About three thousand years ago, in northern India, a civilization of extraordinary wealth flourished, yet it left no architectural or artistic relics. And it is that his fortune was not based on conquests or the accumulation of treasures but on the unsurpassed sophistication of a series of texts about the Veda (knowledge). Texts that, for the most part, are meticulous prescriptions to execute the rites, from the simplest to the most complex: sacrifice. Calasso, who has already devoted himself to the religion of ancient India in a memorable book, Ka, now turns on it to focus precisely on the question of sacrifice. What is it? What did it consist of? What is the difference between the mere violence exerted on a being and the essence of sacrifice? What value do we give today to that concept?
