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The Rg-Vedic Hymn to Vasistha: the Oldest Attested Divinization Dr. Koenraad ELST [in: Sanskrit Vimarsh, Delhi, December 2016.] [Postscript 19 March 2016: This paper was read at the bi-annual conference of the European Association for South-Asian Studies in July 2014, as part of a panel on “divinization”. I had devised it as a cornerstone to any treatment of that subject, in that it deals with the first attested case of divinization. I had had very positive reactions inside the panel, also from the editors of a projected book on divinization in India in which it was arranged to be included. In the autumn of 2015, months after I sent this paper in, I received a notice from one of the editors that it could not be published. When I asked for an explanation, I got the one-line non- explanation that it did not fit their plan for the book. The real reason is one or several of these three: (1) the very straightforward location of the Iranians in Panjab, obvious from book 7 of the RV, was deemed fatally in conflict with the hotly-defended (because heavily politicized) Aryan Invasion Theory, which has the Iranians come from the Volga or thereabouts; (2) I had written on the conference, at times critically (though by no means negatively on this “divinization” panel), see my article “The Zurich Conference of the EASAS”, republished in my book On Modi Time, Delhi 2015; (3) some Indian secularists or their Western dupes had warned the editors or the prospective publisher against my person, arguing for instance that the inclusion of my name would exclude the book from polite libraries and bibliographies, or would trigger a commercial boycott. The editors could of course have contacted me to first discuss the matter, but they chose not to. No glory to them. However, it is nothing new: numerous times have I been excluded, censored, disinvited and all that, but rarely has a self- declared enemy chosen to confront me.] Abstract: In Indian literature, the hymn to Vasistha in Rg-Veda 7:33 is the oldest attested case of a formal divinization. It literally shows the germ of a tradition whose flowering would characterize classical Hinduism. Vasistha himself came too early to graduate to full godhood as understood in classical Hinduism, i.e. as an object of temple worship. However, he earned a place in heaven and thereby enjoyed the original Pagan form of divinization, as attested in Greece and Ugarit. He got identified with the star Mizar in the Saptarsi constellation (his wife Arundhātī with its twin star Alcor, symbolizing the marriage ideal). Vasistha would remain a remarkable mythological figure around whom stories were woven in the epics, the Purān ṇas and the astrological classics. His legendary ownership of the wish-fulfilling cow forms a link between an ancient Indo-European theme (cfr. the Germanic cow Audhumla) and the very Indian divinization of the cow. Though it is not certain that Rāma's guru was the same person, the rsi's aura certainly attaches to the guru, making him also the central character of a medieval yoga classic, the Yoga Vasistha. Divinization was only marginally part of the Vedic worldview and belongs to the revolution that generated classical Hinduism with its temples, heroes who are retrospectively turned into divine incarnations, inviolable cows, belief in reincarnation and celebration of celibate monkhood. The Rg-Vedic hymn to Vasis ṣt ṣha is the oldest Indian case of a formal divinization, germ of a tradition whose flowering would characterize classical Hinduism. Vasistha became a star but came too early to graduate to full Hindu godhood. 1. The Vedic context 1.1. The prehistory of the Vedas The Rṇgveda contains a few vague references to its past, which happen to concur with a fuller account given in the Purān ṇas, a notorious mixture of myths, embellished history and sometimes a really historical core. The genealogies, in particular, were carefully memorized and may very well have that historical core. The Puranic tradition is at any rate much older than its written version edited in the first millennium CE, existing already “in the Upanis ṣadic period if not earlier” (Siddhantashastree 1977:8) and mentioned in the Mahābhārata (18.6.97, “eighteen Purān ṇas”) and even in the Chāndogya Upanisad ṇ (7:1:2-4). The time of origin would, according to the master narrative of the Puranic tradition, be the time of Manu's enthronement. Manu was the Aryan patriarch who established his kingdom in the North-Indian town of Ayodhyā after having survived the Flood. In the Rṇgveda too, he is mentioned some forty times: as an ancestor, as the Father of Mankind, and implicitly as a law-giver, once even explicitly (RV 1:128:1-2: “by Manu’s law”). Though the extant text of the Mānavadharmaśāstra hardly predates the Christian age, the idea of a normative system established anciently by Manu is at least as old as the Veda. The Vedic seer Vasis ṣtha ṣ links Manu with the fire as agent of the sacrifice, as transmitter of the sacrificial offering to the gods, and also as immunizer against evil: “Worship the gods on this occasion, Agni, as (thou didst) for Manu: be our messenger, our protector against malignity.” (RV 7:11:3) Manu’s direct succession went through his eldest son Iks ṣvāku, founder of the Solar Dynasty, who remained in Ayodhyā where his descendant Rāma was to rule. Most Ks ṇatriyas in the Gaṅgā plain, including Rāma, the Buddha and the Gupta kings, claimed to belong to this Solar lineage. One of Manu's other heirs was his first-born, daughter Iḷā,ṣ whose son (or descendant) Purūravas (see RV 10:95:18) started the Lunar Dynasty originally based in Pratis ṣthānapura ṣ near Prayāga (Siddhantashastree 1978:14). Their descendant Nahus ṣa moved westwards to the Sarasvatī basin (alluded to in RV 7:95:2). His descendant Yayāti had five sons who became the patriarchs of the "five peoples" (RV 6:51:11), the ethnic horizon of the Vedas: Pūru, Anu, Druhyu, Turvaśa and Yadu. According to a later myth, Pūru or Puru was the youngest but was rewarded with the privileges of primogeniture because of having lent his youth to his father who had become impotent. At any rate, his tribe occupied the centre when the five tribes were given their historical locations, the centre being the Sarasvatī basin. Within Pūru's tribe, the Pauravas, then, king Bharata started the Bhārata clan, the backbone around which the Vedic tradition was to grow. According to later tradition, he was the adoptive father of the first-generation Vedic seer, Bharadvāja, grandson of Aṅgiras and thus member of the first seer clan, a principal author of RV Book 6. This Bharadvāja was born from the same mother as another prominent first-generation seer, Dīrghatamas (Nagar 2012:93, referring to Matsya Purān ṣa 49:25 and 49:30). As a grown man Bharadvāja became court-priest to king Divodāsa (RV 6:16:5), an ancestor to Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ patron Sudās (“Sudās’s father Divodāsa”, RV 7:19:25). Near the time of the very first Vedic hymns, an important historical event took place, or at least, so the Purān ṇas report. A war was triggered between the Druhyu tribe in Panjab and its eastern neighbours, mainly the Pauravas in Haryana, ending in the westward expulsion of most Druhyus (Pargiter 1962:298, Bhargava 1971:99, Pusalker 1996:283, Talageri 2000:260 with reference to the Purān ṇas: Vāyu 99:11-12, Matsya 48:9 etc.; and Talageri 2008:247). Their place in West-Panjab was taken by another of the five tribes originally living in the north (Kashmir), the Ānavas. These will play a central role in Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ career. The chronology of these putative characters and events is important in its own right, but is not the topic here. For what it is worth, the Puranic king-list as known to Greek visitors of Candragupta Maurya's court in the 4th century BC or to later Greco-Roman India-watchers, started around 6776 BC. Pliny wrote that the Indians date their first king to "6,451 years and 3 months" before Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), while Arrian puts "Pater Liber” (Dionysus) as head of the dynastic list at 6,042 + 300 + 120 = 6,462 years before Sandrokottos (Chandragupta Maurya), to whom a Greek embassy was sent in 314 BC. (Arrian 2002:35, Majumdar 1981:340) After a thorough study of the possibly historical data in the Purān ṇas, Siddhantashastree (1977:44) estimates that Manu’s time is at least as far back as “7976 BCE”. 