Ardor (8 page)

The philological choice was very odd, as if Plato’s
Republic
had continued to circulate without its tenth book, which contains the story of Er the Pamphylian, who, twelve days after his death, “was already lying on the funeral pyre, when he came to life again and told the story of what he had seen in the other world” with descriptions that, from then on, became embedded in Western thought. Or as if, remaining on Indian soil, the
Mah
ā
bh
ā
rata
had been published without the
Bhagavad G
ī
t
ā
.

The
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, in the Eggeling edition, does not therefore contain the “hundred paths”—the hundred “lessons,”
adhy
ā
yas
, to which the title refers—but only ninety-four of them. To read the last six we have to continue on with the
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yaka Upani
ṣ
ad.
And there is a further twist: not only has the amputation of the text become accepted, but an entirely baseless theory has developed over many years about the existence of a radical contradiction between the early Upani
ṣ
ads and the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as, coinciding with a revolt by the “princes” (the
k
ṣ
atriyas
, according to Renou’s translation) against the mean brahmins, who were superstitiously devoted to ritual. And it has therefore been decided, with supreme scholarly arrogance, to ignore the declaration in the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
itself, at the end of its final part, that this is the work of one of those brahmins: Y
ā
jñavalkya. To be unequivocally recognized as the author of
and
character in both the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a and the subsequent Upani
ṣ
ad, Y
ā
jñavalkya had to wait for the brilliant article by Louis Renou: “Les Relations du
Ś
atapathabr
ā
hma
ṇ
a avec la B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yakopani
ṣ
ad et la personnalité de Y
ā
jñavalkya.” Published in 1948 in
Indian Culture
, a journal with a limited circulation and dotted with numerous Vedic acronyms and abbreviations as well as copious philological discussions, that study can be found today, all by itself, in the second volume of Renou’s
Choix d’études indiennes.
A crucial issue—the recomposition of the first clearly recognizable
author
to appear in Vedic India—continues thus to remain in philology’s protective shadow. And yet no one could be as worthy as Y
ā
jñavalkya to stand as a Vedic counterpoint and counterpart to the Buddha.

*   *   *

The brahmin is recognized by a certain light, by a brightness called
brahmavarcasa
, “brahmin radiance.” That light is given out by
brahman
and it is the brahmin’s only purpose, observed Y
ā
jñavalkya: “The brahmin should seek this: to be illuminated by
brahman.
” But the kindling of that light takes place at the same time as that of the fire, of the meters, and of the seasons. The brahmin who recites the “kindling verses (
s
ā
midhen
ī
)” is himself one of those whom the verses must kindle. And, in the same way that the fire accompanied by the verses has a more intense light, “invulnerable, untouchable,” so too will the brahmin have a light that is different from every other man. This is the perceptible origin of his authority. If it is ever said, often with some resentment, that the brahmin appears “invulnerable, untouchable,” it will be because there is still one last, perhaps even distorted, glimmer of the firelight transmitted in him that another brahmin had once kindled when pronouncing the “kindling verses.”

All the divine forms are present in the fire: when it is first lit and gives off only smoke, it is Rudra; when it burns, it is Varu
ṇ
a; when it blazes, it is Indra; when it dies down, it is Mitra. But the only form in which the fire emits an intense light, without any need for flame, is
brahman
: “When the embers glow intensely, that is
brahman.
And if anyone wishes to attain brahminic splendor, let him make his offering then.” The mysterious quality of the brahmins is above all a moment in the life of the fire, recognizable every day. The mystery appears as something that can be seen by all—a “manifest mystery,” as Goethe would one day say. It is no longer hidden, no longer inaccessible. The sacrificer who wishes to come close to it has only to choose
that moment
to present his offering. All that is required is constancy: the sacrificer shall always make his offering to the same type of fire for a year. Every time he must wait for the moment of the embers. He cannot make his offering one day to the blazing fire, one day to smoke, one day to the dying fire. It would be like searching for water by digging shallow holes with a spade, always in different places. Nothing will ever be found.

*   *   *

During Baudelaire’s last years, cartoonists ridiculed him for writing “Une charogne.” That poem was the most scandalous of all, more even than his erotic poetry. No poet, it was said, had ever dared to liken the body of his beloved to the abandoned carcass of an animal.

And yet someone prior to Baudelaire had, with no less daring, spoken of a carcass. It was Y
ā
jñavalkya, if certain words found in the fourth
k
āṇḍ
a
of the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
can be attributed to him. “The gods dispersed part of that smell and deposited it in domestic animals. This is the stench of carrion of domestic animals: no one must therefore hold their nose at the smell of carrion, this is the smell of King Soma.”

Two figures—the beloved and King Soma—appear in the foul smell of the carcass. For Baudelaire, there is a shudder of revulsion and secret gratification. For the moderns, it is the horror that is supposed to lurk behind the appearance. That is why they are so frantic. They rush away, they don’t stop, they fear that appearance will transform itself before their eyes. For Y
ā
jñavalkya, however, acceptance was complete. Indeed, it was connected to a precept imposed on a very primitive sense: the sense of smell, reluctant to obey.

