Ardor (48 page)

It can be said that, in the
Ṛ
gveda,
the two figures are used, first of all, as support for two phrases that have a formidable capacity to be expanded, as will be seen throughout the rest of the Veda. For Praj
ā
pati, it is the question repeated at the end of every verse, before his name is spoken: “To what god shall we offer the oblation?” For Puru
ṣ
a, the phrase appears in the last stanza: “The gods sacrificed the sacrifice through the sacrifice (
yajñéna yajñám ayajanta dev
ắ
s
).” The particularly dense and solemn nature of the formula is confirmed by the fact that it is repeated in identical terms, together with the whole of the next verse, at the end of hymn 1.164, the dizzying hymn of D
ī
rghatamas, the
ṛṣ
i
called Long-Darkness. Here too, scholars seem to hesitate when dealing with such a bold form of words. Geldner translates: “With the sacrifice the gods sacrificed to the sacrifice.” But
yajñám
is an accusative, not a dative. Renou translates: “The gods sacrificed the sacrifice through the sacrifice.” And the meaning obviously changes. But even Renou is still evasive. This is how he comments on the verse: “In other words, Man is at the same time the object offered (victim) and the object to which one aspires (divinity).” But at least one further explanation is needed: in the Vedic verse the endless circle of self-referentiality is outlined, which men have been obliged to pursue since then, up to Gödel and beyond. An endless circle that is not a defect of thought, but a foundation of thought itself. The
ṛṣ
is
were sure of it: “To this the human
ṛṣ
is
, our fathers, adhered when the original sacrifice was born in primordial times. With the mind’s eye it seems to me that I see them, those who first sacrificed this sacrifice.”

As to Puru
ṣ
a: it is true that the gods behaved toward him like the officiants who tie the victim to the
y
ū
pa
, the “post.” And it is stated clearly: “When the gods, in laying out the sacrifice, had bound Puru
ṣ
a as victim.” And the following passage is also true—that the gods cut Puru
ṣ
a into pieces, as happens with every animal victim (“when they had cut up Puru
ṣ
a”). But at the same time Puru
ṣ
a was already the sacri
fi
ce, as the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as fully explain. Together with Praj
ā
pati he had appeared from the golden egg that floated on the waters: “After one year, from it was born Puru
ṣ
a, this Praj
ā
pati.” And Praj
ā
pati, as is repeated insistently,
is
the sacri
fi
ce. So the gods, who operated on his body, were none other than his tools. And the same would one day be the case for men, who imitate the gods in their acts. Only this could lighten the guilt for having killed the one from whom, piece by piece, everything was born: meters, stanzas, chants, but also the sky, the sun, the moon. Guilt that the gods heaped onto men, before men, in turn, heaped it onto the gods.

*   *   *

During his endless vicissitudes, Praj
ā
pati seemed sometimes to ignore what he himself had done. After having generated the worlds of men and gods, he happened to look upon them as if they were something strange and unknown:

“Praj
ā
pati desired: ‘Would that I might conquer the two worlds, the world of the gods and the world of men.’ He saw the animals, the domestic and the wild ones. He took them and by means of them took possession of the two worlds: by means of the tame animals he took possession of this world and by means of the wild animals he took possession of the other world: for this world is the world of men and that other is the world of the gods. And so, when he takes the tame animals, with them he takes possession of this world and when he takes the wild animals, with them he takes possession of the other world.

“Were he to complete the sacrifice with the domestic animals, the roads would converge, the villages would have boundaries close to each other, and there would be no bears, men-tigers, thieves, assassins, and rogues in the forests. Were he to complete the sacrifice with the wild animals the roads would diverge, the villages would have boundaries far from each other and there would be bears, men-tigers, thieves, assassins, and rogues in the forests.

“As to this they say: ‘Certainly this, the wild animal, is not part of the cattle and should not be offered: if he were to offer it, the wild animals would soon drag the sacrificer away dead into the forest, for the wild animals belong to the forest; and if he were not to offer wild animals, it would be a violation of the sacrifice.’ And so they release the wild animals after having passed fire around them: thus, indeed, it is not an offering and nor is it a non-offering, and thus they do not drag the sacrificer away dead into the forest and there is no violation of the sacrifice.”

Praj
ā
pati seemed momentarily to have forgotten having made the world, which appeared to him from the very beginning split in two: this and that, the world of men and the world of the gods. That is: a world of untruth and a world of truth. Praj
ā
pati wanted to find a way of taking possession of these worlds. Then “he saw” the animals. That
to see
has a disturbing implication in this case, for it is always connected to an action. And the action is one alone: killing. In that “he saw,” there is still the perception of the prehistoric hunter.

To go ahead and conquer the world of men and the world of the gods, he had to use animals. Animals are the keyboard of the two worlds. At one and the same time, between animals themselves there is a gap that corresponds perfectly to the one between men and gods: men are equivalent to domestic animals, gods to wild animals. We might think, then, that Praj
ā
pati (the model of every sacrificer) would perform a double sacrifice. But he didn’t. On the one hand, the only means of action is sacrifice. On the other, sacrifice of wild animals would bring ruin to the sacrificer: the victim, being too powerful, would kill the killer and drag him away into
his
world. Here we have the metaphysical spark, at the point, as ever, where we are about to come up against the irresolvable contradiction. Reason would be crippled at this point, and would dare to go no further. Not so with the liturgy. The solution found—to release the victim, but first to carry a burning ember around it, a gesture performed only as a prelude to immolation—is not a childish attempt at compromise nor the indication of a collapse in reasoning. On the contrary, it is an indication that thought, in its inquiry into life, has encountered something that does not allow one straight, unambiguous solution but demands two conflicting responses. On the one hand, sacrifice can be nothing less than total—and must therefore include wild animals—because sacrifice corresponds with life itself. On the other hand, the sacrifice of wild animals would mean the end of the sacrificer—and therefore interruption of the sacrificial activity.

