1062304

Gods and Men in Vedic Ritualism: Toward a Hierarchy of Resemblance Author(s): Brian K.
Smith Reviewed work(s): Source: History of Religions, Vol. 24, No. 4 (May, 1985), pp. 291-307 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062304 . Accessed: 28/01/2013 04:34
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Brian K. Smith
GODS AND MEN IN VEDIC RITUALISM: TOWARD A HIERARCHY OF RESEMBLANCE
GODS AND MEN
In rituals the world over, participants are often thought to undergo an ontological change during the course of the ceremony. They become something other than, or more than, they once were. As Eliade would say, they become "sacred," at least for the duration of the ritual; and, paradoxically, "by manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself."' In Vedic India, the time distinguished by the ideology and performance of the fire sacrifices, this sacrality of the ritual participants was expressed in terms of their divinity. Men were said "to be" gods. Brahmin priests were regarded as "human gods" (mdnusya devas) and
This article was presented, in a somewhat different form, at a meeting of the Columbia University Seminar on Oriental Thought and Religion, March 2, 1984. My thanks to the participants of the seminar and to David Carpenter, Marilyn Harran, Bruce Lincoln, Barbara Stoler Miller, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, and Fredrick Smith for their comments on earlier drafts. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. I Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), p. 12.
? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/85/2404-0001$01.00
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were to be propitiated in the sacrifice along with other divinities: "Thereare two kinds of gods. For the gods [are gods] and the Brahmins who have studied and teach are human gods. The sacrifice of these [sacrificers] is divided into two: oblations [are sacrifices] to the gods and sacrificial fees [daksinas] [are sacrifices] to the human gods, the Brahmins who have studied and teach. With oblations one pleases the gods, with sacrificial fees one pleases the human gods, the Brahmins who have studied and teach. Both these kinds of gods, when pleased, place him in a condition of well-being" (Satapatha Brahmana 2.2.2.6). The sacrificer also attained to a divine state as he was transformed in the preliminary rites from an ordinary man into a god: "He passes from the world of men to the world of the gods" (SB 1.1.1.4). Hubert and Mauss, writing about the dTksitaor one who has been consecrated for a soma sacrifice, note that, "once his divine nature has been proclaimed, it confers upon him the rights and imposes upon him the duties of a god."2 The sacrifice was thought to procure for the sacrificer a place in the "heavenly world" (svarga loka) and obtain for him a "divine self" (daiva atman) in that world after death. But the trip to heaven and the attainment of divinity were also to be realized at every performance of the ritual. For Vedic ritualism, it would seem, man became god in this life (within the confines of the sacrifice) as well as in the next. How are we to understand these claims of equivalence between the human and the divine? I will argue here that, despite first appearances, men and gods were kept ontologically distinct within a hierarchical order of mutually resembling, but fundamentally separate, forms. The divine self and the heavenly world constructed for men by sacrificial work were but resembling counterparts to unconstructed prototypical models, not true equals of them. And this ontological and soteriological hierarchy was complementary to other hierarchical orders within Vedic ritualism, all of which were based on the same organizational principles.
THE SACRIFICIAL JOURNEY TO HEAVEN
The sacrificer attains to his daiva atman and svarga loka as part of a ritual process the ancient Indian texts often liken to a kind of journey, the sacrifice itself playing the role of vehicle. The sacrificial journey follows the course of the ritual procedure that Hubert and Mauss have
2 Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, trans. W. D. Hall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 21; cf. Sylvain Levi's comment that "l'homme se fait surhumain" (La Doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brahmanas [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1898], p. 9).
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described as a curve. It begins with a rising sacrality as the ritual "ascends" toward heaven, reaches a peak coincident with the principal oblation and equated with the "arrival"at the svarga loka, and then begins a "descent" or a set of "exit rites" from the sacred world. This curve is followed by both the sacrificer and the object sacrificed, the two being linked by bandhus or connections, and, indeed, all objects and personages of the sacrifice are carried along the same ascending and descending path.3 In order to reach this world of heaven, the sacrificer is sometimes said to adopt the form of a bird during the ritual, the chants (samans) serving as wings (Paficavims,a Brahmana 5.1.10, 5.3.5; Aitareya Brahmana 3.25). More often, however, it is the ritual as a whole, the yajna, that acts as the vehicle in which the sacrificer is carried to yonder world. It is the yajna, and not the sacrificer, that is regarded as a bird (SB 4.1.2.25). Elsewhere the sacrifice is said to be a cart (anas) (gB 3.9.3.3), the two sacrificial spoons are "yokemates" (yujas) (SB 1.8.3.27), or the meters of the ritual utterances are likened to harnessed cattle who draw the sacrifice to the world of the gods (SB 4.4.3.1). Another image frequently drawn on depicts the sacrifice as a ship (nau). The priests are its spars (sphyas) and oars (aritas), "the conveyances to the heavenly world. If there is one blameworthy [priest], even that one [only] would make it sink. And, truly, every sacrifice is a heavenly bound ship. Therefore one ought to keep a blameworthy [priest] away from every sacrifice" (gB 4.2.5.10). In another instance, other elements of the ritual are regarded as important parts of the sacrificial vessel: "The agnihotra sacrifice is a ship bound for heaven. The ahavanTyafire and the garhapatya fire are the two sides of that heavenly bound ship, the agnihotra. The captain of the ship is the priest who offers the milk oblation [ksTrahotr]"(9B 2.3.3.15). While the sacrifice is thus a "divine ship" in the Brahmanas (cf. Jaiminiya Brahmana 1.166), in the Upanisadic critique of ritualism in light of the new emphasis on mystical knowledge alone the sacrifices are said to be
3 "The religious condition of the sacrifier thus also describes a curve symmetrical to the one traced by the victim. He begins by rising progressively into the religious sphere, and attains a culminating point, whence he descends again into the profane. So each one of the creatures and objects that play a part in the sacrifice is drawn along as if in a continuous movement which, from entry to exit, proceeds along two opposing slopes." (Hubert and Mauss, p. 48.) Compare Levi's description of the sacrificial journey (pp. 130-31): "Les deux temps de l'operation correspondent aux deux movements du sacrifiant: ascension au ciel et retour sur la terre. Le sacrifiant monte au ciel pour s'assurer un corps divin et immortel; en retour, il fait abandon aux dieux de son corps humain et p6rissable. Puis, sa place marqu6e et retenue au ciel, il aspire a redescendre et rachete le corps qui'il avait sacrifi6."