1.2. Ethnicity in the Vedas The oldest work of Sanskrit literature is the Rṇg-Veda. We have consulted the original text, included in Wilson’s published translation (1997, originally published in 1860 ff.), and the translations by Griffith (1991, originally published in 1889), Geldner (2003, originally published in 1951, though written before his death in 1929) and Jamison & Brereton (2014). The Rṇg-Veda always refers to the Pauravas, whether friends or traitors, as Ārya. This term, often analyzed for ultimate deep meanings, has the effective meaning of “compatriot”, “fellow citizen”, “us” (as against “them”), in Vedic as well as in Iranian and Anatolian (Mallory & Adams 2006:266, Talageri 2000:154-160, Elst 2013). As Fortson (2004:187) writes: the term was a “self-designation of the Vedic Indic people”, also used in self-reference by the Iranians. The Paurava king at the beginning of the composition of the Rṇgveda is Bharata, mentioned in RV 6:16:4 (already as a memory: “Bharata of old”) and 7:8:4. After him, India is still named Bhāratavarsaṇ or Bhārata. His progeny is mentioned in RV 2:36:2, 3:33:11-12, 3:53:12, 3:53:24, 5:11:1, 5:54:14; two of his sons are named as having composed hymn RV 3:23 and named in the hymn itself. Agni, the fire, is also described as a son of Bharata, including once by the Sage Vasistṇ ha ṇ (RV 7:8:4). Note that all these references are in the Family Books; by the time of the later books, people seem to have forgotten about this ancestor, or chosen not to mention him. The Bhārata clan remained in power until the internecine war described in the Mahābhārata epic, “the Great (Epic) of the Bhārata’s”, an epic containing many ahistorical literary or mythological motifs but undoubtedly also a historical core. This may be compared to the Iliad (ca. 700 BCE), a story of gods and men about a city dug up by archaeologists, of which we now know that it was based on a historical war ca. five hundred years earlier than the epic poem. Even after the Bhārata war, the dynasty maintained itself through the lone surviving grandson Parīks ṇit. (There still may have been a Pūru kingdom in India’s Northwest when Alexander fought one “Poros”, but soon after, his kingdom was absorbed in Candragupta Maurya’s empire.) The contending cousins in this war, the Kauravas and the Pān ṇdavas,ṇ are depicted as socially descendants of Bharata but biologically the grandsons of Krsṇ ṇn ṇa Dvaipayana, also known as Veda-Vyāsa, “the orderer of the Veda”, the final codifier of the Vedic corpus of hymns. Apart from having an “official” son Śuka, Vyāsa served as sperm-donor for his half-brother king Vicitravīrya’s widow (Nagar 2012:569-571). And Vyāsa, in turn, is described as a descendent of Vasistṇ ha. ṇ At least, his father was called Parāśara, not historically to be equated with Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ similarly named grandson, but deemed a first name that ran in the Vasis ṇthaṇ family, and at any rate treated (or narrarively used) as indicating the latter’s ancestorhood. 1.3. History of the ṚṚg-Veda’s composition The Rṇgveda consists of ten books (Man ṇdala, ṇ “circle”), made up of hymns (Sūkta, “well said”), in turn divided into verses (Mantra, “mental instrument”). They were written, or rather composed, by a group of seers (Rṇsi)ṇ spanning a number of generations, in praise of one or more of the Gods. Vasis ṇtha ṇ composes what is easily the most homogeneous book: the hymns collected in book 7 are almost entirely his work. Vasistṇ ha ṇ asserts, like other seers, that the hymns are composed for the Gods, not the other way around. He affirms that it is the Rṇsis,ṇ not (in that particular case) Indra, who have “engendered” the hymns: “Among all Rṇsis, ṇ Indra, old and recent, who have engendered hymns as sacred singers, even with us be thine auspicious friendships.” (RV 7:22:9) This may sound trivial to the present readers, but for some Hindu ears it really deserves to be emphasized. Very many traditional-minded Hindus are sure that the Vedas are God-given: dictated by the Gods and then “seen” and recited by the seers. This would turn the Veda into a kind of Ten Commandments or Qur’ān, where it is God who does the speaking and who talks down to man. Those who hold this view, are in contempt of the evidence given by the Veda itself, which they claim to be venerating as God-given. From the very first verse, the correct relation is made crystal-clear: “Oṁ Agnim iḻe…”, “I worship the Fire…” (RV 1:1:1) So, man is worshipping a chosen deity, and it would be perverse to make the Gods dictate the very hymns with which they should be worshipped. Note also that Vasis ṇtha ṇ inscribes himself in a hoary tradition of “Rṇsisṇ old and recent”. This is the general outlook in Hinduism: treading in the footsteps of the ancients. It is not necessary to invent anything new, as the truly important things have always been available. The Vedas themselves clearly inscribe themselves in an existing tradition. The Buddha equally said that he had merely gone the way of the former Buddhas, and the contemporary masters equally emphasize that they teach nothing new. If they do claim originality, you know you are dealing either with a charlatan or with a Western sophomore who tries to impress his audience, like that fellow student who promised a “totally new” reading of the Yoga Sūtra. The more classical position was enunciated in a lecture about the ancient yoga teacher and Yoga Sūtra author Patañjali by Dr. Pūkh Rāj Śarmā from Jodhpur, who explained: “There is no improvising on Patañjali.” (1988) Innovators like Sri Aurobindo receive lip-service but their novelties do not have much impact in the long run, unless they too use a discourse of “returning to the ancient roots”. Internal evidence, principally genealogical data, as well as linguistic details, reveal an internal chronology (Talageri 2000:35-93, building on Oldenberg 1894). The oldest period consists of Book 6, then book 3, then (though partly overlapping) book 7. This is followed by book 4, then book 2, the middle period. The late period starts with book 5, the youngest of the “Family Books”, each one written by a family of seers; and then book 8. A collection of separate hymns covering the period of books 4-2-5-8 is book 1. These 8 formed a first corpus of hymns. A collection of hymns related to the psychedelic brew Soma forms book 9, and a distinctly younger collection of hymns constitutes book 10. This latter is part of a younger culture shared with the Yajur- and Atharva-Veda (the Sāma-Veda mostly consists of hymns of the Rṇg-Veda put to music). Many Vedic characters reappear in the Itihāsas and Purān ṇas. Thus, Dīrghatamas, composer of hymns 1.140-164, is said since the Aitareya Brāhman ṇa (8:23) to have been the court priest of founding king Bharata and half-brother of the seer Bharadvāj. This is not based on data made explicit in the Rṇg-Veda itself. The Mahābhārata makes him born blind, hence his name meaning “long darkness” (Nagar 2012:120); but this seems to be a made-up story based on the etymology of his name, and especially strange for a seer most famous for his astronomical observations to the extent that his name is even explained as a nickname for a nightly observer of the sky. Famously, the Epics and Purān ṇas turn the Vedic rivals Viśvāmitra and Vasis ṇtha ṇ into representatives of competing castes: the Ksatriyas, ṇ among whom Rājarsiṇ Viśvāmitra is counted, and the Brāhman ṇas including Brahmarsṇ ṇi Vasis ṇtha. ṇ But these stories are reflective of social concerns of later society, not in evidence in the Vedic account. The Ksatriyas, ṇ Vaiśyas and Śūdras are only mentioned at the fag end of the Rṇg-Veda (10:90:12), without even discussing their recruitment, heredity, social roles, mutual relations or anything we now know as the caste system. By the time the Epics were edited, by contrast, caste was an uppermost concern. Let us keep in mind that references to Vedic characters by later Hindus are generally to these transformed personae whose name is Vedic but whose story is a later creation. 