Aitareya’s Teaching on the Body in the Kaumārikā Khaṇḍa

Chapter 42 of the Kaumārikā Khaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa holds a powerful teaching by Aitareya, the silent brāhmaṇa of the Hārīta family. He gives it to his mother, who is in despair, at the Mahīsāgara Saṃgama, the place where the Mahī river meets the sea. Aitareya describes the physical body in blunt terms, calling it “a leather bag of faeces and urine”. He does not do this to teach that life is worthless. He does it to break his mother’s attachment, and the listener’s, to life in the body, so that they can move towards liberation.

The heart of the teaching is the difference between outer and inner purity. Aitareya declares that “purity of the mind is the greatest śauca” (śauca means purity or cleanliness). Alongside this, he teaches about the jīva (soul) in the womb. There it remembers all its past births and resolves to reach liberation in this life, but the shock of birth makes it forget that resolve.

The Body Seen as It Is

Aitareya describes the physical body in exact, unflinching detail, to shake his mother free of her attachment:

This physical body has the skeleton as its supporting beam. It is fastened with sinews, smeared with blood, flesh and fat. It is a container for faeces and urine, covered with hair like grass, and spread over with a skin of good colour. It has a mouth as its only big entrance and is decorated with six windows (the senses). The two lips are the panels of the door, and the teeth do the work of bolts. Sweat flows through its vessels. It stands in the fire of the jaws of Mṛtyu (Death).

The body is compared to a house: well built, but impure at its root. Its seeming beauty, the “skin of good colour”, is plainly called deceptive. The mention of the jaws of Death shows that the body lives only for a while, and is already being eaten away by time.

The Streams of Impurity

Aitareya goes on:

Just as streams flow all the time from a mountain, so phlegm, urine and other fluids flow all the time from this body. There is not a single clean spot in the body, which is the storehouse of every kind of dirt.

This picture of the body as a mountain always streaming with unclean fluids is a deliberate reversal of a familiar picture in the Purāṇas, where sacred mountains pour out holy rivers. The streams of a tīrtha (holy bathing place) purify; the body’s own streams keep on making things unclean. The body is not a tīrtha but the opposite of one.

Inner Purity as the Highest Śauca

Having shown that the body is impure, Aitareya gives the heart of his teaching:

Purity of the mind is the greatest śauca. By this all holy rites and all ordinary actions are to be judged. What cleans away the bad smell of avidyā (ignorance) and rāga (attachment) is the pure water of knowledge and the clay of true detachment.

This turns the usual idea of śauca upside down. Normally, ritual purity is thought of mainly as outer bathing, a clean body and pure food. Here the highest purity is placed entirely in the mind. The “bad smell” of ignorance and attachment can only be removed by the “pure water” of jñāna (knowledge) and the “clay” of vairāgya (detachment). Outer water only washes the leather bag. Only jñāna and vairāgya wash the inner being.

Liberation Through Letting Go of the Body

The teaching ends:

If a wise person knows that the body is faulty, and becomes unattached and cut off from it, he goes out: he is liberated. The person who clings to it tightly stays in the world.

The body is not to be destroyed or hated. It is to be seen clearly. Seeing the body’s nature clearly brings detachment by itself, and detachment from the body leads to liberation. The body is neither enemy nor friend. It is a vehicle whose nature, once truly understood, points the traveller towards the door.

Knowledge in the Womb and Forgetting at Birth

Aitareya also teaches about what the jīva goes through in the womb:

Just as a traveller surrounded by huge mountains stands still and helpless, so the embodied soul, wrapped in the outer covering of the embryo, lives in misery. The soul in the womb remembers all its past births and resolves: “As soon as I am born, I will receive the sacred rites of purification. I will perform great holy rites so that I do not enter a womb again. I will learn and gain the wisdom of Hari that brings worldly existence to an end.”

Yet the moment of birth wipes all this wisdom away. The shock and confusion of being born into a body with its senses erase the resolve that was made in full knowledge in the womb. This passage explains the deep sorrow of saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death: in the womb, the soul always knows the truth and always resolves to act on it, but the very act of being born undoes that knowledge.

Sources

• Skanda Mahā Purāṇa, Māheśvara Khaṇḍa, Kaumārikā Khaṇḍa, Chapter 42