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The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9: 5 The Origin of the Nāstika

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9

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5 The Origin of the Nāstika

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It is obvious that the term *nāstika*, one who says "there is not," derives from the statement that is considered typical of him. Thus Manu's commentator Medhātiti (ad. 3. 150; 8. 309) characterizes the nāstika as one who, rejecting transcendence and the transcendental effectiveness of sacrifice, states: *nāsti dattam*, *nāsti hutam*, *nāsti paralokaḥ*, "There is no (value in) the gift, there is no (value) in the fire offering, there is no other world." This leads us to a further point. The term *nāstika* seems to imply also the context in which it is made, namely, the *(vi)vāda*, the disputation, where the *nāstika* confronts and competes with his opponent, the *āstika*. This is the situation known from the early expositions on *vāda*, for instance, the one preserved in the *Caraka Saṃhitā*, which exemplifies the vāda in these words: *ekasya pakṣaḥ punarbhavo 'stīti*, *nāstīty aparasya*, "One holds that there is rebirth, the other that there is none" (3. 8. 28). The point I want to stress is that in Caraka's example, there does not seem to be any question of a heterodox doctrine. In fact, the doctrinal content of the counterthesis (*pratiṣṭhāpanā*) seems to be nil. The negative statement is made simply and only for the sake of disputation, not in order to assert a particular doctrine.

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This is not to deny that the terms *nāstika* and *nāstikya* can and do denote a particular teaching, or rather a variety of different teachings, which, for short, may be called materialist. What I want to draw attention to is that these cover on the one hand specific doctrines, on the other hand a role, a party in the game of disputation free from any specific doctrinal content, both parties being bound by the rules of the game that unites them, not by any doctrine that separates them.

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This essay first appeared in slightly different form in *Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens* 12–13 (1968–69): 171–85. Reprinted by permission.

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Anyone interested in the actual content of ancient India's materialist doctrines should at this point stop reading. The purpose of the present paper is a short excursion in the meaning and history of the art of controversy, which through the vāda rules ultimately led to the development of Nyāya.¹ I shall therefore unrepentingly regress from the clarity of philosophy to the murky realm of mythology and ritual, from the specificity of doctrine to the diffuseness of agonistic dualism—for, if I am not mistaken, we may hope to find there some indications, not only regarding the nāstika's ancestry, but perhaps also regarding the place of the doctrinal nāstika in Indian tradition, as distinct from the simple controversialist. The way will lead us back to the Vedic ritual, beyond its classical form to the stage where the contest, verbal or otherwise, was still in the full sense a matter of life and death, not a means to assert and prove a specific doctrine, but the way to win the goods of life from the fangs of death.²

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In this connection the *brahmodya*—the verbal contest in which the *bráhman*, the force holding the universe together, is at stake—should have pride of place. Here we can observe the development from contest to doctrine. We may conveniently start from Renou's classic analysis of the brahmodya.³ Renou found that the classical brahmodya is "l'aboutissement (peut-être dégradé) de l'énigme essentielle du védisme ancien." The essence of its preclassical form would seem to have been an exchange of enigmatic "formulations." The question of the challenger is couched in terms of a well-turned enigma to which his opponent should react, not with a clear-cut, unambiguous solution, but with an equally enigmatic rejoinder, till one of the parties is reduced to silence⁴ or till the strongest, well aware of his strength, enforces silence by withdrawing.⁵

