Ardor, p.16
Ardor, page 16
And yet brahman is also a “world,” brahmaloka—and it is a world that can be entered (“he enters brahman”). But what allows access? Not power, nor piety, nor good works. But simple consciousness, contact with perpetual wakefulness: “He who is wakeful among sleepers, the mind that edifies the various desires, this one is pure, this is brahman, this is what is called the immortal. All worlds rest on it: no one goes beyond.” At last, in this passage in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, we discover—under the name of brahman—what constituted from the very beginning the Knowledge, which is the Veda. Though the Upaniṣads explain it (indeed: they are described as texts that seek above all to explain it), this secret of brahman as wakefulness and consciousness is already present, “unspoken,” throughout the Ṛgveda. In a hymn such as 5.44, for example, which Geldner describes as “the most difficult hymn in the Ṛgveda.” Here “divinity is everywhere unspoken (anirukta).” Here, according to Renou, “the phraseology, the esoteric intention, undeniably indicated the Viśvedevāḥ character” (meaning: this type of composition places the hymn among those to the Viśvedevāḥ, All-the-gods, a peculiarly Vedic entity). No single god is named, apart from Agni in stanza 15, at the end of a hymn where, wrote Geldner, “the final verses seem to be the solution to a riddle,” adding: “and this is undoubtedly all it seeks to be.” To a large extent it remains a riddle: Oldenberg, the father of all Vedists, had already laid down his arms in the face of such a tough obstacle (“Both the explanation and the textual analysis of this hymn remain for the most part doubtful and without solution”). And yet, even though the exposition of the riddle remains largely impenetrable, the “solution” speaks with marvelous clarity—and refers to the supremacy of wakefulness over everything. With these words: “He who is wakeful, the stanzas love him; he who is wakeful, the ritual chants also go to him. He who is wakeful, soma says to him: in your friendship (I feel as if) at home.” Since the hymns are the very formulation of brahman—in other words the expression of brahman as a “word of power” (Kramrisch)—the nexus that connects power to the word is already acknowledged here in wakefulness.
* * *
“The life of sacrifice is therefore an infinite series of deaths and births,” wrote Sylvain Lévi. And so will be, in the first place, the initiation that is implicit in the sacrifice. To celebrate a sacrifice, the sacrificer must first be consecrated. And the consecration is a form of sacrifice—an endless circle on which everything turns. But for the initiand, more than for the others taking part in the ritual, birth and death must be as literal as possible. This is what distinguishes the initiand. During one part of the ceremony he will be the one who is still unborn: “He then wraps his head. For he who is consecrated becomes an embryo; and embryos are enveloped by the amniotic fluid and by the outer membrane; so he covers his head.” The veiled head, which we come across in Greek initiations and for which the texts give us no convincing justification, is explained here in a few brief words: the initiand, he who is consecrated, is an embryo—and the primary characteristic of an embryo is that of being hidden, veiled by a membrane. The turban therefore recalls that state of concealment, that of the initiand as an embryo, in the same way as its shape suggests Vāc’s womb torn open by Indra.
Of course, for the initiand to be literally an embryo raises certain difficulties, which might seem frivolous, like many other details of the ritual. For example: what does he do if, during the ceremony, he feels an itch? The rules are very strict: “He shall not scratch with a splinter of wood or with a fingernail. For he who is consecrated becomes an embryo: and if an embryo is scratched with a wooden splinter or a fingernail, the amniotic fluid could escape and he would die. Thereafter the consecrated one might suffer from itchiness; and his offspring might also be born with itchiness. Now the womb does not damage the embryo, and since the horn of the black antelope is the womb, it does not damage it; so the consecrated one should scratch himself with the horn of the black antelope and with nothing other than the horn of the black antelope.” The pictures conjured up by the rite are never just metaphors, in the sense of a lame literary device. They are invisible presences and at the same time are to be understood in a strict literal sense. If the consecrated one becomes an embryo, this must determine his behavior even at the most casual, unexpected, and insignificant moment: for example, when he feels an itch. And so we discover the subtle answer of the womb, which, with motherly concern, soothes the embryo within it. But how? With the horn of a black antelope, which, contrary to all evidence and appearance, is declared to be the womb. And so, the consecrated one scratches himself with the horn of a black antelope during the ceremony.
