Three Black Bricks for Nirriti

The gods had finished building the first hearth. It was round, the fire of the home, and the text says that this hearth is the earth itself. When it was done they climbed up onto it, as people climb onto a thing they have made to see how the world looks from there.

They saw nothing. There was darkness on every side, so thick that the eye could not get through it.

"Think about this," they said to each other. "How are we to get rid of this darkness, this evil?"

"Meditate," said one of them. "Look for it with the mind."

So they sat and thought, and while they were thinking they saw the answer: three bricks. They made the bricks and piled them up, and the darkness left. The darkness was Nirriti, the text explains, ruin and decay, and so the three bricks have been called Nirriti's bricks ever since.

That is the whole of the story about the gods. The rest of the chapter is about a man who does what they did.

He is building a great altar for fire, and he has just finished its first hearth. Before he goes any further, three bricks are brought.

They are a foot long on each side, so that he may tread ruin underfoot. They have no marks on them, because what does not exist has no marks, and he wants ruin not to exist. They were baked in a fire of rice husks, because the husk is Nirriti's share of the grain. And they are black, because the darkness was black.

He carries them south-west. That is her quarter. He walks until he finds a place where the ground has cracked open by itself, or a patch where nothing grows.

"Wherever the earth is split, wherever no plants come up, that part of it Nirriti has taken," the text says. He will put her bricks in her own ground.

He stands to the north of the spot and sets them down away from himself. He does not touch them as he says the words.

"Go and look for the man who presses no Soma and makes no offering. Follow the road of the thief and the robber. Look for someone other than us. That is your road. Homage to you, goddess Nirriti."

Then he speaks to her more closely.

"Homage to you, Nirriti of the sharp edge. Loosen this iron bond."

"You, fearsome one, into whose mouth I make this offering: people are glad to call you Earth. But I know you. You are Nirriti, in every way."

The Brahmana stops here to explain why he says it. It is like meeting someone dangerous and greeting him by name: you are so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, I know you, do not hurt me. A person who has been recognised and spoken to, it says, does no harm.

He does not press the bricks into place the way altar bricks are pressed, in case he should give ruin a firm footing. He leaves out the verse that is said over every other brick, because that verse is breath, and he does not want to breathe life into her.

Past the bricks he throws the things that carried the fire for a year: the seat, the netting, the pads and the sling of cord.

"The bond that could not be untied, which the goddess Nirriti fastened on your neck: I untie it," he says.

Between himself and the bricks he pours out a jar of water. Water is a thunderbolt, says the text, and with it he cuts ruin off from himself.

Then everyone stands.

"Homage to Prosperity, who has done this!" they say.

And they walk back to the altar ground. Not one of them turns round to look.

The priests of the Black Yajurveda carried the same three bricks, and their book explains the errand step by step, with a reason for each.

There is no tale of the gods and the darkness here. The explanation begins with the bricks themselves. There are three, black, dried in a fire of chaff. Chaff is Nirriti's portion, the text says, and black is her form. The sacrificer honours her with what is her own.

They go to her quarter, and the priest points to it with his hand. He lays the bricks in a hole that has formed without anyone digging it, or in a cleft. That is her home, and she is to be honoured at home.

The sling in which the fire-pan hung is laid there too, facing the bricks. The noose belongs to Nirriti, the text says, and in this way the man is freed from her noose at once. Why three bricks? Because a man is made in three parts, and she is to be removed from the whole of him.

The verses are close to the ones the other school uses, in a different order.

"Homage to you, Nirriti of every form. Loosen this bond of iron."

"People know you as Earth. I know you as Nirriti, on every side."

"Seek the man who pours nothing and offers nothing. The thief's road and the robber's is the one you follow. Seek another than us."

He places the bricks moving away from the altar ground, so as to drive her away from the sacrificer. Then they come back without looking round. The reason this school gives is a little different: it is to hide from her.

One more thing is done here that the other telling does not mention. They wash, and then they stand before the hearth they left and honour it with a single verse. The text says what the short walk has been.

"They have wandered in the world of Nirriti. Now, made clean, they come back to the world of the gods."