went further than anybody else in brahman ?” Y ā jñavalkya replied: “Let us pay homage to the brahmi ṣṭ ha , but I wish to have the cows.” At this point A ś vala dared to question him.
It was a long exchange. Y ā jñavalkya answered the questions of seven brahmins and a woman. The brahmins were A ś vala, J ā ratk ā rava Ā rtabh ā ga, Bhujyu L ā hy ā yani, U ṣ asta C ā kr ā ya ṇ a, Kahola Kau ṣī takeya, Udd ā laka Ā ru ṇ i, and Vidagdha Śā kalya. The woman was G ā rg ī V ā caknav ī , the weaver.
What did they want to know? First was A ś vala, a priest in the king’s household, a hot ṛ , who was accustomed to reciting hymns and formulas as well as pouring oblations. He wanted to begin with what is most certain, with what forms the basis of everything: the ritual. He had to find out if that arrogant Y ā jñavalkya really knew the basics of the ceremonies.
But he also wanted to find out whether Y ā jñavalkya was able to connect ritual with what was the first and final question: death. Ritual and death : anyone able to give an explanation about these two words can say that he is knowledgeable in brahman , that he is intimately versed in it. He began with death: “Everything here is in the hold of death, everything is subject to death: in what way can a sacrificer escape from the grip of death?”
Talking about the “sacrificer” was the same as talking about what, from Descartes onward, is the “subject”: the generic, sentient being who observes the world and encounters death. Implicit in the question was this: even before trying to say what it is, thought must serve as an escape from death, which is a “grip.” Man is the animal who attempts to escape from the predator. But how? Through ritual, which involves—very often—the killing of animals. This is what A ś vala thought, this is what he did every day. But was it right? Was it enough? And how would Y ā jñavalkya now respond? He would have known that behind his question was another: “What do I, an officiant, a hot ṛ , do to escape death?”
Y ā jñavalkya understood—and replied with supreme subtlety: “By way of the hot ṛ , of fire, of speech. For the hot ṛ of the sacrifice is speech. What this speech is, is fire. It is the hot ṛ , it is liberation, it is total liberation.” Words which meant: “A ś vala, you will escape death by doing what you do every day.” After this reply, every further question would seem superfluous.
Deeply thrilled, A ś vala did not show it, but sought to continue with equal delicacy. Y ā jñavalkya’s reply had solved the problem that had always worried A ś vala in his work as officiant. But Y ā jñavalkya was an officiant too. Not a hot ṛ but an adhvaryu , one of those concerned with gestures, who busied themselves in the ritual operations, murmuring the formulas in a sort of continual hum. If he did not have full speech, which enabled the hot ṛ s to save themselves, how could he escape death? This is what A ś vala now sought to ask, with a respectful show of interest: “‘Y ā jñavalkya, all of this is reached by night and day, is subject to night and day; by what means can a sacrificer free himself from this grip?’ ‘Through the adhvaryu , through sight, through the sun: in fact sight is the adhvaryu of the sacri fi ce, this sight is the sun yonder, it is the adhvaryu , it is release, it is total release.’”
Like two accomplices in a recursive exchange, both A ś vala and Y ā jñavalkya had maintained the same formulaic structure in the question and answer. And revealing themselves as allies in the same enterprise: the sacrifice. If the sacrifice could free a certain type of officiant, it would have acted in just the same way for the other, indeed for all the others, including the udg ā t ṛ s , the “chanters”—and in the end for the brahmins, a passive and silent presence in the ceremonies, but who were the invisible chamber where