The Hindus

by Wendy Doniger

  The Rig Veda verses that Vrisha cites refer, obscurely, to the myth in which Agni, the god of fire, is first lost and then found, which is precisely what has happened (again) here.

  This part of the story seems to have little to do with the earlier episode, the fight between the king and his priest. Apparently Vrisha is still full of resentment when he recollects what he (but no one else) regards as the injustice of it all, the insolence of royal office. (The jury’s judgment is not, on the face of it, unfair; it is, I should think, reasonable to hold responsible the person who controlled the chariot’s brakes.) Yet the fire vanishes immediately after Vrisha seeks help from Jana, his father, and though Jana does nothing explicit to help his son, there are many other stories (some in this same text) in which Agni (who is, after all, a priest himself) vanishes when a priest is offended, and still others in which an offended Brahmin conjures up a demoness (a ghoul [Pishachi], as here, or an ogress [Rakshasi] or a female antigod [Asuri]) to avenge him when he has been harmed. Either or both of these may be implied here. The point of the second half of the story is therefore a warning never to offend a Brahmin.

  But the text also makes a gratuitous swipe at the dangerous sexuality of women, for the fire that the queen hides under her lap and that destroys her by entering her between her legs is essential to the life of the whole community, which needs it to cook not only the sacred oblations but all profane food. Both these types of cooking belong to the wife, who cooks the everyday meals and (by her mere presence at the ritual) makes it possible for her husband to offer the oblations into the fire.29 We will have more occasions to consider the connections between women and fire in Hinduism.

  ANIMALS

  THE HORSE SACRIFICE REVISITED, I

  The Brahmanas now tell us more about the way in which the horse sacrifice, which began as a relatively simple ritual at the time of the Rig Veda, developed into a far more complex and expensive ceremony in this later period. The political symbolism of the Vedic horse sacrifice is blatant: The consecrated white stallion was “set free” to wander for a year before he was brought back home and killed, a ritual enactment of the actual equine wandering typical of Vedic culture. During that year the horse was guarded by an army that “followed” him and claimed for the king any land on which he grazed. By the late Vedic period, when the Vedic people had begun to grow fodder crops, the stallion would have been stabled, and a stabled stallion behaves quite differently from one in the wild; he tends to return to the stable where he has been fed. The idea that he will wander away in the Ganges Valley, as he used to do in his salad days up in the Punjab, was by this time an anachronism, a conscious archaism. The king’s army therefore drove the horse onward and guided him into the neighboring lands that the king intended to take over. (“Doubtless some manipulated the wandering of the horse to save face,” Romila Thapar remarks dryly.30) It is not hard to imagine the scene. People would suddenly run out into the fields, shouting, “Get your goddamn horse out of my field; he’s trampling the crop,” and suddenly a few, or a few hundred, armed men would appear over the brow of the hill and growl, “Say that again?” and the people would reply, “Oh, I beg your pardon, sirs, I didn’t realize—do let your lovely horse graze here, and can we bring you a little something for yourselves?” and the soldiers would then claim all the land the horse had grazed. Thus the ritual that presented itself as a casual equine stroll over the king’s lands was in fact an orchestrated annexation of the lands on a king’s border; a ritual about grazing became a ritual about political aggrandizement. The Vedic drive toward wandering (without settling) had developed into what the Nazis called, euphemistically, incorporation (Anschluss) and nineteenth-century Americans called manifest destiny. No wonder the Sanskrit texts insist that a king had to be very powerful indeed before he could undertake a horse sacrifice, and very few kings did in fact perform this ritual.

  In addition to its political purposes, this sacrifice, like most, was designed to restore things that had gone wrong, in this case to restore the king who had been sullied by the bloodshed necessitated by his office. But new things could go wrong during the period when the horse was said to wander freely. So restorations were prescribed if the horse mounted a mare, or became lame, or got sick but not lame, or if the horse’s eye was injured or diseased, or if the horse died in water. Finally:

  If the horse should get lost, [the sacrificer] should make a sacrificial offering of three oblations. . . . And even by itself, this ritual finds what has been lost; whatever other thing of his is lost, let him sacrifice with this ritual, and he will surely find it. And if enemies should get the horse, or if the horse should die . . . , they should bring another horse and consecrate it by sprinkling it with water; this is the restoration for that.31

  At the end of the ceremony, there is even a restoration for the obscene language that has been an obligatory part of the ritual: “The vital breaths go out of those who speak impure speech in the sacrifice. And so they utter at the end a sweet-smelling mantra, and so they purify their speech and the vital breaths do not go out of them. . . . Thus they purify their speech to keep the gods from going out of the sacrifice.”32 You can fix anything, if you know how and if you are a Brahmin.

