Ardor (31 page)

The clearing used for celebrating the sacrifice was a setting where there was a risk at every step of offending or disturbing some presence. The water had to be placed to the north of the fire, not too far away. A short invisible line joined them. And the officiant had to take great care not to cross it. So powerful was the eroticization of the space—and above all that bare space where the officiants moved—that it is easy to see why they felt no need to make simulacra. The air was already crowded with them.

But fire and water were not the only powers that had to be heeded. The sacrificial ground was besieged by a mass of intruders—for the gods there were the Asuras, their brothers and enemies; for the officiants there were the Rak
ṣ
as. For the sacrificer, all of them were his rivals, his enemies. Nothing pleased these intruders more than interrupting the sacrificial work. To chase them off (over and over again, since they never let themselves be overcome once and for all) various stratagems were needed. The first was silence: the liturgy begins when speech is held back, for only silence assures continuity, unmarked by syllables and verbal forms. In the silence of mental discourse, such forms still exist, but as if reabsorbed in an aqueous element, from which they surface for just long enough to be submerged once again. Another stratagem is fire. Bringing the liturgical objects close to the flame is like beginning the process of
tapas
, “ardor,” that constant production of heat, in the mind and in the liturgical act, which will encompass the whole rite and will defend it from outside. The intruders will be driven back, flayed.

*   *   *

The scene of the sacrifice is an empty open space on a slight slope, dotted with the fires and the altar. The bitter conflict of elements that is about to take place has to be mitigated. The tips of the bundles of grass are still wet: resting on the ground they dampen Aditi, the Limitless One who sustains us all. Another sheaf of grass, called
prastara
, is untied: it is Vi
ṣṇ
u’s braid. Yet another is strewn around the altar, since the gods sit here and they find it “a good seat.” The sacrificer and his wife will also sit on a sheaf of grass, which has another name. Lastly there is a sheaf of grass with an awe-inspiring name (
veda
, “knowledge”). Its purpose is not clear. During the ceremony, while an officiant is reciting a
mantra
, it is handed from one officiant to another, and finally to the sacrificer as well as his wife. The spare and barren scene is becoming dappled with soft, damp grass. The sacrificial ground is now strewn with seven sheaves of grass, just as the earth had been strewn with plants. And the altar—a beautiful woman of perfect proportions, stretched out in her nakedness before the eyes of the gods seated around her, and of the officiants—also has to be dressed, attractively, veiled with a heavy, sinuous cloak of grass: in various layers, at least three (the number must be uneven).

Added now to the spoons and ladles, to the seven sheaves of grass, are three stakes around the
ā
havan
ī
ya
fire. The scene is already animated in a vast hallucination: the sacrificer recognizes his body in the spoons and ladles, he feels it crossed by the breath of life; he recognizes Vi
ṣṇ
u’s braid placed on the altar that the officiants are busy clothing. He sees the grasses multiplying, as in the beginning of time, spread over the ground so that the gods find a comfortable bed. Lastly, three fencing stakes are added around the fire. Who might they be? Their closeness to the fire suggests something lofty and secret. They are the first three Agnis: the first
dead
gods. And dead through fear of themselves, of fire. Through fear of being unable to deal with the nature of fire. They are a first warning of death as bare absence. It is an example of how the gods bring back the dead: in the form of stakes. High pathos cloaks the figures of the first three Agnis. Mute, they have no wish to tell us what happened to them when they died. And neither will Agni comment on that act of restitution performed by the gods. But we know he is reconciled to it. Thus he has assumed the role of
hot
ṛ
, of “invoker”—and his ceaseless movement stimulates the very life of the sacrifice. Life itself.

The three stakes never told the story of their flight, their terror and their suffering, but they realized the gods were using them. Without their rigid presence, Agni would never have accepted his responsibilities. In this way they felt they could ask what the gods are accustomed to ask: a part of the sacrifice. And they had the part of the sacrifice that
is lost
, the part that is accidentally spilt. A subtly metaphysical solution: to those who are lost goes that which is lost. And at the same time a great relief for men who live in terror of being unable to completely offer what they are offering, of losing an essential part of it—through clumsiness, outside attacks, ignorance. At last they would know that nothing is lost: the earth receives it and transmits it to the three brothers who had themselves disappeared into the ground.

Finally, another three characters appear on the ever more populated and animated scene of the sacrifice. Once again three pieces of wood: but this time they are alight. The first brushes past one of the three brothers of Agni. With that slight contact, as with two old friends, the invisible fire is lit. Then it is the visible fire that has to be lit: the burning ember is brought close to the center of the altar while one officiant pronounces a verse in the
g
ā
yatr
ī
meter. The fire cannot be lit unless he pronounces it, for only words spoken in that meter give power, give meaning to the action. At the same time, what the ember lights is the
g
ā
yatr
ī
itself. And the
g
ā
yatr
ī
in turn lights the other meters, one after the other. It is the first prodigy: the lighting of those verbal beings—the meters—which carry the oblation to the sky, like mighty birds. And from the sky they will come down among mankind. So enormous is this event that the other two embers must imitate it, in other kindling sequences: the second lights springtime, which lights the other seasons and sets in motion the circulation of time. Lastly, the third ember will kindle the brahmin, the last being who has to travel with the oblation toward the gods—and he too waits to be set alight. A meter, a season, a priest: the fire touches them and everything starts to exist.

