B. SACRIFICE
Yajna
This sacrifice is the navel of the world.
RV I, 164, 35128
All power to our life through sacrifice!
All power to our lungs through sacrifice!
All power to our eyes through sacrifice!
All power to our ears through sacrifice!
All power to our backs through sacrifice!
All power to Sacrifice through sacrifice!
YV IX, 21
All this, whatever exists, is made to share in sacrifice.
SB III, 6, 2, 26
Sacrifice is a reliable ferry.
AB I, 13 (III, 2, 29)
The boat which father and son use for transport undergoes no damage.
Now sacrifice is the boat of the Gods.
JAIM B I, 165
One indeed is the sacrifice!
JAIM B II, 70
If one had to choose a single word to express the quintessence of the Vedic Revelation, the word yajna, sacrifice, would perhaps be the most adequate. Sacrifice is, in fact, an ancient, far-reaching, and pervasive intuition of the shruti. The conception of sacrifice, certainly, varied through the ages, and the term itself has received differing connotations, but the underlying intuition and its centrality have remained. The basic characteristic of yajna seems to be that of an action that reaches where it intends to reach, that really and truly offers something, that stretches out and extends itself. In other words, sacrifice seems to suggest an action that effectively “creates”, that is, it acts, is efficient, and produces what it intends. Or, again, sacrifice is the transitive act par excellence, the projecting act, the action that links directly the acting and its results in one and the same event. It is not something that, once done, remains suspended, as it were, independent from the act, but an action that forms part of the acting itself. The proper sphere of sacrifice is the sphere of communication, and communication constitutes the very structure of the universe. All this, of course, sounds inconveniently abstract, so it may become more intelligible if we proceed to describe the main themes related to sacrifice.
The conception of sacrifice found in the Vedas arises out of one of the two fundamental world views adopted by the human mind as it approaches the mystery of reality and seeks to discover therein the place of Man, that is, his human vocation. We could try to formulate this basic alternative in the following way. An early and universal human experience is the experience of the fact of change in the world or, in a word, that there is a becoming. Now, “becoming” can be understood in two ways: as a “coming from be(ing)” or as a “coming to be(ing).”
There is a trend within human thinking which leads to the assumption that nothing can come to be unless, somewhere and somehow, it already “is;” that nothing can be-come if it does not come from a Be, from a Being; that all that happens is potentially already there. This hypothesis assumes that there is a sort of infinite reservoir of possibilities, an infinite Being, a God, a Ground, ultimately responsible for all that is, for all change, for all becoming. The terms Immutability, Being, God, Creator, Ground, Origin, Substance, Essence, and a score of other notions convey this world view, and philosophies both inside and outside India have developed it to the highest degrees of subtlety and “depth.” In the beginning was Fullness, and from this Fullness everything came, that is, be-came, and to it everything will return.
Another human option follows the second part of the alternative. Becoming is here not a coming-to-be from a Be, from a Being: change is not evolution, that is, a development or unfolding from what was already there, though undeveloped, folded, unstretched. On the contrary, becoming is a coming into be, into being. Being is simply such because it is be-ing, because it has come to be. Let us not hastily jump to the conclusion that here Nonbeing has the primacy, 129 but let us rather dwell particularly on the intuition here expressed that Nonbeing “is” not and thus cannot be handled as if it were negative Being. To affirm that there is nonbeing, that there is “not-is,” is a contradiction in terms. The main reason for rejecting such an approach, however, arises from the notion of sacrifice as the primordial act, as Act, as the act that makes beings to be and is thus responsible for their becoming, without the assumption of a prior Being from which they come. In the beginning “was” Sacrifice. In the beginning “was” neither Being nor Nonbeing, 130 neither Fullness nor Void. We cannot properly say that at the beginning there was Sacrifice, because neither say nor was has any meaning before there were Being and Word; and yet this would be the least inappropriate way of expressing this intuition. It is here that sacrifice finds its proper focus. It is the Prajapati-sacrifice, in mythical terms, which gives birth to Being, as well as to beings, and which releases Being of the burden of having to be the origin and the cause of beings. 131
At the origin of every being there is a sacrifice that has produced it. The texture of the universe is sacrifice, which is the act par excellence which produces all that is. Now this primordial act of sacrifice is a pure act devoid of any ontic or ontological attribute, positive or negative: it “is” neither being nor nonbeing. It “is” an act of which we can be aware only in the action itself and in connection with the “actor” or the “acted,” though as innumerable texts emphasize we should distinguish, but not separate, four “moments”: the act, the action, the actor, and the acted (kriya, karman, kartr, karya). The act is the sacrifice proper, the action is its inherent result, the actor is the agent (which is nothing other than the act acting), and the acted is another aspect of the action, namely, the concrete result of the act. We may distinguish, then, act (actor) and action (acted), but all is summed up in the single act, for the act as such includes everything else.
In the context of sacrifice this fundamental intuition is here not expressed in terms of being or nonbeing; it is not the dialectical approach that was developed in later periods. It is, however, the basis and the starting point of all Indo-European philosophizing. We may recall the two traditions that are to be found within most of the cultures of the world: the substantialist tradition and the functionalist, the one giving primacy to the stable and the other to the dynamic. It must be added that the Vedic intuition cannot be said to incline toward one and only one of these two philosophical views, for the paradoxical and enriching fact is that the dynamic or Heraclitean tone of the first Vedas is followed by the static or Parmenidean tone of the Upanishadic period. Or, to put it in a rather untraditional way, the first Vedas, prior to the Upanishadic interpretation of them, include the seed of both the classical Hindu and the classical Buddhist conceptions.
We must recall, once again, that the Vedic Revelation opens up reality not by means of concepts or, generally, by the telling of myths, but by means of symbols. We need to be aware of symbols in order to enter into communion with reality. A concept relates to logical intelligibility and is expressed in the different notes or attributes that define a word. A symbol, when expressed in words, stands for all that the word reveals over and above the conceptual intelligibility, though the latter is not necessarily excluded. Moreover, a symbol allows for a much wider range of interpretations than does a concept. For this reason the interpretation of Vedic words as concepts, which then have to be reinterpreted allegorically and metaphorically, has led to the discrediting of this ancient wisdom, as if it were only a collection of phantasmagoria. The Vedas are neither a metaphysical system nor a metaphorical or allegorical document, and that is why a special method of approach to them is required, for here Philosophy and Poetry, Speculation and Art, Theory and Praxis, are as yet unseparated.
Next we may note that Vedic sacrifice, as we shall read in the chapters of this section, is undergirded by an important symbol. This symbol, having received one particular name at the beginning, goes underground, as it were, in the subsequent periods, but remains none the less active and effective, even though under different names. This symbol is rita. As its etymology suggests 132 and as related words confirm, 133 rita stands for that nonontological but nevertheless real principle of order and of activity. Rita is the very energy of the sacrifice; it is what triggers the sacrifice. We may remember that ardor, truth, and rita share an intimate relationship. 134 Truth without rita would not be true. 135 All the powers of ardor, concentration, energy, and the like are connected with rita. Indeed, the whole order of the universe comes from and is maintained by the dynamism of rita.
Rita is generally translated by “Cosmic Order,” which is a valid translation provided one bears in mind that cosmic order is not a fixed physical or mathematical law, but a “sacrificial” order. In the words of the Rig Veda itself: cosmic order is maintained by sacrificial order; that is, rita is upheld by rita. 136 It is through rita that Varuna governs the universe. 137 Rita is the ultimate foundation of everything; it is “the supreme,” although this is not to be understood in a static sense. 138 Rita points to an original and universal factor prior to the cosmic and human scission between the father and mother principles. 139 From rita comes the Firstborn (the Word?) 140 in the whole ordering of reality, while in another place it is affirmed that this Firstborn is no less than Prajapati himself 141 or Agni 142. Agni is closely related to rita. 143 These and other utterances 144 are both bewildering and plainly contradictory, if rita is understood as a “substance” or a “thing,” if rita can be “pinpointed,” separated from and made independent of the “beings” it informs. Rita is rather the “law” or universal order embodied in sacrifice. It is the expression of the primordial dynamism that is inherent in everything and also possesses its own internal coherence, a unifying force that could be said to be the very soul of sacrifice. This also explains why rita appears in the Rig Veda as being superior to and independent of the Gods, yet at the same time is their instrument. Rita is not a reservoir of energy upon which Gods or Men can draw for one purpose or another; rita as the principle of order is capable of growth, of expansion, of evolution out of itself: rita, in fact, can increase by means of rita. 145 The order of things, be they nature, Men, or Gods, is certainly a real order, but it is not an immutable and static one; the order of reality depends ultimately on reality itself.
The moment that rita is converted into a concept and is given a consistency in itself it is bound to appear as something rigid, immutable: a fixed cosmic order like a mathematical law which does not tolerate exceptions, a strict regulation which does not tolerate deviations, a stern ordinance which does not allow for freedom and improvization. It does not so appear, however, in the first Veda, where as an adjective, for instance, it means right, proper, holy, true, and the like, all words that denote flexible adaptation rather than rigid immutability.
This feature of rita, defying all that can properly be either objectified or substantivized, comes more clearly into view when we realize its intimate connection with sacrifice and all other cultic activities. Rita is, in point of fact, the actual functioning or rather the proper rhythm of the sacrifice, while sacrifice is that which causes things to be what they are. By sacrifice Gods and Men collaborate, not only among themselves but also for the maintenance and very existence of the universe. Reality subsists, thanks to sacrifice. But this truly primordial sacrifice is not left to the whim of either Men or Gods; it has an internal structure and mode of operation, namely, rita. Without rita the Vedic sacrifice would degenerate into a manipulation of the whole cosmic order by Gods or Men, and we would fall into a hideous world of magic, as Men are sometimes prone to do.
We would venture to describe this paradoxical intuition in this way: the self-subsistency of reality harbors its own absolute contingency. It is not necessary that beings or even Being exist; nothing prevents a total relapse into utter nothingness; nothing guarantees that time will endure forever, or that the world will not one day destroy itself. This Vedic vision awakens us from the illusion of ontological self-complacency: the whole of reality can collapse and disappear. Man can destroy himself, the world can have an end, existence is not indestructible, and even Being is not bound to be as if it were obliged to be Being by a superior necessity. Nonbeing is not only a dialectical, but a real, possibility. The experience of nothingness, which implies the nothingness of the experience itself, is one of the deepest disclosures of the Vedic Revelation. The whole of reality “stands on its own feet;” that is, it does not lean on something or somebody else, but depends on, “hangs,” from itself. It is, as it were, a divine contingency.
On the other hand, reality is not merely contingent: it does not simply depend on Another, that is, another reality, which in turn leans on something else. Nothing can destroy reality but itself. Nothing can challenge the existence of the universe, except the universe itself. There is no fear of any enemy, except the one that lurks inside us. In scholastic or theistic terms, God can destroy himself, if he so desires. In other words, the universe has the power to perpetuate itself, to be established in being, to exist, to overcome all threats and obstacles; but it has no eternal warrant. It has its own resources and from them it can pour forth eternal life. Moreover, this power is not a fiction; it is real and thus it can fail, it can be betrayed by reality itself.
Sacrifice is that which preserves the universe in existence, that which gives life and the hope of life. The universe in its totality does not repose on the shoulders of any extracosmic reality; if it did, it would not be the whole universe, but only an appendix to it. Reality has to include all that of which we can be aware. Neither God nor the Gods can be excluded from it. Now this universe is neither reposing on another Ground, nor reposing on itself, as if it were just a “mechanical” or “automatic” Being, as if freedom and thus the freedom to cease to be were not at the very core of reality. The universe does not repose on anything other than itself and its own structure. This ultimate structure is not to be regarded as “another” or “deeper” “thing” or substance; it is in fact sacrifice, which is, precisely, the internal dynamism of the universe, universal rita, cosmic order itself. This order, this sacrifice, obviously cannot be a static result of an already performed action. Sacrifice is the act that makes the universe. It does it, not through an external agent, but by the self-cooperation of the universe itself. Men alone cannot accomplish this, and the Gods left to themselves are equally impotent. The highest God, the supreme Being, is equally incapable of performing this act alone, for he is not God for himself but for the “creatures.” In point of fact he is never alone; he is relational and belongs to reality, in spite of all the provisos and distinctions that a thinking philosophical and theological mind is bound to make in order not to fall into an oversimplified monism or an unsustainable dualism.
To perform the sacrifice is not to participate in a good act or to do good to the Gods, to mankind, or to oneself: it is to live, to “make” one’s own survival and that of the whole universe. It is the act by which the universe itself continues in existence. An analysis of the different texts would help us to discover a double stage and a double team of agents in the unfolding of this sacrifice. The one stage is ayam lokah, this world of Men; the other is asau lokah, the world beyond, the place of the heavenly beings. Moreover, of the two “teams,” one consists of Men and the other of Gods and asuras. The cosmic liturgy that holds the world together and keeps it in existence is performed (1) by Men trying to ascend to the world of the Gods to celebrate the sacrifice there; (2) by the Gods responding to the call of Men and celebrating the sacrifice here on earth; (3) by Men performing it here also; and finally (4) by the Gods celebrating this life-giving sacrifice in heaven. A meditation on the texts will lead us to discover this fourfold conception.
If sacrifice is the ultimate and supreme principle, superior, thus, to the Gods and derived from God but not separable from either, it is understandable that some of the texts may sound magical to those who can accept only anthropomorphic world views. If the notion that God acts is not considered magic, the fact that sacrifice is efficacious cannot be said to be magical either. It would certainly be so if it did not constitute the ultimate structure of reality; but it is constantly taught in the Vedas down to the Upanishads, and it is repeated subsequently in philosophical works, that sacred science consists in the knowledge of sacrifice and that sacrifice is the ultimate principle. The deterioration of this world view begins when sacrifice is interpreted in a substantialized way, that is, when it is reified and thus permits the introduction of magical interpretations.
From this perspective of the primacy of sacrifice, the whole world appears new every moment and its path unpredictable. It will all depend on the sacrifice, on how the creative act is going to happen. This is a realm of true freedom, but it involves also the risk of misuse. That which allows for freedom may also allow for exploitation by those who understand the labyrinth of sacrifice. It is no wonder that the theory of karman appeared after a short time as an urgent corrective to a world view risking dependence only on whim and on the mere performance of rituals.
Before closing this introduction we should mention a general feature of sacrifice which appears in its post-Vedic development, whereby it is viewed under a more personalistic perspective. The proper name for this is perhaps puja, worship, rather than yajna, sacrifice.
Even when Man’s worship has lost sight of the overall perspective just described, worship is still considered as a human activity by which Man attains the fulfillment of his being, not so much in the sense that our being is thereby enhanced or expanded as in the sense that it is only in worship that we fully are. Worship enables us to overcome the obstacles that obstruct the realization of being. Worship is not only a profoundly meaningful spiritual attitude; it is also an action in which Man’s whole being is involved and through which Man realizes his “self.”
In the performance of worship Man always endeavors to transcend time, to free himself from time. By this liberation he enters into the sphere of ultimate Reality. Liberation, moksha, is absolute freedom, it is an escape from subjection to time. 146 Worship permeates the whole of human life; it is both a means and an end, a means leading to final perfection, and an end, that is to say, perfection itself.
Creation is God’s sacrifice, for not only does God bring it into existence, create it, but he also permits it to return to him again. He has in fact decreed its return. Now, to recognize an existence that restores itself by its own act is to invest it with immortality. Sacrifical acts, then, perform the function of finalizing this sort of exchange. Worship is the way to immortality.
Worship does not consist solely in prayer or feeling or knowledge; it is action, an action by which duality is transcended and dissimilarity banished. This act contains within itself, essentially, a sacrificial aspect, a death and a becoming, a doing, karman. This word, which in the course of time will take on numerous other meanings, has here the significance of “action,” understood as the act of worship and sacrifice. Action that does not include an element of making and remaking (creation and redemption) does not deserve the name. By worship salvation is rendered attainable and worship must needs entail sacrifice, for only sacrifice can produce the essential conversion. There is no other way to salvation except through sacrifice, for salvation is not attainable except by means of a break, a leap onto the other shore, or some sort of transference into a supranatural order. Man can be saved only by the performance of sacrificial worship; apart from such worship he is powerless, at the mercy of blind forces.
We must stress at this point the sacrificial element implied within the concept of karman and not load it with ideas of morality which it does not primarily contain. 147 The tendency to equate religion and morality, to see in karman a simple chalking-up of merits and demerits according to good or evil conduct, is secondary to authentic religiousness. For the Vedic Experience, religion is essentially worship and worship means a dynamic ontological two-way relationship of Man with the divine. Karman implies action, not only in its etymological but also in its intrinsic meaning, and, what is more, it implies an act of worship that is identified with sacrifice. Karma-marga is a way of sacrifice and of worship.
Creation of Sacrifice
Yajne jate
14 Cosmogony is liturgy and liturgy is cosmogony: thus we might sum up the main intuition of this text, which at the same time formulates one of the deepest convictions of the Vedic world view. The world owes its origin to a divine sacrifice and, thanks to the same sacrifice, it continues to be. If the first act is divine, the second is human. We have here a cosmotheandric action for which an appropriate symbol is the loom, connected with the human activity by which Man creates his own patterns and makes his own clothing.
In fact every liturgy has always been and still is a remaking of the world, a reenactment of the creative act by which the world comes into being. This “making of the world” can, however, be understood not only as a cosmological cosmogony but also as a historical or even a sociological one. Modern liturgy tends in fact to be the coming together of people in order to reshape the environment, social, cultural, political ecological, and artistic.
Throughout the hymn there is an interplay between two ideas and sets of actions, weaving and sacrifice, the latter actions mirroring or rather reenacting the creational acts of the former. The meaning of this hymn becomes clearer when we remember parallel texts that speak of two maidens, symbolizing day and night, dancing in circles and endlessly weaving the stuff of the world, spreading all the colors of reality over the six regions of the universe. 148 This world-building action is not left, however, to cosmic forces alone; Men and the ancestors, or “Fathers,” are also involved in the task of weaving the fabric and spinning the threads. The rituals are the threads, the hymns the shuttles, the weavers the ancestral sacrifices. As the cloth has its design, so the sacrificial texts have their meters. One Upanishad says 149 that the Gods were afraid of death and that each one covered himself with his respective meter for protection. The origin of this conception is to be found in the text given here, where each God has his own meter in which he is praised and which gives him strength. The power of poetry is such that the poets sometimes wonder whether it is the Gods who inspire their song or their poetry that gives life to the Gods. But the text also says (v. 5) that the human poets follow the already existing relationship, discovering divine power in every meter. A male figure, the puman, which appears here is related to the purusha, the primordial Man, of our previous texts. 150
Yajne jate
RV X, 130
1. Sacrifice [resembles] a loom with threads extended
this way and that, composed of innumerable rituals.
Behold now the Fathers weaving the fabric; seated
on the outstretched loom. “Lengthwise! Crosswise!” they cry.
2. Behold now a Man who unwinds and sets the thread,
a Man who unwinds it right up to the vault of heaven.
Here are the pegs; they are fastened to the place of worship.
The Saman-hymns are used for weaving shuttles.
3. What was the model, the pattern, what the connection?
What was the ritual butter and the line of demarcation?
What was the meter, the hymn, the preliminary chant,
when all the deities sacrificed God in oblation?
4. The Gayatri meter became the yokefellow of Agni,
Savitri took as his companion the meter Ushnih,
Soma, the one who is praised by hymns, took Anushtubh,
while the word of the Lord of Speech was strengthened by Brhati.
5. The meter Viraj was reserved to Mitra and Varuna;
for Indra’s day the meter allotted was Trishtubh.
The meter Jagati had access to all the Gods.
To this arrangement the human poets conformed.
6. It was this same ritual the Seers, our Fathers, adopted
when in the beginning sacrifice was first created.
With the eyes of my mind I believe I can envisage
those who were first to offer this sacrifice.
7. The rituals, meters, and hymns were according to the rubrics,
even those of the Seven godlike Seers of old.
When the sages follow in the path traced by the ancestors
they take the reins in their hands like charioteers.
1. Innumerable: ekashatam, lit. one hundred and one.
Rituals: devakarman, rite, act of worship.
Fathers: pitarah, ancestral sacrificers as in v. 6.
2. A Man: puman, the primordial man, i.e., adipurusha, or the purusha of RV X, 90 (§ I 5). He is the sacrificer and the sacrifice at the same time: yajnapurusha. Cf. AV X, 7, 43 (§ I 3).
3. Correlation and analogy between model, pattern, and connection (prama, pratima, nidana) and meter, preliminary chant, and hymn.
Ambivalent sentence: the deities offer to the unique God and also the deities offer God as sacrifice. Cf. RV X, 90, 6 (§ I 5).
All the deities sacrificed God: yad deva devam ayajanta vishve. Cf. the parallel idea in RV I, 164, 50. They offer the sacrifice of Man, the mediator of v. 2. These may be the ancestors, pitarah, of v. 1 whose function is to “weave the hundred and one rituals.”