2. VasisṭṚha’s Ṛ life Vasistṇ ha ṇ is described as the son of Mitra-Varun ṇa with the nymph Urvaśī. (RV 7:33:11). Not that he was born from her womb, but she accepted him as her son after seeing the new-“born” emerge from the effusion of sperm deposited by Mitra and Varun ṇa, which they couldn’t contain after seeing her. In this case, the later Puranic story has a definite basis in the Vedic verse itself. He is therefore called Maitrāvarun ṇ i (his family name in the Anukraman ṇī list of hymn authors), just like Agastya, seer of RV 1:165-191. Therefore, these two are sometimes described as brothers. In post-Vedic writings, Vasis ṇtha ṇ is described as the mind-born son (Manasputra) of Brahma, who (e.g. in the Yoga-Vasis ṇtha) ṇ often quotes instructions he received from Brahma himself. His proverbial wife Arundhātī is not mentioned yet, but that he has sons is already clear, and not only because hymn 7:33 is partly dedicated to them. One hymn (RV 7:32) is composed together with his son Śakti. He also mentions Parāśara (RV 7:18:21) together with Śatayātu, seemingly another name of Śakti (thus Griffith 1991:343). Parāśara is described as the son of Śakti by the Anukraman ṇi list when it mentions him as the seer of RV 1:65-73 and part of RV 97:7. His clan is said to wear their hair-knot on the right-hand side (RV 7:33:1). For this reason, a copper Rṇsiṇ statue found with this odd placement of the hair-knot is known as “Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ th head” (Hicks & Anderson 1990). Though the copper was first cast in the 4 millennium BC, inscriptions on it are much younger, and it is assumed that the copper was smelted and recast as the present statue in the historical age, when statues had become common in Hinduism. Possibly after a rivalry (about which the facts are not given) with Sudās’s court priest Viśvāmitra, Vasistṇ ha ṇ becomes the court priest himself. Viśvāmitra is the main composer of Rṇg-Veda’s Book 3 including the single most famous Vedic verse, the Gāyatrī mantra (RV 3:62:10, a prayer to the rising sun, still recited daily as part of the Sandhyā-vandanā, the “salutation of the morning twilight”). The major historical event treated in his hymn collection is his aid as court priest to Sudās in the victory over the Kīkatas ṇ in the east (RV 3:53). In spite of this success, he seems to have been replaced as royal priest by Vasis ṇtha, ṇ who stars as the king’s decisive helper in the subsequent “Battle of the Ten Kings” (Dāśarājña Yuddha). The texts of the hymns allows us to deduce that Viśvāmitra had reason to be envious of Vasistṇ ha. ṇ Yet, though this envy and the ensuing struggle became the topic of many more recent stories (see below, 6.1), the rivalry between the two seers is not treated in the Rṇg-Veda and can only be inferred. Verses RV 3:53:21-24, traditionally interpreted as a curse by Viśvāmitra on Vasistṇ ha ṇ (as by Nagar 2013:222, citing Sāyana in support), contain “no whiff of this personal hostility” and “there is certainly no mention of Vasistṇ ha, ṇ directly or indirectly” (Jamison and Brereton 2014:537). 3. VasisṭṚha’s Ṛ religion The religion expounded in Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ hymns is not noted for anything aberrant from the Vedic pattern. On the contrary, it has greatly helped in shaping our image of what the Vedic religion was. Thus, a general principle of most religion is: “Make the god pay heed by pouring libations” (RV 7:16.11), or what the Romans called: Do ut des (“I give so that you will give”). He sings of “immortal fame” (RV 7:81:6), which was found to be a cornerstone of the Indo- European worldview, the expression being common to divergent Indo-European poetry traditions. And he praises “male posterity” (RV 7:75:2), which ensures the hero of a constituency of descendants who will venerate his memory. 3.1. The categories of gods Vasistṇ ha ṇ is first of all a worshipper of Heaven and Earth: “I worship Heaven and Earth, parents of the Gods.” (RV 7:53:1, likewise 43:1) Just like Ouranos and Gaia in Greek mythology, they are the gods of the first generation, progenitors of all the other gods. Apart from this basic couple, the gods, then, are conceived as belonging to one of three categories: Vasus, Rudras, Ādityas (RV 7:10:4), i.e. earthly, atmospheric and heavenly gods. Here they are not yet given their classical number: the cubic and earthy 8 for the Vasus, the unseizable 11 for the Rudras, and the zodiacal 12 for the Ādityas (as in e.g. Brhadāran ṇ ṇyaka Upanisadṇ 3.9.2). At least not explicitly, for the total number of 33 gods (2 + 8 + 11 + 12) already existed, as is seen in RV 1:34:11, 1:139:11, 9:92:4 (all three: 33 as 3 x 11), 3:6:9, 8:28:1, 8:30:2, 8:57:2. “The Gods, the Thirty-Three” is already a fixed expression, 33 is the unrivalled number of the Vedic Gods. In the anukraman ṇīs , the classes of Gods are called gan ṇa, “group, troupe”, as in Marudgan ṇa (RV 7:56-59), Rṇbhugan ṇa (RV 7:48) or Ādityagan ṇa (RV 7:66). In the modern terms of set theory: a gan ṇa is a “set” and its “cardinal number”. It is herefrom that a popular God is called Gan ṇeśa or Gan ṇapati, “lord of classes (of gods)”, “lord of cardinal numbers”, which effectively means “god of gods”. 3.2. Varuṇ Ṛa Foremost among the Gods are Indra and Varun ṇa: “One kills Vrtra, ṇ the other maintains the Law.” (83:9) Whereas Indra is the God of strong vs. weak, of vigour and power, Varun ṇa is the God of good vs. evil, of norms, of morality. He reminds us somewhat of the Christian God: he has an eye for sin, for defects, for straying from the “law of nature” (rta). ṇ Thus: “Not our own will betrayed us, but seduction, thoughtlessness, Varun ṇa, wine, dice, or anger.” (7:86:6) Sometimes he also shows the vindictiveness of the Old-Testamentic God, who visits the sins of the fathers upon the next generations: “Free us from sins committed by our fathers, [Varun ṇa].” (RV 7:86:5) But overall, he is the merciful one, like Jesus’ father and like Islam’s al-Rah ṇmān al Rah ṇīm, though he knows everything about his worshippers’ sinfulness: “Have mercy, spare me, Varun ṇa.” (RV 7:89:1) He makes his devotee medhira, “wise” (RV 7:87:4), meaning that he has and confers medhā, “wisdom”, the Sanskrit equivalent of Iranian mazdā. So, Ahura Mazdā (Asura Medha) is the equivalent of Varun ṇa. This helps explain why the polarity good/evil is so central in Mazdeism, and how post-exilic Judaism could have been conceived as seriously influenced by Mazdeism, the dominant religion of the Achaemenid Empire to which Israel belonged when the Thora was given its definitive editing. 3.3. Indra Indra is Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ favourite object of devotion. He is worshipped as himself, as Indrāgni, as Indravarun ṇa, as Brhaspati ṇ (RV 7:97) and also as the rain-god Parjanya (hymn 7:101-102, composed together with Aṅgiras priest Kumāra Āgneya). Brhaspati ṇ was originally just a name of “Indra (…) in his role as priest-king and with priestly weapons – songs and correctly formulated true speech (…) But in time the epithet was split off into a separately conceived divine figure Brhaspati, first as an alloform of Indra and then detached from Indra as an independent divinity who served as Indra’s priest – taking with him Indra’s priestly role, with Indra retaining his role as king and warrior.” (Jamison & Brereton 2014:633, introducing RV 4:50) He is also named Brahman ṇaspati, “lord of the formula” (RV 7:97:3 and 7:97:9). Significantly, Brhaspati ṇ also became an alloform of Gurū as the name of the planet Jupiter, both used till today in the name of Thursday. The name Parjanya is cognate with Baltic Perkunas, Slavic Perun, Albanian Perëndija, the name of the stormgod; and probably also with the Sanskrit tree name parkatī,ṇ Latin quercus, “oak”. Since the oak is a tree reputed to attract lightning, the link seems to be the lighting, Indra’s weapon (vajra) and opener of rainstorms (“probably a link with the concept of lightning”, Delamarre 1984:171). The hymn 7:103, commonly known as the “Hymn of the Frogs”, is somewhat jocular in spirit. (Due to the later canonization of the Vedas, the playful aspect of the Vedic poems is insufficiently realized, see Elst 2011:36.) It likens the recitations by the priests to the croaking of the frogs. The chosen day for this concert is the first day of the rainy season when, after months of unbearable heat, the first rain is liberating: “As Brahmans talk at the Soma-rite, so, Frogs, ye gather round the pool to honour this day of all the year, the first of Rain-time.” (RV 7:103:7) After extreme drought, fertility is restored and at once maximized by the generous rains. The frogs rejoice in the overflow of water, the priests in the manifestation of their favourite object of worship, Indra. This at once explains a lot about Indra’s character. The Vedic pantheon has two main storm- gods: Rudra and Indra. Rudra stands for the unexpected and dangerous storms in the mountains. Precisely because he is so unpredictable and threatening, he is flattered with the apotropaeic nickname Śiva, “the auspicious one”. White as the snow on the mountains, his wife Pārvatī, “she of the mountain”, is also called