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Osiris,241 and the earliest evidence of the Dravidian god,
Muruga, in India reveals a Dionysiac deity, we may
assume that the cultural contact being referred to by
Megasthenes is that between the early Indo-Scythian
settlers of India and Elamite Dravidians/Hurrians from
the Zagros region.242 The Dionysiac Dravidian religion,
associable with the worship of Muruga among the Tamils,
may be associated with the Tantric tradition that gradual y
began to predominate in early historic India. However, it
must be remembered also that even the Tantric spiritual
tradition is best preserved in Sanskrit, the cultivated
[sanskrit=refined] and inflected language of the upper
castes of the Indo-Āryans which however retains several
Dravidian elements in it.
We have seen that Bactria seems to have been the
locus in which the Shramana as well as the Brāhmanical
traditions of the Indo-Āryans were consolidated. It is
interesting in this context to note also that Herodotus,
History of the Persian Wars, III,102, refers to other Indians
who “dwell northward of all the rest of the Indians“
and describes them as following “the same mode of life
as the Bactrians“. However, the Indo-Āryans seem to
have moved early to India as wel , and to have come to
consider it their home. For, in the Manusmrithi, Chapter
II, the land of the Indo-Āryans is described in ful y Indian
geographical terms:
22. But the tract between those two mountains
[Himavat and Vindhya] as far as the eastern and
western oceans the wise call Āryāvarta.
241 See A. Jacob, Ātman, Ch.XII; cf. A. Jacob, Brahman. Ch.I.
242 The theory that Āryan is pre-Harappan was put forward by A.D.
Pusalkar, “Pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan culture and
the Aryan problem”, Quarterly Review of Historical Studies, 7,4 (1967-8)”, p.233ff.
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23. That land where the black antelope natural y
roams243 one must know to be fit for the performance
of sacrifices; the tract different from that is the country
of the Mlecchas.
24. Let the twice-born men seek to dwell in those
[lands]; but a Shūdra, distressed for subsistence may
reside anywhere.
According to Vishnusmrithi, LXXXIV,4, “Those countries
are called barbarous (Mleccha) where the system of
the four castes does not exist; the others are denoted
Āryāvarta.” Non-Āryans were in general called Anagni,
the fireless.
***
The sacrifice-oriented Vedas are different from Yoga,
which encourages the adept to attempt not only a higher
Brahmic consciousness but also a total liberation from the
bonds of manifestation. The Brāhmanical fire-rituals focus
on the sacred fire as part of the solar force that animates
the universe and bestows life, and even immortality, on
human beings. The fire-rituals were indeed devised to
obtain supernatural effects through the control of the
sacred fire by means of “tapas”, or “fervour”. The Rgveda
(X,154,2), for example, refers to tapas as that by which
“one attains the light of the sun”. Indeed, in AV XI,8, we glimpse the magical power of ‘tapas’ (fervour/heat) in
the formation of the mind and the sense faculties in the
macrocosm even before the creation of the gods:
Ten Gods before the Gods were born together in the
ancient time.
243 India, which is the natural habitat of the black antelope.
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indo-european mythology and religion
Whoso may know them face to face may now
pronounce the mighty word.
Inbreath and outbreath, eye and ear, decay and
freedom from decay,
Spiration upward and diffused, voice, mind have
As yet the Seasons were unborn, and Dhātar and
Prajāpati,
Both Asvins, Indra, Agni. Whom then did they
worship as supreme?
6. Fervour and Action were the two, in depths of the
great billowy sea;
Fervour sprang up from Action: this they served and
worshipped as supreme.
The Brāhmanās and the Upanishads, however, aim also at
the control of the fire within the body. The establishment
of Agni within the inner self of the sacrificer is explained
in the Shatapatha Brāhmanā as a means of attaining
immortality. According to this major Brāhmanical text, in
the beginning, not even the gods or their opponents, the
asurās, were immortal since they lacked soul, ātman. Only
Agni, the fire, was immortal. As Heesterman paraphrases it,
Fervently chanting and exerting themselves the gods
final y beheld the rite of setting up the fire ... They
then gained immortality by establishing the fire
within themselves, and thereby obtained an ātman,
the seat of immortality, as wel . And so they overcame
the asurās.244
244 See J.C. Heesterman, Broken world, p.215.
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Further, according to the SB, “Once the fire has been
ritual y established in the inner self through the
agnyādheya, it is the sacrificer’s inalienable true identity,
in short, his ātman.” The internalisation of Agni within,
and as, the individual soul, ātman, is made clear also by
Taittiriya Samhita III,4,10,5 where, as Heesterman points out, we observe that
when the sacrificer symbolical y has the fire mount the
aranis by warming them over the glowing members of
the dying fire, he makes it enter into himself … When
churning the fire to reinstall it, he churns it out of
himself, exteriorizing, as it were, his own self, for he is
himself the yoni, the womb of the fire… For the fire is
one’s atman.245
And SB II,2,2,17 declares that “as long as he lives the fire which is established in his inner self does not become
extinct in him”.