This situation should be compared with that of the modern world over a very similar issue: the killing of animals. On the one hand, such killing is practically unlimited, based on an alleged social need (the vegetarian diet cannot be imposed by law). On the other hand, all attempts at moral justification fail miserably, even by a civilization that prides itself on giving moral justifications for everything. The conflict rings out loud and clear. But it has not become part of the general awareness. Indeed, the issue is regarded as distasteful and is avoided. It is left to professional agitators like Elizabeth Costello to raise it in academic circles, as J. M. Coetzee, her chronicler, recounts. The reaction is a series of muffled coughs of embarrassment.

*   *   *

The first action of sacrifice personified is to flee. It runs away from the gods before running away from men. And its flight from the gods takes place while the gods are not yet gods. Only the sacrifice can, in fact, make them into fully fledged gods. We are never told exactly
why
the sacrifice runs away. But we know that being the sacrifice means first of all agreeing to be killed. There is a deep revolt, in every being, in the face of this—and more than any other, in that being who is the sacrifice itself.

Nothing in the sacrifice is immediate and certain: indeed, it is the result of an action of recovering, of calling the sacrifice back with words. The gods had to beg the sacrifice: “Listen to us! Come back to us!” And the sacrifice then agreed. But agreement came after a blunt refusal. Aware of the delicacy of the matter, the priests pass this creature, fragile as a seed, from hand to hand—“like a bucket of water,” in the words of S
ā
ya
ṇ
a. And so a tradition is established.

Sacrifice is an animal ready to escape. Maintaining silence is like shutting that animal inside an enclosure. And this gives the impression of possessing it. But if the sacrifice escapes, becoming spoken word, then the sacred formula—
ṛ
c
or
yajus
—will reveal its nature as a remedy extracted from evil itself: “When he withholds speech—since speech is sacrifice—he therefore closes the sacrifice within himself. But when, after having withheld speech, he emits some sound, then the sacrifice, once allowed its freedom, escapes. In that case, he should then murmur a
ṛ
c
or a
yajus
addressed to Vi
ṣṇ
u, for Vi
ṣṇ
u is the sacrifice; so he captures the sacrifice once again; and this is the remedy for that violation.”

*   *   *

At the center of the sacrifice we find an obscure word:
medha
, the sacrificial essence that circulates in the world like water and accumulates in a hundred beings fit for sacrifice. “Essence” here is not to be understood (only) in the metaphysical sense:
medha
means “marrow,” “juice,” “sap.” “In the beginning the gods offered man as a victim. When he was offered up, the sacrificial essence,
medha
, left him. It went into the horse.” And, after the horse, into the ox, into the sheep, into the goat, and lastly into rice and barley. Sacrificial substitution therefore implies that a life-giving substance continues to flow, even though it is housed in different receptacles. The passage from animal to vegetable is only one of these passages. But we should not imagine that this happens because sacrifice is being made more and more innocuous. On the contrary: the fact of killing is also claimed for rice and barley.
All
of that which possesses sacrificial essence,
medha
, is killed. Rice and barley no less than man or ox. The process is one, the cycle is the same, for “he who knows thus.”

“Now when they lay out the sacrifice, celebrating it, they kill it; and when they press King Soma, they kill him; and when they obtain the victim’s consent and cut it up, they kill it. It is by means of a pestle and mortar and with two millstones that they kill the offering of grain.” The Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as have often been accused of being “immensely monotonous.” And yet at times—indeed so frequently as to rebut any accusation of monotony—we find sentences or passages in those texts that describe with great clarity and concision what others elsewhere have been loath to put in writing. The scriptures in many different civilizations have always been reticent about the act of killing. It is indeed a favorite opportunity for euphemism. Not so in the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a.
The act of killing, generally a natural part of sacrifice, is applied here first of all to the sacrifice itself: celebrating a sacrifice implies the killing of the sacrifice. What this means is not immediately clear, but it can be linked to the stories where the sacrifice runs away from the gods in the guise of a horse or an antelope. The sacrifice can be an abstraction—and sometimes runs away in the face of similar abstractions, such as “priestly sovereignty.” But likewise, a plant that is a king—Soma—can be killed. Or a simple offering of grains of barley. Or an animal victim. Most people would use the word
kill
only for the last of these. Whereas for the Vedic ritualists the killing of the animal victim is only one of many instances in a series of killings. This procedure could be read as the opposite to euphemism. Instead of toning down the violent occurrence, it is extended to apply to everything, since what happens in the sacrifice involves the whole of existence and is to be found at every level, among abstract concepts just as much as among plants.

*   *   *

In Sanskrit, in Greek, and in Latin, killing was defined as a “consent” by the animal to be immolated. In India, killing took place outside the sacrificial area and was not to be seen by anyone except the
ś
amit
ṛ
, the slaughterer who performed the act. And even where a vegetable substance such as
soma
was sacrificed, the pestle had to strike it in the presence of someone who was blindfolded.

In factory farms, right now, millions of animals spend a life of agony crammed together in spaces that prevent them from any movement, before being killed as hastily as possible. According to food industry ideology, this takes place with the “consent” of the animals themselves, who are supposed to feel
more secure
in such conditions.