Ardor (4 page)

*   *   *

When Louis Renou published his first translations of the
Ṛ
gveda
in 1938, he quoted the words of Paul-Louis Couchoud as an epigraph to the Introduction: “Poetry was on the wrong track, [Mallarmé] said with a smile, ‘starting from the great Homeric deviation.’ And if anyone asked him what there was before Homer, he answered: ‘Orphism.’ The Vedic hymns … have something to do with Mallarmé’s Orphism.” Renou didn’t return to this theme in the Introduction, nor did he mention Mallarmé again. But epigraphs are the
locus electionis
of latent thoughts. That was the right place to suggest that the history of poetry did not end with Mallarmé, but had been Mallarméan at birth. “The Orphic explanation of the Earth,” the ultimate definition of poetry according to Mallarmé, does not apply so much to the late Orphic hymns, but above all to the Vedic hymns from which, a few streets away from rue de Rome, Abel Bergaigne was already unraveling the endless tangle of images. In order to feel the Mallarméan resonance it is enough to open the hymns at random, for example at the beginning of 4.58, the hymn to
gh
ṛ
tá
, ghee, the clarified butter used in rituals. This is how Renou translated it in 1938: “From the ocean the wave of honey has surged: with the stalk of the
soma
it has assumed the form of ambrosia. This is the secret name of the ghee: tongue of the gods, navel of the immortal.”

*   *   *

For a Westerner trained in philology, it is hard to think of anything more frustrating than Indian history. Quicksand in every direction. Dates and figures never certain. Here the centuries move back and forth as months do elsewhere. No passage is entirely convincing. What brought about the passage from the
Ṛ
gveda
to the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as? And why from the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as to the Upani
ṣ
ads? And from the Upani
ṣ
ads to the S
ū
tras? Every literary genre is already sketched out in what came before. Or else it stands in contrast with what came before. Alternatively—and this is the most disconcerting case—the two genres coexist. How can we unravel this knot? Or how, at least, can we fathom its densest part? The path that takes us farthest is still the self-referential one. The
Ṛ
gveda
has to be understood through the
Ṛ
gveda
—and nothing else (as in Bergaigne and in Renou). The Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as are understood through the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as—and nothing else (as in Lévi and in Minard). Meanwhile the passage from the
Ṛ
gveda
to the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as is still uncharted, or barely explored terrain. As if understanding Homer made it impossible to understand Plato—and the other way around. Whereas the whole of Greece must inevitably be seen as stretching between Homer and Plato.

Viewed from the standpoint of the Enlightenment, the Veda is as dark as night, dense, with no apparent inclination toward clarity. It is a world that is self-sufficient, highly tensioned, even convulsive, wrapped up in itself, with no curiosity about any other manner of existence. Streaked by all kinds of violent desires, it has no thirst for objects, vassals, pomp. If we are looking for an emblem of something utterly alien to modernity (however it might be defined), something that might look upon it with complete indifference, we find it in the Vedic people.

In the preface to the first edition of
The World as Will and Representation
(1818), Schopenhauer wrote that access to the Vedas by means of the Upani
ṣ
ads “is in my view the greatest advantage which this still young century has to show over previous centuries.” Momentous words: in comparison with the century that had just ended, the new period, according to Schopenhauer, offered a wonderful bonus, as the result of a single book, the daring edition of several Upani
ṣ
ads, translated into Latin from a Persian version, published by Anquetil-Duperron in 1801–1802 under the title
Oupnek’hat
, and later read by Schopenhauer in the 1808 edition. That text alone was enough to tip the balance of knowledge in favor of the nineteenth century.

*   *   *

Certain details help us understand the strangeness, the intractable Vedic singularity. The first complete commentary that we have of the Veda is that of S
ā
ya
ṇ
a, which dates from the fourteenth century. As if the first commentary we had on Homer had been written 2,100 years after the
Iliad.

The world of the Veda is made of this: its elements: fire, water; among the animals: the cow, the horse, the goat; an “ocean,”
samudrá,
which can be heavenly, earthly, in the mind, each having incalculable limits; the word,
eros
, the liturgy; rocks, mountains; ornaments in clothing or on the body; bands of warriors, stockades torn down, the clash of arms.

Certain key words crop up time and again. With seemingly persistent monotony. And yet each of those words has a profusion of meanings, for the most part coded. If we follow Grassmann’s Vedic dictionary,
padá
, the cow’s hoof print, also means, in order of importance: “step,” “footprint,” “track,” “sojourn,” “region,” “(metrical) foot.” But you can also add: “radius,” “(single) word,” or “speech.” If we are talking about the “hidden
padá
,” Renou says it is “the mystery par excellence, which the poet tries to reveal.” Already we are a long way from the cow’s hoof print, which itself is mysterious and venerable, since a special “libation on the hoof print,”
pad
ā
huti
, is dedicated to it.

