Kama

Summary

Kāma is, in the myths of India, desire, and later the god of love who shoots hearts with arrows of flowers. His Sanskrit name, काम, kāma, means desire, longing, love. The first thing said of him is in the creation hymn of the Ṛgveda: in the beginning desire arose, the first seed of thought. The Atharvaveda says he was born before all things and that gods, fathers and men have never matched him.

His best-known story is his death. The demon Tāraka had overcome the gods, and Brahmā told them that only a son born to Śiva by Pārvatī, daughter of the Himalaya, could kill him. Śiva sat in meditation on the mountain, turning to nothing. Indra called Kāma and told him to make Śiva fall in love, and Kāma set out with his wife Rati and his friend Spring. Spring came to the mountain out of season: the snow melted, the trees blossomed, birds and deer woke, and Śiva did not stir. Then Pārvatī came to serve him; at the sight of her Kāma took heart and drew his bow to shoot. Śiva saw him, and fire came out of the third eye in his forehead and burned him, and he was ashes on the ground. Rati fainted, woke, wept for her husband and was about to burn herself when a voice from heaven told her that her husband would return to his body on the day Śiva married.

Pārvatī then practised an austerity harsher than Śiva's own, until he came to her disguised as a young Brahmin to test her, then showed himself and asked for her as his wife. The wedding was held, Śiva gave Kāma back his body as a gift to his bride, and then Kumāra was born, led the gods and killed Tāraka. The Śiva Purāṇa places the return elsewhere: Kāma stays bodiless until Viṣṇu comes down as Kṛṣṇa and marries Rukmiṇī, and Kāma is born as their son Pradyumna.

The idea the story turns on is that desire is the price of the marriage. The gods needed the ascetic to marry so that the saviour could be born; they sent desire to him, and desire burned at his look. Yet the marriage came about all the same, by another road: through Pārvatī's austerity, not Kāma's arrow. And when it did, desire got its body back as the wedding gift. In this story desire is not killed: it burns and returns, and lives on after burning without a body, which is why Kāma is called Ananga, "the bodiless".

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, a reading proposed on the method. Without its final short vowel, the Sanskrit stem vowel, kāma is kām, which is Arabic ḥāma, with k standing for ḥ and the long ā the long ā of ḥāma. In Lane, ḥāma al-ṭāʾir ḥawla al-māʾ is "the bird went round about the water, by reason of thirst"; huwa yaḥūmu ḥawla gharaḍin lahu, "he hovers about an object of desire that he has"; ḥāma ʿalā al-amr, "he desired, or sought, the thing"; and al-ḥāʾim is the thirsty one circling the water, then anyone desiring or seeking. On this reading Kāma is the hoverer, the desire that circles what it wants as a thirsty bird circles water, which is what the story makes him: he circles Śiva on his mountain waiting for a moment of inattention, until he sees Pārvatī approach and draws his bow.

Linguistic Root

Monier-Williams places kāma under the verb kam, to desire, and records desire, longing and love, then "Love or Desire personified" in the Atharvaveda, with a reference to the creation hymn, then the god of love, son of Dharma and husband of Rati in the Mahābhārata, or son of Brahmā in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa.

Lane under ḥ-w-m: ḥāma al-ṭāʾir ḥawla al-māʾ, the bird circled the water from thirst; "he who approaches the forbidden pasture is near to falling into it"; yaḥūmu ḥawla gharaḍin lahu, he hovers about an object of desire; ḥāma ʿalā al-amr, he sought and desired the thing; al-ḥāʾim, the thirsty one, then the one desiring and seeking. Hebrew, another branch of the tongue, has חָמַד ḥāmad, to desire, to covet, as in the commandment "you shall not covet your neighbour's house", which Brown, Driver and Briggs compare with Arabic ḥamida. So ḥ and m are a nucleus of desire in Hebrew as they are in Arabic ḥāma.

The sounds: ḥ is one of the throat sounds that in the European languages become h or k or drop, as the project's sound laws record; m is m; the long ā is the long ā. That ḥ answers k in Sanskrit in particular has not yet been shown. Neither Hindu essay reads Kāma's name, so this reading is made on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

Born from Brahmā's mind, and cursed

The Śiva Purāṇa tells that Kāma appeared from the mind of Brahmā when he saw Sandhyā, a girl also born of his mind, and that Brahmā told him that he himself, Viṣṇu and Śiva were all targets for his arrows. Kāma has five flower arrows, the delighting, the alluring, the deluding, the withering and the killing. He shot them at Brahmā and his sons as they gazed at Sandhyā, and Brahmā cursed him to be burned by Śiva's eye; then, calmer, he told him: Śiva will burn you, and then give you another body when he takes a wife. In The Birth of the War-God the voice tells Rati of this same curse, and says that Dharma interceded for Kāma.

Where the fire went

In the Matsya Purāṇa Kāma enters Śiva's body through his ears and disturbs his meditation, then shoots him with an arrow made of a cluster of fragrant flowers; Śiva cries out and burns him with his third eye. Then Śiva distributes Kāma's fire among the mango trees, the spring month, the moon, the flowers, the bees and the singing koel, and what remains of his arrows settles in the hearts of lovers and burns there day and night. Rati smears herself with her husband's ashes and prays to Śiva, who tells her: your husband will soon be born and will be known as Ananga. In the Śiva Purāṇa Brahmā turns the fire that burned Kāma into a mare and takes it to the sea, which holds it in its depths, consuming its water until the end of the world.

Pradyumna and the fish

In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Kāma, after his burning, enters the body of Vāsudeva and is born as Pradyumna, son of Kṛṣṇa and Rukmiṇī. The demon Śambara steals him before he is ten days old and throws him into the sea; a fish swallows him, fishermen catch it and bring it to Śambara's kitchen, and the cooks find the child in its belly and give him to Māyāvatī. She raises him until he is grown, then tells him that she is Rati, his wife; he kills Śambara and returns with her to his father.

Kāma in the Atharvaveda

The Atharvaveda invokes Kāma in another way: "Kāma the Bull, slayer of foes", who drives the singer's enemies into darkness and is asked to give wealth to the one who sacrifices.

Symbolic Reading

The Hindu rereading essay reads the creation hymn's line "then desire came, the first seed of thought" cosmically: desire is the first force that set the cosmos in motion, which it likens to the tension in a field before the first explosion.

In the stories themselves Kāma comes with spring: the snow melts, the trees blossom, the animals wake, and later his fire scatters into the mango, the bees, the moon and the spring month. In these images the god of desire and the season of mating are one. Against him stands the ascetic who has left the world, who is not overcome by the arrow and is overcome by the austerity of a woman as patient as he.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Hesiod says that Eros was among the first to come into being after Chaos and Earth, fairest of the immortals, who loosens the limbs and overcomes the mind of gods and men. The Atharvaveda says that Kāma was born before all things, and that neither gods nor men have matched him. The Greek essay compares Eros with the Indian Kāma in the love that moves creation.

In Ovid, Venus embraces her son Cupid and tells him: the gods of heaven and sea have yielded to your arrow, so why should the underworld stay outside our rule? He picks his keenest arrow and shoots Dis, the god of the dead, who then carries off Proserpina. The goddess sends desire against a god who stands outside love so that a marriage may happen, as Indra sends Kāma against the ascetic Śiva. But Cupid's arrow strikes, while Kāma burns before he can shoot.

The wedding of Śiva and Pārvatī, for which Kāma paid, belongs with the sacred marriage. Kāma's burning and his return to a body, or his rebirth as Kṛṣṇa's son, belong with death and return.