Inside the texts, beyond the texts : new approaches to the study of the Vedas : proceedings of the International Vedic Workshop, Harvard University, June 1989 9781888789034, 1888789034

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Citation preview

HARVARD ORIENTAL SERIES

OPERA MINORA

Edited by Michael Witzel

.

Volume2

,,

.:

(

,;

.

•,

..

DEPARTMENT OF SANSKRIT AND INDIAN STUDIES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

DISTRIBUTED BY SOUTH ASIA BOOKS, COLUMBIA, MO

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INSIDE THE TEXTS BEYOND THE TEXTS NEW APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE VEDAS Proceedings of the International Vedic Workshop 1farvard University, June 1989

Edited by Michael Witzel

Cambridge 1997

DEPARTMENT OF SANSKRIT AND INDIAN STUDIES HARVARD UNIVERSITY DISTRIBUTED BY SOUTH ASIA BOOKS, COLUMBIA, MO •

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The photo on the front and back page is that of a Vajasaneyi Saiphita manuscript in early Nagart, c. 1200 AD. The MS is exceptional in that is is very early and, against later practice, accented (red markers) in the style of the Maitrayai;il school, see Vishveshvaranand lndological Journal, vol. 12, 1974, 472-508. Occasional word division marks have been added (vertical, in black). The folio contains VS 8.30-35. The horse-drawn royal chariot on the back cover is from Sanchi; the caption is from VS 8.32

Copyright © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews

f1 .'. I •

For information write to: Editor, Harvard Oriental Series, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA 617-495 3295; email: [email protected] www.fas.harvard.edu/-sanskrit/hos-om.html Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas edited by Michael Witzel (Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, v. 2) ISBN 1 - 888 789 - 03 - 4

I. Witzel, Michael (ed.), 1943- II. Title III. Series: Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora; 2

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Contents Table of conten.ts. ..............................................................................................i ... Pre1ace. ............................................................................................................. 1.11 Introduction .................................................................................................... v ~

Articles JOEL P. BRERETON

"Why is a Sleeping Dog like the Vedic Sacrifice?": The Structure of an Upani~adic Brahmodya ........................................ l COLEI IE CAILLAT

Vedic and Early Middle Indo-Aryan................................................. 15 GEORGE CARDONA

Vedic Tradition and Descriptions of Grammarians.......................... 33 R.N. DANDEKAR

Vedic Mythology: A Rethinking........................................................39 TATYANA Y. ELIZAllENKOVA

Problems of a Synchronic Description of Language and Style in the ~gveda .......................................................................................49 WALTER S. FAJRSERVJS

The Harappan Civilization and the

~gveda .......................................6 l

HARRY FALK

The Purpose of ~gvedic Ritual ...........................................................69 MASATO FUJII

On the Formation and Transmission of the JaimintyaUpanisad . ..Brahmana...........................................................................89

.

HANS HENRICH HOCK

Chronology or Genre? Problems in Vedic syntax........................... 103 STEPHANm W . JAMISON

Formulaic Elements in Vedic Myth ................................................. 127 }All.ED KLEIN

On Verbal Accentuation in the Rigveda ........................................... 139

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CHJUSTOPHER Z. MlNKOWSKI

School Variation in the Text of the Nivids....................................... 167 BORIS OGUIBENINB

On Genutlexion in Vedic and Indo-European................................ 185 ASKO PARPOLA

The Dasas and the Coming of the Aryans........................................ 193 WILHBLMRAU

The Earliest Literary Evidence for Permanent Vedic Settlcments.............................................................................. 203 HANNS-PETER SCHMIDT

Ahiqisa and Rebirth .......................................................................... 207 I RENATE S6HNEN

Rise and Decline of the Indra Religion in the Veda......................... 235 CALVERT WATKINS

The Indo-European Background of Vedic Poetics..........................245 ./ MICHAEL WITZEL

The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu......................................................... 257

Participants and their Addresses ............................................................... 34 7 Index............................................................................................................ 351

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PREPACE The present volume, the outcome of an International Vedic Workshop held at Harvard University in June 1989, is now published with kalpa-like delay -due to many reasons, mostly not of my own choice and not necessarily of my own making. Yet, I am sure, it still is worthwhile to publish the presentations of some of the leading specialists in the field not just as a record of the workshop, but because most of its results are still new and fresh . They open new paths and they stimulate further research. Certainly so when compared to some other, 'new approaches' in Vedic studies that have recently surfaced internationally, be they of fashionable or faddish scholarly type, of religious if not outright sectarian nature, of a self-claimed 'psychological' approach, or of revisionist historical, nationalistic, if not chauvinistic breed. In the meantime, due to the long delay in publishing, some contributors have moved on to new locations, some have not yet sent in their papers or have retracted them. It is, however, with sadness that we recall one of our participants and contributors, Walter Fairservis, who passsed away in 1994. My own teacher Karl Hoffmann was invited but could not undertake the journey; he passed away in 1996. However, the volume also includes a paper by W. Rau who, in the end, could not come for reasons of health but, nevertheless, sent in his article. F.B.]. Kuiper and Wayne Howard unfortunately also could not come for the same reasons. As indicated the workshop included a few presentations that, regrettably, did not become ready for publication: Shingo Einoo (Tokyo Univ.) presented an analysis of Brahmai;ia style, Mark Hale (Concordia Univ.) spoke on the pragmatic effects of syntactic rearrangement in Vedic prose, Yasuke Ikari (Kyoto Univ.) about the development of the Mantras of the Agnicayana ritua~ and on the place of the bahvrca mantras and their recensions in particular; Jogesh Panda discussed the Kai;iva Sarrihit4 as found in Orissa. S. Insler (Yale Univ.) has retracted, in June 1997, his paper on Recensions of the Atharva Veda and Atharvan Hymn Composition. These papers will eventually be published elsewhere. Our workshop also included a number of special sessions; these papers have not been included here. One dealt with the present state of Vedic studies in various countries: T. Elizarenlc:ova, on Vedic Studies in the Soviet Union; R.N. Dandekar, on Vedic Studies in India; Ryutaro Tsuchida, on Vedic Studies in Japan. In another session, several reports on field work were presented: A. Parpola, The Nambudiris of Kerala; J. Panda, The Kai;iva tradition of Orissa; M. Witze~ Textual criticism and the Veda transmission of Kashmir, Nepa~ Gujarat. There also was a special session on computers: R. Sohnen, RV and the computer; M. The RV; B. Oguibtnine, ·Ab ~·a1 Rvveda motif index I A tro1n

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RV noun grammar; C. Minkowski, A Taittirtya BrtihmatJa concordance; M. Witzel, A Paippalada edition and concordance. These items have, largely, become obsolete by now. I may point out however, the steadily increasing electronic data bases of Vedic and Sanskrit texts in the TITUS project at Frankfurt (www.titus.uni-frankfurt.de!texte) The preparation of the volume has involved a number of students and colleagues over the years. I thank especially Maria Green who did much of the initial editorial work, S. Ins/er who read a near-final version, and my students Makoto Fushimi, Ario Griffiths, Carlos Lopez, Mieko Kajihara who carefully read all of or parts of the final proof this Fall. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own responsibility. Now, after several years delay, and after many changes of computer fonts, styles and formats, I present the result, undeterred. As for the technical preparation of this volume, I stress that, due to the international nature of the workshop, I did not feel it desirable to normalize spellings according to one, the British or the American norm. There are several regional styles of English in usage now by native and non-native speakers, and we should retain some of these peculiarities. For the same reason I also did not follow, in editing, the Procrustes bed of a particular style manual such as the Chicago one, but rather left it to the individual authors which form of presentation they preferred. Finally, I have retained the practice of printing footnotes and have not followed the impractical and, due to computer editing, by now outdated method of printing them as end notes, or worse, as notes appended to individual chapters. This practice is sometimes defended a presenting a better look, but it has been, in fact, simply a question of cost cutting with commercial publishers. Since computer editing has made us revert, in many ways, to Gutenberg's practice of individually preparing our own fonts, lay-out and typesetting, I see no reason to banish footnotes into an appendix. I have left them where they belong, on the page in question. Cambridge, Oct. 1997

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INTRODUCTION

The study of the Veda has been said to be dead already some fifty years ago, for example by my predecessor at Harvard, W.E. Clarke, in his address to the American Oriental Society. So far, to no avail: The Study of the Veda is very much alive. While the field may be experiencing a slack period right now in the homeland of modern studies of the Veda, continental Europe, we can observe their spread to new territory: there is a growing amount of excellent research that is being carried out in Japan. The field is progressing, as this volume may indicate, on many levels. Research has been and continues to be shaped, as the case may be, by certain characteristics in national and individual approach to the subject. After the usual succession of intellectual fashions that have blown over the Atlantic to America from France (Dum«!zil, Levy-Strauss, Derrida, etc.), and while another one (Hacker's inclusivism) has not yet quite made it due to belated translation and adaptation efforts, we now witness another, home grown "nouvelle vague", announced a few years after our workshop by some American professors of the study of religion. Conversely, the title of this volume exemplifies, in my opinion, exactly what we have to do in Vedic Studies and, for that matter, in South Asian Studies, that is in Indology, in general. The title, indeed, can stand as a shortcut description of the philological approach. Since this has fallen into some discredit in some circles of American academia, it may be worthwhile to reflect briefly on its meaning and on the nature of this approach, which was central, assumed, and therefore not even mentioned expressis verbis in our workshop on Vedic Studies held at Harvard in June 1989, the result of which is the present volume. Philology is not, of course, as one little-published local religionist once instructed me, "the study of a word". Rather, we should define this approach, with the definition used in the 1988 Harvard conference "What is philology?" as "philology is a Kulturwissenschaft based on texts", in other words, the study of a civilization based on its texts. As such it is, of course, different from the approaches of archaeology, history, sociology, anthropology or religion, approaches in which texts play a role, though not necessarily the central one. However, as is wrongly assumed by those who attack it, philology does not enclose itself in the texts while ignoring these other approaches. Rather, philological study comprehends the investigation of the available written and oral texts of a civilization and the study of all features necessary for an understanding of these texts. In carrying out this program, a whole range of tools (Hilfswissenschaften) that deal with the realia met with in the texts come into play. They range from archaeology to writing systems, and from astronomy to zoology. In the case of the Veda we must study and must attempt to understand, in the first instance, oral texts. It is well known that the Vedas have been both composed and carefully transmitted orally; they were first written down, with one or two exceptions, only in this millennium. This Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. ed. M. Wittel Harvard Oriental Sei;ies. O~ra ~inora 2, Cambridge 1997 Original from Digitized by \..:JOu gLe UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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INSIDE THE TEXTS • BEYOND THE TEXTS

feature is basic for any understanding of Vedic texts, their composition and structure. Yet, a text such as the ~gveda cannot be understood if one does not know something about cattle, the historical climate of the Panjab, pre· state tribal societies and their social systems, about the complex system of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian poetics, about oral composition, canon formation and the techniques of critically editing Sanskrit texts; and it cannot be understood at all without a good acquaintance with our old hand-maiden, grammar, -- in the present case, Vedic grammar as clearly distinct from, and preceding Pai:iinean and classical Sanskrit grammar. The present volume includes many if not most of these approaches necessary for a proper understanding of Vedic texts and may serve as an example of how to approach them. This is perhaps even more important as we have witnessed, subsequent to our workshop, another approach to Vedic texts which, expressis verbis, claims to be "cutting edge". In the words of the general editor of the series in question, it was edited as a collection I of papers by various "academici ex machina" and it was seen as a "tilting of the axis mundi", "a new vague" of Vedic Studies. However, there is not much new, groundbreaking research in this book; rather, as far as the Vedas are concerned, one finds a reformulation of well-known facts -- the authors have neither captured the drift of nor have they innovated Vedic research in this last decade of the millennium.2 By contradistinction, our workshop and, thus, the present volume contain many new approaches and, certainly, new results in the fields of grammar, philology, textual study, literary research, archaeology, religion and in the history of ideas, so that we can truly speak of an approach that is both "inside and beyond the texts." Still, it is necessary to observe the many lacunae that presently exist in Vedic and in South Asian Studies. So far, we have, for example, only a handful of critically edited Sanskrit texts which are based on a stemma of the manuscripts used. Without a properly established text, however, it is not possible to tell what an important figure such as Sankara actually taught; in our uncritical editions single words and phrases as well as whole sections or even individual texts3 may be wrong or spurious. A study based on the present uncritical editions can, at best, only be provisional and is, at worst, plainly wrong since, for example, Sankara may simply not have written the particular expression, sentence or commentary in question. It is nothing short of a scandal that still, after some 200 years of study, instead of preparing reliable texts4 and translations, a lot of ink keeps being spilled in I L. Patton, Authority, Anxiety, and Canon. Essays in Vedic Interpretation. (SUNY Series in Hindu Studies, ed. by W. Doniger). Albany 1994. 2 For details, Stt my forthcoming review of the book. 3 See. e.g., the study of S. Mayeda, "On Satikara's Authorship of the Kenopani~dbh~ya." lndo-lranian Journal 10, 1967, 33-55, cf. WZKS 9, 1965, 155-197. 4 It is remarkable, that in the past 200 years only about a handful of truly critical editions with stemma of Sanskrit texts have bttn prepared. In the Vedic field we have only such works as Y. Ikari's Vadhala Srautasotra, or M. Deshpande's Saunaktya PratiUlchya (HOS, vol. 52). All older,e4itions, !.qcluding the recent Poona effor;s,(9!;.N~lll'rmadhilcari, R.S. Digitized by \...:JOOgLe UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INTRODUCTION

