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The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8: 4 The Flood Story in Vedic Ritual

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8

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4 The Flood Story in Vedic Ritual

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The flood story, like all myth, is not just an edifying or comforting tale for homiletic purposes. Perhaps we should even say that myth is not the place to look for any comfort or edification. It is concerned with the incompatible, the insoluble, with conflict and disorder. The only comfort myth can offer is to provide us with the words, the terms, the "code" for grasping, mentally and verbally, the perplexities of the human condition. This is no mean thing, but it is not a definitive answer to the problem of existence. Thus it may be too simplistic to see the flood story only as a fable of a new beginning, a cosmogony establishing a new and better order of life. This is, of course, an important aspect of the story. But underneath is the awesome intrusion of chaos and destruction. Even when the flood is interpreted as a cleansing or purification necessitated by the sinful disorder of the world,¹ the overriding motif is the havoc and violence of the catastrophe. In the oldest Indian versions of the flood story, no reason is given at all for the catastrophe and there is no question of any cleansing. This is the more remarkable since the oldest versions of the story occur in the context of ritualistic exposition where purity and purification are constantly recurring features. One would expect the flood to fit in smoothly with the concern for purity, but no connection is made. It is reported as a catastrophe without explanation. The central theme is the intractable antithesis of continuity and violent break, of order and the irruption of chaos. It is, in other words, a threatening story.

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Let us first look at the flood story as it is told in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*.² A small fish comes accidentally between the hands of Manu—always a paragon of ritualistic correctness—who has properly started the day with his morning ablutions. The small fish pleads with Manu to save him from the rapacious other fishes and offers in return to save Manu's life. Unruffled rather than unbelieving, Manu asks from what mortal danger the fish will save him and is told of the coming flood. Manu's next question is how he should save the fish. He is instructed to transvase it during the successive stages of its growth from a water pot to a tank, from there to the river Ganges, and finally, when full-grown, to the ocean. This accomplished, the now mighty fish tells Manu before setting out into the ocean when the flood will occur and instructs him to build a ship. The fish promises to return and to guide Manu through the flood.

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So it happens. The fish has Manu tie the ship to the horn on its head and draws him safely across to the northern mountain. There Manu is told to moor the ship to a tree and to descend gradually after the retreating waters. The text then states laconically: "The flood had swept away all creatures, only Manu was left." Indeed, Manu is left with the problem of how to set life into motion again, for he did not take with him aboard the ship (as in the later Indian versions of the story) the seed of all manner of life.³ This is not fortuitous. The restoration of life has to be brought about by the ritual. And so Manu, "desirous of offspring," engages in "worship and austerities" and makes an offering of milk products—ghee, sour milk, whey, and curds—in the retreating waters. In a year's time, there arises from this offering a resplendent woman, in whose footstep ghee gathers.

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Here the story brings in another theme: the woman encounters the gods Mitra and Varuṇa, who want to claim her as theirs. She tells them, however, that she is Manu's daughter. The two gods nevertheless claim the right to a share (apitvā) in her. The text then drops this theme again, only telling us that the woman either acknowledges or rejects the claim on her and passes by them to go to Manu. When asked by Manu who she is, she explains that, having arisen from his offering in the waters, she is his daughter. By employing her in the middle part of the sacrifice, she tells him, he will become rich in offspring and cattle. And so, "worshipping and exerting himself with her," as the text ambiguously puts it, Manu generates through her the human race and obtains all the blessings he wished for. The text then rounds off the story with its punchline: "This woman is the same as *Iḍā*—that is, the deified sacrificial food—and whosoever knowing this performs the sacrificial ritual with the *iḍā* thereby propogates, like Manu, the human race and obtains all blessings." Thus the main point of the flood story in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* is the deft interweaving of sacrifice and procreation in the figure of the woman who is at the same time the Iḍā invoked in the middle of the sacrificial ritual.⁴ Moreover, the obvious incest motif—otherwise prominent in cosmogony, as in the case of Prajāpati and his daughter—is deemphasized or even avoided.