4-5. Relate the Gods to their respective meters; cf. also AB VIII, 6, 3 (XXXVII, 2).
Lord of Speech: Brhaspati. rs question
The Origin of Sacrifice
Brahmayajna
15 We recall from the preceding hymn that sacrifice is envisaged as a universal fabric reaching everywhere; or rather, sacrifice is seen as the creative act of weaving that cosmic fabric in which everything has its place and receives its meaning. It is by means of this primordial act that the Gods are able to reenact that action through which Reality is. The original dharmas, that is, the original structures of reality (or the primordial rites, statutes, ordinances) are thus prescribing what is mentioned in the first verse of the first hymn following and is repeated in several other places: a sacrifice to the Sacrifice by means of the sacrifice. To “offer” means to “stretch” and by this very fact to “reach” reality by means of performing the act by which reality is.
If we do not freeze reality into a form of static being, but consider it rather as the act acting, with the Gods as the first agents of the sacrifice, we may understand the stanzas of the hymn. The sacrifice is not a ready-made act, over and done with. It is, on the contrary, the act by which the world is, and thus this act comes to be, it becomes manifest, it is born and grows again and again. It becomes the ultimate criterion, the ruler, the highest instance: the overlord of even the Gods.
The third verse calls Men to partake in the divine banquet, in the feast of the Gods, in the authentic form of existence. The Gods are our forerunners and we pray that we may follow them and be allowed a place with them in the sphere of authentic existence: the parama vyoman. It is a place in which human life is unrestricted: we may experience this new and real dimension of our being while still continuing in our earthly life, while seeing the rising of the sun with our own personal eyes, now no longer limited, of course, to sensorial perception. In the parama vyoman human life is elevated to the life of the Gods. Vyoman is the realm of freedom from limitations. The rising of the sun corresponds also to the ascent of Man to that supreme stage.
The Gods have no existence of their own; they exist in, with, above, and also for Men. Their supreme sacrifice is Man, the primordial Man, whom we have already met in other hymns. It is overwhelming, this experience of being Man: Man is the most important and central creature in the universe but he is also the most miserable, the most suffering, and often even the most despicable. Human life is the most precious thing and at the same time the most lavishly wasted. Man is the sacrificer, but also the sacrificed; the Gods, in their role as the primal agents of sacrifice, offer their oblation with Man. Man is not only the cosmic priest; he is also the cosmic victim. Human history, we may venture to translate, is the most blatant example and confirmation of the truth that Man is both sacrificer and sacrifice. To say that the history of human existence on earth has a meaning amounts to declaring that the Gods performed their sacrifice with Man as their oblation. The last two verses, however, give us a glimpse of an intuition that the coming cosmic liturgy will no longer be the exploitation of Men by Men, or the religious sanction of it, but a new hymn, a new song, whose melody the Gods themselves will have to learn from Men, once the latter have invented it. 151
The second text places the sacrifice in its true perspective: even if Brahman here is not the “absolute world ground” of the later philosophical sense, it is on the way to becoming so. The reciprocal definition of Brahman and sacrifice in the second verse illumines the meaning of both: Brahman is the sacrifice and all its elements precisely because it is the inner reality (or essence: sattva) of the sacrifice and also that ineffable power that makes the priests’ sacrifice a real sacrifice. The text makes it quite clear that the different kinds of priests are merely instruments in the realization of the sacrifice and that as such they are praiseworthy. Yet a consciousness of the unity that exists among all the parts and elements of the sacrifice, and an awareness of the underlying reality of Brahman, are already beginning to pervade the performance and the understanding of the sacrifice itself.
Brahmayajna
AV VII, 5
i) 1. Through sacrifice the Gods sacrificed to the Sacrifice.
Those were the first established rites.
Their greatness enhanced, they ascended to heaven
where dwell the ancient Gods who must needs be appeased.
2. Thus originated sacrifice; it manifested itself.
It came to birth and then increased.
It became the Lord and Ruler of the Gods.
May sacrifice bestow upon us some treasure!
3. There where the Gods made an offering to the Gods,
where, immortal, they worshiped with heart immortal,
may we also revel, in highest heaven.
May we gaze on it in wonder at the rising of the sun!
4. Using the Man for their oblation,
the Gods performed the sacrifice.
But more powerful still than this oblation
was the offering they made with the Hymn’s invocation.
AV XIX, 42, 1-2
ii) 1. Brahman is the priest, Brahman the sacrifice;
by Brahman the posts are erected.
From Brahman the officiating priest was born,
in Brahman is concealed the oblation.
2. Brahman is the spoon dripping fatness;
by Brahman the altar is established.
Brahman is the essence of sacrifice
the priests prepare the oblation.
To the minister, praise!
i) 1. Cf. RV I, 164, 50; X, 90, 16 (§ I 5) for the same stanza. Cf. also RV X, 130, 3 (§ III 14); SB X, 2, 2, 2.
3. In highest heaven: parame vyoman. Cf. RV I, 164, 34 (§ I 11).
4. The first two lines are the same as in RV X, 90, 6 (§ I 5).
Hymn: the hymn vihavya.
5. We have not given the last verse, which has many variant readings and is obscure.
ii) 1. Concealed: antarhita, placed within.
2. Essence of sacrifice: yajnasya sattvam.
Priests: rtvijah.
Praise: svaha.
3-4. These two last verses are omitted as they do not refer directly to the origin of the sacrifice.
The Fire Sacrifice
Agnihotra
16 Without light there is no life. We have already seen the central place and importance of light. But light is not an abstract reality; light is Sun and Fire. The Kaushitaki Brahmana says that
Light is Agni, Agni is light. The one who is light, he calls light . . . Agni offers
itself in sacrifice to the rising Sun and the setting Sun offers itself in sacrifice to
Agni in the evening; Night sacrifices itself to the Day and Day sacrifices itself to
the Night. 152
The sacrifice is the agnihotra. Continuity is thus established, the circle is completed, harmony is preserved.
The Sunlight of the day not only gives way to the light of the night, the Fire, but in a sense gives birth to it, by reason of a certain cosmic solidarity in which Man too has his part to play. This is the function of the agnihotra. All other sacrifices and rites can be neglected, but not the agnihotra, for it is the quintessence of sacrifice 153 and through it one becomes immortal. 154 “The agnihotra is the ultimate [parama] foundation of everything.” 155 One can then understand the text of the Shatapatha Brahmana which says that if the priest did not perform the agnihotra in the morning, that day the sun would not rise. 156 This, as we see from the central thrust of the whole shruti, is certainly not owing to some mysterious magical connection between the agnihotra and the sun, but to the theanthropocosmic link that maintains the whole of reality in truth and order, for Man is not simply a spectator in the cosmic display or an outsider set there just to exploit the earth for his own benefit.
The agnihotra represents the simplest possible form of the whole Vedic conception of sacrifice. Any householder, provided he is properly initiated, may perform the sacrifice in the evening and morning of every day and recite the prayers, some of which are given here along with other texts on the same agnihotra. The two temporal moments, in which this sacrifice has to be performed, are important: they are samdhya, the “holding together,” the junction of Agni and Surya, the brief periods when the two lights meet, when one can distinguish no longer the one from the other, when Man can intervene as a part of the cosmos without disturbing the rhythm of the sun and the stars. In the morning the human heart is ready for life, while at sunset it is inclined to pour out its innermost feelings. Practically all religions of the world have considered these hours to be holy; these are the times even nowadays when the modern city dweller starts the new day with enthusiasm and hope, or longs at its decline for a friend, for love, for relaxation, for Soma. 157
It is not necessary to describe the rite of the agnihotra. Suffice it to say that besides the sun, time, and the light and thus also space a minimum of three fires and three persons, some milk, and, when possible, the cow that has given the milk are required: a complete microcosm.
Agnihotra
RV V, 15, 1-2
i) 1. To the Lord, the far-renowned, the wise Ordainer,
ancient and glorious, I offer the tribute of a song.
Anointed with oil is he, the Lord, the powerful
giver of bliss and guardian of noble riches.
2. On the power of sacrifice which is grounded in highest heaven
and by Cosmic Order in Cosmic Order established,
[our Fathers], though mortal, attained immortal seats
in those spheres above which firmly support the heavens.
RV X, 80, 4
ii) Agni extends the sacrifice to heaven:
his forms are scattered everywhere.
RV X, 100, 6
iii) Indra possesses power divine and glorious.
The singer in the house is Agni, the wise, the seer.
May our sacrifice be at hand and pleasing to the gathered people!
For freedom and for perfect bliss we pray!
YV III, 9; 11; 20-21; 25-26; 38
iv) 9. Fire is Light, Light is Fire. Glory!
Sun is Light, Light is Sun. Glory!
Fire is Splendor, Light is Splendor. Glory!
Sun is Splendor, Light is Splendor. Glory!
Light is Sun, Sun is Light. Glory!
11. Let us, proceeding to the sacrifice,
utter a prayer to the Lord,
who hears us even from afar.
20. You are sacred drink, may I enjoy your sacred drink!
You are greatness, may I share in your greatness!
You are power, may I partake in your power!
You are treasures, may I share in your treasures!
21. O shining ones, remain in this dwelling,
stay in this gathering, this place, this spot.
Remain right here and do not stir!
25. O Lord, be our closest friend, our savior
and gracious protection. O wonderful Lord
of glorious renown, come near us, we pray you,
and bestow upon us most splendid treasures.
26. To you, most brilliant and shining God,
we pray now for happiness for our friends.
Listen attentively to our call;
save us from every evil man.
38. Thus have we now approached the All-Knower,
the one who is the best procurer of good things.
Endow us, O Majesty, with strength and glory.
SB II, 3, 1, 13
v) And so they say: all other sacrifices have an end but the agnihotra does not come to an end. All that which lasts for twelve years is indeed limited; the agnihotra is nevertheless unlimited, for when a man has offered in the evening he looks forward with confidence to offering in the morning; and when he has offered in the morning he likewise looks forward with confidence to offering again in the evening. Thus the agnihotra is unlimited and, hence, from its unlimitedness, creatures also are born unlimited. Whosoever knows the unlimitedness of the agnihotra is himself unlimited in prosperity and offspring.
SB VII, 3, 1, 34
vi) You, O Agni, are the righteous, the truthful, the mighty, and most wonderful. You are indeed manifest to all: you, O Agni, are omnipresent. Men rank Agni highest for grace and joy, for grace and joy reside undoubtedly in sacrifice. You, who are heaven, the ruler and divine one, we human beings invoke with song.
i) 1. Lord: Agni.
Anointed with oil: ghrtaprasatta.
Powerful: asura, lit. the benevolent Asura.
2. On the power: shake, locative of shaka, might, power.
In highest heaven: parame vyoman.
By Cosmic Order in Cosmic Order established: rtena rtam dharunam dharayanta.
Immortal seats: lit. unborn persons, probably the Gods. A difficult but important text.
ii) Extends: lit. stretches: tatana from the root tan-, to stretch out. Cf. RV X, 130, 1 (§ III 14) and also RV I, 159, 4; X, 57, 2 for the same metaphor.
Cf. SB I, 4, 4, 1 (§ I 13) and what has been said about Agni in § III 4.
iv) 9. Cf. KausB II, 8 (quoted in the Introduction).
Fire: Agni.
Light: jyotis.
Sun: Surya.
11. The first approach to the sacrifice requires an invocation to Agni, the mediator.
17-19. Cf. § III 11.
20. Sacred drink: andhas, soma plant, invigorating life-giving food and drink.
Greatness: mahas.
Power: bhakshiya.
Treasures: rayi.
21. Shining ones: revati, which may refer to the cows, to the waters, and/or to holy speech.
Dwelling: yoni, womb, but also homely abode.
25. Savior: tratr, protector.
Gracious: shiva.
Protection: varuthya.
Treasures: rayi, in a material as well as a spiritual sense.
26. Cf. RV V, 24, 3-4 (§ VII 53).
Most brilliant: shocishtha.
29; 31-33; 37. Cf. § III 11.
38. Majesty: agni samraj. This prayer is uttered as the worshiper approaches the ahavaniya fire.
39-40. Cf. § III 11.
v) Have an end: are concluded, finished. There is a play here on the root stha-; sam-stha: to be concluded, to come to an end, and an-upa-stha-: to be unfinished, not to come to an end. Agnihotram na samtishthate/anupashthitam agnihotram: i.e., agnihotra is an everlasting, perennial sacrifice.
Unlimited in prosperity . . . : this may also refer to the spiritual effect of the perennial, creative sacrifice. Cf. SB II, 2, 4, 8 (§ III 23).
vi) A hymn of praise to Agni.
The Drop of Life
Soma pavamana
17 The sacrifice of the Soma-juice, to which all the Vedas so frequently allude, is one of the major Vedic sacrifices.
All the one hundred and fourteen hymns of Book IX of the Rig Veda are dedicated to Soma, as are also certain hymns of the other books. 158 The importance of Soma derives from the fact that its sacrifice is an act in which the divine and the human both take part. Soma is, properly speaking, the drink of the soma-plant which allows Men to feel that they are more than just conscious animals. Thus they are given the elixir of immortality and at the same time are permitted to share in some divine form of consciousness.
The soma-plant has been identified with a brown or reddish bush some three feet high. 159 The golden hue of its juice inspires poets to acclaim tirelessly the “radiance” of this divinity and his close connection with the Sun. He creates light and scatters darkness. Nevertheless the plant should also be understood in a concrete physiological way. The action of Soma has a stimulating and inspiring effect which is something more than comfort or strength, though less than intoxication or drunkenness. 160
The process of extracting the juice from the soma-plant is described minutely with endless variations of ritual. The poets chant their hymns at that moment when Soma leaps forth from the press. The woolen strainer stands for heaven, the juice in liquid form is the rain; thus Soma is called Lord of the Rivers and son of Water. Elsewhere he is “a bull,” and his descent into the milky water of the vat is likened to the insemination of a herd of cows. Thus the whole cosmos is involved in this very simple act of the extraction of the soma-juice.
The earthly origin of Soma is said to be in the mountains, on Mount Mujavat, 161 but the mountains in general are also alleged to be his birthplace. 162 His true origin, however, is in heaven: “child of heaven,” 163 “milk of heaven.” 164 He was brought to earth by an eagle who snatched him from the Castle of Brass where the Gandharvas were guarding him. 165 In the Brahmanas it is Gayatri (a name for Agni) who steals Soma. As the most important of all plants he is given the title of Lord of Plants.
Soma is the vehicle of immortality. Soma “is” immortality. 166 Immortality is acquired by the drinking of Soma and not by abstaining from the fruits of the earth. The way to immortality is not one of escape from the material world, but rather one of assimilating earthly realities. Soma has the power of rendering both Gods and Men immortal. “We have drunk Soma, we have become immortal, we have entered into light, we have known the Gods,” says our text (v. 3). Immortality is not the birthright of any being; it has to be acquired, conquered, merited, given.
The most frequent epithet of Soma is pavamana, the “flowing clear,” which suggests both that the juice is purified in its elaborate processing and that it purifies by its effects. 167 Soma possesses healing powers: “The blind man sees, the cripple walks.” 168 He also stimulates speech and evokes sublime thoughts. He is a poet, the “soul” of the sacrifice, a sage; his wisdom is often acclaimed and he is the giver of all blessings.
The Sea are you, Seer, revealer of all things;
under your sway are the World’s five regions.
You transcend both earth and heaven.
Yours, O Purifier, are the Stars and the Sun. 169
In several of the late hymns of the Rig Veda, as also in the Atharva Veda, Soma is identified with the moon. Soma is luminous, is magnified in water, and is termed a globule. 170
Hymn VIII, 48, is a chant of praise to Soma, God of immortality. The poet prays for the divine strength that mortal Men are powerless to resist, for protection against all evil, for light and wealth, for a long life.
Soma is here, as in some other places, addressed as indu, “Drop,” a word that came to be used also with reference to the moon, probably owing to its connection with Soma, a brilliant drop, a plant to be collected during full-moon night. We have already seen that the waters are a symbol of life and that food is also a life-bringer. Now Soma, as a liquid, as a drop, is considered to be the drop of life, a drink that bestows health, both temporal and eternal. Without venturing any hypothesis regarding the actual Vedic use of Soma as a hallucinogenic potion, we may note the close connection between exciting material substances and religious life. Obviously there are negative factors in these practices, but there are also positive elements, for they demand an attitude that is life-affirming and accepts the importance of matter. Soma is praised, not as a way of escape from the normal human condition, but as a means of facing it more squarely. Second, the exciting effect of Soma tends to activate human potentialities, not to put them to sleep. Third, Soma, elevating the worshiper to a higher plane of human consciousness, claims to enhance his daily living and to help him to live with the awareness of a deeper dimension while he is carrying on his ordinary actions. These and similar ideas spring to mind as being involved in the old Vedic Soma sacrifice and its related rites in other cultures and religions, for the Soma sacrifice undoubtedly has connections with the haoma rites of Zoroastrianism and is viewed by some as having an inner relationship with the Eucharistic sacrifice.
The Soma spirituality (if we may use this expression) is an important characteristic of the Vedic Experience. We have already described it as being theandric. Both Men and Gods, that is, the human and the divine, are involved in the same adventure. Both must become immortal, both must coalesce. While the divinization of Men is a well-defined path, the humanization of the Gods is a mysterious process in which Soma is the link and sacrifice the means of attainment. The divinization of Man is not without repercussions on the Godhead, which in turn is humanized. Soma is the powerful symbol of this double and yet simple process.
This Soma spirituality is based on fullness and not on want. Many traditional religious forms seem to stress want, guilt, penance, asceticism, renunciation, and a flight from all corporal values and material pleasures and rightly so when Man lives in conditions of hardship and strain, as he all too often does. But there is more to human life. Soma spirituality stresses the opposite facet: Soma bestows and celebrates strength, courage, loquacity, and eloquence; he unleashes our thoughts so that, once blessed by Soma, they flow without inhibition. It is not only immortality that we acquire when we drink Soma; it is also joy, purification, and protection from all evil influences. It is Soma who instills in us the proper mood that enables us to perform the sacrifice with dignity and to face life with confidence. Soma is invariably a sacred drink, though it is not always drunk with accompanying rituals--a significant fact in view of the later development of the agnishtoma, especially when it involved multitudinous and complicated rubrics.
An interesting corroboration of this positive Soma spirituality is the meaning and use that the word somya acquires from the Upanishads onward: the drinker of Soma, the one who is worthy to be offered Soma, he who is related to or that which belongs to Soma, has come to mean gentle, dear, kind, auspicious, and has become a form of address for respectable persons, such as Brahmins. A respectable and excellent man is not from this point of view the ascetic in rags, but the “moon-shining” man, who, being satiated with Soma, is therefore radiant and kind, gentle and loving.
Soma pavamana
RV VIII, 48
1. I have tasted, as one who knows its secret,
the honeyed drink that charms and relaxes,
the drink that all, both Gods and mortals,
seek to obtain, calling it nectar.
2. Once penetrated within my heart,
you become Aditi and appease the Gods’ wrath.
O Drop, who enjoy Indra’s friendship, convey
to us wealth, like a steed who is bridled, obedient.
3. We have drunk the Soma and become immortal!
We have attained the light, we have found the Gods!
What can the malice of mortal Man
or his spite, O Immortal, do to us now?
4. Bless the heart, O Life-Drop, which has received you,
as a father his son, or a friend his friend.
Wise Soma, whose voice we hear from afar,
prolong our days that we may live.
5. These glorious drops are my health and salvation:
they strengthen my joints as thongs do a cart.
May these droplets guard my foot lest it stumble
and chase from my body all manner of ills.
6. Make me shine brightly like fire produced by friction.
Illumine us, make us ever more prosperous.
Enthused by you, Soma, I find myself rich!
Enter within us for our well-being.
7. With hearts inspired may we relish the Juice
like treasure inherited from our Fathers!
Lengthen our days, King Soma, as the sun
causes the shining days to grow longer.
8. Have mercy upon us, King Soma, and save us!
Do not forget that we are your disciples.
We are eager, O Drop, with zeal and dexterity!
Do not hand us over to our enemy’s pleasure!
9. It is you, O Soma, who guard our bodies;
in each of our limbs you have made your abode,
O surveyor of men! if we have transgressed your statutes,
forgive us, O God, like a loving friend.
10. May I take him to myself like a well-disposed friend!
May this draught not harm us, O Lord of the bay horses--
this Soma now absorbed within me! For this
I pray to God to prolong my existence.
11. Our weariness and pains are now far removed;
the forces of darkness have fled in fear.
Soma has surged within us mightily.
We have reached our goal! Life is prolonged!
12. This drop that has penetrated our hearts, O Fathers,
this Soma, immortal deep within us mortals,
him would we honor with our oblations.
We long to abide in his grace and favor.
13. In an intimate union with the Fathers, O Soma,
you have extended yourself throughout Earth and Heaven.
