Ardor, p.35
Ardor, page 35
* * *
If we first ask ourselves what are meters, the answer has to be that they are footprints. Footprints in which someone else puts their feet. And in putting their feet there they enter into the being of the one who has left the first footprint. This happens with the tracks of the cow that is used to obtain the soma: “He follows her, stepping into seven of her tracks; thus he takes possession of her.” The cow is Vāc, Speech: as a resplendent woman she charmed the Gandharvas and finally abandoned them, preferring the frivolous songs of the gods to their pious liturgical chants. But Vāc has to be wooed—and so too the cow that is sold to obtain soma. Among its gifts there is this: to have marked out the first rhythm, a step, which men would then imitate. But it is essential that such a measure is external to man, that it originates from another being. Speech is a desirable woman or an animal that is used as currency. In any event, the sound that erupts from the depths of man, and would seem to be a part of him like a groan, is instead external, indeed it is the first visible being that he desires, even if she is now no more than a succession of tracks.
To win over the woman who is Speech they were forced to carry out a series of acts that might conceivably appear mad, but they were simply strictly following instructions: having placed their feet in six tracks in succession, they sat in a circle around the seventh track left by the right front hoof of the cow that was to be sold to obtain soma. They then took a piece of gold and placed it inside the track. They now poured ghee over it, until the track was full. If the piece of gold had not been there in this hoof print, they could not have made any offerings, since an offering is made only into fire. But gold—like milk—is Agni’s seed. And so pouring ghee over the gold was the same as pouring ghee into the fire. And since ghee is a thunderbolt, the cow into whose track the offering is poured was freed, because the thunderbolt is a shield. Once again, everything is consequential. Finally, they shook the dust of the track over the sacrificer’s wife. Then they made sure that the cow looked into the eyes of the sacrificer’s wife. It seemed as if two females were exchanging glances. But it wasn’t like that. The cow is female, but soma is male. Since the cow was exchanged for soma, the cow was the soma. So the gaze became the gaze of a male. And by exchanging glances with the sacrificer’s wife, a “fertile coitus” took place. The sacrificer’s wife then spoke: “I have seen eye to eye with the far-seeing divine dakṣiṇā: do not take my life away from me, I will not take yours away; may I obtain a hero under your gaze!” “A hero,” the ritualists add, here means “a son.”
* * *
The soma, purchased and loaded on a cart, arrives and is greeted like a royal guest. When the officiant handles a plant that is soma, he dresses it, moves it—and in the meantime talks to it. The plant is king, guest, friend. When he lays it down on his own right thigh, which is now Indra’s thigh, soma is “the beloved on the beloved one,” “propitious on the propitious one,” “tender on the tender one,” for “the ways of men follow those of the gods.” Even sacrifice, at this point, is presented as an obligatory celebration for a high-ranking guest: “In the same way that one would place a large ox or a large he-goat on the fire for a king or a brahmin, so he prepares for him [Soma] the guest-offering.” But a king is unlikely to arrive alone. Who then forms his retinue? The meters do. Like K.’s assistants in The Castle, the meters go where Soma goes: “The meters act around him [Soma] as his attendants.” What is seen is a cart that carries the stalks of a plant that “is in the mountains.” But those who know also see, beside the cart, the shimmering of meters, similar to the rays of the sun.
Sweet, affectionate words are murmured to it—like those murmured to the horse just before it is killed during the aśvamedha—to persuade it that no one wants to harm it and it will not suffer, and so the soma plant, the newly arrived royal guest, is told why it has been bought. For a noble purpose, certainly, though a mysterious one: for “the supreme sovereignty of the meters.” Then, straight after, we read: “When they press him, they kill him.” The proximity of these two phrases is in the purest Vedic style. First the esoteric formula (the “supreme sovereignty of the meters,” about which the text has actually given no explanation); then the dry, rugged, clear-cut description: “When they press him, they kill him.” It is the very tension of all liturgical thinking.