SB III,6,2,16 further reveals that “even in being born,
man, by his own self, is born as a debt (owing) to death.
And in that he sacrifices, thereby he redeems himself from
death.” The sacrificer thus has two bodies, one material
and the other ritual/spiritual. Through the sacrifice he
mounts to heaven to get a divine body and, on earth, he
gives his material body to the gods. Thus his material body
is sacrificed after purifications such as shaving the hair,
cutting the nails, etc. ( TS VI,1,1,2), although the sacrifice of his material body is performed with a substitute victim.
Though this victim was original y a man, it was later
replaced by a horse or a bul , while, at the time of the
composition of the SB, the most common substitute was
the goat ( SB VI,2,1,39).
245 Ibid. , p.101.
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indo-european mythology and religion
The importance of Agni as an instrument of the
rebirth of man in the heavenly realm is made clear in the
SB, which declares that Agni entered into a compact with man saying: “I shall enter you; having given birth to me,
you must maintain me. As you will give birth to me and
maintain me, so I shall give birth to you in yonder world”.
Indeed, according to SB XII,1,3,18,ff., in the last stages of the sacrifice,
when the sacrificers worship the regions (dishāh) with
a sacrifice, they become these deities, the regions.
That means that they master the whole of the universe
in respect to space ...When they enter upon the
mahavrata (day) they worship the deity Prajāpati; they
become the deity Prajāpati … That means that those
who now experience intimate union with this god and
“residence” in his sphere have reached this ultimate
goal ... they establish themselves firmly in the world
of heaven.246
This is in sharp contrast to the Shramana traditions which
do not value fire as a sacred instrument of salvation
and do not strive to reach heaven so much as to leave
all phenomenal existence behind. Yoga recognises the
essence of man as energy (especial y in Kundalini Yoga)
and yajna too relates it to thermal energy or the vital fire
within man. But yajna is external and symbolic worship
whereas yoga is more clearly internal and practical.
In the ‘Bhagavat Gita’ too Yogic exercise is described
in terms of fire-worship. It declares that yogis offered their
vital force to the cosmic Prāna, which is considered to be
a spiritual Havan (offering). ‘ Bhagavat Gita’ , 4,24, further states that the self-control aimed at by yogic tapas may
become the source of a variety of sacrifices:
246 See J. Gonda, Prajāpati’s Rise to Higher Rank, Leiden: E.J. Bril , 1986, p.113f.
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Others offer up the senses, such as the sense of hearing
and others, in the fires of restraint; others offer up
the objects of sense, such as sound and so forth, into
the fires of the senses. Some again offer up all the
operations of the senses and the operations of the
life-breaths into the fire of devotion by self-restraint,
kindled by knowledge. Others perform the sacrifice
of wealth, the sacrifice of penance, the sacrifice of
concentration of mind, the sacrifice of Vedic study,
and of knowledge, and others are ascetics of rigid
vows.
Of all these possible sacrifices the Smārtasūtras consider
the sacrifice of the self as the highest.247 According to the
Prānāgnihotra Upanishad (derived from KYV), 17ff.,248
One should meditate on the Atman saying “I offer
a sacrifice to Atman through fire” ... In order to set
the sacrifice within the motion of the universe, one
should make an offering to the interior of one’s own
body saying “Thus I set the sacrifice into motion”.
The Avyaktopanishad treats dhyāna or spiritual meditation as a yajna and declares that one should offer one’s self
as an oblation into the fire in order to attain Brahman.
According to the ‘Gita’, IV, knowledge (jnāna) itself is
a supreme sort of sacrifice since “the fire of knowledge
reduces all actions to ashes”.
The metaphysical constitution of the fire employed
in the Brāhmanical rituals is explained in great detail
in the Panchāgni Vidya of the Chāndogya Upanishad,
V,4ff, which identifies the five spiritual fires within the
247 See Vaikhānasa smārtasūtra II,18 (cf. M. Biardeau, op.cit., p.66).
248 I follow here the French translation of M. Buttex based on the versions of A. G. Krishna Warrier and Paul Deussen.
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indo-european mythology and religion
macrocosm (heaven, the atmosphere, and earth) and
the macrocosm (man and woman). The Prānāgnihotra
Upanishad also mentions five fires, but four of these are identified within the human body. The Panchāgni fires of
the yajna are also used to clean the five internal fires such as
passion, anger, greed, attachment, and jealousy. Similarly,
in Kundalini Yoga, Earth is represented by the Mūlādhāra
chakra of the yogi and Heaven by the Sahasrara chakra249
and the Kundalini energy gets elevated to the Sahasrara
chakra when it goes through the fire of Agni.
