Ardor (39 page)

*   *   *

In the
puru
ṣ
amedha
the victims are chosen from all social classes, with no exceptions: there will be a brahmin, a warrior, a peasant—and lastly a
śū
dra.

The brahmin immediately recites the hymn to Puru
ṣ
a (
Ṛ
gveda
, 10.90) while seated to the right of the victims tied to the sacrificial post. More than any other, this detail may explain why the name Puru
ṣ
a—and not Praj
ā
pati—appears in the hymn: for
puru
ṣ
a
is the word that describes man as sacrificial victim, tied to the post in exactly the same way as Puru
ṣ
a was in primordial times. With delicate cruelty, this is what the hymn describes. Afterward, we read, the officiants “passed with burning embers around the victims, but they had not yet been immolated.”

This is when the miracle happens, corresponding to the voice of Yahweh’s angel who stops the hand of Abraham already raised over Isaac: “Then a voice said to him: ‘Puru
ṣ
a, do not put an end to these human victims (
puru
ṣ
apa
śū
n
): if you put an end to them, man would eat man.’ And so, as soon as the ember had been carried around them, he set them free and offered oblations to the same divinities [to whom he had already dedicated the human victims] and thereby gratified those divinities, who, thus gratified, gratified him with all objects of desire.”

No Kierkegaard, no Kafka has ever commented on this passage. But it would be no less difficult than the story of Abraham and Isaac. This time it is not one man, not the son of the sacrificer, but four men, chosen from the various classes of society and waiting to be killed. They have been tied to a post, alongside many animals tied to other posts and also waiting to be immolated. They have seen an officiant approach and walk around the post holding an ember. It is the most frightening moment: the announcement of the immolation. From that moment on, the victims can consider themselves already dead: strangled or suffocated. And then—“a voice” arrives. But how does it address the sacrificer? It calls him “Puru
ṣ
a” and asks him to save the
puru
ṣ
as
, the men who are about to be immolated. And Puru
ṣ
a, the primordial being whom the gods dismembered, had just been recalled in the recital of hymn 10.90. So the sacrificer, while he was preparing to immolate the four men, was Puru
ṣ
a himself whom the gods had immolated. This is why the voice turns to him calling him Puru
ṣ
a—and not by his own name.

But the ritualist offers no comment on this point. Unperturbed, he carries on describing the ritual acts that follow. It could be a ritual just like any other. Or does he perhaps not recognize the seriousness of what he has just described? It is always wrong to imagine such a thing when dealing with the authors of the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as.

This is confirmed by the description of what happens at the end of the ceremony: “After having assumed the two fires within himself and after having celebrated the sun reciting the Uttara N
ā
r
ā
ya
ṇ
a litany, he [the sacrificer] shall go toward the forest without looking back; and that place is indeed far away from men.” If this description is—as it seems to be—the beginning of the transition to the state of
v
ā
naprastha
, of he who withdraws into the forest, the step prior to the state of renouncer, this means that the first renunciation is in not sacrificing another person. Having carried this out, he can—indeed in a certain way he must—leave society, “without looking back.” If he is unable to do so, the ritualist immediately gives practical advice for anyone who wants to continue living in the village. But even for him there has been a break. Immediately after, with the usual abruptness, it is explained that the moment signals a watershed: “But in fact this sacrifice must not be imparted to everyone, for fear that it ends up being imparted to all and everyone, for the
puru
ṣ
amedha
is everything; but it must be imparted only to those who are known and to those who know the sacred texts and to whom they are dear, but not to everyone.”

*   *   *

The figure of the renouncer indicates the path by which a highly detailed ceremonial practice could become invisible, transforming itself into an act of knowledge. The
sa
ṃ
ny
ā
sin
, thus, no longer kept fires, and withdrew from the community into the forest. Yet remaining a sacrificer, indeed enhancing this aspect of his character.

Several thousand years later, with whom would we now associate this figure? With all those who are driven by a powerful urge—they often prefer not to call it duty, but it is certainly something they feel obliged to do for someone, someone they may never know—and they concentrate their energies on some form of composition, which in turn is offered to someone unknown. They are the artists, those who study. They all find the origin and purpose of what they do in the practice of their art, in their studies. They are Flaubert, who roars in the solitude of his room at Croisset. Without asking for what reason and for what purpose. But absorbed in working out ardor,
tapas
, in a form
.