You would we honor with our oblations,
desirous of becoming possessors of riches.
14. O guardian Gods, pronounce on us blessing!
Let sleep not overtake us nor useless talk.
May we forever be dear to Soma!
Having won the mastery, let us speak wisdom!
15. Imparter of strength, come, take full possession,
O Soma, light-finder, man’s constant overseer.
Enlist your helpers, O Lord; place a guard
on our lives both in front and behind to protect us.
1. As one who knows its secret: sumedhas (a free translation), lit. having a good understanding, wise.
That charms and relaxes: svadhyah varivovittarasya, that inspires and grants freedom, stirs and gives good thoughts.
2. You become Aditi: i.e., Aditi in her function of liberating from sin. When Soma is in the body he purifies and averts the anger of the Gods.
3. Cf. RV IX, 113, 7 (§ V 23).
4. Bless the heart sham nah bhava hrde, do good to our heart, be a blessing, a gift, blissful for us when drunk; sham hrde: refreshing the heart.
O Life-Drop: indu, drop (and also moon).
5. Glorious drops: yashas, object of honor and veneration.
8. Save us: svasti, for our salvation, well-being.
Disciples: vratyah, those who abide by your laws (vrata).
9. Surveyor of men: nrcakshas.
10. Lord of the bay horses: Indra.
God: Indra.
12. The Fathers, pitarah, are here called to witness, as they also love Soma.
15. Lord: indu.
The Pressing Stones
Gravastotra
18 Among the objects used in the sacrifice and hence invested with sacredness are the stones between which the Soma stalks are pressed and crushed in order to extract the juice, the nectar of immortality. The pressing stones are made the subject of several hymns. 171 Here the stones hewn from the mountainside are personified: they are dancers, oxen, racehorses, speakers, and so on; they are godlike, immune to disease and fatigue and death. They play so integral a part in the sacrifice that the sacrificer even prays to them, offering them his reverence and homage, begging them to unloose the inspired tongue of the Soma presser. Finally, they are asked respectfully or scornfully, according to some interpreters to revert to their purely mineral state of being simply stones. The sacred character of a thing, we note, resides always in its function and not in its substance. For example, the murtis, the idols worshiped during popular festivals, are afterwards often immersed in the rivers or simply laid aside.
The whole world is called upon to contribute to the sacrifice; not only Gods, Men, animals, and plants, but also the earth and its elements. These stones are generally called grava and in Soma rituals the priest recites this Rig Veda hymn as part of the prescribed stotra.
Mention is made of these stones in many prayers so as to stress the sacramental, that is, the spiritual-material, aspect of this central and specifically human act:
Fixing with careful attention the press stones
of sacrifice, I invoke noble Heaven and Earth.
Now, O Lord, raise your flames pure and beautiful,
bringing to men all manner of blessings. 172
Gravastotra
RV X, 94
1. Let them utter loud sounds! We too will utter!
Give tongue, one and all, to the Stones who give tongue,
when, O rocks, O mountains, swiftly clashing,
you bring to God’s ears your rhythmic din.
2. These Stones, gnashing their green-tinted jaws,
emit sounds like a hundred, a thousand, voices.
Their task achieved, these Pressing Stones,
noble workers in a noble cause,
forestall the offerer in tasting the oblation.
3. They utter loud sounds as they find the sweet Soma.
Booming, they gnaw the pulp prepared.
These bulls, skillful pounders, bellow aloud
as they seize the branch of the reddish shrub.
4. Exalted and inebriated by Soma, they shout,
calling upon God through whom they have tasted
the ambrosial Soma. They skillfully dance
with the sisters, held in firm clasp together,
and make the earth resound with their stamping.
5. They have raised their voices to heaven, these eagles,
they have danced with vigor, these dark-colored hinds.
Now they sink toward the lower stone, find contact,
and effuse copious Soma-seed, brightly shining.
6. Like strong draught animals who draw a cart,
bulls who wear the yoke and are harnessed together,
the Stones emit bellows, panting and heaving.
Then the sound of their snorting is like that of horses.
7. Acclaim [the Stones] with their ten [workers],
ten belts, ten thongs, and tenfold harness,
with their ten reins, who, never growing old,
yoked ten times over, draw the ten yokes.
8. These Stones are like racehorses with ten sets of reins,
their bits well fixed within their jaws.
At the flowing of the Soma-juice they have been first
to taste the milky fluid of the first-crushed stalk.
9. These Soma-eaters kiss the bay steeds of Indra.
They are set for their stalk-crushing task on an oxhide.
When Indra has drunk the sweet Soma they extract,
he increases in strength, waxes great, like a bull.
10. Your stalk is as strong as a bull. Naught will harm you!
You are ever full of juice, ever replete,
fair in glory, like the daughters of the rich
in whose sacrifice, O Stones, you take delight.
11. Smashing but never shattered, these Stones
are tireless; they know neither death nor cessation.
Exempt from sickness, old age, and suffering,
sleek-looking, free from thirst or craving.
12. Your fathers stand firm from age to age.
Enamored of repose, they stir not from their seat.
Untouched by age, of golden Soma never bereft,
they have forced heaven and earth to pay heed to their sound.
13. Thus speak the Stones at their release, when their journey is over, as they clatter, like men drinking wine.
Like farmers sowing the seed, they decrease not,
but rather increase by their gulping this Soma.
14. They uplift their voices at the ritual pressing,
like children who playfully push at their mother.
Unshackle now the thoughts of the Soma-presser!
May they roll underneath, these stones till now revered!
1. God: Indra, throughout.
3. Sweet Soma: mandu.
Pulp prepared: the prepared juice is compared with cooked meat.
Reddish shrub: the soma plant.
4. Sisters: referring to the fingers of the priest pressing the soma.
5. Now they sink . . . : erotic comparison of the meeting between the upper and the lower stone.
Soma-seed: retas, semen.
7. The Stones: added for intelligibility.
Ten [workers]: the ten [fingers] engaged in pressing, which is here compared with the harnessing of a horse.
8. The ten reins are the ten fingers of the priest.
9. Bay steeds of Indra: as Indra himself drinks the Soma, his steeds are fed with the soma-herb.
Oxhide: the pressing of soma is compared with the milking of a cow, both actions being done while sitting on a skin.
11. Neither death nor cessation: ashrthita amrtyavah, neither interruption nor relaxation. Root shrath-to loosen. The personification of the stones allows for a personified interpretation of the verse; otherwise we should translate: free from deterioration and erosion; or: active, effective.
Sleek-looking: oily, unctuous.
Free from thirst or craving: atrshita atrshnajah.
12. Your fathers: the mountains from which the stones are taken.
Enamored of repose: kshemakama.
“They” in the last line refers again to the stones.
Sound: rava, again refers to the noise of pressing.
13. The stones are compared with horses released from their chariot.
Men drinking wine: anjaspah; the meaning is doubtful. Does it refer to the horses “drinking at once?”
14. Roll underneath: vivartantam, from vi- vrt-, to turn around or move hither and thither, i.e., to stop working.
Revered: cayamana, lit. considering themselves (the stones) to be something, i.e., sacred and important. The root cay- means both to be afraid of and to respect.
The Sacred Tree
Vanaspati
19 “With your apex you touch the heavens, with your middle portion you fill the air, with your foot you establish the earth,” says one text of the Shatapatha Brahmana, 173 referring to the poles of sacrifice and likening them to the thunderbolt which is an emblem of world conquest.
Among all the creatures engaged in the sacrifice perhaps none is more important or more full of symbolic power than the cosmic tree, the tree of life, the lord of the forest, the poles of the sacrifice. The poles are stakes cut from a particular tall tree and used to form the cross on which the victim will be impaled and sacrificed. By unction the sacrificial tree becomes a mediator between Men and Gods and the bringer of every spiritual and material treasure. This tree is at the center of the world and at the summit of the earth. From it flows grace from heaven, the branch of the tree having itself been sacrificed and having acquired by this very fact a new life, a second birth.
None of this is new to any student of religion nor is it unknown to the conscious members of a number of religions. Even modern Man preserves a sense of sacredness for the forest whose reserves and parks are often nowadays called sanctuaries. Modern literature still considers the forest a sacred place, and contemporary ecology imparts a new sense of sacredness to the “green belts” in both country and town. Moreover, objects made of wood evoke an altogether different warmth of emotion than do those made of steel, plastic, or other material.
We have already alluded to the cosmic tree, sheltering the Gods in its branches, 174 “spreading on the surface of the earth,” 175 and providing lodging for the whole of reality, including Nonbeing. 176 There is a connection between the image of the world-encompassing cosmic tree and the sun, which also embraces the entire universe. For this reason, perhaps, in the Rig Veda the cosmic tree is an inverted tree, with branches below and roots above, because the sun directs his beams down toward the earth and keeps his roots up in heaven. 177 This tree in the Upanishads symbolizes Life, 178 God, 179 and the primordial Man; 180 its branches are space, wind, fire, water, earth, and so on in fact, the whole of the universe. 181 As a tree in the forest, so is Man. 182 The Bhagavad Gita sums it up again by combining all these motifs. 183
Against this background the hymn we quote acquires a wider significance. It not only refers to the ritual of preparing the special branches for the performance of the sacrifice, that is, the blessing of them as utensils for the rite, but it also incorporates references to the cosmic sacrifice, the offering of the entire cosmos in order that it may have new life, be born again. The hymn seems to address itself sometimes to Vanaspati, the Lord of the forest, and sometimes to yupa, the branches that form the poles of the sacrifice.
Vanaspati
RV III, 8
1. At the time of sacrifice,
O Lord of the wood,
the worshipers smear
you with sacred oil.
When you stand upright
or when you repose
on Earth’s bosom, you still
will grant us good fortune.
2. Set up to the East
of the sacred Fire,
you accept our prayer,
intense and unflagging.
Hold yourself high
to bring us prosperity.
Drive far away
dearth of inspiration.
3. Lord of the wood,
take now your stance
on this, the loftiest
spot of all earth.
Well-fixed and measured one,
give to the worshiper,
who brings a sacrifice,
honor and glory.
4. Girdled and adorned,
he displays youthful beauty,
yet is fairer by far
when brought to new birth.
With minds contemplative
and godward directed,
our sages of lofty
intelligence rear him.
5. Born anew, he is born
on a day most auspicious,
growing in wisdom
in the assembly of men.
Wise men and skillful
consecrate him with song.
Approaching the Gods,
the priest calls aloud.
6. O Lord of the wood,
whom god-fearing men
have firmly positioned,
and ax has fashioned,
be pleased to grant us,
O divine poles of sacrifice,
a precious treasure,
the gift of children.
7. May these posts which are felled
and fixed in the earth,
to which the sacrificial
ladle has been raised,
which fix the boundaries
of the sacred field,
gain for us from the Gods
what is meet to be chosen.
8. The Adityas, the Rudras,
and the Vasus, directing
Earth and Heaven
and earth’s airy spaces,
shall bless in concord
our worship and raise
our emblem of sacrifice
high in the sky.
9. Like swans that fly
in a long-drawn-out line,
so these stakes have come to us
brightly colored.
Raised aloft by the sages
and turned to the East,
they proceed as Gods
to the Gods’ habitations.
10. These posts, set in earth
and adorned with circles,
appear to my eye
like the horns of horned creatures.
Upraised by the priests
in supplication,
may they lend us their aid
at the onset of battle!
11. O Lord of the wood,
whom this ax well-whetted
has set in our midst
with resultant joy,
put forth branches
a hundred times over!
So may we also
with thousands be blessed!
1. Lord of the wood: Vanaspati, applied here to the one particular tree out of which the yupa, the sacrificial post, will be made.
Worshipers: devayantah those loving and serving God, the godly.
The tree is life-bringing, both when alive in the forest and when used as a pole of sacrifice.
2. Prayer: brahman.
Intense and unflagging: ajaram suviram, undecaying, unfading, and full of vitality (or “performed by the most eminent persons”).
Dearth of inspiration: amati, lack of consciousness, of devotion, of awareness.
3. Loftiest spot: varshman, the surface of the earth, the center of the world: the place of the altar. Cf. YV XXIII, 62.
4. Girdled: parivita, lit. girt with a rope, i.e., the sacred cord (of grass) which is tied around the tree that is to be felled, so that it may become a yupa, or pole of sacrifice. A symbol also of the second birth, which takes place through the sacrifice. This verse is used in the initiation ceremony, upanayana, according to some GS (cf. e.g., AGS I, 20, 9).
Brought to new birth: lit. being born, jayamana, present participle. The act of being raised is the tree’s initiation, a new birth accompanied by prayer (cf. v. 5).
6. Precious treasure: ratna, jewel, pearl, treasure.
Gift of children: prajavat, generative energy, offspring.
7. To which the sacrificial ladle: i.e., the ladle filled with sacred oil (cf. v. 1 and also RV IV, 6, 3) with which the posts are smeared.
Sacred field: kshetrasadhas.
What is meet to be chosen: varya, the most precious and valuable thing. Cf. ratna in v. 6.
8. Emblem of sacrifice: the yupa.
9. Stakes: here probably the posts that mark the line of separation between the different sacrificial areas (dedicated to different Gods).
The Sacrificial Horse
Ashvamedha
20 The horse sacrifice, or ashvamedha, is the “king of the rites” 184 and the rite of kings. 185 It is the royal sacrifice offered by a victorious king. It is the most solemn and impressive cultic celebration of the Vedas and at the same time it is one of the most secular and political. The priestly role is not here so prominent as in most of the other sacrifices. Though its actual duration is only three days, preparations for the rite take long months or even, according to the prescriptions, up to one year or sometimes two, with yet another year to conclude the ritual.
At the moment of sacrifice the royal court, including the queen who has an important role to play at a certain moment, 186 is assembled together with the entire population. At the start Soma-juice is offered and then, after many ritual acts, the horse is immolated with solemnity. Numerous other animals are also led to the appointed spot and certain ones are offered in sacrifice. After the sacrifice of the horse has been performed the prescribed procedure demands the sacrifice of a number of cows, followed by the distribution of honoraria and other gifts to the priests. 187
Today we are perhaps in a better position to understand the nature of this sacrifice, which has been the subject of much debate among scholars. Without taking part in the discussion we may see in this sacrifice the final, minutely detailed elaboration of a long process in which pre-Vedic elements, fertility rites, cosmogonic references, social motives, political factors, and priestly interests all play a part, together producing a highly elaborate and no doubt impressive ritual. In spite of its complicated, soon outmoded, and at times degraded ritual, the overall impression created by this rite, encompassing as it does the whole of the universe, is undeniably splendid. It is often called the Great Sacrifice, mahakratu, the great display of force and power. It blots out all sins, fulfills all wishes, answers prayers for a son, and also, at a deeper level, fulfills or perfects Prajapati and identifies with him the one who is offering the sacrifice.
The Rig Veda has two hymns dedicated to the sacrifice of the horse. Whereas the hymn preceding our text has a more ritual character, 188 Rig Veda I, 163, does not set out to describe the ashvamedha rite; it is a cosmogonic hymn in which the horse of the ashvamedha is homologized in a grandiose fashion with the sun and with a primordial cosmic horse that represents the entire universe. 189 In this hymn are to be found both metaphorical and factual allusions, metaphorical with reference to the sun (e.g., this horse is a primordial horse) and factual with reference to the actual sacrifice. Thus verses 1 and 2 refer to the sun in the heavenly “ocean;” verse 5 speaks of a magnificent champion racehorse, while simultaneously referring to the perfect performance of the sacrificial rites over which the said horse presides. In verse 6 the horse in its earthly course is identified with the Sun in its heavenly course. Verse 8 brings us back to the ashvamedha, to that moment when the horse moves majestically onto the sacrificial parade ground.
Verse 9 describes certain features of the horse’s appearance, while referring once again to the Sun. In verse 12 the horse arrives amidst due solemnity upon the place of sacrifice, followed by other animals, by poets, singers, and priests. The hymn concludes with a prayer uttered by the officiating priest to the horse which has now been offered in sacrifice.
Throughout the Indo-European world the horse has occupied a rather special position and has been considered a powerful symbol both of the human psyche and of the universe, the link between the two being perhaps the connection of the horse with the waters, and in the ashvamedha, significantly enough, the horse is immolated by suffocation. The Vedic contribution in this regard is to stress the horse’s cosmic and universal character, in contrast with the particular features to which attention is drawn in Greece or central Europe, and also to stress its sacrificial role. The horse occupies so central a place precisely because it assumes in itself the whole universe and has a vicarious role to perform. It is significant that the chapters of the Shatapatha Brahmana where the ashvamedha is minutely described are followed by a chapter on the purushamedha, or human sacrifice, 190 which in turn is followed by a further chapter on the sarvamedha, or all-sacrifice. 191
Our second text is from the Yajur Veda and is a prayer said by the officiating priest in the course of the ashvamedha.
Ashvamedha
RV I, 163
i) 1. How worthy of telling and how superb your birth,
O Steed, when first you whinnied, on seeing the light,
as you rose from the ocean of sea or of space
with your eagle wings and limbs of swift gazelle.
2. This Steed, the gift of Death, Trita has harnessed,
while Indra was the first of all to mount him,
the Gandharva first to grasp in his hands the reins.
From the substance of the Sun, O Gods, you fashioned this Steed.
3. You, O Steed, are Death, you the Sun;
you by a secret decree are Trita;
by only a little are you distinguished from Soma.
You have, they say, three connections in heaven.
4. In heaven, they say, you have three connections,
three in the waters and three within the ocean.
You resemble, O Steed, the Lord of the Waters,
for there, they say, is your highest birthplace.
5. Here, Racehorse, are your haunts for bathing;
here are the traces of your champion hooves.
Here I have seen the blessed reins that guide you,
which those who guard Cosmic Order cherish.
6. Your innermost self I have perceived in spirit,
a Bird from heaven who directs his course on high.
I have seen you rearing your winged head and advancing
by dust-free paths, fair and easy to travel.
7. There I have seen your exalted form seeking
to obtain food in the track of the Cow.
When mortal man approaches you for enjoyment,
the great devourer of plants has awakened.
8. Behind you, O Horse, come a chariot, the hero,
an offering of cows, and a troupe of fair maidens.
Desirous of your friendship, many follow.
With splendid courage the Gods have endowed you.
9. His horns are of gold, his feet of iron;
he is fleet as thought and swifter than Indra.
The Gods are gathered for this sacred meal, offered
to the one who first of all mounted this Stallion.
10. Like swans, the celestial coursers form a line
when they, the steeds, reach the heavenly arena,
the end of their lengthened row being motionless,
while those in the center still proceed.
11. Your body, O Steed, flies as with wings;
your spirit moves quickly like the wind.
Your horns are found in sundry places,
advancing in the forests with a jumping motion.
12. The fleet-footed Steed, his mind recollected
and thoughts directed godward, advances
to the place of sacrifice. A ram of his kindred
is led before; next come sages and minstrels.
13. The Steed has attained the abode supreme.
He has gone to the place of his Father and Mother.
May he find a warm welcome today among the Gods
and thus win good gifts for him who offers!
YV XXII, 22
ii) O Brahman, in this kingdom may priests be born who shine brightly with sacred knowledge! May here be born warriors of heroic stature, who are skillful shots, good marksmen, invincible chariot fighters! May cows in this kingdom yield milk in plenty, our oxen be tireless, our horses swift, our housewives skillful! To him who offers this sacrifice may a hero-son be born, a champion, a mighty warrior, a persuasive speaker!
May Heaven send us rain for our needs!
May our fruit-bearing plants ripen in season!
May joy and prosperity fall to our lot!
i) 1. Ocean . . . of space: purisha, a much-discussed word, meaning not earth, as was traditionally said, but originally source, flood, afterward fullness, and still later dirt. Here the word almost certainly denotes the primeval source, the primordial waters. Cf., e.g., RV III, 22, 4 and also SB VII, 1, 1, 24.
2. Death: Yama, the King or God of Death, but here perhaps referring to Agni.
Trita: a little-known divinity related to Indra.
3. Death: Yama.
Sun: Aditya.
Three connections: i.e. his relationships to the divinities mentioned above.
4. The horse’s threefold origin in the waters and in the ocean is here a poetic parallel to the three “bonds” of Varuna. Cf. RV I, 24, 15, (§ IV 8).
Lord of the Waters: Varuna.
5. The homology with the Sun begins here. The Gods are the keepers of the reins and the guardians of rita.
6. Perceived in spirit: manasa . . . ajanam.
A Bird: the vital principle of the Steed is here identified with the Sunbird, i.e., the atman of the Steed is the Bird.
Paths: i.e., paths leading to heaven.
7. Your exalted form: te rupam uttamam.
Track of the Cow: either the firmament where the “trace” of the Cosmic Cow is found or, on earth, the racecourse where cows are won.
Devourer of plants: Agni.
8. An offering of cows . . . : lit. cows follow and the charm of virgins.
9. Horns . . . of gold: probably meaning hooves and referring to the rays of the sun. According to v. 2 it was Indra himself who first mounted the Steed.