Gaurī, “the white one”. Indra, by contrast, is simply good. He is the yearly recurring storm that opens the longed-for monsoon. This is a recurring and perfectly predictable phenomenon eagerly awaited by cultivators, just like the yearly flooding of the Nile Valley. He has slaughtered the dragon of the summer heat that withholds the waters, and releases them: “He defeated the snake and released the waters” (RV 7:21:3; more allusions to Indra killing Vrtra ṇ are in RV 7:19:5, 20:2, 21:6, and in hymns by other seers). Indra has elsewhere (e.g. RV 8:1:7) been called the purandhara or “fort-destroyer”, which has also given rise to a lot of heady speculation, with the forts being the ruined Harappan cities destroyed by the invading Aryan armies. Instead, the truth is not so sinister: “Usually human habitations were located on the banks of the rivers”, but in the monsoon region, the onset of the rainy season, opened by Indra with thunderstorms, a few days are enough to make drought give way to inundations: “[T]he Himalayan rivers destroyed the human habitations by the torrential flow of water (…) This is the precise reason why the water-god Indra has been considered the purandhara or the ‘destroyer of the villages’. (…) contrary to the general claims that pura means ‘fort’, (…) the word always means ‘village’ in the Indian and Iranian languages.” (Priyadarshi 2014:34) Vasistṇ ha ṇ has not used this expression for Indra, but has described Agni in similar terms (RV 7:6:1) because fire does indeed have a similar effect on houses: sweeping the work of years away in one hour. Indra’s name is interchangeably used with Maghavan, “the generous one”. So, here we get the usual image of Indra as mighty, giving boons, victorious and conferring victory in war to his worshippers. He is also described as a great consumer of Soma, meaning that it is often sacrificed to him. But jokes about his sexual prowess and adventures are not so much in evidence here, as they are in later parts of Vedic literature (e.g. RV 4:10, 8:80, 10:86, discussed in Elst 2011:36-37) and in the stories of related storm-gods like Zeus and Thor. Indeed, later generations saw the descent of Indra into becoming a figure of fun, with his amorous pursuits ending in disgrace -- a colourful sunset before oblivion set in. 3.4. The Mrṭyuñjaya Ṛ Maṇṭra The famous Mrtyuñjaya ṇ Mantra (RV 7:59:12) invokes Śiva as “the tree-eyed one” (Tryambaka). This concept is otherwise nowhere attested in the Vedas. Already Wilson in the 1860s thought it was obviously interpolated: “The wish expressed being for final emancipation (…) and the denomination Tryambaka are, in my opinion, decisive of the spuriousness of this stanza” (Wilson 1997:270). So do Jamison and Brereton in their recentmost translation of the text: “The last four verses are clearly late additions” (2014:953). Hindu Tradition says that the Vedas were given their final ordering by Krsṇ nṇ ṇa Dvaipayana a.k.a. Veda- Vyāsa, “analyzer/orderer of the Veda”. He is commonly taken to be a descendant of Vasistṇ ha: ṇ according to the Visnṇ ṇu-Sahasranāma (3), “Vyāsa is Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ great-grandson.” For what it is worth, we speculate that he interpolated the by then prestigious Mrtyuñjaya ṇ Mantra into his famous ancestor’s hymn collection in order to counterbalance the prestige of Viśvāmitra’s Gāyatrī mantra. It may have been composed by Vyāsa himself (upgrading his own little poem into a canonical Vedic verse) or by another descendant of Vasis ṇtha, ṇ and in that sense it could legitimately be attributed to “Vasistṇ ha” ṇ as a family name. 4. The Battle of the Ten Kings The single most important historical event mentioned in the Rṇg-Veda is the Battle of the Ten Kings. It is the topic of hymns RV 7:18/33/83, and a number of allusions elsewhere, both by Vasistṇ ha ṇ and by other seers. It is a battle between the Āryas (meaning the Pauravas, the seer’s own tribe) and the Dāsa coalition of ten clans, led by Kavi and Bheda. 4.1. History of the battle The coalition comes from the west, from the basin of the Asiknī river, the present-day Chenab, to attack Sudās on the riverside of the Parus ṇn ṇī, the present-day Ravi (7:18:8-9), both in Pakistani Panjab. The word “attack” does not really imply that the coalition was the aggressor, though the Vedic people saw it that way. It may just as well have been a tactical counteroffensive within a war in which Sudās himself was the main aggressor. Our knowledge of this conflict is just too sketchy and moreover based on a partisan source. The tactical moves mainly pertain to the military use of the river: it seems that, when the coalition surrounded Sudās’s army, the latter escaped by fording the river (“Indra made the river shallow and easy for Sudās to traverse”, RV 7:18:5, “fordable Parus ṇn ṇī”, RV 7:18:8), that the coalition fell into disarray while trying to cross the river, that some soldiers drowned while others were overtaken in hot pursuit. Their leader Kavas ṇa drowns, along with Druhyu (RV 7:18:12). Kavi “dies” (RV 7:18:8), Bheda first escapes but later gets killed (RV 7:18:18-19), and one Devata is also killed (RV 7:18:20). Both the legitimate enemy and Sudās’s tribesmen siding with the enemy were defeated: “Ye smote and slew his Dāsa and his Ārya enemies and helped Sudās with favour, Indra-Varun ṇa.” (RV 7:83:1) At any rate, the outcome of the battle is a clear victory, for the enemies are killed, dispersed or thrown back to the west, to the Asiknī basin: “Agni chased these Dasyus in the east and turned the godless westward” (RV 7:6:3). They leave their possessions behind and (part of) their land is occupied to become part of the Paurava domain. 4.2. Who were the enemies? The Vedic text gives quite a bit of detail about the enemy coalition. The ethnic identity of the enemies, often treated as a mystery (if not filled in as “obviously the black aboriginals”), is in fact crystal-clear. Sudās, the Trtsu, ṇ defeats the Pauravas’ northwestern neighbor among the five tribes, the Ānavas: “The goods of Anu’s son he gave to Trtsu.”ṇ (RV 7:18:13) In the next verse, the Ānavas are mentioned again, together with what remained of the Druhyu tribe, as having been “put to sleep”. The enemies include Kavi and Kavas ṇa, the enemy tribes Prśu, ṇ Prthu, ṇ Paktha, Bhalana (RV 7:18:7) are collectively known as Dāsa, some of them as Pan ṇi (lambasted already in 7:6:3), and their priests as Dasyu. Practically all the names of enemy tribes or enemy leaders are Iranian or pertain to tribes known from Greco-Roman sources as Iranian: Kavi, the name of the Iranian dynasty still featuring in Zarathuštra’s Gāthās (e.g. Gāthā 51:16, Insler 1975:107); Kavaśa/Kaoša; Dāsa/Dahae; Dasyu/Danghyu; Pan ṇi/Parnoi; Ānava/Anaoi; Parśu/Persoi; Prthu/Parthoi; ṇ Paktha/Paštu; Bhalāna/Baluc/Bolān. A few are not, at least at first sight, and it is after all a heterogeneous coalition. But names like Bheda, while not conspicuously Iranian, are not recognizably Dravidian or Munda either, and none of these names is. On the same pattern, we later get the theological contrast between Asura and Ahura. The first seers including Vasistṇ ha ṇ still use the word in a positive sense, as “lord” or “powerful one”: one of his hymns for Agni starts out as “praise of the Asura” (RV 7:6:1), and he calls Agni again “the Asura” (RV 7:30:3), while Indra provides asurya, “lordliness”, “manliness” (RV 7:21:7). Yet, he also calls Agni the “Asura-slayer” (RV 7:13.1): this could be neutral, meaning “even mightier than the mighty ones”, but it could also signal the shift from positive to negative. In the later hymns and in Hindu literature ever since, Asura has served as the usual term for “agent of evil”, “demon”, but still with a dignified status and an unmistakable dexterity, in distinction from the lowly Rāks ṇasās. In Buddhism too, Asuras are associated with powerful quasi-human emotions, especially jealousy of the gods, but do not inhabit one of the hells where the Hungry Ghosts and other lowly creatures dwell (Krishna 2014:60-61). Conversely, in the Iranian tradition they retain their divine status and it is the Deva/Daēvas who got demonized. Note also that unlike the term Asura, the term Dāsa had already acquired a negative connotation before the battle. It had been used for Śambara, a proverbial enemy slain by the Vedic king Divodāsa (RV 6:26:5 and 6:47:21, also mentioned as his defeated foe in 6:43:1 and 9:61:2). Yet, originally the term did have a neutral or positive meaning, as is clear enough from its use in the names Divodāsa and Sudās. Though this is clear