Roberto Calasso - Ardor

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.