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"leaky vessels" (plava adrdha), unsafe for the true voyage to moksa or liberation from karman (Mundaka Upanisad 1.2.7). Perhaps the most common image for the sacrifice as vehicle is that which compares the ritual to a chariot (ratha). In the KausTtaki Brahmana the sacrifice is a "chariot of the gods" (devaratha), the introductory and concluding rites the two matching sides: "He who makes them equal to one another, just as one can make a journey as desired by driving a chariot with two sides, so safely he reaches the world of heaven" (7.7). Similarly, the agnihotra sacrifice should be performed after sunrise, according to one authority, so that it will be like a chariot with both wheels: "Day and night are the wheels of the year; truly, with them he goes through the year. If he offers before sunrise, it is as if one were to go with [a chariot with] one wheel. But if he offers after sunrise, it is as if one were swiftly to make a journey with [a chariot with] both wheels" (AB 5.30).4 The sacrifice must be a sturdy, complete, and safely operated "vehicle"because the ascension to heaven entails difficulty and danger. "He ascends the difficult ascension [durohana]. The difficult ascension is indeed the world of heaven" (AB 4.20). In one sense the difficulty involved is the necessity to replicate the gods' paradigmatic sacrifice. Men are called on to imitate the perfect sacrifices of the gods in their own rituals, as is indicated by the programmatic statement, "It was done thus by the gods. So it is done by men" (TaittirTyaBrahmana 1.5.9.4). "Perfection" (samrddha or sampanna) is an attribute of the gods, not of men. The human condition is often portrayed as the exact opposite of the divine. In contrast to the perfection that characterizes the gods and their heavenly locale, the earthly and human (manusya) is said to be "imperfect"or "unsuccessful"(vyrddha) (SB 1.4.1.35). "What is 'no' for the gods is 'yes' for them," says another Brahmana (AB 3.5) by way of emphasizing the utter difference between the two ontological conditions. In several passages we read that satya, here in the sense of ritual exactitude, is a quality of the gods, while anrta ("error"or "disorder") is the distinguishing quality of things human (fB 1.1.2.17, 3.3.2.2, 3.9.4.1). Although there are consecration rites to elevate temporarily man to godlike status within the sacrifice, the fact that the Brahmanas refer to the sacrificial process as a darohana or difficult ascension indicates
4 For the sacrifice as chariot, cf. Pan. Br. 16.1.13, where the sacrificial fees (daksinas) are likened to "internalfastenings" (slesmas); Pan. Br. 8.5.16, where the chants (samans) are said to be "reins"(rasmi); AB 2.37, comparing the recitations (sastras) to the "inner reins" (antara rasmi); and esp. Jaim. Br. 1.129-30, where an elaborate metaphor links the parts of the sacrifice to the parts of a chariot.