VII

work with inadequate materials. This is the case with the recent retranslation of Manu,5 where neither the readily available (semi-)critical edition of Jolly6 nor the oldest available commentary of Bharavi have been used and where matters of realia (for example the system of weights) are treated with cavalier neglect. Even in Herodotos' India, a blade of straw did not weigh fou.r gold pieces7 It is surprising to see one re-translation after the other (RV, JB, Manu, Gltl, Kalidasa,8 etc.) appear in quick succession, while more difficult first translations of many important texts are rare and far in between.9 In the Vedic field, we still lack a complete edition of the rather important second oldest text, the Paippalada Atharvaveda, though an unsatisfactory partial edition has appeared and other sections are under preparation.IO Yet, there is progress: The important late Vedic and early Vai~i:iava text, the Vaikbanasa Mantrapr&Sna has recently been edited and translatedby H. Resnick. The indefatigable B.R. Sharma, to whom we owe so many editions in the field of the Samaveda, has now, in his 87th year, completed a new edition of the Kauthuma SV Sal!lhita.11 A. Parpola has completed an edition of the Jaiminlya Srautasotra. Y. Ikari is working on a complete, critical edition, based on new MSS, of the Vadhola Srautasotra and the important Vadhola Brahmai:ia (Anvakbyana), all of which have seen only a rather provisional editio princeps. M. Fujii is preparing a new edition of one of the oldest Upani~ds, Jaiminrya Upani~d Brahmai:ia, based on a new, unstudied MSS tradition. In the present volume, C. Minkowski Shastri, N.P. Jain, S.S. Bahulkar, Vtdic texts: A Revision, Delhi 1990), are semi-critical, i.e. without stemma. 5 W. Doniger with B.IC. Smith, TM Uiws of Mtt1111. London, New York : Penguin Books 1991. 6 The new edition by R. Lariviere and P. Olivelle will include the oldest MS, stemming from Nepal, but written in N. India, at c. I 150. 7 Thus, Doniger in Manu 8.135, a strange misunderstanding of the St. Petersburg I M.Williams' Dictionary entry of pal4, and confusion with palll/,._ 8 W. O'Flaherty, TM Rig Veda: An anthok>gy. Harmondsworth 1981 ; W. O'Flaherty, Tales of sa and violena. Folklore, SIJCrifia, and danger in t/u Jaiminlya BrohmalJa. Chicago 1985; W. Doniger with B.K. Smith, The Uiws of Manu. London 1991; for the flood of Gtta translation5, see W.M. Callewaert & S. Hemraj, Bhagavadgrtanuvada. A study in transcultural tran$/4tion. New Delhi 1983. 9 W. Caland was a master of this genre; in the past few decades, relatively little has been done: Kashikar (Srauta/co§a, 1958-), Parpola, LSs 1968; Rolland, VIJGS 1971; Witzel, Ka\hA 1972; Bodewitz, JB I, 1973/1990; Ranade, KSS 1978; Howard, Matral~. 1988; lkari, BSS 10, 1983; Houben, TA 4·5, 1991; Resnick, Vaikh. Mantrapra§na 5-8, 1996; outside the Vedas, one might draw attention to the long series of first translations of difficult medieval tats (mostly, of Kashmirian Shivaism) into a western language by R. Gnoli and his former students. 10 By my students, with the help of newly available MSS that are not hdd, without access to the public, by libraries or individuals: Y. Tsuchiyama (PS 10). C. Lopez (13-15), M. Grttn (17), and A. Griffiths ( 19); M. Witzel (18), and, in close collaboration with us, by Th. Zehnder, Zurich (1-6). D. Bhattacharya is said to have a partial edition in press since 1977 (sic) viz. 1994. 11 With thrtt co€rrl~dm, rnadh,d lcdrtor vflala'!f sd'!f jabhara "Thi• is the sun's divinity; this, his greatness: in the middle of his work, he bas rolled up [Jam-bhrl (the cloth) stretched out [vi· tan) (on his loom)." 28 Cf. also PB 2.6.2, 12.2, 15.2; 3.2.2, 5.2; 4.7.1; 5.3.S, 6.5, 8.5; 6.3.15 etc. 29 Similar is SB 10.2.4.8. In SB 13.4.1.1 Prajapati wishes sdndn k4man apnuyam sdr>'ll vy1l4{1r .,.Unuvrya "May I get all desires; may I obtain all successes.• 30 Cf. also JB 2.61; SB 13.3.3.2, 3.7.3. 31 Note that the opposition between the two terms is also confirmed by the phalaJrvti at the end of the passage. Yajflavalkya concludes: "He conquers further death and lives a complete lifetime who understands thus.• That is to say, he ascends to a deathless world (through the wind), but before he does, he lives a long life (perhaps also through the wind, which is the

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from within. •32 Yajfiavalkya correctly identifies the thread as the wind and the antaryamin as the self. Not only the frames of the two gandharva questions are similar, but also the contents of Yajnavalkya's answers are related. The recurrence of wind in his second answer connects it to the earlier question of the first gandharva. Also, that the wind and the inner sustainer hold together this world and the world beyond echoes the first gandharva's teaching that the wind moves between this world and the next.33 But, although the answer of the second gandharva is verbally linked to the teaching of the first and shares the same narrative frame, it also shows a thematic shift. The first question concerns life beyond this world and life in this world. The second defines a constant principle that simultaneously underlies both this world and the world beyond.34 A similar program occurs in the two questions of Garg1: first a reference to life and immortality, then a description of a principle behind everything. In 3.6, according to the Kai;iva recension, Gargt asks, yad idarri sarvam apsv otarri ca protarri ca kasmin nu khalv apa ota.f ca prota.f ceti "If this whole world is woven, back and forth, on water, on what is water woven, back and forth?" Yajnavalkya answers, "on the wind." Gargi then asks on what the wind is woven and Yajnavalkya says, "on the worlds of the midspace. • Similar questions and answers move the discussion through the worlds of gandharvas, sun, moon, stars, gods, Indra, Prajapati, and the brahman.35 Finally, when Gargt asks what the worlds of the brahman are woven upon, Yajfiavalkya stops her: gargr matiprak~rr ma te mardha vyapaptat "Gargt, do not question beyond; let not your head fly apart. "36 Jisu 3.7.2 rdr stlrra'!' ydsminn ayd'!' ca toled~ pdraJ ca /okd~ sdrvd(li ca bhardni sdndrbdhanr bhavandti (sic) .... r4m antaryaml(la'1' yd imd'!' ca lokd'!' pdra'I' ca /okdm sdrvd(li ca bhar6ny dntaro yamdyati. 33 This passage also shows a rhetorical strategy that reappears several times within this answer to the first is a chapter of the Upani~ad. Often, when a pair of questions is posed, perceptible or imaginable object, the answer to the second, an indescribable or imperceptible reality. In these cases. the first object operates as a symbol for the second. Because the first can be imagined, the second can be understood. In 3.5, for example, the self that breathes self that is "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, etc.• with each of the five breaths is also In this case the idea of a common life process behind all life processes helps make explicable the idea of an imperceptible agent behind all acts of consciousness. In 3.4 and 8, space is a symbol through which one can understand the "imperishable" (ak~ara). In 3.7, the self is understood by means of the wind, and the antaryamin is explained by the symbol of the thread which bolds things together. 34 The link with the first theme is reaffirmed even as the new theme is stated. The refrain of 3.7.7-31 says sd ta armantaryamy dmfra'I' "that is your self, the inner sustainer, the immortal." The immortality of the self echoes the concern of the previous section. 35 The series in the Madhyandina recension is: water, wind, space, and the worlds of the midspace, heaven, sun, moon, stars, gods, giuidharvas, Prajapati, and the brahman. Thus, M has rwo additional levels (space and the worlds of heaven). omits the worlds of Indra, and places the worlds of the gandharvas lff outstan. "Let there be a share for me also in this pressed (soma)." The begging formulae in non-YV texts are close to but not identical to any in the YV complex. Cf. e.g. AB 1.7, where the goddess Aditi agrees to help the gods recognize the worship. (Also 11.3, II.22, 111.33.)

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AB I.7 sa vai vo varam. vrna . iti vp~l~eti

"(Aditi said,} 'I will choose a boon from you.' 'Choose!'." or (and cf. JB 111.190} JB 1.25 ocur varan vrot~a yan adameti I so hovacai~a eva me varal:i "They said, 'Choose the boons which we have granted.' He said, 'This is my boon'." This patterned variation across texts is strikingly different from their agreement in introductory formulae, and I am not certain of its explanation. Most versions (except the SB) are verbally close enough to each other that they seem to have taken a relatively flexible traditional dialogue and frozen it in slightly different ways. Now, finally I want to return to the individual myth and talk briefly !lbout what happens after the first sentence. What is the verbal structure of a Vedic myth, how flexible is it after the first sentence, and what bearing does this have on the issue of ritualistic manipulation that we began with? ·Basically I will claim that Vedic myth is structured like Vedic ritual, and that this is reflected in its verbal form. As we all know, a set or class of Vedic rituals are often systematically related to each other: they share the same basic structure, the same fixed set of principal events arranged in a fixed order. But they differ from each other in certain optional elements: they may add additional events at certain, allowably open places in the proceedings, and there are other places in the ritual where a choice among different options may or must be made. We can symbolize this type of structure in the following diagram 11. Schematic structure of Vedic ritual (and myth) Event

A

I I B I B1 I C I

(fixed J

(A') optional addition (fixed)

Bi

option: choose one

[fixed)

D fixed, but subject to elaboration if desired

etc.

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FORMULAIC ELEMENTS IN VEDIC MYTH

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Different versions of a Vedic myth also display this type of structure. Within a basically fixed narrative structure, different versions will choose to include or omit certain optional episodes or details, or focus especially on one episode. They can also show systematic variation at particular points in their structure, making a choice of various alternatives based on their appropriateness to the exegetical point. One of the places in myth most open to this systematic variation is what I will call the "Ritual Remedy", the mechanism that sets the story to rights. This will often differ depending on what weapons are considered most effective in each separate tradition: a particular saman in the Sama Veda Brahmai;ias, for example, where Yajur Veda texts will offer a particular oblation.

Let us consider the Svarbhanu story in this light. We know the first sentence. This can, in the separate versions, be followed by certain optional elements. 1) A statement of the result: 'he did not shine forth' and 2) the first effort: 'the gods sought an expiation for him'. This is followed by a fixed element: the solution or remedy, but this solution involves a choice: a) Soma and Rudra healed him; 2) the gods did, 3) the seer Atri did, 4) the gods and seers together. Moreover, 2 can feed recursively into 3 (gods try and fail, so they enlist Atri). The darkness is removed. This may be the end of the myth, or it may feed into a separate sub-episode: what happened to the darkness re{lloved from the sun. (It got transformed into sheep.) Thus, as in ritual we have both fixed and optional elements in the myth, and certain fixed points in the myth offer a multiple choice situation. Unfortunately there is no time to examine this in detail, especially in its verbal manifestations. But we can look at one element, the statement of the solution (which is, remember, the part of the myth where the choices are the freest). Yet the verbal statement of the solution, the remedy, anchors the myth. Whoever saves the sun and with whatever aid (e.g. by a chant or ritual performance), the verb phrase describing the action is almost always the same. Despite the apparent fluidity of the solution, there is a formulaic verbal phrase to act as a fixed reference point in the presentation of the plot, very like the variables in the fixed opening sentences of the vehicle myths we discussed above. 12. Fixed points in the narrative of a myth

tasya dev'5 t4m6 'pa&Jinan tAyasmat tAm6 'paibnan tAsya yAt pratham4'!'l tAmo 'p4ibnan tAsya somarudr~v evaftat tam6 'pahatam tasya somarudrau tat tam6 'p;ija&Jinatub tasya deva divaklrtyais tamo 'pa11hnaq tasyatrir bhasena tamo 'paban tabhir asrnat tamo 'pa11bnan tad atrir apahan tair asya tamo 'pa&Jinan tasyatrayas tamo 'pajiibamsanta tasya purastat tamo 'paja&Jinub 01g1tlz•dby

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MS 11.5.2, IV.5.7 KS XI.5 TS 11.1.2.2 SB V.3.2.2 SBK Vll.2.1.1 PB IV.6.13 PB Vl.6.8, XIV.11.14 PB XXlll.16.2

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"(X (using Y)) smashed off the darkness. n There is little time, and perhaps little need, for a closing statement. I would simply like to say that as in every other facet of Vedic studies, close attention to language seems the key to understanding the mythology in prose texts. And study of the linguistic form of these tales suggests that they have maintained their identity remarkably unchanged through the centuries, amid the splintering into schools and subschools, and despite their employment in a range of exegetical circumstances.

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Jared Klein

On Verbal Accentuation in the Rigveda 0. Oldenberg's- 1906 study of verbal accentuation within nonsubordinate clauses in the Rigveda remains to this day the most complete treatment of this phenomenon and was for its time a model of linguistic description. Nearly all the relevant data are presented, but the discussion is couched in terms which are not always easy to relate to factors which would today be considered germane to syntactic analysis. This paper represents an attempt to reanalyze Oldenberg's data (together with some additions of our own) within a somewhat larger linguistic framework. The basic question we shall pose is this: Is it possible to reduce verbal accentuation in the Rigveda to one or a few fundamental principles? Before answering this, let us review the conditions for this phenomenon. For convenience, we shall take the categories presented by Macdonell (1916:46668) with a few minor revisions of our own. A. A finite verb in a main clause is unaccented, with two major exceptions: 1) It begins a sentence or coincides with the beginning of a pada. Contiguous verbs are considered to belong to separate sentences and are all accented, except for the first, if it is not itself sentence or pada-initial. One or more words occurring between two verbs and logically belonging to both are treated as belonging to the first only, and the following verb is accented as sentence-initial. A verb preceded by one or more sentence or pada-initial vocatives is accented as though it were sentence or pada-initial. 2) A verb not sentence or pada-initial according to the criteria just stated is accented when followed immediately by the particle Id. B. A verb in a subordinate clause is accented, whether the clause is marked as such by a relative pronoun or subordinating conjunction or particle or possesses no segmental subordinator. C. The first of two antithetical clauses is frequently accented, especially when the antithesis is clearly indicated by identical words used in correlation, e.g. anya- ... anya-, ca ... ca, va ... va. D. A non-initial verb in a clause following the 2nd pers. pl. impv. ~ta 'come!' is accented. Briefly to discuss these individual categories, the accentuation of a verb in sentence-initial position is an inheritance from Proto-IndoEuropean, where all sentence-initial words were accented. Accentuation in this position seems to have possessed a demarcative value, signalling a new start-up and serving iconically and pragmatically as an attention-getting device. Unlike Semitic, for example, Indo-European shows no sentential • This paper is a much abbreviattd version of Klein, 1992. This last work provides complete discussion of the entire range of data bearing on the phenomenon under investigation, including detailtd philologic;al discussion of individual passages. Such detail is generally eschewed in the present version with reference to the longer work, where warranttd. Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts, td. M. Wi~l HarvarA Oriental S6i'e;s..9ll,ff Minora 2, Cambridge 1997 Ongmal from Lligmzeo cy U v~ d na ugr6 dart .i;;iatt1 aqa.., babildht 11 "Wishing to destroy harmful deceit which is without Indra, he sharpens the sharp tips (of his arrows) for attack; where there (were) debts, he who goes after our obligations has always rq>elled the uncertain tomorrows (i.e. the repeated assurance "I'll give it back tomorrow")." Lommel (Der arische Kriegsgott 1939, 17, note 2) admits that punishment is sometimes mentioned in connection with Indra. but does not thinlc it to be characteristic. As against his view, I thinlc it to be decidedly characteristic for an ideal king (which Indra is certainly imagined to be) who is responsible for the wcll-bcing of his subjects (sec below). 10 ydtra devdm rghaya~ I vl.fvam dyudhya tk.a It I r...tm indra vandmr dhan I "where you fought against all the heavenly ones, you alone against them who were raging, you, o Indra, against the jealous, by day, .•. •

