25 November 21
If one thought that vultures were integral to only Parsi Fire Temples, there is one documented secretive legend that comes from Tamil country, from a place called Thirukazhukundram. Folks of my grand parents generation used to regale us with stories about the temple, a bizarre and yet believable tale of a pair of vultures that visited the shrine every day around noon to accept the offerings from Shiva temple atop the hill. The story is that in Tamil Lore the saints with powers sung about Thirukazhukundram birds, about their sightings, and that was more than 1000 years before our time! From then the record of their sightings is also in the Temple record for last nearly 400 years, including records by Dutch colonials who had documented a sighting at the temple abode of this unique visit of carrion feeders to the shrine at noon. Then 1998 happened. After that the vultures have vanished. I am quite sure that similar vulture visitations must be in lore elsewhere in the South, particularly in today’s Telangana, Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala. Kazhugu as the bird is referenced, is revered one in our lore. In 2014 the Deccan Herald carried this delightful reminisce about the Birds of Thirukazhukundram…
In Sangam Literature, raptors are described through five names, of which Aruvai and Kazhugu appear clearly for use to describe only carrion feeders, while Aazhaal, Paaru, Parunthu refer to eagles, hawks, kites, falcon etc. We see this as part of ‘Palaai Tinai or ‘Wasteland Literature’ which refers to a geographic view, of dry landscape, associated with desperation, separation of lovers and awaiting of death amongst other poetic classifications. So we can see that even by the Sangam Epochs there was an association with desolation, destruction and despondency with the carrion feeding vultures.
Today, native Indian vulture Gyps Indicus, is perhaps extinct. There is a Himalayan Griffon and an Egyptian Vulture species that are sighted rarely in old vulture haunts. A theory for the extinction of vulture species of India was the use of Diclofenac (NSAID)Injection in cattle. Yet, another is the use of pesticides to kill large animals that Indian farmers now treat as threats to their crops, which includes elephants and neelgai (Antelope). Then there is a much larger problem which is global as a phenomenon, which is our current human considerations about our ecological cleanliness has convoluted, the very disposal of the dead- not just human which is understandable and dictated by personal beliefs, but about how we dispose cattle, pets, and wherever possible even wild animal carcasses. After all, in what is the world that feeds on the ‘dead’ from fungi to ants to hyenas, vultures are kind of the Kings of this feeders of the dead – scientifically called as NECROBIOME!
One can easily go to Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Section 1.2 discusses this) to find one of earliest surviving literary references to the crucial role of Death as a feeder. What may cause consternation to the casual reader is the word ‘Aditi’- today a popular name for a woman, is rooted in this consumptive nature of death. Here in cosmology, the reference is to how Death first created the living, from plants to animals of various types and then humans, their gods and ancestors. After this exertion, Death was naturally exhausted and to replenish its self, it started feeding on its creation, consuming what it slew. Thus going on to recover and replenish itself and renewing the cycle of creation going forward. Some how, this understanding of the role the dead play in our continuous process of renewal and replenishment was lost in translation.
In Europe from September 2022 will start a new process whereby mammals such as roe deer would be left dead in chosen places in local parks and researchers will get opportunities to document exactly how nature scavenges the dead in the wilderness to help scientists and ecologists understand better how these natural processes happen and how endangered species amongst these scavenging species can be yet revived. It is actually some thing to do with religious dogma of medieval and later ages that despite the science, modern studies on the dead have been very limited. Further, even less is known about how nutrients are recycled in nature through the way carcasses are disposed off in Nature. Humans amongst us get agitated even now largely by smells of decaying carcasses, or by the sight of carrion being fed upon by insects, birds and animals, which they feel violates their sensitivity and the rights of the dead animals for ‘dignity after death’!
If from 2022 onward Europe will allow partially the restoration of necrobiomes, in the larger context, when is the movement going to be in urban spaces? When are we going to stop preventing animal carcasses of pets, cattle, from being recycled by natural processes as they once used to be? Even shallow burials are not scientific, deep earth certainly not, cremations are complete waste of natural composites, besides a clear addition to carbon footprint. So humans need to navigate through much of their modern sensibility and afford a clear path for the ‘Feeders of the Dead’ a path to continue to flourish and replenish the natural biosphere through necrobiomes.
There is a need to even look at how the efficiency of mass meat factories may actually be detrimental to our necrobiomes. The Law of Unintended Consequences is always in operation. So while humans continue to graze cattle, feed and raise them, bulk them, harvest them in a manner of speaking, their sense of sanitisation as well as the need to find utility for every portion of the animal harvested means that effectively we are not catering to the natural need to give back to Nature as a byproduct of our efficiency!
When we look at the screen and listen to Old Turkey Buzzard from the blockbuster of all time McKenna’s Gold, we see vividly the majesty of flight, unflipped, just gliding in ever narrowing circles, swooping down poetically which is the mark of all vultures. This was what Thirukazhukundram witnessed for centuries, before some thing man made, disruptive of nature, intervened, which put paid to a rite of piety that was born from human imagination and an innate connect with nature!
Necrobiomes are what governments and societies need to focus acutely on. In these trying times of the pandemic of 2020- Covid19, with its multiple waves that have accounted for now more than 5 million lives, death must appear more voracious and more distasteful to human consciousness. All the more reason for the enlightened and educated to engage with our aversion to discussing the ends that death offers to the animal world. Particularly to large mammalian ungulates and canines that humans have domesticated or those whom we have allowed to remain wild under our watchful eyes, which now consume a large part of the active biomass that is our Planet Blue. Will this issue rise above the abhorrent stench and nauseous imagery that humans associate readily with death and its aftermath in nature?
indiarubberman.com 