When the initiand is finally born, who is his father? The new birth that takes place through initiation makes it possible to escape the old worry of pater semper incertus. The father will now be one alone—and is neuter: brahman. And brahman, whatever it might be, is an intrinsic presence in the sacrifice, so that it could be said that “only he who is born from brahman is truly born,” but at the same time that “he who is born from the sacrifice is born from brahman.” Beyond this acquired paternity, anyone might also be the child or the descendant of one of those Rakṣas who wandered the land and went “hunting for women,” like the angels in Genesis copulating with the daughters of men.
* * *
The night before the ceremony in which a person kindles his fires with the agnyādheya ritual is a most delicate moment. Until then he was a “mere man”—and what he did was unimportant. But now, if he wants to start building a relationship with the gods, the ritualists suggest he should remain awake through the night. And here lies the crucial point. What is the prime characteristic of the gods that we can emulate? Not power: ours will always be limited. Not immortality: we don’t have it—at most we may fool ourselves into thinking we have gained temporary immortality, after long practice. But it’s an immortality that gradually crumbles away, like every conquest gained by merit. Not knowledge, because it is far inferior to that of the gods: we don’t even know the mind of our neighbor, while “the gods know the minds of men.” So then, what? The pure fact of consciousness: of being awake. “The gods are awake”: moving closer to the gods means being awake. Not performing good works, not pleasing the gods with homage and offerings. Simply being awake. This is what enables anyone to become “more divine, more calm, more ardent,” in other words, richer in tapas. And was it not tapas that had enabled the gods to become gods? By isolating the pure fact of being awake and giving it supremacy over everything else, the ritualists made known their particular view with the utmost clarity. Everything could be traced back to this. And everything else could be eliminated, except this.
Becoming divine was not an ultimate experience reserved for the mystics: it was instead the experience of anyone who enters the sacrificial ceremony, immediately after having been consecrated: “He who is consecrated moves toward the gods; he becomes one of the divinities.” This is the passage to which Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss refer when they describe entering the sacrifice as follows: “All that touches the gods must be divine; the sacrificer is obliged to become a god himself to be able to act over them.” Hidden in a hut built purposefully to keep him apart from the human world, shaved, washed, oiled, dressed in white linen and covered by a black antelope skin, the “consecrated one,” dīkṣita, gradually transformed into a divine embryo. He was made to move back and forth around the fire like the fetus kicking in the uterus. As always, the ritualists note the most subtle details: it is essential that the consecrated one holds his fists clenched. But not out of anger or despair. With that gesture he tries to seize the sacrifice. At that moment he says: “With the mind I take hold of the sacrifice.” It must be like this, because the sacrifice is invisible, like the gods: “The sacrifice is not visibly taken hold of, in fact, like this stick or a garment, but invisible are the gods, invisible the sacrifice.” Every event will be accurately described only if the description includes two parts: the visible and the invisible. And so the correct moment to unclench the fists is indicated with precision. Then the fetus “is born to divine existence, it is god.”
But even though the consecrated one, during the sacrificial journey, gradually moved closer to the gods, there still remained a vast distance. Revealed above all by one fact: the gods do not sleep, men are not granted sleeplessness. This, ironically, is enough to thwart human claims: not only do you have to die, but you are also unable to avoid sleep. And this again is why wakefulness was the highest good, the moment of greatest proximity to divine life. Otherwise, in ordinary life, when people found themselves in rites that lasted days and days, all they could do when overcome by sleep was to turn to Agni, the good awakener: may he rouse us, whole, after everything has abandoned us in sleep, everything but breath.
* * *
Having listed the other sacrifices, the sacrifice to brahman still has to be described. And so we read: “The sacrifice to brahman is the daily study of the Veda.” There is a line that starts off with the sacrifice as a long ceremony, structured into hundreds of movements and actions—and therefore entirely visible—and which leads up to a later and invaluable variant, the sacrifice as an invisible and imperceptible activity, as it is performed through the study of the Veda.