11

Wda1tcarri sfndhum arilJlln mahihid

vdjretJilna 144~ sdm pipqa I ajavdso javlnlbhir viV{icdn. •• "By means of his grealness he made the river stream upwards. With bis dub he aasbed the cart of Dawn, with his swift ones ( = discs? steeds?) tearing asunder hers that were not so swift ...• 12 8. •And also this manly and valiant deed did you perform, o Indra, that you beat this WOtpafl mcdita\ing harm, the daughter of the sl\Jrigiral from Dlgltlzeo by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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I think it is no myth at all. The ~edic Indians had apparently no word for the category 'Time'. There is the word kala denoting a special point of time (later the moment of death), and words for different time sections, such as day and night, month, season, year. But how would they express the duration of time, the flow or passing by of time, which causes people to grow old? They did it by the metaphor of the 'dawns' , which again and again will come and pass by, letting people lose their youthful beauty (1.179.l Lopamudra's words to Agastya),13 and which are personified by Goddess U~. who wears out the life-time of the mortals (1.92.10).'4 Against Indra, however, time cannot prevail; he cannot be made old by the 'autumns', (i.e. the years}, months and days (6.42.7),15 he overcomes days and nights in spite of the gods (as I understand RV 4.30.3)16 and he also overcomes the wetness of dew (4.30.7),17 which may be considered as being brought by Dawn or the dawns (5.59.5 .Mnucitras ... Ufasas). He smashes the cart of Dawn, with whom he is otherwise on best terms, but who is characterised, in 4.30.8, as 'the woman who aims at damage' (durhar.iayllvarri striyam}, just as he lets flow back a big river, against the law of gravity in space, in 2.15.6 (see above). By stealing the sun's wheel or chariot he stops the course of the sun for Kutsa (4.30.4),18 just as he pushes it forward again for (the same or) another mortal (4.30.6).'9 Now, in the context of the hymns 2.15 and 4.30, where all these incidents are mentioned or described, it is quite clear that they cannot be meant as myths: both songs deal mainly with numerous deeds of help Indra performed for people in emergency, for those who could not help 9. You smashed Dawn down, the daughter of the sky, you, the great one, her who only deemed bendf to be great. I 0. Dawn ran away from her shattered cart, being afraid that the bull might push her down. 11. Her chariot lies in the river VipU, totally shattered. She henelf bad gone away to the far-off regions.• 13 "For many autumns(= years) have I exerted myself, day and night, many dawns that make people old. Old age makes beauty disappear like a cloud ... " 14 "The old one who is being born again and again, adorning herself always with the same colour, the heavenly (U"'5) wean out the lifetime of the mortal, like a skilful winner in the pme of dice, who diminishes the stakes (of the others)." 15 • ... whom neither years nor months make old, nor do the days emaciate Indra.• (Cf. also 3.32.9cd) 16 •All gods whatsoever have fought against you, o Indra, inumuch as (or: at that time when) you overcame day and night.• 17 •And are you (now), o sbatterer of defences, even more ualous than that, o generous one? At that time you overcame the Danu (demoness, or morning-dew!)." 18 •And where you, o Indra, stole the sun's wheel for the sake of Kutsa, who was fighting against those who bad attacltcd him." 19 "And where you, o Indra, released the sun (again) for the mortal one (Kutsa or somebody else?) you supported Elda (the sun's horse or name of a man?) with your

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themselves, for instance Dabhni who was attacked by enemies whom Indra kept asleep: probably by stopping the U~, as one might suppose, and there is some good reason for this supposition, as the dawns themselves are requested (in 4.51.13) to bring light to the generous, but to keep the P~is (the misers?) unawakened, without light. By stopping the stream of a big river Indra helps those who are not able to swim (their names differ in different hymns); the famous dialogue between Visvamitra and the two rivers Vipli and Sutudrt (RV 3.33) may well be a reflection of this special power of Indra, who in the beginning set the rivers free to flow. Other helpful deeds ascribed to Indra (but not connected with space and time) are in favour of socially neglected persons like children born to unmarried girls or lame and old people with crutches, blind people etc.; they are mentioned in many hymns addressed to lndra.20 These deeds, however, did not much attract the attention of scholars, as it seems, for they were not interesting enough for establishing an 'Indra mythology'. But they are quite interesting with regard to the 'Indra religion', to a popular belief in Indra which can still be traced in the Pali Jataka tales, where Indra or Sakka is mostly depicted in a positive way: either as a helper of the virtuous in difficult situations2 1 or as a teacher and punisher of those who do not live in the right way. Often he puts someone to a test (especially when Sakka is the reborn Bodhisatta)22 and rewards him or her afterwards for being virtuous, whereas only a few stories show him as a mischiefmaker (seven out of the 66 stories in which he appears).23 Even in the Brahmai:ias, whose authors were not at all especially fond of Indra, but rather liked to degrade him in favour of the sacrifice and its mysterious and magical powers, there can be found some few stories in which Indra helps mortal beings: for instance the story of Manu's wife who is saved by Indra from being sacrificed (KS 30.1) or the story of Apala who is cured of a skin-disease (Jaim.Br.1.220-221) - a story which occurs already in the ~gveda (8.91.7) -, or even the story of Rohita in the Sunal_isepalegend (AB 7.13-18). who is detained by Indra from returning home to his father (and being consequently sacrificed to Varui:ia). But Indra's means of helping are ethically somewhat dubious in the Brahmai:ias. It is by no means true what Ruben said, in this respect, that 'only a small group of Vedic Brahmins tried to keep his (Indra's) religion alive';24 on the contrary, they rather try to diminish those great deeds of his that are praised in the ~gvedic hymns. In their stories he is no longer able to slay his enemies

20

For Indra's connection with and his help for women, see my article "Indra and women" in BSOAS Vol. LIV, Part 1,1991, p. 68-74. 21 In the Jatalw nos. 194, 220, 243, 347, 386, 417, 472, 485, 519, 531, 539, 542 22 The Bodhisana takes his rebirth as Sakka in the Jatakas nos. 31, 202, 228, 300, 344, 372, 374, 386, 391, 410, 417, 450, 458, 458, 469, and 512; of these nos. 300, 410, 450, 469, and 512 tell how he puts someone to the test, whereas nos. 202, 228, 372, 374, 391, 450, and 469 show him as a teacher or punisher) 23 Jataka nos. 281, 316, 354, 433, 480, 488, 523, 526. 24 "Indra's fight against Vftra in the Mahabharata" (Felicitation Volume presented to S. K. Belvalkar, Benares IJSl, p. J 13·t 23). p.118. Origiral from UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Dlgltlzeo by l.:.OOg

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without the help of others or of trickery,25 and his most praiseworthy deed in the ~gveda, the slaying of Vrtra in order to release the waters, is given a new context and converted into Brahmin-murder,26 the most deadly sin, Vrtra being raised to the rank of a Brahmin, by that time. It may be true that the new religious movements, such as Vai~1,1avism, Buddhism, Jainism, had no interest in celebrating the old Vedic god Indra, but the example by which Ruben wants to demonstrate this for Buddhism, the Kulavaka Jataka (No. 31). is hardly a lucky choice: for precisely in this Jataka it is the Bodhisatta who is reborn as Sakka and shows pity for a nest of birds; he prefers to withdraw from his battle with the demons in order not to destroy these birds, running the risk of being defeated by his enemies. 27 Thus his description is quite in accordance with the specific ethical values of the Buddhists, and it is no wonder that the story is told of the Bodhisatta reborn as Sakka. It all goes to show the high esteem of Indra that Buddhist story-tellers had to take into consideration, at least as far as their audiences were concerned, even if they themselves were no longer convinced of Indra's ethical qualities. As for the Indian epics, it may be noticed that in the main plot of the Ramayai:ia as well as the Mahabharata Indra plays a quite positive role: he sends Matali together with his own chariot to Rama, in order to help him to win the final battle against Rava1,1a; in the Mahabharata he is the divine father of the perhaps most outstanding hero, Arjuna, whom he entertains in his heaven and equips with weapons for the final battle. In the episodes not belonging to the main story, however, which we owe to a great extent to the Brahmanic tradition into whose hands the epic narrative had passed, we find the same tendencies as in the Brahma1,1as still further developed: Indra

25 Thus he needs Dadhyaftc's bones to defeat the Asuras in JB 3.64 (which may be traced back to an allusion in the J!.V J.84.13-14, see R. SOhnen, "Dadhrcis Knochen und Pippaladas Zorn", XXllI. Deutscher Orientalistentag 1985 in WClrzburg, Ausgewihlte Vortrlge, Stuttgart 1989, p. 420 ff.); when wrestling with Vi§varopa T~!fa, he asks a carpenter to cut off his enemy's heads (MS 2.4.1, KS 12.10); he is able to slay Vrtra only because Tvaftr has used the wrong accent in the compound indraiatrv- (TS 2.5.2.1 ); in slaying Narnuci, Indra has to resort to a cunning interpretation of the covenant with Namuci (TB J.7.J.6-8, PB 12.6.8); de. 26 This starts already in the Taittinya·Sal'flhi~. which has an elaborate section on the distribution of brahmahatya (TS 2.5.1.2-5), absent from the parallel versions of Indra's killing of V!'lfa in the other Brahm~as. 27 In the Jatakamala version of the story, the Sakrajataka (JM 11). Sakra is seen in an even more favourable light: he holds the field, while the gods flee; he perceives the nest of birds before they are actually in danger (and would start shrieking. as in the Pali version); he tells Matali to avoid them and insists on turning the chariot, against Matali's warning that this will unavoidably lead to their own destruction.

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is not only accused of Brahmin-murder,28 but also of the sin of seducing a Brahmin's wife (Ahalya).29 After this digression to later periods of Indian tradition, where we can observe the decline of the Indra religion, I propose to return to the ~gveda, in order to give a sketch of some other features characterising Indra, which are perhaps more celebrated than those already dealt with. Each Vedologist is certainly well conversant with Indra's primordial deeds, which he performed with his own personal strength, as it is said, such as propping asunder heaven and earth (which action is also ascribed to Varu~a, e.g. in RV 7.86.1, but performed by means of the magical effect of truth); 30 he fastened the earth and the mountains, in order to make the world habitable for living beings; by slaying Vrtra (who may be, in a realistic sense, interpreted as a natural dam caused by a landslide in the mountains, cf. e.g. 4.19.4) he released the rivers which provide nourishment for all living beings (they are called viJvddhena~. lit. 'having udders for all', in 4.19.2 and 6); by means of the magic power of speech he split the rock and freed the cows, with the help of (or as?) Brhaspati,31 together with the Ailgiras, in order to provide nourishment for the human race: these deeds are celebrated throughout all Ma~ "m6nsa- > Moilua . The name of the Muses in Greek thus goes back to an Inda-European poetic doctrine, which is mirrored as well in the Vedic word for those unmindful of the poetic message of Vac. 1 Vac is the divinised •wokw- , which we see also in 1

Some lime aftor writing these lines I was able to see, through !he kindness of the author, V. N. Toporov's paper 'MouO'ai "muzy". Soobratenija ob imeni i predi.slorii obraza (k ocen.ke frakijskogo vldada),' in Antitnaja Balkanisti/ca i sravnitel'naja gramm. 28·86, ed. by Dlgltlzeo by

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the name of the 'chiefest of aU the Muses.' (Hesiod, Thcog. 79), Ka>v\1-6m] (*wok"'-a ). Recall that Greek and Vedic arc the two traditions which best preserve the metrical form of the Indo-Europcan poetic tradition. And the verb form lqiyanti of I0.125.4c finds its only exact cognate in Myccnean kitijesi [ktijensi]. The Greek adjective O.µovuos 'without taste or refinement,' is certainly an independent creation directly from µowa, probably no older than the fifth century (dramatists), but still a noteworthy synchronic parallel to Vedic amant1'-. I have pointed out elsewhere (Lalies 5, 1987, 6) the hidden meaning of Vac's message to the poet in I0.125.4d (Jrudhl...). It is an extreme phonetic figure, an exhaustive classification of the speech sounds of the language with a single example for each class: a i u, t d dh, m, r, v, §. By this message Speech 'se donnc totalement a l'auditcur.' Recall Saussure's observation: ".. .le poetc sc livrait, et avait pour ordinaire metier de se livrcr a l'analysc phonique des mots: c'cst cctte science de la formc vocale des mots qui faisait probablcmcnt des les plus ancicns temps indo-curopcens, la superiorite, la qualite particulierc, du Kavis des Hindous, du Vatts des Latins, etc." (cited from J. Starobinski, Les mots sous /es mots 35f. apud Toporov 216 n. 69). Vac's whole message of I0. 125.4a-c: mdya s6 dnnam atti y6 vipMyati ... yd Jm Jrr.i6ti ... amantdvo. .. §rudh( ... Jraddhivdrri te vadami strikingly recalls the Muses' epiphany to Hesiod, Theog. 26-8 'ITOLµEVES O.ypav>-..01, ictiic. i>-..irxEa, yaUTipES otov. iOµEv "1EVlifa 'ITOAAa >-..iruv ETV/.'OLITLV oµo'ia, iOµEv ti· f~· i9tll.wµ£v a>-..719ia Y71pwau9a1

'Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.' Note Hesiod's invocation of the Muses, Works and Days 1-10, esp. 9I 0: \!'.ll

1Cnlll7L

....