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that there was more than a little worry that man could never quite shed his humanity and truly replicate the perfect sacrifices of his divine counterparts. Ritual exactitude was an ideal rather than a realizable goal for the Vedic ritualists. There were simply too many things that could go wrong. The sacrifice was always inclined to fall apart (skanna), be cut (chinna), break (bhinna), or shatter (bhagna) or to become defiled (dusta), inverted (viparTta), or defective (hTna), as one list enumerates (Baudhayana Srauta Sutra 28.10). Thus, in one regard, it is precisely the demand for exactitude and perfection that renders the sacrificial ascension so difficult. As Walter Kaelber writes in his study of the durohana, "In fact, the intricacies of the ritual constitute the greatest source of danger for the sacrificer. No detail may be overlooked, no act incorrectly performed .... Precisely because these ritual
intricacies characterize the entire sacrificial scenario, there can be little question that it constitutes a difficult passage in every sense."5 The gods, through their superior aptitude and techniques, arrived at their immortal condition and heavenly residence by successfully avoiding the multitude of dangers and reaching heaven at the end of the sacrificial journey. Certain rites and ritual utterances have this elevating power, as was proven by the success they had in procuring heaven for the gods: "By means of this the gods went to the world of heaven; one who desires the world of heaven should use it for reaching the world of heaven" (Pan. Br. 2.6.2; cf. 2.12.2, 2.15.2, 3.2.2, etc.). The differences between gods and men, however, place obstacles in the way of reaching this world, the culmination of the sacrificial process, just as they make so difficult the perfect execution of ritual action that makes possible the attainment of the goal. "The world of the gods [deva loka] is concealed [antarhita] from the world of men. 'It is not easy to depart from this world,' they say. 'For who knows if he is in the yonder world or not?"' (Taittiriya Samhita 6.1.1.1). The journey to heaven is thus no easy thing. One needs not only to "fall away from this world"-to leave the world of men-but also to "arrive"at the heavenly world and establish the sacrifice where it "has its only [true] foundation [pratistha], its one [true] end [nidhana]" (SB 8.7.4.6). Rites and mantras are for ascending to the world of heaven and, once there, for establishing the sacrifice and the sacrificer in that world in such a way that they do not "slip" or "fall" from it (see, e.g., Pan. Br. 2.6.2; Kaus. Br. 8.2). The ascent is not only difficult but also perilous. "Dangerous [varana] indeed are the paths that
5 Walter 0. Kaelber, "The 'Dramatic' Element in Brahmanic Initiation: Symbols of Death, Danger, and Difficult Passage," History of Religions 18 (1978): 63. Compare Levi, pp. 123-24: "Dans ce d6dale de prescriptions minutieuses 1'erreurest aisee et les consequences en sont terribles. Le danger est partout qui guette le sacrifiant."
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lie between heaven and earth" (9B 2.3.4.37). The sacrifice is considered "razor sharp" (ksurapavi), and success or failure is unequivocal: "Suddenly he becomes full of merit [punya] or perishes" (Taitt. Sam. 2.5.5.6; cf. Katha Upanisad 3.14). The gB refers to the "wilds and abysses of the sacrifice" (yajn~iranydniyajnakrntatraini) and warns, "if any venture into them not knowing the ropes, then hunger and thirst, evil doers and fiends harass them, even as fiends would harass foolish men wandering in a wild forest" (12.2.3.12). The path to the other world lies between ever-burning flames. "They scorch him who deserves to be scorched and allow him to pass who deserves to pass" (gB 1.9.3.2). But if the sacrificial journey to heaven is a "difficult ascension" and a dangerous passage, the perils to the sacrificer do not cease when he has attained his final goal at the climax of the ritual. Paradoxically, the very success of the sacrifice, the winning of the svarga loka at the summit of the sacrificial journey, is itself another part of the difficulty and danger. It is from this world of heaven that the results or "fruits" of the sacrifice are generated, for "the world of heaven is universal sovereignty [svardj]" (Pan. Br. 4.6.24). But the attainment to this world places man in a world in which he cannot, in his mortal state, survive. A myth of origins explains why this is so: "Death spoke to the gods. 'Now surely all men will be immortal. What will be my share?' They said, 'From now on no one will become immortal with the body [SarTra].Only when you have taken that as your share will he become immortal, either through ritual [karman] or knowledge [vidya]' " (B 10.4.3.9).6 Because of this pact with Death at the beginning, in illo tempore, only the disembodied win immortality and a place in heaven on a more permanent basis. The sacrificial journey places the sacrificer in that world only temporarily, reserving the spot in heaven that will be assumed again after death. What I want to point out here is that the sacrificial journey must be a two-way trip. For if the sacrificer does exactly what the gods did and wins the heavenly world in the course of the ritual but does not subsequently descend from that world, he would, the texts assure us, die. Death would take its share, the mortal body of the sacrificer. The gods "reached these worlds" through the sacrifice, and "having reached these worlds by means of this, they
6 One is reminded here of the story of King Trisanku, who attempted to gain forcible entry into heaven without shedding the physical body. His effort was strongly resisted by the gods, and the king was eventually positioned halfway between earth and heaven, suspended, head downward, as a constellation in the sky. (See Ramayana 1.56-59; Visnu Purina 4.3.14-15.)