The Garbha Upanishad mentions three forms of
fire within the human body, koshta agni, darshana
agni, and gnāna agni, relating to digestion, sight, and
knowledge. These are located in the stomach, face, and
heart respectively and correspond to the three fires,
gārhaptniyāgni, āhavaniyāgni and dakshināgni, in the fire-
ritual. Thus, according to the Garbha Upanishad, “There is none living who does not perform yajña (sacrifice). This
body is (created) for yajña, and arises out of yajña and
changes according to yajña.”
Although the sacrifice has more mundane purposes
such as the acquisition of offspring, cattle, health, wealth,
and the brahmanic splendour,250 the final aim of the
sacrifices is to attain immortality by transfiguring the
sacrificer into the solar force. The nectar of immortality
that sacrificers seek for by toil and penance is indeed Soma
( SB IX,5,1,8). The basic meaning of the Soma sacrifice is related to the idea of pressing, or killing the Purusha, as
SB II,2,2,1 suggests: “in pressing out the king [Soma] they slay him”. This may have a special phallic connotation as
well since the soma juice is akin to the seminal power
of Prajāpati which serves as the source of the sun that
249 The Manipūra chakra is located in the middle – in the stomach.
Aum chanting is done from the Manipūrachakra.
250 See, for instance, SB II,3,3,15f; X,1,5,4, etc.
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emerges as a result of the castration of the Purusha.
Thus the sacrifice, though representing the death of the
sacrificer, compensates the latter with his spiritual rebirth.
According to the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brāhmanā
III,14,8, “As long as a man does not sacrifice, for that long
he remains unborn. It is through the sacrifice that he is
born”. Thus the Maitrāyani Samhita, III,6,7, declares that man is indeed born three times, at birth, at the sacrifice,
and at death. Indeed Manusmrithi V also points out that
even lower forms of life, such as plants, animals, trees,
birds, which have been killed as sacrificial victims rise
to a higher status when reborn. All sacrifice is, like the
original sacrifice of the Purusha, a self-sacrifice followed
by a spiritual rebirth wherein the sacrificer acquires the
essential aspect of his existence, “uniform, undecaying
and immortal” ( SB X,1,4,1).
This rebirth is enacted during the sacrifice in the
four-day purification ceremony called dīksha. SB III,1,1,8
reveals the importance of the consecration of the sacrificer
in the dīksha ceremony whereby the sacrificer is reborn as
an immortal: “He who is consecrated truly draws nigh to
the gods and becomes one of the deities”. The significance
of sacrifice as a rebirth is evident in AB, I,3,
which declares that “the priests transform the one to whom they give the
diksha into an embryo.” The yajamāna and his wife should
be dressed in clothes which correspond to the shell of
an egg since they are going to be reborn.251 Though the
sacrificer’s wife participates in this ritual, it is principal y
the sacrificer himself who will be reborn as the sun. AB
I,1,3, details the process whereby the sacrificer is turned
into the embryonic form of Agni in the course of this
ceremony and is final y born anew. Interestingly, when the
251 See K.-H. Golzio, Der Tempel im alten Mesopotamien und seine Paral elen in Indien: eine religionshistorische Studie, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983, p.113.
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indo-european mythology and religion
purificatory rite is completed, the dīkshita is addressed
as Brahman, even if he is not a brāhman. So too, in the
climactic abhishekam of the rājasūya sacrifice, the king
is addressed as “Brahman” by the four priests, which
suggests that the sacrifice indeed imbues the sacrificer
with the divine Light and Consciousness of Brahman.
***
We see therefore that the fire-rituals of the Brāhmans
are essential y magical performances whereby the
Brāhmanical “magi” restore the cosmos to its original
splendour, and allow the sacrificer who employs them
to achieve immortality through the strict observance of
the scriptural regulations regarding the sacrifices. The
spiritual focus in the Brāhmanical sacrifices on the fire
of the macrocosm is complemented by the focus on the
microcosm in the Brāhmanās and the Upanishads. The
internalisation of Agni within the aspirant's body is also
seen to be for the purpose of gaining the vital fluid, Soma,
which guarantees immortality. In general, Brāhmanism
seeks to control the macrocosm and microcosm through
the power of the divine fire, unlike the Shramana religions
which seek, through chastity and non-violence and right
conduct, to escape from the phenomenal world.
III Tantra
Kali Yuga
The origins of Yoga and of Jainism and Brāhmanism are
difficult to date since, as we have seen, they locate their
founders in the very remote Treta and Dvāpara Yugas.
The Hamitic252 Tantric religions associated with temple-
252 The Hamitic civilisations include those of Mesopotamia, Egypt 110