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Although the purpose of the flood story is ostensibly found in the Iḍā ceremony of the sacrificial ritual, the linkage between flood and Iḍā is not as obvious as the text wants to make it. The story clearly falls into two independent parts, the flood on the one hand, the goddess Iḍā on the other. At the hinge between the two parts, we have already noticed some uneasiness, namely, where Mitra and Varuṇa intervene but immediately and inconclusively drop out of the story. More important, however, is the fact that the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* is alone in bringing in the flood story at this point. The other brāhmaṇa texts give a different account of Iḍā, where Mitra and Varuṇa do indeed play an important part but where there is no mention of a cosmic flood. Conversely, the only other mention of the flood—a short reference in the *Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā*⁵—puts it in a different context and has nothing to say about Iḍā. Here too Manu, only survivor of the flood, makes an offering somewhat resembling the one in the *Śatapatha*’s story: “With that (offering) he performed the sacrifice,” this text tells us, “with that (offering) he spread out (*aprathata*), with that (offering) he went to this plenitude” (*imaṃ bhūmānam agacchat*). Although the image of spreading out the plenitude (or the earth’s plenitude) could conceivably be linked, or rather conflated, with the Iḍā theme, it belongs to a different context, namely the cosmogonic scenario of the demiurge spreading out and fastening the earth that has emerged from or floats on the primeval waters.⁶ The theme of the primeval waters and the *instabilis terra* blends easily enough with that of the flood, but the ghee-filled footprint, characteristic of Iḍā, has little of anything to do with either the floating earth or the flood.

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But perhaps the flood story, apart from introducing Iḍā, is meant to account in its own right for the ritual. There is a telling parallelism: as a new world arises from the devastation of the deluge, so new life is created out of the destruction of sacrifice. Moreover, as the primeval waters are the basic element in the diluvial cosmogony, so water is prominent in the ritual. Thus the Soma sacrifice begins and ends with a bath. In connection with the final bath (*avabhṛtha*), it is stated that the ocean is the womb (*yoni*) of the sacrifice. At the avabhṛtha, it is said, “One makes the sacrifice go (back) to its own womb”.⁷ The sacrifice, then, arises from the waters and cyclically returns to its aquatic birthplace. One is tempted to think of Manu’s fish, which comes out of the waters and finally, when full-grown, is brought back to the ocean, as an image of the sacrifice. Similarly, there is the recurrent theme of the sacrifice or of the sacrificial fire fleeing from service to gods and men and taking refuge in the waters, only to be found and brought back again.⁸

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Particularly interesting for our purpose is the way this theme is used in a Vādhūla text and the part fishes play in it.⁹ The gods want to rearrange the universe so that those representing the elements of fire, sun, wind, and waters can take up their residences in the spaces proper to each of them. To that end, they seek to perform a sacrifice, but they are in doubt as to the ways and means of this sacrifice. Agni, the Fire, offers to have himself immolated as a sacrifice (*medha*) to himself. However, when he is immolated, *medha* (sacrifice) and *asu* (life) escape. The sacrifice is then repeated by immolating again the escaped and recaptured medha part.¹⁰ Each time, the double residue of medha and asu escapes taking the form of particular living things. In this way, a double series of life forms emerges through the sacrifice, the medha forms being immolated, while the asu ones—apparently unfit for sacrifice—are left alone. Finally the last medha residue, in the form of rice and barley, escapes, hides in the waters, and is swallowed by two fishes, the rice by a *rohita* fish and the barley by a fish called *caṣa*. The two fishes clearly represent sacrifice. Not only are they equated with the sacrificial substance they have swallowed, but they are also said to carry on their heads emblematic implements of vegetal sacrifice: the rohita fish bears a mortar and pestle, the caṣa a winnowing basket. When the gods finally catch them, the fishes—or rather, the two sacrificial substances, rice and barley—explain that if they are immolated, the sacrifice will be as small as they are themselves. First the gods should allow them to multiply. When the gods ask how this should be brought about, they are given the plough and instructed about agriculture. Only after the rice and the barley have grown and multiplied, do the gods successfully complete their sacrifice for the rearrangement of the universe.