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finished the sacrificial session" (Pan. Br. 15.11.5); that is to say, they did not descend again from the svarga loka. The human sacrificer does not end the ritual at its highest point but rather embarks on the second half of the procedure, regarded as a descent from this world the sacrificer has so laboriously won. Heaven, having been attained, is quickly renounced.7 The Brahmanas are quite blunt in their warnings to those who spurn a round-trip ticket and do not descend from the svarga loka. The sacrificer must descend or "fall away from this world" (Kaus. Br. 7.9); he who does not leave heaven would "go to the farthest distance" (Pan. Br. 15.7.2). Those who, like the gods, perform the ritual "in the forward direction only" without the subsequent rites of descent may "win the world of heaven, but they will not have long to live in this world" (AB 4.2). They "vanish from this world" (Pan. Br. 4.3.5-6, 6.8.17-18). The danger of remaining in the world of heaven is particularly acute for the royal sacrificer, the king who rules over this world. In the rajasaya sacrifice the king must "go to the world of heaven" first but then be sure to return to the earth, which is his "firm foundation": "In that he is consecrated by the rajasiya, he ascends to the world of heaven. If he did not descend to this world he would either depart to a region which lies beyond [all] human beings, or he would go mad. In that there is that sacrifice for shaving the hair [the kesavapanTya] with reversed chants, [this serves] for not leaving this world. Just as he would descend [from a tree], grabbing branch after branch, so he descends by this [rite] to this world. [It serves, then] for attaining a firm foundation" (Pan. Br. 18. 10. 10). In sum, men who fail to return to their former state "go unto Prajapati," a euphemism for death (Pan. Br. 4.8.9). The sacrificial prototype-the heaven-procuring ritual of the godsis not ordinarily to be wholly replicated by men any more than the exactitude of the divine ritual can be completely and literally realized by the human sacrificer. Just as perfection in the sense of exactitude must be viewed both in its transcendent or prototypical form and in its relative, immanent manifestations or counterparts here on earth, so too must the perfection represented as the "heavenly world" be analyzed into its ideal and relatively realized forms. The full realization of perfection is not for the human and the earthly; thus Levi's
7 See Levi's comment, p. 88: "Le m6canisme du sacrifice est clairement r6present6 par le rite du durohana, 'lascension difficile.' I1 se resume en deux periodes, l'une ascendante, l'autre descendante. I1s'agit d'l1evar d'abord le sacrifiant au monde celeste; mais la terre a ses charmes, et le sacrifiant ne demande pas a la quitter trop tot. Assure de l'immortalit6 a venir par la premiere operation, il reprend par la seconde operation sa place entre le vivants."
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comment that "the true voyage to heaven is not accomplished until after death" and that "the only authentic sacrifice would be suicide."8 And, as the gB warns, the premature death of one who is overeager to reside in the world of heaven is counterproductive: "One ought not to yield to his own desire and pass away before [he has attained] the full extent of life, for [such a shortening of life on earth] does not make for the heavenly world" (10.2.6.7). The realization of the heavenly world and divinity within the sacrifice of humans transformed temporarily into "gods" is, again, a kind of counterpart or resembling form of the realization of svarga loka and the daiva atman on completion of life on earth. We have seen that the svarga loka attained during the course of the ritual process is not only difficult to reach-it is not simply a world fraught with danger for the sacralized but still mortal sacrificer-but also only a constructed and temporary counterpart to the transcendental world of the gods strictu sensu.9 But perhaps it is the case that the world of the gods awaits the sacrificer after death. Perhaps the daiva atman the sacrificer fabricates for himself through ritual action is indeed a full-fledged divinity for those who shed the body and take the final and one-way trip to heaven, having given Death his share. Can men become gods after death, if not in this life? Is the world of heaven attained by the sacrificer at the end of his life the same "world" as is occupied by the Vedic deities?
8 Ibid., pp. 93, 133. While the general Vedic position forbids suicide, there seems to be an interesting exception. An example of a ritual performed "in the forward direction only" is that of the sarvasvara sacrifice described in several Brahmanas and grauta Sutras. It is a ritual apparently meant for an old man, probably an accomplished ritualist, "who is desirous of having an end to his life" (Katyayana grauta Sutra 22.6.1). When various chants designed to make "him go to the endless, to yonder world," or "from this world to the world of heaven" (Pan. Br. 17.12.3, 4) are completed, the sacrificer lies down with his head covered while another chant is recited over him. "And he dies at that time.... The rites of the sarvasvara come to an end as soon as the sacrificer dies as there is no purpose of sacrifice left to be achieved" (Katyayana Srauta Sutra 22.6.6-8). Another text goes so far as to instruct as to what one should do if, perchance, death does not arrive at that time: "If he lives, he should perform the final oblation of the soma sacrifice and, thereupon, seek his death by starving" (Latyayana Srauta Sitra 8.8.40). 9 For this point, see Jean-Marie Verpoorten's description of the transcendent or prototypical svarga loka "ouiregne une unite qui n'a rien d'un agr6gat construit, mais est celle d'un tout indivisible. Chez les dieux, rien qui soit ndna, vikrsta, '6parpill6.' Tout es 'parfait,' samrddha." The counterpart heaven made by human ritual construction is characterized by samdna, the "constructed unity of parts." "Quant au samdna, il se situe, a l'instar des hommes dont il est le lot, a michemin entre la distinction et l'unit6 sans parties.... Samina est... le chiffre de l'homme et de son activit6 rituelle. 11tient le mileau entre le nana ["multiplicity"] qui est sa condition, et l'eka ["oneness"] qui est son modele." ("Unite et distinction dans les speculations rituelles v6dique," Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 21 [1977]: 76, 84.)
