Ardor (30 page)

*   *   *

The premise for every sacrificial act is metaphysical: entering the rite means entering the truth, leaving the rite means returning to untruth. A categorical statement, which ought to be placed beside the enunciation of the Way of Truth in Parmenides’ poem. The ritualist’s style is spare, abrupt, abrasive. There is no gradual progression and there are no moments of relief. The words are all the more penetrating: “Twofold is this, there is no third: truth and untruth. And the gods are truth, men are untruth. And so, by saying: ‘I now enter from untruth into truth,’ he [the sacrificer] passes from men to the gods. He shall speak only what is true. For the gods keep this vow: to speak the truth. And for this they are splendid. Splendid then is he who, knowing this, speaks the truth.”

There are two extremities of existence, two poles between which tension flows: truth and untruth. Like being and nonbeing in Parmenides.
Tertium non datur.
And the space in which this occurs has the sky and the earth as its extremities—or the
ā
havan
ī
ya
fire and the
g
ā
rhapatya
fire. But we immediately notice a peculiarity: “truth” and “untruth,” in the text, are
satya
and
an
ṛ
ta.
As if
an
ṛ
ta
was the negation of
another
truth, indicated by the word
ṛ
ta.
This takes us back to another open question: Heinrich Lüders, in his monumental, unfinished
Varu
ṇ
a
, devoted page after page to showing that
ṛ
ta
, often translated as “order,” primarily meant “truth.” And his theory would seem to be borne out by the above passage, where
satya
and
ṛ
ta
appear as equivalents. But synonyms do not exist.
Satya
is truth in relation to “that which is,”
sat.
Ṛ
ta
contains within it a reference to order, to the
correct articulation
which is in the root
ar-
(from which the Latin
ars
,
artus—
and also
ritus
). In
ṛ
ta
the
truth
is still visibly linked to an arrangement of forms, to a certain way in which they are connected.

It is the liturgy of the
agnihotra—
the morning and evening libations, the germ cell of all sacrifices—that sheds light on the relationship between
satya
and
ṛ
ta.
In a passage in the
Maitr
ā
ya
ṇī
Sa
ṃ
hit
ā
we read: “The
agnihotra
is
ṛ
ta
and
satya.
” Bodewitz translates this as “order and truth” and notes: “This of one of the passages which show that
ṛ
ta
, ‘order,’ here occurring together with
satya
, ‘truth,’ does not mean ‘truth,’ as Lüders assumes in
Varu
ṇ
a
II.” And so a vast body of investigation would seem to come to nothing in just a few short words. But does it really come to nothing? Or are both scholars perhaps right
in a certain way
—and is our conception of the word
truth
too limited? Let us now consider another passage in the liturgy of the
agnihotra
: before moving on to the oblation, the
adhvaryu
touches the water and says: “You are the thunderbolt; take my evil from me. From sacred order (
ṛ
ta
) I enter the truth (
satya
).” That is how P. E. Dumont translates it. But according to Willem Caland: “From the just I pass to the true.”
Ṛ
ta
and
satya
, the Vedic ritualists would say, are a couple (like, as we will see elsewhere,
satya
and
ś
raddh
ā
, “trust in the efficacy of ritual”) and their relationship is dynamic: from
almost
a superimposition we pass to a contraposition. Truth, in
ṛ
ta
, is interlinked with order, above all with the order of the world watched over by Varu
ṇ
a. And in this sense the word, having fallen into disuse after the Vedic era, would be replaced by
dharma
, where the meaning of “order” is clothed by that of “law” (we are at the origin of
law and order
)
.
In
satya
, on the other hand, truth is a simple statement of
that which is
, devoid of any other reference. And so from
order
(
ṛ
ta
) we can arrive at
truth
(
satya
), as from one degree of the same truth to another, now entirely free of any cosmic reference.

*   *   *

The translation of
ṛ
ta
will nevertheless remain a worry for Indologists, as Witzel has stressed: “There simply is no English, French, German, Italian, or Russian word that covers the range of meanings of this word.” And yet a good approximation does exist, at least in Witzel’s mother tongue—and it is
Weltordnung
, “world order.” But, for confirmation, we need the help of Kafka. Anyone wanting an introduction to the meanings of
ṛ
ta
might begin their personal initiation by reading the chapter in
The Castle
where there is a nocturnal dialogue between the counselor Bürgel and K.—a dialogue culminating in two sentences that could be attributed to one of the Seven Seers: “That is how the world itself corrects the deviations in its course and maintains the balance. This is indeed an excellent, time and again unimaginably excellent arrangement, even if in other respects dismal and cheerless.” Wilhelm Rau observed that Renou himself wavered between two solutions when translating
ṛ
ta
: “the cosmic Order” and “the regular ‘course’ of things
=
ordo rerum.
”

*   *   *

Questions of etiquette immediately arise: what should the sacrificer do as soon as he has taken his vow? What is the correct way to behave, so as not to defeat his purpose? First he must fast. Then, the night before the start of his planned rite, he should sleep on the ground, in the house of the
g
ā
rhapatya
fire. These are the first two rules of sacrificial etiquette.

