Ardor (13 page)

To gather the difference between Praj
ā
pati and the gods, it is enough to murmur a ritual formula. The low voice is indistinct—and that indistinctness already brings us in contact with the nature of Praj
ā
pati, which is precisely this: indistinct. By playing with meter, with names, with formulas, with murmurs, with silence, the sacrificer manages to move about among the various forms of the divine. But, even in the case of the most elementary gesture, he will have to reach that vast, mysterious level, that indistinctness where he encounters only Praj
ā
pati—and himself.

*   *   *

Unlike Elohim, Praj
ā
pati does not have a hand in creation as a working craftsman, but is the process of creation itself: in it he is made and he is unmade. The further Praj
ā
pati goes in creation, the more he is dismembered and exhausted. His view of what he does is never from the outside. He cannot look upon his work and say: “It is good.” As soon as he looks outward, he evokes another being, V
ā
c, the “second,” a column of water, which was a female, pouring between sky and earth. And immediately the two copulate. Praj
ā
pati was so little external to his creation that, according to some texts, it was he himself who became impregnated: “With his mind he united with V
ā
c, Speech: he became pregnant with eight drops.” They became eight deities, the Vasus. Then he set them upon the earth. Copulation continued. Praj
ā
pati was once again impregnated, by eleven drops. They became other deities, the Rudras. He then set them in the atmosphere. There was also a third copulation. And Praj
ā
pati was impregnated by twelve drops. This time they were the
Ā
dityas, the great gods of light: “He placed them in the sky.” Eight, eleven, twelve: thirty-one. Praj
ā
pati was impregnated by another drop: the Vi
ś
vedev
āḥ
, All-the-gods. They had reached thirty-two. Only one was missing to complete the pantheon: V
ā
c herself, the thirty-third.

Praj
ā
pati now began to uncouple himself from her. He was exhausted, he could feel his joints disconnecting. The vital breaths, the Saptar
ṣ
is, left him. And with them went the thirty-three deities, trooping off together. Praj
ā
pati was alone once again, as at the beginning, when everything around him was void. He was no longer the only one, but the thirty-fourth, whom they would soon forget to include among the list of gods. And one day, far in the future, certain scholars would say that he was a late and bloodless abstraction, no more than a lucubration of the ritualists.

*   *   *

“In truth, here at the beginning was
asat.
To this they say: ‘What was this
asat
?’ The
ṛṣ
is
: they were, at the beginning, the
asat.
And to this they say: ‘Who were these
ṛṣ
is
?’ Now, the
ṛṣ
is
are the vital breaths. For before all this they, desiring this, wore themselves out (
ri
ṣ
-
)
in toil and ardor, so they are called
ṛṣ
is.
”

If
asat
is an inhabited place, it must certainly also
exist
, but in special ways. At the beginning it contains only vital breaths, which Indra manages to kindle (
indh-
).
The name
ṛṣ
i
is derived from that ardor which is
tapas
; the name Indra comes from the kindling of the vital breaths.
Asat
is therefore a place where at the beginning energy is burning. And so from the vital breaths were born “seven persons (
puru
ṣ
as
).” The first beings with bodily features were therefore the
ṛṣ
is
: the Saptar
ṣ
is, the original Seven
Ṛṣ
is. But the Saptar
ṣ
is were immediately aware of their limited power. Generated by the vital breaths, they themselves could not procreate. Their first desire was therefore to act in concert, transforming themselves into a single person. This had to be their task: to compress themselves, condense themselves into one single body, occupying its various parts: “Two above the navel and two below the navel; one on the right side, one on the left side, one at the base.” There was now a body, but it had no head. Still they worked away. From each of them was extracted essence, sap, taste,
rasa.
And they concentrated it all into the same place, as if into a jar: that was the head. The person made up from the Seven Seers was now complete. And “that same person became Praj
ā
pati.” This was how the Progenitor was created, he who generated everything, including the vital breaths, Indra, and the Saptar
ṣ
is who had laboriously created him.

Leaving aside the complications of mutual procreation, by which the Saptar
ṣ
is give form to Praj
ā
pati, who in turn would generate them (a regular process in Vedic thought) and leaving aside any consideration of the sequence of time, it seems clear that
asat
is a place for something that seeks to manifest itself, that burns to manifest itself, but which is prevented from doing so. At the same time, all that forms part of “that which is,”
sat
, and above all Praj
ā
pati, will owe its origin to
asat
, which goes back to that obscure period in which the Seven Seers wore themselves out developing an ardor, dedicating themselves to the first of all acts of asceticism, if the word is used once again to mean “exercise,”
ásk
ē
sis.
As for
asat
, more than
nonbeing
(in the sense of the
m
ḕ
ón
in Parmenides), it appears to be closer to something one might call the “unmanifest.”

*   *   *

Praj
ā
pati is not only “he who finds that which is lost,” but he himself is also the first to be lost. His supernumerary essence is such that at any moment Praj
ā
pati risks being
too much.
Creatures appear thanks to the superabundance that exists in Praj
ā
pati, but—once their worlds are established—they soon tend to look only after themselves, forgetting their origin. Indeed, they no longer recognize him. It seems they have made Praj
ā
pati suffer even this harsh humiliation. When Praj
ā
pati had finished emanating beings, “he became emaciated. They didn’t recognize him then, since he was emaciated. He anointed his eyes and his limbs.” The last act of the now abandoned Progenitor. Praj
ā
pati went back to being alone, as at the beginning, but now because he was unrecognizable. As he was anointing his eyes and limbs, gaunt and defenseless, Praj
ā
pati was inventing makeup. He was doing these things because he wanted to be recognized again. Men and women would one day try to do the same: “When their eyes and limbs are anointed, they become beautiful: and others notice them.” This is the first
éloge du maquillage
, whose pathos and frivolity Baudelaire would appreciate.

*   *   *

What is the horse? It is one of Praj
ā
pati’s eyes that had swollen up and then fallen out. The
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
doesn’t hesitate for a moment over this statement (nothing is strange for the Vedic ritualist), indeed it moves on immediately to describe the enormous implications: “Praj
ā
pati’s eye became swollen; it fell out: from it was produced the horse; and inasmuch as it swelled up (
a
ś
vayat
), that is the origin of the horse (
a
ś
va
). Through the sacrifice of the horse the gods restored it [the eye] to its place; and verily he who performs the horse sacrifice makes Praj
ā
pati complete, and becomes complete himself: and this indeed is atonement for everything, the remedy for everything. With it the gods overcame all evil, they even overcame the killing of a brahmin with it; and he who performs the horse sacrifice overcomes all evil, overcomes the killing of a brahmin.”

The eye swells up because it
wants
to fall out. And it wants to fall out because it wants to meet another eye—and reflect itself in it. There is no sense producing the world unless there is first of all an eye that looks at it and, in so doing, absorbs Praj
ā
pati in itself, in the same way that Praj
ā
pati absorbs the world in his gaze. At this point Praj
ā
pati and his eye-become-horse are equal and opposite powers, that contain in them (in their own pupil) the image of the other. Paradoxically, however, the horse-born-from-the-eye is whole, complete, but that is not so for Praj
ā
pati, the Progenitor. The wounded orbit of the eye that has fallen out remains open. Praj
ā
pati now wanted to create an eye that would watch him, but he wanted it
within himself.
It was the first time that any being wanted to make himself a duality of Self and I. For this to happen, the horse-eye had to be reinstated to its original place. The gods would take care of that with the horse sacrifice. The reinstatement of a fragment (the eye) had to be done through the killing of a whole being (the horse).

There is an immense variety of Vedic rites, but all—without a single exception—converge in one action: offering something in the fire. Whether it is milk or sap from a plant or an animal (according to certain texts, also from a human being), the final action is the same. For the Vedic ritualists, killing has not just to do with blood. For them—and they have persistently repeated it, time and again—
every
offering is a killing. Even the most basic of rites, the
agnihotra
, the libation of milk in the fire, renews the gesture of Praj
ā
pati, who originally, when nature did not yet exist, offered his own eye to satisfy the hunger of his son Agni: “Praj
ā
pati found nothing that he could sacrifice [to Agni]. He took his own eye and offered it in oblation saying: ‘Agni is the light, the light is Agni,
sv
ā
h
ā
.’” The eye is the most painful
pars pro toto
to be chosen by a suicidal god: Praj
ā
pati. The procedures take on a whole variety of forms, the unshakable unity is to be found only in the act of offering in fire.

*   *   *

Praj
ā
pati not only had the privilege of being abandoned by his children, the beings whom he had just “emanated (
as
ṛ
jata
).” But he also managed to have himself canceled from history for centuries. When his name resurfaced in the pages of late nineteenth-century Western Indologists, their tone was often disparaging. And what appeared most irksome of all were the stories of Praj
ā
pati’s
self-emptying
after the creation (it is strange that none of these scholars—often devoted Christians—recalled Paul’s description of Christ’s
kén
ō
sis
: and yet the same word was used). Deussen found these stories “bizarre.” But A. B. Keith went further: he spoke of “stupid myths” with gruff impatience (“the details of these stupid myths are wholly irrelevant”). The idea of a creator who, worn out after his work, turns himself into a horse and hides his face underground for a year, while from his head sprouts a tree,
a
ś
vattha
(
Ficus religiosa
), which in turn arouses speculation about the relationship between the horse,
a
ś
va
, and the tree … well, all of this must have seemed too much for certain austere Western scholars. Where, then, would we draw the line between the great civilizations (such as India) and those
primitive
peoples for whom, by definition, anything is permissible?

*   *   *

Creation, for Praj
ā
pati, was not a single act, but a succession of acts. Continually obstructed, often unsuccessful. His exhausting series of creative actions is like the human attempt to put together a series of
right
gestures: the ritual. In ancient Rome, a ceremony could be repeated as many as thirty times if the gestures and words were not entirely
right.
For Praj
ā
pati, the greatest obstacle was that of creating beings of a sexual nature. His first creatures could only take care of themselves. They appeared perfect, but soon disappeared (like President Schreber’s “fleeting-improvised-men”). But what was missing? Nipples. Those orifices from which food could be transmitted to other creatures—thus establishing the chain of living creatures. We know very little about the very first attempts, but from various indications they would appear to have been short-lived, as if there was a lack of substance. So the moment arrived when Praj
ā
pati said to himself: “‘I want to create a firm foundation on which the creatures I will emanate shall establish themselves solidly rather than continuing to wander foolishly from place to place without any firm foundation.’ He produced this earthly world, the intermediate world, and the world yonder.” It wasn’t just a matter of obtaining creatures who could last, but of providing them with firm land on which to rest. The earth, the intermediate space, the celestial world were to be that setting, that background.