Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8.s2: 7

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c8.s2

Language
English

7

c8.s2.1

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

c8.s2.2

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.

c8.s2.3

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.

c8.s2.4

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."

c8.s2.5

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.

c8.s2.6

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.

c8.s2.7

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.

c8.s2.8

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.

c8.s2.9

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.

Linked texts (2)