Roberto Calasso - Ardor

The gods already exist, insofar as they are there on the scene, indeed they incite Rudra to shoot their father with his arrow to punish him for the wrong he is doing — certainly not the incest, since further on in the same Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa , having reached the story of Manu and the flood, we read that Manu coupled with his daughter and “through her he generated this line [of people], which is the line of Manu; and whatever blessing he invoked through her, everything was granted to him.” On the other hand, it is from the very seed spilled on the ground by the wounded father, at the moment when he separates himself from his daughter, that the gods themselves will then emerge, starting with the Ādityas, the greater gods. And they are born because it is they themselves who stir and warm their father’s puddle of seed, transforming it into a burning lake. It is as if the gods had to be born a second time —and this time from a guilty and interrupted sexual act: as if, in a certain way, they had provoked the violent scene so that they could be born in this new way, which people would one day regard as being quite unnatural.

The gods then experience two successive feelings: anger toward their father and a concern to look after him. The anger corresponds to the violence that is always present in the sacrifice. The healing of the wound, which is the sacrifice itself, would instead be the element of salvation implicit in the sacrifice. The two elements coexist in the tiny fragment of flesh torn from Prajāpati’s body where he had been pierced by the arrow. That is the very flesh of the sacrifice, since “Prajāpati surely is this sacrifice,” but the metal arrowhead is hurled from another world: Prajāpati is the hunter hunted, the sacrificer sacrificed. This is unbearable even for the gods. That scrap of flesh is like an intolerable ultrasound that overwhelms them. The sacrifice is more powerful than the gods.

But this much was needed to form the first portion of the sacrifice, the first fruit that contained within it the devastating power and meaning of the whole thing: “Now, when [the officiant] cuts the first portion ( prāśitra ), he cuts that which is wounded in the sacrifice, that which belongs to Rudra.” Sacrifice is a wound — and the attempt to heal a wound. It is a guilty act — and an attempt to amend it. “That which is wounded in the sacrifice, that belongs to Rudra”: the work of the brahmins, and of everyone else, is always a vain attempt to heal a wound that is inherent in the very act when existence emerges, not only prior to mankind, but prior to the gods. The gods, then, were only spectators and instigators. Prajāpati, Rudra, and Uṣas were actors. And the scene was a world before the world, a world that will never become identical to the world.

* * *

The cosmic balance is kept by two tiny entities of huge power: the grain of barley in the heart, of which the Upaniṣads will speak, capable of spreading beyond all worlds, and the prāśitra , the “first portion” to which the brahmin is entitled, that scrap of Prajāpati’s flesh torn by the tip of Rudra’s arrow. It is also said that it has to be as big as a grain of barley or a pippal ( Ficus religiosa ) berry.

There is something excessive, corrosive, about that part of Rudra. And yet it was necessarily the first offering of the sacrifice. Without that beginning, the whole work would have been futile. But that first offering was what is intractable, uncontrollable. The gods were already in despair. They were already yielding to a pure force that was overwhelming them. At that moment the supreme astuteness of the brahmin was apparent. For some time Bṛhaspati had been performing rites for the gods. They hadn’t yet realized that this gave him wisdom greater than theirs. Bṛhaspati had the help of Savitṛ, the Impeller, but then he was the first and only one to let his mouth touch that tiny scrap of flesh. He ate it, he said, “with Agni’s mouth”: fire with fire. But he dared not chew it. Then he rinsed his mouth with water, in silence. The gods understood at once why the brahmins are indispensable. They understood that the brahmin is “the best physician” for the sacrifice. Without him it wouldn’t have been possible to take a single step. For them, every possible task was a sacrifice, but the sacrifice could not be performed without the help of the being who dared to let his mouth touch the scrap of wounded flesh. In their purity, in the whiteness of their garments, the brahmins from then on carried with them the memory of the gesture by which the blood of the wound had for the first time disappeared into one of them, who had absorbed it without it destroying him. And from then on they would sometimes display a certain arrogance toward even the gods.

The brahmin is different from all others because his physical makeup is such that he can take poison that would kill anyone else. Śiva managed to drink the poison of the world in the same way, which then turned his neck blue. Although Śiva and the brahmins would show themselves to be fierce rivals in various circumstances, it was not enough to hide their basic complicity: that of being the only ones able to absorb the poison of the world. The brahmin does not act, except when he alone can act, as in the case of the prāśitra , which can be eaten only by him. He does not speak, except when he alone can speak — and this occurs if errors are made in carrying out the sacrifice. The brahmin then has three possible invocations— bhūr, bhuvas, svar —which operate as medicines applied to the loosened joints of the ceremony. Those words cannot be confused with the other words of the liturgy. The brahmin’s speech “is filled with the limitless unspoken, anirukta , of which silence is the emblem.” As bearer of the “limitless unspoken,” the brahmin is the direct representative of Prajāpati. When Prajāpati disappears from mythology, and his place is taken by Brahmā, the brahmins will remain.

Otherwise, the brahmin silently watches what is happening. He is seated to the south, for that is the dangerous area, from which an attack may come at any time. From whom? When the gods were officiating, they were frightened of being ambushed by the anti-gods, the Asuras and the Rakṣas, the wicked demons. Men, on the other hand, must watch out for the “malevolent rival”: generally speaking, the enemy, the adversary, the ever-present shadow in every liturgical celebration.

The brahmin is the “guardian” of the sacrifice. In this respect he is like the Saptarṣis, who keep watch over the earth from the seven stars high up in the Great Bear. His silence likens him to Prajāpati and keeps him away from the throng of the gods. All the brahmin’s tasks are reduced to one: to heal the wound that is the sacrifice. It is his main concern that the wound be inflicted in the right way, and he thus oversees the actions and words of the other priests. Finally he reassembles the tattered sacrifice by cloaking it in silence.

* * *

There are many paradoxes in the relationship between Prajāpati and Mṛtyu, Death (a male being). Prajāpati was given a lifespan of a thousand years when he was born. And since a thousand indicates totality, it might be thought that this indicates a limitless period. But when Prajāpati devoted himself to producing creatures, when he was pregnant with them, Death appeared in the background and seized them one by one. The result of the duel was obvious: “While Prajāpati was producing living beings, Mṛtyu, Death, that evil, overpowered him.” Prajāpati was therefore defeated and thwarted during the very process of creation. For a thousand years he had to practice tapas to overcome the evil of Death. But which years are being referred to? Are they the same thousand years that marked his lifespan? Prajāpati’s life in that case would have been one long, relentless struggle fighting the — already established — supremacy of Death. The life of the one to whom creatures owe their lives would therefore have been most of all an attempt to respond to Death and to avoid his power.