Myth as Argument: The Brhaddevata as Canonical Commentary [Reprint 2014 ed.] 3110138050, 9783110138054

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Part I: Myth, Commentary, and the History of the Bṛhaddevatā
Chapter One: The Basics of the Bṛhaddevatā: Text and Context
Pestles and Mantras
The Nature of the Text
The Text and Its History
Macdonell and Tokunaga: Retentive or Expansive Scribes?
Building on Arguments about Recensions
The Bṛhaddevatā in Intellectual Context
The Tradition of Śaunaka
The Brāhmaṇas
The Nirukta
Mīmāṃsā
Conclusions
Chapter Two: Making Arguments: Canonical Commentary and Mythological Narrative
The Category of Canonical Commentary
The Anukramaṇī as Commentarial Strategy
The Bṛhaddevatā as Commentarial Totalization
Mythological Narratives: A Process of Reading
Myth as Argument
The Case of Vedic Myth
The Problem of Historical Origins
The Problem of Archetypal Myth
Vedic Narrative as Commentarial Argument
Conclusions
Part Two: Framing the Canon
Chapter Three: Patterns of Thought: The Bṛhaddevatā Introduces Itself
On the Question of Coherence
Mantra
Mantra in the Bṛhaddevatā
Devatā as Meta-Grouping
Claiming Privilege
Classifying Canonical Language
The Nature and Origin of Canonical Language
Conclusions
Chapter Four: Language and Cosmology I: Taxonomies of Mantra
Grammar and the Power of Language
Grammar and Cosmology in India
The Motivated List: Supporting Canonical Language
Exemplifying Canonical Language: Tracking the Taxonomies
The Role of Native Taxonomies
The Bṛhaddevatā’s Taxonomy: A Thick Description
The Difference Canon Makes in Taxonomizing: A Comparative Assessment
Conclusions
Chapter Five: Language and Cosmology II: Etymologies and Other Linguistic Speculations
The Problems of Etymology
A New Terminology
Niruktis in Vedic Interpretation
The Nirukta
Niruktis in the Bṛhaddevatā
Tidying up the Universe: Separating the Spheres through Nirukti
Exemplifying the Cosmos: Niruktis as Theology
Theology by Subordination
Addressing Ambiguities: The Case of Vāc
Further Linguistic Speculation on Canon
The Question of Meaning
The Cosmology of Loose Ends: Closing off the Canon
Cultivating the Fields
Accounting for Rubble
The Rhythm of Canon: The Meters and Tones
The Attainment of Brahman through Commentary Itself
Conclusions
Part Three: Situating the Canon
Chapter Six: Arguments about Myth: The History of the Itihāsa/ Ākhyāna Controversy
A New Mode of Organization
Itihāsa/ Ākhyāna
The European Appropriation
Origins and Sources
A New Approach to Itihāsa
A New Approach to the Bṛhaddevatā
Conclusions and Projections
Chapter Seven: The Power of Persuasion: Ṛṣisis in Parity with the Gods
Ṛṣis and Gods in Vedic Context: A Modified Model
Euhemerism Mythologized
Ṛṣis, Gods, Sons
Getting the Gods to Listen
A Nirukti Itihāsa: The Ṛṣi Worshipped by Indra
The Mutual Dependence of the Praised and the Praiser
Rescued from Infertility
Ṛṣis and Their Divine Fathers
Helping Indra Appear
Gaining Attention and Absolving Gods
Gods/ Ṛṣisis/ Gods/Ṛṣisis
Calming the God
Mantras for Twins
Beating Indra and Soma in the Race
The Ṛṣi Downtrodden: Mantras Misspoken
Misperceiving Indra
Saramā and the Cows
Conclusions
Chapter Eight: Pedigree Narratives
Lineage in a Late Vedic Framework
Stealing Indra’s Secret and Surviving
The Blind Ṛṣi
The Birth of Ṛṣis I
The Birth of Ṛṣiis II
Parents After the Fact
Rsis from a Taxonomical View
Conclusions
Chapter Nine: Myth and Money: The Exchange of Words and Wealth
Making Money, Making History
Mantra as Medium of Exchange: The Vedic Context
Fluidity of Identity: Mantra and Exchange in the Sacrificial Texts
Mantra and the Fluidity of Varṇa Identity
The Fixing of Identity: Words and Wealth in the Bṛhaddevatā
Wandering Currency
Selling God in the Marketplace
The Ṛṣi Who Won a Wife with Mantras
Mantras Begetting Wealth Begetting Mantras Begetting Wealth
Conclusions
Chapter Ten: Mantra as Cure
Healing in a Late Vedic Framework
Cakes and Praises
Curing Old Age
The Language of Revival
Deprivation of Mind
The Ṛṣi Who Got off Twice
Methodical Rejuvenation
Conclusions
Chapter Eleven: Erasing the Warrior
Warrior and Priests in Vedic Context
The Stripes of a Ṛṣi
Can Kings be Ṛṣis?
The Function of Ṛṣiis in War
Changing Sexes
Saving the Kingdom: The Kṣatriya Purohita
Conclusions
Chapter Twelve: Selective Ślokas: Cleaning up the Veda
The Benefits of the Blatant in Vedic Interpretation
A “Liberal Shepherd’s Love Song”
The Embarrassed Brahmacārin
An Introductory Itihāsa for Purification
Conclusions
Chapter Thirteen: Salvaging the Sacrifice
The Changing Nature of Sacrifice: The Late Vedic Context
Haggling over the Sacrifice
Cooking the Dog
Ṛṣis and Rats, or How to Save a Sacrifice
A Mantra to Come out of Hiding
Killing Vṛtratra
Saving the Sacrifice through Dispersal
Conclusions
Chapter Fourteen: Ṛṣis’ Power within the Wild
The Untamed in Vedic Perspective
Rivers, Rats, and Ṛṣis: Encounters with Āraṇya in the Bṛhaddevatā
The Battle for Authority over the Rivers
Butter and Milk for a Thousand Years
Rats as Objects of Praise
Ṛṣis as Frightened Fish
Mantras across the Human and Animal Worlds
Pushing Death with a Verse
Conclusions
Chapter Fifteen: The Archaeology of the Bṛhaddevatā
Interpolation as Historical Lens
The Dimensions of the Shorter Recension
The Narrative Emphasis
A Comparison with the Epics and Purāṇas
Triads in the Purāṇas and the Bṛhaddevatā
Gods and Ṛṣis in the Purāṇas and the Bṛhaddevatā
Mantra in the Purāṇas and the Bṛhaddevatā
The Dimensions of the Longer Recension
Expanding Śruti
The Ritual Emphasis
Citing Brāhmaṇas to Settle Controversy and Clarify Ritual Ideas
Clarifying a Ritual Situation Implied by the Ṛg Veda
Ritual Theory in the Longer Recension
The Implications of the Ritual Emphasis
Conclusions
Chapter Sixteen: New Perspectives on Canonical Exegesis
New Questions for the History of Religions
Pushing the Boundaries of Canonical Commentary
Commentary Is Not Always Elaboration
Sensual Forms of Commentary
Commentary as Interpolation
Commentary as Narrative Argument: The Creation of Commentarial Time
Commentary as Ritual Philosophy
Final Questions for Commentary: The Nature of Canonical Language
On Reading Totalizing Texts: The Encyclopedic Analogy
Conclusions
Appendix A: The Dating of the Bṛhaddevatā
Appendix B: Vedic Verses Cited in Pratīka Form in the Bṛhaddevatā
References
Index

Citation preview

Laurie L. Patton Myth as Argument

w DE

G

Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten herausgegeben von Fritz Graf Hans G. Kippenberg Lawrence E. Sullivan Band 41

Walter de Gruyter Berlin · New York 1996

Myth as Argument The Brhaddevatâ as Canonical Commentary

. by Laurie L. Patton

Walter de Gruyter Berlin · New York 1996

In cooperation with the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions Die Reihe Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten wurde 1903 begründet von Albrecht Dieterich und Richard Wünsch. Die Bände I - X V erschienen 1 9 0 3 - 1 9 1 5 unter der Herausgeberschaft von Ludwig Deubner und Richard Wünsch. Die Bände X V I - X X V I I erschienen 1 9 1 6 - 1 9 3 9 unter der Herausgeberschaft von Ludolf Malten und Otto Weinreich. Die Bände X X V I I I - X X X V I I I erschienen 1 9 6 9 - 1 9 8 2 unter der Herausgeberschaft von Walter Burkert und Carsten Colpe. © Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier, das die US-ANSI-Norm über Haltbarkeit erfüllt. Libraty of Congress Cataloging-in-Publkation Data Patton, Laurie L., 1961 Myth as argument : The Brhaddevatä as canonical commentary. (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten ; bd. 41) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-013805-0 1. Saunaka. Brhaddevatä. 2. Vedas. Rgveda - Commentaries. I. Saunaka. Brhaddevatä. English. II. Tide. III. Series. BL1112.56.S28B7437 1996 294.5'9212-dc20 96-20603 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Cataloging-in-Publicaüon Data Patton, Laurie L.: Myth as argument : The Brhaddevatä as canonical commentary / by Laurie L. Patton. - Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1996 (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten ; Bd. 41) Zugl.: Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Devinity School, Diss., 1991 ISBN 3-11-013805-0 NE: G T

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Printing: Rotaprint-Druck Hüdebrandt, Berlin Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin

In memory of Scott O'Brien who followed the narrative

Contents Acknowledgements Preface List of Abbreviations

XIII XV XXVII

Part I: Myth, Commentary, and the History of the Brhaddevatä

I

Chapter One: The Basics of the Brhaddevatä: Text and Context Pestles and Mantras The Nature of the Text The Text and Its History Macdonell and Tokunaga: Retentive or Expansive Scribes? Building on Arguments about Recensions The Brhaddevatä in Intellectual Context The Tradition of Saunaka The Brähmanas The Nirukta Mimämsä Conclusions

3 3 6 8 11 12 14 14 16 20 23 25

Chapter Two: Making Arguments: Canonical Commentary and Mythological Narrative The Category of Canonical Commentary The Anukramanl as Commentarial Strategy The Brhaddevatä as Commentarial Totalization Mythological Narratives: A Process of Reading Myth as Argument The Case of Vedic Myth The Problem of Historical Origins The Problem of Archetypal Myth Vedic Narrative as Commentarial Argument Conclusions

27 27 30 33 35 41 44 45 49 52 54

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Part Two: Framing the Canon

57

Chapter Three: Patterns of Thought: The Brhaddevatä Introduces Itself On the Question of Coherence Mantra Mantra in the Brhaddevatä Devatä as Meta-Grouping Claiming Privilege Classifying Canonical Language The Nature and Origin of Canonical Language Conclusions

59 59 61 68 68 70 72 79 88

Chapter Four: Language and Cosmology I: Taxonomies of Mantra.. 91 Grammar and the Power of Language 91 Grammar and Cosmology in India 94 The Motivated List: Supporting Canonical Language 99 Exemplifying Canonical Language: Tracking the Taxonomies 103 The Role of Native Taxonomies 103 The Brhaddevatä''s Taxonomy: A Thick Description 105 The Difference Canon Makes in Taxonomizing: A Comparative Assessment 125 Conclusions 133 Chapter Five: Language and Cosmology II: Etymologies and Other Linguistic Speculations The Problems of Etymology A New Terminology Niruktis in Vedic Interpretation The Nirukta Niruktis in the Brhaddevatä Tidying up the Universe: Separating the Spheres through Nirukti Exemplifying the Cosmos: Niruktis as Theology Theology by Subordination Addressing Ambiguities: The Case of Vâc Further Linguistic Speculation on Canon

137 137 141 143 144 146 153 161 163 166 171

Contents

The Question of Meaning The Cosmology of Loose Ends: Closing off the Canon Cultivating the Fields Accounting for Rubble The Rhythm of Canon: The Meters and Tones The Attainment of Brahman through Commentary Itself Conclusions

IX

175 183 184 185 186 187 191

Part Three: Situating the Canon

193

Chapter Six: Arguments about Myth: The History of the Itihäsa/ Äkhyäna Controversy A New Mode of Organization Itihäsa! Äkhyäna The European Appropriation Origins and Sources A New Approach to Itihäsa A New Approach to the Brhaddevatä Conclusions and Projections

195 195 196 199 203 206 209 211

Chapter Seven: The Power of Persuasion: Rsis in Parity with the Gods 215 Rsis and Gods in Vedic Context: A Modified Model 215 Euhemerism Mythologized 219 Rsis, Gods, Sons 223 Getting the Gods to Listen 223 A Nirukti Itihäsa: The Rsi Worshipped by Indra 229 The Mutual Dependence of the Praised and the Praiser...232 Rescued from Infertility 233 Rsis and Their Divine Fathers 236 Helping Indra Appear 237 Gaining Attention and Absolving Gods 239 Gods/ Rsis/ Gods/ Rsis 241 Calming the God 243 Mantras for Twins 246 Beating Indra and Soma in the Race 247 The Rsi Downtrodden: Mantras Misspoken 248

X

Contents

Misperceiving Indra Sarama and the Cows Conclusions Chapter Eight: Pedigree Narratives Lineage in a Late Vedic Framework Stealing Indra's Secret and Surviving The Blind Rsi The Birth of Rsis I The Birth of Rsis II Parents After the Fact Rsis from a Taxonomical View Conclusions Chapter Nine: Myth and Money: The Exchange of Words and Wealth Making Money, Making History Mantra as Medium of Exchange: The Vedic Context Fluidity of Identity: Mantra and Exchange in the Sacrificial Texts Mantra and the Fluidity of Varna Identity The Fixing of Identity: Words and Wealth in the Brhaddevatä Wandering Currency Selling God in the Marketplace The Rsi Who Won a Wife with Mantras Mantras Begetting Wealth Begetting Mantras Begetting Wealth Conclusions Chapter Ten: Mantra as Cure Healing in a Late Vedic Framework Cakes and Praises Curing Old Age The Language of Revival Deprivation of Mind The Rsi Who Got off Twice Methodical Rejuvenation Conclusions

249 250 253 255 255 257 259 264 266 270 272 273 275 275 280 282 285 285 287 291 294 300 303 305 305 307 311 313 313 315 319 325

Contents

XI

Chapter Eleven: Erasing the Warrior Warrior and Priests in Vedic Context The Stripes of aRsi Can Kings be Rsisl The Function of Rsis in War Changing Sexes Saving the Kingdom: The Ksatriya Purohita Conclusions

327 327 330 331 333 335 337 340

Chapter Twelve: Selective Slokas: Cleaning up the Veda The Benefits of the Blatant in Vedic Interpretation A "Liberal Shepherd's Love Song" The Embarrassed Brahmacärin An Introductory Itihasa for Purification Conclusions

343 343 344 347 358 368

Chapter Thirteen: Salvaging the Sacrifice 369 The Changing Nature of Sacrifice: The Late Vedic Context.... 369 Haggling over the Sacrifice 371 Cooking the Dog 375 Rsis and Rats, or How to Save a Sacrifice 378 A Mantra to Come out of Hiding 379 Killing Vrtra 381 Saving the Sacrifice through Dispersal 382 Conclusions 386 Chapter Fourteen: Rsis' Power within the Wild The Untamed in Vedic Perspective Rivers, Rats, and Rsis: Encounters with Äranya in the Brhaddevatä The Battle for Authority over the Rivers Butter and Milk for a Thousand Years Rats as Objects of Praise Rsis as Frightened Fish Mantras across the Human and Animal Worlds Pushing Death with a Verse Conclusions

387 387 390 391 395 397 397 399 403 404

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Chapter Fifteen: The Archaeology of the Brhaddevatä Interpolation as Historical Lens The Dimensions of the Shorter Recension The Narrative Emphasis A Comparison with the Epics and Pur arias Triads in the Puränas and the Brhaddevatä Gods and Rsis in the Puränas and the Brhaddevatä Mantra in the Puränas and the Brhaddevatä The Dimensions of the Longer Recension Expanding Sruti The Ritual Emphasis Citing Brähmanas to Settle Controversy and Clarify Ritual Ideas Clarifying a Ritual Situation Implied by the Rg Veda Ritual Theory in the Longer Recension The Implications of the Ritual Emphasis Conclusions

405 405 406 407 409 414 418 420 421 425 427 428 429 431 435 439

Chapter Sixteen: New Perspectives on Canonical Exegesis New Questions for the History of Religions Pushing the Boundaries of Canonical Commentary Commentary Is Not Always Elaboration Sensual Forms of Commentary Commentary as Interpolation Commentary as Narrative Argument: The Creation of Commentarial Time Commentary as Ritual Philosophy Final Questions for Commentary: The Nature of Canonical Language On Reading Totalizing Texts: The Encyclopedic Analogy Conclusions

441 441 443 443 445 447

Appendix A: The Dating of the Brhaddevatä

465

448 451 452 455 461

Appendix B: Vedic Verses Cited in Pratlka Form in the Brhaddevatä

475

References

495

Index

517

Acknowledgements Several companions have assisted me en route to completing this book. In India, the American Institute of Indian Studies provided me with a leafy haven at Deccan College, Pune, where I was able to begin revisions on the dissertation. In reading both Epic and Mlmämsä texts with me, K. Venugopalam gave me a new understanding of the word acarya. Another acarya, Professor H. G. Ranade, gave me invaluable guidance in the world of Vedic ritual—both the textual and the living tradition. G. U. Thite, at Poona University, stood as an inspiring role model for bridging the worlds of western and Indian scholarship. Madhav Bhandare, M. Kulkarini of Deccan College, V. L. Manjul of Bhandakar Research Institute, and T. R. Dharmadhikari of Vaidik Samshodana Mandala were able to provide me much needed research assistance during my stay. I also wish to thank Simrita Singh, Medha Kotwal Lele, Gayatri Chatterjee, Sharmila Godbole, Eleanor Zelliot, and Hameed, Nazura and Arshia Sattar for their friendship and support. Here in the United States, several colleagues in the field of Vedic Studies have acted as counselors and guides: Frederick Smith, Chris Minkowski, Kenneth Zysk and Madhav Deshpande in particular. I owe a particularly large debt to Stephanie Jamison and Muneo Tokunaga, both of whose work I admire deeply. Professor Jamison's thorough comments and counsel have given me real hope for the possibilities of linking the worlds of philology and the study of religions. Without Professor Tokunaga's work, my own would not have been remotely possible, and he has graciously encouraged me in taking up the interpretive work after he completed the philological task. Finally, Brian Smith has given me a new vocabulary with which to build the bridges between the fields of Vedic studies and the history of religions. I only hope I have done his spade-work justice by extending it farther afield.

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Other Indological colleagues—Sheldon Pollock, Tom Coburn, Paul Courtright, Julia Leslie, Mary McGee, Ellison Banks Findly, Vasudha Narayanan, Ashok Aklujkar, Gary Tubb, David Gitomer, David Haberman, Barbara Holdrege, Jack Hawley, Rachel McDermott, and Tara Doyle—have kept me vigilant about the larger Indological implications of this work. My colleagues at Bard College, especially Anthony Guerra, Sanjib Baruah, Michèle Dominy, Amy Ansell, Lourdes Alvarez, Jack Neusner and Bruce Chilton have helped to keep motivation alive during the hectic life of teaching. Fred Grab read and commented on the penultimate draft of the manuscript; Carol Brener provided much needed assistance in the preparation of the Appendices. I owe a particular debt to Eric Wilson (farther afield than Bard), Bruce Chilton, and Leon Botstein, who, together with Jack Hawley of Barnard College, made conditions possible for me to finish the manuscript in a timely fashion. Kathryn Dodgson, of the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions, provided unsurpassable (and good-humored) editorial and typesetting expertise as the final manuscript was being prepared. Leesa Stanion offered valuable assistance in the preparation of the index. Finally, I am particularly grateful to H.-R. Cram at Walter de Gruyter in Berlin and to my editors Lawrence Sullivan, Frits Graf and Hans Kippenberg, whose vision for this project kept me polishing to the end. Francis X. Clooney has been a luminous example of the discipline and rewards of close textual reading; Wendy Doniger, after overseeing the dissertation, has furnished steadfast friendship, encouragement, and guidance; and Paul J. Griffiths, whose work on commentary has been of great help to my own, has provided constant intellectual companionship and inspiration. It is impossible to measure the support and love of my family, particularly my sister Kimberley. It is even more impossible to measure the patience and fortitude of my husband Mark. I can only hope that both the myths and the arguments contained in this book can in some small way return to him the same delight, warmth, and understanding that he has given me.

Preface One late Vedic commentary tells the story of Syäväsva, a brahmin priestin-training, who goes as an apprentice to watch his grandfather sacrifice. While at the sacrifice, he falls in love with the daughter of the royal patron of the sacrifice, and asks for her hand in marriage. The young woman's mother, the queen, refuses, since the young man has not yet become a true "seer" of Vedic verses. Syäväsva returns from the sacrifice, dejected. On his way back, he happens to meet some generous kings traveling on the same road. They bestow on him great wealth—cows, goats, gold, and jewels. These gifts do nothing to console him, however, because he realizes that all the wealth in the world will not make him a possessor of Vedic verses. When at last the Maruts (a group of Vedic gods) appear, Syäväsva is "given" the verses to praise them, and thus becomes a Vedic seer in his own right. The queen is apprised of the situation by the goddess Night, who has been dispatched to give the news. The royal couple relent and allow the young man to marry their daughter. This is a romantic, touching story—compared by some German Indologists to the best of the European tales collected by the brothers Grimm. Yet its moral, I would argue, is not solely, or even primarily, about the power of love or desire to conquer all things. The myth is situated in a rather odd place—an index and commentary on the deities of the Rg Veda called the Brhaddevata. Its contents, compiled from around the fourth century B.C.E. to the first century C.E., are eclectically encyclopedic. In addition to myth, the Brhaddevata contains lessons of grammar, etymology, and ritual philosophy. Preceding the myth of Syäväsva in the text, for instance, there is a discussion of the appropriate deity to whom the verses of the Rg Vedic hymn 5.60 should be directed. A few lines after the story, there is a discussion of appropriate conduct for ritual donations made by kings. The story of Syäväsva, wedged in between,

XVI

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attempts to explain the situation in which the verses of Rg Veda 5.61 were uttered. Certainly, if one is looking for a single, univocal discourse, the story of Syäväsva is the ultimate in non sequiturs. Even if one changes one's sights, and looks instead for a coherent body of mythological narratives, the myth is the utmost in "spurious" insertions—found nowhere in the early Vedic collections of narratives and ritual philosophies. The story seems to have no comprehensible "place" in the Brhaddevatä text at all. This book is concerned with that very issue—finding myth in unexpected, and even puzzling, places. My concern arose out of repeated encounters with stories like that of Syäväsva in the Brhaddevatä. The experience of reading the text is somewhat like walking into a room filled with a cacophony of ongoing conversations, and attempting to make sense of why the gathering is being held in the first place. All of the Brhaddevatä 's voices are recognizably Vedic ones, and yet none of them seems to harmonize with each other. Myths combine with grammatical rules, which in turn slip imperceptibly into discussions of wordderivations for the names of deities, which then suddenly inaugurate indexical listings of the deities themselves, which are interrupted in turn by yet more mythological narratives. Yet the challenge comes not in "explaining" the myths as interpolations, nor even necessarily finding a transcendent "pattern" for such narratives, but in placing them. This book uses the unexpected places where myths occur precisely to relate them to other kinds of interpretive conversations. The location of myth gives it its power. And as many scholars have recently written, such location is in part determined by the context in which it exists. By context, I mean something rather broader than simply historical milieu. As anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere writes,1 historical location is not the only component there is to context. Context can and should be viewed not only in the strictly historical or socioeconomic sense, but also in the intellectual and religious sense. 1 Gananath Obeyesekere, The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 130-33. See also Edmund Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma (London: Bell, 1954): "Myth and ritual is a language of signs in terms of which claims to rights and status are expressed, but it is a language of argument, not a chorus of harmony." (p. 278)

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XVII

These discourses, as well as the more explicitly political and social ones, show the ways in which privileged knowledge is produced and maintained. The juxtaposition of a grammatical rule next to a cosmogonie myth is a way of "placing," and therefore making an argument about, both kinds of knowledge; such juxtaposition has its own kind of logic beyond the mere compiler's whim. 2 The juxtaposition of myths, ritual rules, grammars, and so forth in the Brhaddevata can be productively viewed within the framework of canonical commentary—specifically commentary's production and use by the brahmin elite as a pedagogical and ritual instrument.3 Although commentary has been defined by religious elites and scholars of religion in a number of different ways, here I use the word commentary in its strict, "textual" sense: a work that has as its core a set of remarks corresponding, in a verse-by-verse manner, with the canonical text that it is commenting upon. Precisely because it claims to be canonical, commentary itself follows its own logic—in this case, a logic motivated by the assertion of the transcendence of the Vedas. At every opportunity, intellectual, poetic, and narrative resources are mobilized in the service of the transcendent canonical authority of the Rg Vedic mantras. It is the all-encompassing nature of the authority of Vedic canon that allows the commentary that accompanies it to be so wide-ranging. If the effects of Vedic canonical language, appropriately used in the sacrifice, are to be 2 This is, in a Vedic context, analogous to the arguments Walter Benjamin makes about fragmentation and quotation as a form of persuasive discourse, and that the Surrealists make about the shocking juxtaposition of traditional images to create a new form of perception. (See my "Dis-solving a Debate: Toward a Practical Theory of Myth," in Religion and Practical Reason, edited by Frank Reynolds and David Tracy [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994], pp. 213-63). The difference is in the respective referents of the discourses: the early twentieth-century artists and literary theorists were attempting to criticize an industrial consuming public, and the Vedic exegetes were attempting to continue a canonical tradition which had to be made relevant in a new, late Vedic/early classical milieu. See also Gyan Pandey, "In Defense of the Fragment," Representations 37 (1992). 3 I have discussed this at length in my article, "Beyond the Myth of Origins: Narrative Philosophizing in Vedic Commentary," in Myths and Fictions: Their Place in Philosophy and Religion, edited by Shlomo Biderman and Ben-Ami Scharfstein (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), pp. 225-54.