10. The order is slightly modified to make it more intelligible. The idea is that the celestial, i.e., sunhorses, form a row of which the middle part is moving while the end stands still.
11. Spirit: citta.
Horns: perhaps referring to the hooves. Others see an allusion to quickly spreading forest fires.
ii) Priests: Brahmins.
Heaven: Parjanya.
The Struggle for Immortality
Daivasura
21 The quest for immortality is one of Man’s deepest instincts. At the same time he is aware that immortality is not his “natural” lot; immortality belongs, if at all, to the Gods. Thus a yearning to become a God springs up spontaneously within Man. We have already heard the chant of victory:
We have drunk the Soma and become immortal!
We have attained the light, we have found the Gods! 192
Man can become immortal only if he is divinized or, rather, divinization amounts to immortality.
In connection with this theme the Vedic experience contributes two intuitions, the first of which is considered here and the second in the next text. The Brahmanas tell us explicitly that not even the Gods were originally immortal, that immortality is not natural to the Gods, that they also had to struggle for it. Sacrifice is the way to immortality, because sacrifice is the one original and originating act, as we have already seen.
It would be merely a farce if the Gods were to achieve their immortality without a struggle, without the risk of not getting it and so we have the scene set for the asuras, those beings that are usually referred to as demons, for lack of a better term. One should recall in this connection that angels and demons have the same origin and that their good and evil features are themselves the fruits of a struggle and a test.
The fact that the Gods are obliged to win their immortality has two important implications for Men. First, the Gods are real and inspiring examples, for they have gone through the same fundamental experience as Men: that of having to gain their real freedom. To attain freedom means to become immortal, to be free from the clutches of time, for as long as one is tied to time one is not really free. The Gods are really Men’s fellow travelers on the journey toward immortality. Men’s relation with them is one of companionship, for Gods and Men share a common destiny in spite of their differing positions in an acknowledged hierarchy. The other implication, the recognition of which gives peace and serenity to Man, is that the Gods cannot be whimsical creatures, for there is a rita, an Order, whose dynamism is Sacrifice, which transcends both Men and Gods and which can in no way be manipulated or considered as being activated by an anthropomorphic will.
Let us now take a closer look at the texts themselves. Prajapati, the Lord of all creatures, whose name is scarcely mentioned in the Rig Veda, 193 holds in the Brahmanas a position of capital importance. According to a lengthy narrative in the Brahmanas, Prajapati is the primordial being before whom nothing whatever was in existence. The Shatapatha Brahmana tells us over and over again that “Prajapati is sacrifice;” that is, Prajapati performed an act of self immolation, self-sacrifice, in order that creatures might come to be. Thus creation is regarded as the sacrifice of Prajapati, as the ontological self-despoliation of the supreme principle in order to bring into existence the intermediate order of things which consists of the cosmos, which has come forth from the Father of all beings and is neither the Father nor sheer nothingness. This intermediate order, being neither stable nor self-existent, is by constitution transitory, or, in other words, dynamic. The creature is powerless in itself to sustain itself or to complete its full span of destiny, but must attempt by means of sacrifice to recover its true status, to return to its source, retrieve its unity, that is, to become immortal, divinized.
Prajapati, we may remember, created two types of superior beings, the devas (Gods) and the asuras (demons). In the beginning neither the Gods nor the asuras were immortal. Both tried to become immortal and fought each other in order to achieve immortality. They discovered that only by means of sacrifice could they become immortal. Both performed sacrifice 194 and both strove to conquer the world. 195 The Shatapatha Brahmana abounds in anecdotes about this struggle for immortality, a struggle of a unique kind, a veritable ritual battle in which the combatants are priests and the weapons sacrifices. Sacrifice is the sole means by which the Gods may win the victory. Because the devas perform the sacrifice better than the asuras they win. 196 Before the final victory there are recurring conflicts and victories of a temporary nature, for the asuras try again and again to mount fresh assaults.
The rivalry between the Gods and the demons, the so-called daivasura struggle, is the subject of one of the richest myths extant concerning the conflict constantly being waged between the two forces harbored in Man. The conflict here, however, is not ultimate. Both devas and asuras are offspring of the supreme God and it is not even certain which of the two are the firstborn. 197 The asuras are the enemies of the Gods but very seldom appear as enemies of Men. Both strive for immortality, but they also know that there is an incompatibility between them so that the victory can be won only by one side. The rituals of sacrifice, which is considered the sole total and all-inclusive act, constitute the rules of the game. The first instrument of sacrifice is the firstborn of Prajapati, vac, the word. They will have to fight with it and for it. But this primordial word is both right and wrong, true and untrue. The word is always ambivalent. The Shatapatha Brahmana goes on to say that truth took refuge among the Gods and untruth among the asuras and that for this reason the devas became feeble and poor, while the demons became rich; but in the long run he who abides in truth reaches fullness of existence, while he who remains in untruth loses everything. It is by means of this sacrifice to truth that the Gods finally attained victory. 198 The symbolism needs no further interpretation.
Daivasura
SB I, 5, 2, 6
i) The Sacrifice ran away from the Gods. The Gods called out after it, “Listen to us! Come back here.” It replied, “Let it be so,” and went back to the Gods. Now with what had thus come back to them, with that the Gods worshiped, and by this worship they became the Gods that they are to this very day.
SB II, 7, 3, 1
ii) It is through Sacrifice that the Gods proceeded to the heavenly realm.
SB II, 2, 2, 8-14
iii) 8. [Once upon a time] the Gods and the asuras, both of whom were offspring of Prajapati, were striving between themselves. Both sides were destitute of spirit because they were mortal and he who is mortal has no spirit. Among these two groups of mortal beings one, Agni, was immortal and it was through him, the immortal, that they both had their being. Now, whichever of the Gods was slain by the asuras was in very truth slain irrevocably.
9. And so the Gods became inferior. They continued worshiping and practicing fervent concentration, however, in the hope of overcoming their enemies who were likewise mortal. Their gaze, then, fell upon the immortal sacred Agni.
10. “Come,” they said, “let us establish this immortality in our inmost self! When we have placed that immortality in our inmost self and have become immortal and unconquerable, we shall defeat our enemies who are neither immortal nor unconquerable.”
11. They said: “The Fire is with both of us; let us then speak openly with the asuras.”
12. They said: “Let us establish the two fires, but then what will you do?”
13. The asuras replied: “Then we shall set it in place, saying: eat grass here, eat wood here, cook rice here, cook meat here.” The fire that the asuras set in place, it is by this that men eat [cooked food].
14. So the Gods established that Fire in their inmost self and, having established that immortality in their imnost self and become immortal and unconquerable, they defeated their mortal and conquerable enemies. And so he [the sacrificer] now establishes immortality in his inmost self, and though he has no hope of immortality, he attains a full lifetime. He becomes unconquerable, and when his enemy tries to overpower him, he is not overpowered. Therefore, when one who has established the Fire and one who has not are fighting, the one who has established the Fire overcomes. For by this [Fire] he becomes unconquerable, immortal.
SB II, 4, 2, 1-5
iv) 1. The beings came in a respectful manner to find Prajapati; by “beings” is meant the creatures he had made.
“Arrange,” they said to him, “how we are to live.” First the Gods drew near, ritually invested with the sacred cord [of sacrifice] and bending the right knee.
He said to them: “Receive Sacrifice as your food, immortality as your life-force, and the Sun as your light-sphere.”
2. Then drew near the ancestors, bearing over the right shoulder the cord of sacrifice and bending the left knee. To them he said: “Receive the funeral offerings of each month as your food, the svadha libation as your mind-swiftness and the moon as your light-sphere.”
3. Then drew near the race of men, clothed and bowing low. To them he said: “Night and morning shall you eat, your offspring shall be your death and fire your light-sphere.”
4. Then drew near the animals. He allowed them to eat according to their fancy, saying: “Eat as chance allows, how, when, and where you will.” And indeed they eat when and where they find something to eat.
5. Then, finally, drew near the asuras. To them he assigned darkness and power. The power of the asuras does indeed exist.
All those beings, it is true, have perished, but beings continue to live according to the ordinance Prajapati has given them.
SB II, 4, 3, 3
v) It is by dint of sacrifice that the Gods have brought to completion all their proper undertakings, and the same did the sages also.
SB V, 1, 1, 1-2
vi) 1. The Gods and the asuras, both having Prajapati as their origin, were rivals of each other. So the asuras, swollen with pride, said, “In what, pray, should we place our oblation?” And they proceeded to place their oblations in their own mouths.
2. The Gods then proceeded to place their oblations each in the mouth of one of his fellows. And Prajapati gave himself over to them. In this way they became owners of sacrifice, for sacrifice is really the food of the Gods.
SB VIII, 4, 3, 2
vii) All that the Gods effect they effect by intoned recitation. Now intoned recitation is sacrifice; it is through sacrifice therefore that they do whatever they do.
SB X, 2, 2, 1
viii) And when he had emitted the creatures, he [Prajapati] rose up on high and departed to that world where that [sun] shines; for up to then there existed no other that was worthy of sacrifice. The Gods began then to offer him in sacrifice.
SB XI, 1, 8, 2-4
ix) Prajapati donated himself to the Gods. The sacrifice became verily theirs. Sacrifice is therefore the food of the Gods. When he donated himself to the Gods he emitted an image of himself, which is sacrifice . . . By sacrifice he purchased himself back from the Gods.
TS I, 6, 10, 2
x) It was by the perfect accomplishment of the sacrifice that the Gods proceeded to the heavenly realm, and it was by reason of their defective performance of the same that the asuras were conquered.
i) Listen to us: a-shru-.
Let it be so: so’ stu tatha iti.
Sacrifice is the Gods’ dynamic force.
ii) The verb upa-ut-kram- suggests an ascent by degrees.
iii) 8. Destitute of spirit: anatman, without atman, seems here to have a personal meaning of “without a personal spirit.” Cf. v. 10, where the Gods desire to insert this immortality, idam amrtam, into their inmost self: antaratman.
9. The immortal sacred Agni: etad amrtam agnyadheyam.
10. Established: adadhata, from the root dha-, to establish. Immortality is always a second gift, the fruit of a second birth, the result of the sacrifice.
14. The sacrificer cannot attain immortality like the Gods, but he attains his own fullness as his complete ayus or lifetime.
One who has established the Fire: ahitagni, the one who performs the agnihotra regularly. This sacrificial conclusion of a mythical text is typical of the B.
iv) Prajapati gives sacrifice, immortality, and the sun to the devas; masi-shraddha, svadha-shraddha (cf. thought-swift: manojavin), and the moon to the ancestors (Fathers); alternation of day and night, offspring (praja), and fire to men. To animals he gave no rite (and therefore no life-force) and no light, but only bodily sustenance; to the asuras, only darkness (tamas) and power (maya). Some translate maya as “illusion;” the power, however, is a shrewd and deceptive one, cunning might (Cf. § IV B b). Cf. SB XIII, 4, 3, 11, which again relates maya to the asuras so that asura-vidya becomes synonymous with maya, probably connoting magic. Noteworthy also are the different ways of approach: the devas are ritually invested with the sacred cord (yajnopavitin) on the left; the pitarah (Fathers) are pracinavitin (i.e., invested with the shoulder turned eastward, as for the shraddha ceremony); men are clothed.
v) By sacrifice the Gods and the rishis have accomplished everything that is proper for them to do, or have composed their rite.
Brought to completion: the root klp-, to make possible, to bring about, accomplish, perform, arrange, etc., is here used in the causative.
Proper undertakings: kalpa, fit; as a noun, rule, sacred ordinance.
vi) Cf. SB XI, 1, 8, 2 (ix).
vii) The Gods here are Prajapati and the pranas, creating together by means of stoma, i.e., by intoned recitation, song of praise, chant.
Life-Giving Immolation
Haviryajna
22 Our next texts, like those of the preceding section, all implicitly suggest that the human condition holds within it a deeper invisible dimension. This dimension Upanishadic spirituality seeks to develop (and sometimes to extricate) from the complexus of human reality in order to form out of it an autonomous body of doctrine. This process runs the risk of becoming a discarnate or dematerialized spirituality. We are as yet far from this dichotomy, but already the emphasis is shifting more and more toward interiority.
Yet we should not forget the second and distinctive feature of Vedic spirituality mentioned in the preceding chapter. There exists in the Vedas a trend that is not directed toward immortality and takes no pleasure in the thought of it, but rather is repelled by the idea of “living forever.” At this stage Man either seeks to interiorize and perfect the idea of immortality, or he prefers in his present human condition to renounce altogether such a dream of living forever. In a word, he craves either liberation, that is, escape from the given human condition, or its temporal reform, the latter desire finding its expression in the myth of rejuvenation. The Upanishads follow the former path, but we are still at this stage concerned with the latter, which, we may note, survives in popular religion until our own times. It is after all a constant desire of the human psyche: not to transcend time but to bring it to a halt.
There is a wonderful story in the Brahmanas which may well be the origin of other similar legends. 199 It tells how a certain tribe was afflicted by dissensions and plagues as a punishment for their ill-treatment of the sage Cyavana who was now passing through an abandoned old age in pain and decrepitude. Their chieftain, Saryata, vexed to learn of this, went to the sage, paid him homage, and offered him in atonement his daughter Sukanya. The Ashvins, coming on the scene, tried to seduce Sukanya and sneered at her when she refused their advances, preferring to stay with the decrepit old man to whom her father had given her: “I will not abandon him as long as he lives,” she said. The sage, aware of her promise (for indeed she told him), instructed her that if they came again she was to bring home to them their own incompleteness and imperfection, adding that he would not tell them in what respect they were incomplete and imperfect until they made him young again. The stratagem succeeded and the Ashvins made him young again by virtue of the waters of a certain pool. It is significant that what led them to make him young again was the desire they had to partake of Soma. Cyavana then told them that they were imperfect because they were excluded by the Gods from participation in a certain sacrifice they were performing in Kurukshetra. 200
Not only is the whole text concerned with sacrifice, but it also derives its meaningfulness from the obedience and fidelity of Sukanya, who was ready to give her whole life in service to a ghostlike man rather than to disobey her father. This story supplies a vivid context for the more abstract quotations of this chapter.
Sacrifice consists of an immolation. We find here once again the thought that the sacrifice is “stretched out,” just as thread is stretched on the loom to be woven. If it is a question of Soma-juice, then one presses it, extracts all its virtue, slays it; if it is fire, then it dwindles and dies. In the same way all sacrifice involves a dying. But this immolation is a dying-for-life, for the sacrifice in the very act of dying renews itself within the universe; it is thus a universal principle of life, everywhere in operation. All that is, the whole cosmos, comes to be through sacrifice. The highest act of God is that of Agni the sacrificer, the cosmic priest who constantly renews the life of every being. If it is unable to participate in the cosmic and universal sacrifice existence dwindles and is annihilated.
Haviryajna
SB II, 2, 2, 1
i) Verily, when this sacrifice is performed, it is slain; when one presses the soma-juice, one slays it; when one causes the victim to acquiesce and immolates it and thrusts a knife into it, one slays it. With the pestle and mortar or the two grindstones one slays the oblation.
SB III, 6, 2, 26
ii) Creatures who are not allowed to take part in sacrifice are reduced to nothingness. Therefore the sacrificer admits those who are not annihilated to take part in sacrifice, both men and beasts, Gods and birds, plants, trees, and everything that exists. Thus the entire universe takes part in sacrifice. Gods and men on the one hand and the Fathers on the other were wont in days gone by to drink together from the sacrifice. Sacrifice is their shared feast. In olden days they were to be seen as they came to this feast. Nowadays they are still present but remain invisible.
SB III, 9, 4, 23
iii) Now concerning why Soma is called sacrifice: when they press him, they slay him and when they stretch him out, they cause him to be born. He is born in being stretched out, he is born “going on”: whence comes yan-ja, and yanja, they explain, is the same as yajna.
SB XIV, 3, 2, 1
iv) All that is, including all the Gods, has but one principle of life: sacrifice.
i) Every sacrifice is an immolation.
Causes . . . to acquiesce: samjnapayanti causative of sam-jna-, to agree, to consent. The sacrificial victim ought not to be led forcibly to its death, but made to accept it willingly.
Immolates: vishasati, from vi-shas-, to cut, to slaughter, thus to immolate.
ii) Reduced to nothingness: parabhuta (para-bhu-), to perish, disappear, be lost, succumb, yield, to vanish, to sustain a loss. Ontological nothingness entails being excommunicated from the sacrifice. Cf. § III B Antiphon for one sentence of this text in a different version.
Sacrificer: i.e., Agni, probably in his function as priest.
Drink together: sampibante, i.e., the Soma, shared feast; sampa, from the same root pa-, to drink.
Cf. SB I, 5, 2, 4; II, 3, 1, 20, which is the same text repeated (except for the last sentence).
iii) Sacrifice: yajna, hence the play on words at the end of the passage; going on: yan jayate, from which come the syllables that compose both yanja and yajna. The root i- suggests a cyclical conception.
He is born in being stretched out: sa tayamano jayate, sa yan jayate, with the idea of infinite extension and never-ending continuity.
iv) Principle of life: atman.
Sacrifice Is Man
Purushayajna
23 Although Scripture says more than once that sacrifice is that through which the Gods acquired immortality, or that by means of which Man obtains both material benefits and immortality, it stresses equally that “sacrifice is Man.” 201 It is Man who offers, it is through him that sacrifice is performed. Sacrifice corresponds to Man in stature and proportions. In certain passages of the Shatapatha Brahmana the different parts of the human body are compared to the different constituent elements of sacrifice and to the objects employed in it. If it is true that sacrifice is Man it can equally be said that Man is a sacrifice. Sacrifice involves both immolation and new life and so it is with Man also. He is born, dies, and is reborn. The texts say that Man is born three times, once from his parents, a second time when he offers sacrifice, and a third time when, on dying, he is burned on the pyre. The second birth, that effected by sacrifice, is explained as follows: through the offering that he makes the sacrificer communicates with the world of the Gods and there comes about a sort of exchange. Just as a snake sloughs off its dead skin, so he who offers sacrifice “sloughs off” his mortal body. He presents it to the Gods and receives in return an immortal body. There is a whole series of preliminary rites called diksha leading up to the sacrifice proper. Through the diksha the Man receives a second birth, this time a divine birth, and he becomes immortal. The sacrificer has thus two bodies and it is his mortal body that he offers to the Gods in sacrifice. Once he is assured of a divine body he descends to earth once more and purchases back from the Gods his sacrificed body.
Certain texts also speak of human life in terms of a constitutive debt; one is indebted to the Gods, indebted to the sages, indebted to the ancestors, and indebted to Men. Debt is perhaps an ambiguous word 202 owing to the sociological and judicial connotations it has acquired. Rna refers, certainly, to a kind of moral obligation or duty that Man is discharging when he sacrifices, but this is to be understood as an act that must be done because it entails the fulfillment of Man’s own being. Man’s life on earth is ontically linked with the whole of reality and it is only when he responds with openness, or, to put it another way, when he permits within himself the unhampered circulation of being, that Man can be said to possess real life. To recognize one’s place in the world involves the acknowledgment of a fivefold link, a fivefold debt, not merely as a social obligation but as a constitutive bond of unity. We have come into existence by a “jumping outside,” by a movement or “transgression” away from the undifferentiated whole, and it is specifically by sacrifice that we reintegrate ourselves into the total reality. 203
The passage about the four debts may help us to understand the way in which the sacrifice reintegrates Man into the whole of reality. By sacrificing to the Gods he restores his unity with the heavenly world; by reciting the Vedas, he acquires wisdom, he rescues himself from isolation and banality; by having progeny he establishes his links with mankind, past and future; finally, by practicing hospitality he communes with his fellow beings in an actualized present. The four debts do not impoverish Man; on the contrary they enrich him by letting him partake in the totality of the universe. 204
The last text in this group sums up all that has been said and foreshadows the teaching of the Upanishads. It reminds us in brief that the life of Man, Man’s daily round, consists of a series of sacrifices. Here there is already an advance beyond ritualism, an advance beyond all desire for prosperity or this world’s goods--a declaration that true sacrifice consists of sacred study. A development is now taking place which will transform the idea of sacrifice, interiorize it, and purify it until in its performance only true knowledge will count.
The more general and cosmic interpretation of sacrifice does not, however, take priority in these texts over the concrete and ritualistic one. It is not only the cosmic purusha who performs the sacrifice and not only the primordial Man who can be termed both sacrifice and sacrificer; the concrete human being also is said to be the sacrifice and it is by sacrifice that he lives, because sacrifice links him with the whole of existence and enables him to perform all his duties as Man.