Before reaching the moment of the pressing, problems of etiquette arose. The king was brought down from the cart and laid on the stones that would crush him. The stones are eager, they are already openmouthed. King Soma, who is nobility, descends to his people of stones. This already raises a doubt in the mind of the ritualist—is it improper, a breach of etiquette, to invite King Soma to descend? Certainly—and (here we detect a sigh from the ritualist) “so people today confuse good and bad.” Every complaint about how times are getting worse seems to originate from this brief aside. But the ritualist immediately recovers: this excessive magnanimity of King Soma, who descends to his people, eventually to be killed, must be answered by a gesture from the people, who have to maintain their distance, still placing themselves beneath him. How? By going down on their knees: “And so, when a noble approaches, all these subjects, the people, kneel down, sit lower than him.”
Now the stones surround the soma with their mouths gaping. The sacrificer prays in succession to Agni, then to the soma bowls, and lastly to the stones themselves, since they know the sacrifice. Only those who know speak. “The stones know.” And they “know” because the stones are Soma. Not only is Soma killed, but he is killed by his own body, by fragments of his body, by rocks that have been broken from the mountains that form him (“those mountains, those rocks are his body”). What happens? A murder or a disguised suicide?
And here, at this solemn moment, we are reminded that “Soma was Vṛtra.” The noble King Soma, the being abducted from the heavens to spread rapture on the earth, had also been (in some way—in what way?) the primordial monster, the main obstacle to life.
* * *
There is always something prior to the gods. If it is not Prajāpati, from which they originated, it is Vṛtra, an amorphous mass, mountain, snake on the mountain, goatskin, a repository for the intoxicating substance soma. The gods knew that, in comparison with that indeterminate being, their power was too young and insecure. Even Indra, agreeing to fight a duel with Vṛtra, was by no means sure what would happen as he hurled the thunderbolt. He still feared he was the weaker. He immediately hid. The gods crowded behind him. Vṛtra lay dying on one side. The gods hid themselves in fear on the other. They sent Vāyu, Wind, to investigate. He blew on Vṛtra’s bloated body. There wasn’t a quiver. Once reassured, the gods then threw themselves on his corpse. Each wanted a larger portion of soma than the others. They brandished their grahas, cups, to fill them to the brim. But Vṛtra’s vast corpse, upon which the gods clambered like parasites, was already giving off a powerful stench. The intoxicating substance, which they drew from the defenseless body, had to be filtered and blended with something else to become ingestible even for the gods. They still needed the help of Vāyu, of a breeze that blended with the liquid soma. This was the Vedic version of the Spirit that revives: Vāyu who disperses Vṛtra’s stench and transforms the liquid within his body into an intoxicating and enlightening drink.
So Vāyu ended up winning the right to taste some of the first soma. Indra felt left out. He was the hero, the one who alone, shuddering, had accepted the challenge. It was he who had hurled the thunderbolt. And now he had to give way to the vain Vāyu. They took their dispute to Prajāpati. This was his ruling: Indra would always have a quarter of Vāyu’s share. Indra said he wished, through soma, to have language—indeed, the articulated word. From that time on, through Prajāpati’s decision, of all the languages throughout the world, only a quarter are articulated, and therefore intelligible. All the rest are indecipherable, from the warbling of birds to the noise of insects. Indra thus did not gain the upper hand. He lowered his head, in sadness. Yet the decision followed a general rule: that most things remain hidden. Only just a quarter of Puruṣa is visible. And the same goes for brahman. The unmanifest is much greater than the manifest. The invisible than the visible. The same also with language. We must all know that when we speak, “three parts [of language], kept in concealment, are motionless; the fourth part is what people use.” Speech conserves and renews such a fascination only because language throws an inaccessible shadow much larger than itself.