• ' LUWV aiwv TE

•••

. . . ET.,jruµa µv91]uaiµ71v 'Hear thou, sec and hear ... ... I would tell of true things.' Like the poet of the hymn to Vac, Hesiod closes the invocation with a complex phonetic figure: The palindrome et!tuma muthesaimen calls S. B. Bcmltejn ct al. (Moskva. 1977). The wealth of cthnoscmantic data marshalled in this awesomely wide-ranging paper, and the semiotic structures there elaborated, have their full validity. But they arc for me finally not sufficient to justify a linguistic link (in Greek terms) ,.afxro. - µi)s-, even allowing for a putative Thracian mediation, and contamination with other forms as Toporov suggests. 0191t1zea by

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attention to and indexes the anagram MUthtSAlmi!n which closes the ring by repeating the first word of the invocation, the Muses, MOUSAI in line l. There can be little doubt that these Vedic and Greek examples reflect a common ideology of the theory and practice of poetics. It is as much a common inheritance from the proto-poetic language 0 prime as the verb forms 1e>-..fJ8L and srudhf are a common inheritance from the proto-language 0. For the ideology of the Muses in Greek compare M. Detienne, Les Maitres de verite dans la Grece archaique (Paris 1967). The very title strikes a resonance with India and the notion of rta. The Muses are the daughters of Memory, Mnemosyne; the two roots •mon- (•men-) and •mna(•mnah-, built on •men-) recur precisely in Vedic man- 'think' and mna(Br., S. 'commit to memory and hand down'), and Anatolian Luvian mal'think' (dissimilated from •man-, like Hitt. laman 'name') and mna- 'see.' We have here the very lexical expression of a set of related notions whose modalities remain to be more fully understood. It is surely no accident that these two lexical expressions coexist only in the three earliest attested branches of the Indo-European family. Central to this ideology of the Muses for Detienne is the doctrine of the efficacity of the spoken word, which 'institutes by its own virtue a symbolico-religious world which is reality itself.' Memory is a 'religious power which confers on the poetic word its magico-religious status.' We need only compare Gk. i£pov µ.ivo~ 'holy power' with Vedic 4ire7Ja mdnasa, 'with fervent spirit,' Hittite mill 'force, power,' RV 8.48.7a, and the maximlike formula of l.152.2b saty6 mantr~ kavi$asta fghavan 'true is the powerful formula pronounced by the poet' with Gathic Avestan Y 31.6 hai~lm mf~r;im

'true formula, real precept' In what follows next I want to examine some of the devices the Vedic poets deployed in their messages, and to show that even when they may seem resolutely synchronic they are still part of a diachronic inheritance. The poetic grammar distinguishes levels of sound and meaning. On the level of sound alone we have the domain of metrics and of phonetic figures; where sound and grammatical meaning alone are in play we have figures of grammar. On a higher level where meaning per se is pertinent, we find the syntactic and semantic components. This is the domain of formulas, which are the vehicle of themes, collectively in our particular case the traditional culture of the Indo-Europeans. A pragmatic component would be the domain of poet-performer/audience interaction. The essential characteristic of verse for Roman Jakobson ( 1987:71) is that "equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence.ft In the case of metrics and other rhythmic features, the equivalence tokens are syllables or syllable types. With phonetic figures like alliteration, rhyme, assonance, etc. the equivalence tokens are speech sounds, sound sequences, 0191t1zea by

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or distinctive features. In the case of grammatical figures, the equivalence tokens are morphemes, syntagmas, or words or phrase groups. In all instances the fundamental organizing principle is recurrence (repetition) or sequencing (counting) of these equivalence tokens: they have no inherent semantic content. We shall explore some manifestations of this tradition in the Rig Veda. J. Schindler called my attention some years ago to RV 8.103.l la, where we find a remarkable contrapuntal figure opposing phonetic identity ('sameness') and morphological difference ('otherness'): udita y6 nidita yeditl vhu 'who at sunrise procures the tethered wealth' The grammatical analysis and morphological analysis are completely different in each case: ud-ita toe. sg., ni-dita nt. pl., vedi-ta tr-agent noun. Note also that the line finishes with alliteration y- y-, and begins and ends with the identical vowel .ll- -.u.; a little ring which functions as a frame. Phonetic and grammatical figures have an indexical function: they point to the message, the text, and call attention to it. We saw in Greek the phonetic palindrome which marks the end of the invocation to the Muses in Hesiod's Works and Days; in Vedic the beginning of the myth of the maiden Apala, RV 8.91.la is similarly marked by a palindrome. avayatf kanyt RV 8.70.6ab provides a veritable symphony of sound figures, including alliteration, repetition, concatenation, and phonetic framing: i papratha mahini ~i;iya ~n vfSva Savistha savasa The two etymological figures in succession (vr~- vr~-, Jav- Jav-) are linked by a word combining bothy- and -fi-. The resulting sequence vr~i:i--vr~.n v.§v. tv...§.v could be described syntactically in terms of the resultant word order as "heavy poetic noun phrase extraposition." Lines cd continue the pattern with alliteration .ii- .ii-, repetition .i!Y.il..·· -.illl.-, and a concatenating phonic echo iSmArn ava maghavan g6mati vraje vajriil citribhir lltlbhi~ The extraposed instrumentals 'with wondrous help' recall the Early Irish poem (Murphy, Lyrics 4) beginning Adram in Coimdid 'Let us adore the Lord cusnaib aicdib amraib with his wondrous works'

var

Verse 9 of the same hymn gives good examples of alliteration, rhyme and consonant play, combined with a curious pattern of anaphora. I give first the sound figures in boldface: ud o su no vaso mahe mr§hva §Ora ridhase ud o ~ mahyal maghavan maghattaya ud indra §ravase mahe "Stretch out well (your hand) for us, o Good One, for great generosity, o Hero; 0191t1zea by

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(stretch) out well for great giving, o Generous one, (stretch) out (well) for great fame, o Indra." The anaphora is in greater part elliptic, such that we have a sort of "dwindle gappingn: ud o ~u ... mr§asva ... u'd o ~u, ... ud ... Observe that the constituents of the verb phrase in lines ab must be read, so to speak, 'vertically.' A widespread Indo-European convention or rule of poetic grammar which surely goes back to the proto-language is the convention of verse line = sentence. Grammatical phenomena sensitive to sentence or clause boundary (initial, final, second, pre-final) will occur also at verse or hemistich boundary, as the accented mrJasva in this example. The metrical constituents of this brhatl quatrain are 8-8-12-8, but the clauses are in fact three, of 16- 12-8 syllables, corresponding iconically to the "dwindle • n gapping. The etymological figure (jigura etymologica) is widespread in IndoEuropean poetic traditions, and not confined to these; it is for example common in Semitic. But it is rare to find the exuberance of RV 6.5.4c. tapa tapi~tha tapasa tapasvan Etymological figure becomes polyptoton, anaphoric repetition of a word in different grammatical forms, also beloved of the Vedic poets as of the Greeks. Saussure once described RV I .I as a 'versified paradigm of Agni.' Sequential alliteration is generated by sequential etymological figures in RV 6.32.3cd pural:i purohj sakhibhil:i sakhtyan dr!ha ruroja kavfbhil:i kavfl:i san The words standing outside the sequential alliterations are in fact phonetically linked to them: drllut ruroja - purolui, san rhyming (as well as alliterating) with sakhlyan. The vertical link of the latter closes the frame or ring begun by the vertical constituents pural:i sakhryan dr!ha san The function of metrics or other rhythmic features is to organize and demarcate the message (text). From the comparison of the several IE metrical traditions various PIE verse lines can be reconstructed, as is well known. Aside from metrics a demarcative function is also served by the recurrence device known as ring composition or framing: the beginning and ending of a discourse or complex utterance with the same or equivalent word, phrase or sound sequence, which transforms the so bounded sequence into a set. This device, sometimes with more complex 'nesting' of recurrences, is widespread in archaic Indo-European traditions as a 0191t1zea by

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compositional technique. Smaller rings as well as large are found, as in these Vedic examples. For Greek cf. Hesiod Works and Days 453-4:

/JOE OO> 1ea( O.µa{av 7Tapa Ff.p-ya fJ0EtTtTu1 RV 6.5.4c above gave an 'exuberant' etymological figure; verse 7 of the same hymn provides a four-line verb-initial anaphora, in each case followed by a phonetic figure of repetition. ab'lma t'f!l k!mam agne t'votf aSy!ma rayff!l rayiva~ suvfram uyAma vajam abhi vajayanto a$yjma dyumnam ajarajlira'!l te Anaphora and polyptoton ornament the popular hymn 6.75.2, in praise of the king's military accoutrements: dhUivana g! dhUivanajff!l jayema dh'nvana uvr!~ samado jayema dh"1ul;t ~atror apakamaf!1 kri:toti dh"1vana sarv~ pradiro jayema 'By the bow may we win cattle, by the bow the fight, By the bow may we win the thick battles; The bow makes the enemy lose desire; By the bow may we win all regions.' These sturdy lines cannot but recall the couplet of the seventhcentury Greek poet Archilochus (2 West):

3opl µ.iv J.1-0' µ.a(a µ.Eµayµ.f.v.,,. Ell 3opl a· OtllO) 'Iuµ.apuco>- 7rl11w a. Ell 3opl ICEICAtJ.1-EVO) Ell

'In my spear is my kneaded bread, in my spear Ismarian wine; I drink leaning on my spear.' Aside from the anaphora itself, these Greek lines have more than their share of phonetic embellishment (3opl .. . µ.o' ... 3opl ol-). alliteration (µ.iv µ.ot µ.a(a p.Ep.ayµ.f.11.,,), figura etymologica (µ.i(11 p.Ep.11y); and the grammatical figure of the repeated perfect middle participles with their reduplication projects a static, existential image. More important than the anaphora itself in these two passages is the common metrical technique, as one of the strategies of traditional oral formulaic composition among the Indo-European speaking peoples. The anaphora or iterated word or phrase is in all instances in both the Vedic and the Greek to the right of the metrical boundary, either at verse initial (#) or after the caesura: break (I) after 4 in Vedic 2a, after the bucolic diaeresis and the pentameter break in Archilochus. The equation of metrical and phraseological technique between Vedic

a·

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252 # # # #

•••1

# # # #

#

... 1

... #

I

...#

and Greek

' ···

is eloquent testimony to the lndo-Europcan background of Vedic and Greek poetics. Constituents of syntagmas like noun phrases of Noun and Adjective, Noun and Genitive commonly adjoin one another. But the separation or disjunction of the two is widespread in Indo-Europcan poetic texts, and freedom of word order has been signalled as a characteristic feature of poetic language in these traditions, and reconstructible for the poetry of the proto-language. This freedom is in fact governed by rules of poetic grammar; thus the disjoined constituents of noun phrases typically adjoin metrical colon boundaries, which are themselves formula boundaries, and it is precisely formulaic phrases which arc particula.rly liable to syntactic disjunction. Thus before caesura (I) and adjoining verse boundary (#) we find in Vedic distracted formulaic noun phrases like devA (#) pi ta sutam

udajayanta yffie fndro astu Wmam

# #

or

#deyAyawtlm I amrtaya ~111sa (#) (the last could also be thought of as distracted constitutcnts of a figura etymologica). Compare from the most anciently attested cognate languages the following, where distracted noun phrases straddle the normally sentence-final verb: Greek neusj l.paremenos okuporo jsj # 'sitting in swift ships' Luvian aliti I awinta Wilusati # 'came from steep Wilusa' Faliscan sociai I porded karai # ' gave to his dear girlfriend' South Picene mefiio I veiat yepetj # 'lies in the middle of the tomb' Latin ad aedis l.vcnimus Circai # 'we came to Circe's house' Gaulish ocddamoo I delgu lioda # 'I hold the drinks of the next' Such a syntactic device can be safely assumed for the poetic grammar of the proto-languagc. RV 9.9J.5ab contains two sequential noun phrases with distraction of constituents adjacent to metrical boundary, as discussed above: sa pratnavan I n•vrase vitvavara stlktAya path8J:i I kri:iuhi pricaJ:i 'make ready as before the paths for the new hymn' The 'new hymn,' 'new poem' (navyas1 matt~ 8.74.7a) is a formulaic topos or convention which recurs in Greek as well, presumably generated from the Dlgltlzeo by

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same ideology: cf. Pindar's VfOV vµvov (Is. 5.63), vµvwv IJ(WTipwv (01. 9.49). Now formulas can undergo change in transmission across time while maintaining their essential identity; they may also remain intact but their deployment change. RV 9.91 above in the tri~tubh meter is attributed by the Anukrama1.1t to the sage Kuyapa. RV 9.9 in gayatrt meter is attributed to the sage Asita, descendant of Kuyapa; both names are familiar in later S3J!lhita and brahma1.1a literature. 9.9.8 contains the same formula as 9.91.5 ab, and is obviously related:

ntl Divyase navtyase soktiya sadhaya pathliJ:i pratnavlid rocaya rucaJ:i 'Prepare the paths for every new hymn; as before make your lights shine' We have in this verse a clear run of sequential, concatenating alliterations. The pattern is quite possibly a nonce creation; but in other lndo-European traditions (with fixed initial stress) it will become the "constitutive device of the sequence." The oldest examples are from the 6th cent. B.C. South Picene in Italy: postin : viam : videtas : tetis : tokam alies : esmen : vepses : vepeten : (Marinetti TE.2) The pattern is very common in Early Irish poetry, as in the 6th and 7th century Leinster genealogical poems; cf. Murphy, Early Irish Metrics, ch. 2 (Note that the S. Pie. examples fall neatly into Irish heptasyllabic 73 lines). I have treated elsewhere the history of the lndo-European formula *pah2- wihro- pek'u'protect men (and) livestock' in Vedic, Avestan, Umbrian and Latin. Note here only that AV 8.7.1 1 trayantam... puru~ pa~um has recreated one alliteration, and Old Latin shows sequential alliteration in Cato Agr. 141.3 pastores pecuaque salua seruassis It is the meaningful level of poetic language, the domain of poetic syntax (the traditional area of stylistics) and formulaics, that affords the greatest opportunities for comparison, historical analysis, and reconstruction. One of the characteristics of poetic language in many traditional societies is the extensive use of formulas, whole phrases which are repeated with little or no variation, rather than recreated. These have traditionally received the greatest attc;ntion, and are most familiar; cf. the 0191t1zea by

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work of Rudiger Schmitt cited earlier. We can therefore pass over these quickly. The comparison of characteristic formulas in various traditional lndo-European languages and societies permits their reconstruction as far back as the original common language and society. These formulas are whole noun phrases or verb phrases, with reconstructible semantics, syntax, lexical expression, morphology, and phonology; their complexity is a remarkable testimony to the power of the comparative method in historical linguistics. These formulas tend to make reference to culturally significant features or phenomena -- "something that matters" -- which accounts for their repetition and long-term preservation. A whole network of formulaic, semantic and thematic relations in a variety of lndo-European traditions attests to the importance of the notion 'imperishable fame' in the ancestral culture. RV 8.103, which was cited earlier, begins with discourse-initial verb in cataphoric function, referring forward in the text: # adarsi gatuvittamo 'the best pathfinder appeared' This discourse device as a compositional technique is also inherited, cf. Sappho 31.1 o{{3os 'AwoA.A.wv

' ... breathing out gore; then Phoebus Apollo boasted over her.' A Vedic poet could in a comparable situation boast of 'having found the hidden word like the track of the cow' (RV 4.5.3c padarr na g6r apaga/harr vividvan).

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For (RV 8.41.5) ya usra1.1am aprcya vcda namani guhya sa kav(l:i kavya puru rOpal"fl dyaur iva pu~yati 'He who knows the secret hidden names of the dawn cows, he the kavi brings to flower his many poetic arts, as heaven its beauty.'

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Michael Witzel

The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu (Materials on Vedic SekbJls, 8) Le probltme de la Jakha est ou centre du probltmu vldiquu, ... si I'on rtussissoit a ttablir ... la filiAIWn du koks, on saurmt du mtme coup c.omment s'ut dtvelopf" I'ensemble du vldisme.

§ 0. § I. § I.I. § 1.2. § 1.3. § 2. § 2.1. § 2.2.

§ 2.3. § 2.4. § 2.5. § 2.6. § 2.7. § 3. § 3.1. § 3.2.

§ 3.3. § 4. § 4.1. § 4.2. § 5. § 5.1. § 5.2. § 5.3. § 5.4. § 5.5. § 6. § 6.1. § 6.2. § 6.3. § 6.4. § 6.5.

§ 7.

