the 'Light of the World'. The T'ao t'ieh and other similar monsters thus correspond to Vritra and to his diverse equivalents, and also to Varuna, by whom the light or the rain is alternately retained or released, an alternation which is that of the involutive and evolutive cycles of universal manifestation. [9] Coomaraswamy has thus rightly said that this face, whatever its diverse appearances, is truly the 'Face of God' which both 'kills and vivifies'. [10] It is not, therefore, exactly a 'death's head', as Marchal would have it, at least insofar as it is not taken symbolically; it is rather, as Coomaraswamy goes on to say, the 'head of Death', that is to say of Mrityu, of whom Käla is also a name. [11]
Käla is strictly 'all-consuming Time'; [12] but by transposition it also designates the very Principle itself insofar as it is 'destroyer', or rather 'transformer', in relation to manifestation which it reduces to the non-manifested state by reabsorbing it, as it were, into itself; this is the most exalted sense in which Death can be understood. It is also assimilated symbolically to the sun, and it is known furthermore that the lion, whose mask (sinha-mukha) it borrows, is more especially a solar symbol. This leads us back to what we explained previously on the subject of the Janua Cceli, and Coomaraswamy recalls in this connection that the Christ who said 'I am the Door', is at the same time the 'Lion of Judah' and the 'Sun of men'. [13] In Byzantine churches, the figure of the Pancrator or of Christ 'in majesty' occupies the central position of the vault, that is to say, that which corresponds precisely to the 'eye' of the dome. Now this, as we have explained elsewhere, represents, at the upper extremity of the World Axis, the gate by which the 'exit from the cosmos' [14] is made.
To return to Käla, an essentially solar significance also belongs to the composite representation known in Java under the name Käla-makara in which the features of the lion are combined with those of the Makara, while at the same time, by its Makara aspect, it refers especially to the symbolism of Varuna. Insofar as Varuna is identified with Mrityu or with Yama, [15] the Makara is the crocodile (shishumära or shimshumäri) with open jaws, which holds itself 'against the current' representing the one way by which every being must necessarily pass, and which is thus represented as the 'guardian of the gate' which the being must pass through in order to be liberated from the limitative conditions (symbolised also by the päsha of Varuna) that keep him in the domain of contingent and manifested existence. [16] On the other hand, this same Makara is, in the Hindu Zodiac, the sign of Capricorn, that is, the 'gateway of the Gods'. [17] The Makara therefore, has two apparently opposed aspects, in a sense 'benefic' and 'malefic', which thus correspond to the duality of Mitra and Varuna (united in an indissoluble pair under the dual form Miträvarunau), or of the 'diurnal Sun' and the 'nocturnal Sun', which amounts to saying that, according to the state achieved by the being who presents himself before the Makara, his mouth is for this being either the 'Gate of Deliverance' or the 'jaws of Death'. [18] This last case is that of the ordinary man who, in passing through death, must come back to another state of manifestation, while the first case is that of the being who is 'qualified to pass through the middle of the Sun' [19] by means of the 'seventh ray' because he is already identified with the Sun itself, and to the question, 'who art thou?' which is asked of him when he comes before this gate, he is thus able to respond truly: 'I am Thou'.