enough, Iranologists generally keep labouring under the notion that early Avestan history is a mystery. By contrast, Parsi scholars candidly link the Battle of the Ten Kings (and the subsequent Vārsāgira ṇ Battle, sung esp. in RV 1:100) to early Avestan history (Hodiwala 1913:12-16). Others create a confused picture, theorizing e.g. that the Vedic tribe consisted of Aryan invaders penetrating India eastwards, and that the Dāsas were either aboriginals or earlier invaders resisting the western newcomers. Thus, Dāsas and Dasyus were “people and cultures either indigenous to South Asia or already in South Asia – from wherever or whenever they may have come – when the carriers of Rgvedic culture and religion moved into and through the northwest of the subcontinent” (Jamison & Brereton 2014:56). The thrust of Sudās’s Vedic Aryans was towards: “the region to the east (…), the Gaṅgā-Yamunā Doab to which the Bharatas advanced (…) In this country of the Dāsas and Asuras”. (Pradhan 2014:188) Yet, nothing in the text supports this idea that the Vedic people came from the west and the Dāsas from the east, or that the Dāsas mentioned lived across the Yamuna, or that the Vedic people were intruders while the Dāsas were the established population, or that the Aryans even outside the context of this battle were on the move from west to east. On the contrary, twice and in two different ways, the source text says it is the Dāsas and Dasyus who came from the west. It says that they have come to the “east” for a fight and that these “godless ones” are turned back “westward” (7:6:3); and it has them come from the westerly Asiknī/Chenab river valley to challenge and fight Sudās on the shores of the easterly Parusnṇ ṇī/Ravi. That doesn’t mean they were intruders into India, though: it is a big country, and it is most unlikely that any of the warring parties identified with India as a whole (as opposed to their own slice of it) as “their” country. Even Pradhan, who hurries to toe the orthodox line, breaks ranks with his Western mentors by accepting as simply obvious the Iranian identity of the Ten Kings, e.g.: “their Indo-Iranian past gave the Dāsas the institution of sacrifice” (Pradhan 2014:124), “their Aryan antecedents become clear from the Avestā and the Greek historians’ notices of the Dahae and the Parnoi” (Pradhan 2014:132). He silently passes over the improbable implication that this would put the Iranians where he had earlier located the Ten Kings, viz. east of the Yamuna, a rather unorthodox hypothesis. So everything, including a western-neighbourly location, points to the Iranians. Nothing is there to deny it, nothing points to anyone else. 4.3. The enemies’ religion The heroes of this hymn, the Trtsus, ṇ are Āryas and supported by Indra. The enemy camp as a whole is deemed anindra, “without Indra” (7:18:16), in a verse that seems to furnish the first instance of this term. Later books use this as a standard allegation of the enemies: “Indra-less destructive spirit” (RV 4:23.7), “how can those without Indra and without hymns harm me?” (RV 5:2:3), “enemies without Indra”, truth-haters (RV 1:133:1), “my enemies without Indra” (RV 10:48:7), “Indra-less libation-drinkers” (RV 10:27:6) According to Geldner (2003/3:166), the latter is a “reminiscence of 7:18:16”. Either the same enemy people was involved or, perhaps, this had ultimately become a set phrase in referring to enemies. Included in the enemy camp are the Dasyus, described as “faithless, rudely-speaking Pan ṇis/niggards, without belief, sacrifice or worship” (RV 7:6:3). Other seers call them “without sacrifice” (RV 1:33:4, 8:70:11), “without oath” (RV 1:51:8, 1:175:3, 6:14:3, 9:41:2), “riteless” (RV 10:22:8), “godless” (adeva, RV 8:70:11), “faithless” (RV 1.33.9, 2:22:10), “prayerless” (RV 4:16:9), “following different rites” (RV 8:70:11, 10:22:8). All these are properties pertaining to religion. Dasyus are the Dāsas’ priests and the special target of Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ ire. In fact, opposition to the Dasyus is a general Vedic trait: “Dasyus never figure as rich or powerful enemies. They are depicted as sly enemies who incite others into acts of boldness (6:24:8) (…) The Dasyus are clearly regarded with uncompromising hostility, while the hostility towards the Dāsas is relatively mild” (Talageri 2000:253). Whereas commoners go to the movies to watch famous actors and actresses, intellectuals (the kind who come out of the movie theatre commenting: “I liked the book better”) go there to make their point of view on the scenarist’s plot and the director’s elaboration of it. Whereas commoners speak of World War 2 in terms of “German” aggression, “British” fortitude and “Russian” sacrifices, intellectuals see a three-way contest between the competing ideologies animating the Axis, the Soviet Union and the Atlantic countries. So, Sudās’s court priest is less interested in the warriors who do the actual fighting, and more in the ideologues who have turned the battle in a competition between different pantheons and different ways of pleasing them. The Iranian religion fits the bill. The Vedic seers saw a very similar religious practice and a very similar worldview, of people whom they understood in spite of a different accent, and therefore were extra sensitive to the points where the Athravans had “deviated” from the Vedic standard. Consider: the Mazdeans are “without fire-sacrifice”: they don’t throw things into the sacred fire, because they hold it even more sacred than the Vedic sacrificial priests, who still use it as a channel towards the gods. An Avestan yasna is not a Vedic yajña. They don’t worship the Devas, whom they have demonized: Daēva means “devil”. Conversely, the Vedic Aryans originally worshipped but ultimately demonized the Asuras (Hale 1986). Among the gods, Indra in particular was identified with the principle of Evil. Nevertheless, the substantivated epithet Verethraghna (“Vrtra-slayer”) ṇ was separated from him and remained popular. We may speculate that in an earlier confrontation, Indra did not give them victory, so they demonized him, turning him into the “angry spirit”, Angra Mainyu. Vedic Manyu (addressee of RV 10:83-84) was a name of Indra in his aspect of fury and passion. Aṅgra seems to be a pun on the Aṅgiras, the clan of his priests. Alternatively, the far northwest of the Subcontinent has no clear monsoon, a time opened with a thunderstorm signified by Indra. During their migrations as sketched in the Purān ṇas, the Ānavas are said to have moved from the Western Gaṅgā basin, which has a monsoon, to Kashmir and West-Panjab, where the memory of a monsoon must have faded, so Indra became less relevant and easily identified with the people from monsoon territory. Another element that may have played a role here, is Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ stated opposition to magic: “Let the heroes (…) prevail against all godless arts of magic” (RV 7:1:10), “Against the sorcerers hurl your bolt” (RV 7:104:25). Human experience teaches the perfect compatibility of this “skeptical” position with the fact that his own sacrificial rituals deemed to result in battlefield victories (just like the “miraculous” medallions worn by Catholics resulting in impossible cures) equally amount to magic. At any rate, this cursed sorcery was identified with the Asuras, who are often depicted in stories as more resourceful than the Devas. Magic is at the centre of the Atharva Veda, named after the Iranian priestly class, the Athravans, and held in lower esteem than the Veda-trayī, the other three Vedas. In this case, it is not yet clear what was cause and what was effect: magic (from Magoi, the Greek name of the Iranian priests) was associated with the Iranians, and both the one and the other were mistrusted. Finally, on the Vedic side, it is possible that Varun ṇa’s identity with the enemies’ god Ahura Mazdā had something to do with his decline and gradual disappearance from the Vedic horizon: “One notices the decline of Varun ṇa in Book X, which has no hymn for him (…) If he is seen in his glory in some of the Family Books, Book X registers his decline and subordination to Indra.” (Pradhan 2014:153-154) At any rate, he did decline, both in power and in moral stature: “Varun ṇa, who is now second to Indra unlike in VI, VII and IV, is reduced to singing his praises (…) Varun ṇa of Books X and I acquires semi-demoniacal features which he did not have in the Family Books (…) the former guardian of immortality is now associated with the world of the dead (…) unlike in the early Rṇgveda, the [Yaju] Saṁhitās treated Varun ṇa with dread” (Pradhan 2014:156). Likewise, the Varun ṇa-related concept of rta, ṇ “righteousness”, “world order”, “normative succession of phases in a cycle”, “truth”, dwindles and is more or less replaced by dharma, “righteousness”, “social and seasonal correctness”. This is only a partial and gradual demonization of Varun ṇa the Asura, nothing like the radical demonization of Indra the Daēva. But that is commensurate with the fleeting Paurava war psychology as against the deep grudge the Ānavas bore after their defeat. 