Ardor (49 page)

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When certain crucial stages were reached, various actions served to sidestep or surmount a contradiction that would otherwise have been crippling. When the animal chosen as a victim is taken for immolation, could the sacrificer touch it or not? He must not touch it—it is said—because it is being taken to its death. He must touch it—it is said—because “that [victim] that they are taking to the sacrifice is not being taken to its death.” Which argument is right? Both are. But which should be followed? If the sacrificer touches the victim, he makes contact with death. If he does not touch it, he is cut off from the sacrifice. So what should he do? Watching the sacrifice, we would have seen the
pratiprasth
ā
t
ṛ
guiding the victim, touching it from behind with two skewers, the
adhvaryu
holding the hem of the
pratiprasth
ā
t
ṛ
’s robe, and then the sacrificer holding the hem of the
adhvaryu
’s robe. Moving forward in a line, in silence, like Bruegel’s blind men. But slightly bent in concentration. This was the answer. In this way the sacrificer touched and at the same time didn’t touch the victim. And in this way they thought to escape logic by means of ritual gesture.

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At the moment of immolation, those present are to avert their eyes. The animal is killed beyond the sacrificial boundary, next to the
śā
mit
ṛ
there is fire where they will cook the victim’s limbs, outside the trapezoidal area marked out for the sacrifice, to the northeast. As in Greek tragedy—and with a perfect correspondence of meaning—the killing takes place
offstage.
The rite and the tragedy are complex ceremonial activities that make it possible to work through that intractable event, which must not be witnessed.

And here is the main point at which the use of euphemism inherent in every sacrifice emerges. Before striking the victim, they cannot say: “Kill it!” because “that is the human way.” They have to say: “Make it consent!” Some regard this instruction as hypocritical; others as sublime. It is both. And, above all, it is what happens in any case, as soon as the mute act is clothed in words. But it would be naïve to think that the Vedic ritualists were eager to cover up or mitigate something. That certainly was not their style. When necessary, they knew how to spell things out very clearly: “When they make the victim consent, they kill it.”

The formula in the Brāhmaṇas corresponds precisely with the Roman ritual that required the meek consent of the victim in order for the ceremony to be faultless. And before that, the Delphic oracle had recognized that “if an animal consents by bowing its head toward the lustral water … it is right to sacrifice it.”

The worry continues even after the killing—or after the consent, if we want to use the language of the gods. At that moment the victim has become food for the gods. But “the food of the gods is living, immortal for the immortals,” whereas the victim is a lifeless animal, strangled or with its throat slit. The contradiction is intensified especially around the killing of the sacrificial victim, like specks emerging in various places on a canvas, marring its perfection. What should be done, then? At this point, the sacrificer’s wife was to be seen coming forward. She would turn to the sacrifice, praise it. Then she would approach the victim and begin to clean its orifices with water. The vital spirits passed out—had passed out—from there. But “the vital spirits are water.” And so that motionless body, freshly bathed, now returned to being “truly living, immortal for the immortals.” Another obstacle had been overcome.

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The first tangible form of evil is created by the anguish of the victim who is about to be killed. That anguish deposits itself in the heart. But the primary characteristic of evil is that, like energy, it cannot be eliminated, but only transformed, moved elsewhere. And so the evil passes from the heart of the victim to the spear that pierces it. But what will happen to the spear? The officiants would like it to be swallowed up in the current, near to the sacrificial ground. And so they cautiously approach the waters—seeking to assuage them, asking for their friendship. But as soon as the waters see them approaching with the spear, they draw back. Negotiation then begins. The officiants know they have to make a pact with the waters. They will agree not to throw the spear into them after the sacrifice to Agni and Soma—nor after that to Agni alone. And in exchange they will obtain an agreement that once the barren cow has been killed they can then, at the end of the ceremony, throw the spear into the waters. The ritualists felt satisfied with this, because with the barren cow “the sacrifice is completed.” And that which completes—they thought—has the power, due to its strategic position, to transfigure all that has gone before it. By freeing themselves from that extreme part of the evil, they could believe they were free of all evil. It would have been hard to achieve more than this.

The gods were the first to feel a sharp sense of guilt over the sacrifice. When the first victim was seized, they were filled with fear: “They did not feel inclined to that.” They knew what they were about to perform was the model of all guilt. They would pass this on to mankind. And so, whatever sacrificial speculation might one day be raised over guilt, to the point of wandering into abstraction or into the remotest realms of heaven or creation, at the end of the ceremony the perception of guilt would once again emerge, even more sharply, more insistently—and be concentrated on one object: the spear that pierces the heart. How can it be eliminated? Guilt does not decay, diminish, disappear. Like radioactive matter, it continues to emit radiation. Once again, it was a question of finding an answer to the unanswerable: “He shall bury the spear at the point where the dry and the damp meet.” A mysterious, indefinable point. A point—we can suppose—where the elements neutralize each other, where even anxiety would be suspended, inoperative, even if not entirely removed. This is what can be achieved: an impermanent balance. The anxiety remains. To get rid of the spear as soon as the barren cow has been slain: this pact remains valid even until today. The most effective measure has always been to forget it.

At the end of the sacrifice, rites are necessary in order to leave it. They correspond point by point with the rites celebrated to enter the sacrifice. The form A-B-B-A, known to anyone who studies music, originates here. The same also goes for any structure where the end must correspond with the beginning. And since, at the beginning, there was nothing on the sacrificial ground, all traces must be destroyed, removed, wiped away. The grass used as a cushion for the invisible gods is burned, various utensils are destroyed, the sacrificial post is burned. Only one object remains intact—the spear that has pierced the victim’s heart—but it is concealed, for “the instrument of the crime or of the suffering must be hidden.”