LIFE AFTER DEATH: VEDIC CONCEPTIONSOF HEAVEN AND THE DIVINE SELF
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The gods are in permanent possession of immortality and divinity. Man, on the other hand, "depends on his own (ritual) work, his own karman," writes Jan Heesterman.'1 Or as the SB puts it, "Man is born into a world [loka] made by himself" (6.2.2.7). Man's divinity (his daiva atman) is forged by the ontological power of ritual work; his heavenly world is also made by sacrificial labor, both the heaven reached in every successful sacrifice and the heaven to which the sacrificer finally attains after death. Perhaps it would be better to translate the terms atman and loka not as "self" and "world" but as "character" and "status," respectively. The atman in Vedic texts before the Upanisads represents the conjunction of personality, individuality, self, and body both in the corporeal and the spiritual sense and in the role of the person in society." The daiva atman, then, refers to the extracorporeal projection of the atman in a loka other than the earthly one. Loka means "world" in the sense of ontological condition, status, or sphere of influence. The loka is thus the arena in which the atman exists, a "locus" or "level of reference."12It is sacrifice that establishes a "firm foundation" in various ontological spaces for the sacrificer. He "wins" the "world of men" (minusya loka), that is, he realizes his potentialities and social standing in this world, and he gains access to a "heavenly world" (svarga loka) that he inhabits after death. Both conditions are constructed through the rituals he performs, and both ontological places are in some ways equivalent. The earthly conditions of life are an accurate index of the conditions one might expect to find in the particular heavenly world, for the two are resembling counterparts of each other. "Svarga loka," writes Jan Gonda, "was something or some state which could be, or had to be, produced by the effects of the ritual acts of the sacrificer .... The condition which for convenience may be called 'immortality' belongs to the person concerned already in his earthly existence, before his removal to the
10J. C. Heesterman, "Brahmin, Ritual and Renouncer," Wiener Zeitschriftfur die Kunde Siud-und Ostasiens 8 (1964): 15. 1I For the Vedic concept of atman, see H. G. Narahari, Atman in Pre-Upanisadic Literature (Adyar: Adyar Library, 1944); and Louis Renou, "On the Word atman," Vak 2 (1952): 151-57. 12"The whole world, or universe (viSvam) ... corresponds to the ensemble of all possibilities of manifestation, whether informal, formal, or sensible; a world (loka=locus) is a given ensemble of possibilities, a given modality" (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "Vedic Exemplarism," Harvard Journal of Asian Studies 1 [1936]: 45).
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svarga loka."13 "Yonder world is the corresponding form [anurupa] of this world," notes one text, and "this world is the corresponding form of that" (AB 8.2). Because the two worlds "correspond," the svarga loka is realized in this ontological setting. In this world, as Paul Mus puts it, there is "the anticipated image, or the real base of the other world and of the immortality in that beyond."'4 Because the svarga loka that men enter with daiva atmans is, like other lokas, ritually made, sacrificers with different capabilities (different "characters" correlative to their competency or adhikara) realize different "heavens"and different "divine selves" both within the sacrifice and after death. In this universe of resemblances and interconnected forms and counterforms, the complex atman-yajna-loka is projected simultaneously on different ontological planes. The atman that is constructed/represented in the sacrifice is a construction/ representation of the atman in this world (the sacrificer's social persona) and in the other world (the sacrificer's daiva atman). In like manner, the sacrificer's "world" is at once the sacrificial world, the earthly world in the sense of social standing, and also the particular heavenly world that is reached temporarily at every sacrifice and attained after death on a more lasting basis. Both loka and atman, then, are particularized conceptions linked to the particular sacrificer who fabricates them in his ritual activity. Svarga loka and daiva atman are not unitary concepts but are tailored to fit individual sacrificers. The Rg Vedic hymns seem to reflect a belief in a future life in the same world as that occupied by the gods; one attains proximity to and eternal communion with the deities of the Vedic pantheon.'5 But in post-Rg Vedic sacrificial texts, the svarga loka becomes multiple and individually shaped. A cynical view of this innovation is given by A. B. Keith, who writes that in later texts there are "diverse degrees of good acquired by different modes of sacrifice": "It was obviously necessary to admit that every sacrificer would receive reward by admission to the happiness of the world to come, but the Brahmans had to consider the claims of the richer of the patrons, and had to promise them more in the world to come than the poorer, who offered
13Jan Gonda, Loka, the World and Heaven in the Veda, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkund, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 73, no. I (Amsterdam: N. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgeure Maatschappj, 1966), p. 97. 14 Paul Mus, Barabadur:Esquisse d'une histoire du Bouddhismefonde sur la critique archeologique des textes (Paris and Hanoi: Paul Geuthner, 1935), pp. 135-36. 15The fullest depiction of the Rg Vedic concept of heaven occurs at RV 9.113.7-11; cf. RV 10.14.10-12.