Study of the Veda, known as svādhyāya or “inner recitation,” had to be done beyond the confines of the village, to the east or north, where the roofs were out of sight. It was the first indication of a process by which the simple acquisition of knowledge would get gradually more distant from society and unshackled by it. But study could also be carried out in other ways, even in bed: “And, in truth, if he studies his lesson, even stretched out on a soft bed, oiled, adorned and completely fulfilled, he is burned by tapas up to the tips of his fingernails: and so the daily lesson must be studied.” Here we see a figure we thought was modern: the reader, described much as the young Proust might have been described, given over to his journées de lecture. Once again we can see Vedic open-mindedness: to practice tapas we don’t have to cross our legs or subject ourselves to those “mortifications” that some regard as the very meaning of the word tapas. No, even luxe, calme et volupté may help—or at least not hinder. It is enough that the fervor of the mind runs without respite, and burns “up to the tips of the fingernails.”
IX
THE BRĀHMAṆAS
He who knew the taut thread on which all creatures are woven, he who knew the thread of the thread, would know the great Exegesis.
—Atharvaveda 10.8.37 (trans. L. Renou, 1938)
He who knows the taut thread on which these creatures are woven, he who knows the thread of the thread, knows the great essence of brahman.
—Atharvaveda 10.8.37 (trans. L. Renou, 1956)
The Brāhmaṇas are the part of the Veda most neglected by scholars and most ignored by readers. In the second volume of Dandekar’s Vedic Bibliography, the list of writings on the Brāhmaṇas fills eight pages, while thirty are taken up by the Upaniṣads and twenty-eight by the Ṛgveda. We can guess that not so many scholars, and even fewer readers, have taken any interest in them. And we might wonder why.
A first reason is to do with form, literary genre. The Ṛgveda, after all, can also be read as the most magnificent—and also most persuasive—example of Symbolist poetry, while the Upaniṣads, as Schopenhauer quickly recognized, can be read as outstanding metaphysical texts. But the Brāhmaṇas were neither poetry nor philosophy (only Deussen dared to put them at the beginning of his universal history of philosophy, but his example has not been followed). The Brāhmaṇas are continually laden with gesture: “He [the officiant] does x and y.” This is the phrase that most often appears, each time prompting the thought: why does “he” do x and not z? The underlying assumption is that supreme importance is to be given to the liturgical gesture. And that ritual is given preeminence over every other form of thought, as if ritual were the immediate way by which thought itself becomes manifest. This, though, was exactly what the West wanted to shake off—starting with the Greeks and then through the whole of Christian tradition—like superstitious ballast. Liturgical reforms in the Catholic Church, over the centuries, mark a progressive, ruthless reduction in the range of ritual actions, and words accompanying these actions, up to the poor state of things in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. As for the Reformation, more than arguing particular points of theology, it urged a general rejection of the fripperies of worship. And yet, the heart of Christian doctrine is sacramental, linked to gestures that cannot be replaced by words. Hymns of thanksgiving, however lavish, can never substitute the gesture of the priest who breaks the bread. The sacramental act is the greatest obstacle for anyone wishing to adopt the regime of substitution. For it is an irreplaceable gesture, and a gesture that has immediate effect on the invisible. But if the invisible is to be discarded, then its intermediary must also be eliminated.
