“That’s how Manu, first among men, was procreated. That’s why men always go after simulacra. They are born of a simulacrum. That’s why they are never sure if they really exist. And never will be. Meanwhile Saranyū wandered around and meditated. She had taken the form of a mare. One day Vivasvat opened a door and caught Samjñā scolding the little Yama quite bitterly. It was as though she were a servant taking advantage of her mistress’s absence. ‘She can’t be his mother.’ The thought forced itself upon Vivasvat’s mind. He ran outside, overcome by rage. As he was running, he heard the drumming of hooves. He was a stallion. In the distance, in the middle of a meadow, he saw a mare, motionless, immersed in tapas. As soon as she caught sight of the stallion, she became nervous. She fled. She did everything not to turn her back to him. You already know the end of the story.”
“But now let’s go back a bit,” said Dadhyañc. “No sooner had the gods been born than a cloud of dust arose. Within it: a shuffling sound. On the ground: the first footprints, which immediately became mixed up. Seven beings were dancing. They felt they had been freed, because born of Aditi, She-who-loosens-bonds. But Aditi had given birth to eight children. Seven were dancing, one was an amorphous fetus, a piece of flesh as broad as it was long. The mother had pushed it away, with a kick. The dust of the gods, who had already gone, sifted down onto Mārtānda, the abortion. Then the dead egg rolled slowly in the waters. Nature swelled with lymph. Surrounded it. The gods remembered their brother, and they said to themselves: ‘We mustn’t waste him.’ They pulled him out of the water and tried to give him a form. So Mārtānda became Vivasvat, the Sun. But they couldn’t rid him of Death, who dwells within him and in every descendant of his son, Manu: in men.”
Dadhyañc went on: “It’s not so surprising that Death dwells within the Sun. What is surprising, when you think of how he first appeared, kicked away as trash by his mother, is that the Sun is alive. It was his brothers, born before him and all well-formed, who saved him. They didn’t want him to be lost. So they gave Vivasvat his shape. One day he would generate the line of those who procreate and die.
“Left alone, abandoned by Saranyū and aware now that he had been tricked by her simulacrum, Samjñā (also called Chāyā, Shadow), Vivasvat thought back to the day of his birth. He suspected Saranyū might have returned to her father’s house, out of nostalgia for her real lover. He would look for her there. Tvaṣṭṛ greeted him calmly. He said that yes, it was true, Saranyū had come back, but they hadn’t let her stay, on the contrary, they had chided her for this rash decision. Then Tvaṣṭṛ looked up at Vivasvat and said: ‘You’ll never find her again, the way you are now. Saranyū lived in terror when she was with you, ever afraid of your touch. If you’ll let me, I could try to make you more suitable, more tolerable to living beings.’ Even as he was speaking, he had started to clear a big bench strewn with tools. He invited Vivasvat to lie down on it. Then he set to work with a grinding wheel. First he used a liquid to grease down Vivasvat’s limbs, then he went over them with that strange tool. Vivasvat found it a relief to suffer. Bright shreds fell away from him to roll into the corners of the workshop, where they continued to shine on their own. Losing light came as a relief, gave him an uplifting thrill. And at the same time he felt the agony of those parts of his body that left him. Tvaṣṭṛ worked away like a craftsman absorbed in his task. He’d begun with the shoulders and trunk. Now he was grinding down his thighs. When he touched a knee, Vivasvat felt he had to do something. With one hand he grabbed Tvaṣṭṛ’s wrist and said: ‘No further that way. It doesn’t matter if my feet stay shapeless. No one will know what they’re like when I’m standing on my chariot. There will always be a charioteer to hide me. I’ll wear boots when I have to walk. But no one will have to see my feet. The formless is part of me. I can’t abandon it. You all feed on the formless. Even you wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my formless feet, which you vainly sought to grind down. The world is held together by something left over beyond it, that overwhelms it. But if that something weren’t there, there wouldn’t be anything. Now leave me be. And thank you. I’ll be on my way once more to find my only bride.’”
The Aśvins listened, their eyes on the ground. They were discovering the many branches of their family, after having long wandered the world as orphans. But above all they wanted to know more about one of their stepbrothers: Mṛtyu, Death. Dadhyañc realized even before they asked. He went on: “The more thoughtful, loving, and delicate her husband was with her, the more terrified Saraṇyū felt. A hem of the robe he took off coming to bed could set fire to a continent. Yet it wasn’t that that frightened Saraṇyū. It was the freezing cold. She didn’t want to be inside Vivasvat because she felt an enormous, silent cavity open up within him, echoless, empty of all vibration. She felt that in getting to the bottom of Vivasvat she would come across an invasive guest, who refused to leave the house, or perhaps was its master. She didn’t want to meet him. But she couldn’t help reproducing him. When she gave birth to twins — everything for her came in couples or copies — she recognized Death’s features in the male child, Yama. It was as if that son had come from the last receptacle of Vivasvat’s substance and then, in his mother’s womb, met his copy, his twin sister, Yamī. Now at last he would agree to go down into the world and have a history like so many other gods. He would no longer be merely the black shadow that forms behind all that dazzles. But he couldn’t have become manifest unless together with Yamī. There was a pact, so it seemed, between death and duplication.” Here Dadhyañc fell silent. Then he went on: “Before becoming Yama, Death didn’t have a proper name, as if he were a thing rather than a person. Yet the most terrifying thing about Death was his appearance as a person. A figure with indistinct features, who would not let himself pass incognito. You recognized him in the pupil of whoever came to meet you, be it lover or enemy. Or you glimpsed him behind the burning screen of the Sun, like a black silhouette that penetrated the eye of whoever saw it, and for a long time refused to go away, an intrusive guest.