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and gave less."'6 A somewhat less jaded view of the shift from an egalitarian reward system to the hierarchical one is reflected in Paul Deussen's summary of the Brahmanical calibration of heavens with individual sacrificers: "The chief aim of the Brahmanas is to prescribe the acts of ritual, and to offer for their accomplishment a manifold reward, and at the same time sufferings and punishment for their omission. While they defer rewards as well as punishments partly to the other world, in place of the ancient Vedic conception of an indiscriminate felicity of the pious, the idea of recompense is formulated, involving the necessity of setting before the departed different degrees of compensation in the other world proportionate to their knowledge and actions." 7 In the early Upanisads the lokas composing the universe are many, indicating that by this time at the latest there was a multitude of possible ontological and soteriological spaces or situations. There is first of all a distinction made between the deva loka or the "world of the gods" and the pitr loka or "world of the ancestors."'8 But in the Chandogya Upanisad (8.2) we also learn of "worlds" of mothers, of brothers, of sisters, of friends, of scents and garlands, of food and drink, of song and music, and of women. Elsewhere (Brhad-Aranyaka Upanisad 4.3.33; cf. Taittiriya Upanisad 2.8) there is provided a map to the ontological hierarchy of worlds and inhabitants of them:
If one is fortunate among men, wealthy, a lord over others, well provided with all human enjoyments, that is the most perfect [sampannata] bliss [ananda] of men. Now one hundred times the bliss of men is one bliss of those who have won the world of the ancestors [pitr loka]. One hundred times the bliss of those who have won the world of the ancestors is one bliss in the world of the demigods [gandharvas]. One hundred times the bliss in the world of the demigods is one bliss of the gods created by ritual work [karma
16Arthur Berriedale Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925), p. 572. 17 Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, trans. A. S. Geden (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), p. 324. 18Already in the RV (e.g., 10.18.1, 10.2.7, 10.15.1-2) and the Ath. Sam (e.g., 18.4.62) the "path" leading to the world of the ancestors is distinguished from that leading to the deva loka. In the SB the gate to the deva loka is said to be in the northeast (6.6.2.4), while that to the pitr loka is located in the southwest (13.8.1.5). As opposed to the celestial locale of the gods' world, the ancestors live in the atmosphere or middle space between heaven and earth (they take the form of birds, according to Baudhayana Dharma Sutra 2.14.9-10) or in the earth (see RV 10.16.3; SB 13.8.1.20). In the Upanisads, the pitr loka is associated with the moon, darkness, sacrificial action, and rebirth (the world of the ancestors being a way station in the recycling of souls), while the deva loka is connected with the sun, light, mystical knowledge, and eternal liberation (see Br. Ar. Up. 6.2.15-16; Chan. Up. 4.15.5-6, 5.10.1-3; KausTtakiUpanisad 1.2).
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devas].One hundredtimes the bliss of the gods createdby ritualwork is one bliss of the gods by birth [ajanadevas].... One hundredtimes the bliss of the gods by birth is one bliss in the world of Prajapati.... One hundred times the bliss in the world of Prajapati is one bliss in the world of Brahma.... Thistrulyis the highestworld. This passage emphasizes the difference between the "world" and the "bliss" of the so-called gods created by ritual work and those of the gods by birth. Here we have a clear and unequivocal distinction between divinity constructed and divinity eternally possessed. Again we see that there is no confusion between prototypical deities and the counterpart available to men who make their own divine status through sacrifice. Still more specifically shaped are the worlds of punishments for the wrongdoer, the naraka lokas in contradistinction to the svarga lokas (see Atharva Veda Samhita 12.4.36). In general, hell is considered the opposite of heaven. It is a realm of darkness, whereas the heavenly world is one of light. A person who reviles, strikes, and draws blood from a Brahmin apparently is sent to the naraka loka, for he "will not see the world of the ancestors for as many years as are the grains of dust on which the blood falls" (Taitt. Sam. 2.6.10.2). Those who spit on a Brahmin, or flick on him the mucus from the nose, spend their afterlife sitting in a stream of blood, devouring their hair for food (Ath. Sam. 5.19.3). Those who consume food in this world without first sacrificing some of it will enter specific hells, "for whatever food a man eats in this world, by the very same is he eaten again in the other [world]" (gB 12.9.1.1; cf. Kaus. Br. 11.3). In the myth of Bhrgu's journey to various hells (Jaim. Br. 1.42-44; gB 11.6.1.1-13), lokas are described in which the punishment fits the crime. Those who in this life cut down trees without sacrificing in the sacred fire are eaten by those trees after death in one loka. In another, those who cook animals for themselves without sacrificing are consumed by those animals, and in yet another world, unsacrificed rice and barley feed on the transgressor.19 In sacrificial Vedism, one obtains a "good" loka through ritual activity, a "bad" one through misdeeds or failure to perform good deeds. In this sense Levi is right when he observes, "The good act is the act that conforms to the cultic prescriptions; the bad act is the act that transgresses those prescriptions."20The sacrificer at death goes
19 For a translation and analysis of the Jaim. Br. variant of this myth, see Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Tales of Sex and Violence: Folklore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the JaiminTyaBrdhmana(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). 20 Levi (n. 2 above), p. 100.
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to the sky or the earth-perhaps an allusion to the deva and pitr lokas, respectively-"according to his nature [dharma]" (RV 10.16.3). In the SB, there is a kind of judgment that occurs in the yonder world in which good deeds and bad deeds are weighed, although the exact consequences of the test are not spelled out and one can apparently stack the deck in advance: "Whatever good [sadhu] one does, that is inside the altar; and whatever evil [asadhu] one does, that is outside the altar. Let him therefore sit down and touch the right edge of the altar. For in yonder world they place him on the scale, and whichever of the two will rise that he will follow, whether it be the good or the evil. And whoever knows this gets on the scale even in this world, and escapes being put on the scale in yonder world. For his good action rises, not his bad action" (SB 11.2.7.33). In the Jaim. Br. we learn that "the good that man does during his life passes into his breaths, the wrong into his body. When the one who knows thus departs from this world, his good deeds rise up together with his breath and his wrong deeds are left with his body" (Jaim. Br. 1.15). Elsewhere in that text we read that the breath ascends to the deva loka and "announces to the gods the quantity: 'so much good, so much evil has been done by him"' (Jaim. Br. 1.18), this evidently determining the kind of loka the daiva itman will occupy. If, then, the particular loka or ontological space a person inhabits in the next life is to a large degree determined by the good or bad sacrificial acts of the individual, this is also the case when one turns to the contours of the particular character (atman) one assumes in the particular world. The daiva atman, like the svarga loka, is a relativistic term. As we have seen, there is a critical distinction made between karma devas, those who construct their divinity in the next world through ritual acts in this one, and the so-called ajaina devas, the "gods by birth" or the eternal and unconstructed deities. The daiva atman, no less than the svarga loka, is fabricated or made by the sacrificer and his officiants. In the course of the ritual, the priests construct, prepare, or perfect (sam + kr) a self for the sacrificer.21 The daiva atman is sometimes contrasted to the merely human self that is produced from the mother's womb. "There are indeed two wombs. The divine womb [deva yoni] is one, the human womb [manusya yoni] the other.... The human womb is [related to] the human world.... And the ahavanTyafire [the fire in which oblations to the gods are placed] is the divine womb, the divine world.... He who knows thus has two atmans and two wombs. One atman and one
