The race of Mudgala and Mudgalani.

• Author: Brereton, Joel P.
• Position: Rig Veda 10.102

ACCORDING TO RGVEDA 10.102 (1) a man named Mudgala wins a race, even though his vehicle is a cart pulled by a bull, rather than a horse-drawn chariot, and even though his driver is his wife, Mudgalani. (2) Beyond this skeletal description, the details of the hymn, particularly how it is that the couple win this race, and its ritual or pragmatic application remain obscure. Rgveda 10.102 is hardly unique in this respect, since similar akhyana hymns are similarly opaque. One productive approach to such hymns has been to start with their conclusions, for these narrative hymns told their stories for specific purposes, and those purposes are often expressed, even if indirectly, in their final verses. (3) In the Sarama hymn, RV 10.108, for example, the last verse applies this story of winning the cows to the poet's effort to recover his cattle. (4) Likewise, in RV 1.179, the Agastya and Lopamudra hymn, the last two verses, which confess fault and praise Agastya for his success as both an ascetic and a husband, point towards the hymn's use in a ritual for a celibate's sexual lapse. (5)

The last two verses of the Mudgala hymn do not explicitly state its purpose, but they do hint at it rather broadly through imagery and simile:

11. parivrkteva patividyam anat, pipyana kucakreneva sincan esaisya cid rathya jayema, sumangalam sinavad astu satam

    She has accomplished the recovery of a husband, like a (once) Avoided Wife: she swelling, he dripping, as (when one works) with a poor (water) wheel.

    We would win with a charioteer who is very impetuous [like Mudgalani]. Let the prize bring good fortune and prosperity.

12. tvam visvasya jagatas, caksur indrasi caksusah vrsa yad ajim vrsana sisasasi codayan vadhrina yuja

    Indra, you are (the eye) of the entire living world and the eye of the eye, when, a bull yourself, you strive to win the race with a bull, driving (him) with a steer, as (his) yoke-mate.

    Of great help in understanding these two verses, and especially vs. 11, are Stephanie Jamison's (1996: 99ff.) observations concerning Mudgalani and the figure of the Avoided Wife (parivrkti). Jamison shows that the Avoided Wife was a ritual role, in which a woman represented a wife who has not had a child, or rather, a wife who has not given birth to a son. Line 1la compares Mudgalani to a woman who has overcome this status, and therefore implies that in winning this race, she has become pregnant or given birth to a son. The other images in vs. 11 support this interpretation. Mudgalani "swells" (pipyana). When used in connection with women, the verb typically describes swelling breasts, as in RV 2.39.6b stanav iva pipyatam jivase nah "Like breasts, may you two swell for us to live," that is, "for us to be nurtured," or 3.33.l0c ni te namsai pipyaneva yosa "I shall bend down to you, like a young woman, swelling [with milk]." Mudgalani's swelling breasts thus suggest that she has a child whom she nurtures. The end of this line, kucakreneva sincan, is problematic, (6) but in some fashion or other, the result is that waters, regularly and naturally symbols of fertility, (7) are flowing in every direction.

    I suggest, therefore, that the hymn concerns sexuality and fertility. This conclusion is not exactly a surprise, since all the other Vedic hymns that involve males and females--Vrskapi and Indrani (RV 10.86) (cf. especially Jamison 1996: 74ff.), Agastya and Lopamudra, Apala and Indra (RV 8.91) (cf. Schmidt 1987, Jamison 1991: 149ff.), Pururavas and Urvasi (RV 10.95), Yama and Yami (RV 10.10)--are about sexuality or reproduction in one way or another. But the fertility and pregnancy of Mudgalani are not only a victory for her, but for Mudgala as well. Indeed Mudgala, and not Mudgalani, is the central focus of the hymn. While Mudgalani is directly mentioned in vss. 2, 6, and 11, the hymn elsewhere concentrates on Mudgala and on the bull that pulls his cart. In vs. 8, Mudgala even appears to take over Mudgalani's role as driver of the cart, since he carries the whip. If fertility is the prize that Mudgalani wins, then Mudgala's victory should be the birth of a son.

    The last verse, vs. 12, does indirectly suggest that Mudgala wins a prize of offspring. It attributes his victory to Mudgala's bull and to the help of Indra, who is also called a "bull." Since bulls are embodiments of virility, the imagery again implies fertility and birth. But strangely, the verse says that victory was won also through a vadhri, a steer, a castrated bull--a figure that seems wildly out of place in a hymn concerned with fertility, virility, and birth. Moreover, this steer has not appeared before in the hymn. It is probably not a second draft animal, because the hymn explicitly and consistently maintains that Mudgala has only one animal that pulls his cart. Therefore, the vadhri is more likely a metaphoric description of another figure. But who or what is it, and how can this steer be a part of a sexual victory? I believe there is only one real possibility for the identity of the steer, Mudgala himself. (8) In this case, the hymn is dealing with the interesting and apparently unsolvable proble m of how a wife can become pregnant if the husband is impotent.