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The solution of the enigma, the bráhman itself, is not explicitly stated. It remains hidden in the antithetical relation between the elements of the enigma. For instance, the brahmodya hymn *Ṛgveda Saṃhitā*. 1. 164 consists of a series of antithetical formulations without the antithesis being resolved. Thus in verse 6 it is asked: "What is the One in the form of the unborn that keeps apart these six spaces?"⁶ This question is not answered by a clear-cut definition of the unborn one, such an answer is not even called for. The point at stake here is the often recurring problem of the one and the multiple. The "solution" of the problem is contained in the antithetical relation of the unborn one and the six that it keeps apart. Since the solution is in a way already given, no explanatory answer is called for, but an equally or even more aptly antithetical rejoinder showing that one has "seen" or "found" the crucial relation is required. Thus verse 10 has recourse to similar terms for "encoding" the solution to the problem in an even more ingenious way: "Upholding the six mothers and the six fathers, the One stands upright not being wearied by them".⁷ In this way, the central relation is ever further circumscribed by increasingly ingenious formulations, without a final definition being given. Even in the one case in this hymn where a question is followed by a direct answer, the answer is no less enigmatic than the question, couched as it is in antithetical terms. The question, "I ask you the farthest limit of the earth, I ask you the navel of the world, I ask you the seed of the stallion, I ask you the highest place of speech,"⁸ has to be answered by an equally enigmatic formulation of the relations between the elements: "This *vedi* is the farthest limit of the earth, this sacrifice is the navel of the world, this soma is the seed of the stallion, this *brahmán* is the highest extension of speech."⁹

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The point here is not the one-to-one identification of the separate cosmical elements of the question with the sacrificial ones in the rejoinder, but rather the antithetical relations governing both sets of elements. The opposites, farthest limit and energizing center, coincide as do the *vedi*, the place where the offerings are placed, and the creative activity of sacrifice. The seed of the stallion is the soma, but the point is that the soma is "killed" (pressed) to deliver its juice, as the stallion has been,¹⁰ thus doubling and thereby heightening the expression of the mysterious life-death relationship.¹¹ To put it briefly, question and rejoinder here turn on the mysterious *coincidentia oppositorum*, which is finally clinched by the statement "I, this *brahmán* (i.e., speaker of *bráhman*) am the highest extension of speech," which for all its assertiveness offers no more explicit explanation.¹²

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Thus the bráhman or, in Renou's apt phrase, the "énergie connective comprimée en énigmes," which keeps the cosmos from disintegrating or restores it, resides in the antithetical formulation, not in the explicit definition of the connection, the *bandhu*, which remains essentially enigmatic. This "énergie" is heightened by the two parties, who by their exchange of enigmatic challenges and rejoinders enact the antithesis. Its substance is not enunciation, but silence — the silence, as Renou observes, of the officiant called *brahmán*, who also brings the brahmodya of the horse sacrifice to its end. The culminating point is the moment of truth, when silence prevails between the partners.¹³

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This pattern still shows to advantage in the classical brahmodyas in the tenth and eleventh books of the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*. Although often, but not always, explicit solutions are given, we can still observe here the crucial significance of silence as the culminating or turning point. The solution, if given, is placed after the silence in a different context, to wit, in a teacher-pupil relationship. In fact, where we expect discussion to be decided by

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objective, im contest is a p expect, as th saw in the a contest by si myself to be dent, finally, tion, the pers to our own e body with a Anyway, the cluded by th dénouement offering fire the alternati *pṛcchati*), as *valkya*.¹⁵

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In these classical sp antithetical truth of do hand, the n turning poin these rituali cific teachin as taking p would look deal with s *brahmavādi* entist." Sin *aśvamedha* real contest

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At this p discussion reflection,¹⁶ threshold o has broken the impulse by the aspi antithetical must either other. In th completely objective, impersonal argument, the actual solution in the ancient verbal contest is a purely subjective, personal one. Actually this is what we should expect, as the problem is in a way acted out by the contestants. Thus we saw in the aśvamedha brahmodya that the prevailing party concludes the contest by simply asserting himself: “I, the brahmán (or, who have proved myself to be a brahmán), am the highest extension of speech.” The respondent, finally, assured of his authority, gives himself as the embodied solution, the personified bráhman.¹⁴ Perhaps such subjective solutions are nearer to our own everyday reality than our ideology prepares us to admit, as anybody with any experience of meetings may have had occasion to realize. Anyway, the brahmodyas of *Śatapatha* 10 and 11 are characteristically concluded by the prevailing party asserting himself and imposing silence; the dénouement is again a personal, subjective one. By the stereotype act of offering firewood, the loser becomes his conqueror’s pupil, or *brahmacārin*, the alternative being death for one who “questions beyond this point” (*ati-pṛcchati*), as happened to Śākalya at the outcome of his contest with Yājñavalkya.¹⁵