4.4. Who the enemies were ṇoṭ None of the names or nicknames associated with the Ten Kings, their tribes or their religion is attested in Dravidian, Munda, Burushaski, Nahali, Tibetan or any other nearby language. Most of them, by contrast, are completely transparent as Iranian names. Similarly, their stated religious identification points to the Mazdean tradition. Yet, quite a few translators and students of the Vedas insist that they are the “black aboriginals”. The first reason is that those targeted by Vasistṇ ha ṇ are mrdhravāc ṇ (RV 7:6:3), “babblers defective in speech” (Wilson), “rudely-speaking” (Griffith), “wrongly speaking” (“misredend”, Geldner), or “of disdainful words” (Jamison and Brereton). This is not normally said of people speaking a foreign language, but of people who are comprehensible yet don’t use the accent or the sociolinguistic register we are used to. Still it is popularly thought that this refers to foreigners, the way the European settlers in America considered the Amerindians alien. The second reason is the frequent use of the word “black” as referring to the enemies, notably Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ enemies: the asikni viśa, “the black tribe” (7:5:3). But the use of “black” is not as pregnant with sinister racist implications as if often made out. Hock (1999) shows that this is but an application of a universal symbolism relating whiteness or lightness to what is good or friendly, and darkness or blackness to what is threatening, inimical or evil. In the writer’s country, Belgium, collaborators with the German occupier during World War II were called Blacks (“zwarten”), resistance fighters Whites (“witten”). Colour symbolism in India has many applications unrelated to race, e.g. the “white” and the “black” Yajur-Veda are merely the well-ordered and transparent c.q. the miscellaneous and labyrinthine parts. Moreover, in Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ case we are probably dealing with a pun, a double-entendre: asikni means “black”, but it is also the name of a river, Asiknī, “the black river”, which happens to be the river whence the Ten Kings come to do battle. This is a normal type of hydronym, e.g. the Thames in England and the Demer in Belgium mean “dark (river)” as well, both names being cognates of Sanskrit tamas, “darkness”; just as rivers may have colour names referring to their lighter aspect, e.g. the Chinese Huanghe, “Yellow River”. In this case, the unimaginative interpretation of this pun as indicating a black skin colour in the enemy, has been unusually consequential. The British-colonial as well as the Nazi-German narrative was that the presumed “White Aryan conquest of India from the Black Aboriginals” illustrates the colonial and racialist view: that superior races should rule over the inferior races and that master races should preserve their purity. All this could have been avoided if the Vedic words for “black” (asikni, krsṇ nṇ ṇa) had been interpreted properly. There was no racial difference between Dāsas and Āryas, and Iranians are not black.  4.5. Merits in the battle Hymn RV 7:33 contains a bit of self-praise by Vasistṇ ha.ṇ Of secondary importance is his praise for his sons’ military role in the battle: they “slaughtered Bheda” (RV 7:33:3). Also, affirmations that the seer was special and talented are not what is exceptional here, e.g.: “With divine birth, Vasis ṇtha ṇ is a thinker and knower of Earth and Heaven.” (RV 7:33:11-12) The main focus of praise is that his recitation praising Indra managed to move the god and channel his energies towards the Bhārata army. He attributes to himself the best singing as well as the best Soma for Indra (RV 7:33:2,4). And this singing made a decisive difference: the Trtsus ṇ found themselves embattled and defenceless, until Vasistṇ ha ṇ became their guide (RV 7:33:5-6). The same point is made in hymn 83: “Encircled, helpless, but Indra-Varun ṇa came to the rescue (…) effectual was the service of the Trtsus’ ṇ priest.” (RV 7:83:3-4) From a skeptical viewpoint, it must be borne in mind that he may have been deluded about this. Kings who got defeated on the battlefield also had court-priests who believed in the effectiveness of their rituals. Vasistṇ ha ṇ may simply have been lucky. His whole self-praise and the resulting belief in the effectiveness of Vedic rituals may have been an overconfident deduction from a victorious turn in this battle which was no more than a felicitous coincidence. No doubt he was a great poet, but whether his poetry caused (rather than just happened to coincide with) victory on the battlefield is a matter of belief. 5. Deification Hymn 7.33 glorifies the crucial role in Battle of the Ten Kings of Vasis ṇtha.(verse ṇ 10-14) and his sons. It is the first attested Indian case of divinization, though we shall see that an earlier instance had already been completed. 5.1. Apotheosis The process of a mortal’s deification was called širk in ancient Semitic, “association”. It is attested in Ugarit, Syria, where after dying, fabled kings were associated with a star. (De Moor 1990) In Islam, this širk/“association” of a mortal with a star, or of a creature with the Creator, became the single worst sin: polytheism. In Greek it was called apotheōsis, “elevation to Godhood”, “deification”. Mortals thus deified among the stars include in mythology Hercules, Perseus, Andromede, Ganymede, but there are historical cases too: Antinoos, Roman emperor Hadrian’s lover-boy (ever since, a star in Aquarius), and Jan Sobieski, who broke the Turkish siege of Vienna and then got associated with a newly discovered southern constellation, Scutum (Sobieskii), “(Sobieski’s) Shield”. The logic, which at once explains the Indo-European poetic formula “undying fame” (Greek kleos aphthiton, Sanskrit śravas aks ṇitam), is that one becomes immortal by one’s glorious deeds, and immortality is the key characteristic of gods. At the same time, the gods are identified with stars: the Sumerian ideogram for “God” shows a star, pronounced as dingir (in Akkadian pronounced as el, related to Hebrew Elohim and to names like Micha-el, “who is like God?” or Gabri-el, “my strength is God”, and to Arabic al-ilāha, “thé deity”, whence Allāh), and intimates how the concept of a “god” was originally conceived. A god was one who lived in heaven, who would remain there long after you as a mortal have died, and who can be seen every day by everyone. He is thus part of the collective consciousness. So, that is what a man achieved by earning glory and being recognized as a god. Vasistṇ ha ṇ went through this process not just after his death, he described it himself: “When Varun ṇa and I embark together and urge our boat into the midst of the ocean, we, when we ride over ridges of the waters, will swing before that swing and there be happy. Varun ṇa placed Vasistṇ haṇ in the vessel and deftly with his might made him a rsṇ ṇi.” (RV 7:88:3-4) The vessel of the heavenly god Varun ṇa signifies the seeming motion of the stars around the earth. Vasis ṇtha ṇ is associating his status as a rsṇ ṇi with his elevation to the starry sky. This way Vasistṇ ha ṇ was given a place among the stars. With his wife Arundhātī (sister of Kapila, a seer glorified as the perfected being par excellence in the Bhagavad-Gītā 10.26) he is eternalized as the star Mizar in the Great Bear, actually a double star, with Vasis ṇtha ṇ as the main star and Arundhātī as his companion Alcor. She was the embodiment of marital fidelity, therefore her star is shown to a bride. On this pattern, Vedic civilization elevated seven sages jointly to a kind of godhood by associating them with the seven stars of the Great Bear. There are different versions, from late-Vedic to medieval, the latter including sages associated with South India and even Southeast Asia. (Mitchiner 2000) Together with seer Atri, Vasis ṇtha ṇ is the only one to be present in all versions of the “Seven Sages”. 