The fulfilment of all “debts” would lead inexorably to the elimination of the individual, to the immolation of the little self, to the purushamedha, the human sacrifice. It is not a question here of the destruction of the whole purusha, which would amount to an annihilation of the whole of reality, but to the immolation of the little purusha, that is, the individualistic ego. This ego is understood as all that constitutes individuality. To this end elaborate rituals will furnish the victim with a borrowed body so that substitution forestalls the actual killing of any human being. 205 Yet Man is the first of the five victims 206 and so must be the first one to be sacrificed, 207 though (as other texts will say) the strength of one victim passes on to the next so that the horse is the substitute for Man, the bull for the horse, and so on, 208 until finally by the immolation of one victim all are adjudged to have been sacrificed. 209
The human being is Man and Man is the sacrifice. This priestly identification of the individual with Man plays an important part in the understanding of human sacrifice. There is a twofold rationale to be observed in human sacrifice (we are ignoring, of course, degraded forms of it which are also found). This rationale is concerned in the first place with the debts owed by the individual to the Gods, the ancestors, and so on, by virtue of his having come to individual existence at all. Only by the sacrifice of himself as a separate ego can Man redeem and rescue himself. The rationale includes also the idea of a sharing by the individual in the cosmic sacrifice of the purusha. If the whole world has come into being by the sacrifice of Man, the individual must reenact that creating and saving sacrifice by performing it himself. Man, in this sense, is priest for the whole cosmos and his priestly action must include the sacrifice of himself. From this perspective we can understand two main features of Man’s self-sacrifice: the looking for substitutes, on the one hand, and the interiorization of the sacrifice, on the other.
We may close this commentary on the human sacrifice by recalling the most ancient version of the story of Harishcandra as it is found in the Aitareya Brahmana 210 before its rich and variegated elaboration in the itihasas and puranas, that is, in the epics and in popular literature. In spite of his hundred wives, King Harishcandra had no son and, having prayed to Varuna for an offspring, he promised at the same time that he would sacrifice any son born to him to the God. A son, Rohita, was born and his father by different excuses succeeded in postponing the sacrifice until the young man could bear his own arms. “My son,” said the father to him, “it is Varuna who has given you to me. I must sacrifice you to him.” Rohita escapes to the forest and wanders there for six years. He meets eventually a certain poor rishi, who for a hundred cows consents to offer his second son Sunahshepa as a substitute for Rohita. 211 The king and the God agree. “A Brahmin is worth more than a Kshatriya,” says Varuna. For another hundred cows the same rishi Ajigarta binds his own son to the sacrificial post and for yet another hundred is ready to slay the boy himself, for nobody else is available to perform these actions, the four officiating priests having refused to bind the victim. At this Sunahshepa, realizing that he, a human being, is going to be sacrificed as if he were not a man, begins a mantra recitation to the Gods. His bonds loosen one by one as he recites this succession of verses in praise of Ushas. At the final verse the last knot is loosed and not only is Sunahshepa free but king Harishcandra also recovers from the dropsy with which he has been stricken. The famous sage Vishvamitra, one of the four priests, receives Sunahshepa as his son and curses Ajigarta.
Although this story is generally known as the akhyana (story) of Sunahshepa, we could consider also the figure of Rohita, Harishcandra’s son, and call it “the myth of the human condition.” Rohita represents Man in his basic human situation. He is born into life with a constitutive debt, the debt to the Gods. Rohita discovers the debt and escapes into the forest, but then recognizes his duty through his father’s suffering (he has dropsy) and returns to face his destiny. Before returning he has to overcome, for the fifth time, the test (which comes not from a “bad” temptor, but from the God Indra himself) not to go back to his father and be sacrificed. It is only when he has set his heart and mind on the right way that he meets the poor Ajigarta and his sons, and vicarious substitution becomes possible.
Here we have most of the motifs connected with sacrifice: life is a free gift which can be preserved and fully lived only by means of a gift given in return; there is a supreme order of things over which neither Men nor Gods have any power; the vicarious substitution, whatever its subjective motive may be, has an ontological justification, because ultimately human value does not reside in the individual but in the person and thus one person can take the place of, put on the mask of, another. Herein is the realm of human freedom and the mystery of love. Prayer has a power of its own and can reverse the order of things because it introduces an element of mercy which would otherwise be stifled by unmitigated justice. Human greed and the mysterious ways of the Gods are also vividly depicted in this myth.
One of the most human and universal conceptions of sacrifice is the so-called pancamahayajna, the five great sacrifices. Here the idea of sacrifice embraces all aspects of life and Man’s relationship to all beings, from plants and animals up to Brahman. Man is related to all beings by means of sacrifice. Sacrifice is not his link exclusively with the Gods; even water offered to a guest has the same value and symbolic depth as a complicated ritual. The study of the Scriptures itself is the highest liturgical act, the sacrifice to Brahman. It is not water or ghee, but the student’s intellect which is the substance of this sacrifice. Thus, even before the Upanishadic spiritualizing of sacrifice, this conception saves sacrifice from becoming a mere speciality of the priests and enables it to penetrate the whole of Man’s life.
Purushayajna
SB I, 3, 2, 1
i) The sacrifice is man. It is man [who offers it] because it is man who spreads it out and because, in being spread out, it assumes exactly the same stature as man. For this reason, the sacrifice is man.
SB I, 7, 2, 1-5
ii) 1. When a man is born, whoever he may be, there is born simultaneously a debt to the Gods, to the sages, to the ancestors, and to men.
2. When he performs sacrifice it is the debt to the Gods which is concerned. It is on their behalf, therefore, that he is taking action when he sacrifices or makes an oblation.
3. And when he recites the Vedas it is the debt to the sages which is concerned. It is on their behalf, therefore, that he is taking action, for it is said of one who has recited the Vedas that he is the guardian of the treasure store of the sages.
4. And when he desires offspring it is the debt to the ancestors which is concerned. It is on their behalf, therefore, that he is taking action, so that their offspring may continue, without interruption.
5. And when he entertains guests, it is the debt to man which is concerned. It is on their behalf, therefore, that he is taking action if he entertains guests and gives them food and drink. The man who does all these things has performed a true work; he has obtained all, conquered all.
SB II, 2, 4, 8
iii) When a man dies, they place him on the pyre; then he is born out of the fire and the fire burns only his body. Even as he is born from his father and mother, so he is born from the fire. The man who does not offer the agnihotra, however, does not pass to new life at all. Therefore it is very necessary to offer the agnihotra.
SB III, 6, 2, 16
iv) Man, so soon as he is born, is to be regarded, his whole person, as a debt owed to death. When he performs sacrifice he is purchasing himself back from death.
SB XI, 2, 1, 1
v) Of a truth man is born three times over in the following way. First he is born from his mother and father. He is born a second time while performing the sacrifice that becomes his share. He is born a third time when he dies and they place him on the pyre and he proceeds to a new existence. Therefore they say: “Man is born three times.”
SB XI, 2, 6, 13
vi) The question arises, “Which is the better, the man who sacrifices to the Self, or the man who sacrifices to the Gods?” “The man who sacrifices to the Self” must be the reply, for he who sacrifices to the Self is also the one who possesses the knowledge that through his sacrifice his body is brought to completion, through this sacrifice his body finds its proper place. Just as a snake rids itself of its dead skin, so the man who performs sacrifice rids himself of his mortal body, that is to say, of sin, and by dint of verses, formulas, Vedic melodies, and offerings takes possession of the heavenly realm.
SB XI, 5, 6, 1-3
vii) 1. There are five great sacrifices, namely, the great ritual services: the sacrifices to all beings, sacrifice to men, sacrifice to the ancestors, sacrifice to the Gods, sacrifice to Brahman.
2. Day by day a man offers sustenance to creatures; that is the sacrifice to beings. Day by day a man gives hospitality to guests, including a glass of water; that is the sacrifice to men. Day by day a man makes funerary offerings, including a glass of water; that is the sacrifice to the ancestors. Day by day a man makes offerings to the Gods, including wood for burning; that is the sacrifice to the Gods.
3. And the sacrifice to Brahman? The sacrifice to Brahman consists of sacred study.
i) The sacrifice is Man: purusho vai yajnah. Cf. CU III, 16, 1 (§ III 27). Man is of the same size as the altar. Cf. SB I, 2, 5, 14. And the altar is both the sacrifice and the center of the world. Cf. RV I, 164, 35 (§ I 11)
repeated in YV XXIII, 62. The same idea is repeated in SB III, 1, 4, 23, which, in addition to the identification between sacrifice and the word two verses before, makes a connection (matra) between yajna, purusha, and vac.
ii) 1. The text could also have the contrary meaning: the Gods, etc., owing the debt. Rnam ha vai jayate yo’ sti.
iii) Cf. § III 16 concerning the agnihotra.
iv) Debt: rna.
v) Cf. § V A c for cremation rites and AV XII, 3 for cremation as a form of sacrifice.
vii) The pancamahayajna (“five great sacrifices”) constitute the central acts of worship. They are (in the order of this text) bhuta, manushya-, pitr-, deva-, and brahmayajna (cf. the list given by Manu III 69-72).
Cf. BU I, 4, 17 (§§ I 7 and III 26 Introduction).
The Desire of Heaven
Svargakama
24 Svargakamo yajeta, “with the desire for heaven he sacrifices,” is a traditional formula explicated in the post-Vedic period with the closest attention to detail. There is no point in expounding here the various sacrifices and the proliferation of sacrificial practices which took place. We may simply take note in passing that the power of sacrifice has been used and misused for satisfying human wishes of all kinds.
Tradition renders svarga, which literally means “heaven,” as happiness, 212 and indeed the desire for heaven means the desire for happiness. Now happiness may be sought in different values: material riches, offspring, a wife, power, triumph, and the like. We detect here a peculiar process of secularization; sacrifice is being utilized for secular purposes, because in secular “values” Men see their relative or temporal heaven. One Upanishad, perhaps not without a certain irony, says that “one who desires heaven should offer the “agnihotra.” 213
There is no doubt that human religiousness has overdone the idea of heaven all too often, but on the other hand we should be on our guard against converting religion into so lofty and chemically pure a business that only the sophisticated and “pure” elites can be expected to understand and practice it. At one extreme is the idea that religion is only for the masses, while at the other is the belief that it is only for the elite. In the former instance the “enlightened” persons do not need religion. In the latter what the masses have is only superstition.
The desire of heaven under one image or another, that is, the longing for happiness along with the conviction that an endeavor toward such a goal is not totally hopeless, constitutes mankind’s most constant and most powerful impetus since Man became Man. Its interpretation is quite another matter. Yet here the emphasis lies, as with most religious values, not on the orthodoxy but on the orthopraxy, that is, on the action a Man has to perform in order to attain the desired goal. Furthermore, today’s practices probably illustrate yesterday’s attitudes: many people perform the traditionally prescribed actions without being convinced of their meaning or concerning themselves with their possible interpretation. 214
Svargakama
SB IV, 2, 5, 10
i) Every sacrifice is a boat to heaven.
SB VIII, 6, 1, 10
ii) So great is the power of sacrifice that it is the Self of the Gods. When, out of the essence of sacrifice, the Gods had made their own Self, they took their seat in the world of heaven. Similarly, the one who sacrifices now, when out of the essence of sacrifice he has made his own Self, takes his seat in the world of heaven.
SB VIII, 7, 4, 6
iii) Sacrifice has only one sure foundation, only one abode, the heavenly realm.
SB IX, 2, 3, 27
iv) “Those journeying to heaven do not look back; they ascend the heaven, the two worlds;” that is, those who are en route to the heavenly world proceed straight on; they by no means look back. It is also said, “The sage performing the all-supporting sacrifice . . .,” because sacrifice is most certainly that by which the whole world is supported and those who perform it are the sages.
SB IX 4, 4, 15
v) Daily the sacrifice is spread.
Daily the sacrifice is completed.
Daily it unites the sacrificer to heaven.
Daily by sacrifice to heaven he ascends.
AB IV, 27 (XIX, 5, 4)
vi) The hymns are arranged in groups. Just as one travels [here on earth] in different stages, changing each time the horses or the oxen for those which are less exhausted, in the same way one goes to heaven by reciting each time new hymns in meters that are not yet exhausted.
i) Sarva eva yajno nauh svargya. Cf. JaimB I, 165 (§ III B Antiphon).
ii) Cf. SB XI, 2, 6, 13 (§ III 23) where another idea is expressed, namely, that the best sacrifice is the sacrifice to (or of) the Self (atman) and that it is superior even to the sacrifice to the Gods, because it is more intimate and because it opens the way to the highest realm. Cf. § III 27.
World of heaven: svargaloka.
v) Daily by sacrifice . . . ahar ahar anena (yajnena) svargam lokam gacchati. For this reason, the text goes on, yoking and unyoking of the fire altar has to be performed daily.
vi) An example of the concreteness of the rites leading to heaven; the liturgical ascension is taken realistically.
Hymns: chandamsi, meters.
Fidelity and Faith
Satyam shraddhayam
25 The performance of sacrifice may become complicated and difficult, for any error or failure tends to be corrected by a new caution, which soon results in a proliferation of regulations. In fact, “if the priest omits a syllable in the liturgy he is making a hole in the sacrifice,” 215 says one text, thus indicating the strict correspondence among word, action, and results. In the Shathapatha Brahmana we find frequent mention of “those who know,” that is, the priests who are sure guides in this labyrinth of sacrifice. It is this knowledge on the part of priests which explains their importance (and hence that of Brahmins in general) and their superiority over the simple faithful. It explains also the strong tendency observable at the culmination of this process to consider them as Gods, as God-Men. In fact they have in their hands a formidable weapon, powerful both among Men and among Gods. No wonder, then, that before the performance of any important ritual priests must take an oath not to harm one another, 216 either intentionally 217 or by simple error. 218 It is not surprising that casteism and priestcraft have been among the most devastating abuses in all religions.
Those who perform sacrifice have to satisfy both the Gods above, to whom the sacrifice is offered, and the priests or Brahmins, to whom gifts must be presented. The presentation of gifts, which plays an important part in the ceremony, is called dakshina; the gifts may consist of gold, clothing, or cattle and horses. In the Atharva Veda we find stress laid upon these gifts to priests as “passports” to heaven.
Not only must sacrifice be flawlessly performed as regards the sequence of actions, but the prayers, verses, chants, and hymns must be impeccably pronounced. Just as the divine primordial sacrifice was accomplished through the medium of the word, so Man’s sacrifice similarly employs words, which are for Man his sole instrument and indeed the inner soul-force of the sacrificial action without which no sacrifice could conceivably take place. Hence the extreme precision associated with the words of sacrifice. The primeval words are all cultic words.
This execution of sacrifice in as perfect a manner as possible does not demand merely the proper sequence of rites performed in a mechanical fashion. Sacrifice is valueless without a spirit of trust, without faith. Faith cannot be dissociated from precision, or fidelity to the rules. Moreover, there must be trust both in the sacrifice itself and in the priests, since it is they who take the lead in the performance of the sacrificial action. This “trust” or “faith” appears also as a personified divinity. 219 The one who is faithful (shraddha-deva) par excellence is Manu, the first priest, who accomplished the sacrifice so perfectly that he was thereafter frequently cited as a model to imitate. 220
Even today in the Romance languages, though less in Anglo-Saxon idiom, one speaks of fidelity to observances and to rites, meaning both scrupulous observances and firm belief. There can be no fidelity without both elements: exactitude or precision, and faith or confidence. Shraddha means both equally.
The word shraddha has a fascinating origin. It is composed of shrat and the verbal root dha-, to put (place, set, lay). If we recall that the Latin credo, to believe, and the Greek kardia (Latin, cor) are also related to shrad (or shrat), we have practically all the ingredients of the notion of faith: to put one’s heart, to put one’s whole being, to have one’s trust and confidence in something. 221 Shrat has been related in the Indian tradition to satya, being, truth that here means not only truth but also truthfulness and exactitude. 222 Shrat means the fundamental trust that is based on nothing other than the very nature of our entire being--there where our whole being is based. 223 As already noted, 224 faith, truth, being, and cosmic order go together. 225 It is on this ultimate level that the discourse on faith is meaningful and not on the epistemic level of discussion about different beliefs.
One passage of the Kaushitaki Brahmana relates in a profound and simple fashion, by means of a story and a dialogue, the human longing for permanence and durable effects in connection with sacrifice. If sacrifice is real it cannot be merely a fleeting action but must be an act done once and for all with permanent results. Yet if it is not reenacted each time one feels the need, how can one enjoy its blessings, or how are we going to know that it is efficacious for us? “What makes the sacrifice endure forever is faith; if one sacrifices with faith, the sacrifice is never lost.” 226 Faith is the permanent and enduring element in sacrifice. “Certainly it is out of faith that the Gods fashioned the initiation (diksha).” 227
Faith also means truth and truth implies truthfulness, that is, the correct correspondence and right relationship among actions, words, meanings, and life. The external precision of the acts is only a symbol for the perfect correctness demanded from the sacrificer, for he does not perform the sacrifice through his own private capacity but enters into the ontological net of reality in order to maintain its cohesion and stability.
One text in this chapter (ii) leads us right up to the threshold of the Upanishadic world. Here the exactness of the rites is indeed essential, but still more essential is the spirit with which the ritual is performed. Imagine, the king says to Yajnavalkya, one of the most famous of sages, that the most elementary things are lacking for the performance of the agnihotra. What is to be used for the offering? The ontological interconnection of everything in the world permits Yajnavalkya to justify his substitution of one “thing” for another. When asked what would have to be done in the final extreme when nothing of the material world remains, he replies that one thing only remains: reality, truth (satya), and it is this that offers itself in faith; the sacrificer and the sacrifice coalesce when there is nothing else to offer.
It is the same Yajnavalkya who in the corresponding Upanishad of the later date 228 expresses the beautiful thought that the sacrifice depends on the offerings and the offerings depend on faith. “But on what,” he is asked, “does faith depend?” “On the heart alone is faith based,” he replies. 229
There is an intimate relation not only between truth and exactitude and between both of these and faith, but also between both of these and sacrifice. Sacrifice is the connecting link. “He who has laid the sacrificial fires should not speak untruth,” says another text; “he should rather not speak at all, but he should not speak untruth,” and, finally and epigrammatically, “Truth alone is worship.” 230
Satyam shraddhayam
SB I, 5, 2, 15
i) If he who draws near the sacrifice were to make an improper utterance he would waste the sacrifice, just as he might waste water by spilling it from a full vessel. Where the priests perform sacrifice as described with perfect mutual understanding, however, there everything takes place properly and no trouble appears. Therefore it is in this fashion that sacrifice should be carefully cherished.
SB XI, 3, 1, 2-4
ii) Janaka of Videha once asked Yajnavalkya, “What is used for the agnihotra, Yajnavalkya? Can you tell me?”
“I can, O king,” he replied.
“What is it, then?”
“Milk,” he said.
“If there were no milk, what would you use for the offering?”
“Rice and barley.”
“And if there were no rice and barley, what would you use?”
“Some other herbs.”
“And if there were no other herbs, what would you use?”
“I would use wild herbs,” he said.
“And if there were no wild herbs, what would you use?”
“Some fruit.”
“And if there were no fruit, what would you use?”
“I would use water,” he said.
“And if there were no water, what would you use?”
“Then indeed,” he replied, “there would be nothing at all, and yet an offering could be made--truth with faith.”
Janaka then said: “You know the agnihotra, Yajnavalkya; I give you a hundred cows.”
SB XII, 2, 3, 12
iii) Such are the difficulties and dangers of sacrifice which take hundreds upon hundreds of days to negotiate; and if any man venture upon them without knowledge, then he is stricken by hunger and thirst, by wicked men or friends, just as friends might harass foolish persons wandering in a wild forest. But if those who know do so they proceed one step after another and from one safe place to another, just as one might pass from one stream to another, and they thus obtain happiness in the world of heaven.
AB I, 11, 4 (II, 5, 13-14)
iv) One must prevent the sacrifice from unloosing. Just as in everyday life one ties knots at the two ends of a rope to prevent its becoming loose, so one ties knots at both ends of the sacrifice to prevent its unloosing.
TS I, 6, 8, 1
v) Whoever offers a sacrifice without first taking firm hold on faith, that man’s sacrifice inspires no confidence . . . But if a man first takes firm hold on faith and then offers his sacrifice, then in that man’s sacrifice both Gods and men place confidence.
i) Make an improper utterance: apavyaharet. As vyahrti is the effective and “proper” sacrificial utterance, its dangerous distortion is expressed by the prefix apa-.
Mutual understanding: samvid, which means also common knowledge.
ii) And yet an offering could be made--truth with faith: athaitad ahuyataiva satyam shraddhayam, then one could offer only truth with faith. Cf. The same text in JB I, 19 and also BU VI, 2, 9 (§ III 26), where it is said that the Gods offer faith. Cf. other texts mentioned above (§ III 23) on the human tendency to reduce everything to essentials. Cf. YV XIX, 30:
By means of vows [vrata] one obtains consecration [diksha],
by consecration one obtains favor [dakshina, offering to the priest],
by favor one obtains faith [shraddha],
by faith one obtains truth [satya].
iv) The knots at both ends of the sacrifice refer here to the introductory and concluding rites. If one of these rites were missing, the continuity and very existence of the sacrifice would be endangered. The metaphor of the loom is also in the background.
v) Takes firm hold: a-rabhya, from the same root as arambha, beginning, origin (taking firm grasp before undertaking anything). A play on words involving shrad, confidence, the verb dha-, to put, and shraddha.