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life-giving and eternally true, then that fact can be reflected in a myriad number of ways—all of which can be incorporated into the commentatorial task. Yet there is more to the logic of canonical commentary than its amassing of many different kinds of discourses to convey a particular point of view. These discourses are interdependent, the one leading to and incorporating the other in a kind of mutual refraction. Word-derivations for the names of deities, for instance, can imply a kind of narrative structure, and an elaborate narrative structure, in turn, can work in the service of word-derivations. Such mutual refraction provides the structure of much of the text of the Brhaddevatä. That examination of that structure, and the role of mythological narrative within it, is the purpose of this book as a whole. This book is divided into three parts. Part One, comprised of Chapters One and Two, outlines the historical and theoretical issues at hand in the study of the Brhaddevatä. The next three chapters make up Part Two, "Framing the Canon." They discuss the supporting apparatus—the prelude and postlude— to the Brhaddevatä 's treatment of the Rg Veda itself. The third part (Chapters Six through Sixteen) is organized under the title "Situating the Canon." These chapters discuss both the ways in which the Brhaddevatä situates the Rg Vedic mantras through narrative, and the ways in which the different textual layers, or recensions, of the Brhaddevatä itself can be situated in relation to other kinds of discourse about deities and mantra. As a whole, this book is as much concerned with the text in its most "elaborate" form (i.e., the longer recension) as it is with the text in its most "authentic" form (i.e., the shorter recension).4 Chapter One begins by discussing the larger intellectual context in which Vedic myth occurs—specifically the general world view of the Brähmana (ritual-philosophical); the Nirukta (etymological); and the 4 The translations of the Brhaddevatä are my own, inspired by and following closely the work of my scholarly predecessors, Tokunaga and Macdonell. The translations of the Rg Veda follow Geldner's lead. English works I have consulted include those in Tatyana Elizarenkova (Language and Style ofthe Vedic Rsis [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995]), Walter Maurer (Pinnacles ofIndia's Past: Selectionsfront theRgveda [Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986]), and Wendy O'Flaherty (The Rig Veda [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981].) Translations of other texts are indicated in the notes. I have modified them where I thought it appropriate. The Rg Vedic verses in Appendix Β follow Van Nooten and Holland's Rig Veda: A Metrically Restored Text with an Introduction and Notes, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 50 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). I have changed Van Nooten's "ch" to "cch" to be consistent with the other transliterations in this book. The Atharva Veda citations are not metrically corrected.

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Anukramanï (indexical) genres. It argues for a particular characterization of the Saunaka school—one which is heavily invested in a particular kind of Vedic transcendence. The point of view of this school is not only that the Vedas are eternal, as the Mlmämsa ritual philosophy would also argue, but also that Vedic language, particularly in the form of mantra, can be infinitely applied to any number of situations. The Rg Vidhäna, also a product of the Saunaka school, is one particularly telling example of this approach: it consists entirely of rules governing the application of a huge number of Rg Vedic verses. The chapter continues by commenting briefly on the historical milieu in which the Saunaka school must have thrived—the "India of Vedic Kalpa-Sutras," as Ram Gopal has defined it.5 Chapter One concludes with a discussion of the history of scholarship on the text. It focuses on some of the problems of textual analysis that have been presented by the Brhaddevatä—specifically the question of whether the longer or the shorter recension is the earlier one. Chapter Two introduces the two methodological categories of the book— canonical commentary and myth as argument. First I argue that philological arguments about content can be supplemented by issues of canonical commentary (here simply defined as verse by verse annotation of the Rg Vedic mantras). Using the theory of J. Z. Smith as a starting point, the chapter suggests how and why the contents of the Brhaddevatä, both mythic and otherwise, are all used for a specific purpose—the valorization and transcendentalization of Vedic canon, which in turn valorizes the performance of sacrifice. The chapter goes on to address the problem of mythological narrative from a general methodological perspective, as well as from the specific perspective of the study of Vedic mythology. The chapter introduces the idea of the "mythic process," defined as the manner in which cultural forms are made transcendent. In using the term "the mythic process," I advocate a middle path between the historical and the phenomenological approaches to myth. I propose a "pragmatic approach" to myth that is guided by a practice of reading. The goal of such a practice of reading is not the discovery of a transcendent mythic pattern, nor the explanation of myth in strictly socioeconomic terms, but the outlin5 See Ram Gopal, The India of Vedic Kalpa Sutras (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983).

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ing of the ways in which mythic narratives presume to guide and shape human behavior. In this sense, myth can be defined as a kind of argument—as much the result of controversy and debate as the result of mystical visions of the gods. This practice of reading has consequences for the particular case of Vedic mythology as well.6 Unlike earlier scholars, I take the view that there is much to be gained from laying aside the search for the "original" Vedic mythological tradition. There is value in taking a new approach which examines the uses of particular mythical narratives to argue a point, and studies how such arguments have changed, even within the different stages of Vedic and post-Vedic religions themselves. Chapter Three begins an analysis of the text proper. Throughout this and subsequent chapters, the progress of the book follows the sequence of the text, in order to show the larger coherence of the work as a whole. Thus, the chapters in the first half of the book will necessarily focus more on other discourses, such as Vedic etymology, than on mythic narrative per se. However, in all chapters, an attempt is made to relate other discourses to myth, and show the ways in which such discourses relate to each other. While mythic narrative is more thoroughly discussed in the second half, the focus on the placement, or location, of myth remains the paramount concern of this book. Chapter Three also addresses the particular ways in which the text claims privilege for itself as canonical knowledge. Such claims must employ the basic categories of mantra, or Vedic formula, and devatä, the object (usually, a deity) that is intended to be praised. These terms are found frequently in the Brhaddevatä, and are the basic building blocks of its world view. Moreover, these terms are also concerned with the correct performance of sacrifice that the Vedic canon supports. In fact, the elucidation of these two concepts is the focus of all narratives told later in the text of the Brhaddevatä-, its myths explain the reasons for a Rg Vedic mantra having the devatä, or object, that it does. Finally, this chapter also examines the methods of classification and subordination of ideas that the Brhaddevatä employs. Through these processes of classification and subordination, the Brhaddevatä facilitates the decision-

6 For a single case study in Vedic myth that uses such a practice of reading, see my "Dis-Solving a Debate: Toward a Practical Theory of Myth," pp. 233-62.

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making that must take place in the sacrificial situation—which deity and which mantra to choose, and why. Chapter Four introduces the problem of the grammatical analysis of canon. First, it discusses the ways in which grammar and cosmology are fundamentally linked in Vedic exegesis. Here, one can discern one aspect of the relationship between grammar and mythological narrative. Because Vedic speech is transcendent, the grammatical analysis of its components is accompanied by a mythological, transcendentalizing narrative of how these components came into being. Such a narrative explains and retains the Vedas' eternal status, not only in their sum, but in their parts. Chapter Four goes on to analyze the Brhaddevatä's own classification of mantra intro various forms of efficacious speech, such as praise (stuti) curse (ninda), nonsensical speech (praläpa), and so forth. This analysis compares the Brhaddevatä''s taxonomy with other forms of Vedic interpretation, to show the particular perspective of the Brhaddevatä''s classification schema. Chapter Five begins by exploring the problem of "etymology," or word-derivation, in Vedic exegesis, and such derivation's function in the Brhaddevatä. It shows how the process of word-derivation is used to privilege the canonical language of mantra, and how mantra is linked directly to the geography of the sacrifice. Most important for the purposes of this book, word-derivation is a kind of "mini-narrative" in itself, describing some essential activity of a deity which is characteristic of him or her. Such essential, characteristic activities are also described more thoroughly in the larger, more discursive mythological narratives (itihäsaläkhyäna) told later on in the text. Moreover, some of these narratives are word-derivation stories in and of themselves, in that they describe how a particularly famous rsi, or sage, acquired his or her name. Finally, Chapter Five considers the material immediately before and after Brhaddevatä''s discussion of the Rg Veda itself: the additional linguistic speculations which conclude the introduction, and the discussion of meter and syllable that closes off the entire document. The second half of the book, "Situating the Canon," discusses the particular itihäsas used to situate the Rg Vedic mantra, as they describe the circumstances in which its hymns (süktas) were composed. In an attempt to depart from the "origin-centered" nature of previous scholarship on such itihäsas, the second half focuses on the particular ways in

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which these stories authenticate canon. The Brähmanas also use these stories; in those texts the itihäsas act as interesting side-trips to explain the use of a mantra in a particular set of sacrifices. In the Brhaddevatä, the itihäsas continue this explanatory function, albeit in a less specific way. They legitimate the efficacy of the Vedic mantra as a particular part of the sacrifice. Chapter Six provides some background to these narratives, discussing in greater depth the history of the study of Vedic mythology introduced in Chapter One. Although many of these myths are well-known, this chapter introduces a new interpretive lens emphasizing the place of mantra, and helps to shed further light on the purposes of the stories as forms of Vedic exegesis. While scholars have viewed the Brhaddevatä as a repository of "original" or "non-original" stories accompanying the Rg Veda, Chapter Six argues that such concerns can overshadow some important intellectual and exegetical aspects of the stories themselves. This is not to say that the chronology of the itihäsas is not important to take into account; I take relative chronological placement very much into account in my comparative reading of the versions of particular myths. However, I also show the myths' canonical arguments—the ways in which the Brhaddevatä situates, and thus "proves" the efficacy of, the Vedic mantras by placing them in past events.7 In Chapters Seven to Fourteen, I outline the various kinds of "work" achieved by mantras in the Brhaddevatä's stories. In doing so, I frequently refer to parallel stories from other Vedic, Epic, and Puränic texts. It is important to note that, unlike earlier Indological projects, such references are not part of an attempt to find the "unadulterated version" of a story. Instead, they are part of a larger effort to underscore further the particular exegetical investments of the Brhaddevatä. Chapter Seven shows that—while much of the tension between the gods and men present in the earlier Brähmana texts continues—in many of these Brhaddevatä tales, the production of the Vedic mantra itself restores the right balance of power between the seers and the gods. Indeed, in some cases, the mantra-seer, the rsi, becomes more powerful 7 The genre of itihäsa has recently been viewed by Pollock and others as an example of historical thinking later eclipsed by the ahistorical Mïmâmsâ. See his "Mïmâmsâ and the Problem of History in Traditional India," Journal of American Oriental Society 109.4 (1989): 603-10.

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than the deity whom he praises. This perspective is reminiscent of the early Vedic view, where the relationship between poet and deity was more fluid. However, as later chapters show, such a portrayal is utilized in a later context which also reflects brahminical concerns. The remaining chapters address the other "work" of mantras in these stories. The "/-.n'-centered" perspective is continued in the Brhaddevatâ's biographies of the various seers (Chapter Eight), where I argue that these pedigree narratives are consonant with the later Vedic concern with gotra, or brahminical lineage. In Chapter Nine I examine the Brhaddevatâ 's narrative portrayals of economic exchange of mantra for wealth. I show that, while this idea of exchange is indeed also an early Vedic perspective, certain later, classical brahminical concerns about the respective social roles of the exchangers are also woven into the tale. Chapter Ten focuses on myths which outline the curative process of mantra, and demonstrates how they are almost exclusively dependent upon mantric language and the presence of the rsi. These scenes take place without reference to non-brahminical resources, such as that of the bhisaj, and also without reference to plants and other healing substances. Chapter Eleven comprises a discussion of those stories which deal with the relationship between rsi and ksatriya, and show the ways in which the rsi remains dominant. When viewed from the point of the efficacy of mantras, even those characters in the Brhaddevatâ who are explicitly designated as royal rsis and seers of mantra are implicitly second-class. Chapter Twelve demonstrates how the Brhaddevatâ' s narrative zest is also informed by a kind of principled selectivity, whereby mythological characters are, through deft interpolation, reconfigured in relationship to each other. Such discrimination prevents Vedic verses from becoming too scandalous, and allows the commentary to make the argument that its canon can remain an appropriate one for emerging brahminical norms. In Chapter Thirteen, I analyze myths which are explicitly concerned with the health and well-being of the sacrifice. In all of these narratives, the state of the sacrifice itself is somehow threatened by a new situation, and the threat can only be addressed by the powerful utterance of the rsi. In each case of threat, it is not sacrifice that bestows order on the world, but canonical language that bestows order on the sacrifice. Such stories thus continue the argument for the autonomy of mantra. Carrying on with the theme of expansion upon the sacrifice,

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Chapter Fourteen examines the stories that tell of the rsi's relationship to the non-human world, and thus illuminates the mechanics of crossing the boundaries into äranya, or wilderness. These narratives provide yet another argument for the efficacy of mantric language: canonical mantra can subdue, tame, and protect the forces of the wild. Chapter Fifteen returns to the layers of the text exposed by the careful work of recent philology. The discussion shows how the first recension of the Brhaddevata, created in the early Purânic period, compares with Purânic discourse itself, specifically regarding the treatment of canonical language.8 The chapter will also show how the later, longer recension reveals an intriguing new attitude toward canonical language; it expands its analysis of mantra to include ritual texts other than the Rg Veda, and to address ritual situations with which the earlier recension is less concerned. Such an attitude is consonant with later Vedic interpreters such as Skandaswämin, Mädhava, and others. Chapter Sixteen, the concluding chapter, returns to perspectives from the history of religions. It explores the ways in which this particular study of the Brhaddevata can contribute to more general theories about mythological narrative and canonical commentary, and how a relationship can be configured between the two. The Brhaddevata case shows that the idea of canonical commentary, with its discursive connotations, can be expanded to include the non-discursive form of mythological narrative.9 In turn, the idea of mythological narrative, with all of its imagistic, fantastical connotations, can be expanded to include commentarial argument. Thus, this study suggests specific ways in which a tradition's basic ideas about the nature of canonical language, and the role of mythological narrative in that language, affect the method of canonical interpretation and validation. If Vedic myth is viewed as part and parcel of Vedic

8 I have discussed this issue at length in my article, "The Transparent Text: Purânic Trends in the Brhaddevata," in Purana Perennis, edited by Wendy Doniger (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). 9 For other innovations on the idea of canonical exegesis, specifically its relationship to text and performance, see my edited volume, Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).

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XXV

argument for transcendence, then it has a "place" in Vedic discourse quite different from its rather segregated location in Western scholarly discourse. However, viewing myth in this fashion allows one to take a fresh look at Western discourse as well. With this in mind, I draw some final points of analogy between the "eclectic" nature of commentary in India, which incorporates myth into its structure, and some of the more "eclectic" forms of knowledge in Western culture, such as the encyclopedia. These provisional analogies show that the construction of knowledge within both forms is intriguingly comparable, and suggest further avenues for fruitful research—both within the specialized fields of area studies and the more comparative study of religions as a whole.

List of Abbreviations Sanskrit Sources AB ASS ÄpDhS AV BD BGS

ess GB JB KB KS KSS Manu Mbh MS MU NFM PB PMS RV RVKh SB

sss TB TS TU TaB.

vs VaikhSS

Aitareya Brahmano ÂSvalâyana Srauta Sutra Äpastamba Dharma Sutra Atharva Veda Samhitä Brhaddevatä Baudhäyana Grhya Sütra Baudhayana Srauta Sutra Gopatha Brahmano Jaiminiya Brähmana Kausîtaki Brahmano Käthaka Samhitâ Kätyäyana Srauta Sütra Manu Smrti Mahäbhärata Maiträyanl Samhitä Mundaka Upanisad New and Full Moon Sacrifice PañcavimSa Brähmana Pürva Mlmämsä Sütras ofjaimini Rg Veda Samhitä Rg Veda Khila Satapatha Brähmana Sänkhäyana Srauta Sütra Taittirlya Brähmana Taittiriya Samhitä Taittirlya Upanisad Tandya Brähmana Väjasaneyi Samhitä Vaikhänasa Srauta Sütra

XXVIII

List of Abbreviations

Secondary Sources ABORI AIOC AJPh ALB BDCRI BSO(A)S DLZ J AOS JBBRAS JBomU JGJRI JOIB JRA S KZ

N.S. SBE SPAW WZKM ZDMG

Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona All-India Oriental Conference (Proceedings) American Journal of Philology, Baltimore Adyar Library Bulletin Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute Bulletin of the School of Oriental (and African) Studies, London Deutsche Literatur-Zeitung, Berlin Journal of the American Oriental Society, New Haven, Baltimore Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal of Bombay University Journal of the Ganganatha Jha Research Institute, Allahabad Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermansichen Sprachen, herausgegeben von A. Kuhn et al., Berlin, Gütersloh, Göttingen New Series Sacred Books of the East Sitzerungberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Wien (Vienna) Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Leipzig, Wiesbaden

Part One

Myth, Commentary, and the History of the Brhaddevatä

Chapter One

The Basics of the Brhaddevatä: Text and Context Pestles and Mantras, In his introduction to his massive commentary on the Rg Veda, the fourteenth century commentator Säyana quotes the Mlmämsä commentator 3abara on the meaning of the Veda, thus continuing an interpretive tradition over the span of more than a thousand years. This long-lived hermeneutic argument involves Sahara's imaginary opponent, w h o paints the following scenario: Suppose that a certain woman, called Pürnikä, is plying a pestle. Near her a brahmin boy, intent upon the task of his studies, occasionally recites the pestle mantra. He does not want to explain the meaning of the mantra. This is evident from the fact that he does not make his mantra keep time with the fall of the pestle. He is only learning the words by heart, and in doing that repeats over and over again this mantra, among other mantras. And just as, in such a case, the pestle mantra is at the time of study recited without explaining its meaning to Pürnikä, so at the sacrifice it will not convey its meaning. To this, Sabara replies: It may be said, however, that in the case here, the boy has no wish to explain the meaning, while Pürnikä her side (being a woman) is incapable of understanding it. It is different in the sacrifice. There the adhvaryu does wish to convey the meaning, and can understand it. 1

1 Translation based on the Sanskrit text of Sayana's introduction to the Rg Veda. Peter Peterson, Handbook to the Study of the Rg Veda (Bombay: Government Central Book Depot, 1890), p. 11.

4

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

In this short, rather touching scenario of Pürnikä and the boy, the issues at stake in the history of Rg Vedic interpretation are encapsulated. What is the import of Rg Vedic mantra? What purposes, or objects (artha), is mantra intended to serve, both within the sacrifice and without? How and for whom is it meaningful? What is its relationship to recitation? What is its relationship to physical objects, implements, and all the other apparatus of the sacrifice? The fact that Sâyana's opponent's story takes place outside the realm of the sacrifice is no accident. Both Pürnikä (as a woman) and the student (as a beginner) are only marginally able to participate in that most circumscribed and powerful of arenas2; therefore it is not surprising that they would find the mantras meaningless. As Säyana asserts, neither Pürnikä nor the boy is assisting the sacrifice; therefore there is no need to convey the meaning. 3 Beginning with the ritual/philosophical texts of the Brahmanas, all of Rg Vedic commentary has been concerned, in one way or another, with similar issues. One can discern these issues in the debate between Yäska, author of the fourth-century B.C.E. etymological dictionary, the Nirukta, and his opponent Kautsa, who decries the Vedas as meaningless; or in the later, more elaborate and systematic debates of Jaimini with his pürvapaksin. In all of these discussions, much mental effort is expended upon the question of the relationship between the meaning of the mantra and its efficacy in the sacrificial arena. The general answer—albeit with fascinating variations on the theme—is that mantras are meaningful because they are part of the sacrifice; they exist for it and their meaningfulness derives from it. Sâyana's assessment of the Vedas sums it up nicely. For him, the body of the sacrifice (yajñaíarlram) is formed in the Yajur Veda, the Veda of the adhvaryu priest; the chant and rubrics required by the sacrifice as parts of it are filled in by the other two Vedas.4 For Säyana, then, the Yajur Veda is

2 Of course, the yajamâna's wife holds an integral place in many of the Srauta rituals. The role of women other than the yajamâna's wife in the mahavrata and the aSvamedha rituals cannot be overlooked, but it, too is circumscribed in a particular way. See Julia Leslie's Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women (Rutheford: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1991) and Stephanie Jamison's work, Sacrificed Wife/ Sacrificer's Wife (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 3 Peterson, Handbook, p. 15. 4 Ibid., p. 5.

The Basics of the Brhaddevata: Text and Context

5

dominant, and he explains it first, as is proper. It is only appropriate that the Rg Veda follows. The Brhaddevata, an Indian text traditionally dated from the fourth century B.c.E.5 and attributed to the author Saunaka, is one text that takes the question of the significance of mantra quite seriously and offers some unique insights into the way in which Rg Vedic mantras can be both efficacious and meaningful. It does so through a variety of discourses—grammar, philosophy, and ritual theory. Most importantly for our purposes, the Brhaddevata also explains Vedic mantra through some forty mythological narratives, traditionally called itihäsa, or äkhyäna in Sanskrit. These narratives have been of great interest to scholars of Indian religious history, and have, in some eyes, been the sole source of the Brhaddevata1 s value. Indeed, as I shall discuss below, scholars have generally treated the Brhaddevata as a motley collection of "Vedic dust," to use Renou's term, 6 and extracted its narratives for their own philological and historical purposes. In this book, I shall argue that such extractions are not the only means available to us in understanding the tradition. The Brhaddevata''s narratives are part of a larger debate; its myths are intrinsically linked to other forms of discourse within the text. Moreover, I will show that the linkage between the Brhaddevata''s philosophy, narrative, and grammatical theory is achieved by a particular kind of logic—that of canonical commentary. Although it is a layered text with many disparate forms of discourse, the Brhaddevata can nonetheless be read as a coherent canonical commentary—a considered attempt to explain and justify the significance of the canonical language of Rg Vedic mantra in all of its aspects. While the Brhaddevata's mythological narratives remain a central concern to this book, they do not and cannot remain isolated from other forms of Vedic thought.

5 For a full consideration of the date of the Brhaddevata, see the longer discussion in Appendix A. 6 Louis Renou, "Le Destin du Veda," in Etudes Védiques et Paninéènnes, 17 vols. (Paris: Publications de l'Institut de Civilisation Indienne, 1955-69), 6: 35. While there does exist a translation of this work (see Louis Renou, The Destiny of the Veda in India, ed. Dev Raj Chanana [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965]), it is somewhat less than helpful.

6

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

The Nature of the Text The Brhaddevata might be loosely translated as "The Great [List of] Deities." The commentator Sadgurusisya, writing in the twelfth century C.E., calls it an Anukramanl in his commentary on Rg Veda 10.71— literally, a "right ordering."7 It functions primarily as an index to and commentary on the deities of the Rg Vedic mantras used in Vedic ritual, and is part of a larger corpus of texts called Anukramanls, or indices, which were developed, as far as can be calculated, during the time of the late Brähmanas and early Sutras in India.8 In this way it partakes of a genre from which several later commentators9 quote regularly. The genre consists of indices compiled to assist in organizing the material essential to the performance of a sacrifice. The following Anukramanls are known: the Ärsänukramam, the index of ras, or Vedic seers, composed in a verse of about three hundred and twenty ¿lokas; the Chandonukramanl, the index of Vedic meters, comprising two hundred and thirty eight verses; the Devatänukramam, the index of Vedic deities, of which no independent text has been found; the Süktänukramanl, also presumed to be lost, probably an index of pratlkas, or beginning verses of each of the Vedic hymns, called süktas\ the Anuväkänumramanl, the index of Vedic chapters; and finally, the Pädavidhäna (also known as Pädavidhänänukramanlka), the index of pädas, or quarter-units within a Vedic verse. All of these indices are attributed to Saunaka, author of the Rk PrâtiÉâkhya, a grammatical treatise on the Rg Veda. Certainly, if

7 Indeed, on one of the manuscripts of the Haug collection in the Royal Library at Munich, there is written on the title page, "atha brhaddevatanukramanï prarambhah " See The Brhaddevata, edited and translated by Arthur Anthony Macdonell, 2 vols. Harvard Oriental Series, 5-6 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1904; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965), 1: xiii. 8 Reference is made to one such text, the Ärsänukramam, in the Dharma Sütra of Apastamba, 1.11.2.6, which has been putatively dated to the third to fifth centuries B.C.E.

9 Specifically, Sadgurusisya, the author of the Vedârthadïpika, or "The Lamp of the Meaning of the Veda." See Kätyäyana's Sarvänukramanl of the Rigveda with Extracts from Sadgurusisya''s Commentary entitled Vedârthadïpika, edited with Critical notes and Appendices, by A. Macdonell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886).

The Basics of the Brhaddevata: Text and Context

7

they were not composed by him they were nonetheless part of a larger, unified school of thought in which he played a significant role. Scholars also believe that around the fourth century B.C.E., the Vedic scholar Kätyäyana completed the rather omnivorously named Sarvänukramanl, "index of everything," containing all of the elements outlined in separate Anukramanïs outlined above. Its contents are condensed and systematic. It comprises a number of principles (paribhäsäs) to interpret the work as whole, a treatise on the meters of the Rg Veda, and an index of all the hymns (süktas) of the Rg Veda. It also names the pratïkas, the number of verses, the names of the rsis and the deities of the süktas, as well as the meters of the hymns in their various parts. In addition, legends, called itihasas (literally, "thus it happened"), are briefly alluded to as part of the commentary on particular Vedic hymns. 10 The Brhaddevata''s eight sections, or adhyäyas (which in no way correspond to the astakas of the Rg Veda, as might be expected), are not as neat and tidy as these other Anukramanïs which are related to it. The text encompasses a number of different discourses—hence its interest as well as its difficulty. Indeed, at times the text is as interested in painting narrative vignettes, similar to Säyana's of Pürnikä and the Vedic student, as it is in systematizing and organizing. The Brhaddevata begins with a discussion of the importance of knowing the deities of a mantra (1:1-1:60); it moves to a discussion of the deities of the three worlds, with the Vedic triad of Agni, Indra/Väyu, and Sürya representing each world and Prajäpati representing them collectively; it includes in this section a series of etymologies for the names of the deities, giving some indication of their past and present actions (1:60-2:88). A grammatical section then follows, discussing particles, nouns, and verbs, as well as the relationships among the three (2.89122). The actual enumeration of the deities of the Rg Vedic hymns, or süktas, begins shortly after (2.126) and continues to the end of the text. And it is here that the issue of mythological narrative, or itihäsa/äkhyäna, comes in. Unlike the more straightforward index of deities and its likely precursor, the Devatanukramanï, the Brhaddevata intersperses its list with approximately forty such narratives concerning the circumstances of the composition of the süktas. Further, these narratives are interwo10 Sadgurusisya, more than a thousand years later, expands upon these itihasas, using direct quotations from the Brhaddevata.

