Calling Subandhu Back

A man is lying on the ground. His name is Subandhu. He is not moving, and the people standing over him believe that his spirit has left his body and gone a long way off.

The Rigveda does not say what happened to him. It gives us only the four hymns that were sung over him, one after another, and through them we can watch the work being done.

The singers begin quietly, by steadying themselves.

"Let us not leave the path, Indra. Let nothing hostile settle among us."

Then they turn to the man on the ground.

"We call your spirit here. Let it come back to you, for sense and for strength and for life, so that you may go on seeing the sun for a long time."

The second hymn is a search. They do not know where his spirit has gone, so they name every place it could be, and from each one they call it home.

"Your spirit that went far away, to Yama, the son of Vivasvat: we make it come back to you, to live here and to stay."

"Your spirit that went far away, to the sky and to the earth: we make it come back."

They go on like that, twelve times. To the four corners of the land. Out to the sea with its waves. Into the beams of light. Into the waters and the plants. Up to the sun and the dawn. To the high mountains. Into everything that lives and moves. To places too distant to know. To all that has been and all that will be. Each verse ends on the same words: come back, to live here and to stay.

In the third hymn they feel him stirring, and now they speak to the thing that has hold of him.

"His life is renewed and carried forward. Let Nirriti go away to distant places."

Nirriti is ruin, the wasting that takes people apart. They do not fight her and they do not insult her. Four verses in a row end by telling her to go, far from here.

"Do not hand us over to death, Soma. Let us still see the sun come up."

Then they ask for him to be put back together, piece by piece. They ask a power called Asuniti, the leading of the spirit, to keep the soul in him and give him back his sight and his breath. They ask the Earth to return his life, and Heaven, and the air between. They ask Soma for his body and Pushan for a safe road.

"May both worlds bless Subandhu," they say, and for the first time they speak his name.

The fourth hymn begins strangely, with praise of a king: Asamati, generous, splendid in his chariot, who can throw down strong men with a spear or with his bare hands. The singers bow to him. They do not say why.

Then they bend over Subandhu for the last time.

"This one is your mother. This one is your father. This one has come to be your life. Come out now, Subandhu. Come out."

"As men tie the yoke with a leather strap to hold it fast, so I have held your spirit, for life and not for death."

"I have brought Subandhu's spirit back from Yama."

The pain is told which way to go. The wind blows downward, the sun sends its heat down, the cow lets her milk down, and so the sickness is to go down and out of him.

The last verse is spoken by someone who is touching him.

"This hand of mine is lucky, and this one is luckier still. This hand holds every medicine. This one heals with its touch."

The Brihaddevata is an old index to the Rigveda that stops, now and then, to tell the story behind a hymn. Here is the story it tells behind these four.

There was a king named Asamati, of the house of Ikshvaku. His family priests were four brothers called the Gaupayanas, and Subandhu was one of them. The king put them aside. He had found two other priests, Kirata and Akuli, who were masters of illusion, and he thought those two were the best to be had.

Kirata and Akuli turned themselves into pigeons and flew at the brothers. They fell upon Subandhu with their craft. The pain of it made him faint, and he dropped to the ground. Then the two of them plucked the spirit out of him and went back to the king.

His three brothers stood over the body. Together they murmured the first hymn as a blessing, and the second to turn his mind homeward. They sang the opening of the third to drive Nirriti away.

After that they did something unexpected. They praised King Asamati in four verses and prayed for him in a fifth. Their mother added a verse of her own. And the king, hearing himself praised by the men he had wronged, came to them, the text says, full of shame.

It was Agni who gave the spirit back. The brothers had praised him once before, and now the fire spoke to them.

"The spirit of Subandhu is here, inside the fence of the sacrifice. I have kept it safe, and the king's as well, because I wished them both well."

He returned the spirit to Subandhu and said one word to him: "Live." The brothers praised him, and he went back to heaven content.

Then they called to their brother with the verse about the mother and the father, pointing at the body where it lay, and sang the remaining verses to hold his mind in place. When he came to himself, each of them touched him with his hands.