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In these passages we can, however, observe the transition from the preclassical sphere, where truth and order are subjectively dependent on the antithetical relations of the partners, to the classical clarity of the objective truth of doctrine and the objective order of ritual procedure. On the one hand, the moment of silence still has its full impact as culminating and turning point in the essentially personal relations; on the other, however, these ritualistic brahmodyas function as mere hulls for the imparting of specific teachings about cosmos and ritual. They are in some cases described as taking place at a sacrifice offered by a particular So-and-So, but one would look in vain for their places in the universalized classical ritual. They deal with specific points of ritual, but they are no longer part of it. The *brahmavādin* is no longer a versatile manipulator of words, but a ritual “scientist.” Similarly, the elaborate brahmodya which has kept its place in the aśvamedha ritual, though preserving its quality of enigma, is no longer a real contest, the parts being unalterably fixed.

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At this point the development bifurcates. On one hand, the brahmodya discussion of the ritual, which is now often called *mīmāṃsā*, methodical reflection,¹⁶ serves to settle a point of ritual procedure. We are here on the threshold of classical Mīmāṃsā. On the other hand, this same development has broken up the antithetical relations—indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, the impulse for the elaboration of the classical ritual was provided precisely by the aspiration to transcend these antithetical relations.¹⁷ Taking away the antithetical relation meant that the poles of the relation came apart; they must either remain apart or they must be completely identified with each other. In this way, the partners who acted out their antithetical relation are completely separated as single sacrificers, each alone being identified with the cosmos, or they are amalgamated into a single body (of sacrificer and officiants) performing the ritual in unison. The latter is the case of the *sattra*, the sacrificial "session" where the participants are at the same time sacrificer and officiant. In the same way, the antithetical enigma is resolved by identification. Thus the brahmodya disputations on the ritual in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* lead straight on, as Renou has shown, to the Upaniṣads and from there to Vedānta.¹⁸

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This transition can be further illustrated by the so-called Four-Hotṛ, or *caturhotṛ*, formulas.¹⁹ As they are given in the tests, they are straight identifications of officiants and elements of the ritual with gods and other cosmic entities. These explicit identifications, about which there is not much mystery, which generally are rather predictable in view of similar far from hidden identifications, and which moreover are learned by rote, are nevertheless called "the hidden bráhman of the gods".²⁰

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The original meaning still seems to be present in the ritual of the last day of the ten-day period at the end of the year-long sacrificial session. At the conclusion of this day, a brahmodya is prescribed.²¹ Originally, of course, this was a battle of wits, and the simple rule that a brahmodya contest was to be held on this day at the end of the year was sufficient. In the classical ritual, however, this had to be fixed in form and content. One of the solutions was to have the participants sit around their leader, the *gṛhapati*, and each in his turn ask him fixed questions with regard to the Ten, Four, Five, Six and Seven Hotṛs (*daśahotāraḥ*, *caturhotāraḥ*, *pañcahotāraḥ*, *ṣaḍḍhotāraḥ* and *saptahotāraḥ*): "When the Ten Hotṛs held a sacrificial session, by which gṛhapati did they succeed?" Answer of the gṛhapati: "By Prajāpati as gṛhapati they succeeded, through him they created offspring," etc. Here we see the caturhotṛ formulas in the form of a dialogue instead of the classical single identificatory formula. The point actually at stake seems to be not so much identifying the gṛhapati of the different groups of mythical Hotṛs as establishing the relation of the one gṛhapati and the multiple (Ten, Four, Five, Six, Seven) Hotṛs—the crucial relation that brings about the cosmogonical result. Finally, we can observe here that the crucial relation is, as it were, acted out by the participants, the Hotṛs, on the one hand, and the gṛhapati (who names each time his mythical counterpart) on the other.²²

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Another solution was simply to have the hotṛ priest alone recite the caturhotṛ formulas in their unified classical form. Finally, according to some authorities, the brahmodya is subsumed in the immediately preceding *mānasa* liturgy, performed in mind only, preserving (and maximizing) from the verbal contest only the element of silence.