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The Vādhūla text summarized here provides an abundance of interesting leads: sacrifice as cosmogony; the interplay of the two basic elements of fire and water; the creative as well as the threatening, destructive aspect of sacrifice; the residual essence of sacrifice that through its flight under different guises establishes the diversity and plenitude of life; and finally the founding of agriculture together with vegetal sacrifice. For our purpose, the main interest attaches to a comparison of the two fishes with the one in the flood story. Thus the caṣa fish of Vādhūla immediately recalls the *jhaṣa* in the flood story.¹¹ More important, in both cases life is represented by the fish. In Vādhūla’s text, it is the life-giving essence of sacrifice that is carried by the two fishes. In the flood story, we also see that life and its dynamics are represented by the fish, for on Manu's ark, life is entirely in abeyance. As we saw, not even the seeds of life have been taken on board. All life and action are in the waters with the fish who safely carries Manu across them. Similarly, in both stories the fish must grow or multiply. In Vādhūla's account, this entails the founding of agriculture and the growth and multiplication of rice and barley. In the flood story, great attention is given to Manu's efforts to have the fish grow to an enormous size, exceeding even the capacity of the Ganges.

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Here still another point suggests itself. One easily imagines that the release of a sea monster, like Manu's full-grown *jhaṣa*, would by itself be sufficient to unleash the flood. Or, in other words, the growth of the fish seems tantamount to the swelling of the waters that ends in the catastrophal deluge. Indeed, the flood story begins with an insignificant amount of washing water brought to Manu in the morning with the equally harmless fish in it. At the turning point, both waters and fish have developed to monstrous proportions. The life force contained in the fish and in the waters is ambivalent. When fully developed, it brings both destruction and salvation. This seems to be anticipated in the beginning of the story when the little fish refers to the internecine rapaciousness of the fishes. The motif of life's ambivalence does not come out so clearly in Vādhūla's account. There more attention is given to the violence of sacrifice, which causes its essence to flee. But it seems significant that the two fishes swallow and do not want to give up the life-giving essence of sacrifice. Only by exercising their power as well as their wits are the gods able to catch them and force them to give up their secret.

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Finally, the fishes have in both cases striking excrescences on their heads. In Vādhūla's story, the two fishes carry sacrificial implements on their heads, manifesting thereby their sacrificial identity. In the case of Manu's fish, there is no clear-cut reference to sacrifice. It has, however, been suggested that the horn, to which Manu's boat is tied, may represent the sacrificial pole (*yūpa*).¹² If so, the fish in the flood story can be seen not only as the life force active in the waters, but can also represent sacrifice. Whether we are justified in equating the horn with the yūpa or not is perhaps not so important as the point that the flood story seems to fit in with the course of the sacrificial ritual in yet another respect. I refer to the *avabhṛtha*. There, as already mentioned, the sacrifice is brought back to its birth place, the waters, as is Manu's fish. Manu's offering in the waters also seems to parallel the offering in the avabhṛtha water (*avabhṛtheṣṭi*).¹³ Perhaps we may even go further. After the final ritual bath, there is yet another sacrifice, that of a cow, to Mitra and Varuṇa,¹⁴ starting as it were a new sacrificial cycle. Would it be possible to connect the latter sacrifice with the intervention of Mitra and Varuṇa after the flood in Manu's story?

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The flood story, then, when compared with Vādhūla’s account of the sacrifice’s origins, appears rich in ritual symbolism. However, the comparison also shows that the flood story proper—that is, the first part ending with Manu’s descent from the northern mountain—is strangely lacking in direct references to sacrificial ritual. While Vādhūla’s account from beginning to end turns on sacrifice, the flood story proper does not even allude to it. It is only against the general backdrop of the association of sacrifice with the waters—as, for instance, in the fairly common identification of sacrifice and waters¹⁵—that the connection with the ritual seems to impose itself. Once one starts looking for connecting points, one does indeed find many leads. But, even so, the story as told in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* does not follow up any of the possible leads. It steers clear of the ritual and its terminology. Only in the second part of the story, when Iḍā arises from Manu’s offering in the waters, is the connection with the ritual made. But, as we already observed, the hinge between the two parts looks curiously factitious. The waters in which Manu makes his offering are, strictly speaking, no longer those of the flood. The flood has retreated and Manu has completed his descent from the mountain. The fish that instructed Manu on all manner of detail has nothing to say about offerings. And when Iḍā finally comes out of the waters, Manu does not even recognize her at first. The only connection between the flood and Iḍā is, in fact, a somewhat spurious *post hoc ergo propter hoc*. The flood story looks like an erratic addition, interrupting rather than strengthening the course of ritual exposition. The question then is: Why was the story of the deluge inserted at all? Perhaps a short investigation of the Iḍā ceremony may give us a clue.