*   *   *

Long before fire aroused fear, fire had felt terrified of itself, and of what men (and gods) would ask it to do. Agni’s three older brothers had chosen to vanish, to disappear forever, rather than take responsibility for the fire. They knew that guilt and anxiety are created through dealings with the gods that would have to be nourished with the flame of sacrifice. And it was the task of fire to point out the way, the many stopping places between the sky and the earth, the routes that Agni would endlessly follow. This was to be life, the world. And Agni, as had also happened to other gods—even to
Ś
iva, to Brahm
ā
—had felt a strong aversion. He tried to hide. Every time we see life born like fire from water—or even just light glowing on water—we have to remember it is a sign of Agni’s hiding place, from which Agni was snatched. This ought to be enough for us to understand that the first divine feeling toward life—life as it appears on earth—was simple anxiety and rejection. If this is not clear, it will never be clear later on why all ceremonial acts take place in an atmosphere of latent terror—as if handling something highly dangerous, something that has to be got rid of: guilt, similar to the Buphonia festival in Athens, when the axe that had slain the first ox was passed from hand to hand. With Indra—when he killed Vi
ś
var
ū
pa, the three-headed son of Tva
ṣṭṛ
the Craftsman—it was the three mysterious
Ā
ptyas who accepted the task of absorbing the guilt themselves. This wasn’t enough, though, and for a long time, like an abandoned animal, Indra suffered the consequences of his crime: the killing of a brahmin, the most serious offense, which sticks in the throat of the assassin like a burning ember. The mad rush of guilt, rejected by all those who touch it, ends up in the
dak
ṣ
i
ṇā
, the “ritual fee” made to the priests, which is the origin of money and also a form of V
ā
c, Speech. It is a mystery that will pop up everywhere: punctual, penetrating, subtle.

It was not only Agni who was gripped by terror and fled, but also Indra, after having hurled the thunderbolt at V
ṛ
tra. We find at a certain point that even
Ś
iva disappeared. Not through terror, of course—
Ś
iva can never be accused of feeling terror—but certainly as a refusal, a rejection of something that could also be the world. Indra even yields at the moment that ought to mark his triumph, the completion of his enterprise. In front of V
ṛ
tra, Indra feels weaker, he doesn’t trust his own thunderbolt. And the one who goes looking for him, to persuade him to return, is Agni, another fugitive, who in turn had not felt able to assume the role of messenger of the sacrifice. It might be said that all these gods occasionally feel paralyzed when faced with the task of existence—and of having a purpose. Such moments were—perhaps—the model for the radical rejection of the world that would later emerge in many forms among men in India.

*   *   *

“After which he should cast off the vow, saying: ‘Now I am he that I really am.’” The sacrifice is complete. Hundreds of prescribed gestures have been performed. Hundreds of formulas have been spoken. What is to be done? It’s a tricky situation. The sacrifice has to be treated like a skittish animal: first remove its yoke, which no longer has a purpose, and at the same time pour water—the water described as
pra
ṇī
t
āḥ
, “carried forth”—because “the sacrifice, while it is unyoked, backing away could injure the sacrificer.”

The sacrificer then has to think about himself. He too has a yoke to remove: the vow. How does he express it? The sacrificer knows he ought to say: “I pass from truth to untruth,” to describe exactly what he is doing. But it would be inappropriate, unseemly to acknowledge this, after the fervor of the liturgy. So he resorts to a formula that might seem tautological and yet is discreetly, humbly allusive: “Now I am he that I really am.” In other words: an ordinary man who knows he is being ignored by the gods. And he returns with a certain relief—though he doesn’t dare say it—to an anonymous, undisciplined, negligible life. But a life freed from the constraint of meaning.

What is the underlying presumption? Truth is an unnatural state for man. Man enters such a state only through the artificiality of the vow and the long sequence of actions (rites) connected to it. But he cannot remain there. The procedure for leaving the vow is just as important and delicate as that for entering it. In some way, man yearns to return to untruth, just as he yearns for sleep after the strain of a long vigil. Truth, whose name (
satya
) refers to “that which is” (
sat
), is an impermanent state for man, toward which he aspires and from which he slips away. Normality, the constant state of being, is in untruth, which immediately reenvelops man once he leaves the
vow
, the sacrificial action.

*   *   *

The most important step in the task of
setting up the fires
is the attempt to transfer the fires from the outside world to the remotest depth of the sacrificer’s body. The whole doctrine of
yoga
rests on this operation, since in the beginning “the fires surely are these breaths:
ā
havan
ī
ya
and
g
ā
rhapatya
are the exhaling and the inhaling.” The origin of this difficult transposition was an episode in the war between the Devas and Asuras. The Devas were not yet gods then—and were therefore mortals, as the Asuras were. Between the two enemy forces there was only one immortal being—Agni—to whom everyone turned. So the Devas thought of infusing him into themselves. They let themselves be invaded by that immortal being—and so gained the advantage over the Asuras. It was a question of prefixes: they had chosen
ā
-dh
ā
-
, “to establish inside,” rather than
ni-dh
ā
-
, “establish below” (in the outside world, where grass is burned and meat is cooked), to which the Asuras were stubbornly attached. From then on, it became much easier to talk about inside and outside, about what happens visibly in the world and what happens invisibly in each person.
Tending the fire
was a single action that could just as well be carried out sprinkling butter on the flames or speaking words of truth. As Aru
ṇ
a Aupave
ś
i said one day: “Worship, above all, is truthfulness.”

*   *   *