The Anthropocosmic Sacrifice
Loko ‘gnih
26 The more ancient Upanishads make frequent mention of ritual sacrifice and seem to recognize the traditional ritual interpretations. Yet slowly there appears an interiorized and more anthropocentric notion of sacrifice, though its constituent parts remain the same. There is progress toward a more purely spiritual and interior concept.
One of the most important and ancient Upanishads belonging to the Shatapatha Brahmana is the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Its opening verses describe the sacrificial horse as symbol of the universal sacrifice: the head of the horse is the dawn, the eye the sun, the wind the breath, and so on.
We are still in the old order, but already the great leap has begun. Scripture is quoted as supporting the new ideas. Tradition has considered that meditation on the sacrifice is equivalent to the sacrifice itself, and a passage of the Shatapatha Brahmana is quoted which says, “either through knowledge or through work,” 231 and reference is made to another text that seems to equate the horse sacrifice with the knowledge of it. 232 Still another text says that the Self-offerer is better than the God-offerer, 233 which is understood to mean that to sacrifice to the Self is better than to sacrifice to the Gods. We are not interested in analyzing exegetical methods, but only in detecting a new trend leading to such interpretations. It was knowing this, the text of another Upanishad says, that is, realizing the power that faith possesses and recognizing the internal stream as the real one, that the ancients did not perform the sacrifice of the fire. 234
It is possible to distinguish three phases in the Upanishadic treatment of sacrifice. There is, first, the transient phase in which the ancient-style sacrifices still predominate. It may be called the anthropocosmic sacrifice, because the place of Man is becoming central and his dispositions are considered to be of the utmost importance.
The second phase, which we may call the anthropocentric one, stresses less the traditional sacrifices but underlines the meaning of sacrifice for human life, almost identifying the two. Man becomes the center of the sacrificial act.
The third phase, which may be called the sacrifice of the mind, identifies the costly and difficult external sacrifice with the no less costly and difficult internal sacrifice of an undisturbed and perfect mind reenacting within itself the whole dynamism of the outer world, whose existence, if not always denied or doubted, is certainly minimized. We are present here at the birth of another ritual.
We consider these three phases in three separate chapters. In the first of the selected texts the cosmic symbolism of sacrifice is expressed in anthropocosmic terms, and we note here a first step toward the total interiorization of sacrifice. The text is given with very slight variations in the two most important Upanishads. 235 It has a colorful setting and deals with the so-called pancagnividya, or doctrine of the five fires, which teaches the doctrine of the two ways after death: the so-called way of the Gods which leads to the world of Brahman with no return and the so-called way of the ancestors which leads to a return to this world. 236
The setting is a delightful dialogue between different generations (father and son), between different castes (Brahmins and Kshatriyas), and between different spiritualities (the sacred and the secular). The famous Shvetaketu, who has received full instruction from his father Gautama, does not know how to answer the questions of the king; nor does his father know anything about the two ways open to Men when they die, or about the reason why the other world is not filled to capacity, and so on. The old and famous father, great and rich Brahmin though he be, goes humbly to the Kshatriya to be instructed. Our text reports part of the teaching of this member of the warrior class to the highly respected Brahmin, who declares that such a doctrine is unknown to the whole Brahmin brotherhood. Here is perhaps an indication that the Upanishadic trend toward interiorization and secularization of the ritual did not originate in the Brahmanical and priestly class, but in the secular class of ruling princes.
The answer represents a middle way between the ancient cosmic conception and the later purely interiorized and almost theoretical notion of Vedanta. The cosmos as a whole presents the traditional structure of a universal sacrifice, but the different parts of the cosmos are homologized with human destiny. There are five realities: the otherworld, the intermediate rain cloud, this terrestrial world, man, and woman. All of them are Agni, the sacrificial fire, and all of them have their own characteristic five elements for the sacrifice: fuel, smoke, flame, coals, and sparks. On each of the five fires the Gods offer the corresponding sacrifice which thus presents an interesting hierarchical structure, each of the five elements being based on its immediate predecessor. The completion of the circles takes place in Man, who at the end of his life realizes the unity of the cosmic elements with the human. In the funeral pyre the fuel is no longer the sun, the year, the earth, the open mouth, the sexual organ, but simply fuel. The same is true of the other elements of the sacrifice. The circle is complete but the end can be twofold: a Man who has been transformed and has acquired the color of light may enter the eternal world of Brahman with no return to earth, or, failing to reach transformation, he may follow the way of the ancestors and come back to earth under a different form.
It is at the end of a similar homologization that another Upanishad clearly states:
The Sacifice is fivefold.
An animal is fivefold.
Man is fivefold.
This entire universe,
all that is, is fivefold.
The Man who knows this
obtains this whole world. 237
Sacrifice is the world. The three main fires of sacrifice are given an allegorical interpretation as the sacrificial piles which Prajapati himself erected when he created the cosmos, namely, the earth, the intermediate space, and the sky. Fire is the ruling power in these three regions, that is, the year, the wind, and the sun, and it is by this power that the sacrificer is brought to the experience of Joy Supreme, that is, to the experience of Brahman. In other words, the sacrifice, embracing the three worlds, leads the sacrificer, once he knows the mystery of the person, once he discovers the personalistic structure of reality, toward the supreme Brahman and total plenitude. Prajapati clearly performs here the role of a personal God, the Lord of Creation. The text suggests three lords of creation. In each of them the regeneration is effected by means of sacrifice.
Another text makes this homologization quite explicit. The universal Self, or the vaishvanara atman, is said to have the heaven as his head, the sun as his eye, the wind as his breath, the space as his body, the earth as his feet, and so on. 238
The meaning of these and many other texts is immediately apparent. Man, who has ceased to be a spectator in the cosmic event, is deeply involved and ontologically committed: he is part and parcel of the cosmic sacrifice itself; he is not only a priest but a partner, not only a performer but a mediator. He is the yardstick by which everything is measured. Yet the anthropocosmic unity is maintained and Man’s partnership is ultimately dependent on the objective superhuman order.
Loko ‘gnih
BU VI, 2, 9-14
i) 9. Yonder world in truth is Fire, O Gautama; the sun is its fuel, the rays its smoke, the day its flame, the heavenly quarters its coals, the intermediate quarters its sparks. In this Fire the Gods offer faith as libation. From that offering arises king Soma.
10. The God of rain in truth is a sacrificial Fire, O Gautama; its fuel is the year, the clouds are its smoke, lightning is its flame, the thunderbolt its coals, thunder its sparks. In this Fire the Gods offer king Soma. From that offering arises rain.
11. This world in truth is Fire, O Gautama; its fuel is the earth, fire its smoke, night its flame, the moon its coals, the stars its sparks. In this Fire the Gods offer the rain cloud. From that offering arises food.
12. Man in truth is Fire, O Gautama; his open mouth is fuel, his breath the smoke, his speech the flame, his eyes the coals, his ears the sparks. In this Fire the Gods offer food. From that offering arises semen.
13-14. Woman in truth is Fire, O Gautama; the phallus is the fuel, the hairs the smoke, the vulva the flame, penetration the coals, the pleasure the sparks. In this Fire the Gods offer semen. From that offering arises a person. He lives as long as he lives. When he dies, they carry him to the fire. Here his fire becomes Fire, his fuel fuel, his smoke smoke, his flame flame, his coals coals, his sparks sparks. In this Fire the Gods offer a person. From that offering arises the person resplendent as light.
MAIT U VI, 33
ii) Now, this sacrificial fire with its five bricks is the year. The bricks for this fire are these: spring, summer, the rainy season, autumn, winter. It has a head, two wings, a back, and a tail. This sacrificial fire is the earth for the one who knows the Person. It is Prajapati’s first sacrificial pile. Its strength lifts up the sacrificer to the middle world and offers him to the wind. The wind is indeed breath.
Now breath is sacrificial fire. Its bricks are the five different kinds of breath. It has a head, two wings, a back, and a tail. This sacrificial fire is the middle world for one who knows the Person. It is Prajapati’s second sacrificial pile. Its strength lifts the sacrificer up to the heavens and offers him to Indra. Indra is indeed the sun.
Now, the sun is sacrificial fire. Its bricks are the four Vedas, epic and legend. It has a head, two wings, a back, and a tail. This sacrificial fire is heaven for one who knows the Person. It is Prajapati’s third sacrificial pile. Its strength lifts the sacrificer up to the Knower of the Self. Then the Knower of the Self raises him up and offers him to Brahman. There he becomes full of bliss and joy.
i) Cf. CU V, 4, sq., a parallel passage.
1-8. Cf. § V 4.
9. Yonder world: the world beyond, as opposed to this world.
Fire: Agni, the sacrificial fire.
The Gods offer faith: devah shraddham juhvati.
The whole cosmos presents the structure of a universal sacrifice and the different parts of the cosmos are homologized to the cosmic sacrifice.
10. The God of rain: Parjanya.
11. This world: ayam (loka) in contradistinction to asau, that world (of v. 9).
12. Man: purusha, used also in v. 13 in the sense of an embryo and in v. 14 in the sense of a human person.
13-14. In this text “fire,” as distinct from “Fire,” refers to the funeral pyre.
Resplendent as light: bhasvara-varna, having the color of light. Man has become all fire, passes into the flame.
15-16. Cf. § V 4.
ii) The sacrificial fires referred to are the three traditional fires of garhapatya, dakshina, and ahavaniya.
Its strength: lit. hands.
Fire . . . for the one who knows the Person: esho ‘gnih purushavidah. This sentence has been also translated: “This Fire is like a man” (Gonda).
Middle world: antariksha, the atmosphere, the in-between (heaven and earth).
The five different kinds of breath: prana, vyana, apana, samana, and udana.
Sun: aditya.
Four Vedas: Rig-yajuh-samatharvangirasa.
Cf. § III 28.
Epic and legend: itihasa-purana.
Knower of the Self: atma-vid, referring here to Prajapati.
There is a triple equation to be observed: time-sun-brahman: sun-prana-fire; earth-prana-sun.
The Anthropocentric Sacrifice
Sharirayajna
27 The “conscientization” brought about by the Upanishads does not end with the integration of Man into the framework of sacrifice; it centers sacrifice on Man. If Man performs the sacrifice without the necessary knowledge, if he is unconscious of its meaning, it will not be a true sacrifice. Man is an essential element in the sacrificial structure. Moreover, with the exclusion of possible magical interpretations we are led to recognize that sacrifice is not only and one will soon be led to add, not even mainly directed to the maintenance of the physical cosmos, but of the world of Man. A cosmic catastrophe may well occur if Man fails to perform sacrifice, but defection in this regard is difficult to check. Moreover, there are so many Men on earth and the mechanism of the whole procedure is so complex that one cannot be absolutely sure of the function and importance of one particular thread. On the other hand, one thing is sure: that Man cannot lead an authentic human existence if he does not perform sacrifice. Sacrifice becomes more and more centered on Man. Human life is itself a sacrifice and there is an emphasis on both knowledge and Man.
The first text of this selection ends a long passage at the beginning of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which seems to indicate that all sacrifices culminate in the recognition that the all-embracing sacrifice is the sacrifice of, in, or to the Self, and that only by this kind of sacrifice is a worshiper saved from perishing. The dynamism of the whole text is worth pondering, for it gives another clue to this momentous Upanishadic mutation. This fourth brahmana gives a condensed explanation of the divine sacrifice by which the world came into being. It comes to the conclusion that all is the action of the atman. If so, to worship the atman is the way given to Man for collaborating in the world-making sacrifice. The text goes so far as to say that “one should worship the atman alone as loka,” 239 that is, as “world,” as the open space of which one can be aware, as the realm of one’s own experience, as the world that opens up to a Man. For this reason it is also stated in the same place that “if a Man departs from this world without having seen his own world, that world, being unknown, will be of no avail to him, just as the Veda, if it is not recited, is of no avail. 240 It is then obvious that by meditating on such an atman (in the active sense in which to meditate is to become what one meditates upon) 241 each worshiper obtains the object under which the atman appears to him. 242 But this truth has to be known and discovered, otherwise the works are ineffectual. 243 Sacrifice is the human act par excellence, but it entails also the risk of its misuse for personal profit or greed.
The second text from the Chandogya Upanishad takes up and develops the idea of human life as a sacrifice. All existent things are homologized to different sacrifices. By this means the full range of Man’s life on earth is sanctified, for everything corresponds to some facet of the life-giving and world-saving sacrifice. In this process of correlation stress is laid on the human element. It is affirmed, for example, that the dakshina or honorarium given to the priest at the time of sacrifice (which in ancient times was considerable and burdensome) cannot simply be reduced to dana or almsgiving; it is not even specifically stated that the priests should be the beneficiaries. More important are the other four gifts mentioned: fervor, uprightness, harmlessness, sincerity. 244
Another passage of the same Upanishad (iii) introduces an important act, which also demonstrates the man-centered character of sacrifice. The priest who knows the intricate cosmological origin of the different rites of sacrifice can undo certain mistakes that may have crept in, thus signifying the power Man has over the merely mechanical or blind forces of the sacrifice. The underlying idea is that of an ontological substitution by means of ritualistic identification. Prajapati brooded over the worlds, and their “essences,” their “juices,” rasah, were extracted. From the earth came forth its essence, fire, and from fire proceeded the Rig Veda. So any mistake in the Rig-Vedic recitation can be rectified by means of the corresponding fire sacrifice. Knowledge here is power. 245
The importance of this new idea should not be overlooked. It is the beginning of Man’s domination of the cosmic process, not for magical purposes, not for directing the forces of nature for or against other human beings, but for a restructuring of the same cosmos, for changing its course, as it were. The destiny of the world as cosmos begins to fall into human hands. Man emerges now as more than simply a partner in the cosmic process produced by sacrifice; he appears as the rectifying mind, as the spirit who by his knowledge can correct mistakes that false calculations may have allowed to creep in. One is tempted to say, extending the metaphor, that it resembles the course correction of a spaceship’s orbit, needed when the utilization of the energy condensed in matter has not been properly calculated.
The Chandogya Upanishad also contains a homologization between the life of a brahmacarin, that is, of a student of wisdom, and all the different sacrifices and stages of life (iv).
The selection given here from the Mahanarayana (v) and Pranagnihotra (vi) Upanishads elaborates further the same theme: the centrality of Man and his body to the whole concept of sacrifice. The body here is the microcosm, the mirror and representative of the whole universe; it is not, however, the body alone or the body independent of the mind which matters, but the whole Man. The atman, the Self, is the sacrificer. Sacrifice is the integral human act and each act of life is a sacrificial act. Furthermore, in this connection the same Upanishad introduces the idea of death as the supreme purification, as the ultimate human sacrifice. A most significant verse closes this short Upanishad: liberation, moksha, can indeed be the fruit of a cosmological situation, like that of dying in the holy city of Varanasi (and this Upanishad does not appear to deny the traditional belief), but the doctrine has as its main thrust the teaching that there is another way. Knowledge of the doctrine of the pranagnihotra, the intellectual sacrifice, that is, the internal act and its self-knowledge, may also bring about moksha. The internal or inner agnihotra leads to the mental sacrifice, the sacrifice made by the mind, manasa yajna. This text has been used in Yoga and Tantra to justify or explain the emphasis on the body and on body participation in the sacrifice.
The hymn of the Mundaka Upanishad (vii) is a typical specimen of mature Upanishadic spirituality. It begins by extolling the practice of sacrifice and pondering over its benefits, but immediately adds that if sacrifice is regarded as an isolated entity, disconnected from everything else, that is, if we mistake the means for the end, then we are deluded; the hymn even takes a certain pleasure in using strong words to denounce mere ritualism. Moreover, the highest wisdom, which is the supreme stage, cannot be reached by sacrifice. One must go in a proper manner to a guru and discover from him the imperishable Man, the supreme reality.
The Scripture says “Sacrifice is Man,” and this statement is eminently true. Sacrifice takes place within Man, through Man, so long as he is a Man of faith who believes, hopes, loves, and has made of his very existence an act of worship. His life is adoration, cooperation, prayer, activity, contemplation, action, and love of God and of all he has made. In worship Man is at one and the same time active and passive, helper and helped, actor and spectator. He forms part of the unique human-divine act that enables him to exist and to be.
Sacrifice in its universal significance is endowed with a twofold dynamism: a downward movement of the Divine toward the world, followed by an upward movement or restoration of the world toward the Divine. These two aspects are inseparable, the cosmic process being an exchange and in continual evolution. Eternity and Time blend in each instant. At each instant the universe is created and at each instant it returns whence it came. At each successive moment there is a new universe which in its turn does not tarry before declining. This new renewed world is the fruit of sacrifice.
Sharirayajna
BU I, 4, 16
i) Now this is the Self, the world of all beings. If a man offers and sacrifices, he will attain the world of the Gods. If he recites [the Vedas]; he will attain the world of the Seers. lf he offers libations to the Forefathers and desires offspring, he will attain the world of the Forefathers. If he gives shelter and food to men, he will attain the human world. If he gives grass and water to animals, he will reach the animal world. If beasts and birds, [even] down to the ants, find a place in his house, he will reach their respective worlds. In the same way as a man wishes security for his own world, so all beings wish security to the one who knows thus. This is indeed known and investigated.
CU III, 16-17, 1-6
ii) 16, 1. Man, in truth, is himself a sacrifice. His first twenty-four years correspond to the morning libation. The Gayatri has twenty-four syllables and the morning libation is offered with the Gayatri. With this the Vasus are related. Now the vital breaths are the Vasus, because they cause everything to continue in existence.
2. If he should be afflicted by sickness at this period of life, he should say: “O vital breaths who are the Vasus, let my morning offering be extended till the midday offering. Let me, who am the sacrifice, not perish in the midst of the vital breaths, the Vasus!” and he gets up and becomes free from his sickness.
3. His next forty-four years correspond to the midday libation. The Trishtubh has forty-four syllables and the midday libation is offered with the Trishtubh. With this the Rudras are related. Now the vital breaths are the Rudras, because they cause everything to weep.
4. If he should be afflicted by sickness at this period of life, he should say: “O vital breaths who are the Rudras, let my midday offering be extended till the third offering. Let me, who am the sacrifice, not perish in the midst of the life breaths, the Rudras!” and he gets up and becomes free from his sickness.
5. His next forty-eight years correspond to the third libation. The Jagati has forty-eight syllables and the third libation is offered with the Jagati. To this the Adityas are related. Now the vital breaths are the Adityas, because they take everything to themselves.
6. If he should be afflicted by sickness at this period of life, he should say: “O vital breaths who are the Adityas, let this my third libation be extended till my full life span is accomplished. Let me, who am the sacrifice, not perish in the midst of the vital breaths, the Adityas!” and he gets up and becomes free from his sickness.
7. In truth, it was knowing this that Mahidasa Aitareya used to say [to sickness]: “Why do you torment me like this, me who am not going to die by this affliction?” He lived for a hundred and sixteen years. The one who knows this will also live for a hundred and sixteen years.
17, 1. When a man feels hunger and thirst, when he does not rejoice, then he is undergoing his initiation rite.
2. When he eats and drinks and rejoices, then he is joining in the upasada rituals.
3. When he laughs and eats and has sexual intercourse, then he is taking part in chant and recitation.
4. Asceticism, almsgiving, moral integrity, nonviolence, truthfulness--these are his gifts for the priests.
5. Therefore one says [at the sacrifice]: “He will procreate, he has procreated,” for this is his new birth. His death is the ablution after the ceremony.
6. Ghora Angirasa, having told all this to Krishna the son of Devaki, added: “When man is free from desire, in his last hour, he should take refuge in the three following [maxims]:
You are imperishable
You are immovable
You are firm in the breath of life.”
CU V, 24, 1-4
iii) 1. If one were to offer the agnihotra without this knowledge, that would be just the same as removing the live coals and pouring the libation on ashes.
2. But if one offers the agnihotra with full knowledge one is offering it in all worlds, in all beings, in all selves.
3. Even as the tip of a reed, if laid upon a fire, would be burned up, so also are burned up all the sins of him who offers the agnihotra with full knowledge.
4. Therefore, if one who knows this offers the leftovers of his food to an outcaste, he is offering it to the universal Self. On this point there is the following verse:
As hungry children here below
sit round about their mother,
even so all beings expectantly
sit round the agnihotra.
CU VIII, 5
iv) 1. Now what people call “sacrifice” is really the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge, for only by leading such a life does one who is a knower find the Brahman world. Now what people call “the sacrificial offering” is also really the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge, for only after sacrificing with the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge does a man find the Self.
2. Now what people call “a long course of sacrifice” is really the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge, for only by leading such a life does one find the protection of the true atman.
Now what people call “the practice of silence” is really the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge, for only by leading such a life does one find the atman and meditate.
3. Now what people call “the practice of fasting” is really the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge, for the atman found by such a life does not decay.
Now what people call “the way of solitude” [aranya] is really the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge. For ara and nya are the two oceans in the Brahman world in the third heaven. There is the lake Airammada and the sacred tree producing Soma; there is the city of Brahman, Aparajita, and the golden hall constructed by the Lord.
4. Only those who, by the disciplined life of a student of sacred knowledge, attain the two oceans ara and nya in the Brahman world are free to move in all the worlds.
MAHANAR U 543-545
YUGANATHA PROBLEM WITH NUMBERS
v) 543. At the sacrifice of one who knows this, the Self is the sacrificer, his wife is his faith, his body the fuel, his breast the altar, his hair the sacrificial grass, his hair tuft the sacrificial broom, his heart the sacrificial post, his love the melted butter, his anger the victim, his fervor the fire, his self-control which destroys [the passions] the priestly honoraria, his word the priest, his breath the singer, his eye the officiating priest, his mind the Brahman-priest, his ear the fire-kindling priest.
544. Henceforward, as long as he lives, his consecration lasts; whatever he eats is his oblation, whatever he drinks is his Soma-drinking, whatever he enjoys is his upasada celebration; when he moves about, sits down, gets up, this is his pravargya ceremony.
545. His mouth is the Ahavaniya fire, his utterance is the invocation, his understanding [of the procedure] is his offering. What he eats evening and morning is the fuel; what he [drinks] morning, noon, and evening are his three libations.
PRANAGNIH U 22-23; 33-34; 37-38; 40; 44-50
vi) 22. Breath is the sacrificial fire, the Supreme Self which is enveloped by the five winds. May he comfort all beings, may there be no fear for me!
23. You are the universe, you are common to all men, you assume all forms, all things that are born and carried by you. In you are offered all the offerings and they proceed there where you are the immortal Brahman.
33. Of this sacrifice of the body, performed with the sacrificial post and the girdle,
34. Who is the sacrificer? Who is his wife? Who are the priests? Who is the overseer? What are the sacrificial vessels? What are the oblations? What is the altar? What is the northern altar, what is the Soma vessel? What is the chariot? What is the victim?
37. In what consists the recitation of the hymns? In what consists the recitation of the sacred formula? In what consists nonviolence? What is the role of the sacrificer’s wife? What is the sacrificial post? What is the girdle? What are the offerings? What is the priestly honorarium? What is the final purification?
38. Of this sacrifice of the body, performed with the sacrificial post and the girdle, the Self is the sacrificer, the intelligence is his wife, the Vedas are the priests, the ego is the subordinate priest and mind is the officiating priest.
40. The body is the main altar, the nose the northern altar, the skull is the vessel, the feet the chariot, the right hand the wooden ladle, the left hand the cauldron.
44. Memory, compassion, patience, and nonviolence comprise the role of the sacrificer’s wife.
45. The sound OM is the sacrificial post, hope the girdle, the spirit is the chariot, desire the victim, the hair is the grass, the sense organs are the sacrificial vessels, the motor organs the oblations.
46. Nonviolence is all the offerings; renunciation is the priestly honorarium.
47. The final purification is death.
48. Thus all the divinities are established in this body.
49. Whether a man dies in Varanasi or whether he recites this sacred text, he will attain liberation after one single life.
50. He will attain liberation. This is the Upanishad.
MUND U I, 2
vii) 1. This is that truth: The rites of oblation, O lovers of truth, which the sages divined from the sacred verses, were variously expounded in the threefold Veda. Perform them with constant care. This is your path to the world of holy action.
2. When the fire, the purveyor of sacred offerings, is lit and the flame is flickering, then one should place his oblations with faith between the two portions of clarified butter.
3. The man who offers the agnihotra but fails to observe thereafter the rites of full or new moon or the seasonal rites or to offer the first fruits of harvest, who receives no guests and omits the general oblation, who offers in irregular manner or makes no offering--such a man will suffer the loss of all seven worlds.
4. The flickering flames of the sacred fire are seven: the black, the terrible, that which is swift as thought, the bright-red, the smoky, the sparkling, the well-shaped and shining.
5. The man who commences the rite while these flames are burning and receives the oblations at the proper time is conducted by these same oblations, now changed into rays of the sun, to the Lord of the Gods, to the one and only Abode.
6. “Come, come!” these radiant offerings invite the worshiper, conveying him thither on the rays of the sun, addressing him pleasantly with words of praise, “This world of Brahman is yours in its purity, gained by your own good works.”
7. How frail, though, those rafts, the eighteeen forms of sacrifice, expressions of merely inferior types of action! Deluded men who acclaim this way as the best return again to old age and also to death.
8. They grope in darkest ignorance, those who believe themselves to be wise and learned; they do themselves violence, going round and round in a circle like senseless fools, like blind men led by one who himself is blind.
9. Straying through ignorance in many a diverse path they think in their folly, “Our goal is already achieved.” Embroiled as they are in their actions and blinded by passion to actions’ effect, they sink overwhelmed. Exhausted is the merit of all their worlds. They decline and fade.
10. Thinking, misguided souls, that almsgiving and oblations are to be preferred, they do not know anything better. Having had the reward of their piety in highest heaven, they reenter this world or even another lower!
11. But those who in penance and faith dwell in the forest, peaceful and wise, living a mendicants life, free from passion depart through the door of the sun to the place of the immortal Person, the imperishable Self.
12. A Brahmin contemplating the worlds built up by ritual action may well despair. The uncreated will never emerge from that which itself is created. For the sake of this knowledge let him simply approach with fuel in hand to a master who is fully versed in the Scriptures and established in Brahman.
13. Let him approach him properly with mind and senses tranquil and peaceful. Then will this master disclose the essence of the knowledge of Brahman whereby may be known the imperishable Real, the Person.
i) Known and investigated: viditam mimamsitam, i.e., known both by experience or intuition and by reflection.
17. Cf. § I 7.
ii) 16, 1. Man in truth is himself a sacrifice: purusho vava yajnah. Cf. SB I, 3, 2, 1 (§ III 23).
The Gayatri, Trishtubh, and Jagati are the three meters corresponding to morning, midday, and evening, each of them being connected with different deities. They cause everything to continue in existence: sarvam vasayanti, they make everything to dwell. The connection is “etymological,” relating the Vasus wlth the root vas-, to dwell, live.
16, 2. The argument here and in succeeding stanzas is that life should not be cut short before its due completion, because every sacrifice has to be completed. Life, not death, is sacrifice.
16, 3. They cause everything to weep: sarvam rodayanti. Again there is an “etymological” connection between Rudra and the root rud-, to howl, to weep.
16, 5. They take everything to themselves: sarvam adadate, the verb a-da- is related to Aditya.
16, 7. Mahidasa Aitareya: cf. AA II, 1, 8; II, 3, 7. Sayana narrates the story of Mahidasa (the “servant of the earth”) who was the son of a Brahmin and a shudra woman. In spite of his low birth he attained to the same wisdom as the rishis. The number 116 = 24 + 44 + 48 of the three periods mentioned.
17, 1. Initiation rite: diksha, consecration.
17, 2. Upasada: a particular ceremony, involving the offering of milk and some feasting, which takes place before the Soma sacrifice and is characteristically joyful.
17, 3. Chant and recitation: stuta-shastra.
17, 4. Asceticism etc: tapas, dana, arjava, ahimsa, satya-vacana.
17, 5. New birth: punar-utpadanam, the only occurrence of the word in Vedic literature.
17, 6. Desire: a-pipasa, without thirst: in the sense of appetite, eagerness. There are three possible syntactic placings of a-pipasa: (a) it can be put at the end: he who receives or hears this message becomes free of desire; (b) it can be moved so as to be in opposition to Ghora: Ghora had become free of desire; (c) it can be taken as already in its proper place: this is our interpretation.
Imperishable: akshita, unperishable, indestructible.
Immovable: acyuta, imperturbable, stolid.
Firm in the breath of life: prana-samshita.
Some scholars find here the first reference to Shri Krishna.
The v. ends with “On this there are two Rig-Vedic stanzas.”
17, 7. Cf. § III 6.
iii) 1. Without this knowledge: idam avidvan, without knowing this (what has just been described), i.e., the homology between the sacrifice and the five breaths: prana, vyana, apana, samana, and udana.
4. Outcaste: candala.
Universal Self: vaishvanara atman.
iv) All the explanations of the different paths in terms of brahmacarya are of an “etymological” nature, which cannot be reproduced in the translation.
1. Sacrifice: yajna. A play on words on yajna and “one who is a knower”: yo jnata.
Sacrificial offering: ishta.
After sacrificing (searching): ishtva.
Self: atman.
2. A long course of sacrifice: sattrayana, a sacrifice lasting several days.
The practice of silence: mauna, the vow of silence.
3. The practice of fasting: anashakayana. The text seeks to connect this word etymologically with na nashyati, does not decay.
The way of solitude: aranyayana lit. the way of the forest; the life of a hermit.
Brahman world: cf. the detailed description in KausU I, 3 (§ V 4).
4. Free to move in all the worlds: kamacara, complete freedom.
For the rest of CU VIII and all the ref. cf. § VI 6 (v) and notes.
v) We follow the notation given by J. Varenne.
540-541. Cf. § VI 12.
543. Who knows this: the one who knows OM, the Upanishad, and the mystery of the Gods; cf. 540-541 (§ VI 12).
Priest: hotr.
Singer: udgatr.
Officiating priest: adhvaryu.
Fire-kindling priest: agnidh.
544. As long as he lives . . . : yavad dhriyate sa diksha; it can also mean: as long as he is in the womb, this is his initiation.
Whatever he eats . . . drinks . . . enjoys: eating, drinking, being joyful, are for him the oblation, the sacrifice, the celebration.
Upasada: a joyful offering.
Pravargya: the preparatory ceremony for the Soma sacrifice.
vi) 22. The Supreme Self which is enveloped by the five winds: a definition of the human body.
24-32. Contain prescriptions for ritual ablutions and a speculation on the four fires within man.
33. Sacrificial post: yupa, stands for the stability of the sacrifice.
Girdle: rashana, stands for the internal stability of the sacrificer.
35-36. Continue the queries of v. 34, asking about the various priests and the nature of the offerings.
37. Nonviolence: ahimsa, respect for life, or, according to some interpreters who find this word here rather intriguing, respect or nonviolence to the text.
Cf. AB I, 30, 11 (V, 4); CU III, 17, 4; and here below v. 46.
38. Cf. MahanarU 543 sq. (v) for a more complex elaboration of the same correlations.
Intelligence: buddhi.
Ego: ahamkara.
Subordinate priest: adhvaryu.
Mind: citta.
Officiating priest: hotr.
39. Contains the answer to the queries of v. 35.
40. The body is the main altar: shariram vedir. There follow further homologizations with the human body.
Skull: murdhan, head.
41-43. Contains the answer to the questions of v. 36, following the same order.
44. Memory, compassion, patience, and nonviolence: smrti, daya, kshanti, ahimsa. These are all female virtues.
45. Desire the victim: kamah pashuh.
46. Renunciation is the priestly honorarium: tyago dakshina.
49. A later addition probably.
50. Concludes the U: This is the Upanishad: iti upanishat, this is the secret doctrine, this is the information, the correlation, the teaching.
vii) 1. This is that truth: tad etat satyam. Expounded in the threefold Veda: tretayam . . . santatani, which can also mean “which were extended in the three fires” (garhapatya, ahavaniya, and dakshinagni).
World of holy action: sukrtasya loka the domain of dharma.
3. One variant reading adds, after “in irregular manner,” “without faith” (ashraddhaya); cf. shraddhaya “with faith” (v. 2).
4. Flames: lit. tongues.
The well-shaped and shining: or “all-formed divine,” according to another reading.
5. The description of the flames in v. 4 is important in view of their identification with the rays of the sun which lead to the world beyond.
Lord of the Gods: devanam patih.
8. Cf. KathU II, 5; MaitU VII, 9.
10. Almsgiving and oblations: ishta and purta, i.e., those pious and secular actions which are done for the sake of reward.
12. Fully versed . . . Brahman: shrotriyam brahma-nishtham, the qualities of the guru.
The Sacrifice of the Mind
Manasayajna
28 We conclude Part VI of this anthology with a series of Upanishadic sayings concerning OM, but we might well have given them a place here. In these sayings, as also in certain other texts, sacrifice is interiorized to such an extent that external works are rendered irrelevant and ultimately disappear. We find here the third step that we have mentioned. Man is no longer the center of the sacrifice. If an excessive cosmological bias leads to sheer magic, an exaggerated anthropological emphasis leads to mere selfishness and to abuse of the sacrifice for petty human ambitions. The sacrifice has to be purified from the alloy of both cosmos and Man. What remains is then the pure sacrifice of the atman, atman referring in this instance not so much to a transcendent principle as to an immanent divine principle which not only performs the sacrifice but is also its recipient.
We may remember that we are at that critical moment in which Man discovers not only that he is an essential part in the sacrifice, but also that the real sacrifice happens within himself, for without his inner participation and faith the external act would be devoid both of sense and of reality. The real sacrifice is that which takes place within Man, the inner agnihotra as we have already seen. Now the mental sacrifice becomes not only the sacrifice imagined or thought, that is, performed by the mind, but the sacrifice of the mind itself. The manasayajna of the preceding stage, which referred to the priestly function of the mind performing the sacrifice, now designates the mind as victim of the sacrifice. Now, finally, it is the mind itself which is immolated. What is cast into the fire is no longer either material things or the thought of them, but thinking itself and all that is contained in the cave of the heart, 246 in that hidden recess where all coalesces in a silence of mind and in an explosion of love. 247 We note that the mind and the heart are very often mentioned in close association in the Upanishads, 248 as also in Vedic tradition in general. 249
The small human individualistic self disappears and the universal atman now takes its place. But this atman cannot be known because it is the knower; it cannot be the object of any intentional act, because it is the doer of every act. Individual Man began as a spectator; by a progressive involvement he assumed the role, first, of fellow actor and afterward of sole agent, and now he is swallowed up in the process itself and ceases to be either a doer or a collaborator in the dynamism of reality. The sacrifice is not only perfect but also total; the holocaust leaves no residue.
Shortly after one of our passages given below (iii), the Katha Upanishad uses an expressive metaphor:
The Self-existent pierced holes outward.
Therefore one looks outward and not inside oneself.
Desiring immortality, a certain sage
turned his eyes inward and saw the Self within, 250
thus indicating that real internal vision consists not in “visualizing” within oneself external beings or actions but in visualizing vision itself, that is, in discovering no longer the “seen” but the Seer.
Herein lies the overcoming of every duality and the perfect sacrifice of the Self. “By what should one know the knower?” is a capital question of the Upanishads. 251 The perfect sacrifice is not that of sacrificing the known; it is not even the internal sacrifice in which the external object or the external action has been interiorized, but the sacrifice of the knower, who simply “knows,” in an ecstatic attitude that defies description because it does not admit any reflective movement. The outcome is total ontological silence.
Therefore one grasps the meaning of that other Upanishad that stresses that it is known by those who do not know and not known by those who know. 252 This is not a paradox, but an immediate intuition: knowledge does not exhaust either being or consciousness. The object of consciousness, as such, can never be the subject of it. Those who know that they know, know certainly that they know, but this very knowledge is a shadow in their knowing which no longer purely “knows,” but knows also its own knowing. Those who really do not know, do not pretend or dally with this knowledge which is ignorance.
We cannot then escape the conclusion of these reflections, namely, that the true sacrifice is the sacrifice of Brahman (in the double meaning of both subjective and objective genitive). The sacrifice of Brahman is both performed by Reality in toto and that which Men offer to Brahman. Now, this latter conception may easily be misunderstood if we conceive of Brahman as the recipient of the sacrifice, that is, as that to “whom” we offer the sacrifice. It is here that the Upanishadic purification of the mind is required. Brahman is neither the object of the sacrifice nor an object of knowledge. He is the knower, the sacrificer, and not the known, the sacrificed. What is the place of Man here? There is no place for any spectator, or for any other agent. And yet the sacrifice takes place and Man is there, not to witness the sacrifice but to be it and thus to be Brahman. The price if we want to continue this idiom is the sacrifice of the mind, which is something not performed by the mind, but the offering of the mind itself in the fire of Brahman. The sacrifice is thus perfect. It has sacrificed itself by itself. Reality has become transparent.
The very evolution of the meaning of Brahman testifies to the central position of sacrifice. In a certain sense Brahman has throughout been the symbol that stands for the very center and ground of everything, but it has been variously understood. It is, thus, not so much that the word has changed its meaning, so as to mean first one “thing” and then another “thing,” as the fact that the very “thing” Brahman has been interpreted in different ways. Brahman, in the first Vedic period, means prayer and even sacrifice; in the Upanishadic period it means absolute Being and Ground, precisely because the sacrifice was considered to be such a Ground. The formal meaning of Brahman has not changed; only the material contents of the concept have been differently “filled.” In one instance Brahman was “sacrifice;” in the other, “being.” 253 Needless to say, the process was a long and steady one, and the words “being” and “sacrifice” do not render with precision the notion of Brahman in either instance.
The last text, from the Maitri Upanishad, is a passage of extraordinary depth and clarity. The psychological and ontological elements are here harmoniously blended. The ascetic has to burn, to consume, all his thoughts and to overcome all his desires, but not in order to reach a psychological state of stultifying vagueness or a subjective intoxication accompanied by a blank mind. It is because such an ascesis corresponds to the very structure of reality: the sacrifice of the intellect reenacts the primordial sacrifice. This is not a neglect or a jettisoning of the mind and the rules by which it operates but, rather, it is the most serious effort to get to its root, to reach its source. But the roots are not the tree, nor is the source the river. There in the origin, in the primordial stage, the mind is not yet mind; no discrimination is yet needed because reality is not yet split. It is obvious that this existential way cannot be planned or even desired, for to do so would be to nullify it utterly and would be the worst sort of infatuation. For this reason many schools of spirituality speak of a calling, a being chosen, a passive and feminine attitude, and the like. 254 In connection with the attainment of Brahman neither perspective nor the distance afforded by reflection is possible; the pretension of the will is likewise unthinkable; neither lies nor conceit has here a place. To those who say that this is not possible there is no counterargument; to those who do not believe there is no answer. To those who believe there is no question. Does not any belief begin where questioning stops?
The sacrifice of the intellect is thus not done out of a particular will to perfection or an intellectual conviction that this is the ultimate act to be done. If any such thoughts or intentions were surreptitiously entertained they would make the whole enterprise futile, or even injurious. It all happens, as the texts say (using an image that is one of the primordial images of the whole East), just by a “consumption” of all the functions of thought and will. All is “consumed” in a consumption of the entire “material” of human structures: the thoughts are thought up to the very end, the intentions are pursued up to a final point, so that nothing remains to be thought and desired. 255 As long as there is some material to be thought or “willed” or desired, we are precluded from speaking of the sacrifice of the intellect; and those who do speak do so as if they were not speaking, acting, communicating anything. Svaha! 256
Manasayajna
BU IV, 5, 15
i) Where there is duality, there one sees another, one smells another, one tastes another, one speaks to another, one hears another, one knows another; but where everything has become one’s own Self, with what should one see whom, with what should one smell whom, with what should one taste whom, with what should one speak to whom, with what should one hear whom, with what should one think of whom, with what should one touch whom, with what should one know whom? How can He be known by whom all this is made known? He, the Self, is not this, not this. He is ungraspable for He is not grasped. He is indestructible for He cannot be destroyed, He is unattached for He does not cling [to anything], He is unbound, He does not suffer nor is He injured. Indeed, by whom should the Knower be known? By these words, Maitreyi, you have been instructed. Such, in truth, is immortality. Having spoken thus, Yajnavalkya departed.
KAUS U II, 5
ii) Now for the rule of self-restraint as enunciated by Pratardana, the innerfire sacrifice, as it has been called. As long as a person is speaking, he is not able to breathe. Then he sacrifices breath to speech. Further, as long as a person is breathing, he is not able to speak. Then he sacrifices speech to breath. These two are infinite, immortal sacrifices: whether awake or asleep, one is sacrificing continuously. Now, other sacrifices have an end, for they are made of works. Knowing this, the ancients did not offer the fire sacrifice.
KATH U III, 13
iii) The wise Man should surrender his words to his mind;
and this he should surrender to the Knowing Self;
The Knowing Self he should surrender to the Great Self;
and that he should surrender to the Peaceful Self.
