The Ritual of Battle
The embodied ideals of personal suffering and merit are aligned with the concept of the ‘ritual' or ‘sacrifice of battle' (samgrama- or yuddhayajna) wherein the gore and carnage of war are said to be sacrificial oblations.[1280] For example, MBh 12.99 documents an ancient dialogue between King Ambarisa and the god Indra.
After dying from (presumably) natural causes, Ambarisa ascends to Indra's heaven, yet is dismayed to find that one of his ministers, Sudeva by name and the lord commander of his armies (senapati), dwells in a higher heavenly world because he died in battle. The king opines somewhat incredulously to Indra that he defeated armies in battle, ruled the earth righteously, studied religious doctrine, practised celibacy and performed the correct rites for guests, ancestors and the gods. How, then, could a warrior surpass the king in heaven? In response, Indra is clear about the rewards and fame gained by a hero in this world and the next, and the gist of what the god tells Ambarisa can be summed up in two stanzas that quintessentially justify the violent, yet transcendent life of a sura:Son, this Sudeva performed the tremendous sacrifice of battle, and so does any other man who wages war: Every warrior equipped for battle is ritually consecrated, and when he goes to the front of the army he gains the right to perform the sacrifice of battle - that's a settled conclusion.
(MBh 12.99.12-13)
To unpack Indra's declaration, all soldiers enter into battle in a ritually consecrated state equivalent to sacrificial patron in Vedic rites (we recall that King Janaka dons a ‘sacred thread for battle', further underscoring war's ritualised nature). Nevertheless, to bring the violent rite to its promised conclusion of heavenly ascension, warriors must make an offering of themselves in the front lines of battle, which, as has been seen, is tantamount to acting as a sura.
Consequently, Ambarisa accepts Indra's explanation and takes its injunctions to heart as ‘the perfection of warriors' (MBh 12.99.50 cd: yodhanam... siddhim).A heroic warrior's freely flowing blood absolves him from all accumulated sins. Blood is but one of the bodily offerings a slain warrior can make in this violent rite. The epic chapters describe at gory length the correlation of body parts and martial paraphernalia with ritual implements and practices for no other reason than to underscore that death in battle is a sacred ritualised act in line with an ordered cosmos, however Pyrrhic such a self-sacrifice may have been. The grisly analogies mimic the older Vedic model of secret correspondences that align individual, ritual and cosmic phenomena so as to reveal the underlying interconnected nature of the cosmos. Such secretive knowledge
a Sacrifice', in J. Houben and K. van Kooij (eds.), Violence Denied: Violence, Non-Violence and the Rationalization ofViolence in South Asian Cultural History (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 69-103; Brekke, ‘Between Prudence and Heroism'. grants wealth and prestige to the knower in this world and heavenly realms and immortality after death. Consider, then, some of the epic descriptions - cited from MBh 12.99.15-26, 30-4, 36-8 - wherein elephants and horses act as priests; the chunks of enemy flesh and blood are food offerings and clarified butter; carrion animals such as jackals, vultures and ravens are the recipients of the offerings, the weapons of war are the ritual implements; cries and shouts are liturgies; the kettle drum acts as the singer; the lines of battle are different kinds of sacrificial altars and other significant sites on the ritual ground; a headless corpse standing upright in the midst of the slain is the sacrificial post of the heroic warrior; and the river of gore and carnage with a ‘gravel bed made up of the bones of brave men' (vlrasthisarkara) is ‘the concluding bath of the warrior's great sacrifice'.[1281] According to Indra, the field of battle is the sacrificial altar of heroes and for this reason they should not be mourned. To quote the god at length:
The heroic warrior (sura) who, for the sake of his lord, attacks at the front of the army and does not turn back out of fear - he has heavenly worlds like mine.
He who strews the altar area with dark blue swords shaped like the crescent moon and severed arms that look like spiked clubs - he has heavenly worlds like mine. He who is committed to victory and expects no one to accompany him as he penetrates into the middle of the enemy army - he has heavenly worlds like mine... He who strews the altar area with the heads of his enemies and piles of his enemies' horses and elephants - he has heavenly worlds like mine... But when a warrior is frightened and retreats and is then slain by the enemy, he goes to the hell that has no bottom, no doubt about it. He whose gushing blood forms a flooding river dotted with hair and flesh and bones, he goes the highest course. But he who slays a commander of the army and then mounts his chariot, he strides with the boldness of Visnu, he has the wits of Brhaspati. He who captures an enemy leader alive, or a warrior who sets their standard, or one who is honoured among them - he has heavenly worlds like mine. One should never mourn for a hero (sura) cut down in battle; for there is nothing sad about him - the slain hero is exalted in a heavenly world. (MBh 12.99.27-9, 35, 39-43)The epic analogies underscore the fact that immortality can only be achieved in the two overlapping yet socially uneven realms: the first, ritual sacrifice, is reserved for wealthy high-class males, while the second, the ritual of battle, is open to all soldiers no matter what their class status. For individual warriors, war is a righteous act under the auspices of dharma and death in battle is the highest form of sacrificial offering that guarantees heavenly ascension for the victim. Injury and death in battle are unequivocal testaments to a warrior's martial devotion and cosmically sanctioned heroism. Therefore, in ideological terms, soldiers are doubly blessed as consecrated participants in a holy rite and as its sacrificial victims, as triumphant victors in this life and in the next. The six epic chapters thus justify the heroism of aristocratic warriors and common soldiers by aligning it with the ideals of the Vedic ritual tradition and by equating death in battle with sacrifice and heavenly ascension. In no uncertain terms, warfare is a sacred act that brings about heavenly salvation for the courageous dead (who may not have been able to participate in and receive the promised rewards of Vedic rituals in the first place). However, like Indra's heaven, the concept of the ritual of battle is a somewhat cynical ploy because soldiers only transcend ritual and social hierarchies by giving their lives to the army and willingly dying in the front lines of battle.