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Iḍā is invoked by the hotṛ priest in the middle of the sacrificial ritual after the main oblations in the fire.¹⁶ The adhvaryu priest cuts off some small slices, called iḍā, of the offering substance, which are eaten by the sacrificer and his priests. The ceremony stands for the ritual meal at which the participants share the iḍā, the sacrificial food. The Iḍā, then, is the life-sustaining substance that is released by sacrifice to be enjoyed by the participants. In this connection, it may be mentioned that the Iḍā ceremony also is the time for bringing up and distributing the *dakṣiṇās*, or gifts, to the priests—another form of the life-sustaining substance.¹⁷ After the destructive part of the sacrifice, signified by offering up the burnt oblation in the fire, life is set in motion again and distributed in the tangible form of food and gifts. In this way, we can easily understand that after the devastation of the flood, Iḍā is essential for the renewal of life. But if this explains the function of Iḍā after the flood, it does not justify that her appearance should be preceded by a flood. Perhaps one should not ask such questions in mythology. But the fact is that, apart from the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, the texts have no need for the flood to explain Iḍā's appearance.

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The *Taittirīya Saṃhitā* gives the following account:

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Manu was looking for (a proper place) of the earth for sacrifice; he then found (a spot with) spilled ghee. He said, "Who is able to produce this at the sacrifice also?" Mitra and Varuṇa answered, "It is the cow, we are able to produce (her)." They then set the cow in motion; wherever she stepped, from there ghee was pressed out. Therefore she (i.e., Iḍā) is called ghee-footed (*ghṛtapadī*); that is her origin.¹⁸

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In the first place Mitra and Varuṇa—in contradistinction to the *Śatapatha* version—here come into their own as the prime movers of Iḍā.¹⁹ But the main point is the ghee-dripping foot or footprint of the divine Iḍā cow. This spot, the *iḍás* or *íḍāyās padá*, is said to be the best spot, the top or the navel of the earth, in other words, the creative center of the world. There Agni, the offering fire and primordial hotṛ priest, has his seat or birthplace.²⁰ Not surprisingly, Iḍā is both the mother and the daughter of Agni.²¹ Her footprint is the primeval place of sacrifice and as such is associated with Manu, prototype of the sacrificer and progenitor of the human race. This, it would seem, gives Iḍā and her rite a firmer, more cogent ritual charter than the loosely connected flood story. But we still have to look further into the connection of the ghee-filled footprint, characteristic of Iḍā, with the sacrificial meal.

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The clearest ritual manifestation of the footprint is not in the Iḍā ceremony, but in the rite of the "seventh step" of the Soma cow, that is, the cow that will function as the barter price at the purchase of the Soma stalks.²² After a piece of gold—representative of the fire—has been put on the step, ghee is poured on it. Then the sand of the footprint is taken up and divided in three parts; two parts are thrown on the hearths of the gārhapatya and āhavanīya fires and the third is given to the sacrificer's wife. The mantras that accompany this rite call the Soma cow Iḍā and refer to her seventh step as "the head of the earth," "the sacrificial spot of the earth," and "Iḍā's footprint filled with ghee." Interestingly, the Soma cow is also called dakṣiṇā.²³ As I have argued elsewhere, the Soma cow and the dakṣiṇā are related to each other as the two poles of the cyclical regeneration process of the goods of life, which starts with the Soma cow and its seventh step and reaches its acme at the distribution of food and gifts.²⁴

