Ardor (26 page)

Study of the Veda, known as
sv
ā
dhy
ā
ya
or “inner recitation,” had to be done beyond the confines of the village, to the east or north, where the roofs were out of sight. It was the first indication of a process by which the simple acquisition of knowledge would get gradually more distant from society and unshackled by it. But study could also be carried out in other ways, even in bed: “And, in truth, if he studies his lesson, even stretched out on a soft bed, oiled, adorned and completely fulfilled, he is burned by
tapas
up to the tips of his fingernails: and so the daily lesson must be studied.” Here we see a figure we thought was modern: the reader, described much as the young Proust might have been described, given over to his
journées de lecture.
Once again we can see Vedic open-mindedness: to practice
tapas
we don’t have to cross our legs or subject ourselves to those “mortifications” that some regard as the very meaning of the word
tapas.
No, even
luxe, calme et volupté
may help—or at least not hinder. It is enough that the fervor of the mind runs without respite, and burns “up to the tips of the fingernails.”

IX

THE BR
Ā
HMAṆAS

He who knew the taut thread on which all creatures are woven, he who knew the thread of the thread, would know the great Exegesis.

—
Atharvaveda
10.8.37 (trans. L. Renou, 1938)

He who knows the taut thread on which these creatures are woven, he who knows the thread of the thread, knows the great essence of
brahman.

—
Atharvaveda
10.8.37 (trans. L. Renou, 1956)

The Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as are the part of the Veda most neglected by scholars and most ignored by readers. In the second volume of Dandekar’s
Vedic Bibliography
, the list of writings on the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as fills eight pages, while thirty are taken up by the Upani
ṣ
ads and twenty-eight by the
Ṛ
gveda.
We can guess that not so many scholars, and even fewer readers, have taken any interest in them. And we might wonder why.

A first reason is to do with form, literary genre. The
Ṛ
gveda
, after all, can also be read as the most magnificent—and also most persuasive—example of Symbolist poetry, while the Upani
ṣ
ads, as Schopenhauer quickly recognized, can be read as outstanding metaphysical texts. But the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as were neither poetry nor philosophy (only Deussen dared to put them at the beginning of his universal history of philosophy, but his example has not been followed). The Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as are continually laden with gesture: “He [the officiant] does
x
and
y.
” This is the phrase that most often appears, each time prompting the thought: why does “he” do
x
and not
z
? The underlying assumption is that supreme importance is to be given to the liturgical gesture. And that ritual is given preeminence over every other form of thought, as if ritual were the immediate way by which thought itself becomes manifest. This, though, was exactly what the West wanted to shake off—starting with the Greeks and then through the whole of Christian tradition—like superstitious ballast. Liturgical reforms in the Catholic Church, over the centuries, mark a progressive, ruthless reduction in the range of ritual actions, and words accompanying these actions, up to the poor state of things in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. As for the Reformation, more than arguing particular points of theology, it urged a general rejection of the fripperies of worship. And yet, the heart of Christian doctrine is sacramental, linked to gestures that cannot be replaced by words. Hymns of thanksgiving, however lavish, can never substitute the gesture of the priest who
breaks the bread.
The sacramental act is the greatest obstacle for anyone wishing to adopt the regime of substitution. For it is an irreplaceable gesture, and a gesture that has immediate effect on the invisible. But if the invisible is to be discarded, then its intermediary must also be eliminated.