21 See, e.g., AB 6.27; Kaus Br. 3.8.
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womb has he who does not know this" (Jaim. Br. 1.17; cf. Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana 1.259; SB 7.4.2.20). The sacrificer's divine self is thus "born out of the sacrifice," that is, it is a ritual construct. Sacrifice specifies the particular dimensions of the daiva atman; the ritual resume of the individual sacrificer translates into the special contours of the divine character. "The sacrifice becomes the sacrificer's atman in yonder world. And, truly, the sacrificer who, knowing this, performs that [sacrifice] comes into existence with a whole [sarva] body" (SB 11.1.8.6).22The sacrificer "is united in the other world with what he has sacrificed" (Taitt. Sam. 3.3.8.5), his ritual accomplishments on earth the precise measure of his daiva atman. Or, as the RV puts it, the sacrificer is joined after death to his "treasury"-a kind of savings account in the next world composed of sacrificial deposits made during the ritual life in this world-and to a "splendid body" of his own making: "Unite with the fathers, with Yama, with the treasury of your sacrifices [istiiapirta] in the highest heaven. Abandoning defects, return home; unite with a splendid body [tanu suvarcas]" (RV 10.14.8). Uniting with the heavenly self one has forged for himself in the next life is not always easy. Just as there is danger involved in the passage to the heavenly world during the ritual journey, so too is there a certain risk involved in the transition from a human atman to the daiva atman. Self-knowledge and recognition of one's "own world" are necessary: "Truly, sbme one, after having left this world knows [his] atman [saying], 'This I am.' Another one does not recognize his own world [sva-loka]. Bewildered by the fire choked with smoke [i.e., the fire of the funeral pyre], he does not recognize his own world. But he who knows the savitra fire, he indeed after having left this world knows the atman [saying], 'This I am,' and he recognizes his own world. And then the savitra fire carries him to the heavenly world" (TB 3.10.11.1-2). Recognizing one's "own world" and identifying one's true divine self is a matter of realizing and adopting the tailor-made life after death that one has created in ritual action over the years. The collective oblation he offers, the quantity and quality of his sacrificial history, determines the daiva atman as it is transmuted from offering into character: "Whatever oblation he sacrifices here, that becomes his atman in the other world. When he who knows thus leaves this world, that offering that follows him calls out to him, 'Come here.
22 For the emphasis on the "wholeness" of the new body, see Ath. Sam 11.3.32; B 4.6.1.1, 11.1.8.6, 12.8.3.31; Jan Gonda, "Reflections on sarva- in Vedic Texts," Indian Linguistics 16 (1955): 53-71.
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Here I am, your [divine] atman"' (9B 11.2.2.5). Or, in another passage, it is the collective sacrificial fee (daksina) that constitutes the particular nature of the daiva atman: "He who sacrifices sacrifices with the desire that he may obtain a place in the world of the gods. That sacrifice of his then goes forth toward the world of the gods. After it follows the sacrificial fee that he gives [to the officiants], and holding on to the sacrificial fee [follows] the sacrificer"(9B 1.9.3.1).23 Finally, we might note that there is a nutritive value to the various sacrifices. Each of the different rituals has a different sustaining power for the atman in the next world, the hierarchically superior sacrifices providing more enduring sustenance than that provided by the inferior ones:
And now for the powers of the [various] sacrifices [yajna-vTrya]. He who
performsthe agnihotraeats in the eveningand in the morningin [regularly] yonderworld, for so much sustenanceis there in that sacrifice.And he who [biweekly]performsthe new and full moon sacrifice[eats]everyhalf-month.
He who [quarterly] performs the caturmasya [eats] every four months. He who [every half year] performs the animal sacrifice eats every six months. He who performs the soma sacrifice [yearly] [eats] every year. And the builder of the fire altar optionally eats every hundred years, or not at all. For a hundred is as much as immortality, unending and everlasting. [SB 10.1.5.4]
Here we see again the notion that life in the other world is correlative to the sacrificial performances in this world; that the daiva atman feeds on the "treasury"built up in the other world and is itself shaped by the sacrificial resume of the individual sacrificer. The divinity available to men is made by sacrifice and is contoured to the specifics of the individual ritual history. There is, then, a hierarchical distinction between gods made and gods born, and within the former category there are also hierarchically ordered degrees of divinity in accordance with the ritual hierarchy here on earth.