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The Iḍā cow, then, covers the whole of the sacrificial process. We may add that the *maitrāvaruṇī* cow sacrificed at the end of the Soma ritual, after the final bath, seems also to be connected with the Iḍā cow. This maitrāvaruṇī cow is a *vaśā*, that is, a cow that has become barren after having had a calf. This reminds us of the (exhausted) womb that remained after Prajāpati's creation, or rather release, of the different kinds of beings out of himself. As the *Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā* says, "The womb that was left over became the cow; she is 'womb' (*yoni*) by name".²⁵ Further on in the same text, the Iḍā cow is said to have been fashioned by Mitra and Varuṇa out of an *indigesta moles* produced by the gods. The different kinds of beings exploit her and finally, when she is completely exhausted, reject her. Prajāpati, however, takes pity on her and grants her the ghee-dripping foot—in other words, he restores her and makes her inexhaustible.²⁶ This tale of maltreatment, exhaustion, and restoration together with the apparent connection with the cow of Mitra and Varuṇa seems to suggest that Iḍā is not only the Soma cow, the *dakṣiṇā* cow and possibly also the *maitrāvaruṇī vaśā*, but also the sacrificial victim in general, whose meat is shared and eaten at the sacrificial meal. Strangely, however, no explicit connection is made. The nearest we get to this point is when the Iḍā and dakṣiṇā cows are equated, but no direct link is given as regards the vaśā cow immolated for Mitra and Varuṇa.

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Nevertheless, there are several indications that the Iḍā cow is the immolated victim. The mantras addressed to the victim when it is led up to the sacrificial pole are also addressed to the Soma cow.²⁷ As we saw, Iḍā and the Soma cow are intimately connected with each other. If, then, the Soma cow can be linked with the immolated victim, the link will include the Iḍā cow too. Now Iḍā is Manu's daughter as well as his wife, and ritual mythology has it that Manu's obsessive ritual correctness did not even stop at immolating his own wife. In most versions, Manu's wife is saved by divine intervention, but the *Śatapatha* laconically describes her immolation.²⁸ In this respect—as in others—Iḍā recalls the goddess Śrī, Prosperity, who comes forth from the exhausted Prajāpati. The gods want to kill and rob her. But Prajāpati humanely objects that one does not kill a woman; one takes everything from her but leaves her alive. The gods then do just that, leaving her much like the exploited and rejected Iḍā.²⁹ This sorry tale is meant to explain a particular sacrifice, the *mitravindeṣṭi*. It suggests that the gods share Śrī among each other at a sacrificial meal—as the participants in any sacrifice share in the iḍā. But, as we saw, the critical point of the immolation is eliminated by Prajāpati's intervention.

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Now communal meals are hardly tolerated in the solemn (*śrauta*) ritual. The perfectly anodyne Iḍā ceremony is the last vestige of the sacrificial meal, and even it is not taken in common anymore. But where the meal survives, there is an abundance of cow's meat, as in the sacrifice for the "householder" (*gṛhamedhin*) Maruts.³⁰ A similar case is the rite for establishing the sacred fires (*agnyādhāna*), where the participants gamble for the parts of a cow.³¹ That such cows are the tangible substance of the Iḍā may by now seem fairly obvious, notwithstanding the reticence of the texts. But there is one instance where they almost seem to give away the game. This is in the rite of the Soma cow's seventh step. When a line is drawn round the ghee-filled footprint with a view to taking it up, the accompanying mantra says: "Here I cut the neck of the evil spirit, here I cut the neck of him who hates us and whom we have".³² The ghee-mixed dust of the footprint is equated with cattle, and therefore this rite is supposed to make the sacrificer rich in cattle. If we further consider that just before, when the ghee libation was made, the spot of the footprint was called "the head of the goddess Aditi" and "head of the earth," we can hardly avoid anymore the idea of a killing or immolation of cattle, that is, of cattle belonging to one's rival or enemy. Appositely, the next mantra claims, "With us be wealth."