*   *   *

Witzel once observed, in passing, that the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as are “one of the oldest examples of Indo-European prose.” An invaluable comment, which very few seem to have given any thought to. In fact, if it is true that the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as “are still regarded as incomprehensible and tedious by the very scholars who study them,” then why take any interest in their form? And yet prose—this varied, flexible, prehensile form, capable of stretching to every level, from manuals on horse riding or hydraulics up to Lautréamont, this form that has become normality itself, so normal as to become transparent, to the point of being barely noticed—made its appearance on Indian soil through this unattractive and often incomprehensible literary genre. The Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as are not thought (or at least: they are not what people today are accustomed to consider as thought); and they are not stories (or at least: they are a series of fragmented and continually interrupted stories). Rather, they give instructions above all about ceremonies whose inner meaning, already obscure, often becomes even more obscure due to the explanations the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as seek to provide. History has taken enormous trouble to chemically separate these elements, associating them with certain injunctions: thought cannot tell a story, a story cannot be a way of thinking, ritual is an obsolete activity that we can do without. To understand just how deeply these convictions are embedded in the mind, we need only listen to ordinary language. If something is described as a “myth,” it is usually regarded as a baseless story; if something is described as a “ritual” act, it generally means it is a hollow and by now ineffective practice. This is diametrically opposed to the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as, where “myth” is the very fabric of stories that have meaning, an everlasting meaning, and “ritual” is action in its most effective form. If there is such a misunderstanding—and it couldn’t be greater—over the two words that are the foundation of story and gesture, it is no wonder if the people of modern times have developed such an aversion to this literary genre—more antiquated, jumbled, abstruse than any other—that is the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as. Their first emergence is usually dated, at the latest, to the eighth century
B.C.E.
The dating is contentious, as it always is in India. But certainly earlier than those Greek sages of whom we know. Thales, the first of the pre-Socratics in the Diels-Kranz edition, lived between the seventh and sixth centuries. Moreover, a text like the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
is so subtly arranged in its form as to suggest that it was elaborated over a long period. The Indian texts therefore clearly predate the earliest Greek speculation. But the subject matter is very similar—
ph
ý
sis
, the manifestation of that which is. It is a question of
giving names
to
ph
ý
sis
: in Greece it can take the form of poetry (Parmenides, Empedocles) or statements (Anaximander, Heraclitus). In India, it remains bound up with ritual, with gesture, even in the two longest and oldest Upani
ṣ
ads, the
Ch
ā
ndogya
and the
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yaka.
And, above all, the very form of the Upani
ṣ
ads—texts that were to be found
at the end
of a Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a—presupposes all the scrupulous, taxing, dauntless murmur of reasoning that precedes them.

The
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
belongs to the White Yajur Veda, a branch of the Veda devoted to the
yajus
, to the “formulas” recited by the
adhvaryu
during sacrifices. And the composition is painstaking, meticulous, always in danger of failing to keep a hold on the enormity of the material, all relating to the nature of the
adhvaryu
, this priest who works unceasingly and using every means—gestures, manual operations, words. While the other officiants spend their time chanting or watching in silence, the
adhvaryu
acts and makes the ceremony go on. He is its whirring engine.

When Renou had the chance, at Pune, to witness a Vedic sacrifice of the simplest kind, that of the Full Moon and the New Moon, he was struck by the activity of the
adhvaryu
: “One was able to gauge the overwhelming role of the manual officiant, the
adhvaryu
, on whom almost everything depends, gestures and words, despite the assistance he receives from two acolytes.” While the
hot
ṛ
, the chanter, “appeared at the important moments, dominating everything with his tall stature and his vibrant voice,” the
adhvaryu
provided the background to that “ample drapery of verses” with his “short, disjointed formulas,” similar to the way of arguing in the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as—always starting, being interrupted, being forced to change direction, weaving the fabric of the work by resuming it at different points.

The school of the White Yajur Veda is different from that of the Black Yajur Veda, above all because there is a clear-cut separation between the
mantras
—or verse “formulas,” often taken from the
Ṛ
gveda
—and the commentaries on the ritual, which are in prose. We do not know and cannot guess what reasons lay behind this variance. But we can observe one result: the
birth of prose
, in the sense of a lengthy exposition, with no metric form, on a single subject: in this case the whole of the sacrificial rites. Until then, nothing of the kind had been seen in that form: of obstinate, meticulous, obsessive, relentless inquiry. Even if the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as would one day become misused, spurned and reviled as a literary style, something of these origins would continue to energize prose, especially where that humble and practical form has revealed its intent to pervade every corner of everything, as in Proust.
À la recherche du temps perdu
, in fact, can be read as an immense Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a, devoted to expounding and illuminating the fabric of time within that long ritual (a
sattra
) that was the life of its author.

The “flavor,”
rasa
, of the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, an unmistakable flavor that cannot be reduced to that of a metaphysical or a liturgical commentary, lies first of all in the uninterrupted sensation of
thinking the gesture
at the very moment when the gesture is performed, without ever abandoning or forgetting it, as if the spark of thought might be released only at that moment in which an individual being moves his body in obedience to a significant course. It would be hard to find other cases where the life of body and mind have coexisted in such intimacy, refusing to detach themselves for even a single instant.