Ardor (14 page)

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Praj
ā
pati’s drama took place without witnesses and continued for a long time, before even the arrival of the gods. It was an autistic drama, which saw no respite nor the consolation of an external viewpoint that could empathize or condemn—it didn’t matter which—but could at least play a part in what was happening. There was no way of distinguishing prodigies or disasters from mirages. And yet they were all that Praj
ā
pati had. This had to be the source for what one day, after long reworking, would naïvely be called
reality.

The ritualists soberly relate that: “While he [Praj
ā
pati] was practicing
tapas
, lights rose up from those armpits of his: and those lights are those stars: there are as many stars as the pores of those armpits; and there are as many of those pores as the
muh
ū
rta
, the hours, in a thousand years.” That was Praj
ā
pati’s heroic period. He held his arms high, in the darkness, for that is the position of those who invoke and those who make offerings. That is the measure of everything: the measure of a Person with arms held high. Globes of light rose from his armpits and lodged themselves up in the vault of the sky. They designed patterns, gradually illuminating a scene that was still desolate and silent. The first change happened after a thousand years—a breeze. It was “that wind which, blowing, cleanses everything here; and that evil which it cleansed is this body.” The wind that blew after a thousand years of heat and stagnation was certainly a relief for Praj
ā
pati. But we are not told how long it lasted nor whether it succeeded in eliminating—and not simply purifying—evil.

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Praj
ā
pati, a lonely god, the source of all things, is certainly not an omnipotent god. But every action of his is fateful, for he is the founder—and immediately also threatens to be fateful for himself. Producing his firstborn son, Agni, from his mouth, he makes him become a mouth, forced to devour food. From then on, the earth would be a place where someone devours someone else, where fire incessantly consumes something. Agni’s appearance, therefore, from the very first moment, coincides with Death.

The first drama had thus begun, without an audience. Agni is born—and Praj
ā
pati, deep in thought, has doubts about his son. He seems to have difficulty in understanding that, if Agni can do nothing but devour, the only being he’ll be able to devour is his father. Thus we see the first terrifying picture: “Agni turns to him with his mouth wide open.” This gaping mouth of the son, ready to devour his father, is what underlies the whole huge sacrificial construct, as if there would never be sufficient complexity and intricacy to conceal the brutality of that image. What happens afterward is a strange, mysterious process: “His greatness escaped from him [Praj
ā
pati].” The terror had produced in the god a separation, indeed the expulsion of a power, here called “greatness.” What was this greatness? It was Speech, V
ā
c. A female being that lived in Praj
ā
pati and whom terror had released from within him. And V
ā
c now stood before him like another being, who spoke to him.

Praj
ā
pati knew it was essential to offer something to stop his son from devouring him.
But there was no substance.
Only after much rubbing of hands did Praj
ā
pati manage to create something substantial: a liquid much like milk that was the sweat his terror had caused to pour from his skin. Offer it? Or not? At that moment a mighty voice resounded, outside of Praj
ā
pati, and said: “Offer it!” Praj
ā
pati obeyed—and it was then that the world’s fate was decided. As he performed the offering, he realized it was he himself who had spoken: “That voice was his own (
sva
) greatness which had spoken (
ā
ha
) to him.” Praj
ā
pati then gave out that sound:
sv
ā
h
ā
, the quintessential auspicious invocation that has accompanied countless offerings, up to today.

A violent, rushing scene, containing within it the first splitting of personality: if Speech had not been expelled from inside Praj
ā
pati and had not spoken to him, nothing could have persuaded Praj
ā
pati to perform the offering. On the other hand—and here the delicacy of the liturgist is exceptional—so long as Praj
ā
pati, namely the one who had produced everything in the world, including the gods, remained in doubt, “he stayed firm on the better side,” inasmuch as he had caused Speech, V
ā
c, to come out of himself. And his unknowing saved him.

The scene lets us see the first appearance of the offering as the ultimate means for self-defense. The moment is crucial, since the world from then on will be based on the offering—on an uninterrupted chain of offerings. But another irreversible, less apparent, event had occurred in that scene. And its consequences would be of no less importance. As soon as Praj
ā
pati formed the word
sv
ā
h
ā
for the first time, it brought self-reflection into existence.
“Sva
ā
ha,”
“that which is his has spoken,” implies the formation of two persons, of a first and a third person within the same mind, which is Praj
ā
pati. All of what we call thought—but also the whole immense, nebulous, frayed extension of mental activity—established then the two poles that would support every instant of awareness. As soon as one recognizes one’s own voice in a separate being, one creates a Double in continual dialogue with the one called I. And the I itself turns out not to be the ultimate, but only the penultimate foundation for what happens in the mind. Alongside an I there will always be a Self—and as well as the Self there will always be an I. That was the moment when they split apart and recognized each other. It was only because Praj
ā
pati’s I was gripped by uncertainty that he could then obey his Self, which spoke to him through V
ā
c. The ritualist doesn’t want to tell us this explicitly, but this is the nub of the doctrine. Here it appears in its remotest, rawest, most inaccessible form. As well as its decisive form. If Praj
ā
pati had not obeyed that voice, the world would not have managed to be born. The offering was the means, the only possible means for escaping from a deadly threat. A threat for the Progenitor, long before there were people. So people must imitate him performing the
agnihotra
, pouring milk into the fire, every morning and every evening.

