Ammonites and Sri Salagrama Shila

Originally published 9/29/07 on Desicritics

The Ammonites were nothing but trouble for ancient Israel. Ammon, according to Genesis 19:38 was a son of Lot who had lots of descendants who were nomadic types and thus warlike and bothersome to other descendants of Abraham. They pillaged their towns and because of their worship ceremonies which required human sacrifices, were abhorred by ancient descendants of Israel. But once in a while beauty won over caution. Solomon had a gorgeous wife who was an Ammonite. (Ezekiel 25:6 and Kings 2, 23:13)

Ammon as a term that is now commonly used by scientists and historians alike harks back to a Greek word, Ammon, derived from the ancient Egyptians who called their god Amun. Amun had curled horns like a ram on his head, thus the application to modern usages of the word in our vocabulary. In medicine there is the cornu ammonis, a region of the hippocampus in the brain which literally means “Amun’s Horns”. Shelled extinct cephalopods have spiral shells resembling a ram’s and Ammon’s horns. We call them ammonites. Even our word ammonia, a chemical is named as a derivation from Ammon.

Alexander the Great, who visited Taxila, was once greeted as Ammon’s son because of his veneration and respect for the Egyptian deity. He had the temerity to have a coin struck with his profile on which the whorls of hair are shaped to resemble the ram’s horn. He had other godly images of himself struck as well. Some of those ancient misshapen, thick, copper coins got buried in pottery in Taxila and one of them, as well as others that bear his image, are beside my computer as I write. Ammon, the horns of the ram. But the story does not end here or in Taxila, it eventually takes us to the Kali Gandaki River of Nepal.

Long before the great cosmic collision that killed many of earth’s terrestrial creatures, including the dinosaurs, there were creatures in the depths of the ocean that survived, that rose to the shallows to feed, great and small ammonites, the chambered nautiluses. “The long voyages of the nautilus, from the depths into the shallow each night, are thus a perfect metaphor for its evolutionary history, which comes up to our world unchanged from the depths of time.” (Megalania Dinosaur Page—Dinosaur News)

Also on my table, next to the computer for inspiration and reference, is in my bolo-tie. It is a magnificent fossil form, cut, shaped and polished like a jewel, revealing the swirl, the ram’s horn configuration that formed some 65 to 140 million years ago. From a tiny living cephalopod-mollusk the size of a grain of basmati rice, it grew, expanded and made new rooms for itself, in the shape we all know so well, room upon room, chamber upon chamber, as it occupied progressively larger rooms which it made for itself. The Chambered Nautilus!

This ammonite has captured the minds of many throughout history, bards, poets, and religious saints. Hear the words of Ayappa Suprabhatam: “A handsome mien, the entire world yearned, with a holy stone around his neck, and with a luster, none in the world dreamed, grew the holy babe, King of souls, oh my Lord, to you ... holy and a pleasant...” (by Narayana lyer, translated by P.R. Ramachander)

Or hear Oliver Wendell Holmes who caught the idea of the progression of the soul in his poem “The Chambered Nautilus”. “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, as the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, shut thee room, heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!” How lovely. Transmigration, reincarnation, the imprint of growth leaving behind a jewel!

The Skanda Purana states that, “a genuine Salagram Sila (or Shila) is directly a manifestation of the Supreme Lord Vishnu and does not require installation.” It states that, “Merely by touching a genuine Salagram Sila one becomes free from the sins of millions of births, so what to speak of worshiping Him. By puja of Salagrama Sila one gains the direct association of Lord Hari” (Vedic Sacred Stones)

***

It was many, many, years ago, in 1949 that I climbed through the deep valley of the Kali Gandaki valley, moving slowly in the rarified air toward the Tibetan border, Jomosom and Muchtinath, an altitude of almost 12,000 feet. Often alone during the long day’s hike, I stopped to eat my chappati and canned cheese. The river ran out from Tibet on the dark stones, shiny and crystal, icy cold from the snows high above. Re-billed Choughs played on up-currents of air calling to each other as they did acrobatics above me.