THE NATURE OF THE VEDIC CANON THE ~GVl!DA The structure of the RV collection The historical lnckground Two Stages in the collection of the I:tgvedlc materials COLLECTIONS OF THE MANTRA PERIOD IN THE LANDS OF THE KURU The social and political conditions: The Kuru realm The texts of the Mantra period The 5amaveda The Yajurveda The Atharvaveda The I:tgveda Khila Collection The Four Vedas FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE CANON: EARLY YAJURVl!DA PROSE AND THE BRAHMA?:IAS The Historical Background The early Brahmar;ia style collections of the CarS, MS/KS, TS The early Yajurveda $arithitas of the Kuru realm: MS, KSIKpS THE TEXTS OF THE PA1ilCAl.A LANDS The Taittirtyas and their subschools Early Brahmar;ia texts of the Paftcala lands: Saiyayani and JaiminJya texts THE EASTERN TERRITORIES The social and political situation The eastern fringe area: Kosala The Satapatha Brahmar;ia of the Kll)va school Baudhayana Srautasotra Kau~taki Brahma.i:ia THE EASTERN CORE AREA: VIDEHA The later Aitareya Brahmai;ia (AB 5· 8) Sakalya's ~gveda redaction Vajasaneyi Saiphita Canon formation in the east UpanifldS THE VEDIC SCHOOLS IN THE LATE VEDIC AND POST- VEDIC PERIOD

Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts, ed. M. Witzel Harvard Oriental Series,~\\Minora 2, Cambridge 1997 Digitized by

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SUMMARY : Canon, schools and politics

...... ,... § 0. THE NATURE OF THE VEDIC CANON

A* detailed list of the texts which make out the Vedic canon does not exist in Vedic or early post-Vedic literature. There are, of course, medieval lists of Vedic texts and schools, such as those contained in the Prapaflcahrdaya. In the Vedic period itself, we find incipient lists which stress the particular division of the Vedic texts into three (tray1) or four branches (RV, SV, YV; AV). As will be shown, this division became typical as a result of the Kuru reformation of the Vedic ritual. Yet a Vedic corpus, as more or less fixed canon, was recognized and quoted by the early grammarians (Pai:iinil c. 400 B.C., Patai\jali2 c. 150 B.C.}, and it was detailed in the Pali canon3 (c. 250 B.C.) which already knew of the complete Vedic corpus.4 As is well known, the Vedic canon is not scripture in the literal sense: the Vedas were composed orally and they always were and still are, to some extent, oral literature. They must be regarded as tape recordings, made during the Vedic period and transmitted orally, and usually without the change of a single word.s The strictly oral transmission applies to the prose • A lint, brid" version of this paper was read at the Toronto confttencc on Canon in 1988, organiud by D. Oxtoby and J. Chen. A section dealing with canon formation in the East was read at Frciburg. Germany, in Dcccmbtt 1996. A book-length version of this paper will appear separately. • For the present topic, sec especially L. Rcnou, La taJw vtdiqaus tt la formation du Veda, Paris 1947 and N. Tsuji, Gmzon Yajur1'weda Bunlcen I Existent YV liraaturt, Tokyo 1970. I Stt P. Thieme, Pal;iini and du Veda, Allahabad 1935, sec now J. Bronkhont, P~ and the Veda rcconsidtted, Pll~inian Studies, ed. by M. Deshpande and S. Bbate, Ann Arbor 1991, 75121. 2 Stt W. Rau, D~ vedisclun Zitatt im Vyolcara~a-Mahab~ya, Stuttgart 1985; Author, On the Archetype of Patalljali's Mahab~ Il/ 29 (1986), pp. 249·259 3 Of course, the problem of the time of the redaction of the Pili canon remains. Yct the testimony about Vcdic schools, found at inconspicuous places in the Pali canon, i.s valuable. 4 "The old text of the mantras" (portl~a>rr mantapada'!') MN 2, p.169:95; the Padapa!ha: padalca Brahmins, the three Vedas and their transmitters (ON 1.88, Tbag 1248, Thlg 65, Mg.N. I p.163,166: 58,59, etc.), and even ancillary texts liU etymology, grammar, etc. (ON 2.13, MN 2.91.93, Bv. 38); sec Author, Tracing the Vedic dialects.~ dans w littlratvra indo-aryenna, ed. by Colette Caillat, Paris 1989, pp. 97-264; cf. Hillebrandt, Kkine <riften p. 309 sqq. 5 Strictly spcaltlng, only after the collection and redaction; yet even before redaction, the changes made arc minimal (sec below tl.3, n .35, 132 on diaskcuasis; but contrast M. Deshpande, ~cdil!troflcxiofi, Aryan and Non-Aryan in /ndU., ed. hv M. M. Deshpande · U11g1na 1f tom Dlgltlzeo by OOg UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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parts of the Vedas as well. These texts were taught and recited on the offering ground.6 Exceptions to the strictly oral tradition are rare. 7 The earliest surviving Vedic8 mss., written without accent marks,9 come from Nepal (c. 1040 A.D.); however, they have not been studied so far. The Four Vedas have been transmitted in various ~akhas or "branches", or as we usually call them, in "schools". The many Vedic schools developed from a very early time onwards, i.e. from the post-~gvedic period when the Mantra texts such as the AV and YV were composed and collected. A particular school represents the Brahmin community of a particular area, tribe, or small kingdom, or rather chieftainship. Each local school followed a particular form of ritual and pronunciation, as opposed to those of the neighboring areas. Thus, the early territory of a Vedic school usually coincides with that of a particular tribe or subtribe.10 Therefore, originally there was no canon of Vedic texts, no Vedic "Scripture", but only a canon of texts accepted by each school. Thus, one can say, with L. Renou: to know the development of the schools is to know that of the Veda. This means: all school texts taken together form the Vedic canon.I I It does not mean that all of these texts were accepted by all Brahmins. A working definition,12 thus, may be: the Vedic canon consists of and P. E. Hook, Ann Arbor 1979, p. 246). The situation of individual texts may differ: texts with a small basis of reciters (PS, SS, JaiminJya, Vadhnla, Maitray~. Ka!ha texts) have more deviations due to little control on the medieval written transmission on which our editions arc almost exclusively based. For dctaib see Author, Prolegqmena on AV tradition (forthc.). 6 MS 1.6.13 refers to the three fires with imam and amum 'th.ia one', and 'that one', while KS 8.4/KpS 6.9 already substitute the words: garhapatya, odanapacya and ahavanlya (observed by J. Narten, in her classes, c. 1970). Even the Vedic Sotras still show the emphatic use of the demonstrative pronoun: "he should do in that way", sec W. Caland, Ober das rituelk Sarra des Bawihayana, Leipzig 1903. 1 Note the "first" writing down of the Vedas by the Kashmiri Brahmin Vasukra, according to Albiruni, sec Albmlni's IndU.. An English ed. ... by Dr. Edword C. Sachau, p. 126; however, the tradition of PS points to a written archetype of c. 800-1000 A.D., sec Author, Die Atharvaveda-Tradition und die Paippalada-SaJphita. ZDMG, Suppkmentband VI, Stuttgart 1985, pp. 256-271; d. also Rau, Zur Tcxtkritik der BrhadaraJ:iyakopani'4d ZDMG 105, 1955, p. •5g-, on a poss.blc written archetype of BAU. 8 One has perhaps to exclude the Upani'4ds which have a scpasatc tradition in Vedantic cisdes, some Dharma texts and several Vedallgas. 9 Note that Orissa MSS ladt accent marks while these arc common elsewhere in the Middle Ages. 10 By 150 B.C., however, Patafljali gives a list of schools which dearly is unrealistic in part: There ase a surprising 21 schools of the RV, IOI schools of the YV, 1000 of the SV and 9 of the AV. I I The question what was excluded from these ~lcha collections bas not even been asked. An indication is given by H. Falk's investigation into Vedic rituals in the Pali canon (BEi 6, 225-254). which shows that certain rituals did not make it into the canon accepted by the various (surviving) Vedic schools. 12 In the longer version of this paper (forthc.) this will be discussed at length; also, major tradition additions to and questions such asl !igin an~ formation, gradual shifts in Ung11 al lfo Dlgltlzeo by OOg UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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the sum of all those texts in Vedic Sanskrit that originated in and were used by the various Vedic schools (Jakhas). Most of these canonical texts were composed by Brahmins for Brahmins. The texts stress proper praxis rather than belief, and one would be justified to speak of orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy. However, the Kuru system of !rauta rituall3 comes along with a complete set of mostly unstated (and largely unstudied) presuppositions and belief's, which are the basis of this authoritative system, an orthodoxy of sorts. The most important among them, perhaps, is the very act of belief in the efficacy of the system itself, by Jraddha.14 In this sense, I think, we can speak of a Kuru orthodoxy. Other peopleslS of Vedic Northern India did not believe (!rad-dha) in these tenets of Kuru orthodoxy and therefore did not follow Kuru orthopraxy (the post-~gvedic Jrauta ritual).16

exclusion from an emerging canon, the interpretation of (early) canon, the continuing power of "meaning" of canonical texts, expansion by inclusion of "commentaries", transmission in recitation and writing, etc. will be treated. J.Z. Smith's recently canonized (W. Doniger in Patton 1994, vii) but rather exclusive, sole criteria of closure and interpretation (Smith 1981, repeated by L. Patton et al. 1994) are not sufficient to explallt the phenomenon; cf. however, A. Ile. J. Aumann, K"'"'n und Zensur, 1987. 13 See Author, Early Sanskritization, Elecrronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS), vol. 1, issue 4 (Dec. 1995), at: www.shore.net/- india/ejvs = Early Sanskritization. Origins and development of the Kuru State, in: Recht, Staat und Vnwalhmg im lclassischm Jndim. The state, the l..llw, and Administration in C1'wica/ India edited by B. Kolver, MQnchen 1997, pp. 27-52. 14 See H.W. Kohler, Srad-dha- in der vedischen und altbuddhistischen Literatur, Wiesbaden 1973 (=Diss. 1948); interestingly, Jradd/UJ, the equally all-important rite of feeding one's ancestors in the other world is derived from Jraddha. -· Many other aspects of this belief system are in dire need of study (some of which are forthcoming): Vdc (RV) and inspiration (dhl), r'Ja "debt (towards the gods, an=tors, r~is)", ritual itself (yajfla), food (anna), uah~ra (AV), exch1111ge (pratid4na). See Author, Macrocosm, Mesocosm, and Microcosm. The persistent nature of 'Hindu' beliefs 1111d symbolical forms, in: IJHS Symposium on Robert Lny's Mesocosm, International Journal of Hindu Studies, ed. by S. Mittal, forthc. 1997. 15 For example, horrilliJe dictu, the Kafi, who "had lost the sacred fire for 10 generations" SB 13.5.4.19, in other words, and in spite of the SB tale which attributes this to their defeat by a Bharata king, they never had it; 1111other, weU-known case is that of the eastern country of the Videha which had to be "SWtttened" by Agni/the Brahmins before it was accepted into the fold, SB J.4.J.10 sqq; see below t 3.3., t5.l, 1111d n.284. 16 In a way this echoes the l;lgvedic distinction between arya 1111d dasyu. (cf. on tU.syt., below n.162, 164, 279, 334, 3~) 0 rig1ra · Ifrcn1 Dlgltlzeo by OOg UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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§ I. RV COIJJ!CTION

There is general agreement that l,lgveda is the oldest text of the Vedic period. However, why have the hymns been collected at all and how? This question is rarely put and hardly ever answered. The hymns were the intellectual property of certain clans; most of the hymns are part of the so-called "family books" (RV 2-8). These clans were not willing to part with their ancestral and secret knowledge. They indicate their "copyright" by a "clan seal": refrains,17 poets' own names, openly or disguised.18 The stage was set early on, for the individual viz. clan-wise preservation of texts, and for the development of a multitude of smaller or larger priesdy traditions. But this is exactly what did not happen: we only have the RV "collection" (the Sarrihita), the RV IPjb.->Yamuna NW, Pjb., Sar.;->Ganga Pjb., Sar.; ·>Yamuna

Divodasa (Bharata) Sudas (Bharata) Trasadasyu (Poru), Divodasa Tr~i (Poru) Trksi . . (Poru) Sudas (Bharata)

8 Kai:iva & Ailgirasa

NW, Panjab

Tr~i

9 Soma hymns

(Poru), etc.

(extracted from older clan collections)

21 Author, ~gvedic history: ~ts, chieftains and politics. In: The lndo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. by G. Erdosy, Indian Phi/clogy and South Asian Studies (ed. by A. Wezler and M. Witzel, vol. I, Berlin/New York (de Gruytcr)), 1995, pp. 307-354. I take this opportunity to apologize for the innumerable printing mistakes in my two papers in that volume; mistakes that seem to indicate that I even lost competence of my mother tongue, German. At my request, the text was rewritten and corrected by the volume editor but my corrections were, for the most part, not carried out. The Volume has now bttn reprinted, at an affordable rate, by Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi. 22 In the sequel I present mostly conclusions but only a few, certainly not all arguments that lead to them. These will be presented in detail in the long version of this paper, to be included in my forthcoming book on early South Asian history (working title: Beyond the Flight of the Fabn: The lndianW.tion of the Aryans). • Cf. now also the somewhat divergent results on RV dialects by H. Scharfe, Bartholomae's Law Revisited or how the ~eda is Origiral from dialectically divided, SJl.(20, 351-i n. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Dlgltlzeo by l.:.OOg

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It is important to note that four of the "Five Peoples" of the RV, the Yadu-Turvata and the Anu-Druhyu, do not figure prominently in most of the RV, and if so, the stanzas praising them are composed in standard ~edic, not a hypothetical l-dialect23 represented in eastern MIA. Only the newcomers, the Poru and their original sub-tribe, the Bharata, play a major role; most of the books 2-7 have been composed when the Pnru-Bharatas were about to enter or had just entered the Panjab. Whatever had been composed before must have been recast in Pnru-Bharata style (or has been lost). In fact, the bulk of the RV represents only 5 or 6 generations of kings (and of the contemporary poets)24 of the Paru and Bharata tribes. It contains little else before and after this "snapshot" view of contemporary ~gvedic history, as reported by these contemporary "tape recordings." On the other hand, the whole ~gvedic period may have lasted even up to 700 years, from the infiltration of the lndo-Aryans into the subcontinent, c. 1900 B.C. (at the utmost, the time of collapse of the Indus civilization), up to c. 1200 B.C., the time of the introduction of iron which is first mentioned in the clearly post-~gvedic hymns of the Atharvaveda. The initial collection, Oldenberg's core 1.51-8, must have been made shortly after the time of the Bharata victory under Sudas over the Ten Kings' alliance25 but not as late as during the post-~gvedic Kuru realm. The Kurus appear only once in RV proper in the name of king Kuru~ravai.ia and in the Kuntapa hymns (RVKh 5) that depict the golden age of the Kuru tribe; thus they could not yet have been incorporated into the RV collection. The original collection must have been the result of a strong political effort aiming at the re-alignment of the various factions in the tribes and poets' clans under a post-Sudas Bharata hegemony which included (at least sections oO their former Paru enemies and some other tribes. At first, the stylistically divergent Kai.iva collections may have been excluded from the Bharata collection since the Kai.iva poets seem to have sided with the Paru. Their later inclusion into the "national Bharata-Pnru collection" may have been part of an appeasement policy of the later Bharata chieftains, that may have also been accompanied by intermarriage of the Paru and Bharata royal houses.26 The Kai.iva frame with strophic hymns (RV 1.1-50, RV 8.1-48/66) that surrounds the family books could have been established by the poets/priests of new Bharata/Paru lineage as to include the strophic hymns of the pro-Paru Kai.iva poets in a prominent

2 3 For example eastern /Jlja for raja, with further characteristics such as nom. buddhe for

western buddhalybuddho; see disclwion in Tracing. 24 See Author, chapter on J.lgvedic poets in: Beyond the Flight qf the Fala>n (forthc.). 25 As Sudas, his grandsons as well as their contemporary, the P1lru king Tr~i. are mentioned, but hardly any later kings. 26 Intermarrioge is attested for the Kuru and Palkala for example at JB 2.278-9, see Tradng p. 236, n.328 and ~or, Earl;y Sanskritization. Origiral from Digitized by UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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position,2 7 with the strophic hymns of the Vi§vamitra descendant28 Madhuchandas at the very beginning of the text.