    Yet there are solutions to this problem. Among other possibilities, Sanskrit legal literature recognizes the practice of niyoga, the appointment of a man to father a child by another man's wife. This appointment is made if the husband has no male heir and is incapable of producing one, either because he is impotent or dead. The child born of this arrangement legally belongs to the husband and the husband's lineage. It is, to be sure, a somewhat controversial solution. Manu 9.59-63 allows it, although it restricts the choice of the man who substitutes for the husband and the circumstances in which the substitution is allowed. The basic principle is stated in vs. 59: devarad va sapindad va striya samyan niyuktaya / prajepsitadhigantavya samtanasya pariksaye "On the failure of issue (by her husband), a woman who has been authorized, may obtain, (in the) proper (manner prescribed), the desired offspring of (cohabitation with) a brother-in-law or (with some other) sapinda (of her husband)." (9) Having permitted th is practice, Manu then immediately forbids it, at least for widows: vs. 64 nanyasmin vidhava nari niyoktavya dvijatibhih / anyasmin hi niyunjana dharmam hanyuh sanatanam "By twice-born men a widow must not be appointed to (cohabit with) any other (than her husband); for they who appoint (her) to another (man), will violate the eternal law."

    This inconsistency and uncertainty about the practice is reflected in other legal literature, which sometimes permits the practice with various restrictions, sometimes allows it as an option, and sometimes prohibits it. But whether forbidding or permitting niyoga, this literature attests to its significance. The practice has even greater and less ambiguous prominence in narrative. Perhaps the most famous example is the niyoga of the wives of Pandu in the Mahabharata. Because Pandu cannot have children, he encourages his wife Kunti to give him sons by invoking the gods to act as his surrogates. In persuading Kunti to use her power to summon the gods, Pandu cites a number of instances in which wives gave sons to impotent husbands or in which widows gave sons to dead husbands. He tells the story of Kalmasapada Saudasa, who sent his wife to have a son by the seer Vasistha (Mbh 1.113.22), and mentions his own birth by Vyasa after the death of his mother's husband (1.113.23). (10)

    This practice of niyoga was already known in the Rgvedic period. There is a direct reference to it in RV 10.40.2, (11) in which the poet, addressing the Asvins, says: 2cd ko vam sayutra vidhdveva devaram, maryam na yosa krnute sadhastha a "Who takes you two to his place, as a widow (takes) her brother-in-law to bed, as a young woman her young man?" It is possible that the category of vidhava could include not just women whose husbands are deceased, but also those whose husbands are impotent. This is the sense that the commentators give the word in their explanation of Manu 9.60 (cf. Buhler 1886: 338n.). In any case, the practice of niyoga for one whose husband is alive appears in the multiple Rgvedic references (RV 1.116.13, 1.117.24, 6.62.7, and 10.39.7) to a woman named Vadhrimati, "Steer's Wife," to whom the Asvins gave a son. Her name signifies both her childless condition as well as the reason for it, and it connects her story to that of Mudgalani and the vadhri in RV 10.102. Of the passages that refer to Vadhrimati, the most revealing is RV 6.62.7 vi jayusa rathya yatam adrim, srutam havam vrsana vadhrimatyah, dasasyanta sayave pipyathur gam, iti cyavana sumatim bhuranyu "With the victorious (chariot), o you two charioteers, drive to the stone. Hear the summons of Steer's Wife, o you two bulls. Doing service to Sayu, you two have made (his) cow swell. Thus (you show) your favor, o you who are moving and swift." I understand Vadhrimati to designate the wife of Sayu, for whom the Asvins have done the favor of impregnating his wife. Strikingly, this hymn recapitulates features of the Mudgala hymn. In RV 6.62.7, as in 10.102, there occur a victorious chariot, a wife who has been barren, a steer (implied in the term vadhrimati), a bull (or two) who responds to the need of the wife for a potent male, a female who "swells" through the intervention of a bull, and a human male who is benefited by all this. Admittedly, races, chariots, bulls, and swelling cows are not rarities in the RV, but the similar configuration of this verse and the Mudgala hymn is telling. It points to a parallel situation in which the gods mediate a pregnancy for a wife made barren by an impotent husband.

    Since the appointment of a substitute progenitor was a delicate issue, it required careful ritual circumscription and sanctification. Both the narrative and legal literature refer to rituals of niyoga. In...