*   *   *

In the beginning there was a mute king, M
ā
thava of Videha, who kept in his mouth the fire called Agni Vai
ś
v
ā
nara, Agni-of-all-men, that form of Agni which all living beings keep inside themselves. Next to him, a perennial shadow, a brahmin, Gotama, who provoked him, first with his questions that remained unanswered, then with his ritual invocations, to which the king, according to the liturgy, should have answered. And the king still remained silent, for fear of losing the fire he had in his mouth. But in the end the brahmin’s invocations succeeded in driving out the fire, making it erupt into the world: “He [the king] was unable to hold him back. That [Agni] erupted from his mouth and fell down to this earth.” And, from the moment Agni fell down to earth, he began to burn it. King M
ā
thava found himself at that moment by the Sarasvat
ī
River. Agni then began to burn the land eastward. It marked out a path—and the king and the brahmin followed it. A question remained in the mind of the brahmin, so he asked the king why Agni had fallen from his mouth when he had heard a certain invocation and not before. The king answered: “Because ghee is mentioned in that invocation—and Agni loves it.” That, for the brahmin, was the founding ruse. The first act of history is therefore not that of the ruler, of the
k
ṣ
atriya
, of the warrior. It is an act of the brahmin, of he who kindles every event, who compels the fire to leave its refuge. What immediately follows is a brief outline of what would always happen thereafter: man follows the path left by the fire, which goes before him, scorching the land. This is civilization, before all else: a trail marked by flames. And in the euphoria of conquest there is no need to think that desire or human greed take over. Men always follow: it is Agni who conquers.

The brahmin Gotama’s shrewdness had worked. With his words of enticement—but above all the mere mention of ghee, Agni’s favorite food—he had managed to start the ritual, which in turn had set history in motion. But that story had a precedent, dating back to the period of the relentless conflicts between the Devas and the Asuras. At one time the arrogant Asuras “continued to offer sacrifices in their own mouths,” whereas the Devas preferred to offer them to each other. At that point their father, Praj
ā
pati, chose the Devas and gave them the task of offering sacrifices. He preferred them because, even before being entirely sure to whom they had to make their offering, they had agreed that the offering should be
external
, that it
passed
from one being to another, rupturing the membrane of self-sufficiency, reminiscent of the formless body of V
ṛ
tra, the primordial monster.

*   *   *

If Vedic men had been asked why they did not build cities, or kingdoms, or empires (even if they had a concept of cities, kingdoms, empires), they could have replied: we did not seek power, but
rapture
—if rapture is the word that best describes the effect of
soma.
They described it like this, in the most direct way: “We have now drunk
soma
, we have become immortal, we have attained the light, we have found the gods. What can the hatred and malice of a mortal do to us now?” Vedic men wanted nothing more, but also nothing less. They built a huge edifice of rites and formulas to enable them to utter those few words. They were the beginning and the end. Palaces, kingdoms, and vast administrative systems are more a hindrance than a gain for anyone who has attained this. All human glory, all conquerors’ pride, all thirst for pleasure: they were only an obstacle. And the intoxication wrought by
soma
was not an exultant but uncontrollable state. For they said of
soma
: “You are the guardian of our body, O
soma
; you have settled into every limb as a keeper.” Intoxication was a protective shell, which could be broken at any time, but only through the weakness of the individual. He then turned to that substance which was also a king, beseeching favor, as if to a benevolent sovereign: “If we break the holy vow, pardon us like good friends, O god, for our own good.” This physiological familiarity with the divine was such that
soma
, in invigorating the body from within, sustained it. Not even the Greeks, who were experts in rapture, would have dared to have merged possession and supreme control together into one state, granted by those “glorious” and “salvific drinks,” of which it is said: “Like the harness of the chariot, so you hold together my limbs.” And what will be the ultimate desire, now that it seems almost within grasp? Infinite life: “O King Soma, prolong our days like the sun prolongs the days of spring.” Subtlety, lucidity: the infinite is presented as a gradual, imperceptible expansion of the dominion of light.

II

Y
Ā
J
Ñ
AVALKYA

Sometime before the days of the Buddha—no one can be quite sure when—there appeared the figure of Y
ā
jñavalkya. Sacri
fi
ce (
yajña
) is in his name, but the meaning of -
valkya
is not so clear. He had received his learning from the Sun,
Ā
ditya. To
know
, one must
burn.
Otherwise all knowledge is ineffective. One must therefore practice
tapas. Tapas
means “ardor”—it means the heat within the mind but also cosmic heat. And the Sun is the being that produces heat more than any other. To gain learning, it is natural to turn to him. In the oldest texts, wherever Y
ā
jñavalkya appears, he speaks little and speaks last. His speech is cutting, decisive. To clash with him is a fearful prospect. Even the “shrewd”
Śā
kalya, whom Staal described as “the first great linguist in human history,” since he established the Padapatha version of the
Ṛ
gveda
—the one we still read today, with its text divided into separate words—had to suffer its consequences. He was unable to answer a question posed by Y
ā
jñavalkya and his head burst into pieces. His bones were gathered by scavengers who did not know to whom they had belonged.

In dangerous situations Y
ā
jñavalkya goes on regardless. He seems to enjoy provocation and challenge. One day it was King Janaka of Videha who wanted to put Y
ā
jñavalkya in difficulty. But he did not manage to get the better of him: