[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985) › c10 # The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10: 6 Vedic Sacrifice and Transcendence The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10 - **Language:** English ### 6 Vedic Sacrifice and Transcendence ### [c10.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.1) Sacrifice and transcendence are closely related to each other. Regardless of its bewildering variety and the many questions it raises, the purpose of sacrifice is clear. It mediates between the human and the transcendent world. Sacrifice, therefore, takes up a pivotal place in religion, not least in Christianity. It is precisely this central importance of sacrifice that can mislead us when we come to consider Indian religious thought. ### [c10.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.2) Now sacrifice is indeed a conspicuous theme in Indian religious and social thought. The Veda, the revealed knowledge, focuses almost exclusively on sacrifice, while the universal order, the \*dharma\*, is said to rest on or even to be contained in the sacred lore of Vedic sacrifice.¹ It is thus tempting to view Hinduism in terms of sacrifice, which seems to promise us a unifying theme to organize the confusing richness of Hindu religious thought and practice. In a stimulating essay, Madeleine Biardeau has taken just this approach.² Even though no longer purely Vedic, sacrifice is singled out as the organizing principle of religion and society. In this way, Professor Biardeau aims at establishing a unitary picture of Hinduism in all its variety, integrally based on and unified by the concept of sacrifice. The idea is undoubtedly persuasive. Yet caution is in order. It is certainly important to try to overcome the atomizing tendencies to which the bewildering variety of phenomena that go under the single name of Hinduism seems to condemn our studies. The attempt to strike out toward a more coherent picture is to be welcomed, but it is questionable whether the concept of sacrifice offers the right angle of vision. ### [c10.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.3) It cannot be gainsaid that the Veda takes up an exceptional place in Hin- ### [c10.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.4) This is a translation of "Vedisches Opfer und Transzendenz," which first appeared in \*Transzendenzerfahrung\*, edited by Gerhard Oberhammer (Vienna, 1978), 28–44. ### [c10.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.5) duism. This is true even today. It would otherwise be hard to account for the vivid interest, devotion, and controversy aroused by the recent performance of a complicated Vedic sacrifice in the tradional style of the Nambudiri brahmins of Central Kerala.³ More important, the "language" and terminology of sacrifice appear to have known a far-reaching influence and diffusion. Thus the recitation of Vedic texts is itself considered a sacrifice (\*yajña\*), namely, a \*brahmayajña\*.⁴ The brahmin who takes his food can do so as a sacrificial offering in the internal "fires" of the breaths (\*prāṇāgnihotra\*)⁵. The king or warrior is allowed to look on his worldly and not always very devout activities as a life-long sacrificial session (\*sattra\*), which entitles him to claim purity and immunity in the exercise of his duties.⁶ Similarly, the patron, or "boss," is in many Indian languages known as \*jajmān\*, that is, \*yajamāna\*, "sacrificer." Even the renouncer's texts, which have no use for the actual practice of sacrifice, are replete with the sacrificial idiom. It is clear that the idea of sacrifice has been very much generalized. But should this also be taken to mean, as Professor Biardeau says, that "l'action rituelle, sans cesse répétée, est le modèle même de toute action, et que le sacrifice, mode de communication de la terre avec le ciel, en est le centre"?⁷ Or is it only a generalized way of expression which has irretrievably blurred the precise outlines and content of sacrifice?⁸ Put differently, does all talk of sacrifice in reality amount to "de la poussière védique"?⁹ ### [c10.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.6) The question is not without importance. For, if Professor Biardeau is right and the Hindu's life and thought are governed by the ritual order of sacrifice, then Hinduism, notwithstanding its notorious variety, is contained in an all but monolithic structure. But this means that the Hindu would be constrained to live under the rule of an unforgiving ritual order. More than that, the ritual order, geared as it is to sacrifice, brings with it a constant nearness of the transcendent. A life in unremitting proximity to the transcendent, though perhaps not unthinkable, is exceptional. It is hard to imagine a society based on these premises. ### [c10.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.7) There are many indications that we shall not be able to understand Hinduism and its view of the transcendent in this way. Take, for example, the plain fact that although the Veda enjoys supramundane, transcendent authority, its painfully detailed system of ritual injunctions lacks all relationship to the reality it is ostensibly meant to govern. The dharma's total dependence on the Veda is clearly a pious fiction. In some respects, the two are even incompatible. This is the case in the tangled matter of animal sacrifice, enjoined in Vedic ritual but against the dharma's rule of \*ahiṃsā\*, which prohibits the taking of any life. The dharma texts can only deal with the Vedic injunction by setting it apart in a separate autonomous sphere of its own; ### [c10.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.8) animal sacrifice is strictly limited to its appropriate place, time, and purpose within the extrasocial confines of Vedic ritual.¹⁰ ### [c10.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.9) The solution is reasonable enough, but, at the same time, it makes the gap between Veda and dharma all the more glaring. The problem of Vedic animal sacrifice remains a sensitive point of controversy. Yet the fiction of dharma being entirely founded on the Veda is a necessary one, for otherwise the dharma would be cut off from its source of ultimate authority. Here, then, we see a significant fault line, and it may not be fortuitous that we see it precisely in the matter of sacrifice. We shall therefore have to proceed with caution if we want to investigate the place of sacrifice—and especially of Vedic sacrifice—in Indian thought. ### [c10.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.10) First, however, a general remark on sacrifice is in order. In spite of many efforts, there does not seem to be a satisfactory theory explaining this phenomenon.¹¹ This is perhaps to be expected. At least it is in keeping with the problem sacrifice presents to the participants themselves. The communication between this and the yonder world by way of sacrifice (or otherwise) always remains a problem that defies attempts at a definitive solution. The point that most of all hampers our understanding is the unavoidable interlacing of sacrifice and gift. ### [c10.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.11) Now the theory of the gift has been clarified by anthropology and especially by Marcel Mauss's classic study.¹² The three interconnected duties of giving, receiving, and reciprocating are well understood. As analyzed by Mauss, the gift establishes the solidarity of givers and receivers and brings about a constant circulation, which maintains a dynamic and manipulable equilibrium. Since sacrifice is also concerned with gifts (offerings), it is tempting to explain sacrifice in the same way as the gift. Hence the unsatisfactory and often criticized \*do-ut-des\* explanation in its variously trivial, magical, or learned versions. Of course, the \*do-ut-des\* idea is not totally wrong, for it is a matter of no mean import for man to inveigle the transcendent powers, whose impact he can not avoid in any case, into a manipulable equilibrium of gift and reciprocity. Man will seek, if not to direct unilaterally, at least to arrange his relations to the transcendent in an orderly, predictable manner. But he also knows that this enterprise is ultimately doomed to fail. The constraint to reciprocate loses its power when confronted with the absolute power of the transcendent. Not even the obligation to accept man's gifts holds good for the gods, as we know from the classical story of Polycrates' ring. The desperate attempt of the all-too-fortunate ruler of Samos to restore the equilibrium through the sacrifice of his invaluable ring fails. The gods reject his sacrifice, and the sacrificer finds a miserable end. The transcendent cannot be contained by any compact or arrangement, and man knows it. ### [c10.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.12) The transcendent does not submit to any system, to any order but its own. In its unpredictability, it is full of terror for man, as the theophany of the \*Bhagavadgītā\*—to take just one example—shows us. It only knows its own absolute order and as such is a deeply disturbing power that ever threatens to overthrow all humanly conceivable order. Sacrifice, therefore, like all endeavors to come in touch with the transcendent, is an awesome and terrifying venture. It goes far beyond the bounds of gift and reciprocity, of solidarity and participation. This stands out clearly in the fact that sacrifice always involves the destruction, through fire or otherwise, of part of the sacrificial offering, be it ever so minimal a part. In this respect, sacrifice is decisively different from the gift, which remains at man's disposal and will return by way of reciprocity. This element of destruction tells us that something dangerous is at stake in sacrifice. ### [c10.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.13) Yet, when we turn to the Vedic conception of sacrifice, it is striking to notice that it is regularly connected with unbroken universal order. The cosmogonic Puruṣa hymn, \*Ṛgveda\* 10. 90, tells us that the gods sacrificed and dismembered the cosmic man (púruṣa), establishing thereby the world and its order. "These were the first institutions".¹³ Even though the world is founded on the destructive violence of sacrifice, the sacrificial order is nonetheless viewed as the rigidly stable order of the universe established by the gods. The rules of sacrifice are the world's "first institutions." Viewed in this way, sacrifice is the supreme means to found and maintain universal order. "All this here follows sacrifice".¹⁴ ### [c10.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.14) Perhaps this motif has been overemphasized, if not hackneyed, at the expense of other themes, such as the overcoming of death—that is, gaining access to transcendence—but it is all the same striking that sacrifice has come to be represented in our texts as the fail-safe, risk-free mechanism that will automatically deliver the goods of life. Clearly this is the result of a peculiar development, one that took out the sting of death and absolutized the capacity of sacrifice for establishing order. But even so, the awareness of sacrificial violence and destruction was preserved. ### [c10.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.15) For all the mechanistic security of the classical conception of sacrifice, the original danger and insecurity still shine through the cracks, as it were, of the professed risk-free system. Thus we are told, albeit metaphorically, of the dangers of "the wilderness of sacrifice".¹⁵ Elsewhere the awareness of terror and mortal danger is more clearly felt, as, for instance, in the story of Śunaḥśepa, which is to be recited at royal consecrations. King Hariścandra desperately seeks to obtain a son. Finally, through rigid ascetism, he moves the god Varuṇa to grant him a son, but his wish is granted only on the contradictory condition that he sacrifice this son to the deity. The story takes a fortunate turn: the king finds a young brahmin, Śunaḥśepa, as a substitute for his son. The substitute victim manages by means of his mantras—that is, through his expertise in sacrificial lore—miraculously to release himself as well as the king and his son. But this is not the end of the story. After his sacrificial experience, Śunaḥśepa must again find a place in the human world. To that end, he is adopted by the brahmin Viśvāmitra. The adoption, however, creates a rift between the sons of Viśvāmitra, one party siding with their father, the others rebelling against his authority. The evil of death is in this way transferred and shifted to another area—significantly, the area of brahminhood—without there being a definitive solution.¹⁶ The problem of sacrifice and death cannot be solved; it can only be shifted round. But what the story clearly shows is the terror and contradictoriness of the confrontation with the transcendent in sacrifice. ### [c10.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.16) In a different legend, and in direct connection with the sacrificial regulations, the theme of mortal danger is given still clearer expression. The passage where this legend is recorded deals with the ritualistic question of the proper time or occasion for concluding a long-lasting sacrificial session (\*sattra\*).¹⁷ The times or occasions are when the participants have reached a place called Plakṣa Prāsravaṇa—probably representing the middle of the world¹⁸—when the cows they have taken with them have increased tenfold, or, conversely, when they have lost all their property, or, finally, when their leader dies. At first sight, this list of occasions for ending the sattra looks rather puzzling. On further consideration, however, the connecting idea becomes clear: the sacrifice is an all-or-nothing enterprise; it ends either in success or in failure, in triumphantly enriched life or in loss and death. The outcome is unpredictable. But the essential ambivalence of sacrifice goes still further, for even death and failure can still turn into a sign of ultimate triumph. This is what the story embedded in the rules for the sattra's termination tells us. A group of sacrificers under their leader (\*gṛhapati\*) Sthūra, “the stout one,” are engaged in a sattra. While performing the sacrifice, they are surrounded by a hostile band, defeated, and plundered. Sthūra is killed in the affray. The pitiful survivors sit in mourning round the body of their slain leader. Then comes the unexpected reversal. One of the mourners, the \*dhruvagopa\*, or guardian of the Soma, has a vision of the slain Sthūra passing along the place of sacrifice to the offering fire at the eastern end, going upward from there, and entering heaven. The dhruvagopa then calls out to the others: “Do not lament, he whom you are lamenting has gone upward from the hearth of the offering fire and entered heaven.” And so, out of their loss and defeat, Sthūra's followers gain praise and honor.¹⁹ ### [c10.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.17) The striking point of this rather trite story is that the final success is not brought about, as we would expect, by the orderly performance and conclusion of the sacrifice, but, on the contrary, by the drastic disturbance and overthrow of the proceedings. It would seem that here death and destruction breaking out of the ritual structure are not so much a fatal disturbance as they are the essence of the sacrifice itself. Only by submitting to the mortal perils of sacrifice can one hope to find access to the transcendent. Yet there is no glorification of heroic death. The cry “Viva la muerte” has no place in the liturgy. One simply tries somehow to come through and to reach the goal in spite of all the risks. It is not a matter of egregious bravery and even less of superior sacrificial knowledge. We are even told that Sthūra’s companions were a rather miserable band (\*pāpagrāmatarā iva hi tataḥ purāsuḥ\*). There is no question of their redeeming themselves by seeking death in battle. When misfortune hits them, this does not mean that their path \*per aspera\* will automatically lead them \*ad astra\*. By itself, Sthūra’s death on the place of sacrifice is just a lusterless misfortune. It is only the unexpected revelation of his entering heaven that brings ultimate redemption. Till then, the final outcome remains uncertain. ### [c10.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.18) One might, of course, object that the story of Sthūra and his companions is a marginal episode that has nothing much to do with sacrifice and only by accident found its way into the explanations of the ritual. However, we are told in the same context that the gods act in exactly the same way among each other. When the Maruts are engaged in a sattra, the gods Indra and Agni set upon and plunder them.²⁰ Moreover, there is a similar instance of a sacrificer who is killed on his place of sacrifice. Significantly, the misdeed is perpetrated by \*ajinavāsinaḥ\*, “people clad in antelope skins”.²¹ The antelope skin is the typical attribute of the consecrated sacrificer (\*dīkṣita\*). If I am right, this means that attacks and disturbances are not accidental intrusions, but belong to the sacrificial scenario. The attackers and the attacked are both consecrated and are engaged in the same sacrificial action, in the same way as the gods Indra and Agni are closely connected with the Marut gods whom they attack. The Sthūra legend, then, is not fortuitously introduced but is intrinsically related to sacrifice. Battle and catastrophe belong to the essence of sacrifice, as we can still see in many passages of the epic, the \*Mahābhārata\*. Not only do we find many instances of battle and sacrifice being equated,²² but also it would seem that the terrifying sacrificial battle, pitting against each other two parties that are as close as brothers, was the model or prototype of the great epic. It overthrows the order and continuity of the world. And so tradition situates the catastrophe of the \*Mahābhārata\* war at the end of a world era, on the breach line of time.²³ ### [c10.19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.19) The catastrophic conception of sacrifice we have encountered above is not characteristically Indian. It is equally known in other religions. For our purpose, however, it is more important that the agonistic and violent conception of sacrifice, though never forgotten, is not a fundamental or central theme in Indian religious thought (as opposed to folklore or popular religion). Even though it can still be recognized in the \*Mahābhārata\* with comparative ease, it is hardly the epic’s leading motive. Rather, the main theme has shifted to the dharma’s being fatally endangered by the sinful war between brothers. Typically, the destructive war is brought about by the sacrifice of the royal consecration. Here the original pattern is still recognizable, but the \*Mahābhārata\* is predominantly critical of agonistic sacrifice and its catastrophal consequences. It is predicted at the beginning that the sacrifice of the royal consecration will lead to the destruction of the whole warrior race.²⁴ Sacrifice in the epic is a fatal doom, not a just and ultimately promising enterprise. The epic raises the numinous ambivalence of sacrifice to an unbearable pitch. Its sacrifice is a sacrifice to end all sacrifices. ### [c10.20](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.20) In the epic, sacrifice has in fact already been overcome. As we saw, it belongs to the preceding world era, the \*dvāparayuga\*, which ends in the self-defeating paroxysm of the \*Mahābhārata\* war. In the following era, our present \*kaliyuga\*, animal sacrifice belongs to the \*kalivarjya\* institutions, which should not be put into practice in the \*kaliyuga\*. The men of our era are no longer deemed strong enough to cope with the heady excitement and terror of sacrifice.²⁵ In the \*dvāpara\* era, sacrifice was the foremost meritorious work, but in our age it has been replaced by the gift.²⁶ ### [c10.21](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.21) Sacrifice in its original agonistic sense, however, has not simply been rejected. Instead it has been fundamentally changed in form and content. What we know as Vedic sacrifice is not sacrifice \*tout court\*, to be put on a par with its normal, popular practice as we find it to the present day in India and elsewhere. To illustrate the difference, we may briefly look at the immolation of the victim, the point of maximal tension in sacrifice. Usually the victim is immolated by cutting off the head. This was originally also the case in Vedic sacrifice (or rather, in its preclassical predecessor), but the Vedic ritual texts expressly reject this procedure. Instead they prescribe that the victim be killed by suffocation outside the sacrificial enclosure proper.²⁷ ### [c10.22](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.22) Vedic sacrifice, as it has been elaborated and systematized by the ritualists, has been resolutely turned away from its origins and from popular practices as well. It has been made into a fully technical and harmless procedure. Violence, death, and destruction are mentioned with a frequency that borders on the obsessive—for instance, the slaying of the Vṛtra dragon in the Soma ritual—but the ritual has no room for such violently heroic proceedings. There is no antagonist anymore, the dragon was slain long ago, and mortal peril has been replaced by the concept of the technical error in the performance of the ritual—an error that is to be repaired by equally technical means. ### [c10.23](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.23) Clearly a bifurcation has taken place. The intellectualized and systematized Vedic ritual, which has reduced sacrifice to the point where its very name is a source of misunderstanding, has been set apart in lonely eminence as the \*śruti\*, the revealed injunction. As such, it has no common ground with the world, with its concerns and sacrifices. But for the same reason, one keeps referring back to it, as we noticed, in language and terminology, in the same way that the dharma has to invoke the ultimate authority of the śruti with which it has no real connection anymore. The connection between the peasant \*jajmān\* and the Vedic \*yajamāna\* is at best a flimsy one. Nor can the Vedic ritual provide the jajmān with a model for the management of his affairs or even for his sacrifice. But the intention to relate life to ritual somehow is all the more serious, for otherwise there is no source of ultimate authority and legitimation. ### [c10.24](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.24) Vedic ritual, as transcendent injunction, can only be devoted to the maintenance of a static, unchanging order of the universe. At least, that is what the texts keep telling us. It should keep up a constant, uninterrupted circulation between men and gods, earth and heaven. The burnt offering goes upward to heaven whence it comes down again in the form of beneficial rain.²⁸ It is all unbroken order based on automatic reciprocity. But within this order, there is no room anymore for the unpredictable working of the transcendent. It is then not surprising that in post-Vedic Hinduism the gods are no longer considered to be transcendent. They are, like their human counterparts, caught within the same \*saṃsāra\*, the same closed circulatory system. ### [c10.25](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.25) On further consideration, however, we find that Vedic ritual in fact undermines its own claim to be the absolute universal order. In the first place, one can, of course, never be completely sure that one has not unwittingly committed an error in the ritual proceedings, which, if unrepaired, will irretrievably impair the ritual order. Thus there is always an element of uncertainty. Fittingly, the uncertainty about ritual error can be shown to be a transformation of the old uncertainty about the outcome of the sacrificial catastrophe.²⁹ ### [c10.26](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.26) No less important is another point. The ritual, according to its own statements, is obviously of great importance to the life of the community and to the universe at large. Nonetheless, its performance is left to the decision of a single individual. One would expect that such a weighty matter would be a collective concern, involving the support and participation of the whole community. However, communal or collective rituals are absent from the Vedic \*corpus rituale\*. They are even rejected.³⁰ The yajamāna, assisted only by his brahmin experts, performs the ritual alone, at his own cost and for his own benefit. There is clearly an unresolved tension here between universal order and individual enterprise. That this tension is not resolved should not be understood as a marginal defect. Rather, it bears witness to the seriousness and honesty that somehow resists the temptation to solve the insoluble by sleight of hand. ### [c10.27](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.27) Vedic ritual, then, can neither offer a viable model for man's life and activity in the world nor do justice to the transcendent. It can only propose an absolute order, which is, however, undermined from within and restricted to the place and time of the ritual's execution. In the final analysis, the Vedic śrauta ritual has to and does in fact acknowledge defeat. But how then should the orthodox Hindu relate to the transcendent when the Vedic sacrifice fails him? ### [c10.28](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.28) At this point, it may be useful to summarize briefly the nature and development of Vedic sacrifice by taking as an example a particular sacrificial ritual. This example is the \*agnihotra\*, which is both the simplest and the most widespread Vedic ritual.³¹ It has, moreover, the advantage that it came to epitomize Vedic sacrifice and thus offered a starting point for ritualistic speculations that found their way into the Upaniṣads. In many respects, the agnihotra is the hub of Vedic ritualism. ### [c10.29](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.29) Insofar as we know it from its rules, it is a simple and, all told, a rather dull affair, conspicuous only by its unremitting repetitiousness. Every day, in the early morning and at sunset, a portion of boiled milk is offered in the fire and the rest drunk by the sacrificer or, if he has engaged the ritual services of a brahmin, by the latter. Although milk is the normal offering substance, other food or drink can be used—rice or other vegetal preparations, the Soma beverage, and even meat. We have here the basic paradigm of Vedic sacrifice in its simplest form: on the one hand, the cult of the fire involving the sacrifice of a little bit of food or drink; on the other hand, the meal or, albeit reduced to the barest minimum, the solemn banquet. ### [c10.30](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.30) Because of its connection with the rising and setting of the sun, the agnihotra has usually been explained as a magical operation meant to support and maintain the sun on its regular daily course.³² The essential point of the ritual—to which the obvious solar connection seems to be subservient—appears, however, to be a different one, namely, the neutralization or desacralization of food so as to make it free for consumption. The materials for his food do not belong to man by right; it is, in other words, something inviolable or sacred. As a passage on the agnihotra says, “food belongs to the gods.”³³ And even of the gods it is said that those among them who ate without sacrificing a bit of the food in the fire disappeared.³⁴ Appropriation and preparation of food are a violation of the sacred. The ritual texts are perfectly clear on the point that grinding, pressing, cooking, and boiling constitute acts of killing the same as the killing of an animal.³⁵ Later texts also speak about kitchen utensils as so many slaughter houses.³⁶ ### [c10.31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.31) The need for food forces man to enter into violent contact with the sacred and to expose himself to the ominous consequences of his transgression. He can only neutralize these risks by giving up again what he has gained by his transgression—as King Hariścandra had to give up his son obtained from the deity—or, at least, by abandoning a token part of the food by pouring it in the fire. Otherwise he will, as in Bhṛgu's vision of the underworld,³⁷ be killed in his turn by the killed. In this way, we can understand why the agnihotra is viewed as an expiation for the evil committed in the house and that all food is seen as the remainder left from the fire offering.³⁸ In the same line, we also understand why the agnihotra is said to make the sacrificer overcome death and to lead him to immortality.³⁹ Without the fire offering he would himself fall prey to death because of the violation and killing he had to perpetrate to obtain his food. ### [c10.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.32) This numinous and threatening background forms a striking contrast to the total harmlessness of the agnihotra. The insecure interaction of transgression and retribution, of killing and being killed, has been replaced by the steady alternation of the sun's rising and setting, of day and night, and by the circulation between heaven and earth. The ritualistic control of alternation and circulation should enable the sacrificer to rise above them and so to overcome death. The unsettling interplay with the sacred has been eliminated. What is specifically lacking is the element of contest and battle, the fight for the goods of life that we have come to recognize as the essential uncertainty of sacrifice. Instead, the exclusive emphasis is on mechanistic certainty. ### [c10.33](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.33) However, on further consideration, the element of violent conflict cannot be totally eliminated. How else is it possible to find a statement, albeit an isolated one, that equates the innocuous agnihotra with a weapon, a \*vajra\*, which the sacrificer hurls at his enemy?⁴⁰ At first sight, it is hard to see what exactly this means. It can be clarified, though, if we connect it with an even more curious passage, which comes under the heading of the possible errors and mishaps in the execution of the ritual. Among these errors, we find the somewhat surprising case that a chariot or cart passes between the sacrificer's fireplaces in the ritual enclosure.⁴¹ Such an event would obviously constitute a most serious disturbance of the ritual. One wonders, however, how such a traffic accident could occur. It should be easy to avoid driving through the ritual enclosure, unless, of course—and that is the point—one expressly does so with evil intent. The case is analogous to the fate that befell Sthūra and his followers when they were set upon and defeated on their place of sacrifice. Similarly, we are often told of the asuras' invading the gods' place of sacrifice. In other words, the traffic accident is no accident at all, but a reflection of the ancient sacrificial battle, which has been transformed into a ritual error. ### [c10.34](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.34) Significantly, the correction for this "error" is the same as the one prescribed when someone passes with his sacrificial fires through someone else's ritual enclosure. Apparently the two cases—crossing with a vehicle or with one's fires—are one and the same. Such a "mishap" can hardly be explained otherwise than in terms of agonistic procedures between two competing groups of sacrificers within the compass of the same sacrifice. It is then hardly surprising that a sacrificer's death in foreign parts requires the same expiatory rite.⁴² As we have seen, violent conflict and death were the essence of sacrifice. In this way, we can understand why the serene and harmless agnihotra can still be identified with a vajra hurled at the enemy. ### [c10.35](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.35) The elimination of death and catastrophe from the ritual does not seem to have been a gradual and cumulative process of erosion but a conscious reform. Its aim was to control the perils of the quest for transcendence. That the reformers were well aware of the issue comes out clearly in the mythical story of the sacrificial contest between the Lord of Life, Prajāpati, and his opponent Death—a story that may be considered the "charter myth" of Vedic ritualism.⁴³ The decisive point is Prajāpati's "seeing" the equivalence of the elements of his sacrifice with those of his opponent's sacrifice. Prajāpati is thereby enabled to integrate the rival sacrifice and to overcome Death. "Since then," the \*Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa\* proudly concludes, "there is no sacrificial contest anymore; the sacrifice is one, Prajāpati is the sacrifice." Conflict and the rival, Death, have been eliminated. ### [c10.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.36) Identification based on equivalences of cosmic and ritual elements is indeed the premier intellectual tool of the Vedic "science" of ritual. It enabled the ritualists to construe a closed mechanistic universe to be controlled and directed by the ritual. Uncertainty and catastrophe were replaced by the fail-safe certainty of ritualism. But the price of excluding uncertainty was internal contradiction. The ritualistic system breaks down on the insuperable obstacle of the transcendent. ### [c10.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.37) The agnihotra illustrates how the elimination of conflict and catastrophe resulted in the internal contradiction of Vedic ritualism. This has already come out in the remarkable fact that the kṣatriya—the king and warrior who as the upholder of the dharma is the ideal sacrificer—is, according to the rules, excluded from the agnihotra. He cannot perform the agnihotra himself, and the brahmin is forbidden to perform it for him. The kṣatriya, so we are told, perpetrates many impure acts, eats impure food, he kills and plunders.⁴⁴ The ritualists have, of course, tried to remove this contradiction, but the result is a further deepening of the problem. Since the kṣatriya cannot perform the agnihotra or have it performed for him, he must instead feed brahmins. In this way, he still makes the required offerings, not in the fire, but in the brahmin. ### [c10.38](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.38) The solution is based on separating the priestly office at the sacrifice from the eating of the sacrificer's food. However, both acts, officiating and eating, are two sides of the same function. The brahmin cannot officiate for a sacrificer whose food he cannot eat.⁴⁵ Conversely, if he does accept the sacrificer's food, it is hard to see how he can refuse to officiate for him on the grounds of the sacrificer's impurity. The kṣatriya's impurity is in both cases equally prohibitive. So the problem is further complicated, and therefore we find yet another attempt at solving it. The exclusion of the kṣatriya is waived if he has shown his ritual devotion by performing the Soma sacrifice. But how can the impure kṣatriya be able to perform the complicated and weighty Soma ritual, for which he will have to engage not just one but sixteen or seventeen brahmin officiants, when he is already excluded from the simple agnihotra? Not surprisingly, this is left unexplained and the problem remains as refractory as before. ### [c10.39](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.39) How did the problem arise in the first place? The kṣatriya's impurity is not a very convincing ground for his exclusion, for, as we saw, it does not exclude him from the Soma ritual. The interesting point is that the reference to the kṣatriya as a Soma sacrificer appears to hold the key to the origin of the contradiction. This requires a short excursus on the Soma ritual: Some time before the actual Soma sacrifice, when the Soma beverage will be prepared, offered in the fire, and drunk, the sacrificer undergoes the consecration (\*dīkṣā\*). The consecrated \*dīkṣita\* starts on a begging tour that should help him to collect the necessities for the sacrifice (\*saniyācana\*). Although this begging tour is a rather marginal and perfectly harmless rite, its original character is easily recognizable. The \*dīkṣita\* sets out as a warrior on a war or racing chariot.⁴⁶ Clearly, the original purpose of this pomp and circumstance is to obtain the goods for sacrifice at the sacrificial contests organized by others or perhaps, less ceremonially, by way of a razzia. We have already come across such warrior \*dīkṣitas\*, and we could notice that the dividing line between razzia and sacrificial contest is disconcertingly thin, if there is one at all. It is this keenness on prize and plunder that marks the \*dīkṣita\*—like the kṣatriya—as impure.⁴⁷ It is only afterward, when his warrior prowess has won him the property—especially cattle—needed for sacrifice, that he can set himself up as a liberal host and sacrificer. Incidentally, he is then of course entitled to the agnihotra. ### [c10.40](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.40) Originally, then, there was a cycle consisting of two opposite phases: on the one hand that of the consecrated warrior, on the other hand that of the munificent sacrificer.⁴⁸ The pivot and connecting point of this, in more than one sense, vicious circle was the sacrificial contest with its uncertain outcome. This cyclical course of sacrifice can be genetically connected with the mechanistically conceived circulation between heaven and earth propounded by ritualistic theory. But the ritual is of an entirely different nature. It removed the catastrophic turning point and thereby excluded the transcendent. The old cycle, deprived of its dynamic center, collapsed. The two opposite phases "imploded" into the now vacant center. The aggressively acquisitive dīkṣita fell into the same place as the peacefully munificent yajamāna. The kṣatriya warrior must therefore at the same time act as a peaceful sacrificer. By the same token, the brahmin should be able to officiate for the kṣatriya and to accept his food and gifts, notwithstanding his impurity. Hence the contradiction of the rules that exclude the kṣatriya from the agnihotra and yet allow him to act as yajamāna at the Soma sacrifice. These rules that were once perfectly understandable in their original context result in an insoluble contradiction now that the two opposite phases have come to coincide. ### [c10.41](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.41) The ancient alternating cycle left room for the transcendent in its catastrophic center at the cost of an awesome uncertainty. The mechanistic system of ritual excluded the catastrophe, but it too had to pay for its achievement. Catastrophe was replaced by contradiction. This was the only way in which the ritual system could account for the insoluble problem of the transcendent. ### [c10.42](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.42) The ultimate breakdown of ritualism is, however, not the last word. This is illustrated again by the agnihotra, namely, by its last manifestation, the \*prāṇāgnihotra\*, or sacrifice in the internal fires of the breaths. In plain fact, it is a meal surrounded by some simple ritual acts and mantras.⁴⁹ But its significance is far weightier than it appears. The idea of numinosity and transgression involved in the production, preparation, and eating of food make the connection with sacrifice a natural one. The special importance of the prāṇāgnihotra is the fusion and concentration of both meal and sacrifice in the single person of the sacrificer. It emancipates the sacrificer from society. In sovereign independence from the surrounding world, he performs his sacrifice, which is at the same time his meal. ### [c10.43](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.43) The starting point for the prāṇāgnihotra may again be found with the dīkṣita. As we saw, the dīkṣita is not yet qualified to act as a sacrificer and patron. He must still win the goods to be spent in sacrifice and gifts. In the meantime, he should, by virtue of his vow (\*vrata\*), nourish himself only with boiled milk—a restriction that is apparently so characteristic that the dīkṣita's milk diet is simply known as vrata. The interesting point is that this vrata is expressly mentioned as the replacement of the agnihotra, which he is not yet entitled to perform as a sacrificer.⁵⁰ The dīkṣita is a prāṇāgnihotra sacrificer \*avant la lettre\*. As the dīkṣita sets out from the community, so the prāṇāgnihotra emancipates himself from society. The difference is that the dīkṣita hopes to return to society, and the prāṇāgnihotra perpetuates the distance from society. In the daily prāṇāgnihotra, the practitioner performs the food sacrifice without any outside help or reciprocity. In this way, it allows him to stay in society while maintaining his independence from it. ### [c10.44](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.44) It is, of course, easy to see that this construction hides a new contradiction. In simple terms, how should the single individual obviate the practical need for dependence on or cooperation with others in the production of food? The prāṇāgnihotra contradicts the reality of the relationships that of necessity govern the social world. But, then, contradiction is the sign of the transcendent. ### [c10.45](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.45) The utter reduction of sacrifice in the prāṇāgnihotra is the end station of Vedic ritualism. All oppositions—dīkṣita and sacrificer, giver and recipient, world and transcendence—have been drawn together and fused in the single sacrificer. In the mythical language of Prajāpati's victory over Death, the sacrifice is now "one." Dualistic sacrifice has become monistic ritualism. It does not communicate or connect anymore but, by means of identification, posits the unification of opposite poles in the individual. This also means that the ritual has withdrawn into splendid isolation and requires its adherent to view himself as equally withdrawn. The prāṇāgnihotra is then either a meaningless complication of daily life, unthinkingly accepted, or a contradictory sign of transcendence. The important point is that out of the awesome violence of sacrifice a new and unique view of the transcendent has been won. It urges man to emancipate himself from his mundane bonds and to realize the transcendent exclusively by himself and in himself. ### [c10.46](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.46) At this point, not sacrifice and ritual, but knowledge—the knowledge of the self—holds the center of the stage. This knowledge had already announced itself when it enabled Prajāpati to resolve all antitheses and to integrate into himself his opponent, Death. In the "one who knows," all opposites coincide and become one. The ritual of sacrifice therefore cannot be the pivotal moment in Indian thought, for it has been overcome and superseded by knowledge.⁵¹ This is what gives knowledge in the form of the Veda its transcendent authority. Therefore, too, this knowledge is cut off from the world over which it holds ultimate authority but to which, for the same reason, it cannot relate. ### [c10.47](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.47) ⁵¹ This is what gives knowledge in the form of the Veda its transcendent authority. Therefore, too, this knowledge is cut off from the world over which it holds ultimate authority but to which, for the same reason, it cannot relate. This essay is based on a paper read at the Conference on the Origins of the Axial Age and Its Diversity, Bad Homburg, 4–8 January 1983. ### [c10.48](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10.48) In the final analysis, not even the knowledge of the self can be the pivotal moment, for then it would have to stand in the world and thereby lose its transcendent absoluteness. There is no mediation. There is only contradiction. There, in the contradictory tension between world-denying self-realization and worldly piety is the dynamic center. In the perplexity of contradiction, man must wrestle with the transcendent. The outcome remains uncertain. Man's quest for the transcendent is first and last a desperate leap into the unknown. ## Linked texts (6) - [Ṛgvedasaṃhitā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.samhita.rg.10.90) — Sanskrit - [Jaiminīyabrāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana.jaiminiya) — Sanskrit - [Prāṇāgnihotra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.upanisad.noncanon.pranagnihotra) — Sanskrit - [Mahābhārata](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.mahabharata.vyasa) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Bhagavadgītā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darsana.all.gita) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Śatapathabrāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana.satapatha) — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c10) · Pramāṇa