  DOGS

  A dog too played a part in keeping evil out of the sacrifice, and the negative role of the dog is evidence that the lower castes were still essential to the ritual. It may well be that the growing acknowledgment of class distinctions in this period and the formulation of more intense rules of purity and impurity began to find the omnivorous dog a useful symbol of the impure eater, the outsider, in contrast with the noble, herbivorous (i.e., vegetarian) horse. Another factor in the fall of the dog’s status may have been the progressive decline of the Vedic gods Indra, Yama, and Rudra, who were associated with dogs.33

  Early in the ceremony the stallion stood in water. Collateral relatives of the king and queen brought to the stallion a “four-eyed” dog (probably a reference to the two eyes plus the two round marks above the eyebrows that many dogs have to this day). Then, when the dog could no longer touch bottom in the water, the son of a whore killed him with a wooden club, saying, “Off with the mortal! Off with the dog!” For, a Brahmana explained, “Truly the dog is evil, one’s fraternal enemy; thus he slays his evil, his fraternal enemy. . . . They say that evil seeks to grasp him who offers the horse sacrifice. He throws the dog beneath the feet of the horse. The horse has a thunderbolt. Thus by a thunderbolt he tramples down evil.”34 The horse then put his right front hoof on the dead dog, while another spell banished any man or dog who might harm the horse.35 The association of the dog with an unclean woman (the whore whose son kills him) and with feet, as well as explicitly with evil, is an indication of his status as a kind of scapegoat, more precisely a scape-dog, onto whom the sins of the community were transferred. The sacrifice of a “four-eyed dog” at the beginning of the horse sacrifice also takes on deeper meaning when interpreted in the context of the ancient Indian game of dice, for the dice are also said to be four-eyed36—that is, marked by four black spots.

  Bitches too lose cachet between the Rig Veda and the Brahmanas. The Rig Veda regarded all dogs as the sons of Indra’s beloved brindled bitch Sarama; dogs were called Sons of Sarama (7.55.2-4). In the Brahmanas, Sarama is still a somewhat positive figure; she still finds the cows that the Panis have stolen and resists their bribes of food, as in the earlier text. Indra says, “Since you found our cows, I make your progeny eaters of food,” and the brindled dogs who are Sarama’s descendants “kill even tigers.”37 But now Sarama eats the amniotic sac that contains the waters—just as dogs (and other animals) do eat the afterbirth—which the text regards as an act of murder. The same ambivalence hedges the curse/boon that her progeny will be omnivorous; it’s good to kill tigers but bad to eat the amniotic sac.

  Sarama, the ancestress of all dogs, is a good dog, but dogs as a species are bad, for they pollute the oblations by licking them in their attempt to eat them. A number of
texts therefore ban dogs from the sacrificial area. The Rig Veda warns the sacrificer to keep “the long-tongued dog” away (9.101.1), and the lawbook of Manu (7.21) warns that if the king does not enforce the law, crows will eat the sacrificial cakes and dogs will lick the oblations. Several Brahmanas tell of ways to destroy an ogress named Long-Tongue (Dirgha-jihva), who licks the milk offering and curdles it38 or licks at the soma all the time.39 Though she is an ogress (Rakshasi), not specifically called a dog, her name is the name of a dog in the Rig Veda, and she does just what dogs are supposed to do: She licks the oblation. This Long-Tongue also just happens to have vaginas on every limb, like another ogress whom Indra destroyed by placing penises on each of his joints and seducing her.40 And so Indra equips Kutsa’s son (Indra’s grandson) in the same way. Then:

  LONG-TONGUE AND INDRA’S GRANDSON

  They lay together. As soon as he had his way with her, he remained firmly stuck in her. He saw these mantras and praised with them, and with them he summoned Indra. Indra ran against her and struck her down and killed her with his thunderbolt that was made of mantras. Whoever praises with these mantras slays his hateful fraternal rivals and drives away all evil demons.41

  Long-Tongue’s long tongue makes her ritually dangerous, and her equally excessive vaginas make her sexually both threatening and vulnerable (eventually immobilized, in an image perhaps suggested by observations of mating dogs, often similarly paralyzed). Despite her grotesque and bestial sexuality, Long-Tongue does no harm, yet she is destroyed. She is more sinned against than sinning. For the point of the Brahmana is that the dangerous bitch (in either canine or human form) is not, ultimately, dangerous—for the man who knows the mantras.