“Mobile are the waters, mobile the sun, mobile the moon and mobile the stars; and, as if these divinities did not move and act, so will be the brahmin on that day when he does not study.” Study is that which assures movement, which makes it possible to respond to the ceaseless activities of the divinities in the sky and on the earth. It is the closest approximation in defining that which is living, that which overcomes inertia. Study can also be reduced to reciting its smallest unit—one verse of the
Ṛ
gveda
or one ritual formula. That is enough for the thread of the vow not to be broken, to ensure “the continuity of the vow,
vrata
.”

*   *   *

There is a subtle distinction between
renunciation
and
detachment.
To accept the life of the renouncer means following an
āś
rama
, a stage of life like the three that have preceded it. And each stage brings its own guilt and restrictions. “Detachment,”
ty
ā
ga
, is something else—a mental attitude that can pertain to any stage of life. Simone Weil is extremely clear on this point: “Detachment and renouncement: often synonyms in Sanskrit, but not in the
G
ī
t
ā
: here ‘renouncement’ (
sa
ṃ
ny
ā
sa
) is the lower form that consists of becoming a hermit, sitting beneath a tree and moving no further. ‘Detachment’ (
ty
ā
ga
) is making use of this world as if not using it.”

XV

RITOLOGY

Nothing actually left it and nothing entered from anywhere—there was indeed nothing else—and it [this all,
tónde tòn ólon
] nurtured itself procuring its own destruction, whereas all that it suffered and did in itself and by itself happened by art [
ek téchn
ē
s
]. He who had created it felt indeed that it would have been better if it had been self-sufficient and not needy of anything else.

—Plato,
Timaeus
, 33 c–d

Even today, in some Indian airport lounges, we can find a billboard with the following words: “Lead me from nonbeing to being. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality.” Tourists either ignore it or read it with satisfaction, as a sign of age-old Indian spirituality. What are these words? They were part of a series of ritual formulas recited during the
soma
sacrifice, called
pavam
ā
nas.
While a priest intoned a chant, the sacrificer pronounced those words in a low voice, as we can read them in the
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yaka Upani
ṣ
ad.

For the Upani
ṣ
ad the meaning of those words is clear:
asat
(unmanifest),
tamas
(darkness),
m
ṛ
tyu
(death) all mean “death” in the same way. It is assumed that every life in its raw state is an amalgam of nonbeing, darkness, and death. To leave it, we need help. And to get help, we need ritual.

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Giving stability to the earth was the decisive action, whether it was the gods who achieved it, during their battle for supremacy over the Asuras, or whether it was Praj
ā
pati himself, as the
Taittir
ī
ya Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
says. What appears to us today as “the vast one (
p
ṛ
thiv
ī
),” motionless and calm, was in the beginning a lotus leaf battered by the wind. That beginning is the state in which every person finds himself before the sacrifice begins. He is a confused being, wavering, at the mercy of unpredictable gusts of wind. He can find nothing to rest on. And so he has to imitate the action of the Devas: he will take some pebbles and place them around the edges of the area where he wishes to build fires. First of all to mark out, circumscribe (it is the same as the Greek concept of
témenos
). And so the earth will become a “foundation,”
prati
ṣṭ
h
ā
, for any action whatever, for any thought whatever.

In dealing with the gods, there is an etiquette that justifies certain activities, without which nothing would happen. One of these is fence making. If it is true that “the whole earth is divine” and that sacrifices can be performed on any part of it, it is also true that the part chosen can only become a place of sacrifice after it has been closed off from the rest. The same happens when a hut is built to shelter the sacrificer during the time of consecration. “Now the gods are segregated from men and that which is enclosed on every side is also secret: this is why they enclose it on every side.” What is the underlying assumption? “The gods do not speak with everyone,” and so a way has to be devised to approach them: men must segregate themselves in the same way as the gods are segregated from men. Then perhaps the gods will pay attention. This is what the consecrator must do, so that he “truly draws close to the gods and becomes one of the divinities.” An initial separation from other men is achieved through the preliminary actions of the rite. And it is only possible through this separation to establish a rapport with the gods. Secrecy, the need for secrecy, arose from the original segregation of the gods from men. The one who intends to break this secrecy (the sacrificer) must agree to segregate himself from everyone else. Secrecy is not a way of concealing something that would otherwise be obvious to all. Secrecy indicates that one is entering an area where everything, including meaning, is enclosed. The secret is the place cut off by the enclosure, as a picture by its frame.