The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s1.6

v1.c28.s1.6

The Dīkṣā has obvious affinities with the ceremonies, which all over the world have been used to spread that feeling of ecstasy which makes man akin to the divine, and of which the Bacchic rites of Greece present the most obvious and convincing classical parallel. The idea is found but rarely in the Rigveda but it is to be noted in one hymn of the tenth book,³ in which is described the long-haired Muni, clad in dirty garments, who claims to speed along with the winds on the path of the Apsarases and the Gandharvas, to have entered into the winds leaving his body only for men to see, and who, it is clear, regards himself as quasi-divine for the moment. In that case there is no reference to Tapas, but the long unshorn hair and the dirty garments remind us of the plight of the unhappy sacrificer. At any rate it would be absurd to doubt for a moment that in this figure we have a case of the effort made to obtain religious exaltation, or that the attitude is similar to that of the medicine man of tribes in a lower stage of civilization. It is not, of course, in any sense irreligious or opposed to religious feeling: it is the same spirit as that of mysticism throughout all ages and among all peoples. The discomforts of the performance are merely intended to melt away the solid flesh, which retards the communion of the spirit with the divine. The wearing of the black antelope skin is a practice which is especially enjoined on the Brahman student, and it is natural to see in it some special connexion with the power to be derived from wearing such a skin. The sacrificer wears a pair of shoes of antelope hide.⁴ The use of the horn of the antelope is parallel to its use for the pouring out of the mixture used for the anointing of the king.⁵ The parts of the offering which fall down are offered to the Rakṣases under such a skin.⁶ The actual intention is uncertain: the prohibition of the use of the hand to scratch is paralleled in many lands, especially in initiation ceremonies, and it is clearly due to the fact that the body is full of the divine essence, and that therefore contact with the hand is undesirable: a non-conducting material should be interposed. But the choice of a black skin also suggests that the idea of making the wearer invisible to the demons may have something to do with the use. The idea that the antelope is divine as a representative of any god cannot be proved or even made probable for this rite, and similarly there is no trace of totemism to be seen in regard to the antelope in Vedic literature.