* * *
Certain filters, called pavitra, are essential in worship—either two kuśa blades, used for purifying water, or two strips of white wool, used for the soma. Their use recalls the cosmic drama between Vṛtra and Indra. Vṛtra’s nature was that of covering (vṛ-), enveloping, enclosing within him, obstructing every “evolution,” a word that in Sanskrit corresponds with pravṛtti, the word that indicates life being lived. This monstrum par excellence, since he held everything within himself, also held supreme knowledge—the Vedas—and soma, the intoxicating drink. For Indra, killing him meant not only making life possible, but also conquering what could make life inextinguishable: knowledge. And it also meant that the waters flowed, brimming over into the world, where they produce the surplus that is life itself. Yet, even though Indra’s gesture implied salvation, it was also a guilty act, one of immense guilt, commensurate with the enormity of his victim. The first sign of guilt is the impurity that has poured into the world since then, through Vṛtra’s wound. This liquid is precious but also putrid. And it is enough to contaminate everything, except for those waters that rose up in disgust to escape evil contact, becoming kuśa grass. The waters, though immediately contaminated, at the same time escape impurity—at least in part. So they will be used to sprinkle, and then consecrate, every element. And here a subtle theological problem appears: how can those who have not been consecrated consecrate? This too is a guilt for which the officiant “makes amends”: already a first sign that guilt extends up to the peak of purity.
The presence of filters enables us to understand that the world is an impure mass. If this were not so, it would not be alive, but would still be closed up in Vṛtra’s vast belly. Now, when even the waters are suspect, since they are in part contaminated, what will allow the return to purity? The world has to be filtered, in the same way that the prodigious soma has to be filtered, which otherwise would not be tolerable. And here is a crucial step: the only element that can provide help, in this scenario of a cosmic swamp, is the stirring breeze. The wind that “blows purifying (pavate)” corresponds with the two blades of grass that filter, pavitra: but why are there two blades of grass but only one wind? Here follows another decisive step for Vedic theology: there are two filters because there are two basic breaths (inhaled and exhaled), which, by entering the body and leaving it, make it live. So the wind is those breaths and those breaths are the two filters of kuśa grass. This dazzling equation introduces the supreme function of breath (from which the whole of yoga and countless reflections on breathing follow) and explains why the world, this formless and fetid mass of elements where the liquid held in Vṛtra’s wounded body continues to flow even today, needs a breath of wind to filter it, to give life to it, to make it usable in a ceremonial act.
* * *
In the beginning, the gods lost the soma; men did not have it. But they both found themselves performing the same gestures when they recovered it (or bought it): practicing tapas, fasting—with ever greater rigor. In the meantime, men as well as the gods “heard its sound,” the sound of soma. What was this sound for the gods? We are not told. But we know what it was for people. The sound of the lost soma said: “On such and such a day the buying will take place.” For the gods, an undefined sound; for men, the announcement of an exchange, a sale. This is the passage from divine to human: abrupt, curt. But we are made to understand that, without exchange, man does not exist. Or, at least, he can never obtain soma. As for immortality, it would be naïve to think that for men it may mean an endless duration. So it is made clear: “This assuredly is immortality for man: when he attains a full life.” The most important thing for man is to give form to life, making it whole, perfect, in the same way that the fire altar must be whole, perfect. There is no answer to the question that worried Prajāpati’s creatures: does the perfect life include Death in it? On this there is no answer, either positive or negative.
* * *
The “comedy of innocence” is just the same for the bear about to be killed by hunters as it is for Soma. When the stones are on the point of striking the stalks of the divine plant to bring out the juice, the intention to kill must be directed toward any enemy or being that is hated. Then the sacrificer can say: “Here I strike x, not you.” The guilt therefore resides not in the act—the killing of Soma—but in the mental picture accompanying it. And if the sacrificer has no enemies? If he hates no one? Then he directs this thought, with hatred, to a blade of straw: “If he hates no one, he can even think of a straw, and thus no wrong is incurred.” Corollaries: the act is a necessity, an inevitable step. And it is in itself a guilty act. But anyone who doesn’t want to increase his own guilt, which belongs already to the fact of existing, has to separate their mind from the act, to direct it toward an object that mitigates the guilt. The straw indicates that we are approaching the nonexistent and the invisible. Does anything exist beyond the straw? The detachment that Kṛṣṇa will teach Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gītā, the nonadherence to the act. This is one step higher than simply diverting the act onto another object.
