Cuire le monde

Without denying the necessity of studying the vedic yajña as a symbolic system, we find it interesting to look at it from another point of view: we try to analyse it as a set of gestures, as a tiring work. "Sacrifice indeed is work", as the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa itself says.What kind of work? Walking, digging, piling, cutting, straining, pouring, killing. But mainly: cooking.In post-vedic hinduism, it is safe to have the cooking done by a brahmin: one is sure, doing so, that nobody among the guests would feel polluted. We try to connect that fact with this other dictum of the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa: the duty of the brahmins is to cook the world. Cooking meals is but a part of cooking the world.This task is performed in the sacrifice. Every yajña consists in preparing and offering cooked food. It is true not only of the paśu, the various vegetables, the bricks of the fire altar, but of the milk as well, since milk is already cooked within the udder. Cremation is to be analysed as a sacrifice in which the corpse is cooked and presented to the gods. The only exception may be soma: but the soma sacrifice is not basically an offering of soma; it is rather an offering to King Soma, welcomed as an honoured guest.The offering is not the only cooked item in the yajña: the yajamāna is cooked too, during the dīkṣā.One cannot cook and be cooked at the same time: one does not cook during the dīkṣā. The saṃnyāsin’s life is an everlasting dīkṣā: therefore one does not cook (nor does he sacrifice either!). That is the reason why he cannot be cooked, when dead, on the funeral pyre: he has been cooked and burnt up beforehand during his life.