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Here we have, I think, the whole development: from contest,²³ involving the formulation and enacting of the antithetical relation, to rigorously fixed liturgy and identificatory statement, to the final internalization of the whole procedure by the single, unopposed sacrificer.

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All this may seem quite remote from the nāstika. Nevertheless, it is here, in the agonistic conception of sacrifice and especially in the verbal contest, that we may find his origin. We have to turn first to a particular form of the verbal contest: the reviling of sacrifice and its mythical representative, Prajāpati. This reviling takes place at the *mahāvrata* Soma festival at the end of the year-long sacrifice. This festival, otherwise a normal Soma sacrifice, is marked by the insertion of a number of contests in the midday service of the Soma liturgy: a chariot race, an arrow shooting, a tug of war (or wrestling match) between an ārya and a śūdra for a hide representing the sun, the exchange of verbal obscenities between a man and a woman who later copulate. It preserves, in other words, the elements of an orgiastic festival. In this context the *Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa* places the action of a "praiser" (*abhigara*), who eulogizes the participants, and a "reviler" (*apagara*), who blames them.²⁴

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Though the brāhmaṇa texts consider the blame to refer to faults in the execution of the liturgy and ritual procedure, the reviler's utterances refer to acts of violence.²⁵ Violence is not a peculiarity of the mahāvrata. In fact, sacrifice generally turns on the act of violence, on death, by which its opposite, life, is to be won. Since the classical ritual was based on the breakup of the antithesis (the essential antithesis being life-death), it had to stress life and eliminate death (or at least eliminate it from the place of sacrifice). Actual, violent death was replaced, as I have argued elsewhere, by the nonviolent ritual error, to be avoided or expiated in a "technical" way.²⁶ What is of interest to us is that the antithesis of life and death, albeit under the guise of ritual correctness and error, is not only verbalized, but acted out by the two parties, as in the case of the brahmodya.

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Though no conclusion to the praising-reviling contest is given, we can infer it from an analogy in a passage of the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*. There Śaulvāyana, serving as adhvaryu officiant with Ayasthūṇa and his cosacrificers, deprecates their sacrifice. Ayasthūṇa answers by blaming Śaulvāyana's handling of the sacrificial spoons. Characteristically, the conclusion is that Śaulvāyana becomes his opponent's pupil.²⁷

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Of course, the simple abuse and the equally artless praise are a far cry from the sophistication of the verbal contest. But the case of Śaulvāyana and Ayasthūṇa illustrates how the verbal contest developed into the discussion of ritualistic detail. The transition to ritualistic discussion of procedure and to the correction of ritual mistakes can be seen in the rules for "declaring"

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ritual errors on the last day of the ten-day period, which immediately precedes the mahāvrata festival. Though there are set procedures for correcting ritual errors in general, "declaring" them seems to be a distinguishing feature of this day. This "declaration" is to be made by a "declarer" (*vivaktṛ*) in the form of an improvised anuṣṭubh verse, that is, either by reciting an anuṣṭubh verse and then reciting the passage where the error occurred, or more ingeniously, by fashioning the erroneous passage into an anuṣṭubh. Thus the "declaration" resembles nothing so much as a contest in verbal skill between two parties enacting the crucial life-death antithesis.²⁸

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The adversary role of the vivaktṛ's pointing out of errors is clearly related to other contest-like episodes which also belong to the last day of the ten-day period. On that day Prajāpati, the mythical personification of sacrifice, is to be ceremonially reviled. Though this abuse, which consists either in verses mentioning the bad things he created or relating the well-known tale of Prajāpati's primordial incest, is not given as a dialogue, it follows immediatley on, or is even a part of, the brahmodya at the end of the tenth day.²⁹ The mystery of origins, resulting in both good and evil, and especially when these origins are cast in the controversial mold of the primordial incest, would seem to be a fitting theme of the brahmodya.³⁰

