Ardor (7 page)

Question and answer were formulated in just a few words. Before theorems, the axioms had to be set out. And Y
ā
jñavalkya had immediately stated the axiom on which life around him was based. From there, if they wished, they could go further into
brahman
, as King Janaka had asked.

The questions that followed A
ś
vala’s incisive first question were
not
superfluous, even though it might seem they were asked out of a desire for completeness (to establish that the other officiants—the
udg
ā
t
ṛ
, the
adhvaryu,
and the brahmin—could free themselves, just like the
hot
ṛ
). A
ś
vala asked Y
ā
jñavalkya how it was possible not to be subject to day and night, to the first fifteen days and the second fifteen days (the waxing and waning of the moon). He meant: how can we not be subject to the fading away of all things, how can we not be subject to time? Death was just the sting of time. One had to begin from that torment. But behind death was the actual fact of disappearing. So sacrifice, first and foremost, brought death, with the killing of the victims, but also brought about actual disappearance, with the pouring or burning of oblations in the fire. Release from bondage (to death, to time) came about through a series of acts (the sacrifice) that emphasized that bondage. It was a conundrum that A
ś
vala wished to leave to other questioners. For now, through Y
ā
jñavalkya, he had learned that if you wanted “total release” you had to continue doing exactly what you had always done.

*   *   *

A
ś
vala’s question on the
udg
ā
t
ṛ
and the
adhvaryu
followed the same lines as the first, substituting death with time. But, in moving on to the role of the brahmin officiant, A
ś
vala changed register. This reflected the peculiarity of the brahmin’s role. If officiants were like a string quartet, the brahmin would be like an instrumentalist who never plays and intervenes only when the others go wrong. The passive supervision of the brahmin is unlike the role of the other officiants, who are restricted to gesture, action, speech. So A
ś
vala’s question took a different form. He said: “The atmosphere offers no point of support. What path will the sacrificer take to get to the celestial world?” Y
ā
jñavalkya’s answer was: “By way of the brahmin officiant, by way of the mind, of the moon. The brahmin is the mind of the sacrifice.” So release could also be attained by way of the brahmin, thanks to a sudden change of level in the argument, which coincided with the reference to the mind. And it might seem disturbing that something as changeable as the mind (compared for this reason with the moon) could provide a “point of support”—and thus release from mutability itself, from which the gradual disappearance of everything follows. It was another conundrum. But here again, A
ś
vala, a meticulous officiant, did not wish to linger any further. He was more anxious to find out whether Y
ā
jñavalkya was able to give a clear description of the
sampads
, the “equivalences” that punctuate every stage of the sacrifice. And Y
ā
jñavalkya, once again, gave immediate and satisfactory answers. His knowledge was not only metaphysical but also technical.

*   *   *

Any mention of the “mind,”
manas
, always means taking a step up (or down—it’s just the same). The mind is never on the same level as everything else. It can be present everywhere or nowhere. In any case, nothing will change in the description and operation of whatever happens. With the same scant persuasiveness, everything can be regarded as inconceivable without the mind, or conceivable only if there is no mind. The prime characteristic of the mind is that of not allowing any expressible certainty as to either its presence or its absence.

This was perfectly in line with the role of the brahmin officiant. It was possible to describe the proper performance of a sacrifice ignoring the presence of the brahmin officiant. But it could also be described as the operation of successive states of mind in the brahmin himself, of the algorithm taking place within him. And Y
ā
jñavalkya therefore said that the brahmin officiant “is the mind of the sacrifice.”

*   *   *

Vedic sacrifice wasn’t just a ceremony during which a prescribed sequence of gestures was carried out, but a speculative tournament where life was put at risk. The
brahmodya
(the disputation on
brahman
), an integral part of the rite, could always end up with the head of one of the disputants
bursting out.
And it could happen for two reasons: either because the disputant couldn’t answer a question or because he had asked one question too many. An unsatisfactory answer, one question too many: these were the two cases that brought the risk of death. “If you do not explain this to me, your head will burst out” is Y
ā
jñavalkya’s threatening response to
Śā
kalya’s insinuations. And it certainly wasn’t a momentary excess: it was part of the rite, it was implicit in the rite. If those contemplating
brahman
do not risk their head, it means they are not speaking of
brahman.
On that occasion, when
Śā
kalya could not answer, his head flew into pieces. Y
ā
jñavalkya even threatened G
ā
rg
ī
, the woman theologian, this time because G
ā
rg
ī
was in danger of
asking too much
when she had put the question “With what weft are the worlds of
brahman
woven?” G
ā
rg
ī
then kept silent and survived.

Was the prohibition on putting certain questions an attempt to protect a particular sphere of knowledge, without being under any obligation to explain it? If that were so, it would have been no more than a trite priestly strategy of a kind that all future Voltaires would have readily mocked. But that wasn’t the case. As can be seen in another clash between G
ā
rg
ī
and Y
ā
jñavalkya.

