The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8.s1.3

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.