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So not only is the Iḍā cow subjected to violence and immolation before she can perform her beneficial life-giving function at the sacrificial meal, she is also the object of agonistic proceedings between rival parties. This seems to be confirmed by a curious passage of the *Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā*.³³ The gods were, as usual, in conflict with their rivals, the asuras. The goddess Aditi was then with the gods; her counterpart, the otherwise unknown Kustā, with the asuras. The gods planned to cut off Kustā's head if they won. The asuras had the same in mind for Aditi in case of their victory. As we expect, the gods won and decapitated the asuras' Kustā. The text tells us that therefore, in the house of a victorious conqueror, Kustā, in the form of a cow captured from the rival party, is killed. The interesting point is that this passage, together with other no less agonistic ones, occurs in that part of the *Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā* called "the names of the cow" (*gonāmika*), which is an extensive treatment of the Iḍā rite.

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Behind the Iḍā ceremony, then, there lurks the ugly specter of violent conflict, such as the one between gods and asuras, for the goods of life that must be immolated before they can be enjoyed at an abundant communal meal or distributed as gifts.³⁴ From this perspective, we can see why the Iḍā ceremony is considered to be a violent "rending apart," a "breaking asunder" of the sacrifice.³⁵ But the puzzling fact is that of all this, of conflict, violence, immolation, and communal meal—in short, of the potlatch scenario suggested by several mythological and ritual features—nothing remains in the actual Iḍā ceremony. It is a perfectly peaceful and harmless affair.

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Even the sacrificial meal, though clearly suggested by the standard phrase in the ritual rules, "they eat the iḍā," has been reduced to an almost unrecognizable minimum. The small slices forming the tangible Iḍā are not even eaten in community. Insofar as there is a communal meal of the sacrificial food, it is removed from the place of sacrifice and can take place only when the ritual is over. We can now understand why. The meal was intimately connected with intense rivalry and violence. The central drive behind the development of the śrauta ritual as we know it was, however, to exclude all violence and conflict.

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The ritualists achieved this by excluding the other party from the sacrificial arena. Though the rival comes in for frequent mention, even to the point of obsession, he is nowhere is sight anymore. The gods and asuras still had their regular battles on the place of sacrifice. By contrast, the śrauta sacrificer, but for the company of his priestly experts, is alone in the sacrificial arena. And alone he strikes out on his own into a transcendent sphere, unhampered by allies and bypassing his enemies. But then the old explanations of Iḍā had to go, because as well as her life-giving qualities, they stressed the violence and conflict involved.

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It would seem that here we may find the reason for the insertion of the flood story in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, a younger text steeped in the new ritual doctrine. We may then also understand why the violence and devastation of the flood are in the *Śatapath's* telling not only deemphasized but also, insofar as they are implied, totally unconnected with the ritual. For if there were a connection, the destructive violence of the flood would be a recurrent feature of the ever-repeated pattern of the ritual, as, for instance, would be the case if the avabhṛtha were explicitly associated with the deluge, or the maitrāvaruṇī vaśā with the Iḍā cow. The flood story describes a once-and-for-all intrusion of chaos, out of which arises the permanent order of the ritual.

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The story of the deluge holds the origins of the ritual. As is proper for the flood story, it founds the new dispensation of the śrauta ritual, putting its critical central part, the sacrificial meal, on a new footing. But even so, the Iḍā ceremony continues to be viewed as a breach, a tearing apart. Our texts suggest that this refers to the intrusion of an alien element into the ultramundane śrauta ritual, namely, the eating of the meal, which properly belongs not to the śrauta ritual but to the *pākayajña* of the worldly domestic ritual.³⁶ But at the same time, it clearly serves as a reminder of the paradox that the life-giving ritual is intimately connected with life's opposite, with death and destruction. Manu's unworldly ritual perfection is utterly meritorious, but it is barren. The tale of the fish confronts him with the internecine

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<!-- Note marker ³⁶ has no footnote text on this page --> vitality of life in the depths of the waters. After this vitality has reached its destructive acme in the deluge, life, recreated and expanded through Iḍā has to admit the breaking asunder, the rending apart of Iḍā. In order to perpetuate life, the new ritual order of the universe established after the flood must still concede a place, however surreptitiously, to evil and destruction.

Linked texts (4)