Ardor (19 page)

*   *   *

The story of the relationship between the Seven Seers and their consorts, the Pleiades, dates back to the earliest times, and is never properly explained. The Saptar
ṣ
is, in their celestial residences, signaled the north with the Pole Star. If they had once also been called “bears,”
ṛ
k
ṣ
a
, there was presumably something in their appearance that resembled those animals, in the same way that we see the Seven Apkallus of Sumer, the “Holy Carps,” covered in fish scales. The Saptar
ṣ
is were three pairs of twins, plus a “seventh single-born.” They were loved and respected by their consorts but separated from them by a vast expanse of sky, since the Pleiades lie to the east. So Agni, their first lover, crept in. He was the first to seduce the lonely women neglected by their husbands. With his flames he began licking the toes of the wives of the
ṛṣ
is
, while they were gathered around the fire. In the end he became the lover of each of them. Only the stern Arundhat
ī
refused him. Thus one day, when the Pleiades went down to the waters of a reed bed to meet the runaway Agni, it was an old lover in difficulty they found.

When it came to deciding on setting up the fires, the ritualists pondered: should the protection of the Pleiades be refused, since they were adulterers, or sought for the same reason, since they betrayed the
ṛṣ
is
with Agni? The alternative was this: either to place the fires under the Pleiades, seeking in some way to attract their complicit gaze, or keep away from them, as they were an example of adultery—or at least, of the couple’s distance (and at this point the worried ritualist noted “it is a misfortune not to have intercourse [with one’s wife]”). The dilemma raised once again a delicate, recurring question. The
ṛṣ
is
are sages with immense power, formidable anger, often contemptuous and stern even toward the gods. But they are unable to ensure the fidelity of their wives. The Pleiades, who were ravishing and also severe, couldn’t resist the enticements of a god. This was what happened with Agni, their long-term lover. But the most scandalous event was
Ś
iva’s visit to the Cedar Forest, when they followed him dancing, in rapture. The story itself took place against a background of cruel revenge. The
ṛṣ
is
were above all the husbands chosen by Dak
ṣ
a for his daughters. And
Ś
iva was he who had taken Sat
ī
, Dak
ṣ
a’s favorite daughter, against his will. This was the beginning of the conflict that ended with the burning of Sat
ī
’s body. And
Ś
iva, through the
ṛṣ
is
, now mocked those in the world who would continue to represent Dak
ṣ
a’s authority, his priestly power.

Tracing these stories back to their origins within the divine, they were a new expression, in erotic terms, of the conflict between Brahm
ā
and
Ś
iva, as a result of which
Ś
iva had cut off Brahm
ā
’s fifth head and had then spent a long time wandering about dressed as a beggar, with the god’s skull fastened to his hand as a bowl. But what had caused the conflict between Brahm
ā
and
Ś
iva? That is highly unclear, little can be gleaned about it. While Brahm
ā
is the source of order and priestly authority,
Ś
iva is the perpetual certainty that this order will eventually break down, that it will not withstand the impact of a force that exists beyond ritual. Order thus falls apart over the course of history. And this is why the Saptar
ṣ
is’s wives were powerless to resist Agni’s persistent, passionate courtship.

*   *   *

The Vedic seers regarded the passage of the mind from one thought to the next, and its ever deeper immersion into the same thought, as the model for every journey. To speak about oceans, mountains, and skies they had no need for daring explorations. They could remain motionless beside their belongings, during a pause in their migrations. The result would be the same. Traveling, they thought, was an essentially invisible activity. And, if anything, it takes its form in a series of liturgical actions. So in the kindling rituals they were above all concerned with kindling the mind, the only steed capable of carrying them to the gods. And they murmured: “Yes, that which carries to the gods is the mind.”

*   *   *

The activity that the whole of creation depends on takes place in mind alone. But it is of a kind that immediately demonstrates the effectiveness of the mind over what lies outside it. And, for the mind, the effects of what lies outside it are within the body itself. An invisible combustion is thus produced, a gradual heat, up to the ardor achieved through the operation of the mind. It is
tapas
, well known to Siberian shamans, ignored or banished in Western thought. Ubiquitous and supreme, rarely are its powers defined, because they are too obvious. But the ritualist sometimes consents to explain them: “In truth, with
tapas
they conquer the world.” What affects the world, what assails it is
tapas
, the inner ardor of the mind. Without it, all gestures, all words are useless.
Tapas
is the flame that passes covertly or overtly through everything. Sacrifice is the occasion for which those two conditions of ardor—visible in fire, invisible in the officiant—meet and combine.

This is the greatest approximation allowed, if we want to describe the most elusive yet inevitable of facts: the feeling of being alive. Reduced to its proprioceptive as well as its thermodynamic essence, it is a sensation of something alight, something that burns on a slow and continual flame. All other characteristics are added and superimposed on this, which is their assumption and support. The word
extinction
,
nirv
āṇ
a
, taught by the Buddha, had to appear as the negation par excellence of what was presented as life itself. Sacrifice, as an act of burning something, therefore had to appear as the most exact visible equivalent of the state which is the basis of life itself.

*   *   *

The
ṛṣ
is
had the task of keeping and controlling world order. But they also had another function, which threatened to disrupt world order at any moment. Stories were based around the
ṛṣ
is.
In the interminable tangle of dealings between men and gods, at every turn there was a
ṛṣ
i
’s curse, or his “boon,”
vara.
Great epic stories such as the
Mah
ā
bh
ā
rata
or the
R
ā
m
ā
ya
ṇ
a
, which resemble immense luxuriant trees, would one day be presented as the work of a
ṛṣ
i
, Vy
ā
sa or V
ā
lm
ī
ki. But, much earlier, the framework of the stories they retold had been based on the acts of other
ṛṣ
is
, among whom there may have been the person who would one day become author of the poem that told these stories. This is what happened with Vy
ā
sa and the
Mah
ā
bh
ā
rata—
as if Homer had been one of the Greek heroes who fought under the walls of Troy.

*   *   *

There are no archaeological remains of Vedic kingdoms, but the
Ṛ
gveda
describes various conflicts and battles. They culminated in the “Battle of the Ten Kings,” where the Bharatas, under their chieftain Sud
ā
s and armed with axes, managed to defeat a coalition of ten warlords—
Ā
ryas and non-
Ā
ryas—who were surrounding them. So the Bharatas won, and it is the name by which India is still known today. Or this, at least, is what we may infer, since the hymns never recount a sequence of events, but allude to them, addressing gods and men who already knew what had happened. What were the salient features of the war? In describing the enemies of the Bharatas, the text declares only that they were “without sacrifices (
áyajyava
ḥ
).” That was quite enough. It was taken for granted that every war is a war of religion. As for the Bharatas themselves, they were supported by both Indra and Varu
ṇ
a, not always friendly divinities. How had this miracle been possible? Thanks to the work of a seer, the
ṛṣ
i
Vasi
ṣṭ
ha, who had arranged that alliance and had taken over as chaplain to the Bharatas, ousting another seer, Vi
ś
v
ā
mitra, who had immediately crossed over to the enemy line. After that, they had been in perpetual conflict. They argued sitting on opposite banks of the Sarasvat
ī
—and their voices traveled across the roaring flow of the waters. Even when Vasi
ṣṭ
ha transformed Vi
ś
v
ā
mitra into a heron—and Vi
ś
v
ā
mitra in turn transformed Vasi
ṣṭ
ha into a crane—they continued fighting in the air, pecking furiously with their beaks. They detested each other for deep religious reasons, “totally committed to attachment or aversion, always full of desire and hatred.”

Vi
ś
v
ā
mitra had once threatened to destroy the three worlds, but Vasi
ṣṭ
ha relied on his secret: he was the only
ṛṣ
i
to have seen Indra “face to face.” And when the hymns mention the battles, they do not pause to describe the kings, the warriors, and their exploits, but rather the gods and
ṛṣ
is
, as if the decisive conflicts could take place only between them. If Sud
ā
s turned out to be a great ruler in the end, it was not so much because he had defeated the Ten Kings, but because Vasi
ṣṭ
ha had once taught him how to perform a particular type of
soma
sacrifice. Sud
ā
s was grateful. He gave Vasi
ṣṭ
ha two hundred cows and two chariots, as well as women, jewels, and four horses.

VI

THE ADVENTURES OF MIND AND SPEECH

Manas
, “mind” (later
mens
in Latin), “thought.” But above all the pure fact of being conscious, awake. For the Vedic people, everything came from consciousness, in the sense of pure awareness devoid of any other attribute. They invoked it delicately, as “the divine one that comes forward from afar when we awake and falls back when we slumber.” Likewise “she through whom the seers, able creators, operate in the sacrifice and in the rites.” They said it was an “unprecedented wonder, dwelling in living beings.” They recognized in it “what envelops all that was, is and shall be.” They called it “stable in the heart and yet moveable, infinitely fast.” The unattainable speed of the mind: here it was named, evoked, adored perhaps for the first time. Finally the much-repeated wish: “May that which it [the mind] conceives be propitious for me.” The mind is an external power, equal to the gods and superior to the gods, which conceives in solitude and can, through its grace, reverberate in the mind of every living being. And the first, the highest wish, is that this might take place “propitiously.”
Manas
would then act like “a good charioteer,” it would become the one “who powerfully guides his men like steeds, by the reins.”

Absolutism of the mind, a prerequisite of Vedic thought, certainly doesn’t mean omnipotence of the mind, as if supremely magical powers were attributed to it. If that were the case, the result would have in the end been a crude construction, equivalent—in reverse—to one where such sovereign powers were attributed to an entity called “matter.”