8

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

ven with the recounting of various arguments between authorities on the right interpretation of a Rg Vedic sükta. Thus, even a preliminary glance at the structure of the Brhaddevata'?, text itself raises questions as to the relationship between narrative and argument.

The Text and Its History Although the Brhaddevata was edited by A. A. Macdonell for the Harvard Oriental Series in 1907, subsequent Indological scholarship, both on the Brhaddevata and on the larger group of indices of which it is a part, displays a markedly disparaging attitude to these texts. The development of such texts during this period is generally treated, if at all, as the insignificant and compulsive activity of pedants. What comment does exist on the Brhaddevata itself focuses on its asystematic nature. Thus Renou: Are the problems of semantics disentangled any better in the Brhaddevatai? Almost right at the beginning, the text poses a new principle (2,117), arthät padam, "the word (as form) derives from the meaning," a principle quite contrary to the common thought of the Vaidikas. But this text, after some useful preliminary reflections, begins on the path of simple repertory where questions of meaning have hardly any role. In short, it lacks a mïmâmsâ which would orient the mantra, as one has later a mïmâmsâ orienting the act, or rather—but with Tantric usage—a mantraSâstra. The commentators, about whom we are going to say a word, live on the plane of pedetentim; whence, for one part, comes their defeat; for in India only the systematic becomes vigor-

11 "Les problèmes de sémantique ont-ils un meilleur débouché dans la Brhaddevata! Ce texte pose presque d'emblée (2.117) un principe neuf, arthât padam, 'le mot (en tant que forme) dérive du sens,' principe biens advers à la pensée commune des Vaidikas. Mais ce texte, après d'utiles réflexions préliminaires, s'engage dans la voie d'un simple répertoire où les questions de sens n'ont plus guère de rôle. Il manque, en somme, une mïmâmsâ qui serait axée sur les mantra, comme on aura plus tard une mïmâmsâ axée sur l'acte, ou bien—mais à l'usage tantrique—un mantraiâstra. Les commentateurs, dont nous allons dire un mot, demeurent sur le plans du pedetentim·, d'où, pour une part, leur échec; car seul prend vigeur dans l'Inde ce qui est systématique." Renou, "Le Destin du Veda," 6: 35.

The Basics of the Brhaddevata:

Text and Context

9

With one sweep, Renou's words confine the "simple repertory" of the Brhaddevata to its anemic place in the rest of Indian intellectual history, at least until the epoch of Vijayanagara, where commentators launched a revival which did much to reinvigorate Vedic interpretation. In fact, precisely at that time of revival, with commentators such as Säyana and Mädhava, the actual value of the text emerges—as an object of plunder. Beginning as early as Skandasvämin in the seventh century C.E., and following with Sadgurusisya in the twelfth, Durga in the thirteenth, Säyana and Dyädviveda (the author of the Nïtimanjarï12) in the fourteenth centuries C.E., the stories explaining the composition of the hymns have been quoted and requoted, appearing like strange beacons of narrative light in the mist of etymological commentary or Vedäntan exegesis on the Rg VedaP The Western tradition, too, has had its own motivations for plunder. Before the text was edited, the Brhaddevata''s main interest was as a source of narratives which could shed light on the "origins" of Vedic tradition. A good fifty years before Macdonell, Adalbert Kuhn gave a brief description of the Brhaddevatä's contents based on a manuscript found in the Königliche Bibliothek in Berlin. 14 As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Six, Karl Geldner 15 and Hermann Oldenberg 16 made frequent reference to the Brhaddevata in their debates about the äkhyäna theory—the idea that the poems of the Rg Veda could best be understood in the context of explanatory prose narratives, which formed 12 See Emil Sieg, Die Sagenstoffe des Rg Veda und die indische lúhasa-lradition (Stuttgart: Druck und Verlag von W. Kohlhammer, 1902), pp. 37-41, for a full discussion of the date of the Nïtimanjarï. 13 It is the narratives that survive the centuries, while the parade of minor Vedic texts—those Renou calls the "dust of works, which lacking any other merit, have the one merit of attesting to a certain productivity of schools of specialists"—do not (Renou, "Le Destin du Veda," 6: 46.) 14 See Adalbert Kuhn, "Über die Brhaddevata" Indische Studien (edited by Α. Weber, 18 vols. [Berlin: F. Dummler, 1850-1863; Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1865-1898]) 1 (1850): 101-12. 15 See especially Geldner's "Purüravas und UrvasI," Vedische Studien, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Verlag von Kohlhammer, 1889-1901) 1: 243-95. 16 Hermann Oldenberg, "Das altindische Äkhyäna, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das Suparnäkhyäna," ZDMG 37 (1883): 54-86, and "Äkhyäna-Hy mnen im Rigveda," ZDMG 39 (1885): 52-83.

10

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

an independent tradition, adjacent to the Rg Veda itself. Emil Sieg develops this theory most thoroughly in his Sagenstoffe Des Rg Veda ( 1902), and uses much material from the Brhaddevata in his analyses. Räjendrälala Mitra attempted a critical edition in 1892,17 which was quickly eclipsed by Macdonell's edition in 1907; in his introduction, Macdonell roundly criticized Mitra's editorial principles. The new edition, however, was well-received. Moriz Winternitz 's generally favorable review 18 made only the slight demur that Macdonell may have included a larger number of redundant or superfluous lines than necessary. Isidore Scheftelowitz, 19 who reviewed the work mainly with an interest in the khila, or apocryphal, portion of the Rg Veda, agreed with this idea, and removed some lines from the text as later interpolations. Macdonell's edition was treated as the standard for the next fifty years of Vedic scholarship. In 1979, Muneo Tokunaga, in a Harvard dissertation and a subsequent article (1981), 20 threw all of Macdonell's editorial principles into question. As discussed below (and in Appendix A), Tokunaga claimed that the nature of the text was more complicated than Macdonell had assumed. In addition, he challenged its status as representative of an itihäsa or äkhyäna tradition of interpretation. His own analysis of the manuscripts led him to conclude that the Brhaddevata1s indexical and exegetical projects are multilayered, and its narratives are derivative from earlier Brahmano and Epic sources.

17 Brhaddevatä, or an Index to the Gods of the Rig Veda by Saunaka, to which have been added Ärsänukramanl, Chandonukramanï and Anuväkänukramanl in the Form of Appendices, edited by Räjendräläla Mitra, Bibliotheca Indica Sanskrit Series, n.s., nos. 722, 760, 794, and 819 (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1893). 18 M. Wintemitz, review of The Brhaddevata, by A. A. Macdonell, WZKM 19 (1905): 422-26. 19 Isidore Scheftelowitz, review of The Brhaddevatä, by A. A. Macdonell, ZDMG 56 (1902): 420-27. See also his Die Apokryphen des Rgveda, Indische Forschungen, heft 1 (Breslau: Verlag von M. H. Marcus, 1906). 20 Muneo Tokunaga, "On The Recensions of the Brhaddevatä," J AOS 101.3 (1981): 275-86; "The Text and Legends of the Brhaddevata" (Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1979).

The Basics of the Brhaddevata: Text and Context

11

Macdonell and Tokunaga: Retentive or Expansive Scribes? Some brief discussion of this recent scholarship is a necessary premise to my own study. Both Macdonell and Tokunaga have used a variety of textual references and parallels to place the Brhaddevata chronologically—albeit with startlingly different results. Their differences revolve primarily around the chronological placement of the two recensions of the text, which differ considerably in length. For Macdonell, it could safely be assumed that the original work was longer, probably composed between the time of the Brähmanas and that of the Sütras. Macdonell wedges the Brhaddevata between Yäska's etymological dictionary, the Nirukta, dated by Sarup around 500 B.c.E, 21 and Kätyäyana's Sarvânukramanï, which, while possessing much in common with the concise style of Srauta Sutra of the White Yajur Veda, still has many Vedic peculiarities which render it pre-Päninean. For Macdonell, the Brhaddevata, as the Sarvânukramanï's chief source, must be placed no later than 400 B.C.E.22 He believed that the long version of the Brhaddevata was then abridged, forming a later, shorter recension. Tokunaga questions these assumptions of Macdonell and goes on to substitute his own philological principles. To him, none of Macdonell's arguments proves the antiquity or authenticity of the text. In an intricate philological tour de force, Tokunaga posits a series of three scribes who successively interpolated material onto the original, "core" text. In his view, this core text was probably Saunaka's Devatânukramanï, or "Index of Deities," a text no longer extant, but surmised to be similar to Saunaka's other Anukramanïs and grammatical treatises on the Rg Veda.

21 The Nighantu and the Nirukta, The Oldest Indian Treatise on Etymology, Philology, and Semantics. Introduction, edited and translated by Laksman Sarup (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1920-27); Nirukta. Sanskrit Text, with an Appendix Showing the Relation of the Nirukta with Other Sanskrit Works (Lahore: University of the Panjab, 1927); Indices and Appendices to the Nirukta with an Introduction. (Lahore: Univerity of the Panjab, 1929); The Nighantu and the Nirukta, reprint edition (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1967), p. 54. 22 See Macdonell, The Brhaddevata 1 : xxii, and the introduction to his edition of the Sarvânukramanï, p. viii, for a full discussion.

12

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

Tokunaga's idea of successive expansions also explains the title of the "Brhaddevata"—which must originally have been the "Brhaddevatänukramanl," or the "expanded Devatänukramanl." The two recensions of the Brhaddevata mean that the Devatänukramanl was expanded twice. Thus, Tokunaga hypothesizes that the first expansion of the Brhaddevata was the shorter recension, composed in the early Puränic period between the first and fifth centuries C.E. He believes that the later, longer version—the "second" expansion—was probably composed between the seventh and eleventh centuries C.E. In the second part of Tokunaga's work, he undertakes an analysis of the narratives of the Brhaddevata. His primary purpose is to explore whether the text's stories reflect on an unbroken "authentic" itihäsa (legendary) tradition which existed adjacent to the Rg Veda and was used for its interpretation. He finds, however, that these tales are spurious—concoctions, misunderstandings, graftings, and "plot contamination"23 from earlier Brahmano and Epic sources. Tokunaga's research is impeccably thorough; I hope to build on his excellent work by exploring alternative possibilities for the interpretation of these narratives in Part Three.

Building on Arguments about Recensions It should be emphasized at the outset that, although some of his criteria are problematic, Tokunaga's argument for the date and nature of the Brhaddevata is more convincing than Macdonell's. He uses more data than Macdonell to make his case, adding to the evidence of parallels with the Särvänukramanl and the Nirukta such evidence as the analysis of meter and the patterns of reference to the Brhaddevata and related texts in other Vedic commentaries. 24 Moreover, his chronological work is crucial in helping scholars in other fields, such as the history of religions, form a way of thinking about the text—deciding whether it expands or contracts over time. The present study will therefore take into

23 Tokunaga, "Text and Legends," p. 259, on the story of Äsanga. 24 See Appendix A for a detailed discussion.

The Basics of the Brhaddevata·. Text and Context

13

account the differences between the first and second recensions, and will read with reference to Tokunaga's edition. For the purposes of uniformity and easy reference, however, this study will retain the numbering of Macdonell's edition, which is more accessible to the larger reading public. Yet the work of analysis of the Brhaddevata must not stop at the arrival of a date, or the conclusion of a composite nature. Since such philological arguments frequently revolve around an "original" text, once such a text has been located and edited within the larger collection of verses the rest of the material is dated, boxed, and put away, like so many letters in an attic trunk. The rhetorical effect of stopping at that point is to imply that that is all we know, and all we need to know, to echo Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Up to the most recent times the Brhaddevata has suffered from the well-known tendency of Vedic studies—what one scholar calls "the explanation of a phenomenon of borrowing without attending to coherence as such." 25 For a historian of religious thought, there are further questions to be asked: once such a text has been located, how did it expand? What pattern can one discern in the expansion? What investments are made within the different versions of the text, and the text as whole? How can one develop an "ontology of interpolation," 26 based on viewing the changes in the text as motivated by intelligent people with assumptions different from those of the philologist or the historian of religions? The Brhaddevata can thus act as a kind of case study for examining a process of intellectual and religious change. The text need not only serve to reflect back the Indian history sufficient to the parameters and needs of the westernized Indological project. The text can also be read as a series of choices and investments by motivated authors.

25 Francis X. Clooney, Thinking Ritually (Vienna: DeNobili Press, 1990), pp. 32-33. 26 I am grateful to Sheldon Pollock for putting into more elegant words the idea I had been struggling with vis-à-vis this marriage of the philology and the history of Vedic thought.

14

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

The Brhaddevata in Intellectual Context The first step toward developing a method of reading is to take seriously the ideas contained within the text, however "indexical" in form. Renou may be right in assuming that part of the Brhaddevata's dismissal may in fact be due to the fact that it lacks a mlmämsä, or at least a mlmämsä as a series of explanatory principles such as occurs in the Sutras of Jaimini. 27 Yet the Brhaddevata does possess a kind of mlmämsä, in the light of the more general, pre-Upanisadic meaning that Kane indicates— a way of reasoning about Vedic texts, involving investigation into a topic of discussion and coming to a conclusion thereon. 28 Such discussion is simply scattered throughout the text at various points. And this is the core of the interpretive problem: the text contains bits and pieces of not just two, but many sorts of discourses, none of which Western scholarship could adequately classify under such rubrics as philosophy or ritual.

The Tradition of Saunaka In light of these various discourses, the Brhaddevatä's close relationship to many other Vedic texts also helps place it in context. To begin with, many characteristics of the Brhaddevata can be linked to the interpretive style of the other works within the school of Saunaka itself. While virtually nothing is known of the person of Saunaka, we can reasonably infer certain things about the tradition of texts which are attributed to Saunaka (but were probably also products of his pupils). Geographically speaking, one can surmise that the tradition probably flourished in the region of the northeastern Gangetic plain. The Brhaddevatä lists the usual early Vedic places in the Indus Valley region, such as the Sindhu 27 Gonda, in his recent book, Prayer and Blessing: Ancient Indian Ritual Terminology (New York: E. J. Brill, 1989), raids the Brhaddevata for a catalogue of the various valences to the term âSîs (translated by him as "prayer") but gives no serious consideration to it as a system in and of itself. 28 See P. V. Kane, History ofDharmaSastra, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1968-75), 5.2: 1154. He goes on to say that only later does it take on the restricted meaning of investigation into dharma and arriving at conclusions on doubtful matters by interpretation and reasoning.

The Basics of the Brhaddevata:

Text and Context

15

(6.153), Sutudri (1.114), Drsadvatï (3.137), and Sarasvatl (1.158; 1367; 6:22-24) rivers. It also names places more common in the texts of later Vedic periods, such as the central kingdom of Kuruksetra (6.58), and the more eastern ones of Videha (4.58-59) and the more southeastern realm of Anga (4.24). None of these place-names stray far from the region of northern India. As Michael Witzel, in his excellent work on tracing the Vedic dialects, puts it, ". . .[T]he horizon even of the late Vedic texts was restricted to Northern India, but intentionally so. Certainly one did, by 500 or even 150 B.C.E., know more about the South,— but it was not worth mentioning... ," 29 We also know that Saunaka's school was heavily invested in the kind of index-making activity mentioned above. Five out of the six Anukramanïs listed above are attributed to him, and Kätyäyana heavily relies upon them in his expansive later work. (The work of the school is distinct from Kätyäyana's in that it is written in a mixture of sloka and tristubh meters, whereas the works of Kätyäyana are written in sütrastyle, aphoristic prose.) Moreover, Saunaka's name is also affixed to the Rk Prätisäkhya and the Rg Vidhäna. The Rk Prätiiäkhya, a work of grammar and correct pronunciation, was composed for the purposes of showing all the changes necessary for constituting the samhitä, or euphonically combined, version of the Rg Veda on the basis of the padapatha version, where individual words were not combined in sandhi. The Rg Vidhäna lists uses of the verses of the Samhitas for tangible ritual or domestic purposes. It contains four adhyäyas, or chapters, which consist of instructions as to which Rg Vedic mantra is appropriate in which situation. Many of these situations are "extra-sacrificial" in nature—concerning the worship of the moon, a walk in the forest, and difficulty in childbirth, to name a few. Although these and other works of Saunaka's school—especially in their Anukramanl and Vidhäna forms^-are not officially part of the Vedañga literature, they are still inseparable from 29 Michael Witzel, "On the Localization of Vedic Texts and Schools," in India and the Ancient World: History, Trade and Culture before A.D. 650, edited by Gilbert Pollet (Leuven: Department Oriëntalistiek, 1987), 173-213. See also his more expanded "Tracing the Vedic Dialects," in Dialectes dans les Littératures Indo-Aryennes, edited by Colette Caillat (Paris: Institut de Civilisation Indienne, 1989), 97-266.

16

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

the auxiliary literature of the Vedas because of their close relation to the kalpa literature—the manuals ofritualrules composed mostly in sütra style. Moreover, it is quite clear from the brief inventory of works above that Saunaka and those attached to his school were concerned with the correct boundaries and applications of the Rg Vedic canon—in its meter, its anuväka divisions, its authorship, its deities, and its ritual and everyday uses. The tradition of interpretation can be characterized as a kind of organizational exegesis. Given the dating of the Saunaka school—at the very earliest during the late Vedic period—it may well have been a non-í«íra-style attempt to clarify and codify a Rg Vedic canonical tradition. This Rg Vedic tradition was probably one in which (as Michael Witzel's recent work also demonstrates) much dialectical and narrative change had occurred, and was still occurring in the region of the northeastern Gangetic plain.

The

Brahmani

Aside from the Anukramanï genre and other texts attributed to Saunaka, the Brhaddevata has significant parallels with three other distinct modes of thought in India—the Brahmanas (c. 900-700 B.C.E.), the ritual/philosophical texts which for the most part precede it, and from which the Brhaddevata draws much narrative content; the Nirukta (c. 500 B.C.E), the etymological dictionary from which the text draws heavily for its word derivations; and the philosophy of Mïmâmsâ (c. 400 B.C.E), hailed as the ultimate systematization of Vedic knowledge in early India, and from which the text draws some of its more general rules of procedure and itsritualcommentaries upon individual verses. Similar to thefirstgenre of texts, the Brahmanas, the Brhaddevata reads as if the performance ofritualwere an ongoing and very present concern. The Brahmano narratives, according torecentwork by Michael Witzel,30 are often constructed in a multilayered fashion, and are aresultof accretions which were 30 "On the Origin of the Literary Device of the 'Frame Story' in Old Indian literature," in Festschrift U. Schneider, edited by Harry Falk (Freiburg, 1987); "JB palpûlanï: The Structure of a BrähmanaTale," in Felicitation Volume B. R. Sharma, edited by R. K. Sharma et al. (Tirupati: Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, 1986). His historical arguments about the intent of the stories are indeed convincing, and inform the overall spirit of my own study. O'Flaherty has also treated the. Jaimimya Brahmano from a more symbolic, psychoanalytic perspective (Tales ofSex and Violence [Chi-

The Basics of the Brhaddevata: Text and Context

17

attempts to explain ritual developments and changes over time. In the case of the Cyavana story of the Jaimiriiya Brähmam, for example, three layers exist: the frame story of Cyavana; a second layer about Cyavana which explains the "head of the sacrifice" (similar to the Brhaddevata story about Dadhyañc and the Asvins); and finally, a third layer of stories about the pravargya rite which also include Cyavana. All these layers exist in order to explain the inclusion of the once-separate pravargya rite in the agnistoma. Thus, the Vedic technique of embedding one ritual in another is mirrored by the same technique of embedding one explanatory narrative in another. While the aim of this book is not historical/linguistic study, Witzel's conclusions about the Brahmano tales are quite helpful to the present context. The ritual purpose of the Brhaddevata is particularly to focus on the relationship between deities and worshippers that is established through mantra, and correct knowledge of mantra. Thus, it would make sense that the stories' motivation would revolve around explaining, indeed proving, the efficacy of such a ritual tool. The Brhaddevata strikes one as having a similar perspective on sacrifice. Its stories are concerned with the personal charisma of the rsi or the jealousy of a god combined in intriguing ways with such details as therightplacement of sticks for the sacrificial enclosure. Moreover, like the Brahmanas, there is a kind of assumed-world quality to the Brhaddevata from its very beginning—launching as it does into a series of rules without an easily imaginable referent. One feels, as one does when one opens a Brähmam, that one has entered a conversation between two unknown people in a foreign tongue—perhaps even an entire convention filled with such incomprehensible conversations. Foigoing the temptation to rehearse the entertaining but much-cited irascible statements about the Brähmams, which accuse the Brähmanas of being pattem-less twaddle, we still might say that the Brhaddevata has inherited the etiquette of such Vedic conversations, that protocol of remaining frustratingly obscure to the outsider. Renou contrasts the Brähmanas to the Sutras in a way which is equally applicable to the text at hand:

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1985]). While less historically persuasive about the development and intent of the narratives, her interpretations of individual stories are useful for the purposes of symbolic analysis, and will be referred to on occasion.

18

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata One knows that the Brahmanas had as their object not to describe the rites, but to explain the reason for being of gesture and formula, making an appeal to a causality which was altogether internal and formal, and also utilizing narrative illustration. In doing this, the descriptive element finds itself reduced to the point of sometimes disappearing altogether. On the other hand, the Sutras left to one side all that is narration or interpretation, pushing the descriptive element to the last detail. At the same time, they reorganize the entirety on a methodical plan, taking into account the equilibrium between archetype and ectype, between common portions and individual schemes, while in the Brahmanas everything was treated linearly.31

So too the Brhaddevatä operates on the basis of a kind of internal, formulaic causality. Its cognitive principles are not overtly presented or described. Brhaddevata 1.32, for instance, discussing the origin of names, is utterly elusive without extensive research into related verses, earlier texts, and particular terms: "Whatever name is made from auspiciousness or from speaking ill of someone also becomes desire, such as those [names] formed from auspiciousness in this world, such as [the term] svasti, etc." The verse only becomes comprehensible when one knows that, in an earlier verse, the Brhaddevata states that names are derived from bhava, which can be roughly translated as some kind of ongoing action which is intrinsic to the person or thing being named. And ails, here translated "desire," is a word which denotes a powerful sort of prayer, with an almost imperative tone. Thus a name, whose basis is the auspiciousness of the thing or person named, also becomes an ails, a strong prayer for continued auspiciousness. Yet unlike earlier theorists such as Renou, scholars are now in a position to conclude that the internal nature of such cognition in the Brahmanas does not consign it to obscurity; it does conform to a pattern. More recent work,

31 "On sait que les Brahmano avaient pour but, non de décrire lesrites,mais d'expliquer le raison d'être du geste et de la formule, en faisant appel à une causalité, tantôt interne, tantôt formelle, en utilisant aussi une illustration narrative: ce faisant, l'élément descriptif se trouve réduit, au point de disparaître parfois entièrement. Au contraire, les Sutra solennels laisseront de côté tout ce qui est narration ou interpretation, tout en poussant la partie descriptive dans le dernier détail. Ils réorganisent en même temps l'ensemble sur un plan plus méthodique, tenant compte de l'équilibre entre archetype et ectype, entre portions communes et schémes individuels, alors que dans les Brahmano tout était traité linéairement." Louis Renou, "Sur le genre de Sütra dans la littérature Sanskrite," Journal Asiatique 251 (1963): 165-216.

The Basics of the Brhaddevata: Text and Context

19

such as that of Brian K. Smith, 32 has done a great deal to develop this idea. For Smith, there is indeed a philosophical center around which all Vedic thought revolves, called "resemblance," that governs knowledge: Articulated most fully and cogently in the Brahmano texts, Vedic philosophy results in a system of mutual resemblance between three hierarchically calibrated registers: 1 ) the scale of ritual performance... 2) the relative quality and realization of the sacrificer's earthly self and status... and 3) the hierarchical order of selves and worlds of the unseen spheres.33 The details of this argument need not be discussed here, but it is worth noting that the Brhaddevata too is concerned with all three registers. Although it does not explicitly address the scale of sacrifice, it is concerned with the scale of deities—articulating rules for when and why some deities may be appropriately substituted for others. Moreover, the Brhaddevata is explicitly concerned with earthly self and status—gaining the fruits of the sacrifice. In its itihäsas, it extols the mantra-seers as winners of wealth, cows, and even brides. In several places it states that he who knows the deities will obtain the highest fruits, and "is praised by those seated at the sacrifice in heaven." (8:133) And, it bases the entire sacrifice on the schema of the three unseen worlds within which the deities must be appropriately named, represented by the Vedic triad of Agni, Indra/Väyu, and Surya. 34 32 Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also his Classifying the Universe: The Ancient Indian Varna System and the Origins of Caste (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), to be discussed in later chapters. The classical work on the subject is Hermann Oldenberg, Vorwissenschaftliche Wissenschaft: Die Weltanschauung der Brähmäna-texte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1919). 33 Brian Smith, Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion, p. 119. 34 There are also substantive similarities between the Slitras and the Brhaddevata. The ritual Kalpa Sutras, in fact, the earliest known instance of the concise, aphoristic style of Sütra literature, developed parallel to the other schools of Vedic thought, with which the Brhaddevata is most closely related—the Vedängas, or limbs of the Veda. Also composed in sütra style, the Vedängas' six disciplines are related to correct performance of theritual-—grammar,phonology, prosody, etymology, and astrology. Ritual Sutras date, according to C. G. Kashikar, from between 800 and 300 B.C.E. (A Survey ofthe S rauta Sutra [Bombay: University of Bombay, 1968]). For further work on the relationship between the two genres, see Renou's "Les Connexions entre le rituel et la grammaire en Sanskrit," Journal Asiatique 233 (1941-42): 105-65; reprinted in J. F. Staal, ed., Λ Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), pp. 435-69.

