Roberto Calasso - Ardor

“Gāyatrī flew toward Soma, sent by those two. While she was carrying him away, the Gandharva Viśvāvasu stole him from her. The gods realized this: ‘Soma has been carried away from yonder, but he does not come to us, for the Gandharvas have stolen him.’

“They said: ‘The Gandharvas are fond of women: let us send Vāc to them and she will return to us with Soma.’ They sent Vāc to them and she returned with Soma.

“The Gandharvas pursued her and said: ‘Soma for you, Vāc for us.’ ‘So be it,’ said the gods. ‘But if she prefers to come here, do not take her away by force: let us woo her.’ And so they wooed her.

“The Gandharvas recited the Vedas to her, saying, ‘See how we know them, see how we know them.’

“The gods then created the lute and sat playing and singing, saying: ‘Thus we will sing to you, thus we will amuse you.’ She [Vāc] turned to the gods; but, in truth, she turned to them frivolously. Since, to go toward the dance and the song, she went away from those who sang hymns and prayed. And so even to this day women are only frivolous beings: for it was in this way that Vāc returned, and other women do as she did. And it is for this that they most readily take a fancy to he who dances and sings.

“And so Soma and Vāc were with the gods. Now, when someone buys Soma to obtain it, it is to sacrifice with the [Soma] obtained. He who sacrifices with [Soma] not bought, sacrifices with Soma that is not truly obtained.”

Here is the story of the conquest of Soma, the basis for every liturgical act, told with the usual sobriety and making punctual reference to another passage — much as a Western scholar could do — where there is a full account of the story of Suparṇī and Kadrū. What would the rite be if it didn’t have this radiant substance at its center, which is also the most sought-after celestial guest on earth? The gods are the first for whom life would lose all meaning without him. But the gods, alone, would not be able to capture Soma. They need the help of a being that is both a meter and an animal: Gāyatrī, who appears as a large bird. The power of form was never, and will never again be declared as boldly as in this passage: the gods could not have taken off from the earth without the help of a sequence of twenty-four syllables, which is a living being. The story of how the capture took place will continue later on. Here the emphasis is on what happened after the capture. First, the celestial obstacle: the Gandharvas, who live in the heavens, do not let Soma escape. Viśvāvasu snatches him from Gāyatrī. Once again, the gods wouldn’t know what to do without the help of another female being: Vāc, Speech. The story that follows is not just a primordial comedy of the sexes, that perhaps only Aristophanes would have known how to stage with equal skill. Here it is a metaphysical game — and for the first time, with great clarity and concision, an equivalence is established: Speech-Woman-Money. Lévi-Strauss would reach the same conclusion in Structures élémentaires de la parenté. And didn’t Western science, in its most noble form, speak through him? It is an equivalence full of ambiguities and pitfalls. But also of immense power. And the access path to all modernity: all that is needed is for exchange to expand and free itself from all respect — and we will be in the new world, preordained and perhaps even outlined in the mould of antiquity. This alone would be extraordinary: but even greater is the corrosive criticism that the civilization founded on brahman exercises here upon itself. If the frivolous Vāc had not gladly agreed to be used as barter, like a putain au grand cœur ; if the gods — to heighten even more the outrageousness of the scenario — had not chosen to dance and sing to get her back, rather than chanting the Vedas, as the Gandharvas do, touchingly in their innocence, then Soma, the hypostasis of the Vedas, would never have reached the gods. Lastly, if Soma had not been bought — as the ritualist punctiliously states at the end — then it would not be the real Soma, the effective Soma, the Soma “obtained” that makes it possible to “obtain.” The deliciously erotic and mocking scene of the contest for Soma between the innocent Gandharvas — as innocent and fond of women as only celestial beings can be — and the wily gods is also the scene that introduces us to the realm of the value of exchange, all too familiar to any modern reader. There is no interval between the eventful arrival on earth of Soma, a self-sufficient and radiant substance, and the universal establishment of exchange, where Soma even takes on the role of hidden guarantor and surety, like gold to currency for Marx. The archaic and the ultramodern are here described at the same time, in the same terms. Perhaps this is the secret of the Gāyatrī meter.

* * *

The text of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa had already told us: “In the chapter on the dhiṣṇya fires it is said how the affair of Suparṇī and Kadrū came to pass.” At last we reach it — and we read this:

“Now Soma was in the heavens and the gods were here [on the earth]. The gods desired: ‘Would that Soma might come to us; we could sacrifice with him, if he came.’ They produced two apparitions, Suparṇī and Kadrū; Suparṇī in truth was Vāc (Speech) and Kadrū was this [Earth]. Disagreement broke out between them.

“They then argued and said: ‘Whichever of us can see farthest will have the other in her power.’ ‘So be it.’ Kadrū then said: ‘Look over there!’

“Suparṇī then said: ‘On the yonder shore of the ocean there is a white horse by a post, I can see it, do you also see it?’ ‘Of course I see it!’ Then Kadrū said: ‘Its tail hangs down [from the post]; now the wind blows it, I see it.’

“Now, when Suparṇī said: ‘On the yonder shore of the ocean,’ the ocean in truth is the altar, with this she meant altar; ‘There is a white horse by a post,’ the white horse, in truth, is Agni and the post means the sacrificial post. And when Kadrū said: ‘Its tail hangs down; now the wind blows it, I see it,’ this is none other than the rope.

“Suparṇī then said: ‘Come, let us fly there to see which of us has won.’ Kadrū said: ‘Fly there yourself, you say which of us has won.’

“Suparṇī then flew there; and she saw that all was as Kadrū had said. When she returned, she [Kadrū] said to her: ‘Have you or I won?’ ‘You!’ she replied. This is the story of Suparṇī and Kadrū.

“Then Kadrū said: ‘I have won your Self ( ātmānam ); over there is Soma in the heavens; go and fetch him for the gods, and with this redeem yourself from death.’ ‘So be it!’ replied [Suparṇī]. Then she produced the meters; and Gāyatrī seized Soma from the sky.

“He [Soma] was closed between two golden cups; the sharp edges closed together at every blink of an eye; and those two cups were, in truth, Consecration and Ardor ( tapas ). Those Gandharva guardians watched over him; they are these hearths, these fire-priests.

“She [Gāyatrī] snatched one of the cups and gave it to the gods. This was the Consecration: and so the gods consecrated themselves.

“Then she snatched the other cup and gave it to the gods. This was Ardor: and so the gods practiced ardor, namely the upasads [triple offerings of ghee to Agni, Soma, and Viṣṇu], for the upasads are ardor.”

What Kadrū (Earth) sees and her sister Suparṇī (Speech) does not see — in the far distance beyond the ocean where that horse appears who is Agni — is the rope that ties the horse to the sacrificial post: “None other than the rope.” Speech, in comparison with Earth, is she who does not see with total precision. And total precision is a rope that is tied to death. And so Kadrū challenges her sister to carry out the very action that can redeem her from death: the theft of soma. It is as if Kadrū had said: Since you are like this — and you do not see what ties you to death — you have to fly off into the heavens and carry out that brave task which alone can redeem you from death. Otherwise, not seeing the rope that ties you to the sacrificial post means being already dead — or at least having lost your Self.