CONCLUSION: RITUAL, RESEMBLANCE, AND HIERARCHY
We have seen that the ritually obtained divinity and heavenly world were not the true equivalents of the ontological and metaphysical states of the gods. Unlike the later Upanisadic and Hindu situations, where asceticism could be used to gain access to the divine condition or where gods took on human form out of their grace and love for
23 The creation of the particular daiva atman and the placing of it in its appropriate space can also be compressed into a single rite (see, e.g., gB 1.8.3.1ff.).
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their devotees,24 in sacrificial Vedism the gods remained gods and men essentially remained men. While the participants in the ritual might become godlike for the duration of the ceremony, their fundamental mortality precludes anything more than a temporary, resembling form of true divinity. Furthermore, they must quickly descend from the ritually created "world of heaven," abandoning their ersatz divinity and returning to their firm foundation here on earth: "He then touches [the earth] with this [little finger]. Nonhuman [amanusya] he becomes when he is selected for the office of officiant. This earth is a firm foundation. He thereby stands on this firm foundation and he thereby again becomes human. For this reason he touches [the earth] with this [little finger]" (9B 1.9.1.29). And even after death the daiva atman and svarga loka one adopts are but replicated, ritually constructed, and hierarchically differentiated creations of the sacrifice. Both are calibrated according to the resume of the cumulative rituals performed over the course of a lifetime, and both are distinguished in all cases from the hierarchically superior, prototypical originals. The distinction between gods made and gods born, and the "worlds" appropriate to each, remains firm. The hierarchical nature of Vedic ritualism is only just becoming a part of the Indological discourse-one of the many wakes created by Louis Dumont's seminal work on the caste system and homo hierarchicus.25 One set of important beginnings has been taken by J. F. Staal.26 Despite the tendentiousness of his principal thesis of the "meaninglessness"of Vedic rituals, Staal has brought out some crucial points regarding the ways in which rituals are systematically and hierarchically related one to another. Concentrating on the "syntax" (while denying any "semantics") of ritual, Staal rightly insists that "we must start with the observation that the srauta rituals constitute a hierarchy."27The ritual order, as it is laid out in the Srauta Sutras, forms a sequence of rituals moving from the simple and inferior (those providing minimal sustenance to the daiva atman in the next
24 For an examination of the mythological and theological problems engendered by these ideas in Hinduism, see Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 57-93, and Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 65-76. 25 See Louis Dumont's magnum opus, Homo Hierarchicus, complete rev. English ed., trans. Mark Sainsbury, Louis Dumont, and Basia Gulati (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 26See esp. J. F. Staal, "Meaninglessness of Ritual," Numen 26 (1979): 2-22, and "Ritual Syntax," in Sanskrit and Indian Studies, ed. M. Nagatomi et al. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 119-42. 27 Staal, "Meaninglessness of Ritual," p. 15.
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world) to the complex and superior: "This sequence is not arbitrary. There is increasing complexity. A person is in general only eligible to perform a later ritual in the sequence, if he has already performed the earlier ones. Each later ritual presupposes the former and incorporates one or more occurrences of one or more of the former rituals. Sometimes these embedded rituals are abbreviated. In general, they undergo modifications."28 Hierarchy here, like in the later caste hierarchy as it is described in Dumont's work, operates on the basis of the encompassment of the inferior (the "embedded" and prior rituals) by the superior and more complex. Staal has explicitly stressed the ritual hierarchy with only passing interest in the hierarchy of ritualists and nothing to say about the hierarchy of ritual "fruits" or results. In Vedic ritualism, I believe, there was a correlation-that is, a relationship of mutual resemblancebetween these three registers of the hierarchical order. There was, then, a linkage between (1) the scale of ritual performance (the relative size, complexity, duration, and inclusivity of the sacrifice both as an individual performance and as a collective term for a sacrificial history), (2) the relative quality and realization of the sacrificer's adhikara (the complex nexus of innate and acquired ability or competency made up of inherent proclivities, degree of learning, prior ritual accomplishments, wealth, desire, and willingness), and (3) the ontological and soteriological results of the ritual. In this article I have focused on the third of these parallel registers as a contribution to the continuing project of delineating and coordinating the interlocking hierarchical orders that compose Vedic ritualism. As Dumont has noted for the caste system, and as Staal observes for the ritual order, hierarchy is based in part on the principle of relative encompassment or inclusion. But as we have argued here, a complementary principle in Vedic ritualism is resemblance, which is often expressed in statements of apparent identity. Men "are"gods in the sense that in certain circumstances and in certain ways men come to resemble gods, as counterparts resemble their prototypes. Thus, ritually constructed svarga lokas and daiva atmans more or less nearly resemble, but are not identical to, their superior and unconstructed models, the world and divinity of gods by birth. Divine and human are interrelated by resemblance, but the hierarchical order of things and beings depended on the separating aspects of resemblance as much as it did on the connecting aspects. Barnard College
28 Staal, "Ritual Syntax," p. 125.

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Gods and Men in Vedic Ritualism: Toward a Hierarchy of Resemblance Author(s): Brian K.

GODS AND MEN IN VEDIC RITUALISM: TOWARD A HIERARCHY OF RESEMBLANCE

GODS AND MEN

? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/85/2404-0001$01.00

21 See, e.g., AB 6.27; Kaus Br. 3.8.

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