20

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

Finally, like the Brâhmanas, the Brhaddevata intersperses ritual rules within its more narrative and descriptive discourses. While not so self-conscious as to contain an entire section of paribhäsäs, as the Sutras often do, 35 the Brhaddevata still enjoins a number of ritual rules concerning the correct discernment of a deity of a mantra as well as the rewards of knowing a deity in the practice of ritual. Brhaddevata 1.78, for example, gives a meta-rule about deciding to which deity a sükta belongs in an unclear case: "The one to whom the oblation is offered, and to whom the sükta belongs, should be regarded in that case as the predominant god, not the one who is praised incidentally."

The Nirukta In addition to the Brahmanas, the Brhaddevata has much in common with a slightly more accessible discourse, called nirukta, often translated as "etymological explanation." While such etymologies are scattered throughout the Brahmanas and other interpretive works, the crowning work of this genre is a dictionary by the same name: Yäska's Nirukta. In fact, Yäska was writing a commentary on an earlier text called the Nighantu, a list of Vedic synonyms, many of whose meanings had become obscure. As discussed at length in Chapter Four, the wordderivation method of explanation in early India was not simply a matter of scholarly, linguistic knowledge. For Yäska, it is a key to understanding the sacrifice as a whole. Moreover, while the "assumed world" quality of the Nirukta is just

35 As Renou intimates, it has long been accepted that the difference between the earlier Brahmanas and the Sutras has been that, in the Brahmanas, relations between parts are built by narrative while in the Sutra texts, the parts are organized by a systematic relationship to the conceptual whole. Sütra literature also tends to contain reflections upon its own system. Much of this can be seen in the existence of paribhäsäs—general principles that facilitate the correct interpretation of the work. As Smith also notes, however, the Sutras still presuppose the philosophy of hierarchical resemblance. Knowledge of the particulars in the subsequent text can be inferred from the archetype, and to know the archetype is to know all the manifestations of the archetype (Smith, Reflections, p. 124).

The Basics of the Brhaddevata: Text and Context

21

as pronounced as it is in the Brahmanos, Yâska introduces a new component, that of the defense of the meaningfulness of the Veda. In the Brahmanas, the question of the meaning of Vedic language is in part addressed in narrative form: stories about one rsi's "chatter," coherent but inappropriate and obscure; stories about confusion and silence on the part of inept sacrificers; or stories about how one Veda can better accomplish the task of sacrifice than the other three, whose language is somehow ineffective. 36 In the Nirukta, however, Yäska addresses the question of meaning more directly. In Nirukta 1.15, Yäska engages the figure of Kautsa, the skeptic, in an argument about the meaningfulness of the Vedas. To summarize, Kautsa bases his challenge on several points. First, Vedic language is fixed and frozen in both word and syntax; if the meaning of the Vedas were so important, the form would not have such a huge emphasis. Second, ritual form is already enjoined by the Brahmano text, making the Vedas redundant. Third, nonsensical features appear in Vedic language, such as in the words, "Save him, O Plant!" (TS 1.2.1.1.) "Why would one talk to a plant?" asks Kautsa. Moreover, Vedic language is contradictory—one verse (TS 1.8.6.1) says there is only one Rudra, and another verse (VS 16.54) says there are Rudras without number. In addition, Vedic language addresses itself to figures that one already knows about. For instance, TS 6.3.7.1 contains the verse, "Address the hymn to Agni, who is being kindled." Why does one need to address Agni when one already knows him? Finally, the meanings of Vedic verses are obscure. Kautsa at this point introduces a number of hapax legomena, such as the word amyak, which occurs only once in RV 1.169.3. In Nirukta 1.16-17, Yäska replies to each of Kautsa's objections. To the challenge that the Vedas are frozen, Yäska responds that the phrases of everyday speech, such as "father and son," also have an immutable, fixed order. To the charge that the ritual form is already enjoined by the Brahmano, he replies that the Brahmano is simply reiterating what has

36 See Satapatha Brahmana 6.33.1, the story of Aitasa's chatter; SB 5.14, the story of Näbhäbedistha Mänava's rescuing the Angirases from confusion; and Gopatha Brahmana 1.2.18-19, the story of how the different Vedas attempt to tame the horse to pass the test of speech, and how Indra takes the form of different Vedas to please and protect the gods.

22

Myth, Commentary and the History of the Brhaddevata

already been said by the Veda; thus such repetition does not render the Veda meaningless. To the charge that the meaning of some Vedic passages is impossible, he replies that the general intention behind such particular passages as "Save him, O plant!" is that no injury be inflicted; thus the passage remains significant. To the charge that the Veda contains contradictory passages, Yäska asserts that this is no different in the everyday world, in laudatory statements such as "The king has no enemies." In reply to the objection that the Vedas address a person that one already knows, Yäska again says that this is no different in the everyday world, when one announces the name of a person one already knows in greeting him, or in declaring to a guest that the mixture of milk and honey is ready for him, when the guest is already acquainted with the custom and expects it. To the objection that the meaning of the Veda is obscure, Yäska "blames the victim," and replies that the fault of obscurity lies with the person who does not take the time to study the Vedas and learn the meanings. By implication, of course, it is the fault of the person who does not study the Nirukta, Yäska's own text. Finally, the meanings of Vedic words must be known; if they were not known, the division of words into syllables, and therefore, effective recitation within the sacrifice, would be impossible. As Yäska goes on to say in 1.17, the phonetic treatises of the Vedic schools that teach such recitation are based on the original meanings of words. Yäska's argument with Kautsa is worth mentioning at this point because it sets up the larger parameters between ritual form and Vedic meaning which the Brhaddevata continues to emphasize. In short, the Veda mantras must be meaningful because their ritual use depends upon it. Among other reasons, one must understand mantras in order to recite them correctly, to discern which mantra is appropriate at which point in the ritual, and in order to bring the appropriate deity to mind at the appropriate time. The Brhaddevata uses the Nirukta's arguments for and techniques to discern the meaningfulness of mantras in two ways. First, for the Brhaddevata, the most important aspect of the meaning of mantra is knowing its referent— the deity to whom it is addressed. As BD 1.2 states, "The collection of deities in each mantra is to be known exactly, for the one who knows the collection of deities of the mantras is the one who understands their purpose." Sec-

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ond, the Brhaddevata uses Yäska's etymological procedures to augment and highlight the nature of the Vedic deities, the subject with which it is most concerned. The Brhaddevata''s own use of these procedures will be discussed in Chapter Five.

Mlmämsä The third genre of discourse to which the Brhaddevata is related, the philosophical school of Mlmämsä, refines the question of meaning even further. Mlmämsä''s core Sutras are those of Jaimini, who is credited with systematizing Vedic knowledge to a point of transcendental elegance. Its central problem is the investigation of dharma, or duty, as it is stated within the Vedas. Because the Vedas are the main source of dharma, they have no author, but are eternally valid and uncreated—as Sheldon Pollock puts it, an "always-already-given discourse."37 Most importantly, dharma is taught by Vedic injunction (codana)—that which is laid down in the Vedas as "to-be-done" within the ritual sphere. All of Vedic language is organized according to this basic principle. Mlmämsä divides the Vedic literature into four different categories—mantra, brähmana, arthaväda, and nämadheya. Though an extended discussion of these distinctions need not detain us here, some important points should be noted. For Mlmämsä, the most important distinction is between mantra and brähmana. Mantras are those texts which merely make an assertion,38 but are not themselves injunctive. They function only during the performance of an act. The brähmana texts have been defined as all that which is not mantra?9 While arguments abound as to how the brähmana, which contains "all the rest," is to be divided up, what remains clear is that, whatever else they contain, brähmanas do contain injunctions which are indicative of dharma. The

37 Pollock, "Mlmämsä and the Problem of History in Traditional India," p. 610. See also Francis X. Clooney's "Why the Veda Has No Author: Some Contributions of the Early Mlmämsä to Religious and Ritual Studies," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55 (1988): 659-84. 38 PMS 2.132. 39 PMS 2.1.33.

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brahmano portion is where injunctions are primarily to be located. The third category, arthavâda, consists of those brâhmana texts which are not injunctive in character, but are purely descriptive or declamatory. They commend the act of sacrifice to a deity, or describe the reason for performing a certain act. The final division, nâmadheya, consists of those texts primarily made up of the proper names of sacrifices and other things, and whose meaning depends upon the knowledge of those names. How does Rg Vedic mantra fit within this larger scheme? Does this Mïmâmsâ system mean that mantras, being merely assertive statements, are useless, or even meaningless, given the centrality of injunction? On the contrary. As Ganganatha Jha notes, if the mantra texts were meaningless, they could not convey any information regarding dharma, and this would vitiate the authority of the Veda.40 To argue this point, in Siitras 1.2.31-53, Jaimini picks up the skeleton of the arguments provided by Yäska against Kautsa and develops them in more elaborate detail. For Mlmamsa, mantras serve two purposes—the purpose of asserting things in connection with the acts enjoined by injunctive texts, and the purpose of recalling such injunctions to mind. Thus, mantras are clearly helpful in providing knowledge of dharma. It is in comparison with the precepts of Mïmâmsâ outlined above that the Brhaddevata becomes the most challenging. As a form of discourse it shares a great deal with Mïmâmsâ. Although it does not explicitly organize itself around the question of dharma, the Brhaddevata circumscribes all knowledge—even knowledge of the deities—as part and parcel of the ritual performance which Mïmâmsâ declares to be the path of dharma. And, it places an emphasis upon the meaningfulness of mantra, just as the Nirukta and the Jaimini Sutras do. Yet the Brhaddevatâ also lays a good deal of emphasis upon things which are less important to Mïmâmsâ—such as the nature and exploits of the deities. For Mïmâmsâ, the deities are a purely hypothetical entity, posited for the sake of the sacrifice, which would not be an act of "sacrifice" unless there were a deity to whom the offering is made. 41 Yet

40 Ganganatha Jha, Pürva Mïmâmsâ in Its Sources (Bañaras: Bañaras Hindu University Press, 1942), p. 162. 41 See PMS 9.1.6-10.

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even with this proviso, for Mïmâmsâ deities are clearly subordinate— they have no physical body, they are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, nor do they reward and punish people as the results of sacrifices. 42

Conclusions In light of these kinds of intertextual connections, then, it is imperative to read the Brhaddevata with these different Vedic genres in mind. Throughout the book I will be constantly addressing relationships between texts. First and foremost is the relationship between the Brhaddevata and the Rg Veda, the canonical text upon which it comments. In addition, I will be addressing the relationship between the Brhaddevata and earlier texts—specifically the Brahmanas and the Nirukta, all of which contain much narrative and etymological material from which the Brhaddevata draws. Finally, I will be comparing the two recensions of the Brhaddevata itself, as they have been delineated by Tokunaga. Indeed, it is impossible to gauge the degree of selectivity and investment in the Brhaddevata without these kinds of comparison—both with related texts making similar attempts at collecting and legitimating knowledge, and with texts which contain information left out of the commentary altogether. Comparison is all the more important because the Brhaddevata''s claims to universality and uniformity are so explicitly formulated. And it is to those claims, and how we might make sense of them theoretically, that I now turn.

42 Jha, Purva Mimamsä in Its Sources, p. 317. See also Francis X. Clooney, "Devatädhikarana: The Theological Reconception of God in Mimärnsä and Vedänta," Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (1988): 277-98.

Chapter Two

Making Arguments: Canonical Commentary and Mythological Narrative The Category of Canonical Commentary Already, by a preliminary comparison with other genres of Vedic interpretation, the Brhaddevatä begins to take on some dimensions beyond the mere catalogue, reflecting as it does both the style and the content of the literature surrounding it. Yet such comparison may well have simply substituted Indian concepts for Western ones; one still grapples with the Brhaddevatä's strange amalgam of Nairuktan etymology, Brähmanalike narrative, and the seedlings of Mïmâmsâ philosophical thought. Must it be concluded, then, that even in its Indian context there is still something of a motley nature to the text, and must we renounce all possibilities of internal coherence? Not at all. Brian Smith hints at other possibilities when he writes that in general, the schools of Vedic exegesis "are far better understood as taxonomies than as handbooks or manuals for practice."1 If, as Brian Smith suggests, one understands these Vedic taxonomies as a form of canonical commentaries, a whole new method of inquiry opens up as a possibility. It is under this larger rubric of canonical commentary that one can do the most justice to a variegated text such as the Brhaddevatä. In addition to "taxonomy," and almost synonymous with it, the term "list" has also been used by recent historians of religions to understand the creation and preservation of canon. It has become a truism in the last ten years of religious studies that the creation of a religious canon involves the building and refining of lists. J. Z. Smith2 has proposed the 1 Smith, Reflections, p. 21. 2 J. Z. Smith, "Sacred Persistence," in Imagining Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 36-52.

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term Listenwissenschaft for the study of canon-creation in religious traditions. The approach is salutary because it introduces the problem of list-making—what is at stake in the inclusion and exclusion of elements in a debate about canon? Who is it that formulates the rules for such determinations and why? By emphasizing the problems involved in listmaking, the scholar introduces the question of agency into the study of sacred scripture. And, as mentioned in the Preface, she also considers both social and intellectual contexts in the study of the formative period of any canon. By examining what is included as canon and what is not, the scholarly perspective of Listenwissenschaft permits inspection of the criteria involved in the manufacture of knowledge. Various projects have been conducted with this particular view in mind, and with profitable results. Many of these studies have focused on the criteria by which such lists are made—usually resulting in an outline of particular tropes, an exposure of the persuasive and lasting images and categories which serve best as agents of coherence in list-making. Listenwissenschaft has provided the study of religion with a kind of cognitive science whereby one can better understand the categories with which the exegetes of a particular culture think.3 In general, the process involves the collection of data, the discovery of a pattern, and the determination of some common principle that underlies the pattern. This principle is then used for prediction (omen), interdiction (taboo), or retrospection (history).4 Further, studies in Listenwissenschaft have demonstrated that religious listmakers often make particular claims. First, once "enlisted," such knowledge is frequently portrayed as inviolable. Second, the list is often presented as sufficient unto itself—no other form of knowledge is

3 See Fitz John Porter Poole, "Metaphors and Maps: Toward Comparison in the Anthropology of Religion," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 14.3 (1987): 411-57. Other fields, such as cognitive science itself, have broached the question of religion only sporadically. See George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 90100. Pascal Boyer's Tradition as Truth and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) is the first systematic attempt to study a single ritual from the perspective of cognitive science. 4 J. Z. Smith, "Sacred Persistence," p. 48.

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needed for human flourishing.5 Third, when new data are introduced into the culture, they are generally absorbed within the list—usually in a manner which does not consciously challenge its claims to central cultural signficance. Attempts are made to accommodate earlier and later forms of knowledge to each other, ostensibly motivated by the same principle of organization which the earlier list possessed. J. Z. Smith calls this a recurrent process of "arbitrary limitation and of overcoming limitation through ingenuity."6 The category of commentary can be seen in the context of this theoretical perspective of Listenwissenschaft. As mentioned in the preface, for the purposes of this work I define commentary in a strict, "textual" sense—as a set of remarks corresponding, in a verse-by-verse manner, with the canonical text that it is commenting upon. While the specifics of the Anukramanï will be discussed below, in a more general way one can argue that, because of its verse-by-verse nature, commentary is a kind of list. Commentary brings into a list-like focus the one-to-one relationship between text and remark upon the text (in this case, the verses of the Rg Veda and the situating of those verses that the various discourses of Brhaddevata achieve.) Taking commentary as a subset of Listenwissenschaft, then, the student of the Brhaddevata can bring into focus the minutiae of intellectual operations performed on Vedic canon in order for it to remain relevant and viable in changing conditions. Moreover, as J. Z. Smith implies, Listenwissenschaft is inherently intertextual in nature. So too commentarial practices tend to be embedded within, and frequently refer to, larger traditions of comment; thus, the interpreter of such practices would not only look at text and comment, but at other comments (antecedent and rival traditions, etc.) on that same text. Because of this kind of intertextuality, the perspective of commentary is historically productive; it shows—both directly and indirectly—the ways in which commentators perceive social circumstances to have changed and how they create new forms to address that change. Relatedly, the lens of commentary also brings into focus the investments of the practitioner—the commentator—who refashions and relocates the

5 See Bruce Lincoln, "The Tyranny of Taxonomy," Occasional Papers of the University of Minnesota Center for Humanistic Studiesl (1985). 6 Ibid., pp. 47-52.

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text in such a way as to maintain authority in the midst of shifting circumstances.

The Anukramani as Commentarial Strategy How does this kind of thinking about canon help to make sense of the Brhaddevata? As mentioned above, there is a strong case to be made for the argument that the core text of the Brhaddevata is the Devatânukramanï—one of the several Anukramani works attributed to Saunaka in the fourth century BCE. And even if the Devatânukramanï is not the particular core text of the Brhaddevata, the Brhaddevata has an indisputable Anukramani basis, of whatever derivation. While a separate consideration of each of these lists would involve a dissertation in itself, the question must nonetheless be asked: How is one to "read" the occurrence of these texts at this point in Indian religious history? Macdonell, in a rather backhanded way, conjectures as follows about the Sarvânukramanr. For on the one hand it is probable that when fixing the canon of the Rg Veda became a desideratum, the want was supplied almost simultaneously in the various directions of the indexes attributed to Saunaka, while all of them on the other hand, like the Prätitäkhya, have a metrical form, several of them (the Pada and the Devatä, besides the Anuväkänukramam and the Brhaddevata) containing an occasional admixture of tristubh, such as appears in the PrätiSäkhya. That most of them at least were anterior to the Sarvanukramanl is tolerably clear, for the latter, on Sadgurusisya's showing from the quotations which he adduces, is based on them, and, as embodying the substance of all of them, is for the sake of brevity composed in Siitras. That the desire to condense the matter contained in the various indexes into a single work of a comprehensive character should soon have arisen, is in itself likely; and that this task should have been undertaken by Kätyäyana, himself an author of pratiÉâkhya and of a Srauta Sutra, is highly probable. . . ^

In this rather involved discussion of dates and authorship, Macdonell alludes to the possibility of canon formation. Placing the argument in the larger context of Indian discourse, we might describe the occurrence of such a genre in a slightly more developed way. The Brâhamana texts 7 Macdonell, Sarvänukramani, p. viii.

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are ritual/philosophical manuals, designed to create connections (bandhus) between various parts of the universe and to underscore the ritual and social system of the priestly elite. In the Brähmanas, there is no attempt to stem what one might call "elaborative energy"—indeed all of the universe must be accounted for under the aegis of the system of connections. In the Anukramanis, however, there is a very different impetus: that of condensation and distillation. While the Anukramani texts are drastically shorter than their Brahmano counterparts, they do not work in opposition to the transcendentalizing project of the Brähmanas. On the contrary, one might say instead that their existence comes out of the organizational needs of the performance of sacrifice; they act as an almost bureaucratic response to the Brahmano''s proliferation of sacrificial emphasis, the pedagogical "aides-mémoires" which Renou, Gonda, and others cite as their primary purpose.8 The system has become overloaded, and, at least at the introductory level, needs to organize itself in a simpler fashion in order to continue. In this, the Anukramanis are similar to the Prätisakhyas. In effect, they control the Rg Vedic canon. One can be even more specific about the commentarial strategies of the Anukramanis. They canonize the Vedas in two particular ways. First, after mentioning the various opinions of grammarians and other interpreters, they often "close o f f ' any possible counter-argument as to the appropriate deity, rsi, or classification of a sükta, and opt for one particular choice. Thus, such texts have the effect of fixing the canon, not only with regard to the words which are included, but also with regard to the way in which those words are to be received semantically and used ritually. A compelling example of such a canon-forming function, mentioned in Chapter Five, is that of the khila hymns of the Rg Veda. Taken from the point of view of canon formation, the khilas take the ambiguous place of apocrypha. Yet the "waste land between cultivated fields" (one of the meanings of the word khila)musl be accounted for, named as such, in order for canon to become defined. The Anukramanis serve this func-

8 Jan Gonda, Vedic Literature (Samhit&s and Brähmanas,). A History of Indian Literature, vol. 1, fase. 1 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1975), pp. 33-34; Renou, "Le Destin du Veda," 6: 35-37.

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tion in two ways. First, the Anukramanïs are the first to utilize the concept; the term khila does not appear before the Anuväkänukramatfl and the Ârsânukramanï attributed to Saunaka.9 Second, to make clear the boundaries between what was waste and what was cultivated, the khilas had their own Anukramanî—the Khilânukramanï. Perhaps even more threatening to canon than that which is "not included," those khilas which are "almost included" must have a delineated list. Anukramanïs close off possible counter-arguments in another way— by making claims to be sacred and indispensable knowledge. In this sense, they "canonize" themselves, and put themselves on a par with the text which they interpret. As the introduction to the Sarvânukramanï has it, "without this knowledge, there is no accomplishment of action according to smrti and Sruti."w Thus the condensation of the Veda, while not replacing the Veda wholesale, is indispensable to it, and becomes equal to it. Indexical activity is not utilitarian, but a necessary and transcendent distillation, a form of knowledge in its own right. The Sarvânukramanï even goes beyond the Veda, since it indexes not only the Veda, but all that is prescribed in the ritual activity which incorporates the Veda. It contains all that is necessary to the Vedic world. There is also some textual evidence that before the Anukramanîs were compiled, the Veda threatened to become a senseless canon. The Nighantu, the glossary of Vedic synonyms, and the Nirukta, the dictionary which comments upon it, make claims to illuminate what had become unintelligible words, thus testifying eloquently to this threat. Yäska's argument with the infamous Kautsa about the meaninglessness of the Veda, discussed above, is part of this attempt to relegitimate the Veda. This is not to say that characters such as Kautsa were necessarily based on a historical figure or movement. While that may or may not be the case, what is observable is that the interpretive apparatus of the Rg Veda had to be massively mobilized in order to preserve the Rg Veda, to make it count. The interest of these early arguments lies in the question of how one justifies an act of organizing and interpreting an only partly intelligible canon, while at the same time preserving its transcendence. More specifically, in these texts the claim to an all-encompassing, total

9 Gonda, Vedic Literature, p. 35. 10 na hi etajjñanam rte Srautasmärtakarmaprasiddhih.

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organization of knowledge is not made solely in the name of a quantitative acquisition of knowledge, but in the name of the efficacy of mantra within the world of Vedic sacrifice, and indirectly, the everyday world.

The Brhaddevatâ as Commentarial Totalization The Brhaddevatâ, then, takes this basic commentarial project of the Anukramanls and extends it in a variety of different directions—via narrative, cosmology, etymology, and Ritual philosophy. These extensions are part of what J. Z. Smith calls "exegetical totalization." He writes: When there is a canon, it is possible to predict the necessary occurrence of a hermeneute, of an interpreter whoSe task it is continually to extend the domain of the closed canon over everything that is known or everything that exists without altering the canon in the process. It is with the canon and its hermeneute that we encounter the necessary obsession with exegetical totalization. 11

In this respect, the Brhaddevatâ dwells in some very interesting ways in the rather unappealingly described world of "necessary obsession with exegetical totalization." Its authors are the hermeneutes who can be predicted to accompany any finished canon, and they choose to augment and refine the "core" list of mantras and deities so that no aspect or "difficult case" of Vedic knowledge is left unconsidered. Far from being "motley" in its heterogeneity, the Brhaddevatâ contains a variety of discourses because it must support and account for a religious canon by collecting and/or naming all of its "constituencies"—both its constituent parts and the situations in which it is relevant. Indeed, the Brhaddevatâ contains all of the kinds of lists Jack Goody names in his stimulating essay, "What's in a List?", 12 all of them instigated by the interpretive challenges posed by the Rg Vedic canon. Following Goody's model, one finds in the text simple lists (the names for Indra), administrative lists (the exchange of gifts from a king to a rsi), event lists (the events in the numerous itihâsas), and lexical lists (the different parts of speech, kinds of compounds, etc). 11 J. Z. Smith, "Sacred Persistence," p. 49. 12 Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 74-112.

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One can sketch the Brhaddevata''s attempt at totalization even more specifically. First, the opening verse of the text emphasizes the aggregation, the total collection of the mantras and deities to be expounded: "With honor to the seers of the mantra, I will say for all the verses, in the cardinal order of the collection, the deity of the padas, the half-verses, the verses, and the süktas" {BD 1.1). Second, many of its verses imply that the Brhaddevata as a whole contains a totality, a sufficiency of knowledge. As the final verse states, the one who knows the rsi, the meter, and the deity of a Rg Vedic sükta "enters into brahman, the immortal, the unending, the fixed source of that which is and that which is not, big and little, the Lord of all and the highest light" (8.140). Third, its emphasis on totality also involves a system. Brhaddevata 1.79 states the importance of the "general rule" (vidhi) upon which all discernment of the deities of the mantras is based. Moreover, the cosmological system, that of gaining fruits of the sacrifice, is a closed affair to those who do not know the contents of the Brhaddevata: "For no-one who does not know the collection of deities precisely obtains the fruit of the ritual action, either of the everyday world or of the Vedic world" (1.4). Fourth, those who know the Brhaddevata are claimed to be indispensable pedagogues of Rg Vedic knowledge. Verse 1.2 states that the god in each mantra is to be known exactly, for the one who knows the god [of the mantras] is the one who understands the purpose [of the mantras]. And continuing on, it promises the fruits of such pedagogy: "He is the one who makes known what the seers intended in their visions of the mantras, as well as right understanding and various sorts of ritual action." Such preliminary analysis shows that it may be profitable to approach the Brhaddevata as a work of canonical exegesis which, like the canon it comments upon, claims a total sufficiency of knowledge. Thus, supporting my particular analyses will be two general points related to this approach. First, the Brhaddevata contains an impetus to coherence which derives from its relationship to canon. In its own attempts to make Rg Vedic mantras efficacious, the text itself can be read as a cohesive, patterned discourse. This pattern is based on an accordion-like movement between the exposition of the general, global rule, and the consideration of particular examples of and exceptions to that rule. Second, one can also trace an investment and a selectivity in the Brhaddevata''s

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pattern of thought. This selectivity is a natural result of its claim to sufficiency of knowledge. For example, several aspects of Rg Vedic mantra which might indicate that the Rg Veda was a less-than-transcendent text are interpreted in such a way as to push aside that very possibility— a point to be discussed again in Chapter Twelve, "Selective Slokas: Cleaning Up the Veda." As a particular procedure for reading, then, I will present the Brhaddevata as a series of patterned responses to the canon of the Rg Veda. The following chapters will outline its attempts to justify and support the basic unit of canonical language—the mantra—through description, taxonomy, and etymology. The mantra, as a specific mode of Vedic knowing, is one of the Brhaddevata's main points of reference. 13 However, because the mantra is also bound up with the narratives which explain their genesis, these earlier chapters also serve to "set the stage" for the more extensive deliberations in the third part of the book—the examination of those narratives as forms of exegetical argument in their own right.