* * *
“And he [Soma], insofar as he is generated, generates him [the sacrificer]”: a phrase that rings out three times. It touches on a delicate and crucial point: mutual procreation. A general rule among the gods, it now finds a ritual counterpart. Nothing exists in itself, all is the result of work. Likewise for soma: the plant from the heavens does not exist until it is pressed, filtered, and sprinkled by the sacrificer and by the priests. But, at the point when soma comes into being, it produces the sacrificer. The existence of the soma brings about a transformation in the person who with his actions has brought it into being.
And at the end of the ceremony, in the same way that King Soma is a bundle of crushed stalks, reduced to a “body unfit for offering,” so too the sacrificer, tired out, a shadow of his former self, makes his way toward the water that flows just below the sacrificial ground. There the cleansing bath, avabhṛtha, awaits him. The soma and the sacrificer: both yearn for new sap. They want to immerse themselves in the water, to forget.
“Thereupon both [the sacrificer and his wife], having gone down, bathe, and wash each other’s back. Having wrapped themselves in fresh clothing, they leave: like a snake that sloughs its skin, so he frees himself from all evil. In him there is no more guilt than in a toothless babe.”
Anyone entering the rite is burdened with gestures, acts, and karman, which literally means “ritual action.” There is no doubt: he sees the light, immortality, he touches the gods. But at the end he nevertheless wants to forget, exhausted. He wants to return to dull, insignificant, straightforward normality. And the sacrificer and his wife retrace the steps they took to arrive at the sacrificial site. They bathe in flowing water. The objects used in the sacrifice are thrown into the water, as if no one wanted to remember they ever existed. Everything must now be new. The innocence of the newborn child is never something given. On the contrary, it is hard fought for. And is short-lived. For the action immediately starts all over again. And the action, every action, and above all that sacred action that makes it possible to attain the light through soma, is a form of guilt. Not because it hurts or injures someone or something, even if it inevitably does hurt and injure, but simply because it is action. On the other hand, without that action any life is formless and empty. But from time to time we need to return to that formlessness, that meaninglessness, because we do not bear too much meaning, too much light, or too much guilt. The sacrificer no longer wears his own clothes. They too are part of an episode now swallowed up. But how will he dress, now? He covers himself with the cloth in which the soma stalks had been wrapped, in which they had appeared in the distant past, a few hours earlier, when the soma had still to be pressed. Tied around his wife is the cloth that had wrapped the cloth in which the soma lay. Then they leave, silently, passively, cleansed, empty. All that remains is a barely discernible fragrance—perhaps discernible only to them—coming from the two cloths in which the soma had for some time been kept.
* * *
“When Gāyatrī flew toward Soma, a footless archer, aiming at her, shot off a feather, either of Gāyatrī or of King Soma; and the feather, dropping down, became a parṇa tree.” Elsewhere we are told that this mysterious footless archer is called Kṛśānu, but we learn little more. His appearance and attitude suggest a being on the margin of the unmanifest—or of “fullness,” pūṛna, which is another name for it. Like another archer—Rudra—Kṛśānu tries to stop a deed that goes against the order of the world, and thereby creates life as we know it. In the case of Rudra, it was Prajāpati’s incest with Uṣas. In his case, it is the abduction of the soma, which will enable men to become drunk on it. Kṛśānu’s nature is perhaps also implied in his being “footless,” apād, a characteristic that links him with another enigmatic figure: Aja Ekapād, the one-footed goat. If we go back to the “unborn,” aja, to the “self-existing,” svayambhū, the last two figures that let themselves be recognized—though only in flashes and glimmers, without ever being described—are a Goat (Aja Ekapād) and a Serpent (Ahi Budhnya). We can distinguish nothing beyond them. The Goat has to stand up because it is the “supporter of the sky,” but if we look closer we see it is resting on only one hoof (ékapād). At times it appears as a column of fire speckled with black, the black of the darkness against which it stands out. And beneath it? The Serpent of the Deep, Ahi Budhnya. No text dares to say any more about it. Only its name is mentioned—five times, in the Vedic hymns, along with that of the Goat, as if these two figures hint at something beyond which we cannot go: the Unborn, the Deep. The inevitable and almost imperceptible channel for all that exists.