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The final dilemma over the sacrifice emerged when Soma was killed. There was then an exchange between the gods and Mitra, whom the sacrificer recalls at the moment when
soma
is mixed with milk:

“He mixes it [
soma
] with milk. The reason he mixes it with milk is this: Soma was really V
ṛ
tra. Now, when the gods killed him, they said to Mitra: ‘You kill him too!’ But he did not like it and said: ‘I am certainly a friend (
mitra
) of all; if I am not a friend, I will become a nonfriend (
amitra
).’ ‘Then we will exclude you from the sacrifice!’ He said: ‘I also kill.’ The cattle moved away from him, saying: ‘He was a friend and has become a nonfriend!’ He was left without cattle. Mixing [the
soma
] with the milk, the gods then supplied him with cattle; and likewise now this [officiant] supplies it [to the sacrificer] mixing [the
soma
] with the milk.

“And to this they say: ‘Surely he did not like killing!’ So the milk that there is in this [mixture] belongs to Mitra, but the
soma
belongs to Varu
ṇ
a: and so it is mixed with the milk.”

Sacrificing implies complicity in the killing. Only in this way is it possible to avoid being excluded from the sacrifice. And this must be a far more serious threat, if Mitra, the Friend, the one who represents the brahmin’s purity, is prepared to take part in the killing, so as not to be excluded from the rite. But what is to be lost by being excluded from the sacrifice? Everything—if what there is to be gained is a result of action. And if action comes from desire. Anyone who accepts the action—and the desire that prompts it—also accepts the killing. It is the inflexible rule of sacrificial society, in this respect similar to—and perhaps the model for—every secret society, every criminal society. The group is based on complicity—and the most solid complicity comes from killing. That this then consists of pressing the juice of a plant can offer no form of reassurance. Indeed, it allows us to see how the realm of killing is larger than we might imagine, as large as the world.

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Any reference to
the invisibles
in Vedic times is not to be interpreted as a metaphysical allusion, but as referring to a situation that recurs in all “solemn,”
ś
rauta
, rituals. Those present belong to four groups: the sacrificer, for whose benefit the rite is celebrated (he is present, but, once he has been through the consecration, he plays no active part); the officiants (sixteen: the
hot
ṛ
s
, the
udg
ā
t
ṛ
s
, the
adhvaryus
), who have to pronounce the verses of the
Ṛ
gveda
, chant the melodies of the
S
ā
maveda
, murmur the formulas of the
Yajurveda
while the countless gestures that make up the ceremony are performed (this being the exclusive task of the
adhvaryu
); the brahmin, a priest who watches every detail and intervenes only when errors are made, otherwise remaining silent. But a last group is also there: the gods, invisible presences. Or more exactly: those who are crouching around the
ā
havan
ī
ya
fire, on fragrant layers of
ku
ś
a
grass, entirely invisible apart from Agni and Soma. Agni is always visible, for he is the fire. King Soma is visible in the
agni
ṣṭ
oma
, because in that rite it is the
soma
itself that is offered.

After being purified with the
pavitra
—the “filter,” which in this case is made of stalks of a sacred herb—for “impure, indeed, is man; he is foul within, insofar as he speaks untruth,” the sacrificer folds his fingers one by one toward his palm, evoking a different power for each, because he wants to
take hold
of the sacrifice. And the commentator adds: “The sacrifice is not in fact to be taken hold of visibly, as this staff or a garment, but invisible are the gods, invisible the sacrifice.”

Every sacrificial practice, beneath every sky, implies a relationship with the invisible, but never as in the India of the Vedic ritualists has that relationship been declared, celebrated, studied down to the tiniest details, including even the movements of the little finger. Thus we discover that the little fingers are the first to be moved in the gesture of taking hold of the sacrifice, and represent nothing less than the mind. This continual fluctuation between minuscule and huge, with equal attention to both, is the primary hallmark of Vedic liturgy. And such is the tension and the precision of that intense, ceaseless relationship with the invisible, that it is no surprise that the visible scene of Vedic life remained so bare, so unimpressive, so averse to all monumentality. And it is no surprise that its inhabitants had such a lack of interest in leaving behind any trace that was other than textual or whose object was not to be found in that invisible which could not be grasped like a staff or the hem of a garment, but was nevertheless to be grasped. The invisible is like the onetime forest animal—it is the prey that the liturgy teaches us how to hunt, showing us how to prepare the ground, how to stalk it, how to catch it. And finally how to kill it, as happened in hunting, and is now repeated in sacrificing.

There is one ultimate question on sacrifice, after all the others: why does the offering to the invisible have to be killed? Suffocating the animal, pressing the
soma
, grinding corn: all these are considered acts of killing. And already this suggests an intensity of thought, a concern to clarify that elsewhere was not felt necessary. But for the Vedic ritualists this was only the penultimate question. It was bound up with another, which they asked repeatedly: why is the celebration of a sacrifice also the killing of the sacrifice? Why, in the case of the sacrifice, does its performance have to involve not just the execution of the victim, but that of the sacrifice itself? Why is the sacrifice an act that not only kills, but kills itself?

Here we enter the most arcane area of Vedic liturgical speculation, an area in which it becomes increasingly difficult to find parallels in other civilizations. And it is an area where we have to move with caution, since “the gods love what is secret,” as the texts never tire of repeating, as soon as we cross the threshold of the esoteric.