Mythological Narratives: A Process of Reading Because of the importance of these narratives in the Brhaddevata, it is necessary to make some general, preliminary comments on myth in general, and the study of Vedic myth in particular, before embarking on an analysis of the Brhaddevata1^ text. While the myths themselves will be discussed in greater detail in the second half of the book, in these remarks, I hope to identify a general approach to the study of mythology which is compatible with the placement of myths in commentarial texts such as the Brhaddevata. This approach attempts to resolve certain theoretical impasses in the study of myth, and to solve some particular problems associated with the study of äkhyäna and itihasa in the Vedic context. It does not take an extended exploration of the vicissitudes of Vedic mythology to see that the theory of myth has fallen on hard times. The historical critique of recent philosophies of myth, in all of its manifesta13 Isidore's Etymologiae provides an interesting parallel in the West. Like Yäska's Nirukta, Isidore's etymologies prove and celebrate something transcendent— in the medieval case, the existence of God.

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tions, is well known. Among others, Geo Widengren, 14 R. D. Baird, 15 Guilford Dudley,16 J. Z. Smith, 17 Ivan Strenski,18 Gregory Alles, 19 and Ariel Glucklich 20 have shown the ways in which an exclusively theoretical approach to myth risks being profoundly ahistorical, subordinating historical events in the development of religious traditions to the larger pattern of myth in which these events are said to participate. Moreover, such philosophies cannot account for social change, but merely give a template for "discovering" the same patterns or axioms in a variety of divergent phenomena world-wide. Since philosophy's impetus is thus toward universalization and transcendentalization, a philosophy of myth risks rendering symbols empty containers in which objects reside because they represent, through shared characteristics, a certain abstract aspect of the world. 21 If culture is to be respected, and historical inquiry is to maintain its own rigor and identity as a discipline, myth must refer not to some larger, transcendent symbol such as the "Center," but to the historical and cultural circumstances from which it came. J. Z. Smith, in his recent work criticizing the Eliadean notion of "the Center," puts it eloquently: Without examining each and every instance, it cannot be claimed that the pattern of the "Center" is a fantasy, but it is clearly far from a universal (or even

14 For the more historical articulation of this view, see G. Widengren, "La Méthode comparative: entre philologie et phénoménologie," Numen 18 (1971): 161172. See also "Some Remarks on the Methods of the Phenomenology of Religions," Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 17; Universitetet och Forskingen, pp. 250-260. 15 R. D. Baird, Category Formation and the History of Religions (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), and his Methodological Issues in the Study of Religion (Chico, Calif.: New Horizons Press, 1975). 16 See Guilford Dudley's "Mircea Eliade: Anti-Historian of Religions," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (1976): 345-359. 17 See J. Z. Smith, Imagining Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), and his To Take Place (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 18 Ivan Strenski, Four Theories of Myth in the Twentieth Century (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988). 19 Gregory Alles, "Wach, Eliade, and the Critique from Totality," Numen 35 (1988): 108-138. 20 Ariel Glucklich, "Images and Symbols in the Phenomenology of Dharma," History of Religions 29:3 (1990): 259-285. 21 Ibid., p. 267.

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dominant) pattern of symbolization. At the very least, the burden of proof has shifted to those who will claim that a particular cultural construction represents a "Center." The "Center" is not a secure pattern to which data may be brought as illustrative; it is a dubious notion that will have to be established anew on the basis of detailed comparative e n d e a v o r s . As Smith asserts, the impetus of theory itself may be precisely what prevents the historical variety of the mythic form from receiving its full exposure. Moreover, as Marcel Detienne 2 3 has maintained, and as w e shall see in the case of Vedic myth, theories of myth have been overly concerned with origins as an explanatory tool. One can see such a concern in Max Miiller's attempts to establish myth as a degeneration from humanity's original apprehension of the Infinite, 2 4 or in Ε. B. Tylor's 2 5 effort to show the origin of mythmaking in so-called "primitive" puzzlement about a human soul. In a related way, later morphologists have asserted that "archaic" humanity longs to return to its cosmogonie origins. Mircea Eliade 2 6 saw regenerative power in archaic man's return to and re-enactment of the creation of the world. Henri Corbin 2 7 argued 22 J. Z. Smith, To Take Place, p. 17. 23 Marcel Detienne, The Creation of Mythology, translated by Margaret Cook (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 24 See, among many others, Max Miiller's Three Lectures on Vedanta Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1894); Chips from a German Workshop, 4 Vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867-75); Comparative Mythology (New York: Arno Press, 1977). 25 See E. B. Tylor, Origins of Culture (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1970); Primitive Culture (New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1920). For a good discussion of this tendency in Tylor's thought, see Joan Leopold's Culture in Comparative and Evolutionary Perspective: E. B. Tylor and the Making of Primitive Culture (Berlin: Reimer, 1980). 26 See, among countless others, Mircea Eliade 's Cosmos and History, translated by Willard Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954); Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958); and "The New Humanism," in The Quest (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1975). 27 For the more explicit of his methodological statements, see Henri Corbin's The Concept of Comparative Philosophy, translated from the French by Peter Russell (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1981), and his Temple and Contemplation, translated by Philip Sherrard (London: Kegan Paul, 1986).

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for the salvific return to the original temple—the «r-temple in which all historical forms participated. The concern with origins is not,per se, problematic. However, as I shall discuss more specifically in the Vedic case below, such concern with origins frequently prevents mythologists from paying sufficient attention to the context in which the myths are being told. The origin of the myth becomes the sole explanatory principle in the study of mythology. Moreover, such a view perpetuates the illusion that there can be a "first myth," of which all other myths are simple "variants" or "versions." The rift between historians and philosophers of myth might profitably be understood in the light of Lee Yearley's work on primary, secondary, and practical theories, found in his book, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage?·* Building on the work of Robin Horton, 29 Yearley explains how primary theory involves a kind of everyday logic, whereby the events of normal life are negotiated, regulated, and calculated according to experience. These theories will vary from culture to culture insofar as they are affected by particular exigencies of climate, social organization, etc. However, many primary theories, such as the changes of seasons or the measure of weights, remain universally shared. Secondary theories are those which are developed from primary theories to explain singular, extraordinary, or troubling occurrences; such theories differ widely from culture to culture. Such secondary theories often involve spirits, deities, and other supernatural phenomena to account for those occurrences with which primary theories cannot cope. While these two levels of theory may be adequate to explain certain cultural phenomena, Yearley claims the need for an intermediate category, that of practical theory, which is concerned with ethics and the place of human action. For Yearley, practical theory aims at a more concise organization of human experience than does primary theory, but stays far closer to the peculiar, particular complexities of human life than does secondary theory. Practical theories aim to guide appreciation and action, to explain human activities, and to shape people's 28 State University of New York Press, 1990. See particularly his discussion on pp. 175-82. 29 Robin Horton, "Tradition and Modernity Revisited," in M. Hollis and S. Lukes, eds., Rationality and Relativism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 201-60.

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practices. Practical theories, writes Yearley, generate forms of explanation, prediction, and control. 30 Yearley acknowledges that, as descriptions of specific forms of cultural thought, Horton's categories are highly problematic. However, they are indeed illuminating when applied to Western theories of myth themselves. One might call the secondary theorists the philosophers of myth, and the primary theorists the historians of myth, and the debate between them something like an intellectual war. For the secondary theorists, myth itself is a unique and extraordinary occurrence. To them, myth must have its own form of being and its own laws because it is radically distinct from normal everyday life; myth is, to use a truism, an interruption of the extraordinary sacred into the everyday profane world. The primary theorists, the historians, accuse the secondary theorists, the philosophers, of creating an illusory, overly transcendent category, "myth," to explain phenomena which only seem unique and extraordinary. The primary theorists argue that all such phenomena can and must be located in the realm of everyday logic, as part of the normal human struggles for power and position called history. What is missing, and what could help resolve this conflict, is a practical theory of myth. Such a theory stays close to the historical "ground" of human experience, yet attempts to make a more concise organization of myth in order to understand the ways in which myth has guided human action. Certainly, the myths of the Brhaddevatä act as guides in just this way. Put more specifically, a practical theory of myth involves an awareness of myth's relationship to human flourishing throughout history—when myth contributes to such flourishing, and when myth precludes the possibility for such flourishing altogether. It may be best, therefore, to abandon the attempt to establish either a primary (historical) or a secondary (philosophical) theory of myth and proceed instead with a practical theory—an invitation to see myth in the ways outlined above. I thus make one important addendum to Yearley's formulation: a practical theory of myth involves an intellectual operation distinct from strictly philosophical or historical thought—an operation that I call a practice of reading. A practice of reading is an intellectual operation which, while axiomatic, does not have the construction of a 30 Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas, p. 178.

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Brhaddevata

series of axioms as its primary end. 31 A secondary theory of myth must be based on a claim or series of claims about a "thing" called myth, and a primary theory tends to reduce myth to a number of other socio-historical functions. A practice of reading, however, hypothesizes a number of possibilities that the mythic form might take in its use by myth-makers throughout history. Yet the act of reading delays "applying" such hypotheses; it delays "demonstrating" a transcendent pattern. Whereas a secondary theory must subsume facts into patterns and exceptions to such patterns, a practice of reading is more easily interrupted by new information, and is liable to change its focus entirely. Moreover, such a practice of reading emphasizes that myth, like all of human activity, can itself be a kind of practical theory. Provisionally and quite generally, I define the term "myth" as the process by which a cultural form can be argued as transcendental, thus guiding and regularizing human behavior. Such a process can take a number of different forms—whether it be the creation narrative of the Hainuwele, studied by Adolf Jensen and others 32 as the archetype of the dying and rising god of vegetation; the image of the black Frenchman saluting the flag, thought by Roland Barthes to be the appropriation and distortion of a historical moment; 33 or the commodities of nineteenth-century Paris, thought by Karl Marx, 34 Theodor Adorno, 35 Walter Benjamin, 36 and 31 I must say at the outset that the intellectual practice of theory which does aim to construct a series of simple axioms is not one to be disparaged. Paul Griffiths in his essay, "Denaturalizing Discourse" ( M y t h and Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), provides a good example of how such theory works to benefit the study of religion. 32 Adolf Jensen, Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples, translated by Marianna Tax Choldin and Wolfgang Weissleder (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). 33 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, translated by Jonathan Cape, Ltd. (New York: Noonday Press, 1972), pp. 117-21. 34 For Marx, commodities "appear as endowed with life" like the "mist-enveloped regions of the religious world." Cited in Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 119. 35 Letter, Adorno To Benjamin, 2 August 1935, in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften (GS) 6 vols., edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972-1988) V: 1128ff. 36 Benjamin, GS V: 213ff.

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others to be "mythical fetishes" that falsely promise a social utopia. Whatever the form of the object, a practice of reading looks for the process by which an object is made transcendent, a sanctioned norm or explanation for human behavior. And, while this book will be primarily concerned with the text of the Brhaddevata, a practice of reading discerns such a process in various modalities of cultural knowledge in addition to texts, whether they be commodities or icons. Finally, a practice of reading admits that myths, as varieties of practical theories, may contribute to or hinder human flourishing—the conditions in which the largest number of people can attain the maximum amount of material and spiritual prosperity. While mythic forms may remove the historical contingency of a religious tradition, they can also create "countertranscendencies," forms which resist and relativize the claims to transcendence that a religious tradition may make.

Myth as Argument Viewing myth as a process of transcendentalization (and countertranscendentalization), as my proposed practice of reading does, allows for mythical narratives to move positions and change shapes. Such movement and change in the telling of myths does not create an intellectual "problem" to be solved, but rather alerts the reader to look for the kinds of conversations taking place within and around the mythological text. Such a perspective is consonant with the studies of Gananath Obeyesekere, who in turn harkens back to the work of Bronislaw Malinowski. In a study of the fate of the Hindu Ganesa myth in Buddhist Sri Lanka, Obeyesekere builds on Malinowski's classic study of myth as "social charter," a sacred narrative function within a sociological context. Obeyesekere argues that, precisely because myth is a charter, it will provoke a debate between groups: the outsiders who deny the validity of the charter and those insiders who have to respond to the challenge. Obeyesekere further contends that not only does myth provoke a debate by its very existence, but it also embodies the sedimentation of past debates, a dialogue with the tradition's perception of its past.37 37 Obeyesekere, The Work of Culture.

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Myth, Commentary, and the History of the Brhaddevata

Obeyesekere writes, "Malinowksi's charter is an ongoing debate, with historical roots in past debates, but [Malinowski] freezes the myth in time in accordance with the synchronic imperative guiding British social anthropology."38 Such a debate provides the framework for what I have called the "mythic process"—the various ways in which people use myths to serve their intellectual and social purposes. Obeyesekere describes such a process in terms of the development of myth in Sri Lanka: Normally Buddhists can tolerate Siva as long as he exists in myth, but is never part of ritual (and thereby of the pantheon). However, confrontation gets accelerated in time of Buddhist revival, whether such revival occurs nationally or in a specific village through the actions of local virtuosos. Yet when Buddhism becomes ossified and emotionally unrewarding, the Sri Lankan tradition gets an infusion from Hinduism, bringing Shaivate mythology once again—and we see this happening in present day Kataragama. And so it goes on: confrontation, reconciliation, debate, and provocations—all producing new myths, variations of myths, resurrection of old myths, myth associations and interpretations.

Obeyesekere assumes that mythological narratives are, like orbiting planets, constantly in motion. The point is not to study them in isolation from each other, but to study them as they play a role in religious arguments. A myth is a cultural product that provokes people into an argument or a contentious discourse which then forces people to create alternative versions of the myth. While Obeyesekere's anthropological study of the Sri Lankan Ganesa may not have meant to provide such a helpful model for textual study, it is a happy by-product of his work. On the one hand, one cannot ignore the fact that a myth (even contained in a text) is a cultural product—responding to, engaging, and provoking the social context around it. One must be attentive to the multiplicity of social groups who will react to, and even ritualize, an existent myth from their own perspective. 40 However, as Obeyesekere himself argues, if mythic narrative can provoke debate, it does not necesarily mean that debate always takes an 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid, p. 131. 40 Ibid., p. 132.

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"embodied" social or ritual form. Myth provokes various kinds of debates which are carried on not by people speaking, but by people writing: in philosophical, etymological, and grammatical texts. Such a view provides a new way of making the link between myth and other forms of discourse, and that link is crucial if we are to make sense of works like the Brhaddevatä. Myth may provoke a problem that is best solved philosophically or grammatically. Thus commentary on myth, performed in a workman-like manner, will most likely use a variety of means to solve problems. As I shall discuss later on, the nature of commentaries, especially those such as the Brhaddevatä, is that they use whatever means possible to respond to, and attempt to resolve, the argument provoked in the texts upon which they comment. However, the inverse is also the case: a philosophical, ritual, or grammatical problem may also best be solved mythologically, or narratively. We shall see that this response is a very frequent one in the case of the Brhaddevatä. A textual scholar who views myth as the sedimentation of debate must assume a kind of intertextuality. And it is this conversation between texts that comprises much of Indian intellectual history.41 This is not a kind of intertextuality based on thematic emphases alone. While it may include thematic considerations, it also focuses on tracing an argument through time, a series of references that texts make to each other in debating a point, whether it be philosophizing a ritual, deriving a word, or retelling a myth. In addition, textual study always involves the question of agency— specifically in the form of authorial intention. Such discussion has taken the form of a radical denial of the importance of authorial intention, 41 Obeyesekere views debate as a form of "hidden discourse" operative in history, responsible for variations and symbolic transformations of myth (ibid., p. 132). Such an emphasis on the hidden-ness of debate seems to me to be dangerously similar to positing an ahistorical "pattern" or "archetype." I would prefer to see debate as something which may be more or less explicit in cultural discourse, depending on the circumstances of the debate itself. Myth might well be overtly constructed, not just "discovered" by the cultural analyst—be she anthropologist, psychoanalyst, or historian. Here I am following Bruce Lincoln's analysis of myth in his Discourse and the Construction of Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), especially his "Myth, Sentiment and the Construction of Social Forms" and "The Politics of Myth," pp. 15-37.

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such as in reader-response theory, or a total embracing of it, such as in some forms of modernist criticism. In either case, viewing myth as a form of argument exposes the ways in which authorial intention in the study of myth both matters and ceases to matter. On the one hand, authors of myths matter in that they deliberately shape and re-shape narrative content; I will show this in detail in my analysis of the brahmin-authored narratives in the Brhaddevata. On the other hand, authors of myths cease to matter in that, like many cultural products, myths take on a life of their own. In addition, when viewed as forms of argument, mythological narratives found in texts cease to become frozen entities. Despite their being cast in the more fixed form of writing, mythic narratives are responses to earlier myths, and will generate further mythic responses, both within and outside of their textual form. Indeed, as I shall discuss below, a mythic narrative may attempt to freeze itself—"transcendentalizing" its own perspective in an attempt to remove itself altogether from debate. We can see this in the myriad claims that Vedic myths make about their timeless, unchanging value. However, such a claim is itself a form of argument—one that is embedded within a larger conversation.

The Case of Vedic Myth It is just such a practical theory of myth that I wish to employ in the following chapters on the narratives and other discourses of the Brhaddevata. In my study of the mythic process, I will attempt to stay close to the ground of the Brhaddevata''s text and what can be pieced together of the Vedic and post-Vedic worlds surrounding it. However, I will also attempt to make a concise organization of the text's narratives in order to show how they guide and govern human action—particularly the action of sacrifice. Through the logic of canonical commentary, the Brhaddevata's myths are linked to the grammar of sacrificai speech and the philosophy of sacrificial action. Thus, the text's narratives participate in the larger project of transcendentalizing both the canonical Vedas and the sacrificial action which the Vedas support.

Making Arguments: Canonical Commentary and Mythological Narrative The Problem

of Historical

45

Origins

This practical approach to reading Vedic myth has not been the usual perspective. Beginning with the first blossoming of interest in the itihäsal ähkyäna material in the mid-nineteenth century, 4 2 most Indologists have studied itihäsas with a concern for empirical-historical evidence of Vedic sources. While such scholarship will be discussed at greater length in Chapter Six, I will provide a general outline of the arguments here in order to show how such a practical approach to myth can address not only theoretical concerns, but also particular problems in the study of Vedic narratives. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Max Müller and his colleague Adalbert Kuhn believed that Vedic commentarial narratives could complement the Rg Veda in elucidating an "original" mytho-poetic reli42 For a thorough survey of the material, see Tokunaga,"Text and Legends," pp. 163-99. See also Gonda, Vedic Literature, pp. 206-8. The first blossoming of Western concern with these dialogical hymns and the legends used to interpret them occurs with H. T. Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1837; reprint, New Delhi: Cosmos Publications, 1977), and extends to A. Weber's publication of Indische Studien in eighteen volumes (Berlin: F. Dummler, 1850-63; Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1865-98). These were pioneering works, exposing the scholarly audience to the very existence of such legends. R. Roth's Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Weda (Stuttgart: A. Liesching and Co., 1846) made a comprehensive survey of the literature relating to the Vedic legends, and the relationships between the commentators. Needless to say, his interest in traditional exegesis was less than respectful. Combined with this intensely historical interest was the growing Indo-European school with its concern for a naturalistic interpretation of myths. This approach included several works by Max Müller, including an analysis of Purüravas and UrvasI legend. ("Purüravas und Urvasî," Oxford Essays, 1856). Most important among these studies were those of Adalbert Kuhn, whose analysis of the messenger dog Saranyü episode and others contributed to his gargantuan theory of myth. (See his "Zur Mythologies," Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum, Band 6 [1949]: 117-48.) Weber also contributed to this period with his various studies of legends from the Satapatha Brâhmana, many of which are found in the Brhaddevatä as well. (See Indische Studien 1 [1850]: 161231.) Others such as Theodor Aufrecht contributed studies of individual legends. (See Aufrecht's "Die Sage von Apälä," Indische Studien 4 [1858]: 1-8, and his "Saramä's Botschaft," Zeitschrift der Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 13 [1859]: 493ff.)

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gion. Müller applied his theories about language to these stories, and Kuhn believed that they, like other Vedic myths, represented the psychological projection of human activity upon the world of nature. While this scholarship was concerned with textual/critical analyses, it continued to treat these later legends as part of a larger body of myths which made up the Vedic past. In the late nineteenth century, Hermann Oldenberg put forth his "äkhyäna-theory," asserting that many of these later legends were the degenerated form of prose "frame narratives" which originally connected the metrical part of the Rg Veda itself. Many Vedic scholars agreed with Oldenberg's basic idea, and much of the next halfcentury was taken up with an analysis of individual legends in an attempt to show their specific function in framing the Rg Vedic hymns to which they were attached.43 Not only did this theory prove an "original" form of Vedic composition, it also engendered further debate about origins. Karl Geldner, Richard Pischel, and Emil Sieg 44 took issue with Oldenberg's dismissal of the äkhyänas in later Vedic commentary as degenerations of an unrecoverable but nonetheless "purer" form of äkhyäna. Preferring the term 43 Hermann Oldenberg, "Das altindische Äkhyäna, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das Suparnäkhyäna," ZDMG 37 (1883): 54-86. See also "Äkhyäna-Hymnen im Rigveda," ZDMG 39 (1885): 52-83. The ensuing twenty years resulted in specific studies of those particular stories for which Säyana gives no ritual employment (viniyoga), such as the Vrsäkapi hymn (RV 10.86), Sarama and the Panis (RV 10.108), the recovery of Agni (RV 10.51-53), Mudgala's race (RV 10.102), the dialogue between Purüravas and Urvasï (RV 10.95), Lopämudrä and Agastya (RV 10.179), and Indra, the Maruts, and Agastya (RV 10.165,170,171). Bloomfield's "Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda" treated the stories of Indra and Namuci, the two dogs of Yama, and again the marriage of Saranyû, as well as Trita. (See his "Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda 3. 1. The story of Indra and Namuci. 2. The two dogs of Yama in a new role. 3. The marriage of Saranyû, Tvastar's daughter," Journal of the American Oriental Society 15 [1898]: 143-88; "Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda 7. 6. Trita, the scape-goat of the gods, in relation to Atharva Veda 6.112 and 111" American Journal of Philology 17 [1896]: 43037.) Albrecht Weber contributed an important study, "Episches im vedischen Ritual" (Sitzersberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft [Berlin] 38 [1891]: 769-819), which focused on the ritual use of Vedic legends and the relationship between the legends in ritual literature and in the Mahäbhärata. 44 Karl Geldner, "Purüravas und Urvasï," Vedische Studien 1 (1889): 243-95.

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itihäsa to äkhyäna, they attempted instead to prove that the later stories were part of an uninterrupted chain of an itihäsa tradition—an idea which Oldenberg dismissed. They remained unified, however, in their view that such legends provided the "key" to the hows and whys of the earliest form of Vedic composition. Not surprisingly, in the first part of the twentieth century scholars reacted against this theory about the origins of Vedic hymns, in all of its variations. The "anti-äkhyäna" reaction believed that the Rg Vedic hymns were coherent enough on their own—defined as some sort of cohesive dramatic scene, 45 independent of any supporting prose apparatus;46 as full ritual dramas in their own right;47 or as epic poetry without the addition of prose. 48 Whatever side one takes in this debate, it is clear that the question of origins was paramount. The force of the äkhyäna theory and its adherents postulates an "Mr-principle" of original stories, 45 Sylvain Lévi, Le Théâtre Indien, 2 vols. (Paris: Collège de France, Libraire Honoré Champion, 1963). Translated by Ν. Mukherji, The Theatre of India, 1 vols. (Calcutta: Writers' Workshop, 1980). 46 In addition to Lévi's Le Théâtre Indien, various other scholars took positions in various degrees of extremity against the äkhyäna theory. J. Hertel, working independently of Lévi, rejected the äkhyäna theory in several articles. Moriz Winternitz tried to reconcile the idea by postulating that some of the samväda hymns were ballads, in which everything is told in versified speeches, some were äkhyäna, poetic fragments which did have the non-surviving prose element, and some were strophes which belonged to ritual dramas. (See "Dialog, Äkhyäna, und Drama in der Indischen Literatur," Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 23 [1909].) In a similar vein, Α. Β. Keith, in "The Vedic Äkhyäna and the Indian Drama" (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [1911], part 2: 979-1009), in one great sweep rejects both the äkhyäna and the drama theory, stating that there is not enough evidence for either. The debate about the äkhyäna theory died down in the early 20's, and the fourth period is marked by a notable silence on the subject of Vedic legends. Interestingly, in the later 60's there do exist attempts to reconsider and reaffirm the äkhyäna theory. Ludwig Alsdorf attempted to vindicate the äkhyäna theory from the perspective of Jain literature. (See "The Äkhyäna Theory Reconsidered,"Journal of the Oriental Institute of Baroda 13.3 [1964]: 195-207.) 47 Leopold Von Schroeder, Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda (Leipzig: H. Haessel Verlag, 1908). 48 Jarl Charpentier, Die Suparnasage. Untersuchungen zur Altindischen Literatur und Sagen-geschichte (Uppsala: A.-b. Akademiska Bokhandeln i Kommission, 1922).

