A Digit of the Moon

The Moon god Chandra.

© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

A few weeks ago, I was reading The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru and in it I came across a beautiful piece of paragraph, on the creation myth of woman, taken from A Digit of the Moon by Francis W. Bain.


"In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid materials were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of moon, and the  curves of the creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of the flowers, and the lightness of the leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of the deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bossom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of the fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane and the fidelity of chakrawaka; and compounding all these together, he made woman, and gave her to man."

I was so enamoured by this passage alone that I wished to read it further. So I went to look for this book and after much searching on the internet I managed to get hold of an old copy, a 1910 edition. I am sure this is the oldest book that I own now.


I like reading mythology and I find this text quite simply beautiful. It is an evocative piece of text that has the richness of emotions and imaginations that one finds in the creation myths of the Greeks, the Mesopotamians and the Aborigines. Myths are superb figments; fantastic imaginations, that allowed the early people to make sense of things around them, which were beyond the realm of their understanding. To them lightning and thunder, weren't simply multimillion volts of electric spark or sonic shock waves caused by it, they were flared tempers of warring gods; earthquakes and volcanic eruptions weren't just sliding of tectonic plates or venting of lava, these were gateways to the underworld and the caprices of the demons.


Myths give us a unique perspective to understand the minds of our early ancestors by means of their fantastical stories. Their lives were strongly linked to these myths, just as ours today to the science and technology. But sometimes I wonder if our ancestors didn't turn to these myths would we still have this rich heritage of art, poetry, literature and drama? All of which are mediums that were created to express and propagate these myths. Sometimes I muse that to say - Apollo then mounts his chariot and waits for Eos with her rosy fingers to throw open the gates, he then whips his horses, which shine dazzlingly bright as they ascend up in the sky, drawing his chariot on his daily journey from his palace in the far east - is far more inspiring and thought provoking than just saying the Sun rises in the east.


Oh well, let us get back to the book.
Bain, in his book tells us that A Digit of the Moon, was a translation of a much older Sanskrit manuscript, which was given to him by a native scholar whilst he was stationed in India and details this in his introduction. However, while doing some research on this rather obscure book, I stumbled across reports which told a rather different story from his. In later years it was realised that these stories were all made up by Bain himself and there was no ancient manuscript from which he translated all this. Ha! A myth begetting a myth. Nonetheless A Digit of the Moon offers a sumptuous reading of a quest for love through riddles. To those readers to whom the above passage from Bain's book may seem sexist and literal objectification of women, we have to keep in mind that when Bain wrote his book in the late 19th century societal attitudes towards women were agreeable to say the least. We are now more respectful of women's rights, dignity and equality, and are advocates of women empowerment. So in this sense the above passage from Bain's book should be read and appreciated for its artistic and imaginative merits only and rather be not interpreted it any other ways.


But, why the title A Digit of the Moon?
Bain rather wonderfully puts it in his book: "But in Sanskrit, the Moon, like the Sun, is a male. Hindoo poets get over this difficulty, when they want a female Moon, by personifying his attributes, or making a part do duty for the whole. Thus, his disc is divided into sixteen parts, called 'streaks' or 'digits', and a beautiful woman is 'a digit of the moon'."