Roberto Calasso: Ardor

* * *

In the beginning there was a mute king, Māthava of Videha, who kept in his mouth the fire called Agni Vaiśvānara, 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 Māthava found himself at that moment by the Sarasvatī 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 kṣatriya , 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, Prajāpati, 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 Vṛtra, 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.

Sometime before the days of the Buddha — no one can be quite sure when — there appeared the figure of Yājñavalkya. Sacrifice ( yajña ) is in his name, but the meaning of — valkya is not so clear. He had received his learning from the Sun, Āditya. 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 Yājñavalkya appears, he speaks little and speaks last. His speech is cutting, decisive. To clash with him is a fearful prospect. Even the “shrewd” Śākalya, whom Staal described as “the first great linguist in human history,” since he established the Padapatha version of the Ṛgveda —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 Yājñavalkya and his head burst into pieces. His bones were gathered by scavengers who did not know to whom they had belonged.

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

“Janaka of Videha once asked him: ‘Do you know the agnihotra , Yājñavalkya?’ ‘I know it, O king,’ he said. ‘What is it?’ ‘It is milk.’

“‘If there were no milk, with what would you sacrifice?’ ‘With rice and barley.’ ‘If there were no rice and barley, with what would you sacrifice?’ ‘With other grasses that were about.’ ‘If there were no other grasses about, with what would you sacrifice?’ ‘With the plants that I found in the forest.’ ‘And if there were no forest plants, with what would you sacrifice?’ ‘With the fruits of the trees.’ ‘And if there were no fruits of the trees, with what would you sacrifice?’ ‘With water.’ ‘If there were no water, with what would you sacrifice?’

“He said: ‘Then there would be nothing else here, and yet there would be the offering of truth ( satya ) into faith ( śraddhā ).’ ‘You know the agnihotra , Yājñavalkya: I give you a hundred cows,’ said Janaka.”

That day, King Janaka had pushed Yājñavalkya to the limit. To do so, he had used the idea of the simplest ritual, the agnihotra: the mere act of pouring milk into the fire. He wanted to find out what would be left if even the most basic things disappeared. It was a device for uncovering the relentless process that operates in every offering. Yājñavalkya immediately separated out the two essential points in every sacrificial act: substitution and the transposition from the visible to the realm of the mind. This in turn was reduced to its ultimate terms, beyond which the substance to be offered and the agent that consumes that substance (the milk and the fire of the agnihotra ) no longer exist as such. The two ultimate terms were: satya , “truth,” something that was not part of people’s lives from the very beginning (“men are the untruth”), but which they had to attain so as to be in a position to offer something; and śraddhā , “faith,” in particular faith in the effectiveness of the ritual, a feeling without which the entire edifice of thought collapses. Only śraddhā can replace fire, since śraddhā is fire. Śraddhā is the Vedic axiom: the firm belief, which cannot be demonstrated but is implied in every act, that the visible acts on the invisible and, above all, that the invisible acts on the visible — that the realm of the mind and the realm of the tangible are in continual communication. They had no need for faith , except in this sense. Everything else followed from that. It required Yājñavalkya to say it with such incisiveness.