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from which even the Rg Veda itself derived; it explains in the most elegant fashion even the most difficult of dialogical hymns. The antiäkhyäna theory only substitutes a number of other i/r-principles for that of the first scholarly hypothesis, whether it be that of "original coherence," ritual drama, or a combination of these and other elements. To be sure, some scholarship of the last few decades has balanced these excessive concerns with origins. In an attempt to move away from the exclusively text-critical concerns, some authors, such as H. L. Hariyappa and S. A. Dange, concentrate on the telling of religious history through changes in themes and the treatments of characters in the various versions of these legends. 49 Despite these later advances, however, the question of evolution from the Rg Veda remains paramount. The Rg Veda continues to function as the fans et origo of all later Indian ideas about narrative, and the question of continuity between it and later types of tale-telling remains dominant. Even in his thoroughgoing recent treatment of itihäsa, Gonda 50 treats the subject solely from the perspective of origins. He pays considerable attention to whether the authors of such tales originally drew on an oral tradition connected to the Rg Veda, or on their own imagination. He also claims that some itihâsas which, upon first appearance, seem to be "suitable exegeses" of a Vedic hymn, are when subject to further scrutiny found to be "concoctions" which are "secondary" to the Rg Vedic hymn itself.

49 In his monumental work, Rgvedic Legends through the Ages fDeccan College Dissertation Series, 9 [Poona: S. M. Katre, 1953]), H. L. Hariyappa began the trend by examining the evolution of several Vedic stories, especially those of the Rg Vedic sages. S. A. Dange 's Legends in the Mahäbhärata (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1969) and Robert Goldman's "Mortal Man and Immortal Woman: An Interpretation of Three Äkhyäna Hymns of the Rg Veda" (Journal of the Oriental Institute of Baroda 18 [1969]: 273-303) are other important examples of a more thematic treatment of these itihâsas. Paul Horsch, in Die Vedische Gäthä und Sloka Literatur (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1966), attempts to give a thorough intellectual history of the äkhyäna theory as a subset of the larger problem of genre in Vedic literature. See also Ram Gopal's "Vedic Sources of the Sämgaka Legend in the Mahäbhärata" (Journal of the Ganganatha Jha Research Institute 25 [1969]: 397-401) and M. Mehta's "The Evolution of the Suparna Sage in the Mahäbhärata" (Journal of the Oriental Institute of Baroda 21, 1-2 [1971]: 41-65.) 50 Gonda, Vedic Literature, pp. 125-26.

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The Problem of Archetypal Myth The obsession with historical origins in philological theories about itihäsas does not find much remedy in the more general study of religion. Max Müller plays the role of intellectual ancestor in the history of religion as well as in philology; as shown above, his broader theories about religion were firmly cemented in the belief that the Vedas were the first and purest expression of religious feeling known to man. A more recent generalist in the field of religion who tried to move away from historical/positivist criticism, Mircea Eliade, continued the obsession with sources in another form—that of the study of myth. In his numerous writings,51 Eliade forged a link between "myth" and "origin" which has profound implications for the study of the Rg Veda and the itihäsas found in exegetical texts. Eliade took the general definition of myth as "stories about the creation of the world, gods, human beings" and developed it into a larger theory whereby myth contains archetypes— transcultural symbolic structures, said to exist at the beginning of time. Further, he argued that any telling of myth involves an abolishment of time and a return to these archetypal origins. Although Eliade inherited the idea that the Rg Veda is the forts et origo of Indian thought from his Indological predecessors, he imbued the Rg Veda with archetypal meaning in accordance with his larger theory about myth. In his History of Religious Ideas, for example, Eliade implies that the Rg Veda's cosmogonie contents provide the model against which later Indian history must be measured. To be sure, he begins with a disclaimer, asserting that: It would be useless to seek the origin of each of these [Vedic] cosmogonies... The cosmologies, like so many other religious ideas and beliefs, represent a heritage transmitted from prehistory even in the ancient world. What is of importance for our purpose is the Indian interpretations and revalorizations of certain cosmogonie m y t h s . 51 See especially Mircea Eliade's Cosmos and History ·, Patterns in Comparative Religion', and Images and Symbols, translated by Philip Mairet (New York: Sheed, Andrews, and McMeel, 1961). 52 Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 1 : From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, translated by Willard R. Trask (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 223.

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Myth, Commentary, and the History of the Brhaddevata

Despite their nominal placement in the movement of history, these myths still function as the Mr-principle of Eliade's depiction of Indian religions. The subsequent section on later religious developments in India is a good example. Eliade goes on to designate four types of cosmogonies found in the Rg Veda. First, there is the theme of fecundation of the original waters, such as the Golden Embryo hovering over the waters and fecundating them to begin the process of creation (RV 1.121). Second, one finds the dismembering of the primordial giant, Purusa, such as that depicted in the famous hymn 10.90, where the sexes, the social classes, the earth, the sky, and the gods are created out of the sacrifice of the primordial giant. Third, Vedic hymns express creation out of a unity-totality, at once being, and non-being such as that speculated upon in Rg Veda 10.129, where the "One breathed from its own impulse, without there being any breath" (RV 10.129.2). Finally, there is creation by separation of heaven and earth, usually by the killing of a demonic opponent, such as that separation accomplished by Indra in killing the dragon Vrtra (RV 1.113.4-6; 1.33.4; and others). Eliade singles out these four cosmogonies as paradigmatic, the source of a uniquely Indian religious consciousness. He writes: . . .similar myths are documented in many traditional cultures. However, it is only in India that these myths have given rise to sacrificial techniques, contemplative methods, and speculations so decisive for the awakening of a new religious consciousness.^

Eliade 's subsequent exposition of early Indian religious history follows upon these four themes. He addresses the exaltation of sacrifice in the Brähmanas, the identification with Prajapati through the sacrifice, and the philosophical resolution of the problem of the fruits of the sacrifice through the Upanisadic equation of ätman-brahman. Throughout this exposition, continuity with the Rg Vedic myths is emphasized: . . .the central problem is present, explicitly or implicitly, in every text. It is a matter of grasping and comprehending the first Being, the One/All, which alone is capable of explaining the world, life, and the destiny of man. From the time of the Rig Veda it has been identified in the tad ekam—"the one" (neuter)— of the celebrated hymn 10.129. The Brahmanas call it Prajapati or Brahman, but in these scholastic treatises the first being was related to cosmic 53 Ibid., p. 227.

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sacrifice and ritual sacrality. The [Upanisadic] rsis bent their every effort to apprehending it by means of a meditation guided by gnosis.^ 4

In a footnote, he stresses such continuity even further: However it must not be forgotten that the rsis of the Upanisads are the successors of the "seers" of the poet-philosophers of the Vedic period. From a certain point of view, it can be said that the central intuitions of the Upanisads are already found, in a nonsystematized form, in the Vedas. Thus, for example, the equation "spirit"="god"="real"="light."^5

For Eliade, the myths and fragments of myths from later material are simply "illustrations" of the cosmogonie, théogonie, and soteriological themes found originally in the Rg Veda. Although he does not specifically discuss the genre of itihasas, they are the stuff of these "later myths and fragments of myths" contained in later material, and by implication, would fit neatly into his archetypal schema. Certainly, it must be emphasized here that such continuities can and should be traced by mythologists and philologists alike. Indeed, the scholarly obsession with origin and continuity is derived from the fact that much of Vedic literature itself is about origins—the creation of the sacrifice in a Vedic hymn, the creation of the world by Prajâpati in the Brähmanas, the explanation of the origin of the individual mantras, of the Rg Veda in the itihäsa material. Moreover, a concern with origin per se does not necessarily mean that the scholarship is flawed. Stephanie Jamison's recent Ravenous Hyenas and the Wounded Sun56 is one such example of a constructive tracing of origins. Jamison places two particularly intriguing Vedic myths within their appropriate ritual contexts, and yet does not succumb to the temptation of making sweeping claims about the nature of Vedic tradition as a whole. Yet the classification of the Rg Veda as a collection of cosmogonie myths also places a stranglehold on the ways in which later Indian exegetical narratives can be interpreted. The Eliadean emphasis on "the one and the many" prejudices the historian toward the discovery of unity in terms of the "cosmogonie pattern" to be found in Rg Vedic hymns. With such archetypal connotations, the term myth predisposes the scholar 54 Ibid., p. 241. 55 Ibid. 56 Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

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Brhaddevata

to look for continuity in the texts which follow the Rg Veda-, all later religious perspectives are viewed simply as fascinating "variations" on the archetypal theme. The paradigmatic status ascribed to myth in general, and to Rg Vedic myths in particular, determines the way later Indian religious history is written. While Eliade differs from the philologists in that he places the myth of the Rg Veda and the philosophy of the Upanisads upon the same analytic plane, myth nonetheless remains a "pre-philosophical" discourse which provides a kind of "deep structure" to nascent forms of speculative thought which "resolve" the questions stammered out by the Rg Vedic hymns.

Vedic Narrative as Commentarial Argument The scholar of itihäsas, however, can take paths other than those of historical origins or archetypal cosmogonies. As indicated in earlier sections of this chapter, she can also analyze itihäsas as exegetical narratives with particular arguments about the canonical language of the Veda. Interestingly, such an approach is closely parallel to the Vedic view of exegesis itself. In a text closely related to the Brhaddevata, the 5th century BCE etymological dictionary called the Nirukta,57 the author Yâska refers to the aitihäsika, or "narrative" school of interpretation. While the details of such exegetical attitudes will be discussed below, such nomenclature indicates a larger school of exegesis which distinguishes itself from the yajñikas, or "ritualist" interpreters, and the nairuktas, or etymological interpreters. The nairuktas tend to interpret Vedic mantras according to natural or physical phenomena; the yajñikas interpret mantra according to ritual use; and the aitihäsikas interpret mantras according to the characters and events depicted within narratives. While I shall explore in greater detail the genres of Vedic exegesis below, 58 the exist57 Nirukta 2.16; 12.1,10. 58 An additional problem with the use of the term "myth" arises when one examines the emphases of the Rg Vedic commentaries themselves. Far from clarifying what is at stake in Vedic interpretations, the term "myth" actually blurs the exegetical distinctions made in the commentaries because it can be so easily applied to all three genres of interpretation — the nairukta, yajñika, and

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enee of the aitihäsika school does suggest that Vedic hymns can be comprehended as part of the progression of certain narrative events. And, in the analysis of myth, it is important that scholars take that suggestion quite seriously as an epistemological claim about the Vedas as a privileged form of knowledge. Recent Indological writing offers an opportunity for further analysis of this question. In his article "Mlmämsä and the Problem of History in Traditional India," mentioned above, Sheldon Pollock discusses the suppression of historical consciousness in India via the claims of the religio-philosophical school of Mlmämsä59 about the transcendental nature of the Vedas. According to the Pürva Mïmamsâ Sutras (PMS), the Vedas' status as apauruseyatva texts—texts "existing beyond the human"—is proven by two basic strategies. The Vedas are transcendent because they have no beginning in time and no author; those men whose names are associated with particular recensions (such as Paippalädaka) are simply scholars specializing in the transmission of the Vedas (PMS 1.1.29-30). Moreover, according to Mlmämsä, the Vedas have no historical contents. All those references which are suggestive of historical contents are, via the strategy of word-derivation, proven to be merely phonemic resemblances to the names of historical persons (PMS 1.1.3l). 60 Pollock views the itihäsa portions of Vedic literature and Epic works such as the Mahäbhärata and the Ramäyana as "in a large but still meaningful sense, historical explanation"—an explanation of texts as historical cultural products. (Indeed, the very names itihäsa—literally, "thus it aitihäsika schools. This problem, as well as the chronic problem of Western distinction between "myth" and "history" being applied to Indian terms such as itihäsa and puräna, is a dilemma worthy of further study. 59 Recently Shlomo Biderman has made an argument that the claims of Mlmämsä should be taken seriously from a philosophical as well as a religious basis. As Pollock does also, I am assuming such philosophical value from the start. (See Biderman's "Orthodoxy and Philosophy in India: Philosophical Implications of the Mlmämsä School," in Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Dissent in India, ed. S. Ν. Eisenstadt, R. Kahane, and D. Shulman [Berlin: Mouton, 1984], pp. 7381. 60 Pollock, "Mlmämsä and the Problem of History," p. 608, for a full discussion of these proofs of transcendence in Sabara, Kumärila, and other commentators.

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happened"—and äkhyäna—derived from ä khyä, to tell, or narrate— indicate an event-oriented and narrative nature.) Pollock goes on to show how, as early as the Upanisads, even itihäsas are "Vedicized"—conformed to a genealogy of the Vedas. Itihäsas were even identified with the latest stratum of a fifth Veda itself, as mentioned in Chandogya Upanisad 7.1.2. In later texts, such as Yajñavalkya Smrti61 and Artha Sastra,62 itihäsa is conjoined with the study of the Vedas as a cognate activity. As Pollock writes, "So itihäsa itself, 'what has actually taken place,' has become merely another textualization of eternity, an alwaysalready-given discourse." 63

Conclusions Although the question of whether the English term "history" can be analogously mapped onto the Sanskrit itihäsa in anything but a larger sense has yet to be answered fully, Pollock does raise the crucial question of the philosophical uses of narrativity. As Pollock asserts, even the narrative discourse of itihäsa is subordinated to the more philosophical, ahistorical system of Vedic knowledge. And this idea sets out the basic program for further research: if from an early stage itihäsas are used in the project of making the Vedas an eternal authority existing "out of time," one should also explore individual itihäsas to show further the mechanics of how this authority was structured and maintained. More specifically, a practical approach to myth demands that questions about the role of narrativity must be asked of individual itihäsas. Instead of reading these tales as myths involving archetypes, one could read them as philosophically motivated narratives. For what purposes are these narratives told, and what value do they claim? What motivates the progression of events, and in what style can these past events be best represented? In the analysis which follows, I will suggest that while the Brhaddevatä cannot be called "philosophical" in the sense that it entails the rigorous systematizations that Mlmämsä does, its narratives none61 Yajñavalkya Smrti 1.39-45, cited by Pollock, "Mïmamsa and the Problem of History," p. 610. 62 Artha Sastra 1.3, cited by Pollock, ibid. 63 Ibid.

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theless share the same end as Mlmämsä—the assertion of Vedic transcendence. Proceeding with this understanding in mind, in Part Two I will outline ways in which other forms of discourse found in the Brhaddevatä, such as etymology and taxonomy, can be linked to narrative in their attempt to establish canonical supremacy. In Part Three of the work, I will show the particular senses in which these stories "argue a point," because they are guided by particular principles about the inviolable nature of Vedic canon.

Part Two Framing the Canon

Chapter Three Patterns of Thought: The Brhaddevatä Introduces Itself Those who carefully reviewed and went over and over again all that pertained to the rituals of the gods were called religious, from relegere. —Balbo the Stoic

On the Question of Coherence Since texts like the Brhaddevatä are often classified as the compulsive work of pedants, they are also quite open to the charge of incoherence. Indeed, such texts are the symbols of all that is repetitive and obsessive about religious thinking, as Balbo suggests in his etymology. Recently, European medievalist Richard Sharpe turned his attention to a reconsideration of Irish saints and their genealogies.1 Through a detailed analysis of the repetition of genealogical patterns, spelling, and scribal hands he set out to discover once and for all whether there was a consistent and straightforward method of genealogical reckoning. His conclusion: there wasn't. All evidence pointed to a situation that is infinitely difficult for the cultural historian to admit: the scribes were engaged in, if not mindless, at least careless copying, disregarding the inconsistencies they were perpetuating in their own genealogical stories. Sharpe's regretful conclusion teaches a lesson—sometimes the scribes are not concerned with coherence, but with other things, such as prestige or payment. No amount of cultural and historical respect can alter that fact. While most would want to avoid engaging in the subtleties of cultural stereotyping in the

1 "Irish Saints and Their Genealogies," presented at the University of California Celtic Colloquium, May 3, 1990.

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name of scholarship, the opposite assumption—that every text is potentially, if not actually, coherent—can be equally destructive. So, too, the Brhaddevatä challenges its audience to walk a fine line between coherence and incoherence. The text arranges itself into eight adhyäyas, which are not meant to correspond specifically to the eight astakas of the Rg Veda. Each adhyäya contains about five vargas of approximately five Élokas each. As Macdonell has commented, this division is quite mechanical, often cutting into the middle of a discussion. Macdonell himself, however, has not helped matters any. He has supplied the vargas with certain "subtitles," which divide the contents into a series of discrete subject matters, but none of them have anything in particular to do with the others. This design, although perhaps not intentionally imposing incoherence on the text, does in fact contribute to the "motley" first impression that it gives to the reader. Tokunaga, in his edition, gives no subtitles, preferring to see the work as a continuous whole. Yet his concern with the coherence of content takes a back seat to his concern with the "right" original reading. If one ignores both the adhyäya divisions and Macdonell's method of organization, a basic description of the contents of the work would read as follows: introduction, grammatical discussion; the different kinds of formulas; the discussion of the Vedic triad and the etymological names of deities; the deities enumerated according to sphere; the deities enumerated according to the verses of the Rg Veda; remarks on the deities of several khilas; the deities of the meters and the tones; final emphasis upon knowing the deities. It seems like a straightforward discussion of the many aspects of Vedic deities. Moreover, as discussed in the previous chapter, above, the Brhaddevatä makes its own case for coherence: it lays emphasis on the "cardinal order" of the collection of mantras, of the "general rule" for discerning the deity of the mantra, and on the cosmological organization of the three worlds which subordinates all other gods to its system. Thus one must assume that the text makes some claim to coherence, not only because one must assume coherence as a prima facie position, but because the text itself places a significant emphasis upon "right-ordering" in the particular cases it discusses. If, in fact, one gives credence to the text's claim that knowing the names of the deities of the mantras is cosmologically important, then everything that follows within

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the text will serve to justify and authenticate that claim. If one does not take the initial claim seriously, one would not take what follows seriously either. If one assumes that those who made the claim took it seriously for a reason, one has to assume as a working hypothesis that the relevant Vedic knowledge has been effectively arranged in order to prove it. Aside from the Brhaddevata's specific discussions, then, the suspicions raised in Chapter Two about the totalizing potential of commentary make it worthwhile to look again at the nature of its organizational structure. Do any principles or patterns emerge? What are its points of transition, and why does it make the particular transitions that it does? Even before exploring the possibility of such patterns, however, we must introduce some examination of the scholarship on the main categories of the text—that of mantra and devata. The Brhaddevata is, above all, a text about mantras and their deities. As mentioned above, the first verse declares: 1.1. With honor to the seers of the mantra, I will say for all the verses, in the cardinal order of the collection, the collection of deities (daivatam) of the pädas, the half-verses, the verses, and the süktas?

Mantra In the past few decades of Indological study, the importance of the mantra's use in ritual has been thoroughly demonstrated by Jan Gonda, Louis Renou, and, more recently, Wade Wheelock and Frits Staal. Despite the rather large disparity in method and terminology,3 almost all 2 mantradrgbhyo namaskrtvä samämnäyänupürvaSahl süktargardharcapädänäm rgbhyo vaksyami daivatam// [In d, Tokunaga has rksu for rgbhyo] 3 This debate engages not only the question of mantra, but the entire question of the possibility of meaning. For an approach which posits a certain continuity of mantra usage in the midst of cultural change, see Louis Renou, "Les Pouvoirs de la Parole dans le Rg Veda," Etudes Védiques et Paninéènnes 1 (1955): 127; Jan Gonda, The Vision of the Vedic Poets (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1963); "The Indian Mantra," Oriens 16 (1963): 244-97. For a more mystical, bhakti-oriented view of mantra, see Willard Johnson, Poetry and Speculation of the Rg Veda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). For a strictly syntactical analysis of mantra usage, see Frits Staal, "The Concept of

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agree that the Vedic mantra is an utterance which does not simply communicate thought, but is almost entirely determined by its use in ritual. Its function is pragmatic, defined by the context of the ritual situation. S o m e have argued that mantras are effective speech, or to use Austin's term, speech acts, which effect a change in a situation. Recently Wade Wheelock has provided a useful model for looking at mantras, using the N e w and Full M o o n Sacrifice (NFM) as his text. While he notes that the N e w and Full M o o n Sacrifice lacks any obvious unity in theme, he also shows that the ritual has an underlying unity, somewhat similar to Tambiah's notion of ritual as a series of meaningful constituents (words, acts, and objects) strung together in rule-governed sequences. 4 Wheelock's main concerns are the words of ritual. Aiming to provide a taxonomy of the constituent parts of N F M ritual language, he makes use of J. L. Austin's notion of the "locutionary act" to show that speech has a performative function to it; to make any utterance, accord-

Metalanguage and its Indian Background," Journal of Indian Philosophy 3 (1975): 315-54; "Rg Veda 10:71 on the Origin of Language," in Revelation in Indian Thought: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor T.R.V. Murti, eds. Harold Coward and Krishna Sivaram (Emeryville, Calif.: Dharma Publishing Company, 1977), pp. 3-14; "Ritual Syntax," in Sanskrit and Indian Studies: Essays in Honour of Daniel H. H. Ingalls. M. Nagatomi, et al., eds. (Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston: D. Reidel, 1980), pp. 119-143; "The Meaninglessness of Ritual," Numen 26, no. 1 (1979): 2-22; "The Sound of Religion," Numen 33, no. 1 (1986): 33-64; "Vedic Mantras," in Mantra, ed. Harvey Alper (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 48-95. For a more performative perspective, see Wade Wheelock, "The Ritual Language of a Vedic Sacrifice" (Ph.D. Diss., University of Chicago, 1978); "A Taxonomy of Mantras in the New and Full Moon Sacrifice," History of Religions 19:4 (1980): 349-69; "The Problem of Ritual Language," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50:1 (1982): 49-69; "The Mantra in Vedic and Tantric Ritual," in Mantra, ed. Harvey Alper, pp. 96-122; and Ellison Banks Findly, "Mantra kavitosta: Speech as Performative in the Rg Veda," in Mantra, ed. Harvey Alper, pp. 1548; and Laurie Patton, "Väc: Myth or Philosophy?" in Myth and Philosophy, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 183-214. 4 Stanley Tambiah, "The Magical Power of Words," Man, n.s., 3 (1968): 175208.

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ing to Austin, is to accomplish an act.5 As is by now well-known, language is not only used to communicate a description of reality, but actually to bring about affairs by the mere utterance of a statement. John Searle 's Speech Acts supports his idea that speech is "performing language according to rules." 6 Most have preferred the linguistic categories of Searle, who, in a sophisticated revision of Austin's less elaborate linguistic taxonomy, distinguishes between several types: 1) assertives, whose function is to commit the speaker to the truth of an expressed proposition; 2) directives, which aim at getting the hearer to do something; 3) commissives, whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action; 4) expressives, which express some psychological attitude toward the proposition; and 5) declarations, whose function is to bring about the state of affairs indicated in the proposition by the mere fact of their being said. The utterances in this fifth category—declarations—create a reality as they are being spoken.7 According to Wheelock, the rules which Searle develops for performative speech apply only to ordinary language. Ritual language, like poetic language, has its own set of special rules for performance. 8 Ritual speech, for instance, does not always involve a speaker or hearer, as ordinary speech does. Nor does it always have informational content; ritual may use a fixed text where all the participants know what's com5 See, among many other interpretive works on speech acts, the "Ur-texts" of J. L. Austin's How To Do Things with Words (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965; reissued 1975, 1978); and John Searle, "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts," in Expression and Meaning, ed. John Searle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 1-29. 6 Although a detailed description of the rules of speech performance would impede the discussion at this point, it is important to note that the development of this kind of rule system is important to any analysis of the spoken word. Michael Silverstein's analysis of the use of parallelism in ritual speech is one such example. See his "Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology," in The Elements (Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society, Parasession, 1979), pp. 193-247. For an application of his thinking to religious language, see Naomi Janowitz, "The Language of Ascent: Lévi-Strauss, Silverstein and Maaseh Merkabah," in Anthropology and the Study of Religion, eds. Robert Moore and Frank Reynolds (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1984), pp. 213-28. 7 Following Wheelock, "The Problem of Ritual Language," p. 54. 8 Wheelock, "Taxonomy," pp. 351-53.

