sacrificial gatherings. This time we read: “Having spoken thus, Y ā jñavalkya left.” The text continues for another two adhy ā yas , without involving him further. That scene with Maitrey ī , those words on ā tman are his last appearance before he goes off into the forest. And the detail confirming that we have entered the world of the novel is that Y ā jñavalkya’s final concern was to establish an “agreement” between the two wives whom he was about to leave.
III
ANIMALS
Consumed by the arrogance of knowledge, the young Bh ṛ gu, son of the supreme god Varu ṇ a, was sent off by his father into the world (into this world, according to the Ś atapatha Br ā hma ṇ a , into the other world according to the version in the Jaimin ī ya Br ā hma ṇ a ) to see what knowledge alone could not reveal, to find out how the world itself is made. Without this, all knowledge is pointless.
In the east, Bh ṛ gu came across men who were slaughtering other men. Bh ṛ gu asked: “Why?” They answered: “Because these men did the same to us in the other world.” He saw the same strange scene in the south. In the west there were men eating other men and sitting about, calmly. In the north as well, amid piercing cries, there were men eating other men.
When he returned to his father, Bh ṛ gu seemed speechless. Varu ṇ a looked at him with satisfaction, thinking: “Then he has seen.” The moment had come to explain to his son what he had seen. The men in the east, he said, are trees; those in the south are flocks of animals; those in the west are wild plants. Last, those in the north, who cried out while they ate other men, were the waters.
What had Bh ṛ gu seen? That the world is made up of Agni and Soma, of these two brothers. Brought up as two Asuras in V ṛ tra’s belly, they abandoned him to follow the call of another brother, Indra, and to pass over to the side of the Devas. Then “one of the two became the devourer and the other became food. Agni became the devourer and Soma the food. Down here there is nothing else than devourer and devoured.” And there are these two poles in everything that happens, without exception and at every level. But Bh ṛ gu discovered something else: the two poles were reversible. At a certain moment the positions will switch, indeed they will have to switch, because this is the order of the world. This explains why all that is said about Agni can also, at a certain moment, be said about Soma. And vice versa. A phenomenon that had already baffled Abel Bergaigne.
The revelations that Bh ṛ gu came across were set one within the other. First of all: the final act from which all others followed was the act of eating—or at least the act of severing, of uprooting. Every act that consumes a part of the world, every act that destroys. There is no neutral state, no state in which this doesn’t happen. The act of eating is a violence that causes what is living, in its many forms, to disappear. Whether grass, plants, trees, animals, or human beings, the process is the same. There is always a fire that devours and a substance that is devoured. This violence, bringing misery and torment, will one day be carried out by those who suffer it on those who inflict it. Such a chain of events cannot change. But the serious damage, the paralysis that this causes in those who become aware of it, can—we are told—be treated, remedied. This is Varu ṇ a’s knowledge, which Bh ṛ gu could not have learned without the impact of what he saw when he traveled the world—or the other world. And what was the remedy? The very act of perceiving that which is—and of manifesting it, not just with words, but with gestures: in this particular case, with a series of gestures to be carried out in the agnihotra , the most basic of all rites. Pouring milk into the fire—every morning, every evening—meant accepting that what appears disappears and that what has
III
ANIMALS
Consumed by the arrogance of knowledge, the young Bh ṛ gu, son of the supreme god Varu ṇ a, was sent off by his father into the world (into this world, according to the Ś atapatha Br ā hma ṇ a , into the other world according to the version in the Jaimin ī ya Br ā hma ṇ a ) to see what knowledge alone could not reveal, to find out how the world itself is made. Without this, all knowledge is pointless.
In the east, Bh ṛ gu came across men who were slaughtering other men. Bh ṛ gu asked: “Why?” They answered: “Because these men did the same to us in the other world.” He saw the same strange scene in the south. In the west there were men eating other men and sitting about, calmly. In the north as well, amid piercing cries, there were men eating other men.
When he returned to his father, Bh ṛ gu seemed speechless. Varu ṇ a looked at him with satisfaction, thinking: “Then he has seen.” The moment had come to explain to his son what he had seen. The men in the east, he said, are trees; those in the south are flocks of animals; those in the west are wild plants. Last, those in the north, who cried out while they ate other men, were the waters.
What had Bh ṛ gu seen? That the world is made up of Agni and Soma, of these two brothers. Brought up as two Asuras in V ṛ tra’s belly, they abandoned him to follow the call of another brother, Indra, and to pass over to the side of the Devas. Then “one of the two became the devourer and the other became food. Agni became the devourer and Soma the food. Down here there is nothing else than devourer and devoured.” And there are these two poles in everything that happens, without exception and at every level. But Bh ṛ gu discovered something else: the two poles were reversible. At a certain moment the positions will switch, indeed they will have to switch, because this is the order of the world. This explains why all that is said about Agni can also, at a certain moment, be said about Soma. And vice versa. A phenomenon that had already baffled Abel Bergaigne.
The revelations that Bh ṛ gu came across were set one within the other. First of all: the final act from which all others followed was the act of eating—or at least the act of severing, of uprooting. Every act that consumes a part of the world, every act that destroys. There is no neutral state, no state in which this doesn’t happen. The act of eating is a violence that causes what is living, in its many forms, to disappear. Whether grass, plants, trees, animals, or human beings, the process is the same. There is always a fire that devours and a substance that is devoured. This violence, bringing misery and torment, will one day be carried out by those who suffer it on those who inflict it. Such a chain of events cannot change. But the serious damage, the paralysis that this causes in those who become aware of it, can—we are told—be treated, remedied. This is Varu ṇ a’s knowledge, which Bh ṛ gu could not have learned without the impact of what he saw when he traveled the world—or the other world. And what was the remedy? The very act of perceiving that which is—and of manifesting it, not just with words, but with gestures: in this particular case, with a series of gestures to be carried out in the agnihotra , the most basic of all rites. Pouring milk into the fire—every morning, every evening—meant accepting that what appears disappears and that what has
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