I. I · SO

1.51·191

strophic

non·strophic

K.a~va

A~girua

I

2·7

FAMILY BOOKS]

RV 8.1-48/66

8.67-103

strophic

Slrophic Allgirasa

K.a~va

I One has to assume that this split frame of strophic/non-strophic hymns was established only when the redactor(s) who made the final collection wanted to balance book 1 with book 10, both of which contain 191 hymns. Consequently, we have to distinguish between the collection (and the ancient diaskeuasis) of the family books 2-7 and the (re-)arrangement of these materials, accompanied by the addition of the Ka1,1va and additional Angirasa materials in books 1-1O. § 1.3. Two Stages in the collection of the ~gvedic materials.

This second effort to collect RV material is, perhaps, the more interesting one in the present context. It was only under the Kurus that as much traditional verse material as possible was included: not only the saman-like hymns in book 9 but also that of the "Atharvavedic" spells in book 10, and that of stanzas accompanying some major rites of passage (marriage, death). We must suppose rivalry between various groups of priests which resulted in double or multiple collection of hymns (in SV, AV) in cases where several groups were contending for the monopoly of arranging and carrying out certain rituals and their texts. The contemporaneousness of these efforts is indicated by the data of the late book 10 of RV, the "book of additions."29 The collection of the new hymns in RV 10 create the impression of a collection of "bits and pieces" of individual poetry composed at the time of the later Bharata realm and 27 Actually, even the Ailgirasa section RV I.SI-· begins with the hymm of Savya Pajra and contains at 1.53.9 the interesting reference to Su.travu fighting a Twenty Kings' Battle. Th.is parallel occurrence of the famous Ten King's Battle is suspicious. As names using the element Jrav-as 1-atJa occur in the later Bharata/Paru dynasty, the occurrence at RV 1.53-54 may have bttn intentional. 28 ViJvamitra, an opponent of Sudas at the time of the Ten Kings' Battle. 29 Book IO is clearly the "book of additions.• Additions in other paru of the text are incidental and late; Book 10 hu the older additions while the various small additions elsewhere in the text of RV are much younger, see Oldenbttg, Prolegomm4, p. 265 n.2, p. 253. Origiral frcn1 0191t1zea by

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perhaps even that of the emerging Kuru realm.30 This book approaches the style of the poetic Mantra texts of YV, SV, AV. We still are in need of a detailed comparison of the hymns in RV 10 that appear in AV, SV, YV as well.31 Finally, there are some indications of the intentions of the initiator(s) of the final collection of ~cs: books l and l 0, the outer frame surrounding the older mar;i4alas, both have 191 hymns; obviously, the number of hymns in book 10 was modeled after book l, as to provide a well balanced frame. After what has been said above, it is not surprising that the last hymn is a hymn to unity! 32 To sum up: as has been discussed in detail elsewhere,33 the new Kuru dynasty of Pari.14it, living in the Holy Land of Kuru~etra, unified most of the ~gvedic tribes, brought the poets and priests together in the common enterprise of collecting their texts and of "reforming" the ritual. This provided a chance to increase one's status by conscientiously performing one set of Srauta rituals after the other. It is significant, however, that the ~gveda Khilas, especially the Kuntapa hymns, were not included in the new Kuru ~gveda collection. The Kuntapa hymns were part of the New Year ritual of the Kuru dynasty, and as such, they were not (yet) regarded as sacred or ancient and hallowed enough to be included: they were "practical", ritualistic poetry for ready use.34 This first complete RV Sarp.hita should not be confused with the text which Sakalya encountered when he composed his PadapaPia in eastern North India during the late Brahmai;ia period.35 Rather, there is a gap of 30 Note the mentioning of king Kuru$raval).& Trasada.syava RV 10.32.9. 10.33.4 (in Kav~ Ail~

hymns) and, in the RV Anukram~I, of the poet of RV 8.76-78, Kurusuti, who, with typical arcbaization, stresses his use of an "old poem" (8.76.6); it is typical for the late date of his poems that be already knows of a lqrrapaka oda11JJ (consisting of rice! 8.77.10, pakva odana 77.6, puro/IUa 78.1) and of the boar Em~ 31 Cf. below on overlapping hymns and the Ur-YV, SV, AV. 32 The Unily Hymn 10.191 was added as the "full stop". Interestingly, it exceed$ the preceding hymns by one stanza and thus cannot be original in its present form, unless by design. Note also that other, lost RV versions (e.g. ~a. see Scbeftelowitt, Die A.pokryphen des ~gveda, Breslau 1906, p. 132, cf. RVKh 5.1-3; Oldenberg. ProlegomtllJJ, p. 501 sq.) have more hymns, and end with another hymn. Only the Salcala RV (and its predecessor) ends with the sa'!'jililnam hymn; cf. Author, II) 25 (1983). pp. 238-239. -- The beginning of the text is remarkable too. RV I.I is a hymn to Agni Vaih-anara, 'Agni of all people.' Note that it is Agni Vaih-anara who precedes Videgha Mathava in his march eastwards (SB 1.4.10-18). 33 Author, Early Sanslcritization. 34 One may, of course, also suppose that they were composed only after the collection of the RV materials. as they were the texts of the post-Bharata Parilqita dynas1y. Cf. Author, Sarama and the P.,Ps. Origins of Prosimetric Exchange in Archaic India, in: Prosimttrum: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, ed. by Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl, Cambridge 1997. 35 See Oldenberg. Proltgomtna for dating our RV redaction, as established by Sakalya through his Padapa!ha at the end of the Brahma!).& period. Some small changes in the text were made later on, see). Bronkhorst, The ortboepic diaskeuasis of the ~eda and the date of PIJ;lini, IIJ 23, 19fll. 83-95; 4 Oldenberg. Kleine Schriftm 3, Pcl~?afflbm Dlgltlzeo by L.OOgLe UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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several centuries during which the transmission of the collected RV text was affected by some unknown, rather erratic individuals who made some minor, not always consistent changes in the received text. The process is well known as the orthoepic diaskeuasis of the RV. There still are traces which the older pre-Sakalya Sal'!lhitapalba has left in our text}6

§ 2. COLLECTIONS OF THE MANTRA PERIOD IN THE LANDS OF THE KURU § 2.1. The social and political conditions. The newly formed Kuru super-tribe and its 'Great Chieftains' first appear in RV 10.32.9, 10.33.4 as Kurusravai;ia and in RV Khila 5.10 (=SS 20.127), Parik~it. The many political, social, economical, linguistic and religious changes of this time37 include: * Politically, there is a replacement of the fifty-odd l.lgvedic (sub· )tribes by the new "super-tribe" of the Kuru and slightly later, by their eastern counterpart, the Paficala. • The geographical and political center has moved from the greater Panjab to the modern (eastern) Panjab and Haryana,38 and further on into the Upper Doab of the Yamuna and Ganga. Settlements are predominantly found along the rivers;39 people still move about in semi-nomadic fashion, with yoga "trek" and k~ema "peaceful settlement"."° This pattern continues well into the Brahmai;ia period (see § 3.1.) • The importance of the new Kuru monarchy is underlined by the number of texts that refer to it and its institutions in the Mantra period: while some "coronation" hymns are already included in the RV,41 there are the Mantra time collections of 16 hymns in PS 10, of the Rajasnya Mantras in the extant YV Sal'!lhitas, and, largely unnoticed so far, that of the hymns of SS 13 I

36 See Oldenberg, Prolegomena and Hillebrandt, Kleim Schriften p. 539. 37 See Author, Early Sanslcritization. 38 This is obvi0\1$ in references on the rivers flowing eastwards and westwards (see Author, Localisation). The Gandhari and Arana in the NW and their neighbors, the Mahavrf&. are regarded as outsiders, as well as the eastern neighbon of the Kuru·Pallcalas, the KISi (in PS) or the Ailga of NW ~ngal (in SS). The Eastern and Southern expansion of Vedic culture has just begun at this moment. --- Some economic reasons also play a role in the shift to Haryana, see J. Shaffer, Cultural Change in eastern Panjab, in Studies in the Archaeology of India and PakistJJn, ed. by J. Jacobson, Delhi 1986; cf. alJo J. D. Shaffer and D. A. Lichtenstein, The concepts of "cultural tradition" and "paleoethnicity" in South Asian archaeology, in Tire lndo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia. Language, Material Culture and Etlinidty, ed. by G. Erdosy, ~!in-New York, 1995, esp. 137 sqq. 39 Cf. G. Erdosy, Urbanisation in Early Historic India. Oxford 1988. 40 See Wilhelm Rau, Staat und Gtstllschaft im alten Indien nach den Brahma'!a-Texten dargestellt, Wiesbaden 1957, and see bis contribution to this volume, on the development of the meaning of grama. 41 See B. Schlerath, D4i!ya Up.1 Or was it taken over en bloc into the •va;. Br. with chapters 6-91 299 See Tracingp. 149. 3-00 See Author, Tracing, §6.6, p. 182 sqq.: late Vedic/class. Skt. verb forms such as dugdhe, duhau, !tit, declension of !lrJan; such forms also occur in VSK and PB; similarly Renou, /A I948 p.38, on late forms in VSK; VSK is, on the other hand, heavily influenced by the RV in the form of its Mantras. 301 See Author, Tracing. p. 172, n.190, sec Renou, /A 1948, p.38: tanakmi VSK, etc. 302 But cf. the situation of PS (above, n.7). see Author, Tracing. p. In, n.190, 196, and note W. Rau on a possible archetype of BAU, ZDMG 105, 1955, p. •58•. Also, note the accents in this school: udatta is pronounced as low tone, marked by a "anudatta" stroke below the syllable, sec below n.361. 303 Especially the use of compounds in -putra, see Author, Tracing. 304 See Author, Tracing. p. In, n.196. 305 Note that the MaitrayaQ.tya. too, seem to have received their name from/because of the patronage of the local Maitraka dynasty of Gujarat. Their older name was Ka/JJpaka (e.g. in Patalljali, Mahabh~). The Ka!ha may have taken theirs from the Ka!}la/Kathaioi tribe of the Panjab; cf. however, Author, Zu den Namm einiger v k (cf. above).371 This would point to a strong The Madhyandina parts 1-5, 6-10, 11-13 and 14.1-3 and 14.4-8 (viz. their corresponding ~va sections), see Caland, Kleiru Schriftm, p. XXIV. 366 See Author, On some unknown systems of marking the Vedic accenu. Vishwshvaranand /,,,J,,Wgiatl Journal 12, 1974, pp. 472-508. See cover page of this volume. 367 It is unlikdy to have influenced the North Indian (dev11nag11rr) writers whose MSS were brought to Nepal. The present RVtrS style accent marks of VS were introduced only lattt in this millennium. 368 Note that it was treated twice in SB where is has been taken over from TB, KS or MS, see Caland, Kleiru Schriften, p. XIV. 369 In an earlier period of SB, when the western Caraka-Adhvaryu texts were taken over into SB, they were transformed into Vljasaneyin style texts with all the peculiarities of their respective schools (SBM, SBK) including the 11/iAfib accentuation, see Author, Ober die Caraka-Schule, Tracing, p. 232, n.325. 370 And for a section of SB, cf. A. Minard, Trois btigma"" /es mit cltemins. Paris 1949-; cf. Keith, TS tr11ruL, p. lnix, Renou, l!J 1, 10 on the 4-0 chapters of AB, apparently also known to

365

P~.

371 See above, n.302, Author, Tracing, n.190: ta1111kmi VSK : tanacmi VSM, yu1111gmi VSK : yunajmi VSM. Ong1nal from Digitized by

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

THE VEDIC CANON AND ITS POLITICAL MILIEU

327

Prakritic influence at c. 150 B.CJSO B.C. If true, this would be another good case of intentional canon formation in a period of transition, perhaps instituted as a reaction to Maurya time Buddhism, by the conservative Sunga (Pu~yamitra) and the Brahmin Kai;iva dynasties of eastern North lndia.372 § 6.4. Canon Formation in the East.

Summing up the above investigations, what clearly emerges is that the east was an area of large scale importation, collection and compilation of texts, and, even more importantly, an area of canon formation . The local chieftains and the rulers of the emerging larger kingdoms (Mahakosala, Mahajanaka) and their -- mostly imported -- Brahmins aimed at a collection of all Vedic materials that had developed since the inception of the lrauta ritual in the Mantra period. Normally, such movements ensue when a decline of tradition sets in and when one feels that a collection and fixation of the "proper" texts is needed.373 Or they occur in situations of large-scale social and religious change, as for example at the end of the ~gvedic period and the establishment of the Kuru realm.374 In the present case the local eastern kings felt looked down upon by their western Paiicala neighbors (like the lk~vaku chieftains at JB 3.168-70 and the Kosala prince at JB 1.338: §115). They wanted to move up on the social scale of "acceptable" princes and began to "sweeten" (i.e. Sanskritize) their territories, not unlike their medieval successors successfully proceeded in the outlying areas of the subcontinent.375 They employed methods which echo those first used by the early Kuru kings, who apparently were in a similar predicament.376 Sanskritization now took place by the overt importation of Kuru-Pai\cala norms, that is of ritual orthopraxy, of orthodoxy (belief, lraddha, in the efficacy of the ritual), and of the Brahmins who embodied these norms. Large masses of texts were imported into the east and were made use of in rituals and in public brahmanical discussions. Whatever may have been in use in the east as Vedic ritual (perhaps an early form of the Sukla 372 See Tracing, p. 172 n.196. • Note also the contemporaneous fashion of providing not only one's father's name but also that of one's mother (if one's father had more than one wife) by supplying names ending in -putra. Examples arc the VaJ!l"S of BAU, SB, the Maurya practice, names in the Mathura inscriptions, Saravahana names, and even those of the early Gupras (licchavlputra). 373 Cf. for example the collection of the remnants of the Avesta at c. 900 A.O. in E. Iran, the l_lcaka handbooks of medieval Kashmir under Muslim rule, or the medieval extracts from the Vcdic Sarpbitas made for the study of only portions of the texts by tlcaddAdhy11yins. 374 Such socio-political factors have not been discussed by J.Z. Smith, Sacred Persistence: Toward a Redcscriptioo of Canon, and bis followers, the authors of Authority, Anxiety and Cgle

