Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8.s1: 2

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8.s1

Language
English

2

c8.s1.1

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.

c8.s1.2

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.

c8.s1.3

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.

c8.s1.4

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.

c8.s1.5

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

c8.s1.6

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.

c8.s1.7

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.

c8.s1.8

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.

c8.s1.9

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?

c8.s1.10

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.

c8.s1.11

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.

c8.s1.12

The *Taittirīya Saṃhitā* gives the following account:

c8.s1.13

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

c8.s1.14

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.

Linked texts (3)