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Now Prajāpati is the representative of the classical nondualistic, nonagonistic conception of sacrifice, and it stands to reason that he can hardly be the subject of a verbal contest and that consequently the blame is not put in dialogue form. It is rather with Indra, in a sense Prajāpati's predecessor as the divinity presiding over the sacrifice, that we expect this to be the case; not so much because of the warlike sound and fury of his exploits, which have perhaps been overstressed, as because of his essentially ambiguous nature. Because of his violent cosmogonic exploits, he is not only praised, but, like the mahāvrata sacrificers, he is strongly abused. Thus he is blamed for his violence by an inauspicious "voice" (*aślīlā vāc*) accusing him of brahmin-slaying (*brahmahatyā*).³¹ These acts of violence even are the subject of a contest, as recorded by the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*.³² King Viśvantara Sauṣadmana performs a sacrifice from which the Śyāparṇas are excluded; the latter nevertheless sit down in the sacrificial enclosure; the king then gives orders to remove these "perpetrators of evil deeds, speakers of impure language."³³ Then the Śyāparṇas, boasting of their prowess in winning the Soma drink, appoint one of them, Rāma Mārgaveya, as their champion. Rāma, claiming to be one who knows "thus",³⁴ challenges the king, who asks contemptuously: "What is it that you know, you second-rate brahmin (*brahmabandhu*)?" Rāma then recounts Indra's acts of violence leading to his exclusion from the Soma drink, an exclusion shared to the present day by his human counterpart, the kṣatriya. The point here is that the Soma drink belongs by right to the brahmin Śyāparṇas, whereas the king, who tries to withhold it from them, should be excluded. The debate then develops into an exposition by Rāma on the sacrificial food proper to each of the four varṇas and is concluded by the gift of a thousand cows by the king to the brahmin Rāma Mārgaveya and the reinstatement of the Śyāparṇas at the sacrifice.

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Though the episode is obviously remodelled so as to fit the classical non-dualistic conception of sacrifice,³⁵ the original pattern seems perfectly clear. The pivotal point is a sacrificial contest for the goods of life (the Soma drink, which the two parties dispute in a debate on the primordial act of violence).³⁶ The Śyāparṇas, "of bad work (and) evil speech," using the account of Indra's misdeeds as a ploy for blaming the king, challenge his right to the Soma drink. They closely resemble the vituperating reviler at the mahāvrata, except for the learning they exhibit in the debate.

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Not only is Indra abused, in some *Ṛgveda* passages his very existence seems to be doubted and even denied.³⁷ Thus we read in *Ṛgveda* 2. 12. 5 "about whom they ask, 'Where is he?' the dread one. And they say about him, 'he is not.' He takes away the goods of the lord like (a gambler) the dice. Trust him; he, O men, is Indra."³⁸ On the words "he is not," Geldner confidently notes in his translation "die Nāstikas".³⁹ Though apparently we touch here on the classical nāstika's ancestry, it is highly unlikely that this is the expression of a doctrine. It would seem that this and similar expressions of doubt have to be seen in the light of the verbal contest, especially the contest with the "reviler."⁴⁰

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The reviler, of course, does not reject sacrifice as a matter of abstract doctrine, otherwise his participation would be inexplicable. What he does reject is his opponent's sacrifice. His is not a religious doctrine but a ritual role in the contest for the goods of life, which calls for his wholehearted participation in the hope of reversing the roles. In the same way, it would seem, we must view the negation of and the disparaging doubts about Indra. In fact, it is not Indra's existence that is denied; on the contrary, the nay-sayer tries to deny his opponent Indra's presence and help.