5.2. Other deifications in the ṚṚg-Veda Anything that outlives man and is therefore felt to be immortal, can be deified. In that sense, the disembodied ancestors are gods too, for after death they are deemed to stay on to watch over their progeny. To limit ourselves to Vasis ṇtha’s ṇ book, it addresses hymns to the frog species (RV 7:103) and to the waters (RV 7:47/49), as well as to the named gods and to his own sons and himself (RV 7:33). A colourful example elsewhere is the hymn “to the press- stones” (RV 10:44), the implements used by the Soma priests, on the pattern of the annual sacrifice by a warrior to his weapons or by a craftsman to his tools. Since the line between god and man is fluid, some people are addressed in passing as “divine”, e.g. Trasadasyu is twice named “half a god” (RV 4:42:8-9). Persons about whom you may never have heard, but who each had one hymn addressed to them by the seer Kaksīvān, ṇ were the generous princes, son and father, Svanaya and Bhāvayavya’s (RV 1:125- 126). These are but a kind of Dānastutis, lavish praise to express gratitude for gifts of sponsorship. Likewise, a part of a hymn is dedicated to a Rājā Citra 8:21:15-18. Further, a hymn is jointly dedicated to Indra and the composing seer Vasukra, who is deemed to be the God’s son (RV 10:28). By then, authorships and dedications often have something fanciful. Hence, finally, the hymn to the ancestor Purūravas (founder of the Lunar dynasty) and his beloved, the heavenly nymph Urvaśī (RV 10:95). And that brings us to the one great success story of Vedic divinization: Purūravas’s mother Iḻā (RV 10:95:18). 5.3. The matriarch Iḻā ṇ may be considered the first one to be deified, there was a “zeroth” (0th) candidate If Vasistṇ ha to be acknowledged. She lived well before the first Vedic hymn, hence we can’t witness the process of her climb from human being to Goddess, but in the hymns themselves her invocation is deemed very important. As the ancestress of the Vedic tribe, she had become, so to speak, the presiding deity of the Vedic tradition: Iḻā. She is often mentioned together with clan goddess Bhāratī and with the personified life artery of Vedic civilization, the river goddess Sarasvatī. This follows a well-known pattern visible in many traditions, from the “triple goddess” of the made-up (but in this respect authentic) Wicca religion; via al-Lāt, al-Uzza and al-Manāt, the three pre-Islamic goddesses of Mecca mentioned in the Qur’ān’s “Satanic verses”; to the Vedic moon-goddesses Guṅgu, Sinīvālī and Rākā (signifying the first visible moon, the full moon and the last moon, RV 2:32:8, more elaborately sung in the Atharva-Veda); and the later Hindu triplicity Pārvatī, Durgā and Kālī. Vasistṇ aṇ himself calls her “divine Iḻā” (RV 7:44.2). He also mentions her in RV 7:2:8 and 7:16:8. Her oldest mention is probably in RV 6:1:2 by Bharadvāj son-of-Brhaspati, ṇ where the fire, the first of the Gods, is asked to “sit down on the foot-mark of Iḻā, accepting the (sacrificial) food and being glorified”. Puranic stories make her into Sudyumna, a son of Manu, who had emerged from an enchanted pond finding himself transformed into a woman. Already a father, she now gets impregnated by Budha and becomes a mother. When the Gods turned against her and announced the death of one half of her children, she offered to have those killed she had had as a man, because “a woman loves her children more”. Though later on the Gods were pleased with her and offered her the boon of choosing her own sex, she preferred remaining a woman, as “women enjoy the sex act nine times more than men do”. (The same observation was attributed by the Greeks to Teiresias, equally a veteran of life as both a man and a woman. We apparently have an ancient motif of Indo-European poetry that found its way into various different narratives.) This is not bad as a story, but it may be transparent of an actual historical sequence which has been reconstructed as follows: “Manu desired that his first child should be a son, whereas his wife desired a daughter. Their first child was a girl. (…) Iḻā gave birth to a boy named Sudyumna (…) He could not ascend to the throne because of being [Manu]’s daughter’s son. Sudyumna, therefore, was appointed to rule Pratis ṇthānapura ṇ (…) This has been mentioned in the form of allegory, which runs thus: Iḻā, the first child of Manu, herself was transformed into a man, and then again into a woman (...) But when we carefully consider all the different descriptions in different Purān ṇas and epics, we can easily find the historical fact.” (Siddhantashastree 1978:35) Siddhantashastree (1978:84-87) cites both the Mahābhārata (1:90), where Iḻā’s successor is called Purūravas, like in RV 10:95:18, and various Puranic lists, where the Lunar dynasty is founded by Soma or Candra (“moon”), and without any Sudyumna. As for the sex change, the Vedic seers know nothing of it and just venerate her as the presiding Goddess of their tribe. 5.4. Temple near Maṇālī Outside Manālī (Himācal), in a village called Vasistṇ ha, ṇ there is a temple to Vasistṇ ha ṇ with sulphur hot springs. In modern Hinduism, that is the formal recognition of his divine status. Other gods are brought before him to take a bath. It is asserted that this was the site where Manu’s Ark landed after the Flood. As Brahma has only one temple (Pus ṇkar) but is undoubtedly a god, Vasistṇ ha ṇ can also claim to be up there. 5.5. Significance of one’s divinization Singing one’s own praise is not that unusual in the Vedic tradition, witness e.g. Yājñavalkya claiming the herd of cows awarded by king Janaka for a debate that had yet to take place, as if actually winning it was a formality too small for a man of his calibre to go through (Brhadāran ṇ ṇyaka Upanisad ṇ 3.1.2). This could be understood as a matter of personal conceit, at least of an assertive temperament. But it could equally be a grateful acceptance and proper appreciation of the divine working in and through you. It also prefigures the Tantric practice of divinization by means of self-identification with a visualized deity: visualizing the divine in yourself, feeling yourself to be a deity. In serious theology, we might ponder this act of divinization as profoundly heaven- challenging, as a Nietzschean repudiation of “envy on the part of those who by their very nature are incapable of self-affirmation and want to chain the whole world with their own shackles”, thus illustrating “the connection between denial of God and self-worship” (Halbertal and Margalit 1994:250). But there is no indication that Vasistṇ ha ṇ had such a radical intention, if only because he was quite serious about Indra and other gods. Indeed, he saw his main claim to fame in his skill of channeling the energies of the gods through his rituals and recitations. Probably we shouldn’t read too much in Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ self-deification: it was really just a daring rhetorical flourish, momentarily placing himself on the pedestal where normally only the gods reside. After the Battle of the Ten Kings and its literary digestion, he returned to business as usual and didn’t take his self-deification too seriously. Yet, the question arises whether the Vedic seers were ever spiritually ambitious enough to go beyond the dichotomy god-man. Even while using the language of serving the gods and being rewarded by them, did they sometimes transcend this dichotomy? The Greek Vedic scholar Nicholas Kazanas thinks so: “In the RV we can detect a process which I call ‘divinization’ and which is, really, the same as the upanishadic or yogic ‘Self-Realization’. (…) Repeatedly in the RV one god or another is said to reside within man. (…) The Holy Power bráhman is also within man or as the innermost armour (6:75:19). A very clear statement reveals that ‘the mighty and wise guardian of the entire world has entered me, a simpleton’ (1:164:21). Some prudent visionaries seek and manage to realize these powers within themselves, chiefly the acittam bráhma, ‘the Holy Power that is beyond conception’ (1.152.2). Many descriptions are given in the hymns (…): ‘they found the spacious/infinite light even as they were reflecting’ (7:90:4) (…) the seer Kan ṇva declares how he was born even like the Sun-god Sūrya after he had received essential knowledge (medhā) about the Cosmic Order (rta) ṇ from his father.” (Kazanas 2015:321-322) This way, the Vedic hymns do already carry within them the germs of a vision that will flourish in the Upanisads: ṇ of the divine within man, of non-duality between the individual Self (ātman) and the Absolute (brahman). The common belief in an opposition between Vedic karmakān ṇd ṇa and Upanishadic jñānakān ṇdaṇ (the sections of ritual c.q. knowledge) is unfair to the Vedic poets, who had their moments of profound insight too. 6. Later place in Hinduism Since our topic concerns the Rṇg-Veda, we disclaim responsibility for the enormous task of narrating Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ “afterlife”. But as there is so much of it, we should at least give a nod to this enormous material. Our very incomplete list of his roles in later literature and philosophy includes the following instances. 