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ing next. Wheelock thus rejects the notion that ritual speech is primarily discursive in nature, and that its declarative statements are designed only to inform and communicate. Unlike regular speech acts, whose fundamental intention is communication of information between speaker and hearer, the intention of ritual speech is to create a known and repeatable situation. Ritual speech is thus caught in an insoluble dialectic; it alters the status of a subject whose status is, in fact, already a well-known fact. 9 Finally, ritual speech is joined by other symbol systems that may use a variety of media. According to Wheelock, the ritual speech of the NFM "situates" the performance in four different ways: 1) presentation of characteristics (indicative); 2) presentation of requests (imperative, interrogative); 3) presentation of intentions (first person interrogative); and 4) presentation of attitudes (optative).10 He then goes on to show how each of the ritual participants involved in the sacrifice—the adhvaryu, the hotr, and the yajamana, uses these different types of mantras with particular themes in mind. The adhvaryu, for instance, uses the indicative utterance types to establish the potent identities of the mundane ritual items, while optative and imperative are used to cajole and direct these forces for human benefit. The hotr, as gracious host, often invokes and requests the gods to officiate, praising and petitioning them to aid the sacrificer, thus using the second person imperative and the second person indicative. The yajamana reflects his view of the sacrifice as the vehicle for fulfilling desires, and thus uses first person indicative mantras to connect his sacrificial manipulation of an object with some specific goal, and the first person optative to express publicly his desires.11 9 Wheelock, "The Ritual Language of a Vedic Sacrifice," p. 357. Ritual language sets up an identity with the participant and the truth of a situation. For example, when the priest at an NFM sacrifice says, "I pick up this grass with the arms of Indra," his speech is a way of characterizing his relationship to Indra; it both creates his identity with Indra and recognizes that it is already a fact. It both presents and facilitates recognition of a new situation. 10 Wheelock, "Taxonomy," pp. 353-54. 11 Wheelock's entire analysis is strikingly parallel to Michael Silverstein's idea of the transformative power of ritual language. For Silverstein, utterances which occur in relatively similar places in the ritual have some special metaphorical "pseudodefinitional" relationship, which at a higher structural level of the ritual in effect suggests categorical identity. The higher level provides the "diagram-

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Others have fiercely rejected the notion that mantras are "speech acts." Staal does agree with Wheelock that mantras do not always require a speaker and a hearer and do not necessarily convey information; and with Tambiah that they need not be communicative. But, Staal asserts, this does not mean they are speech acts. Staal argues as follows: according to Searle, speech acts have illocutionary force, or an effect the speaker intends to produce in the hearer. Searle's classification of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary speech acts is based on the assumption that all speech acts are concerned with such effects, viz., with intention.12 Staal asserts that according to Searle's method of classification, all speech acts involve intention, and, since all mantras do not, mantras cannot be speech acts. What is more, asserts Staal, mantras may not even be acts. Citing the discussion of mantras in the Srauta Sutras, he shows that sütras require correspondence, but not identity between mantra and karma, or ritual action. Often, they simply formulate the requirement that there should be a one to one correspondence between mantras and acts. 13 Moreover, the beginning of the act should coincide with the end of the mantra,14 a topic also addressed in Mïmâmsa Sütras.15 Often the mantra which is "perfect in form" is that verse which refers to the accompanying act—such perfection requiring no more than that the mantra contain a particular word. 16 The Brahmanes are in fact quite large compendia of exactly these kinds of correspondences.17 matic images" mentioned above—icons which are both "of the context of the rite and invoke the context of the rite." For Silverstein, the transformative power of a rite is the transformation of these diagrammatic images and thus of the context. Such images are reshaped and moved as theritualdiscourse moves from beginning to end, thus creating and recreating the contexts of use. Ritual language can both index the transformation that is occurring and at the same time provide an icon of that transformation. (Cited by Janowitz, "The Language of Ascent," p. 217.) 12 13 14 15 16 17

Staal, "Vedic Mantras," p. 66. Äpastamba Srautasütra 24.1.38: ekamanträni karmäni. Äpastamba 24.2.1. Pürva Mîmamsâ Sutra 12.3.25. Kane, History of Dharmatästra 5.2: 1097. Aitareya Brahmano 1.16.(3.5) etad vai yajñasya samrddhamyad rüpasamrddham yat karma kriyamänam rg abhivadati. The perfection of ritual is when it is perfect in form, viz., when the rk refers to the act that is being performed. See Staal, "Vedic Mantras," pp. 67-68.

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And finally, asserts Staal, mantras may also have nothing to do with language; they are often simply meaningless sounds, such as the stobhas of the Sama Veda. Such syllables can in fact be represented algebraically, and substitutions of one syllable for another can be made in order to derive a new chant for another ritual context. 18 To be sure, Staal's arguments are compelling and interesting if one is looking for a larger, overall theory to explain the entire phenomenon of mantra. It must be pointed out, however, that this approach contains all of the risks of universalism within it. Wheelock makes no universal claim about mantra from his study of the New and Full Moon Sacrifice. He makes a far more limited case that in the New and Full Moon Sacrifice, there is indeed an intention behind the speaker's mantra and, in fact, his mantra is composed of something one would call language. And Staal is therefore knocking down a straw man when he rightly asserts that in the stobhas of the Sama Veda, there is no such intention or meaning. In contrast to Staal, Chattopadhyaya,19 Thieme,20 and Findly21 have all in their own ways eloquently emphasized the development and change of the use of the term mantra. As Thieme and Renou 22 have commented earlier, one might cast the development of mantra in the Rg Veda as a movement from brahman to mantra, or following Thieme, from formulation to formula. 23 As Findly points out, the word mantra is seldom used in the earlier parts of the Rg Veda, and when the term does occur, it does not imply a "ritual" centered speech, but a "deity" or "insight" 18 See Staal's "Vedic Mantras" and "Ritual Syntax." 19 Ksetresa Chandra Chattopadhyaya, "The Place of the Rgveda-Samhitä in the Chronology of Vedic Literature," Proceedings and Transactions of the All India Oriental Conference 9 (1935): 31-40. 20 See, in particular, his "Brahman." 21 See her "Mantra KaviSastâ" pp. 42-43. 22 See his "Sur la notion de Brahman" (in collaboration with L. Silbum), Journal Asiatique 236-7 (1948-49): 7-46. 23 Die Formel ist ihren Wesen nach überkommen, ihre Wirkung berüht darauf dass sie in bewährter Weise wiederholt wird. . . . Die Formulierung wirkt, wenn sie neu ist. The formula is traditional in character; its effect depends on the fact that it is repeated overtime The formulation works when it is new. (Paul Thieme, "Brahman," [ZDMG] 102:102-03)

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centered one. Although the person of the priest may have been central to ritual, as in the later Vedism, his centrality depended upon the possession of eloquent speech given to him by the gods. 24 Among other suktas Findly cites, Rg Veda 7.23 is the best example of this: Brahman rose up in competition. Ennoble Indra at the verbal contest, Vasistha! He who through his strength is spread out over all, will listen favorably to the words of someone as good as me. 2 5

Thieme, Renou, and Findly also emphasize that the term mantra develops in its use, and changes in its connotations. Not surprisingly, in various ways the term mantra comes to be more and more identified with the poet/priest wielding power within the ritual. Mantras are pronounced not only to express insight, but to be effective words, as discussed above: . . . the focus on power and pronunciation in mantra indicates a new emphasis on ritual effectiveness, and I argue that, while by design the mantra system rests upon and in fact participates in this earlier stratum of insight and eloquence, it has already moved on to reflect the issues that become central in the Brähmanas, the expanding of the techniques and analogical referents of the liturgical complex and the very divinization of the ritual itself. 2 ^

The arguments above teach two lessons: each text concerning mantra should be analyzed on its own terms first, and an analysis of mantra in any given text should not make larger claims about the nature of mantra as a whole. Not to heed these lessons causes a good deal of confusion; one cannot hope to uncover the layers of meaning which mantra may have accrued over time. What is more, scholars risk repeating on a smaller, Indological scale the sins of their forefathers who extrapolated on the essence of "religion" on the basis of only a few key texts. Debate about mantra could go on endlessly if one is searching for the perennial nature of mantra per se—the one thing about it which, when combined with other elements in the experiment called Vedism, will always turn the litmus paper blue. Explaining all of mantra may be as unproductive as explaining the entire phenomenon of "religion" or even, on a more specific level, explaining yajña in the entire Vedic context. 24 Findly, "Mantrá Kavisastä," p. 30. 25 Ibid., p. 32. 26 Ibid., p. 43.

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Mantra in the Brhaddevata The Brhaddevata has its own perspective on mantra, differing as it does from both the Brahmano and the Mïmâmsâ perspectives. Generally speaking, the unmarked term mantra in the Brhaddevata refers to the mantras of the Rg Veda, and it is those mantras which require an object deity. The sacrificial mantras (yajus) are mentioned only in contrast to the rks of the Rg Veda. And all mantras, including the rks, yajuses, and the samans, are given a deity collectively (Agni, Indra/Vayu, and Surya respectively—BD 8:110). Moreover, while mantras may not require "meaning" or even a "referent" in other cases, in the case of the Brhaddevata, mantra is effective speech par excellence. Its utterance alone provides an end to the many compromising situations in which the rsis and the gods find themselves. Moreover, groups of mantras also possess a form of reference, an "owner" (süktabhägin), either directly in the form of the deity named in the mantra itself, or indirectly, derived by the rules laid out in the Brhaddevata. Despite the objections raised by Staal, then, the analysis of mantra as speech act in the Brhaddevata is valid, not because of some taste for extrapolating from the Brhaddevata into a universal realm, but because the text seems to suggest it, and one would do well to test the hypothesis.

Devata as Meta-Grouping The same principle would apply to the term devata, or deity. First, devata should be distinguished from deva, which has the more general connotation of a "god," something in human or in animal form. Devata is better translated as "object deity," or in the Rg Veda, perhaps "godlike worth or power." In fact, the use of the term in this sense in the Brhaddevata is far more frequent than that of the Rg Veda\ the text uses devata twelve times, as opposed to the Rg Veda's using it once. 27 Daivata, its vrddhi form, connotes the collection of object deities. 27 See Hermann Grassmann, Wörterbuch zum Rig Veda (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1964), s.v. devatä, p. 634. Devatä in its meaning of "among the gods" or "to the gods" is used much more frequently in the Rg Veda than in its meaning as a "god-like power"—used in RV 10.24.6.

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This difference is not surprising, if one remembers that the appropriate ritual use of mantra becomes an increasing focus in the Brähmanas and Mlmämsä. The term devatä is a way of organizing the mantras not for "devotional" purposes, but for ritual purposes-—knowing which object of the mantra is the fulcrum of power at which point in the ritual. Thus while deva remains a significant category in that many mantras are addressed to particular gods, devatä encompasses all mantras, whether they are addressed to a god or not. And, while many Rg Vedic hymns are addressed to deified objects, such as the hymn to the "pressing stones" of RV 10:94, there is no explicit category for them in the Rg Veda itself. It is only at the point of commentary that one needs a larger, more allencompassing word. In fact, with one exception, all of the verses which use devatä (and its vrddhi form, daivata) are the "meta-rules" of the text—rules which state some kind of intention or sum up a larger rule for discerning the object of a mantra in a difficult case. 28 The word is hardly ever used as a synonym for deva itself. The very first verse, cited above, is a good example of this abstract use of devatä. To cite another example, verse 1.118 introduces a discussion of how, in the case of an oblation to dual deities, one must find mantras which will fit that occasion: "The one who knows the true purpose [of the mantras] should join the oblation and the deity (devatä) with the formulas." 29 And finally, near the end of the text, at 8.132, the vrddhi form daivata is employed: "A collection of deities (daivatam) would not want an oblation designated without correct knowledge. Therefore one should offer an oblation after bringing the deity (devatä) into mind." 30 Moreover, the "identity-establishing" function mentioned by Wheelock as a function of characteristic speech fits in neatly with the notion of devatä in the Brhaddevatä. This kind of speech may involve identities with things other than gods, such as abstract entities and material objects. Grass, happiness, prosperity, as well as gods such as Indra and Soma, are all entities with which ritual speech is capable of setting

28 See S D 1.11, 14,17,118, 119; 2.88, 136; 7.139; 8.8, 21, 124, 131, 138. 29 cd: devatäm arthatattvajño mantraih samyojayed dhavihll 30 avijñanapradistam hi havir neheta daivatam/ tasmän manasi samnyasya devatäm juhuyäd dhavihll

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up an identity. Wheelock, in his "Taxonomy of Mantras" mentions that the function of the adhvaryu priest in the NFM sacrifice is "to enlist the help of potent forces embodied in the sacrificial objects." He goes on to note that, . . .the goals of the sacrifice are won not only by pleasing the invited gods, but in large measure through the manipulation of the physical components of the ritual, whose true and powerful identity is made effective by the mantras.

Claiming Privilege A consideration of the more general terms permits a fuller discussion of the text's overall structure. The Brhaddevatä organizes knowledge of the deities upon two basic principles: in the introduction, it organizes names according to the order of the three worlds; and in the rest of the text, it organizes knowledge according to the order of the mantras and süktas of the Rg Veda itself. In some ways, this pattern is comparable to the introduction of an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia; the introduction contains the ideological justification, and the encyclopedia contains an organization according to the order of a known, regular quantity of letters. The introduction is the biggest challenge for the interpreter, since it includes a number of seemingly unrelated topics within its organizational purview. Yet interpretation is possible if one remembers that the Brhaddevatä must validate its principal claim that knowledge of the deities is important; one of its central tasks, then, is to explain the means by which such knowledge is possible—-the discernment of names. As will be discussed in further detail below, the Brhaddevatä places names, and the structure of names, in harmony with a well-ordered cosmos, quite similar to the cosmos that is outlined in the Brähmanas. Through exploring the names of the gods and associating them with the lokas, or "worlds," the Brhaddevatä engages in what Brian Smith has called the "ritual construction of being," focusing not only on self and status, but more exclusively upon the ways in which the names of the deities reflect and explain the modalities of the three worlds. As shown below, the names of the deities not only mirror the larger pattern of the sacrificial worlds, but also the inverse: the names of the deities are in part the insti-

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gators of such an ordered cosmos. Cosmology and etymology are the inverse of one another. The process of nidäna, correlation through resemblance, is telescoped to the form of a list. Brhaddevata 1.1. introduces the importance of knowing the deities at the very start. Verse 1.2 states that The collection of deities in each mantra is to be known exactly, for the one who knows the collection of deities of the mantras is the one who understands their purpose.·"

The work then promises the fruits of such pedagogy in 1.3: He is the one who makes known what the seers intended in their visions of the mantras, as well as right understanding and various sorts of ritual action. 32

Nothing less than the past and present of the Vedic world is to be illuminated by the Brhaddevata. It continues: 4. No one who does not know the collection of deities properly obtains the fruit of the ritual action, either worldly or Vedic. 33

The introduction then launches into a larger discussion which follows a pattern of accordion-like expansion and distillation, moving between the complexity of problems in the recitation of mantras and the distillation of such complexity by the application of various rules. The Brhaddevata presents diversity as a problem to be solved, and then claims that its rules are the proper way of solving it.

31 veditavyam daivatam hi mantre mantre prayatnatahl daivatajño hi mantränäm tadartham avagacchati// [Tokunaga has for this verse veditavyam hi tat sarvam mantre mantre prayatnatah daivatjño hi mantränäm tadartham adhigacchati. The general trend of thought is not changed significantly in this reading. The notion of adhigacchati—"obtains"—perhaps underscores the goal-oriented tenor of the Bhaddevatä's attitude toward mantra in general.] 32 taddhitäms tadabhipräyän rsïnâm mantradrstisul vijñapayati vijnänam karmäni vividhäni call 33 na hi kaÉcid avijñaya yathätathyena daivatam! laukyänam vaidikänäm va karmanäm phalam ainutei!

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Classifying Canonical Language BD 1.5 gives the basic organizational schema of deities, a familiar one to which the text returns later on. This initial statement of cosmology is a way of organizing the mantras of the Rg Veda. It connects mantras with deities in a way which reinforces the mantras' status as canonical language. 5. The first class of these belongs to the Agni collection of deities in this world, the second to that of Väyu or Indra and the third to that of Surya.-'4

The Brhaddevata goes on to explore in verse 1.6 how divinities (like Agni, Indra/Vayu, and Surya and many others) can be determined. The first way is discerning the god that is connected with a specific request, and the second way is discerning the god to whom the mantra is predominantly addressed. 6. Whatever god a rsi who desires an object mentions, let that one be [the object of the mantra], [In addition], a mantra which predominantly praises with reverence [has] that same [god as an object.] 35

The text then continues the discussion by stating that these two elements of praise (stuti) and desire (äils) are to be distinguished and explained in the following way: 7. Praise is expressed by means of name, form, action, relationship, and but desire is expressed by means of objects such as heaven, long-life, wealth, and sons.

Praise is to be determined by both pragmatic characteristics (such as action and relationship), and semantic characteristics (such as name and form). Desire, on the other hand, is characterized by the benefits one hopes to receive (heaven, long-life, wealth, and sons). 34 prat hamo bhajate tv äsäm vargo ' gnim iha daivataml dvitïyo vayum indram va trtlyah süryam èva call 35 artham ichann rsir devam yam yam ähäyam astv iti/ prädhänyena stuvan bhaktyä mantras taddeva eva sahll [For cd, Tokunaga has prädhänyena stuvañ chaktyä mantras taddeva eva sah. The term bhaktyä—"with reverence"—is replaced with saktyä—"with ability." The meaning is not changed dramatically.] 36 stutis tu nämnä rüpena karmanä bändhavena cat svargäyurdhanaputrädyair arthair ä.ils tu kathyatell

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The text then admits that cases in which there is a conflict between the two kinds of discerning a divinity are not very common. 8. Here in the Rg Veda, those verses in which both praise and desire appear are few, but those in which heaven is requested are even fewer. The Brhaddevata then g o e s on to establish a single principle to which both kinds of mantras can adhere. This principle informs verses 1.9 and 1.10, where the Brhaddevata states that, in fact, both desire and praise are the same: 9. Everyone knows the one who praises; [they think,] "This· man wants something from me"; [everyone knows] the one who states an object; [they think] "This man praises [because] he regards me as someone who has objects."·^ 10. Both [praise and desire] are expressed by rsis who see the truth, whether they are praising or stating [an object], for both of them are the same with regard to their object.·^ The Brhaddevata thus sees "object-oriented" praise as the pre-eminent category of ritual speech. S o m e words on âÉïs might be useful here. Gonda, in his elaborately detailed study of prayer and blessing in the Veda, spends more than half of the book analyzing the term ails in its various uses in the Veda, Brähmanas, and Vedängas. He characterizes the term as a kind of

37 stutyäSisau tu yäsv rksu drfyete 'Ipästu tä ihal täbhyas cälpataräs täh syuh svargo yäbhis tu yäcyatell [Tokunaga has for ab, stutyä.iisas tu yäsv rksu drfyante 'Ipäs tu tä ihal Again, the basic meaning is not changed.] 38 stuvantam veda sarvo 'yam arthayaty esa mäm iti/ stautïty artham bruvantam ca särtham mäm esa paÉyatill [Tokunaga has for pädas cd, stautïtyartham bruvantam ca yo'rtham mäm èva pafyati. ". . . and recognizes one who states an object (thinking,] 'He, who regards myself as his object, praises [me].' " Macdonell missed the yo 'rthamäm in one manuscript, rl. Again, the basic idea is the same as the later manuscript.] 39 stuvadbhir vä bruvadbhir va rsibhis tattvadarSibhihl bhavaty ubhayam evoktam ubhayam hy arthatah samamll [In b, Tokunaga has mantradarSibhih, "those who see mantras," as opposed to "those who see the truth."]

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expectation. 4 0 The verb äiäs, from which the term is derived, does not mean "prayer," 41 but "the voicing of the opinion of those pronouncing the mantra that its contents and the acts which it describes lead to a result upon which the mind and will are fixed."42 B y uttering an âSîs one expects to promote the fulfillment of wishes. 4 3 In his examination of the places in the Veda which distinguish between asls and non-öfts, Gonda writes: From a close examination it would appear that the difference was often assumed to lie in the degree to which the âiïsah explicitly refer to the benefit that the institutor of the sacrifice, the yajamäna (or sometimes another person or thing), is expected to derive from the rite.44 Indeed, this is a particular kind of speech act, not one which necessarily "sets up an identity with a deity," but one which expects results from a deity. Ails is a statement which presupposes a form of reciprocity because the divine powers are believed to be loyal and faithful—that is to say, faithful in their fulfillment of the speaker's expectation of future blessings. 4 5 Even when an ails is expressed in terms of homage, it is 40 AB 2.12.7 on Agni hymn RV 3.21, beginning "Enjoy these oblations, O Jätavedas" (see also TB 3.6.7.1). Also AB 2.12.15 on RV 3.21.4 cd, "Praised by the inspired poet, you have come unwavering brightness; enjoy the oblations, O wise one." Also see TB 3.6.7.2. Both beginnings of the Rg Vedic hymns could be seen as straightforward invocation, but they are more than a simple invitation, as Gonda puts it. The Aitareya singles them out, using the verb äSäste (the cognate verb of äsls), to describe the poet's activity. Thus these mantras are effective in bringing about advantage or benefit, and add to the god's power and vigor, from which the worshipper hopes to derive great profit. (See Jan Gonda, Prayer and Blessing: Ancient Indian Ritual Terminology [New York: E. J. Brill, 1989], p. 14.) 41 See Gonda, Prayer and Blessing, p. 85, for a criticism of Macdonell's translation of äSls as "prayer" in his edition of the Brhaddevatä. Relatedly, see Gonda's comments on Brhaddevatä 8.87, discussing RV 10.185—a hymn for the svasti of travelers. He writes here that the hymn is a svastyanana because it expects the successful or auspicious progress for travelers, not because it is a "benediction," or "prayer" for the safety of travelers (ibid., p. 182). 42 Ibid., p. 141. 43 In Brhaddevatä 8.97, for example, Kasyapa's desires to possess cows are chiefly expressed by äiirväda. Also see Rg Veda khila 5.3.2. 44 Gonda, Prayer and Blessing, p. 16. 45 Ibid., p. 40. Gonda is in fact referring to the Brhaddevatä''s comment on RV 6.75, where the rsi invokes äSisäh on his own behalf (BD 5.129).

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self-interested homage designed to ward off danger or to gain wealth from the deity. Brhaddevata 8.44, for instance, characterizes Rg Veda khila 4.4 as an "ätirvada," a statement of an â$îs. Its prayer, "be merciful to us," is ostensibly a simple prayer for benevolence, but stanzas 2 and 4 include a wish for offspring and cattle as well. As another example, the Kausltaki Brahmano (38.8) classifies a charm against lightning as an âÉîs, further underscoring the fact that by using this mantra, the worshipper "wants something from a deity" (in this case, protection from lightning), as Brhaddevata 1.9 has just declared above. The Brhaddevata is filled with references to such cases of äils— the first case that can be made in this discussion for its viewing the mantra as a speech act. Even at this point, one may go so far as to say that the entire classificatory system of mantra in the Brhaddevata is based on a speech act par excellence. Ätils is a combination of what Searle would call a "directive" speech act, which aims at getting the speaker to do something, and a "commissive" one, which aims to commit the speaker to some future course of action. 46 In characteristic accordion-like style the Brhaddevata has enumerated the complexity, then reduced it to a single principle of knowledge. The Brhaddevata then turns its attention to the next logical issue. The object-orientation of mantra only intensifies the importance of knowing the deity, as the one who "owns" the sükta and who is expected to fulfill the object. Rules are needed to explain how one can discern the addressee, and therefore appropriately apply a mantra in any given situation. And a simple rule is then enjoined: 11. In whatever mantra the name of the deity is mentioned in the second pers o n , i n that mantra one should know that deity by means of the combination (sampadä) of [the deity's] distinguishing marks.4** 46 J. L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words', and John Searle, "A Taxonomy of Elocutionary Acts," pp. 1-29. 47 Macdonell takes pratyaksam to mean whenever a god is directly addressed in the second person, basing his idea on Nirukta 7.2. 48 pratyaksam devatänäma yasmin mantre 'bhidhiyatel tarn eva devatäm vidvan mantre laksanasampadäll [Tokunaga has pratyaksam devatänäma yasmin mantre pradrfyatel tarn evähuh susampannam mantram laksanasampadall "That mantra is well-furnished with distinguishing marks." Again, the basic idea of both versions is that the direct perception of a deity, as

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The simple rule here is that when there is a form of direct address which is ambiguous, such as that of the second person, the way to discern the deity is by looking elsewhere in the mantra for the deity's combination of distinguishing marks (sampadd). It closes off this brief discussion by thus concluding how careful one must be with regard to the multiplicity of the names that will arise in relation to a single deity; "name," after all, can possess several kinds of manifestations. 12. Therefore one who knows the application in mantra after mantra should take care to identify the deity by name and [to identify] the multiplicity of appellations

The Brhaddevatä then turns to address the question of how to organize these individual mantras with their distinguishing marks into a larger grouping. It introduces the term sukta as a means of classification: 13. The whole utterance of a rsi is called a sukta, in whatever hymn the object deities appear, whether in one hymn, or many, or two.^0

And again, in 1.14 a familiar pattern now emerges: the Brhaddevatä goes on to warn the hearer about the possibility of confusion between the various ways to designate a sukta: "A variety arises as to the deity, the rsis, the purpose, and the meter." It then goes on to clear up the problem with the following four criteria for knowing or describing a sükta,: the rsi's sükta, the topical süktas, the deity's sukta, and the meter süktas. 14-15ab. A variety arises as to the deity, the rsis, the purpose and meter. A rsi's [total] sükta consists in as many süktas as are the praise by that very one; for all of those are heard as the sükta of that one rsiß1

expressed by the use of the second person, allows one to discern distinguishing marks.] 49 tasmât tu devatäm nämnä mantre mantre prayogavitl bahutvam abhidhänäm ca prayatnenopalaksayetll 50 sampürnam rsivâkyam tu süktam ity abhidhïyatel drsyante devatä yasminn ekasmin bahusu dvayohll [Tokunaga has for cd, citram tad drfyate cäsmin ekasmin bahusu dvayoh. "And it {the utterance of a rsi ) appears here {in the sukta ) variously—in one, in many, (and) in two [süktas]"]. 51 devatärsärthachandasto vaividhyam ca prajäyatel rsisüktam tu yävanti süktany ekasya vai stutihil [Tokunaga has devatärsärthachandasto vaividhyam tasya jäyatelrsisüktäni täny atra yävanty ekasya vai stutihil]

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15cd. As long as it may take to complete the object [of purpose], they say that is the sUkta of that object [of purpose],

The first recension also gives a definition of the deity-sükta, in accordance with the four-fold list introduced in verse 14. It is defined like the other süktas: In as many süktas as belong to one deity, that many is said to be a devatä sükta.

