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5. The Start of the Indian Axial Age
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“Ritual was of vital importance in preaxial India, especially to the Aryans, whose entire scripture was dedicated to its proper practice.” 5 The Start of the Indian Axial Age Our first look into the religious environment of ancient India revealed a world of gods and goddesses controlling the various aspects of existence that were of particular concern to the inhabitants of the Indus Valley and their Aryan successors. The interest that the Aryans and Indus dwellers had in their gods seemed to focus on the ways these powerful beings could help sustain and improve human life on earth. Gods and goddesses might be called upon to render aid in a battle, stave off disease, or enable reproduction. The essential means for making these appeals to the divine was through ritual. Ritual was of vital importance in preaxial India, especially to the Aryans, whose entire scripture was dedicated to its proper practice. For the first part of this chapter, we will focus on the nature of these ceremonies, attending especially to the beliefs about how they accomplished their intended purpose. It is important to understand the dynamics of preaxial ritual in order to grasp the impulses that led to the reevaluation and reinterpretation of ritual in the Axial Age. By the end of this chapter, we will have seen how new ideas began to emerge in Indian religion that provided the foundations for Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Vedic Ritual The Vedas reveal that the Aryans did not have a highly developed or consistent self-understanding, and they are rather vague about how the Aryans understood human nature or the ultimate destiny of the individual. However, we should not infer from this that the Aryans were somehow incapable of sophisticated or systematic thinking. When we come to Vedic ritual practices, it becomes abundantly evident that these ancients were 49 able to think in complex and abstract ways. In fact, the Aryans devoted intense intellectual energy to understanding and practicing their rituals. To illustrate the complexity of the belief structure supporting their rituals, let us consider an intriguing passage from the Rig Veda that describes the world’s creation. This myth is one of a half-dozen creation stories in the Rig Veda alone; obviously, the Aryans were not greatly troubled by having several different cosmogonies. This well-known story describes the ritual dismemberment of a primordial person. This myth is a late addition to the Vedas, which puts it closer to the start of the Axial Age than other Vedic material. But the narrative clearly echoes a very ancient creation theme: the idea that the world is created by the gods through sacrifice. That theme, we recall, was also part of the Avestan cosmogony. In the Vedic version, the sacrificial victim is called the Purusha, who is described as a massive cosmic man with a “thousand heads, a thousand eyes, [and] a thousand feet,” larger than the physical universe itself: When the gods spread the sacrifice with the Man as the offering, spring was the clarified butter, summer the fuel, autumn the oblation. They anointed the Man, the sacrifice born at the beginning, upon the sacred grass. With him the gods . . . sacrificed. From that sacrifice in which everything was offered, the melted fat was collected, and he1 made it into those beasts who live in the air, in the forest, and in villages. From that sacrifice in which everything was offered, the verses and chants were born, the metres were born from it, and from it the formulas were born. Horses were born from it, and those other animals that have two rows of teeth; cows were born from it, and from it goats and sheep were born. When they divided the Man, into how many parts did they apportion him? What do they call his mouth, his two arms, and thighs and feet? His mouth became the [Priest]; his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the [Producers], and from his feet the servants were born. The moon was born from his mind; from his eye the sun was born. Indra and Agni came from his mouth, and from his vital breath the Wind was born. From his navel the middle realm of space arose; from his head the sky evolved. From his two feet came the earth, and the quarters of the sky from his ear. Thus they set the worlds in order.2 1. “He” may refer to a creator god or the Purusha himself. 2. The Rig...