OrlQlf\31

trom

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

INDEX

(Names, Sanskrit and English terms in the Mder ef tM English alphabet) abahirjanukarmatJi 189 ABBOT 78 abhaya "fearlessness" 216; of ascetic, =

ahirrrsa 210 abhi-jlllA 185 abhifeka, of king. in Vedic and medieval period 299; early form as part of a Sava (in PS 10) 266, 278; simple "installation hymns" in RV, SS 278; as state ritual in PS 278; of kings (AB 8) 313; simple form in Kau.tika Sntra 17.1-10, U.ghv-abhi~d:JJ 299; see royal consecration Abisares, Abhisara in R.ajataratl~I 319 aboriginal population, diJsa, dJJsyu 294; SE of Vindhya 320 accent marks, lacking in Orissa MSS 259; RVrrs system late in VS 326 adda,94

addhartya 332 adhvara, and adhvaryu 298 Adhvaryu 285; 'wishing to find the path' to heaven 298; identified with Adityas 236, 240; see Vedic ritual, Srauta ritual

dditi 53 adoption 321

adroghd 236 ddrogha.ac 236 Agastya 237 Agni Vai~anara 311; precedes Videgha Mathava 265 Agnicayana ritual 298; see Yajurveda agriculture, done by slaves or servants. 75; cultivated plants 205; ten plants: vrthl, ydva. tf/JJ, ~a. drJu, priydngu, godh(lma, mas6ra. lchdlva, kha/A-lcu/4 205; Vedic words for plow, furrow, club to break clods, sickle 205 agro-pastoralists, in Baluchistan 64; cf. archaeology

ahavanlya 259 ahirrrsa 207; "non-injury" 207; and compassion 2 20; and metempsychosis, interdependence 207; and Indus civilization 228; originally for ascetics 207; vow of renouncer, BaudhDhS 2 10; to remove sins 210; to attain heaven 210; to overDigitized by

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351

come rebirth 210; in Buddhism, Jainism 218, Buddhism and Jainism, in opposition to Vedic ritualism 219; upgrading of the vegetal sacrifice 211; stha/4 and salqma, with Jainas 207; Brahmanical tradition 219; emancipation from magical approach 221 ; fear of revenge or punishment 221; multiple causation 22 1; first as doctrine in ChU 217; differing from Vedic 222; post-Vedic ritual ahirrrsa, turned on its head 222; rule for Brahmins, 210, 218; duties of all four classes 208; as vegetarianism 208; and yoga 228; Sankara 227; Bhagavatapur~a 227; V~up~a 227; see animal sacrifice; vegetarianism ahirrrsa, abhaya, daya. ideals of a brahmin 218

ahihan 242 A.iryana Vaejah 74 A.itareya Ar&Qyaka 321, 322 A.itareya Brahmai;ia 9, 84; AB 1- 5, composed in Panjab 320; AB 6-8, late redaction 320, AB 6-8 320, AB 6-8 from eastern N. India 320; AB 6-8, royal rituals 321; aiming at inclusion into eastern Vedic society of aboriginal population 311; 40 chapters 326 A.itareya form of RV, introduction to East 322

A.itareya school 328 A.itareya Upanifad 322 A.itareyin 318, 319(; moved to Vidcha 321; in the east 328 Aja!Uatru, of Kati 312; of Kuru, KUi, Magadha 309

djra, vs. girl 74 alqara 11 Albiruni 259 Alemannic low tone 323 ALLCHIN 294, 321 alliance, of ICf&trlyas and Brahmins

(brahmalqarra) 334 alliteration 249 ALPER 269 ALSDORF 20, 208, 209, 218, 221, 228 amantlA 245, 246; 'uncomprehending, mindless, unmindful (of the poetic message)' 246 amazons, of the Trilcarta 302 anagram 247, 255 anaphora 250, 251 , 254 ANARTIYA 180 Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

352

INDEX

ANDERSEN 20, 103 Andhra 311. 321 Andronovo culture 198 Allg;a 266, 330; living at the bend of the Ganges 307 Angirasa 262, authors of new speculative hymns 293, see Atharva(n) animal, when eaten, will eat the eater in other world 214; animal sacrifice, horse goes to fold of th• gods 223; -·· beheading ramitra, as king in JB 290 asrau lal!lrakani 317 astu fr~ar, Aves!. sraoJu astll 288 Asura, as gods of Dasa 197 asurya, non-orthoprax people 310 Afvala, an Aiureyin, at king Tanaka's court 321 Afvalayana 322 A!valayana Srauwntra 322 A!valayana school 319 Afvamedha 326; Mantras of TS 303; sections in TS, KS 328, added as insertion in TS, at end in KS, Mantras in a late section of MS 313; treated twice in SB 326;performed by P~amitra 331; ultimate royal ritual 313; see animal sacrifice, Vedic ritual, Srauta ritual Afvin 271; Adhvaryus equated with Mvins, impure doctors 290; mythical "newcomers" to the Soma ritual 290; link between the Adhvaryu and Atharva.i:ia 290, 291; identity of early A. 292 Atharva-(ailgirasa], and Bhargava 278, and Mgiras 278, 292; close link to Adhvaryus 281; Ailgirasa and K~va poets 275; Atharva.i:ia-Ailgirasa collection 285; effort to be accepted 278 Atharvan, primordial sacrificers 291; as royal priests, in AV-ParifiJ!& 279 Atharvaveda 275, "the ( text) of the Atharvans and Mgiras" or "the (text) of the Bhrgu-Mgiras" 277; --- contents: Mantra time collection of hymns of sorcery, healing, small private rites , rites of passage, royal rites, early speculation on Srauta ritual 275, 2n; such as ucchisra 276; black and white Digitized by

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353 magic 277, marriage, burial hymns of RV277; --- sorcery, older than RV 275 --- source for material culture, customs and beliefs 275 --- speculative hymns ("mystical") 277, mystic hymns 275 --- materials different from SV, YV, RV 275 -- composed, adapted, collected under Kuru hegemony 278; language younger than RV 276 --- SS and PS, genuine deviations from RV 277; verses from RV, in "floating form", in SS 281; RV poets' texts taken over into AV 281; PS agrees in form with RV 278 ---establishing original, Ur-PS/SS text 282; reconstitution of authentic PS text 283, of original (Ur-)PS 283; reconstruction of Ur-AV 283 ---development two fakha texts 281, SS frequently inferior to, perseveration of PS 280, 282; --- redaction 327; redactional activities of PS and SS traditions 283 --- SS, in Pailcala up to Kam 280 --- authentic (archetype) forms of PS and SS 282; SS in need of critical edition 283 --- arrangement of PS, in opposition to RV 278; SS 6-7, deviation from standard arrangement 276; structure of the SS and PS 276 --- SS/PS divided into four sections 277 --- first, core section (SS 1-5 - PS 1-4) 276 --- grhya and royal ritual 278 --- first reflections on frauta ritual 278 --- age, iron at AVS 13.3.7= PS 280; age of grhya books (AV 13-18 /PS 18) 276, 280, slightly later than core 280, genitive in -ai in AV and PS 280 --- task for the next decade(s) 283 --- hell in AV, stream of blood, devouring hair 4-4 --- various appendixes 277 Atharvavedin, aim to be puroltira 279; become fourth main priest at Srauta rituals 278; disdain of text and AV brahmins 282; Saunaka Brahmins 280 Atharvaveda-ParifiHa 279 Atharvaveda Upaniiads 329 arigraluz "portion beyond" 5 arimolqa, "release beyond" 5 lltmaylljin 217 Atreyi Sakha 3-03, Anukramar:il 317 Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

354

Atri 262; Atris of RV S, excluded in ritual and despised 292 AVFRECHT 172 aupanifada-vrata 91, 97 --- of Jaim~a. in Kerala 97, includes JUB with the samans of Up.-vrata 97 -- - study of Upanifads of Katha school 96 AUSTERLITZ 200 Austro-Asiatic, Sora 196; d. diuyu. asura authentic text 282 authority, of the Veda 226 avastabh 179 avasllnadarla 'scout' 204 AVERY 103, 105 Avesta 253 --- text, a PadapaJha 323 --- collection in E. Iran 327 --- GaO.S 323 --- PadapaJha of lost Avestan " Saiphita" 323 --- similarities with Vedic genres 323 --- Slstan-Helmand home land of 86 avoidance, of part of lexicon as ' unpoetic'

2SS awe, of taking life 220 Ayodhya, and Taittil1ya 332 Bactria and Margiana, archaeology 194; bronze age culture of c. 2000 B.C. 195; Bactria-Margiana complex 71; fortifications 72; urban centm depended on agriculture 73; does not rdlect ~edic mythology and ritual 73; changes c. 1750 BC 71; and Seistan, southeastern Caspian area 72 """" 185, 186 Bah!lca, despifed, in SB 302, 308, 312 BAILl!Y 196 BALASUBRAHMANIAM 297 BALBIR IS Banas culture 299 bandhu 330 BARDOVl -HARUG 145, 159 BARTHIAVME 209 BARTHOLOMAE 208 Bartholomae's Law 35 Baskala 265, 322, school of RV 286, 323 Baudhayana SrautasDtra 308, 313, 316, 328; oldest SrautasQtra 316; nature, assimi-lated texts of neighboring school 316f. chapters in Brahmai:ia style 316; includes Mantras in extmso 317 •- describes ritual step by step, 316; a Digitized by

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"handbook" 316, no extensive use of pranka, praJcrti, framing device of later Sotras 316; describes all Taittil1ya rituals of TS, TB, TA 317; Baudhayaniya 304, from Kosala 304 BEAL 78 DECHERT 309 BENKE297 Bl!NVllNlSTE 49, 53, 241, 246 BERGAIGNE 261 BERGER 279 BHATIA NARAYAll!A 91 blulga 53 Bhagavad-Gna 111, 113 Bhallavi Brlhm.u:ia 326 Bbaradvaja, on Yamuna 306 Bbaradvaja 262 Bbarata 262, 267; fight with the Satvants 296; hegemony 263; realm, RV included Vasajha, Vijvtmjtra and lC.aJ.tva hymns 290; Bh. time poetry of ViMmitra, VuifJha 293 BHARTIµWU 37 bhafi/ca accent 325; low tone, = wutem udatta (rising) tone 325; tone, indicated by undentroke 325; modern recitation 325 Bhlfika Sotra 325 BHAVATRATA 96, comm. on JSS 97 BHAWE 273, 301, 304 BHIDE 213 Bhargava (lamadagni), teacher of Vilvamitra 292 Bhrgu legend, SB and JB 214; Bhrgu in AV

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Bhrgu-Mgiras 278, d . Mgirasa BIARDEAU 207 BISCIONE 72, 193 Blaclt Yajurveda, = Krfl:la YV, see YV BLENCH 193 BLOCH 20, 105 BLOOMFIELD 189, 267, 269, 276, 279

BMAC, see Bactria-Margiana BODEWITZ 89, 92, 301 Bodhayana, his SrautasQtra, as a "handbook" 316 BOLINGER 159 BOLLEE 19, 26 bones, must be undamaged in sacrifice 223 borrowing pattern, among schools of Kwu area (MS/KS) 331; in Kuru-Pallcala region (KS/TS) 331; in south-eastern area 331; d . Vedic schools Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX BOHTUNGK 164 BOTHMl!R, VON 195 bouphorua, bull eats grain sacrifice 213 BOYCE 209 bralmuialrin 217, 228, 276, 278; food restrictions 210 brohnuihatya 239 brahmalq4tra 334 brahm4n 277, 284; poet of the (pre-)JW'edic period291 Brahman 285 brahmai,a, formulation in Mantra period 276; Bl'lhnw.la style compolitions CarS, MS, KS, TS 296; early B. 293 Brahmagas, Br. proper, 4th level of Vedic 270; wrongly not separated from YV Salphita prose 294; --- Brahmaga texts of PaJlcala 305 --- Brahm~panipd texts, secret significance of Silmans 90 --- late B. period, S.E. Koine 318; language, late period 328 --- late B., JB, PB, KB, GB additions at beginning of texts 319 --- and Srautasotra compilations (SSS, SB, AB, KB) 334 brahmaniud villages in Mga and Magadha 309 brahmasama 231 brahmau.U.na 278 brahmavadya 2 brahmawJdinl, woman learned in the Veda 216 brahmawulya 2 brahmifrha 4 Brahmin's cow 276 Brahmins, of the Kurus and PaJlcllu 2; in Aflga and Magadha 312; movements during late Brahmaga period 328; brahmodya 2, 6, 8, 311, 329 Brakhmanoi, in Arrian 332 BRERETON !sqq; 319, 322, 329, 330 BREUNIS 16 Brhad Aral}yaka Upanifad, I , 89, !CaJ.tva and Madhyandina composition 7; BAU and JUB 4.18-21 (KenaU) 92 Bfhaddevata 290 Brhaspati 40, 242; and artificial creation 43, as independent god 43 Brbaspati-Brahm~aspati, not anthropomorphic 45 brhal Slman 268, and rathantara 268, 293 BRONKHORST 35, 258, 265, 308, 322, Digitized by

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355 328, 329 bronze Age cultures, in Iran: Sbabdad in Kerman, Tepe Hissar III in Gurgan; Namazga V in Turlanenistan, Gonur in Margiana 195 BROUGH 16 BRUCKl!R295 BRUNNHOPl!R 196 Buddha 218, 330; --- date reconadered 309 --- bis lineage 318 Buddhlsm, origins: urbanization, plagues, lqatriya views 219 Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit 21 Buddhist scriptures, in Pili I 5 Buddhists, meat acceptab~ when animal not killed by onesdUfor onesdf 226 BOHLER 170 BUITENEN, VAN 11, 12 Bull 319, 321 burial., in RV 86 BURKERT 213, 222, 228 BURNELL 95, 97 BURROW 196 CAJLLAT lStqq; 307, 308, 309, 312, 332 Calcra-Saipvara 197 CAI.AND I, 8, 89, 90, 91, 167, 170, 172, 179, 212,259,273,299, 300,301,303,304,310, 314,315,316,317,318,324,326,332 CAMPANILE 245 Candraguptasabha 33 t canon 257; criteria 259; collection, of all Vedic materials 327 --- formation inside each achoo( 317; --- formation, geography: Panjab center (RV) 333; in Kurultfetra center of Kurus, with PS 333; in Pallcala realm, with TS I TB, VlldhB, Sa!Y 333; in Kosala SBIC, SSS, KB/SSS, AVS 333; in the East 327; and Sablya 323; in "southern" area, between the Yamuna/Ganga and Vindhya: JB, later Madhyandina 333; and sociopolitical factors 327 --- correct pronunciation of the Mantra texts 328 --- justification of rule 333 --- extent of texts 328; unim.t body of texts 328; "sciences" effectively excluded 285 Caraka 273; Caraka school 274; texts 298 -- - Mantras in SB 277 --- Salphita 293; foreruniler of JCS 296 Caraka-Adhvaryu in TB 313; texts, taken Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