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The point at stake seems to be Indra's ambiguous nature, and it is in this connection perhaps not irrelevant that he is sometimes called *brahmán*.⁴¹ He seems to be absent, or even hidden, most of the time. On the question of where Indra is, the poet answers that he has secretly espied his place.⁴² Indra must be summoned and activated in order to manifest himself. In the next verse, the poet triumphantly announces to those "who know and who do not know": "Here drives the bountiful in full armor".⁴³ The way to activate Indra seems to be by questions and answers, working up toward his decisive manifestation. Thus he is called upon to decide the question by declaring whether the power, the vīrya (of his former deeds) is now his or whether it is not.⁴⁴ Similarly, *Ṛgveda* 6. 27 starts with questions about Indra’s achievements (answer: “The being [*sat*] is his [achievement]”); then addresses Indra directly “We do not now perceive your greatness. . . . your Indra power [*indriya*] has not shown itself”; and announces, finally “Now this your indriya has become manifest.”⁴⁵

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Indra, as is well known, manifests himself in battle and contest, but his manifestation is ambiguous. His appearance means victory to the party on whose side he will throw his weight, but it spells doom to the other party. Both parties activate him and contend for his help in “rival invocations” (*vihava*),⁴⁶ trying to deny each other Indra’s effective presence. This is the situation known in the classical ritual—where of course it is considered faulty procedure—as *saṃsava*, sacrificial rivalry: “The two (parties) who press (the Soma) together do so with a view to (obtaining) Indra; the pressing stones, being the teeth of Prajāpati-sacrifice, devour one of the two parties”.⁴⁷

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In this context, I think, the negation of Indra has its proper place. That is, initially Indra is not present with either of the contending parties; the rival invocations activate him and (when his manifestation is imminent) the one tries to deny the other his presence.⁴⁸ This would seem to be the case in *Ṛgveda* 8. 100. 3, where the parties are exhorted: “Bring forward the praise, competing for the prize, a true one for Indra if there is truth. ‘Indra is not,’ says the other, ‘Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?’” Then, in the next verse, Indra manifests himself: “Here I am, O singer, look at me here.”⁴⁹ The same situation suggests itself in *Ṛgveda* 2. 12, where verse 5 records the question, “Where is he,” and the negation, “He is not” (or, “He is not here”). Verse 8 clarifies the situation: “Whom the two battle lines, engaging each other, invoke, vying with each other, both the parties here and yonder—the two standing on the same chariot invoke him separately—he, O men, is Indra.”⁵⁰

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These passages suggest a rudimentary scenario, question-answer, affirmation-denial, possibly further heightened by vituperation and finally subsiding when Indra manifests himself with one of the two contending parties (meaning that one of the parties has subdued the other). This pattern seems still to subsist in the classical ritual, where the consecrated sacrificer, often identified with Indra, may be said to act Indra’s part, going from concealment to resplendent manifestation. He is symbolically reduced to the embryonic state and speaks, if at all, only in veiled language. He recalls somewhat the *śreṣṭhin* who silently presides over the banquet while the participants strive to know his silent voice (vāk).⁵¹ In fact, the sacrificer is the counterpart of the brahman officiant, with whom he originally exchanges his role.⁵² It stands to reason that in the nonagonistic ritual no ill should be spoken of him, his evil (*aślīla*, *pāpman*) should not be mentioned; but the fact that he is considered to be possessed of evil is sufficiently significant. Though the blame, the mention of evil, will in any case have been reserved for a certain (probably advanced) stage of the proceedings—the reviling at the mahāvrata takes place in the midday service—it seems unlikely that the sacrificer would originally have escaped the lot of his prototypes, Indra and Prajāpati. Finally, at the culminating point of the ritual he manifests himself, is proclaimed brahmán, and distributes the dakṣiṇā, wealth.⁵³

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This is elaborately enacted in the rājasūya. The king, seated on his throne and surrounded by the four chief officiants and the office bearers, addresses each of the priests: “O brahmán. To which the priests answer:“Thou, O king, art brahmán.”⁵⁴ The scene recalls exactly the brahmodya in the caturhotṛ formulas at the end of the last day of the ten-day period.⁵⁵ Though we find here no “reviler” or vituperative utterances,⁵⁶ the idea of contest—chariot race, cattle raid, game of dice—is not very far away.

