Ardor (55 page)

*   *   *

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
a
ś
vamedha
—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 V
ṛ
tra.” 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.

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There is always something
prior
to the gods. If it is not Praj
ā
pati, from which they originated, it is V
ṛ
tra, 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 V
ṛ
tra, 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. V
ṛ
tra lay dying on one side. The gods hid themselves in fear on the other. They sent V
ā
yu, Wind, to investigate. He blew on V
ṛ
tra’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 V
ṛ
tra’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 V
ā
yu, of a breeze that blended with the liquid
soma.
This was the Vedic version of the Spirit that revives: V
ā
yu who disperses V
ṛ
tra’s stench and transforms the liquid within his body into an intoxicating and enlightening drink.

So V
ā
yu 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 V
ā
yu. They took their dispute to Praj
ā
pati. This was his ruling: Indra would always have a quarter of V
ā
yu’s share. Indra said he wished, through
soma
, to have language—indeed, the articulated word. From that time on, through Praj
ā
pati’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 Puru
ṣ
a 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.

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Certain filters, called
pavitra
, are essential in worship—either two
ku
ś
a
blades, used for purifying water, or two strips of white wool, used for the
soma.
Their use recalls the cosmic drama between V
ṛ
tra and Indra. V
ṛ
tra’s nature was that of covering (
v
ṛ
-
), enveloping, enclosing within him, obstructing every “evolution,” a word that in Sanskrit corresponds with
prav
ṛ
tti
, the word that indicates life being lived. This
monstrum
par excellence, since he held everything within himself, also held supreme knowledge—the Vedas—and
soma
, the intoxicating drink. For Indra, killing him meant not only making life possible, but also conquering what could make life inextinguishable: knowledge. And it also meant that the waters flowed, brimming over into the world, where they produce the surplus that is life itself. Yet, even though Indra’s gesture implied salvation, it was also a guilty act, one of immense guilt, commensurate with the enormity of his victim. The first sign of guilt is the impurity that has poured into the world since then, through V
ṛ
tra’s wound. This liquid is precious but also putrid. And it is enough to contaminate everything, except for those waters that rose up in disgust to escape evil contact, becoming
ku
ś
a
grass. The waters, though immediately contaminated, at the same time escape impurity—at least in part. So they will be used to sprinkle, and then consecrate, every element. And here a subtle theological problem appears: how can those who have not been consecrated consecrate? This too is a guilt for which the officiant “makes amends”: already a first sign that guilt extends up to the peak of purity.

The presence of filters enables us to understand that the world is an impure mass. If this were not so, it would not be alive, but would still be closed up in V
ṛ
tra’s vast belly. Now, when even the waters are suspect, since they are in part contaminated, what will allow the return to purity? The world has to be
filtered
, in the same way that the prodigious
soma
has to be filtered, which otherwise would not be tolerable. And here is a crucial step: the only element that can provide help, in this scenario of a cosmic swamp, is the stirring breeze. The wind that “blows purifying (
pavate
)” corresponds with the two blades of grass that filter,
pavitra
: but why are there two blades of grass but only one wind? Here follows another decisive step for Vedic theology: there are two filters because there are two basic breaths (inhaled and exhaled), which, by entering the body and leaving it, make it live. So the wind is those breaths and those breaths are the two filters of
ku
ś
a
grass. This dazzling equation introduces the supreme function of breath (from which the whole of
yoga
and countless reflections on breathing follow) and explains why the world, this formless and fetid mass of elements where the liquid held in V
ṛ
tra’s wounded body continues to flow even today, needs a breath of wind to filter it, to give life to it, to make it usable in a ceremonial act.

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In the beginning, the gods lost the
soma
; men did not have it. But they both found themselves performing the same gestures when they recovered it (or bought it): practicing
tapas
, fasting—with ever greater rigor. In the meantime, men as well as the gods “heard its sound,” the sound of
soma.
What was this sound for the gods? We are not told. But we know what it was for people. The sound of the lost
soma
said: “On such and such a day the buying will take place.” For the gods, an undefined sound; for men, the announcement of an exchange, a sale. This is the passage from divine to human: abrupt, curt. But we are made to understand that, without exchange, man does not exist. Or, at least, he can never obtain
soma.
As for immortality, it would be naïve to think that for men it may mean an endless duration. So it is made clear: “This assuredly is immortality for man: when he attains a full life.” The most important thing for man is to give form to life, making it whole, perfect, in the same way that the fire altar must be whole, perfect. There is no answer to the question that worried Praj
ā
pati’s creatures: does the perfect life include Death in it? On this there is no answer, either positive or negative.

*   *   *

The “comedy of innocence” is just the same for the bear about to be killed by hunters as it is for Soma. When the stones are on the point of striking the stalks of the divine plant to bring out the juice, the intention to kill must be directed toward any enemy or being that is hated. Then the sacrificer can say: “Here I strike
x
, not you.” The guilt therefore resides not in the act—the killing of Soma—but in the mental picture accompanying it. And if the sacrificer has no enemies? If he hates no one? Then he directs this thought, with hatred, to a blade of straw: “If he hates no one, he can even think of a straw, and thus no wrong is incurred.” Corollaries: the act is a necessity, an inevitable step. And it is in itself a guilty act. But anyone who doesn’t want to increase his own guilt, which belongs already to the fact of existing, has to separate their mind from the act, to direct it toward an object that mitigates the guilt. The straw indicates that we are approaching the nonexistent and the invisible. Does anything exist beyond the straw? The detachment that K
ṛṣṇ
a will teach Arjuna in the
Bhagavad G
ī
t
ā
, the nonadherence to the act. This is one step higher than simply diverting the act onto another object.

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“And he [Soma], insofar as he is generated, generates him [the sacrificer]”: a phrase that rings out three times. It touches on a delicate and crucial point: mutual procreation. A general rule among the gods, it now finds a ritual counterpart. Nothing exists in itself, all is the result of work. Likewise for
soma
: the plant from the heavens does not exist until it is pressed, filtered, and sprinkled by the sacrificer and by the priests. But, at the point when
soma
comes into being, it produces the sacrificer. The existence of the
soma
brings about a transformation in the person who with his actions has brought it into being.