MAIT U VI, 9-10
iv) 9. Therefore, one who knows this has these two selves [i.e., breath and the sun] as his Self. He meditates only on the Self, he sacrifices only to the Self. This meditation, when the mind is absorbed in its practice, is praised by the wise. Then a man should purify the impurity of his mind with the verse: “What is defiled by leavings.” He recites the verse:
Leavings and what has been defiled by leavings,
or by those who handled them, what has been given
by a sinful Man or polluted by a stillbirth--
this may the rays of Fire and Sun
and the purification of the Vasus cleanse!
May they purify my food and all else that is sinful!
Then he proceeds to rinse [his mouth] with water [before eating]. With the five invocations: “Hail to the Breath! hail to the downward breath! hail to the diffused breath! hail to the distributary breath! hail to the upward breath!” he offers the oblation [the food]. Whatever remains, he eats, restraining his speech. Afterward he again rinses [his mouth] with water. Having rinsed it and having performed the sacrifice to the Self, he should meditate on the Self with these two [verses]: “Breath and Fire” and “You are the All”:
As Breath and Fire, as the five Winds,
the Self supreme dwells within me.
May he, pleased, please all, the enjoyer of all things!
You are the All, you belong to all men.
All that is born is supported by you.
Into you may all the offerings enter!
There where you are, All-immortal, are all beings.
He who eats according to this rule will not revert to the condition of food.
10a. Now there is still more to be known. There is a further modification of this sacrifice to the Self . . .
10b. He who knows this is a renouncer and an ascetic, a Self-sacrificer. Just as one who does not touch a sensuous woman entering an empty house, so is he who does not touch the sense objects that have entered into him a renouncer, an ascetic, a Self-sacrificer.
MAIT U VI, 34
v) 1. Just as fire without fuel is extinguished in its own source, so is the mind extinguished in its own source, when thoughts have ceased.
2. When the mind of a seeker after truth has become extinguished in its own source, he is no longer deluded by the sense objects, which are deceptive and are subservient to karman.
3. The mind indeed is this fleeting world; therefore it should be purified with great effort. One becomes like that which is in one’s mind--this is the everlasting secret.
4. Only by a tranquil mind does one destroy all action, good or bad. Once the self is pacified, one abides in the Self and attains everlasting bliss.
5. If the mind becomes as firmly established in Brahman as it is usually attached to the sense objects, who, then, will not be released from bondage?
6. The mind has been declared to be of two kinds: pure and impure. It becomes impure when it is touched by desire, and pure when freed from desire.
7. When a man, having made his mind perfectly stable, free from attachment and confusion, enters upon the mindless state, then he attains the supreme abode.
8. Only so long must the mind be controlled, until it is annihilated in the heart: this truly is knowledge, this is liberation; the rest is nothing but pedantic superfluity.
9. The bliss that arises in the state of highest absorption, when the pure mind has come to rest in the Self, can never be expressed by words! One must experience it directly, one’s own self, in one’s inner being.
10. If a man’s mind is merged in the Self, then he is completely released, just as water is not distinguishable in Water, or fire in Fire, or air in Air.
11. The mind alone is man’s cause of bondage or release: it leads to bondage when attached to the sense objects, and to release when freed from them. Thus it is taught.
i) 1-3. Cf. § III 31.
Cf. BU II, 4, 14 (§ VI 4) for a similar passage.
Duality: dvaita.
He, the Self, is not this: sa esha neti nety atma.
The Knower: vijnatr!
Immortality: amrtatva.
Departed: vijahara, i.e., he renounced everything.
ii) Rule of self-restraint: samyamana.
The inner-fire sacrifice: antaragnihotra.
Breath: prana.
Speech: vac.
Made of works: karma-maya, i.e., the ritual actions.
iii) 10-11. Cf. § V 5.
12. Cf. § VI 5.
Many standard versions read also “words ‘and’ mind.”
This: i.e., the mind or “words and mind.”
Surrender: from the root yam-, which may also mean to restrain, support, raise, extend, establish, or even suppress. Here, however, it is not a question of a negative restraint, but of an ascent in consciousness. The three atman are the knowing, the great, and the peaceful (jnanatman, mahatman, and shantatman), representing the individual, the cosmic, and the absolute Self, i.e., the conscious, the universal, and the still and absolutely quiet self.
14-15. Cf. § V 5.
iv) 9. The purification of the Vasus: vasoh pavitram, cf. YV I, 2.
Hail: svaha.
“You are the All”: vishvo ‘si, addressed to Agni; cf. CU V, 24, 1-3 (§ III 27).
Condition of food: annatva.
10a. Cf. § II 11.
10b. We suggest here one possible interpretation of this difficult text. The emphasis here is on the correspondence and correlation between the self-sacrificer (atmayajin), i.e., the performer of the self-sacrifice or sacrifice of the Self, and the renouncer (sannyasin) or ascetic (yogin). In this case the self-sacrificer himself constitutes the sacrifice of the Self; therefore, ascetics and monks do not perform any external sacrifice. The other idea expressed is that the man who performs this self-sacrifice or renunciation is internally untouched by the sense objects (cf. the later idea of renunciation).
v) 33. Cf. § III 26.
34, 1. This passage is IV, 3 of the Southern Version.
Extinguished: upashamyati, upa-sham- means to become quiet, tranquil, or to cease, to be extinguished. Thus it is appropriate both for the fuelless fire and for the tranquil mind. This cannot be rendered adequately in English.
Mind: citta.
In its own source: svayonau, in the place from which it has sprung forth.
2. Seeker after truth: satya-kama, desirous of truth.
3. Fleeting world: samsara.
4. Self: atman, here used first in the sense of individual self and second for the universal, divine Self.
6. Mind: manas. If citta stands for the functioning mind, the thoughtful mind, manas is its underlying organ.
7. Mindless state: amano-bhava, the state where there is no mind (because the mind ceases to exist, so to speak, when its functions are terminated), or the state-beyond-the-mind which no longer belongs to the realm of mind.
8. To be controlled: niroddhavya, to be suppressed. Nirodha is a term used in yoga. Cf. YS I, 2; I, 12; I, 51; III, 9.
Pedantic superfluity: grantha-vistarah, bookish proliferation.
9. Bliss: sukha.
Absorption: samadhi.
Pure mind: amala cetas.
Inner being: antahkarana, inner organ.
35. Cf. § VI 8.
The Integral Action
Karmayoga
29 In any synthetic view we find the danger of eclecticism, that is, the arbitrary choice of such elements as are found to be common and the ignoring not only of peculiarities, but also of the depths and heights of any human conception. The Bhagavad Gita may not have escaped the influence of its time, when the grandeur of the cosmic sacrifice had already declined, yet it offers an extraordinarily well-integrated conception of sacrifice. It maintains, though a little in the background, the ancient Vedic vision; it accepts the Upanishadic interiorization and it adds the element of love, of bhakti, of personal involvement. This last element, called the bhakti-marga or the path of devotion, is the way of ardent devotion, love, and abandonment to the Lord who is the manifestation of Brahman to Man. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad has already given an indication of this way but it is the Bhagavad Gita that discloses it more fully. To be sure, it appears at first sight a little disconcerting. Lord Krishna teaches his disciple that the way that is most perfect is one of action and knowledge combined, though hitherto the two have been opposed the one to the other. The dilemma, however, disappears when one realizes that, though worship here always means action, it does not mean external acting or intellectual activity. Worship, sacrifice, is above all an essentially loving activity, the loftiest activity in which Man can be engaged: that which employs his whole range of feeling powers, that personal love that makes of human existence a real sacrifice. The essential core of this sacrifice is detachment of spirit and availability; the offering of some material object is merely secondary. It is by his ardent devotion that Man is saved, a devotion, it is to be noted, that is also truth, and that is why it is called the sacrifice of the intellect.
Thus there is no dichotomy, but a harmonious synthesis in which are blended action, knowledge, and love. It is this blending that the Gita calls the way supreme, superior both to the way of Vedic sacrifice and to that of the pure ontological knowledge of the Upanishads. The new path does not reject tradition; it conserves, rather, its essential values while at the same time deepening and purifying them; it brings them within the grasp of the ordinary Man. The verses that follow are grouped in three sections according to the chapters to which they belong.
The performance of ritual sacrifice is the path of action (i). These verses mention the beginning of all things, Prajapati, and the creation. They recall to mind that epoch when sacrifice was for Man the supreme, even the only, means of achieving his destiny.
The path of knowledge is described in Chapter IV (ii). Here sacrifice is still deemed to be action but it is action performed with detachment. Several sorts of sacrifice are mentioned, such as control of the self or the practice of austerities. Furthermore, certain ascetics may offer as a form of sacrifice their knowledge of the scriptures. However it may be performed and whatever may be the nature of the action offered, the Eternal Law of this world and of the world beyond is declared to be undergirded by sacrifice. Thus we arrive at the conclusion asserted so often by the Upanishads: that the highest sacrifice of all consists of wisdom, of real knowledge.
In the new path (iii), sacrifice consists in the offering of oneself to the Lord in love and self-surrender. All actions, even the most ordinary and insignificant ones, are to be offered to the Lord, who Himself will take care of the one whose life is a perpetual oblation and who will lead him to eternal joy.
There is now no longer need, as there was in the sacrifice of olden days, for large sums of money, the mediation of priests, or long and complicated ritual; nor is it any longer essential to retire into the forest or lead an ascetic life as taught in the Upanishads. This way is far less complicated and more compatible with human life, though it is by no means easy of achievement. The way of love, of abandonment of oneself and one’s whole life to the Lord, without renunciation of action but with detachment from the fruits of this action, is the new path--a path that has attracted and continues to attract persons of all sorts and conditions of life.
We may recall at this point the three elements of the integral sacrifice--the cosmic, the anthropomorphic, and the theistic by briefly analyzing three key terms used by the Gita.
Action is a human necessity and also a divine need. Man cannot exist without some sort of action nor does the Lord cease for a moment to maintain the world and to sustain human life. Yet, for Man, the real action is ritual action, the action that, in the words of the Gita, contributes to the ‘maintenance of the world’: lokasamgraha. True liturgical action is that which has a cosmic as well as a social “reverberation,” which is performed “having in view” (sampashyan) the welfare and coherence of the world, as the etymology of the word suggests. 257 The cosmic repercussion of the sacrifice is affirmed; moreover, Man has to be conscious of this cosmic repercussion and indeed must specifically intend it if the sacrifice is to have any value. But the world does not consist only of the astronomic or geological cosmos; the world is also the loka, the human world, the open space that extends to the utmost limits of our vision, of our experience. This world is our human world and the man who knows performs his actions for the welfare of mankind. Sacrifice thus combines in one the cosmic and anthropocentric aspects, for according to this view those actions are truly human which tend to maintain the cohesion of the world (and here the background of the sacrifice as the threads of the cosmic loom is visible) and to preserve it as an open space, not closed in upon itself. A timely reminder to unbalanced secularisms!
If Men are to undertake so lofty an endeavor, these real human actions must be performed, as the verse immediately preceding emphasizes, 258 a-sakta, that is, with detachment. 259 A subtle but important distinction should be made here, so that we do not misunderstand the message of the Gita. We may in this connection use different words in order to express two fundamentally different attitudes. The one word is nonattachment (unattached) or noncommitment (uncommitted); the other is detachment (detached, uninvolved). The former is not preached by the Gita; the latter is not only strongly recommended, but affirmed to be a necessary condition for any valuable action. Lord Krishna, in the Gita, certainly does not preach abandonment and neglect of one’s duties or the merely mechanical performance of one’s actions. He does not preach that we should do things without enthusiasm, passion, and ideals. On the contrary, he permits no flinching or easygoing interpretation of each man’s proper dharma. Nevertheless, he insists that all actions must be done with a pure heart and a detached mind, with the sovereign freedom that is the fruit of an uninvolved spirit and preserves the distance which is necessary for a proper perspective. Committed, not as a casual stranger, yet detached and uninvolved, not as a slave: this is how the Lord in the Gita asks that we should perform all human actions.
Thus we have already arrived at the well-known maxim of the Gita concerning the naishkarmya, the action that is performed with renunciation of the fruits that might accrue therefrom to the individual doer. Our emphasis here is not upon a particular aspect of moral philosophy, but upon the connection of this concept with sacrifice. In fact, any appropriation of the fruits of the action by the individual agent would damage the cosmic interrelationship among all the elements of the sacrifice; it would endanger the action itself, and indeed so pervert it as to excommunicate it from the cosmic web of real actions which sustain the world. Disinterested action is required not only for the sake of individual moral purity, but because the maintenance and welfare of the world cannot be realized otherwise. It is in this sense that we can easily understand the statement that sacrifice is born out of work 260 and also the nature of the relation between Brahman and sacrifice. 261
Now, the surrender of all fruits of our work can be justified, practically and theoretically, only if there is a theistic Lord to receive the sacrifices, 262 with whom we enter into a relationship of love. The Gita does not inculcate a slavish mentality by demanding from Men work but withholding their wages. 263 On the contrary, it spreads a message of participation and communion, which is the fruit of love. We “renounce” the fruits of “our” works, because we have realized that neither the fruit nor the work is ours. Without love the cosmos would cease to exist and human life would be meaningless and unbearable. To liberate us from the burden of selfishness the message of the Gita combines in this harmonious unity the old and the new insights regarding the nature of sacrifice.
Karmayoga
BG III, 10-26
i) 10. Prajapati, when he made both sacrifice and men,
said, “By this you shall multiply;
this shall be to you like a bounteous cow,
ever yielding your desires.”
11. With sacrifice nourish the Gods; in return
they will nourish you also.
In partnership with them you will thus attain
the highest good.
12. Nourished by your sacrifice, the Gods will grant you
your heart’s desires.
What a thief is he who enjoys their gifts
but gives nothing in return!
13. The good who consume the remains of the sacrifice
are absolved from all guilt.
But sinful are they, and sinful their food,
who cook only for themselves.
14. From food beings come into being, while food
is produced from rain;
rain from sacrifice comes into being
and sacrifice from works.
15. Know Brahman to be of all action the origin,
itself sprung from the Imperishable.
Thus Brahman the all-pervading is supported
forever by sacrifice.
16. Whoso in this world fails to help turn
the wheel thus moving
is an evildoer, the senses his pleasure.
His life is worthless.
17. But the man who delights and finds his satisfaction
in the Self alone,
in the Self his contentment--for him there is no work
that needs to be done.
18. What interest has he in works done on earth
or in works undone?
Because he does not depend for gain
on anything at all.
19. Therefore, always perform with detachment
the work you must do;
only by work performed with detachment
does man reach the highest.
20. It was only by working that Janaka and others
attained perfection.
In the same way you in your turn should work
for the maintenance of the world.
21. Whatever a great man does, that others
will also do.
Whatever standard he sets, the same
the world will follow.
22. In all three worlds there is no work whatever
I needs must do,
or anything left that I needs must obtain--
yet in work I am engaged.
23. If ever I were to cease, O Arjuna,
my tireless work,
all men would straightway follow my example
(and cease their own).
24. If I were to cease my work, these worlds
would fall into ruin,
and I would become a creator of chaos,
destroying these creatures.
25. The ignorant act from attachment to work;
the wise, however,
should act, but in a spirit of detachment, with desire
to maintain the world order.
26. The wise should not confuse the minds of the ignorant
who are bound to action.
Let him rather, himself both active and integrated,
foster all works.
BG IV, 12; 23-25; 28; 31-33
ii) 12. Desiring success, they sacrifice to the Gods
with ritual actions,
for from such actions success comes quickly
in the world of men.
23. Liberation achieved, attachments gone,
with a mind fixed on knowledge,
man’s whole action becomes a sacrifice, his deeds
melt entirely away.
24. Brahman is all: the act of offering,
the offerer, and the fire!
He who concentrates on Brahman in all his actions
shall surely reach Brahman.
25. There are yogins who offer sacrifice to the Gods
for the Gods’ own sake,
while others offer sacrifice by means of sacrifice
in the fire of Brahman.
28. Some offer their wealth or austerities
or the practice of yoga,
while others, men of control and strict vows,
offer study and knowledge.
31. Consuming the immortal food remaining from the sacrifice,
they reach the eternal Brahman;
but a loser is he who makes no oblation
in this world or the next.
32. Many and varied are the sacrifices offered
in the mouth of Brahman.
All these spring from work. If a man knows this,
his deliverance is sure.
33. More precious by far than a sacrifice of wealth
is the sacrifice of knowledge
For knowledge is surely the culmination
of all ritual works.
BG IX, 15-16; 23-27
iii) 15. Others sacrifice with the sacrifice of knowledge,
worshiping Me
as the one and also as the many, facing
in all directions.
16. I am the ritual, I am the sacrifice,
the oblation, and the herb.
I am the Prayer and the melted butter,
the fire and its offering.
23. Even those who are devotees of other Gods,
if they worship with faith,
are sacrificing to Me alone,
though not adhering to the rule.
24. For I am Enjoyer and I am Lord
of all sacrifices,
but men do not know Me in my true nature
and therefore they fall.
25. Worshipers of the Gods will go to the Gods,
of the ancestors to the ancestors.
Worshipers of the spirits will go to the spirits,
but my worshipers to Me.
26. Whoever offers to me with devotion
and purity of heart
leaf, flower, fruit, or water--that offering of love
I accept with joy.
27. Whatever you do, whatever you eat,
whatever your offering,
whatever your alms or your penance, do all
as a sacrifice to Me.
i) 10. Bounteous cow, . . . : kamadhuk, the mythical cow yielding the milk of all (our) desires. Cf. BG X, 28.
11. Partnership: lit. nourishing each other. The verb used throughout is the causative of bhu-, to call to being, to vivify, nourish, sustain.
12. Nourished by your sacrifice: yajna bhavita sustained, made to be by the sacrifice.
13. Sinful their food: bhunjate te tv agham, lit. they eat only sin (cf. Manu III, 118).
14. From food . . . : cf. § II 10 and 11 where we observe the relation of the texts there quoted to this doctrine of the BG, and also its integration into the total vision of sacrifice.
15. Imperishable: akshara, which commentators consider to be the primal syllable OM.
16. The wheel thus moving: pravartitam cakram, the wheel of sacrifice and of “creative” action in general.
His life is worthless: mogham . . . sa jivati, he lives in vain.
17. Who delights . . . in the Self alone: atmarati, cf. CU VII, 25, 2 (§ VI 8): MundU III, 1, 4.
19. With detachment: a-sakta detached, or not intercepted, free from ties, independent, without obstacle or resistance. From the root sanj-, to cling or stick, adhere, be attached or engaged. Cf. BG IV, 14.
20. Janaka: the King of Mithila, father of Sita.
Maintenance of he world: lokasamgraha, from loka, open space, room, place, scope, free motion, world, wide space, the realm of the secular, saeculum, the temporal; and sam-graha, holding together, grasping, taking, gathering.
21. A great man: a superior man, the best. The actions of the best man have exemplary value.
Standard: pramana, measure.
25. From attachment: sakta.
In a spirit of detachment: asakta. To be detached should be distinguished from an inhuman nonattachment.
Maintain the world order: loka-samgraha, to “hold the world together” (which otherwise would fall apart).
26. Confuse the minds: buddhi-bheda, a term that could almost be translated as “schizophrenia.”
Bound to action: karma-sangin, tied to works, attached, in bondage.
Integrated: yukta, the internal harmony created through yoga, the opposte of buddhi-bheda.
ii) 12. Ritual actions: karman.
Stanzas 14 to 23 speak of the “vanity” of work and the need to renounce its fruits, describing in 23 the perfect “mystique” of work.
23. Man’s whole action . . . : i.e., all the actions of the man who works as if sacrificing.
24. He who concentrates . . . : he who realizes brahman, “sinking into” him.
Cf. § III 28 Introduction for the ultimate identity of the different elements of the sacrifice: the act of offering, the thing offered, the one who offers and, that in which the oblation is offered.
25. Sacrifice by means of sacrifice: yajnam yajnena. Cf. § III 15 and RV I, 164, 50; X, 90, 16 (§ I 5). The “fire of Brahman,” and indeed the whole verse, have been variously interpreted. Now follows a list of men’s offerings: hearing, sounds, actions, breath, etc.
28. Offer their wealth . . . : dravya-yajna, tapo-yajna, yoga-yajna.
31. Eternal: sanatana, everlasting, primeval.
36-38. Cf. § IV 22.
39-40. Cf. § I 38.
iii) 15. Sacrifice with the sacrifice of knowledge: jnana-yajnena . . . yajantah. Cf. BG IV 33 (ii) for the sacrifice of the intellect as explained in § III 28.
One and . . . many: ekatvena prthaktvena, lit. by the oneness (and) by the manifoldness.
16. Herb: according to Shankara, aushadha stands here for the food of animals, but it may refer to medicinal herbs.
Prayer mantra, the hymn, the sacred formula.
23. Not adhering to the rule: a-vidhi-purvakam, not in conformity with the Vedic injunctions.
24. Enjoyer: bhoktr. Cf. the correlation of food and sacrifice. The Lord is the receiver (enjoyer) of every sacrifice.
25. Spirits: bhutani, superior beings, imtermediary between men and Gods.