6.1. Epics In the Rāmāyan ṇa we get the classical image of Vasistha: a proverbial sage living in a hermitage, married to Arundhātī, possessor of the wish-cow Kāmadhenu and her calf Nandinī, and in rivalry with Viśvāmitra, the princeling who tries to wrest his wish-cow from him but finds out the hard way that Brahmanical power is superior. A section (Bālakān ṇd ṇa 51-56) describes the rivalry with Viśvāmitra, who has Vasistṇ ha’sṇ 100 sons killed, though grandson Parāśara survives – an uncanny resemblance to the Mahābhārata narrative, where the Pān ṇdavas’ ṇ children are all killed but their only grandson Parīks ṇit survives to revive the lineage. Yet, in his youth, it is to Viśvāmitra that Rāma turns, and, after his father is persuaded by Vasistṇ ha ṇ to give him permission, has him as a tutor during a stay in the forest. Viśvāmitra in youth, Vasis ṇtha ṇ in adulthood: this mirrors the employment by Sudās of Viśvāmitra in his early and of Vasistṇ ha ṇ in his later career. The two seers can jointly take credit for the conduct of the Rāmāyan ṇa campaign in accordance with the principles of Just War (Balkaran and Dorn 2012). The righteous war (Dharma Yuddha) has been theorized in the West by Cicero, Thomas Aquinas and others, but its application existed already earlier in India. In the Mahābhārata, these principles are being broken one after another, and Krsṇ ṇn ṇa’s brother Bālarāma’s return from a pilgrimage at the end of the war serves to highlight his consternation at seeing how mores have degenerated during the war. By contrast, in the Rāmāyan ṇa, featuring Rāma as the ideal man, these principles are upheld, and superficial objections are duly met after a closer reading. Thus, cutting off Sūrpanakhā’s nose (Āran ṇya Kān ṇd ṇa 6) may not seem very gentlemanly, but the picture changes when you realize that Rāma does this to protect his lady Sītā, whom Sūrpanakhā has threatened to murder. If at all we attribute some historical core to the story, we must remain aware that Vasistha came to serve as a family name (and still does: Vasistha is common among Panjabi Brahmins), already in the Vedic hymn where the Sage’s sons are called Vasistṇ has, ṇ so we can’t strictly say that the Vedic seer is meant. But precisely the similarity with the Vedic poet is too good to be true and suggests that this was just a literary adaptation to which no historical value should be attached. At any rate, this is the Vasis ṇtha ṇ best known in India: Rāma’s gurū. The Seer also makes a relatively minor appearance in the Mahābhārata, where e.g. he visits the dying Bhīs ṇma. Those who insist on seeing history here (and the story probably does have a historical core, just as Homer’s Iliad is based on a real war that took place some five hundred years before Homer), are faced with the fact that this narrative treats the Rāmāyan ṇa narrative as belonging to the distant past; and that it treats the Vedas as completed with the final editing by Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ descendent Vyāsa, who himself is already the grandfather of some of the epic’s protagonists. So, on both counts we cannot seriously treat the appearance of the Vedic Seer Vasistṇ ha ṇ as more than a literary device. Nevertheless, as the proverbial Sage, he is made to contribute seriously to the philosophical excursions in the epics. In the Rāmāyan ṇa, Rāmā’s actions, presumably informed by his gurū’s teachings, prefigure each of the principles of the Just War doctrine (as argued by Balkaran & Dorn 2012). In the Mahābhārata, a discussion of determinism versus free will crucially quotes a lesson attributed to the instruction of Vasis ṇtaṇ by Brahma: “Destiny is not accomplished without human action, just as a field without sown seed bears no fruit.” (MBh 13:6:7, discussed in González-Reimann 2010:30) Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ grandson Parāśara is also presented as the author of the Brhat-Parāśara-Horā- ṇ Śāstra, a comprehensive work on Hinduized Hellenistic (now mis-termed “Vedic”) astrology. Vasistṇ ha ṇ himself is anachronistically credited with a book on Hellenistically-derived electional astrology, the Vasis ṇtha-Sa ṇ ṁhitā. Equally fictional: his wife Arundhātī is featured by Kālīdāsa in his Kumārasambhava (canto 6) as brokering the wedding of Śiva and Pārvatī. 6.2. Buddhism The Buddha pays respect to Vasistṇ ha. ṇ Far from being in “revolt against the Veda” (as endlessly claimed in Indian textbooks nowadays), he declares that the Veda in its true form was held by the Vedic seers "Atthako, Vāmako, Vāmadevo, Vessāmetto, Yamataggi, Aṅgiraso, Bhāradvājo, Vāsetto, Kassapo, and Bhagu”. (Vinaya Pitaka, Mahavagga, 1.245) Alas, this “true” Veda had been altered. There are many indications, starting with his frequent self- referential use of the word Ārya (usually translated as “noble”, but really “Vedic”, hence “having received the Vedic initiation”, hence “upper-caste”, hence “sociologically noble”, hence metaphorically “morally noble”, see Elst 2013), that he thought of himself as a reviver of the “true” Veda, as against the Yajur-Vedic ritualism that had by then filled up the religious space. 6.3. More recent writings Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ appearances in the Purān ṇas are too many to be counted. For a single example, he is made the narrator in the Janakapraśna (“Questions to king Janaka”) of the Brahmān ṇdapurān ṇ ṇa (Smets 2013), where teacher Dattātreya instructs his disciple, king Kārtavīryārjuna, by referring to an earlier instruction in yoga by sage Asita to his disciple, king Janaka. Vasistṇ ha ṇ only introduces and concludes the narrative. His final words about what the king learned, are: “Well-versed in the true nature of yoga, endowed with the quality of universal sovereignty (aiśvarya) without being attached to it, resplendent, he (Kārtavīryārjuna) governed the country for a long time.” (Smets 2013:115) He is also made the author of the Vasistṇ ha-Dharma-Sūtra. ṇ Part descriptive and part normative, the Dharma-Sūtras are often considered as Law Books. An oft-quoted verse in anti-Brahman polemic serves to prove that, while vegetarianism clearly already existed among purists, it was still untypical of Brahmans: “If a Brahman refuses to eat the meat offered to him on the occasion of śraddhā or worship, he goes to hell.” (VDS 11:34, quoted e.g. in Kumar 2015) Interesting, but nothing here is specifically reminiscent of anything in Vasistṇ ha’s ṇ hymns. Vasistṇ ha ṇ serves as the protagonist of the medieval Yoga-Vasis ṇtha ṇ (Venkatesananda 2013). This very prominent instruction on yoga uses the narrative device of a teacher-pupil relationship between the proverbial sage Vasistṇ haṇ and the proverbial hero Rāma. The message is akin to what other yoga masters taught, but have much less to do with what the Vedic Vasis ṇthaṇ wrote. Finally, we should mention the Dhanurveda, “Knowledge of Archery” (Ray 1991), a late minor classic on the art of warfare, attributed to Vasis ṇtha. ṇ A Brahman as putative author of a martial treatise should not surprise us: almost all the writing was done by Brahmans anyway, and there are precedents for Brahmans dealing with martial arts, e.g. the Pān ṇd ṇavas’ archery teacher Dron ṇa, who had received his martial knowledge from yet another belligerent Brahman, Paraśurāma. In the Dhanurveda we briefly find the same emphasis on Just War already associated with Vasistṇ ha ṇ , e.g. the chivalrous attitude to non- combatants: “One should not kill the enemy who lies unconscious, is crippled, without weapon, filled with fear or asking asylum.” (4:41) “He who sleeps, is drunk, without clothes or weapons, the lady, the minor, the helpless one and the coward leaving the battlefield, must not be killed.” (4:64) Less thorough and less profound than in the epics, but then it is a far smaller and less important book. 7. Conclusion After a remarkable performance in the Rṇgveda, Vasistṇ ha ṇ has become the proverbial Rṇs ṇi. As such, his name has been endlessly re-used in later literature. 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