356

over into SB, with bhasilui accentuation 326 Cara.r;iavyoha 89 CARDONA 33sqq; 103, 106, 107, 325 CATO 253 CATSANICOS 190 CatlllYarpcintamai.U 188 chains, of acc. cases 56 chalcolithic period 201 Chandogya Upanifad 89; without main theme of JUB 90; ChU and BAU be· ginnitlgs parallel to and posterior to JUB (J-2) 92 CHANDRA 179 CHAPPLE228 chariota. of early Andronovo culture 200 charter myth, of Srauta ritual, tale of Dadhyallc Atharvaiµ and the Mvin, Adhvaryus of the gods 290, 291 CHEN 258 CHILDE 198 CINT~l319

circulatory exchange, between tlUs world and the here-after 222 classes, 4 van:ia in Puruf& hymn of RV 267; division into four claases (~a) 267; cf. van:ia, Kuru realm, Sanskritiztion classic.al ritual, of the Veda, see Srauta ritual Classic.al Sanskrit, as fettered language 103 collection, of all Vedic materials 327 commentaton 13 communication theory 49 comparative poetics 245, see lndoEuropean poetics, poetic( s) compassion, dayo 218 compounds in -putra 315 concatenation 249, concatenating alliterations 253 consciousness, imperceptible agent 10 contest, among priesu 2 contrapuntal figure 249 coronation ritual, see abh4elui, royal consecration cosmologic.al and cosmogonic.al hymns in AV 276 C~i25

cyclical time, in RV 50 Dabhni 237 Dadhilcravan 57 Dadhyallc 239, Dadhyallc Atharvai:ia and Digitized by

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AJvins 290 Dadhyallc myth 278; cf. Adhvaryu. Srauta ritual, Vedic ritual Daha. 'male penon, man, hero' 196, Da(h)a 196 Daiva, see Deva dalq, dltalq, archaic/modem 35 dalqilJll 4,217,225,284 DANDEKAR 39sqq; 42 Dardic languages 201 darlc period, after RV, in Mantra tats 267 dllrJa Brahma.r;ias in MS, KS, TS 298 d4rJapau"!a""2sa and sorruJ collections, at beginniJ1g of YV corpus 274 Dlsa 193, 194, d4sa (dahl) 79; as first-vi: of Aryans 200; religion, as early Salctism 197; Dasa forts. circular 194; concentric walls 194; fortifications of 194; Dasa. Dasyu, P&J.ll, as Aryan spealscbool 318; and Sankbayana scbool 318 ICallfltakl Upani'"'1 11; Jaiminrya in.8uence on rebirth theory in ICallfU 93 l high + low tone 325 Oba gtna 269 Ohya gtna 269 Umbrian 253 unaugmented aorist form, replaced in Nivid 172 unexpressed form of saman 90 unknown god 56 Upanipds 89; continuation of Brthmai:ia speculation in dialogue form 32, with questions on nature of saai6c:e, univerw, human beings, fate of toul 32; dfrta attributed to famous teachen 330; secret teachings at end of Vedic study 331; include final teachings (TU 1, ~ Up. = Ka!}!SiU) 322; last sections, for educational purposes: JUB 4. 18-21 (KenaU), 4.22-26 and 4.27-28, BAU 5-6, TU I, Ka!ha-Si]qa-Up 94; UpanifadBrah·mai:ia, origin of name 95; included in Arai:iyalw 322; 331; geographical horizon, Gandhara to Atlga 330; separated from Pali texts by hundred or more

Vadhola, homeland downstream on Ganges 303; survive in Kerala 334 Vadhola Anvalchyana.s not "' Vadhola Srauwotra 318; Vadhola Brthmai:ia 307, 316; Vadhola·Grhyasotra, unpublished 94, and JUB 97; Vadhola Mantrapl!ha 318 Vadhola Srautasotra 318 vaidika speech 331 Vaikhanasa school 303 Vaikhanua Sotras 331 Vaitahavy., and Brahman's cow 44 VaUamplyana 328 Vaitya 295 Vajasaneya, = Yajllavalkya, 'late' in VldhB 329 Vajasaneyi Brihm~• 316 vajasaneyipr1tiUlchya 34 Vajasaneyi Sarphit2 324; late redaction of Eastern YV materials 273; extracted from SB 324; VS 1-25, khila sections, Pravargya Mantras (VS 36·39) added 326; VSM and VSK, 40 chapters 326; Madhyandina VS, agrees with redacted RV 273; ~va VS, tound changes 326; canon formation in transition period 327; ICCent marks 326; conversion from E. tones, made by W. native speaker 326; MSS. in Nepal (1428 AD) 326

Digitized by

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Unarsrcib 269

•wo.1:w, Speech 246

Ong11ial frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

..

--

INDEX

376

Vajasaneyin 326; prominent in N. India 320 Vajji 319, confederation: Licchavi, Naya, Videha 312; cf. Viji Vakyab~, by Sankara 95 Vakyapad!ya and AV 282 Vala myth 46, and beginning of spring 82, and the sun 82, as creation myth, at New Year festival, at winter solstice 81 valabhid 242 Valalchilya 283 Valakhilya hymns (RV 8.49-59). 323, ucluded from Padapa!ha 324 Vamadeva 262 varriU. 92, in Samavidhana Br. 89, of BAU, SB 327 Vup4&, people in Gangt/Yamuna Dolb, near Allahabad 304 vanaprastha 226, 230 vanaprastha, the hermit in the forest 210 varcas 279 varna 267; cf. cl-. stratification Varw;ia 197, 240, as sarrirttj 42, 'binder' god 40; cf. dual divinities, Vedic myth Vasi'1ba 262, from across the Indus (RV 7.33.9) 289, protagoni$t ofVarw:ia cult 42, as Purohita and Hotar 290 VaA'1has, most eminent Brahmins, in JB 290

Vatts 247 Veda, see~ Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda; Vedic texts, Four Vedas, trayr. canon Veda student, ltrahmactlrin 210; in "yaj114 school", (moc.k) ritual performances 316; teaching, OD offering ground (MS 1.6.13) 259; end of study 331 Veda-Vyasa 326, 328 Vedavrata, see vrara 96 Vedic, see also Late Vedic Vedic accent, single origin ofW. and£. tonal systems 325; "barbaric" eastern accents 323 (cf. Satapatha Brthmai;ia); Vedic canon, nature of 258; no early lists 258; not scripture 258; originally no canon of texts 259; all school texts taken together 259; as texts acupted by each J41chA, school 259; swn of all tuts of various Vedic schools (l4kh4s) 259; working definition 259; --- development 257; social and political milieu 257; early canon 293, during dark period, before earliest YV Suphitas 267; Digitized by

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reason for establishment 267; collections of Mantra period 266; double I multiple collection, in RV, SV, AV 264; further development 293; corpus, known to ~. Patalljali, Buddh. texts 258; congruence of linguistic development, internal chronology, interrelation of schools, trend of political devdopment 333; see canon, Mantra texts, etc. Vedic culture{s), in RV 61; integration with Harappan cultural style 66 Vedic dialects 89, see Vedic language, Late Vedic, Koine Vedic economy, bovine pastoralism, farming 78; see archaeology Vedic gods, their historical development 39, see Vedic mythology Vedic house 76; see grtlm4 Vedic Indians, constantly on the move 206 Vedic language, a living language 103; historical changes 103; emergmce of post-J!.gvedic Sanskrit 267; Vedic Prose language 103; Mantra language, Vedic Prose, as two genres I04; differences between Mantra language and Vedic Prose 105; cf. Brlhmatias. Koine, Vedic dialects; late Vedic and Middle lndoAryan (MIA) 15; and MIA, nominal forms 18; Ved. -IWh, MIA - 18; MIA, eastern dialects 26; MIA -4, -ani 21; Ved. and MIA, gap in (syntactic) pattern 26; MIA, stylistic devices 26; verb, fading out of subjunctive 105; increase in the use of the ta-participle 105; late restructuring of past tenses 16; syntax, historical changes 103; Vedic literature, writing of history of 315 Vedic manwaipts, earliest without accent marks, from Nepal 259; cf. Yajurveda, KIJ;iva, Vajasaneyin, canon Vedic myth, identity unchanged in Vedic schools 138; language as the key to understanding 138, formulaic elements 127; formulaic thematic building blocks 134; introductory formulae 127; introductory sentences 128; gods and the Asuras 130; predictable slots in formulaic beginnings 131; particle choice 129; precise verbal form 127; schematic structur~ 136; structured like Vedic ritual 136; individual myth 127; episode 127; JN!ltemed variation across texts 136; situation conatant, participan• Ong1nal from

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INDEX vary 133; fl.en'bility of verbs 129; substitution of the synonyms 129; vehicle myth 127; vehicle formulae, with semi-independent epUodes 132; vehicle myth, introductory sentence 131; vehicle myth capturing an individual myth 132; see Yajurveda, Bralunm:ia, etc. Vedic period, end undefined 331 ' poetics, lndo-European baclcpund Vedic 245; see poetics, lndo-European poetics Vedic schools, - Sakha, Vedic Schools; and Pralqt insaiptions 334 Vedic recitation, little studied 324 Vedic ritual, pre-lrauta and Vratyas 70; Vala hymns in morning, Vrtra hymns at midday Soma pressing 82; shadow of the yapa 82; arrival of lndra = arrival of the waters 86; - animal sacrifice, amm!il Vedic schools, 259; Jalchll 257; each Jalchll, Brahmin community of a particular area 259, of local character 33, of particular tribe 259; and development of the canon 334; comparison, and formation of Arm:iyakas and early Upanifads 98; final compilation I redaction of Ill/cha texts 333; mutual influences between neigjiboring schools 333; borrowing pattern, among schools ofKuru area (MS/KS) 331; in Kuru-Pallcala region (KSITS) 331; in south-eastern area 331; relationships, between ~edic Aitareyas, 5amavedic Jaimintyu, Yajurvedic Vajasaneyins 94; location and migration 94; dispersal 331; spread and development of schools 334; western schools recuperated 332; spread of western schools to the east 331; move to the east, KaJ:lvas, Kauthuma (PB). (Kapif!hala- )Ka!ha, Pracya-Ka!ha 328; at Janalca's court 319; in Late Vedic, Post· Vedic Period 331; in Pali texts 331, 334; in medieval copper plate grants 334; many survive in isolated regions 334; history of minor schools a desideratum 334 Vedic student, behavior, SB 11-13, BAU 6 and TU 1, Silqa-Up. 331; cf. am'!'Sll Vedic studies, new situation in RV studies 49 Vedic syntax, genre-conditioned variations 115; chronology and genre 103; fronting of large complexes 116; initial-strings, difference between ~edic and Vedic Prose 123; 'initial strings' 116; initial Digitized by

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377 position 117; position of t4· 121; relativepronoun, position 121; relatives and deictics in Ved. prose 123; deictics and relatives in RV 121; interrogative pronouns before the verb 109; position of relative pronouns in RV 114; 'doublefocus' constructions 11 S; relative pronoun, preference 121; 'default position' 117; verbal accentuation in RV 139sqq.; verb-final structure in prose 103; changes in word order 103; word order in Rig-Veda 103; word order, statistics 103; syntax of passives 107; pa.ssive formation from all verbs 108; passives, word order 108; transitivity hierarchy 105, 106; changes in syntax of causatives 1OS; Vedic texts, distinction of textual levels 292; lndo-lranian level 292; -- composed orally 258, as ' tape recordinp' 258; strict oral transmWion 258; taugjit, recited on offering ground 259; transmitted by four main priests (Hoq-, Udgaq-, Adhvaryu, Brahman) 28; composed by Brahmins for Brahmins 260; stress proper praxis, orthopraxis, rather than orthodoxy 260; three viz. four separate groups 285; Samhita collection, contemporaneousness of effort 264; from the viewpoint of Jakha (Vedic school) 89; dialect and ritual peculiarities reflect political reality 303; final redaction 331; - trayr, ~gveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, BrahmaJ,las, Upanif&(ls, Four Vedas Vedic tradition, and grammarians 33 Vedic transmission, strictly oral 258; taugjit, recited on offering ground 259; use of demonstrative pronoun 259; transmitted by four main priests (Hoq-, Udgaq-, Adhvaryu, Brahman) 28; with minimal changes 258; by lllkhas "branches", schools 259; first writing, by Kashmiri Brahmin Vasukra, 259; lade of accent marks 259; Upanif&ds, with separate tradition in Vedantic circles 259; small basis of reciters (PS, SS, Jaimintya, Vadhnla, Maitrayai,itya, Ka!ha) 259, see redaction vedlJ\gas 285 Vedantins, knowledge of Vedic texts surrounding the Upanif&d 95 vegetarianism, forerunners and Ong1nal from

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INDEX

378

substitutions in Brthm&Qa texts 211; cornerstone of ahif!11'1 229, strict fonn, originally only for special category of brahmins 227; exapt sacrificial animals 208; as popularized ahi'lf!il 207; Mahavira, eats chicken killed by a cat 228; Jaina monies, eat meat, fish 228; see ahi'lf!il, animal sacrifice vehicle myths, invariant lint sentence, details not predictabk 129 verbal accent 161; raised pitch signaling importance 159; categories 139; in main clause, phonetic solution, sentenceaccent and intonation 145; in main clauses 139; in main clauses, is optional 143; intonational accent a clausal phenomenon 149; based on salience I emphasis, heightened intonation 162; intonation peak is optional 147; intonational accent, signaling incompleteness 160; incomplete, twopart statements accented 146; affinities of subordination and intonational accent 161; affinities of subordination and intonational accent 161; in subordinate clauses, explanation 160; augment 159; in subordinate clauses, grammatic:alized 150; origin of grammaticalization 161; verbal accentuation, reduced to few syntactic, semantic functions 158; few fundamental principles 139; accent sentence-initial, demarcative 158; in sentence-initial position, from I.E. 139; in pada-initial position 140; in antithetical clauses 139; in main antithetical clauses, fluctuate, optional I 50; intonational, of two clauses, ellipsis 149; intonational, with anyd- anyd- 151; verb unaccented, asyndetic parallel members, with iterative anaphora, gapping 141; in anti-final intonation 152; anti-final intonation pattern 154; verbal accent, in protasis when apodosis unexprt$$ed 157; asyndetic parallel members, with iterative anaphora, gapping 140; conjoined structures, no intonational accent 148; impv. tlll 139; verse line, = sentence 250 Vesali 319 Vetalapallcavilp"ti 110, ll l, ll 3 Vidagdha Sakalya 319, 322 Vidarbhas, and fierce Macala Sarameya Digitized by

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dogs 305 Videgha legend, brahmanical version of •origin• of the Videha Icings 311, and "proper" rice agriculture 311; a tale of Sanskritization 311; name older than Videha, Vaideha cows 311 Videha 333; and V"tdegha M1tbava 319; Videgha tale in SB 308; "sweetened" by Agni/Brahmins, SB 1.4.1.lOsqq 260; king Namin Slpya 312; ruled by Janaka, in favor of Kuru orthopraxy 319; inviting famous Kuru-Pallcala Brahmins 311; imported Aitareyins, Sakala RV, Kauthumas, Pracya-Ka!ha 313; Sanskritize