When the offerings were wholely made, what happened? The Vedas were born of this sacrifice, and poetics, and the sacred chants—and of course, horses rose from the sacrificial hearth, and cows. So too emerged the Brahmins and kings, the sun and the moon, earth and heaven.

Finally sacrifice itself was sacrificed at sacrifice (yagnena yagnyam ayajanta devah).4 That is why, one says, nothing ever happens.

* * *

Thus there came to be man and things. And of course woman. They wandered then, man, woman and children, along the banks of the rivers, say, like the Ganges, and the Jumna, and the mysterious Saraswati, and made settlements with hearth and byre and sacrificial fire. And when children grew up, and they too were married, it was time come for the yajamana, the sacrificial-fire keeper, the family head, to leave for the forests, to seek that from which there is no returning. The cycle of life and death (samsara), turns on itself—and there is no escape. The circle has no end. Yet the cycle must end, for man (or woman) to be free. For freedom is the ultimate meaning (moksha) of man or woman. Thus the forest. And thus finally the Upanishads, the wisdom of the forest.