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Praj
ā
pati was laid out and his body was one single pain. The gods approached to relieve his suffering—and perhaps to cure him. They were holding
havis
, offerings of vegetables, rice, barley, as well as milk, ghee, and cooked foods. With these offerings they wanted to treat Praj
ā
pati’s loosened joints. Especially between day and night, since Praj
ā
pati was made up of time. Hence dawn and dusk. That was the moment to act. So they established the
agnihotra
, the libation to be performed each day at sunrise and sunset. Then they concentrated on the phases of the moon, which also make time and its junctures visible. Finally they thought about the seasons, their beginnings, discernible and certainly painful in the body of the Progenitor.

The ritual action inevitably took place during those dangerous transitional moments when the presence of time was apparent: entering daylight and leaving it.
Agnihotra
thus became the most important rite, a cell that unleashed a vast energy, which invaded the totality of time.

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“Praj
ā
pati conceived a passion for his daughter, who was either the Sky or U
ṣ
as, the dawn:

“‘Let me couple with her!’ he thought and he coupled with her.

“This was certainly wrong in the eyes of the gods. ‘He who acts thus toward his own daughter, our sister, [does wrong],’ they thought.

“The gods then said to the god who is lord of the animals: ‘He who acts thus toward his own daughter, our sister, surely does wrong. Pierce him!’ Rudra, having taken aim, pierced him. Half of his seed fell to the ground. And thus it happened.

“In relation to this, the
ṛṣ
i
said: ‘When the Father embraced his Daughter, coupling with her, he spilled his seed on the earth.’ This became the chant called
ā
gnim
ā
ruta
: it shows how the gods made something emerge from that seed. When the anger of the gods subsided, they cured Praj
ā
pati and removed that arrow; for Praj
ā
pati is certainly the sacrifice.

“They said: ‘Think how all of this may not be lost and how it may be a small portion of the offering itself.’

“They said: ‘Take it to Bhaga, who is seated to the south: Bhaga will eat it as a first portion, so that it will be as if it were offered.’ So they carried it to Bhaga, who was sitting to the south. Bhaga looked at it: it burnt out his eyes. And so it was. That is why they say: ‘Bhaga is blind.’

“They said: ‘It has not yet been appeased: take it to P
ūṣ
an.’ So they took it to P
ūṣ
an. P
ūṣ
an tasted it: it broke his teeth. So it was. That is why they say: ‘P
ūṣ
an is toothless.’ And that is why, when they prepare a lump of boiled rice for P
ūṣ
an, they prepare it with ground rice, as is done for someone toothless.

“They said: ‘It has still not been appeased here: take it to B
ṛ
haspati.’ So they took it to B
ṛ
haspati. B
ṛ
haspati hurried to Savit
ṛ
, for Savit
ṛ
is the Impeller. ‘Give impulse to this for me,’ he said. Savit
ṛ
, as the one who gives impulse, therefore gave impulse, and having received impulse from Savit
ṛ
, it did not harm him; that is why since then it is appeased. And this is the first portion.”

The gods already exist, insofar as they are there on the scene, indeed they incite Rudra to shoot their father with his arrow to punish him for the wrong he is doing—certainly not the incest, since further on in the same
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, having reached the story of Manu and the flood, we read that Manu coupled with his daughter and “through her he generated this line [of people], which is the line of Manu; and whatever blessing he invoked through her, everything was granted to him.” On the other hand, it is from the very seed spilled on the ground by the wounded father, at the moment when he separates himself from his daughter, that the gods themselves will then emerge, starting with the
Ā
dityas, the greater gods. And they are born because it is they themselves who stir and warm their father’s puddle of seed, transforming it into a burning lake. It is as if the gods had to be born
a second time
—and this time from a guilty and interrupted sexual act: as if, in a certain way, they had provoked the violent scene so that they could be born in this new way, which people would one day regard as being quite unnatural.

The gods then experience two successive feelings: anger toward their father and a concern to look after him. The anger corresponds to the violence that is always present in the sacrifice. The healing of the wound, which is the sacrifice itself, would instead be the element of salvation implicit in the sacrifice. The two elements coexist in the tiny fragment of flesh torn from Praj
ā
pati’s body where he had been pierced by the arrow. That is the very flesh of the sacrifice, since “Praj
ā
pati surely is this sacri
fi
ce,” but the metal arrowhead is hurled from another world: Praj
ā
pati is the hunter hunted, the sacri
fi
cer sacri
fi
ced. This is unbearable even for the gods. That scrap of flesh is like an intolerable ultrasound that overwhelms them. The sacrifice is more powerful than the gods.

But this much was needed to form the
first portion
of the sacrifice, the first fruit that contained within it the devastating power and meaning of the whole thing: “Now, when [the officiant] cuts the first portion (
pr
āś
itra
), he cuts that which is wounded in the sacrifice, that which belongs to Rudra.” Sacrifice is a wound—and the attempt to heal a wound. It is a guilty act—and an attempt to amend it. “That which is wounded in the sacrifice, that belongs to Rudra”: the work of the brahmins, and of everyone else, is always a vain attempt to heal a wound that is inherent in the very act when existence emerges, not only prior to mankind, but prior to the gods. The gods, then, were only spectators and instigators. Praj
ā
pati, Rudra, and U
ṣ
as were actors. And the scene was a world before the world, a world that will never become identical to the world.

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