But why is this? The vow is a way of welcoming the gods as guests—and is immediately perceived as such, for the gods see every movement in the mind of man. And so the first aim of the vow is to make space, to keep the area around the fire clear, since it is there that these new guests, the gods, sit waiting for their food. This is enough to link fasting with a rule of good manners: never eat before your guests. Then, when it is time to sleep, the sacrificer stretches out on the ground beside the fire. This is the first scene of the new life after taking the vow: a fire lit, protected by its house; invisible presences—the gods—who gradually gather around; a man sleeping on the ground: it is the sacrificer, who in this way starts to befriend the gods. He breathes together with them, he warms himself together with them. But he has to sleep on the ground, again as if by a rule of etiquette, reaffirming the immeasurable distance between the new guests and the man stretched out beside the new fire: “For it is from below, so to speak, that one serves a superior.”

Once the “vow” (
vrata
) has been introduced, once the
ā
havan
ī
ya
and
g
ā
rhapatya
fires have been introduced, once truth and untruth have been introduced, what is the next step? The act of
yoking
something to something else. The sacrificer “yokes” the water to the fire. And he announces it with an “indistinct” (
anirukta
) voice. Here, the yoking resembles what occurs in
yoga
(“yoke,” “junction”). It is a gesture of the mind taking hold of itself. This assumes that the mind is always a double entity, where two parts act upon and yield to each other. This is the exercise (the
ásk
ē
sis
, “ascesis”) behind all else. When, in the
Bhagavad G
ī
t
ā
, K
ṛṣṇ
a urges that it is good for the mind to be “yoked,”
yukta
, this is what is meant. The immobility of the lone renouncer is only a final outcome of this discipline. Its first manifestation is in gesture, in the liturgical act. Indeed, any liturgy takes this yoking for granted. And this continual reference to a precise mental action is perhaps the distinctive, recurring feature in all Indian thought, from the Vedas to the Buddha—and up to the Ved
ā
nta. But how does this act occur, by which the mind (or two elements—water and fire—that represent it) begins to act upon itself? This is the first and last question: “‘Who (
Ka
) yokes you to this fire? He yokes you. For whom does he yoke you? For him he yokes you.’ For Praj
ā
pati is indistinct (
anirukta
). Praj
ā
pati is the sacri
fi
ce: and thus he yokes Praj
ā
pati, the sacri
fi
ce.” Who,
Ka
, performs the act? The answer is given in the question: who acts is “who?,”
Ka
, the secret name of Praj
ā
pati, whose deeds the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as are, in a certain way, recounting. And so elsewhere it can be said that “Praj
ā
pati is he that yokes, that yoked, the mind for that sacred work.” And we also learn that that gesture, in the liturgy, precedes another: “They yoke the mind and they yoke the thoughts.” But before introducing himself with the name of Praj
ā
pati, he steps forward, as if his shadow had appeared before he had, with the name Ka, the most mysterious, the most indefinite, the one that most radically expresses the difference between this being who preceded the gods and the gods themselves. And the name Ka arises in the most fitting way: murmured with an “indistinct” voice,
anirukta.
For all that is
anirukta
belongs to Ka: it is the implicit that can never become explicit, it is the “limitless unexplicit” (according to Malamoud’s formula), the unsaid that can never be said, the indefinite that will always escape definition. The whole liturgy is a tension between the form that is expressed (
nirukta
) and the indistinctness (
anirukta
) from which it arises. The latter is Praj
ā
pati’s part. This is also because Praj
ā
pati is made up of all the other gods, but without it being possible to say—as S
ā
ya
ṇ
a comments in relation to
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, 1.6.1.20—that he is “this or that.” He has to be remembered, he has to be taken into account, in every action, in every thought. Every action, every thought will be a move in the unresolved contest between those two ways of being.

With the first, simple action of moving forward carrying water, the sacrificer could already claim to have completed his task, since “with this first act he conquers all this [the world].” The liturgical setting begins to take shape. Meanwhile it is said that the water (
ā
pas
) is “all-pervasive”—playing on the root
ā
p
-, “to pervade”—and so reaches everything, and hence is used as a remedy to make up for the shortcomings of the officiants, in case they are ever unable to achieve everything. Then it is said that water is “a thunderbolt,” as we can understand by observing that where it flows, it erodes the earth. And water as a thunderbolt has already been used by the gods to defend themselves from the Asuras and the Rak
ṣ
as, the evil demons who continually disturb them while they are celebrating sacrifices. These arguments ought to be enough to explain the use of water. And its dangers, since dealing with water is like handling a thunderbolt. But what then might be the purpose of water in the liturgy? Firstly sexual. Once set down to the north of the
g
ā
rhapatya
fire, its fruitful coitus with the fire begins. The sexual act is the first example of an action that is both yoking and yoked, an action underlying everything else that takes place in the sacrificial work. And so we read a little later: “Let no one pass between the water and the fire, so that in passing he does not disturb the coitus which is taking place.”
Eros
is a certain state of tension that is only established if the distances are correct. The most common relationship, though, between water and fire is not erotic attraction, but rivalry. If the water was placed too far away, beyond the point exactly to the north of the fire, the fire itself would show its aversion. But also to stop too early, before the erotic tension is established, would be an error and a risk. It would in fact mean not reaching “the fulfillment of desire (
k
ā
ma
), for which he had carried forth the water.” The final key word,
desire
,
k
ā
ma
, appears here. And its precariousness can immediately be seen. Placing the water jug in the wrong place would be enough to bring down the whole vast edifice of sacrificial acts.