* * *
Witzel once observed, in passing, that the Brāhmaṇas are “one of the oldest examples of Indo-European prose.” An invaluable comment, which very few seem to have given any thought to. In fact, if it is true that the Brāhmaṇas “are still regarded as incomprehensible and tedious by the very scholars who study them,” then why take any interest in their form? And yet prose—this varied, flexible, prehensile form, capable of stretching to every level, from manuals on horse riding or hydraulics up to Lautréamont, this form that has become normality itself, so normal as to become transparent, to the point of being barely noticed—made its appearance on Indian soil through this unattractive and often incomprehensible literary genre. The Brāhmaṇas are not thought (or at least: they are not what people today are accustomed to consider as thought); and they are not stories (or at least: they are a series of fragmented and continually interrupted stories). Rather, they give instructions above all about ceremonies whose inner meaning, already obscure, often becomes even more obscure due to the explanations the Brāhmaṇas seek to provide. History has taken enormous trouble to chemically separate these elements, associating them with certain injunctions: thought cannot tell a story, a story cannot be a way of thinking, ritual is an obsolete activity that we can do without. To understand just how deeply these convictions are embedded in the mind, we need only listen to ordinary language. If something is described as a “myth,” it is usually regarded as a baseless story; if something is described as a “ritual” act, it generally means it is a hollow and by now ineffective practice. This is diametrically opposed to the Brāhmaṇas, where “myth” is the very fabric of stories that have meaning, an everlasting meaning, and “ritual” is action in its most effective form. If there is such a misunderstanding—and it couldn’t be greater—over the two words that are the foundation of story and gesture, it is no wonder if the people of modern times have developed such an aversion to this literary genre—more antiquated, jumbled, abstruse than any other—that is the Brāhmaṇas. Their first emergence is usually dated, at the latest, to the eighth century B.C.E. The dating is contentious, as it always is in India. But certainly earlier than those Greek sages of whom we know. Thales, the first of the pre-Socratics in the Diels-Kranz edition, lived between the seventh and sixth centuries. Moreover, a text like the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa is so subtly arranged in its form as to suggest that it was elaborated over a long period. The Indian texts therefore clearly predate the earliest Greek speculation. But the subject matter is very similar—phýsis, the manifestation of that which is. It is a question of giving names to phýsis: in Greece it can take the form of poetry (Parmenides, Empedocles) or statements (Anaximander, Heraclitus). In India, it remains bound up with ritual, with gesture, even in the two longest and oldest Upaniṣads, the Chāndogya and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka. And, above all, the very form of the Upaniṣads—texts that were to be found at the end of a Brāhmaṇa—presupposes all the scrupulous, taxing, dauntless murmur of reasoning that precedes them.
The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa belongs to the White Yajur Veda, a branch of the Veda devoted to the yajus, to the “formulas” recited by the adhvaryu during sacrifices. And the composition is painstaking, meticulous, always in danger of failing to keep a hold on the enormity of the material, all relating to the nature of the adhvaryu, this priest who works unceasingly and using every means—gestures, manual operations, words. While the other officiants spend their time chanting or watching in silence, the adhvaryu acts and makes the ceremony go on. He is its whirring engine.
When Renou had the chance, at Pune, to witness a Vedic sacrifice of the simplest kind, that of the Full Moon and the New Moon, he was struck by the activity of the adhvaryu: “One was able to gauge the overwhelming role of the manual officiant, the adhvaryu, on whom almost everything depends, gestures and words, despite the assistance he receives from two acolytes.” While the hotṛ, the chanter, “appeared at the important moments, dominating everything with his tall stature and his vibrant voice,” the adhvaryu provided the background to that “ample drapery of verses” with his “short, disjointed formulas,” similar to the way of arguing in the Brāhmaṇas—always starting, being interrupted, being forced to change direction, weaving the fabric of the work by resuming it at different points.
The school of the White Yajur Veda is different from that of the Black Yajur Veda, above all because there is a clear-cut separation between the mantras—or verse “formulas,” often taken from the Ṛgveda—and the commentaries on the ritual, which are in prose. We do not know and cannot guess what reasons lay behind this variance. But we can observe one result: the birth of prose, in the sense of a lengthy exposition, with no metric form, on a single subject: in this case the whole of the sacrificial rites. Until then, nothing of the kind had been seen in that form: of obstinate, meticulous, obsessive, relentless inquiry. Even if the Brāhmaṇas would one day become misused, spurned and reviled as a literary style, something of these origins would continue to energize prose, especially where that humble and practical form has revealed its intent to pervade every corner of everything, as in Proust. À la recherche du temps perdu, in fact, can be read as an immense Brāhmaṇa, devoted to expounding and illuminating the fabric of time within that long ritual (a sattra) that was the life of its author.