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Moreover, truth and nontruth seem originally to have been involved in personal form at the king’s unction and enthronement. One of the king’s office bearers is the *pālāgala*, the “messenger,” who is explained as *anṛtadūta*, “nontruth messenger.” His counterpart is the *satyadūta*, the “truth messenger,” who brings the message of the king’s unction (that is, of his manifestation, his birth) to the rival kings (*pratirājan*) and exhorts them to put faith in the king (*śraddhā*).⁵⁷ This rite is explained by a reference to the contest of devas and asuras. Depositing truth (*vācaḥ satyam*) with the Aśvins and Pūṣan, the devas conquer the asuras by untruth (*anṛta*). The original idea would seem to be that the two functionaries, *anṛtadūta* and *satyadūta*, represent the two opposite champions, the negator and the affirmer. The king is born out of the antithetical relation between satya and anṛta. Arising out of embryonic limbo and combining in his person both satya and anṛta, he manifests himself as the personified solution of the antithesis, like his prototype Indra.

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When we now try to piece together the scraps of information delivered by the texts, they appear to converge in a coherent picture of the verbal contest—question and rejoinder, praising and reviling, affirmation and denial—all turning on the essential enigma of being and nonbeing, life and death. The enigma cannot be objectively solved, it can only be circumscribed in antithetical formulations and acted out by the contending parties who, like “two on the same chariot,” are bound together by the contest.

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In fact, an objective solution is not aimed at. The pivotal concern is the antithetical complementarity. What the kavis, in the words of Ṛgveda 10. 129. 4, found was not objective truth or absolute being (*sat*), separate from nontruth, nonbeing (*asat*), but the connection between the two opposites, the *sáto bándhum ásati*. The antithesis is not an abstract problem to be solved once and for all. It is a concrete contest between opposite parties. In the same way as life and death, being and nonbeing, the parties are locked together in agonistic complementarity. Consequently, the contest must ever be renewed. No objective solution is strived for, but an ever-alternating, personal outcome.

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The point where development sets in is the impulse toward transcendence, a reaching out toward absolute life beyond the alternation of life and death. This means cutting the Gordian knot of complementary antithesis, resulting in the atomization of the world. The unity of the world has to be realized either by arranging the disconnected elements in discontinuous series or by bringing them under the same denominator through identification. Instead of antithetical connection, *bandhu* now means identification.

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Truth and nontruth are no longer bound up with the parties in the contest who act out their mutual relation. Instead they have been freed and absolutized. That is, abstract doctrine and individual belief are born. The superior contestant's assertion of himself as the brahman is transformed into the doctrine of the ātman-brahman identification. The rules of the contest, the vāda manual, yield their place to the rules of abstract proof.⁵⁸ By the same token, the reviling antagonist is cut loose from the praising protagonist. The complementary ritual roles make place for mutually exclusive doctrines. It is no longer a question of denying a particular person's (or group's) sacrifice, but of denying the abstract institution of sacrifice. The doctrine of sacrifice is either true or false.

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It is at this point that the classical nāstika makes his appearance, as does the orthodox ritualist. The utter acerbity of their relations signifies the fact that they are no longer bound together in a complementary pattern. The initial point is, however, the breakthrough out of mutual dependence in the contest for the goods of life. Both ritualist and nāstika reject karman in the sense of the (sacrificial) "work" of agonistic exchange between two parties. What divides them is the truth or falsehood of the doctrine of individual karman regulated by transcendent Vedic injunction. In the essential point, man's freedom to transcend his condition of bondage, both find themselves on the same side. But neither can realize both freedom and transcendence. The ritualist (and his āstika progeny), in order to safeguard man's transcendence, subjects his freedom to transcendent injunction. The nāstika, on the other hand, surrenders transcendence in favor of man's freedom.

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