Roberto Calasso - Ardor

And therefore before touching the soma with their fingers they touch it with gold, a divine intermediary since it is the seed of Agni, “so that [the sacrificer] can touch the stalks [of the soma ] with truth, so that he can handle the soma with the truth.” In order to deal with soma , so as not to upset it, men have to transform themselves into bearers of truth, going against their nature. This is what the rite is all about. All the more evident, in contrast with this delicate care, is the brutality that marks the purchase of the soma , when the trader who had sold it ended up being beaten with staffs.

* * *

“He buys the king; and, since he buys the king, everything here can be bought. He says: ‘ Soma -seller, is King Soma for sale?’ ‘He is for sale,’ says the soma -seller. ‘I will buy him from you.’ ‘Buy him,’ says the soma -seller. ‘I will buy him for one-sixteenth [of the cow].’ ‘King Soma is certainly worth more than that,’ says the soma -seller. ‘Yes, King Soma is worth more than that; but great is the greatness of the cow,’ says the adhvaryu. ”

This scene is the basis for every economy. But why must the soma be purchased — and why does it have no effect unless purchased? Why, if not simply for emphasis, does the text explain several times that it is referring to “bought soma ”? Because the debt comes before the gift. We are born in debt, we make offerings and then — in time, through ritual — we receive the gift. The trader represents the Gandharvas who intercept Soma, a primordial clash between sky and earth. This reminds us that Soma does not arrive as a simple gift, even for the gods. They have to redeem him from the Gandharvas. They had to become “debtless” toward them. And, even earlier, the soma itself had been captured by Gāyatrī to ransom Suparṇī (or Vinatā) from slavery. There is always a payment to be made before anything is obtained. This is because nothing ever happens between sky and earth without some obstacle. There is always at least the shot of an arrow, something is always snatched away. The consequences of that act then weigh upon life on earth. Anyone who disregards them knows nothing about the heavens.

* * *

The sacrificer approaches a priest sixteen times and tenders his ritual fee. The dakṣiṇā can be of four kinds: “gold, a cow, cloth, and a horse.” The distribution of fees is made following a strict order. The last to be paid is the pratihartṛ priest, entrusted with the simplest task: to keep the cows, “so that he [the sacrificer] does not lose them.”

Watching this scene, in its meticulous arrangement, one might think it is the most recent part of the rite — almost an addition aimed at sealing the closure of the ceremony with the offering of a payment to the priests who have performed it. A naïve, modern notion. The first to distribute ritual fees had been Prajāpati. The world, the gods, humans had only just begun to exist. Everything had just arisen from Prajāpati’s sacrifice. But Prajāpati was concerned all the same about distributing ritual fees, almost as if exchange had been there from the very beginning. To such an extent that this distribution of ritual fees could diminish the world — or even exhaust it, unless it were stopped.

This, at least, was the view of Indra, king of the Devas, who were always frightened of being ousted: by their brothers the Asuras, but also by men who tried to reach the heavens through sacrifice — or even, it was now discovered, by the ill-considered magnanimity of the Progenitor. “Indra thought to himself: ‘Now he is giving everything away and will leave nothing for us.’” Indra realized at that moment that the power of exchange and substitution, if left to itself, is uncontrollable and corrosive, like the power of a central bank that goes on printing money. So he stepped in with his thunderbolt, in this case a simple formula: the invitation to pray to him.

Indra obtained relatively little satisfaction for his troubles, compared with the solemnity and severity of the obligation connected with the ritual fees. Its principle is set out and repeated in this form: “There should be no offering, as they say, without a ritual fee.” This phrase comes close to being a postulate. And the implications that can be drawn from these few far-reaching and allusive words are endless. The postulate itself is only occasionally recalled, when it is appropriate — and is always accompanied by the phrase “as they say,” the simplest and quickest way of appealing to the authority of tradition. In this way we learn that you cannot offer something, thus perform a gesture (indeed the gesture) that is essentially gratuitous, without at the same time giving a dakṣiṇā, which is exactly the opposite: a fee, a payment for a particular work carried out by another. Thus implying that gratuity has a price. And not only does it have a price, but it has to have one. Gratuity must be connected with exchange (because the fee is given in exchange for the opus, the priest’s labor). But the exchange can arise only from the gratuitous act, with the simple offering, with the tyāga : the decision to “yield,” to abandon something, to let it disappear in the fire, while watching it, attentively.

In the story of King Soma, those who lose out overall are the Gandharvas. It is they whose main mission was to be the keepers of Soma who are now left as keepers of the void. It is a position that would have to be remedied, if the world wants to maintain its equilibrium. And so it was: “The gods officiated with him [man]. Those Gandharvas who had been the keepers of Soma followed him; and having come forward they said: ‘Allow us to have a part of the sacrifice, do not exclude us from the sacrifice; let us also have a part of the sacrifice!’

“They said: ‘And then, what is there for us? As in the yonder world we have been his keepers, so will we be his keepers here on earth.’

“The gods said: ‘So be it!’ Saying: ‘[Here is] your retribution for Soma,’ he assigns them the price of Soma.”

Soma has to be purchased because it was stolen from the heavens — and the price is paid so as to silence its keepers, the Gandharvas. Devastating violence first, then an exchange that gives an illusion of fairness: this is not only the relationship that men have with the sky, but also that of the gods when they still had to conquer it.

The exchange appears in relation to an injury. More to cover it up than to heal it. The violence that took place in the heavens with the abduction of the soma cannot remain unanswered, but the answer can only be a reasonable and misleading one: a price for something that could not be substituted. The substitution arises in relationship to something it does not have the power to substitute. The hýbris of exchange is fully revealed when it claims to bring about substitution of something that cannot be substituted. And what is it that cannot be substituted? The soma. Only in relation to soma does exchange show itself in all its greed forcing into submission the totality of all that is.

* * *

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.