  COWS, VEGETARIANISM, AND NONVIOLENCE

  Cows are not themselves dangerous (compared with horses and even dogs, not to mention bulls), but they are indirectly responsible for a great deal of trouble in Hinduism. The Brahmanas advise the sacrificer never to stand naked near a cow, for, as we learn from the story that opens this chapter, “Humans and Cattle,” the skin of cattle (pashus) was once our skin, and (the text continues), if a cow sees you naked, she may run away, thinking, “I am wearing his skin,” the implication being that she fears that you might want to take back your skin. The transaction in the other world is here interpreted as the reversal of a reversal: Humans and cattle traded places long ago, and as a result, cattle willingly undertook to supply humans with food and clothing but also, apparently, won the boon of eating humans (and, perhaps, flaying them) in the other world. Nakedness, by reducing humans to the level of the beasts, establishes a reciprocal relationship, rendering human beings vulnerable to the sufferings of beasts—being eaten--when they enter the other world.

  Another text adds more detail to the basic idea of reciprocity between humans and animals in the other world; it is a long text, and I will just summarize the main points relevant to this discussion. The story concerns Varuna, the Vedic god of the waters and of the moral law, and his son, Bhrigu, who was a famous priest:

  VARUNA’S SON GOES TO HELL

  Bhrigu, the son of Varuna, thought he was better than his father, better than the gods, better than the other Brahmins. Varuna thought, “My son doesn’t know anything. Let’s teach him a lesson.” He took away his life’s breaths, and Bhrigu fainted and went beyond this world to the world beyond. There he saw a man cut another man to pieces and eat him; and then a man eating another man, who was screaming; and then a man eating another man, who was soundlessly screaming. He returned from that world and told Varuna what he had seen. Varuna explained that when people who lack true knowledge and offer no oblations cut down trees for firewood, or cook for themselves animals that cry out, or cook for themselves rice and barley, which scream soundlessly, those trees, and animals, and rice and barley take the form of men in the other world and eat those people in return. “How can one avoid that?” asked Bhrigu. And Varuna replied that you avoid it by putting fuel on the sacred fire and offering oblations.42

  This text is not just about animals, since trees and barley play an equally important role, but more broadly about all the things used in preparing food (vegetables, animals, and fuel), about consumerism in a very literal sense. Being eaten in the other world is not a punishment for sins but rather a straight reversal of the inevitable (and not condemned) eating in this world. Other Brahmanas confirm this: “Just as in this world men eat cattle and devour them, so in the other world cattle eat men and devour them.”43 And: “Whatever food a man eats in this world, that [food] eats him in the other world.”44 In the Brahmanas, you are, as usual, what you eat, but now in the sense of becoming food for your food.

  This experience in the other world is therefore as inevitable as death itself, and just as unpleasant. The soundlessly screaming rice and barley resurfaced in the writings of the great Indian botanist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who moved George Bernard Shaw deeply with his demonstration of an “unfortunate carrot strapped to the table of an unlicensed vivisector.”45 The silent screams in the Sanskrit text have the quality of a nightmare, from which the unconscious Bhrigu flees.