My feet rested on damp rocks, my eyes feasted on the view. I stood and dislodged a rock, not a large one but roundish and black. I bent to pick it up and was surprised at how heavy it was. It was the size of a very large mango. Its surface had been polished by the moving water for eons and was shiny and black. One edge was unusual, looking almost carved, whorls that faced each other forming a labial configuration. The imagination of a youth! I held the stone, hefted it, held it near my cheek and felt it cool and magical. What is this, I wondered? There was a large boulder near me. I took the stone and threw it with force against the boulder. It broke in two, evenly, revealing the most astonishing sight! Jewels, arranged in a spiraling whorl, as if the eternal Jeweler had arranged the smallest ‘diamond’ crystals in the center and then progressively increased their size, room by room, until the picture that emerged was that of a twisted, curling ram’s horn. I set the two halves on the boulder and looked at the ancient wonder, sparkling in the sun, now upset that I had violated this hidden wonderful microcosm of growth which had lain for some one hundred million years, unseen by mortal man. This rock was here because of the up-thrust of the mountains, the Himalayas, which were once under the deepest seas. What a migration for this rock, and what karma for me to have touched it.

My pack was heavy, filled with skinning tools, a water canteen, a camera, film, ammunition, food and clothes for the day. The stone was heavy. To carry it one mile would be easy, eighteen, problematic, for three months, wearisome. I sighed, kissed each side goodbye, put the halves together and placed the stone back where I had found it, humming to myself. OM MANI PADME HUM.

It is the song of Tibet, sung by many who traverse the cruel trails leading from Tibet to Tansing along the Kali Gandaki River. The devout among them moved along and murmured, counting their beads, trying to concentrate their minds. Many carry Mani Stones, on which is carved this very mantra; of compassions which vibrate, resonate and develop a corresponding feeling in the heart; as if by these vocal repetitions and sounds and by using the mind intoxicating words a new state of spiritual awareness would occur. In the brutality of their life and environment, the deprivation of adequate food, the hard earth as their bed, OM MANI PADME HUM lifted them up, up and away.

I sat with the carriers that night and we talked about their grueling day of labor, each carrying about seventy pounds on their backs supported by head straps that cut into their foreheads. Their karma, coolies! They huddled over a hot coal on which a pea-sized greenish substance, bhang, was placed and with straws inhaled the sweet smoke and sighed, their aches and pains, their hunger assuaged for a lingering moment, even the humming now a vague memory. I told them of the stone I had found and they sat up more alert and questioned me. Where? How far back? Could I take them there to retrieve the stone? Sadly, I said that of the thousand steps I took that day, I could not return to that exact spot. They murmured, “Sri Salagrama Shila” and shook their heads sadly. They looked at me strangely now.

I travel back in time to that memory of holding a sacred stone, the Salagrama Shila, a manifestation of the Supreme Lord Vishnu. Was my kiss an appropriate puja? Was my smashing the stone to reveal its hidden splendor a mystic violation? Or was the peek into the spiral arrangement of rooms of the primordial creature a portent of the rooms of my own life?

CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

Kaligandaki River
Winds, a snake, black
Between high rock walls
Primordial thrusts, upheavals
Erecting earth extensions high
Himalaya fingers proudly holding
Creatures born yesterday in sea chambers
Black time warps, frozen stone sea memories
Bathed for centuries, awash in earth’s salty solutions
Sea mummies, mysterious black stone folds, cupped secrets
Held silently in frozen time, millions of years unseen, unknown
This fossil form, just a stone picked up by wandering callow youth
Tossed against a boulder, cracks and unfolds its obsidian hands holding
Sleeping places, bejeweled rooms, crystal filled, chambers of once soft life
Shining mantras of yesterdays.


Self Grows Slowly
Tortuously formed fossil stuff
Tomorrows, chambered though brief years
Birthday parties, picnics on white sands, report cards
Tears, new sneakers, joy and insecurities neatly packaged
Accretions, unnoticed, forming, reforming, life’s lost wax molds
Castings, edges rough, unending parades in self or other’s lives, in, out,
Nudging, pushing at delicate stuff, mind tissues, will struggles, love strokes,
Calligraphy marks of pain and joy, diplomas, gold stars, motorcycle licenses
Diagnosis and life prescriptions

Pulsating and Throbbing
Growths under this deep sea of stars
Planet creatures that crawl on dirt and sand
Life forms filling time and space, mere calcifications
Just human reefs; libraries, compact discs, Taxila ruins,
Sand Castle construction, aching retractions, hopeful advances
Cycles, shock waves of life energy, human anemones undulating
Old lives and shadows, petrified human forests, memories of yesterday
Rediscovered anew, soft memories stored in calcified chambers, limitations
Of our own life’s rooms

From : Soft Shoe in Soft Rain, Poems
by Harold Bergsma, Copyright 2004