G
ā
rg
ī
, in addition to being a theologian, was also a weaver. She felt that metaphysics should be perceivable in her art as in everything else. This was why she preferred to put questions connected with her trade: it was what she knew best. So, on two occasions, she asked Y
ā
jñavalkya for explanations about the “weft” used to weave a certain thing. Since she had once been spurned for her question—and threatened with a horrible death—one might have expected G
ā
rg
ī
to choose a different route. Instead she spoke once again about “weft.” But changing the
way
in which she put it (and perhaps this was the point: the prohibition was not on a certain question, but on a certain way of putting it). It shouldn’t be thought, however, that G
ā
rg
ī
’s manner this time was any milder or more obsequious. On the contrary—G
ā
rg
ī
announced straightaway that she would speak “like a warrior from the land of the K
āś
i or the Videha, who comes forth holding two arrows ready to shoot the adversary.” But the formulation of her question had changed. This time it was Kantian. G
ā
rg
ī
asked first with what weft
time
(“that which is called past, present, future”) was woven. Y
ā
jñavalkya answered: “with the weft of space (
ā
k
āś
a
).” But G
ā
rg
ī
still had her second and
last
question in reserve: “With what weft is space woven?” At this point G
ā
rg
ī
might have been expecting a blunt refusal to answer, as on the previous occasion, together with the threat of death. This didn’t happen. Indeed, Y
ā
jñavalkya’s answer was immediate and expansive. He said that the weft of space was woven on the “indestructible” (
ak
ṣ
ara
). And he embarked on a lofty, intense, poetic explanation about
ak
ṣ
ara.
Anyone, he said, who doesn’t know it, whatever merits he has gained from good works—from sacrifices or abstinence—will remain “miserable.” Many centuries—almost thirty—were to go by before that “indestructible” would again be described with similar authority, in the aphorisms that Kafka wrote at Zürau between September 1917 and April 1918. Kafka was shorter, more succinct than Y
ā
jñavalkya, perhaps because he too feared his head might burst at any moment. But the purpose of their words was exactly the same.

Questioned by G
ā
rg
ī
, Y
ā
jñavalkya defined the “indestructible” through what it was not, as the whole succession of great mystics would later do. And he added a detail to be found nowhere else: the indestructible “eats nothing and no one eats it.” Here spoke the voice of the
adhvaryu
, that officiant who constantly carries out the necessary acts during the sacrifice. And that is exactly what Y
ā
jñavalkya was. For the expert on sacrifice, the chain of Agni and Soma, of the devourer and the devoured, is essential in defining what belongs to this world and what does not. Only what is not a part of that chain can be said to be
beyond
—and beyond that we cannot go.

*   *   *

Y
ā
jñavalkya’s discourse went a little further, continually interspersed with G
ā
rg
ī
’s name, as if the brahmin wanted to keep a tight hold on the weaver’s attention. He was, indeed, about to reach the crucial point: people are proud of seeing, of hearing, of perceiving, of knowing. They firmly believe they are made of all this. And now Y
ā
jñavalkya spoke of “this indestructible, O G
ā
rg
ī
, that is not seen and sees, not heard and hears, not thought and thinks, not known and knows.” And at the same time “it is the only one that sees, the only one that hears, the only one that thinks, the only one that knows.” People, whatever they do, are therefore passive, acted upon by an entity they may not even recognize. And, if they ever become aware of it and turn toward what is acting in them, they are obliged to realize that they cannot know it. And yet only “he who does not leave this world without having known this indestructible” can be considered a brahmin. But how can we know something that doesn’t let itself be known? In only one way: by becoming to some extent that thing itself.

The weft of that which is, of that space with which even ungraspable time is woven, is made of this, said Y
ā
jñavalkya. And that weft is indestructible. That weft is
the
indestructible,
ak
ṣ
ara.
G
ā
rg
ī
then turned to the other brahmins who were listening and told them, with ill-concealed insolence, that they ought to feel satisfied. She then added that no one would ever beat Y
ā
jñavalkya in a
brahmodya.

*   *   *

The
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
is impressive in its length, venerable for its antiquity, and has been assiduously studied and plundered by scholars, who should have been persuaded to give it the prime consideration that every work deserves: to be viewed as one work—above all in its form. This hasn’t happened. There is, even now, no complete edition of the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, since it ought to include the
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yaka Upani
ṣ
ad
as its final part. In December 1899, having reached the end of his magnificent enterprise of translating the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, which had taken him twenty years, Julius Eggeling calmly noted: “The present volume completes the theoretic exposition of the sacrificial ceremonial, and thus brings us to the end of our task. The remaining six chapters of the last book of the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a form the so-called
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yaka
, or great forest treatise, which, as one of the ten primitive Upani
ṣ
ads, is included in Professor F. Max Müller’s translation of those old theosophical treatises, published in the present series.” It was a candid way of announcing that one part of the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
had been lopped off. And on various occasions thereafter, this missing part—one of the most famous texts of Indian thought—would be translated and annotated either alone or with other Upani
ṣ
ads.