  Nowhere, however, does the text suggest that people should stop eating animals (or rice, for that matter). It is possible to avoid the unpleasant consequences of eating; the solution is, as usual in the Brahmanas, to perform the proper rituals, to fix it, to restore anyone who has eaten something alleged to produce unfortunate consequences—if left unrestored. Dangers arise in the context of profane eating and are warded off by sacred feeding (the oblations offered to the gods). Indeed the two are inextricably linked by the belief that it is wrong to take food without offering some, at least mentally, to the gods; in the broadest sense, all human food consists of divine leftovers (later known as prasad [“grace”]). The text is not saying, “Do not eat animals, for then they will eat you,” but, rather, “Be sure to eat animals in the right way, or they will eat you.” One word for “avoidance” (of this retributive devouring) or “restoration” is nishkriti (“undoing”), designating a careful plan by which to repair a mistake that will otherwise bring unwanted consequences, as well as the repayment or redemption of a debt and the expiatory payment for an error. The proper sort of “avoidance” makes the meat safe to eat, as if it were kosher or halal. This accomplishes what the Vedic sacrificial priest achieved when he gave the offering first to Agni and only after that invited the people to eat it; in both cases, a preparatory ritual makes the food safe. This sort of “restoration” (also called prayash-chitta, often wrongly translated as “expiation”) first refers to the measures taken to restore the ritual when it goes wrong (such as fixing the horse in the horse sacrifice). But then it comes to mean the ritual you use to restore something else that might go wrong (the oblation you perform when you eat animals), and finally, the text or the priest tells you how to restore your entire life when it goes wrong (getting rid of your bad karma, making a pilgrimage, surrendering to the god, or whatever else may be prescribed).

  The word ahimsa (“nonviolence”) occurs in the Brahmanas primarily in the sense of “safety,” “security.” Yet we can also see the stirrings of another, later meaning of ahimsa—a desire not to harm animals, as well as an uneasiness about eating animals at all.ce Indeed we saw this discomfort even in the Rig Veda in the idea of the cow that yields food without being killed, the cow that Prithu milked, and the reassurance that the sacrificial horse doesn’t really die. The idea of reversals in the other world was easily ethicized (in Jainism and Buddhism and, later, in Hinduism) into the stricter belief that the best way to avoid being eaten in the other world was not merely to eat animals in the proper (sacrificial) way but to stop eating them altogether. The story of Bhrigu does not yet espouse the ideals of nonviolence or vegetarianism, though it probably contributed to the rise of such doctrines.

  For it is evident that people did eat meat, including beef, at this period, though in ways that were becoming increasingly qualified. People ate meat mainly on special occasions, such as rituals or when w
elcoming a guest or a person of high status.46 Eating meat in a sacrifice is not the same as eating meat for dinner, and killing too can be dichotomized in this way,cf as can the eating of cows versus other sorts of meat, though several texts combine the permission for eating meat (including cow) at a sacrifice (where the gods are, after all, the guests) and meat offered to a human guest. “Meat is certainly the best kind of food,” says one text.47 The Brahmanas say that a bull or cow should be killed when a guest arrives, a cow should be sacrificed to Mitra and Varuna, and a sterile cow to the Maruts, and that twenty-one sterile cows should be sacrificed in the horse sacrifice.48 For “the cow is food.”49 The grammarian Panini, who may have lived as early as the fifth or sixth century BCE, glossed the word goghna (“cowkiller”) as “one for whom a cow is killed,” that is, a guest (3.4.73).50 A dharma-sutra from the third century BCE specifies: “The meat of milk cows and oxen may be eaten, and the meat of oxen is fit for sacrifice.”51 This textual evidence is further supported, in this period, by archaeological indications, such as cattle bones found near domestic hearths, bearing marks of having been cut, indicating that their flesh was eaten.52

  On the other hand, one Brahmana passage forbids the eating of either cow or bull (dhenu or anaduha),cg concluding that anyone who did eat them would be reborn as something so strange that people would say, “He committed a sin, he expelled the embryo from his wife.” The text then adds, “However, Yajnavalkya said, ‘I do eat [the meat of both cow and bull], as long as it’s tasty.’ ”53 Yajnavalkya was an in-your-face kind of guy. Some people, however, did not eat the meat of cows, as Thapar points out: “This may have contributed to the later attitude of regarding the cow as sacred and inviolable, although association with the sacred need not be explained on rational grounds. . . . Eventually it became a matter of status to refrain from eating beef and the prohibition was strengthened by various religious sanctions. Significantly, the prohibition was prevalent only among the upper castes.”54 The ambivalence that is embedded in this historical development is not really so hard for us to understand if we cast its light upon our own casual combination of affection for our pets and appetite for filet mignon. We can see here the Indian insight into the conflicted belief that there is a chain of food and eaters (dog eat dog or, in the Indian metaphor, fish eat fish) that both justifies itself and demands that we break out of it: It happens, but it must not happen.55