Something remote and powerful had to be implicit in that prohibition. It had to go back to the most dreadful moment for the gods, when Indra had hurled a thunderbolt at the formless V
ṛ
tra, but wasn’t at all sure he had killed him. So he hid. Crouched behind him were the gods, equally doubtful and terror-stricken. They said to V
ā
yu, Wind: “V
ā
yu, go and find out if V
ṛ
tra is dead or alive; you are the fastest among us: if he is alive, come back straightaway.” V
ā
yu agreed, after having asked for a reward. When he returned, he said: “V
ṛ
tra is slain, do with the slain what you wish.” The gods rushed off. They knew that V
ṛ
tra’s body was swollen with
soma
, since V
ṛ
tra was born from
soma.
Each wanted to plunder the corpse, to take the largest portion of it. They realized that the
soma
stank: “Its pungent stench wafted toward them: it was not fit for offering nor was it fit for being drunk.” So once again they asked for V
ā
yu’s help: “V
ā
yu, blow over him, make him palatable for us.” V
ā
yu asked for another reward. Then he began blowing. The foul smell began to disperse. The gods deposited it in the smell of carrion that is in domestic animals. Then V
ā
yu blew again. Finally the
soma
could be drunk. The gods continued to squabble over its portions. Round about, the world was strewn with rotting carcasses. But the
soma
was also in them. People would be expected to remember this. If they came across them, they should not hold their noses.

The ritualists were extremely demanding: the
soma
, the intoxicating plant that grows on Mount M
ū
javant, might have become less easy to find, it might have disappeared, but the rites that celebrated it would have continued in just the same way. A substitute would have been given for something that was unique. A fatal step. The rite would have been celebrated with another plant that lacked the powers of the
soma.
But the hymns remained. And if one day, roaming about, any humans were to come across the carcass of an animal, they were forbidden to hold their nose. Even in that rotting body, as in all bodies, the
soma
had once been deposited. Indeed, that repulsive smell was the “distinctive sign of King Soma.” The
soma
is Good in its raw state. Already intolerable in itself, it becomes all the more intolerable when it is mixed with the “evil of Death,”
p
ā
pm
ā
m
ṛ
tyu
ḥ
. In that precise moment it has to be accepted, inhaled, left to penetrate into us. Good is something against which nature rebels. But nature has to be tamed. This is what rites are for. And not even this was enough for the ritualists. Thought must be extended even to chance. Even to a sudden encounter with the carcass of an animal while wandering off the beaten track.

*   *   *

That Self,
ā
tman
, which “in the beginning existed alone,” had the form of a “person,”
puru
ṣ
a
, but was not simply a man. And it saw nothing outside. It sought pleasure, but “pleasure is not for someone who is alone.” It therefore decided to split itself in two: a female and a male being. “For Y
ā
jñavalkya has said: ‘We are each one half.’” Shorter and more abrupt here, in keeping with Y
ā
jñavalkya’s style—but the doctrine was the same as that which Aristophanes would one day put forward during the symposium recounted by Plato.

Y
ā
jñavalkya’s observation has enormous implications. First, it explains why “the emptiness created is filled by the woman.” It was like this even in the beginning, because the Self, as soon as it split in two, coupled with that woman who had come out of him. “Thus men were born.” The first reference is made at this point to woman’s thought: “Then she reflected: ‘How can he have intercourse with me, after having produced me from himself? Come, I need to hide myself.’ She became a cow, he a bull. He joined with her: cows were born. She became a mare, he a stallion.” The gesture of the woman in flight (out of hostility? to seduce better? for both reasons?) and the zoological sequence are evoked with supreme rapidity. Strindberg’s war of the sexes and Zeus’s animal metamorphoses. They continue without respite: “Thus everything is produced that goes in couples, down to the ants.” And even though such stories of multiple and metamorphic coitus could be Greek, the detail of the ants is the hallmark of the Vedic author.

*   *   *

There is something about sexual pleasure that makes it different from everything else, and supreme. “
Ér
ō
s aníkate máchan
,” “Eros invincible in battle,” wrote Sophocles—and he was never proved wrong. But why is this so? Once again, the most immediate and convincing answer was given by Y
ā
jñavalkya: “In the same way that a man in the arms of the woman he loves knows nothing else outside, nothing else inside, so too this person (
puru
ṣ
a
), embraced by the
ā
tman
of knowledge, knows nothing else outside, nothing else inside.” No other pleasure is so akin to
ā
tman
, because no other leads so closely back to the beginning, when
ā
tman
had the “form of Puru
ṣ
a”—and that Person, alone and previous to the world, “was the size of a man and a woman in tight embrace.”

*   *   *

According to Renou, the
brahmodya
, with its high element of risk, was the formal unit that linked the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as to the Upani
ṣ
ads. As additional proof, in
k
āṇḍ
as
10 and 11 of the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
and in the part dominated by Y
ā
jñavalkya in the
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yaka Upani
ṣ
ad
, we meet “the same speakers, the same type of scenes, often the same particular phrasing.” So that it can be said not only that the Upani
ṣ
ads do not conflict, but also that “they are no other … than the faithful continuation of the Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as.”