The second recension ignores this classification. The Brhaddevata goes on to name the meter süktas with the first half of 16: Whatever ones have the same meter, they are said to be the sükta of that meter. 53

In these passages, the süktas are designated as much by function as by form: a sükta is determined both by the ways in which it is produced and by the ways in which it is used to control the sacrifice: according to the rsi who composed it as well as its artha, or object of purpose. 54 The specific question this section is answering is, "How can these various mantras which we have been given in the Rg Veda be organized?" Thus, the sükta is not simply a genre, or "unit" as one might call a stanza of English poetry, emerging from the mind of the poet before the poem is composed. It is above all an object to be ordered, after the fact, part of the complex Rg Vedic knowledge that confronts the audience. The fourfold sükta classification is another way of saying, "The mantras have four things in common, and can be organized accordingly." This brief discussion is closed off with a familiar kind of self-reinforcement: 16cd. Thus one should know the various factors in the süktas here, in each regard[—i. e., the variety of deities, of rs/s, of objects, and of meters.] 55

52 érüyante tani sarvâni rseh süktam hi tasya tat yävad arthasamäptih syad arthasüktam vadanti tat!I [Tokunaga has for ab, devataikâ tu yâvatsu devatâyâs tad ucyate. This in fact is the only version of the text to give the definition of the devata sükta.] 53 samanachandaso yah syus tac chandahsüktam ucyate/ [Tokunaga has samanachandaso yds tu tac chandahsüktam ucyate] 54 According to these rules, of course, one could have a sükta within a sükta—a series of verses bound by one common principle, such as meter, might be within a larger series of verses attributed to the complete utterance of a rsi. 55 vaividhyam evam süktänäm iha vidyäd yathätatham! [Tokunaga replaces evam with etat.]

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Not surprisingly, as mentioned above, Vedic literature makes references to Anukramanïs to c o v e r m o s t o f this r e q u i s i t e k n o w l e d g e — a Devatânukramanî, or index of deities, an Ârsanukramanï, or index of rsis, and a Chando' nukramanl, or index of meters. N o Arthänukramanl, or index of objects of purpose, has been found, perhaps because even Vedic purposes themselves are subject to human change and evolution! The last and largest problem introduced in 14 and 15, the deity of the sukta, is left to the next discussion. The deities deserve organizational principles of their own—principles which will be applied to the entire Rg Veda in the last three quarters of the Brhaddevatä itself. A s the Brhaddevatä notes, there are deities of a verse; deities of a whole sükta, and incidental deities: 17. The giving of names (namadheya) of the deities in the süktas is threefold: those owning a sukta, those [owning] a verse, and whichever ones are mentioned incidentally. 56 18. Those [deities] owning the süktas belong to süktas, those owning verses own verses alone; in the mantra which is given to only one [deity] some others are also mentioned in the same placed 7 19-20. The ones mentioned incidentally are either from the same world or are associated with each other; therefore even in a sükta with many characteristics, 58 a deity may own that sükta. In this way, such a sükta is understood to be unclassifiable. Even in a divided sükta, one should in this case state the deity by reason of its distinguishing marks. In characteristic style, the Brhaddevatä anticipates problematic cases. Although a difficult sequence, these verses seem to mean that, where a

56 devatänämadheyäni mantresu trividhani tul süktabháñjy athavargbMñji tathä naipätikani tuli 57 süktabhañji bhajante vai süktäny rgbhänji vai rcahl mantre 'nyadaivate 'nyäni nigadyante 'tra känicitH [In ab, Tokunaga replaces the vai with yaih and yair, respectively. In c, he has yani for anyani, and in d, he replaces atra känicit with prasangatah. Thus, the verse would mean that other deities are mentioned on occasion.] 58 sälokyät sähacaryäd va tani naipätikani tul tasmäd bahuprakäre'pi sükte syät süktabhäginlll 59 devatä tad yathä süktam aviSesyam pratïyatel bhinne sükte vaded eva devatäm iha liñgatahll

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sükta has manifold references to deities, the deity must be described as indefinite and unclassifiable, possibly (as the Nirukta states), belonging to Prajäpati. In the second problematic case—when a sükta is broken up for ritual application, and single verses are ritually applied—the Brhaddevata states the rule that one can discern the deity of such a verse by looking at its laksana, or characteristic mark. A characteristic mark is usually the simple name of the deity, or some "key" word, such as the word viSva used in a verse indicating that the verse belongs to Visvadeva. The text closes off this section with the paramount statement about why knowing the deities is all important—because the names of the deities help to connect the formulas with the rites. 21. In each of those cases one should connect the mantra with the ritual, as a result of one's discernment of who the deity is. For that is the ritual which is fulfilled. 60

Thus the deity of every stanza must be accounted for in the Rg Veda, for this is the only way in which a rite can be completely successful. This rule results in an even more detailed legitimation of the enumeration of the deities later on in the text.

The Nature and Origin of Canonical Language In the next discussion, the Brhaddevata extends the discussion rather dramatically, examining the question of discerning a deity on a smaller level—the name. As will be discussed at length below, knowledge of the names of the deities is concerned not only with the successful sacrifice, but also with the entire structure of the cosmos. The Brhaddevata begins the discussion by linking it with the theme of the mention of names, treated in the preceding verses. The text states that the rsis often mention, at the beginning and end of each hymn, the circumstances connected to their being praised.

60 tatra tatra yathavac ca mantran karmasu yojayetl devatäyäh parijñanat tad dhi karma samrdhyatell

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Framing the Canon 22. Because of the proclamation of the occasions] by the praisers at the beginning and the end of the sûktas, the one who knows the mantras should observe the deities with regard to their name [in those places in the sükta

This discussion deserves more detailed examination. Brhaddevatä 1.22 asks: "What is the relationship between the occasion (prasanga) and knowing the mantras with regard to name?" At the beginning and end of Vedic suktas, often the name of the deity is proclaimed in connection with the circumstances of praise. The term prasañga has the connotation of event, occasion, and connection. A name, then, is immediately assumed to be connected with an event, something happening in the world which causes it to be spoken. In modern linguistic terminology, one might say that this view is intensely pragmatic—concerned with the way in which context informs and determines speech patterns. As will be discussed in Part Three of this book, the Brhaddevatä's itihäsas, or narratives, provide mantras with a similar pragmatic context. In the next verse, the Brhaddevatä switches the subject from the mere mention of names to the origin of names. Yet the linkage between topics here is the occasion of the utterance. As any good pragmatic linguist would do, so too the Brhaddevatä inaugurates the new topic by addressing in verse 23 the kinds of occasions in which names arise, the kinds of occasions that provide the origins of names. Those kinds of occasions all have to do with action: 23. Indeed, they say about that, "From how many actions does a name come into being, whether the name of the Vedic beings or any other name here in this world?" 6 2

Despite its rather esoteric, alien-sounding nature, this discussion is quite familiar to Western culture as well. To put it in everyday language, the Brhaddevatä is asking, "How do names originate? What motivates people to give someone a certain name?"

61 ädyantayos tu süktänäm prasangaparikirtanâtl stotrbhir devota nämnä upekseteha mantravitH I translate iha here to refer to the dual locative, "beginning and end," that begins the verse. Those beginnings and endings are the places where names are particularly crucial. 62 tat khalv ähuh katibhyas tu karmabhyo näma jâyatel sattvänäm vaidikänäm vä yad vänyad iha kimcanall

81

Patterns of Thought: The Brhaddevata Introduces Itself At this point, the distinctive point of view of the Brhaddevata

comes

in. In the next discussion it sweeps all other hypotheses about the origins of names under one organizational principle. The answer runs as follows: 24. The nairuktas say "From nine" and the ancient poets, Madhuka, Svetaketu, and Gälava also think s o : ^ 25. that which comes from a dwelling place, from action, from form, from auspiciousness, from speech, from desire, from accident, from speaking ill of a person, and from being a descendant.^ To put this verse in plainer language, the Brhaddevata

is telling us that

some ancient authorities, such as the Nairuktan etymologists, believe that people give someone a name because of where they were born (dwelling place); h o w they act (action); what they look like (form); the hope for a fortunate life for them (auspiciousness); the ways the name-receiver or the name-giver speaks (speech); the ambitions or goals the name-giver or name-receiver has (desire); arbitrary chance (accident); or family ties (being a descendant). The text goes on: 26. About that topic, Yäska, Gärgya, Rathîtarâ say, "From four: from desire, the many forms of purpose, from speech, and from action."^ 27. "All these names are from action," says Saunaka; desire, form, and speech— all are from action.^ 63 navabhya iti nairuktähpuränäh kavayaS ca yel madhukah SvetaketuS ca gälavai caiva manvatell 64 niväsät karmano rüpän mañgalad vaca aíisah! yadrcchayopavasanät tathämusyayanäc cayatH [Macdonell takes ämusyäna to mean "the condition of being the descendant of someone." Tokunaga has in 25cd, yadrchayopavacanät, "from speaking ill of a person," to replace Macdonell's rather nonsensical yadrchayopuavasanät, "from abstinence." Tokunaga argues persuasively that his version of this verse is later illustrated by verse 1.33.] (See Tokunaga, "Text and Legends," p. 90.) 65 caturbhya iti taträhur yäskagärgyarathXtarähl äSiso 'thärthavairüpyäd vacali karmatia èva call [Tokunaga has in cd aSiso 'tha ca vairüpyäd vacah karmana eva ca —taking the notion of artha, "object of purpose" out of the definition, and simply saying that names come from many forms.] 66 sarvany etani riamarli karmatas tv äha Éaunakah! aíí rüpam ca väcyam ca sarvam bhävati karmatah/l [Tokunaga has väkyam for väcyam.]

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Here again a process of distillation occurs. While the earlier scholars list nine sources of names, other authorities reduce them to four. Finally, Saunaka reduces the whole discussion to one source—that of action. Thus the text introduces an organizational principle to which all other things can be subordinated; all of the theories about the origin of names can be classed under action. The Brhaddevatä g o e s on to explain: 28. Whatever is from accident, speaking ill of someone, or the state of being a descendant, that too is from action. Thus hear the reasons for that:^ 7 29. Creatures come into being from action, for the sexual union of beings comes from action. A person is born somewhere and is said to be born from a given place [i.e. he derives his name from his birthplace].^ 30. Wherever an accidental name is given, one should know that even here [in this world] that [name] also derives from a similarity with some kind of becoming (bhäva)ß9 31. For there is no becoming which is not action, and no name which does not have a meaning. Names derive from nowhere else than becoming; therefore they all are derived from action.™ All creatures arise from action, or c o m e together from action; and action implies b e c o m i n g — a process, a continuing existence. Even an accidental name, a name which results from a chance event, is appropriate to the bhäva of the person named. 67 yadrcchayopavasanät tathämusyäyanäc ca yat! tathä tadapi karmaiva tac chrnudhvam ca hetavahll [Tokunaga has yadrcchayä niväsäc ca yac cämusyäyanäc ca yat/ tathä tad api karmaiva tac chrnudhvam ca hetutahll Niväsät, "from a dwelling place," must be the correct reading, he notes, for in the next verse the Brhaddevatä explains niväsä. In addition, Macdonell attempts to explain the ungrammatical use of the nominative hetavah when it should be the accusative. The correct reading hetutah is in MS S.] 68 prajah karmasamutthä hi karmatah sattvasamgatihl kvacit samjäyate sac ca niväsät tat prajäyateH 69 yädrcchikam tu nämäbhidhlyate yatra kutracitl aupamyäd api tad vidväd bhävasyaiveha kasyacitH [In ab, Tokunaga has yädrcchikam tu nämäbhidhlyate yat tv iha kvacit/ aupamyäd api tad vidyäd bhävasyaiveha kasyacitH. [In c, Tokunaga has datte for vidyäd.] 70 näkarmako 'sti bhävo hi na nämästi nirarthakaml nänyatra bhävän nämäni tasmät sarväni karmatah!!

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The term bhäva here deserves some consideration. A term hardly used at all in the Rg Veda, it occurs in other texts such as the

Svetasvatara

Upanisad (5.14), where it seems to imply an existence. Texts more closely related to the Brhaddevata, 71

Nirukta,

such as the grammatical discussions of 72

and Rk Prätiiäkhya,

also attributed to Saunaka, imply a

sense of transition into, a turning into something. Macdonell's "becoming" or Böhtlingk's "ein Werden" have the most appropriate processual connotations. 7 3 A s Prabhatchandra Chakravarti comments of bhäva in later Indian thought, Philosophically speaking, bhäva represents a stage of manifestation from the unmanifest (avyakta), or it is the summum genus (mahäsatta) that permeates the entire world of existence. 74 Although bhäva (iäkhyäta),

will c o m e up again in the discussion of verbs

in this context of Saunaka's 7 5 discussion of names,

bhäva

71 Nirukta 1.1: bhäva pradhänam äkhyätaml sattva pradhänäni nämäni: The verb is predominantly becoming; nouns are predominantly being. Nirukta 1.2: sadbhävavikärä bhavantîti värsyäyani—jäyate 'sti viparinamate vardhate 'paksvyate vinatyatitilΊ According to Varsyäyani, there are six modifications of becoming: genesis, existence, alteration, growth, decay, and destruction (see Brhaddevata 2.121). 72 Rk Prätisäkhya: 12.19 tan näma yenäbhidadhäti sattvam tadäkhyätam yena bhävam sadhatu/ That by which one designates being is a noun; that by which one designates becoming and which contains a root is a verb. Later Brhaddevata 2.121 will take up the distinction between verbs and nouns as Nirukta and Rk Prätisäkhya do. 73 Otto Böhtlingk and Rudolph von Roth, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch, 7 vols. (St. Petersburg: Buchdruckerei der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 185575), 5: 257. 74 Prabhatchandra Chakravarti, The Linguistic Speculations of the Hindus (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1933), p. 159. 75 Classical grammatical tradition accords bhäva several meanings. According to Renou, bhäva can mean either 1) the meaning of a root (Panini 3.1.24, and Nyasa 1.3.13); 2) action (Pänini 2.3.37), the Kasika of Jayaditya and Vamana also gloss kriya here); or 3) entrance into a state (Panini 5.1.119 on the suffixes tva and ta; see also Pänini 3.4.69 on the notion of the impersonal passive); 4) that which causes to exist, that which causes to produce; the expression defining the root, in so far as a word effects action (Kätantra 3.1.9). While these later definitions are helpful in showing what bhäva evolved into, Renou

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implies a certain essential activity, or natural activity that defines the thing being named. Verse 31 sums it up: "There is no becoming which is not action, and no name which does not have a meaning (or purpose). N a m e s derive from nowhere else than becoming; therefore they are derived from action." The important thing that the Brhaddevatä does here is to create a chain of associations, linking grammar to cosmology. It derives nama from bhäva, and bhava from karma, so that they all imply one another. This linking legitimates the importance of names, since names derive from nothing less than karma, from which all creatures and their various bhävas also derive. With such a pedigree, h o w could they possibly be ignored? A more elaborate discussion of the relationship between grammar and c o s m o l o g y will address these issues below. The next two verses also collapse the distinction between the various origin of names: 32. Whether a name is formed from auspiciousness or from calling someone a bad name, it is nothing but desire: for example, those [names] formed from auspiciousness here (in this world), such as [the name of] svasti, etc. 76 33. [For in the first case of good names] one wishes auspiciousness [to the person so named]; [in the second of bad names, one wants to curse him:]

himself saw little reason to combine the use of the term as classical grammarians used it with its earlier use. As he puts it in his Terminologie Grammaticale, "The plan of this work required me to sidestep the compilations on Vedic phonetics (Prätüäkhya and Siksa) and Vedic lexicography (Nirukta), which, in certain regards, are neighbors of proper grammar, yet appertain in reality to a very different system." "Le plan de cet ouvrage imposait d'écarter les compilations sur la phonétique védique (PrätiSäkhya et Siksâ) et sur la lexicographie védique (Nirukta) qui, bien qu'à certain égards voisines de la grammaire proprement dite, appartiennent en realité à un système très different." (Louis Renou, Terminologie Grammaticale du Sanskrit [Paris: Edouard Champion, 1942], p. viii). Renou's question as to what comprises proper grammar is itself open for discussion; see Mahulkar's discussion of the PrätiSäkhya tradition below. 76 mängalät kriyate yac ca namopavasanâc ca yatI bhavaty eva tu sä hy äSih svastyäder mangalad ihall [Again here, Tokunaga substitutes upavacanat, "speaking ill of someone," for upavasanät. For ed he has bhavaty eva tu sä hy âSïr ätäste mangaläni ca. The example of svasti is taken out.]

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"With such a contemptible name, this person won't live long in this world." In this way even despised names are given to living beings. 77

Just as accidental names derive from action, so too those deriving from auspiciousness or malediction also become desire, or äils. For example, those named for auspiciousness are named with the desire that auspicious circumstances give him long life. Those named insultingly are being cursed to die. In the same spirit, the Nirukta 1.20 comments that kucara as an epithet of a beast means "one who moves in a crooked manner (caratikarma kutsitam)," but as an epithet of a god it means "Where does he not go (kväyam na caratiti)?"78 At this point, the text seems to have strayed from action, until it is remembered that äsis is a form of action, usually seen as a kind of request with an imperative tone uttered in a ritual context. By collapsing into âSïs those names with both positive and negative desire behind them, the Brhaddevata is still proving the general case that names ultimately derive from action. Once again, the multiplicity has been reduced to a single rule. In the previous verses, the Brhaddevata uses the mundane (laukikya) example of the name svasti to make a general case about names. In the 77 api kutsitanämäyam iha jïvet katham ciraml iti kriyante nämäni bhütänäm viditâny api// [In cd, Tokunaga has ninditäny api for viditâny api. This reading seems right, for according to Macdonell's reading, the two verses 32-33 would read, rather nonsensically, "Names of beings, even well known ones, are made (with the thought ), "How could a man with a repulsive name live long in this world?"] 78 Compare the Laws of Manu, where social status and name are more explicitly connected: "The name giving should be done for him on the tenth day [after birth] or the twelfth day, or on an excellent lunar day or moment, or under a constellation that has good qualities. [The name] of a priest should have [a word for] auspiciousness, of a ruler strength, of a commoner property, and [the name] of a servant should breed disgust. The name of a priest should have [a word for] secure comfort, of a king it should have protection, of a commoner it should be connected with prosperity, and of a servant it should be connected with service. [The names] of women should be easy to pronounce, not harsh, of patent meaning, and auspicious; they should captivate the mind-and-heart, end in a long vowel, and contain a word for blessings." (Manu 2.30-33; as translated in Wendy Doniger with Brian Smith, The Laws of Manu [New York: Penguin, 1991].)

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next verse, it goes on to make a specific case for the Vedic names of the deities. The Brhaddevata starts, not surprisingly, by identifying this multiplicity, a veritable warehouse of speech acts which speciate mantras: 34. Those mantras seen by the seers of mantras may be of various kinds, those prompted by the praise [of a deity]; the power [of a deity]; and the power of one's own speech.7^

As I have tenatively rendered this rather recalcitrant verse, the first two classifications, those mantras prompted by the praise (stutyä) and power (vibhütyä) of a deity, correspond to the classifications which the Brhaddevata makes earlier, that of praise (stuti) and desire (öiw), or wanting something from a deity who has the power to give it (BD 1.710). The final classification, "the power of one's own speech" (väkprabhäva atmanah) perhaps conveys the idea that certain kinds of mantras may not be so plainly motivated by the aims of the sacrifice as the first two kinds, but derive their efficacy instead from other suggestions made in the speech of the mantra itself. This idea is echoed in Sahara's Bhäsya on Pürva Mlmämsä 2.1.32, where, in his own taxonomy of mantras, he includes a similar category of mantras which indicate "powerful designation" or "powerful expression" (samarthyam abhidhänam)ß° 79 mantra nänäprakäräh syur drstä ye mantradariibhih! stutyä caiva vibhütyä ca prabhäväd devatätmanah// [In ab, Tokunaga substitutes vai for ye. For ed, he renders, stutyä caiva vibhütyä ca väkprabhävena cätmanah, which he takes to mean, "with respect to praise, power, and by means of the power of speech and from the self." Macdonell translates cd as, "with respect to praise, and to the (degree of) majesty (arising from ) the prominence of a deity's nature."] While I prefer Tokunaga's reading of the Sanskrit, neither Macdonell's nor Tokunaga's translation seems to make much sense. Sheldon Pollock has suggested, "by means of the power of one's own speech," which seems to be the most reasonable. My own translation of the half verse, although tenuous, seems preferable to the other two. As mentioned in the text, vibhütyä translated as a function of a deity's "power" seems to correspond with the notion of äSis, "wanting something from a deity," and thus stutyä and vibhütyä correspond to the classifications which the Brhaddevatä makes earlier, that of stuti and äils (BD 1.7-10). 80 Sahara's list is not as exhaustive as the Brhaddevatä's. Not surprisingly, however, his list also includes classifications of mantras which would be of use within a ritual performance, such as those mantras expressive of number. See

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87

The list that follows contains exemplifications of these three categories. 35. Praise, eulogy, abuse, uncertainty, complaint, longing, desire, swagger, entreaty, question, summons, enigma;^ 36. command, solicitation, boast, lament, narration, dialogue, protecting statement;^ 2 37. and lewd verses, homage, hinderance, resolve, chatter, response,*®3 38. prohibition and instruction, intoxication, denial, and that which is invitation, agitation, and astonishment;^ 4 39. abuse, laudation, disdain, and curse; preposition, particle, noun and verb;®*5 40. past, present, future; masculine, feminine, neuter—all the mantras in all the Vedas everywhere are made of such s t u f f . ^

The sub-categories of "praise," "eulogy," and "laudation," for example, are kinds of mantras which would fall under the larger category of

81 82

83 84

85 86

the Sabara Bhäsya, 3 vols., edited and translated by Gangänätha Jha (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1933-36). Jha translates this phrase as "capability," or "the power of expression." See also my "Speech Acts and King's Edicts: Vedic Words and Rulership in Taxonomical Perspective," History of Religions 34:4 (May 1995): 329-50. stutih praiamsa nindä ca samiayah paridevanW sprhâSïh katthanä yäcnä praSnah praisah pravalhikäll niyogaS cânuyogaS ca Élâghâ vilapitam ca yatl äcikhyäsätha samläpah paviträkhyanam eva call [Tokunaga substitutesparitrâ for Macdonell'spavitrâ, "purifying story." ( From MS r i } This earlier reading makes more sense, since an example of it from the Atharva Veda is given in 1.54, and nowhere does the Brhaddevata give an example of a purifying story.] âhanasyâ namaskärah pratirâdhas tathaiva cal samkalpaS ca pi aläpas ca prativakyam tathaiva call pratisedhopadesau ca pramädäpahnavau ca hai upapraisas ca yah proktah samjvaro yaS ca vismayahll [Tokunaga substitutes noma for yai ca.] âkroÉo 'bhistavas caiva ksepah Sapas tathaiva cal upasargo nipätas ca näma cäkhyatam ity apill bhütam bhavyam bhavisyam ca puman stri ca napumsakaml evam prakrtayo manträh sarvavedesu sarvaSahll [In b, Tokunaga reads stry atha napumsakam, and in d, he reads, sarvavedesv iti sthitih.]

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"praise." And those of "desire," "solicitation," and "longing" would fall under the larger category of "desire." Finally, sub-categories such as "intoxication," "narration," or "chatter," would fall under the category of those mantras prompted by "the power of one's own speech." 87 In this list the Brhaddevatä describes both the intentions which produce the mantras (boast, swagger, lament, etc), as well as what one in the West would call the standard parts of speech—particle, noun, verb, etc. Its purpose is to list the component parts of the whole of Vedic speech—some of which one would class under the Western rubric "grammar," and some of which Western scholars might call "pragmatics." In these and later verses the Brhaddevatä introduces its own taxonomy of speech acts—one which can and should be compared with the Western version introduced by Wheelock, discussed above. And it is upon this comparison that the next chapter embarks.

Conclusions Before beginning that discussion, however, it is worth reiterating the accordion-like movement with which the Brhaddevatä has introduced itself. Whether it be in the discussion of the nature of mantra, the appropriate names for a deity, or the origin of names, the text characteristically introduces a rule, and then examines the variety of cases in which the rule may apply. The Brhaddevatä then subsumes those multiple cases back underneath the rule. Thus all mantras, no matter how they are classified, can be said to "have the same object" (BD 1.10). So too, all names, no matter how many sources they may be said to have, in reality all come from one source—bhäva (BD 1.27). And, as will be evident in the following pages, this accordion-like pattern of thought is found throughout the text. The Brhaddevatä's introductory section also shows its emphasis upon the circumstances of mantric utterance. As the discussion of prasañga above indicates, the importance of a deity's name is connected with the occasion, or event, in which it is uttered. A poet who utters the deity's name in a mantra is thus also obliquely referring to his own cir87 This insight was developed in conversation with Sheldon Pollock.

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cumstances. To use Hayden White's terms discussed in Chapter Two, a poet endows those present events with a particular meaning simply by invoking a name. The term bhäva, too, has a circumstantial, event-like quality in so far as it describes the essential activity of a deity. And in Vedic texts, that divine action is usually, although not exclusively, described in the form of a narrative—the sequence of events in which that action was most clearly manifested. Thus, in its introductory emphasis on the circumstantial events of mantric utterance, the Brhaddevata implicitly sets the stage for its lengthy discussion of narrative events later on in the text.

Chapter Four

Language and Cosmology I: Taxonomies of Mantra I fear indeed that we shall never rid ourselves of God, since we still believe in grammar. —Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols

Grammar and the Power of Language The relationships between mantra, name, and circumstance become even more entwined when one takes the basics of grammar into consideration. Such grammatical elements are introduced in verses 1.41-58, where the Brhaddevatä embarks upon a discussion of the constituents of mantric language. In this regard, a question should be raised: how can grammar be related to the larger whole, particularly to the narrative emphasis of the work? Macdonell and Tokunaga treat verses 1.41-58 and other related verses as being a necessary part of the Brhaddevatä''s larger indexical project, but make no attempt to relate it to any other part of the work, or to treat it in relation to its other discourses. The architecture of the Brhaddevatä discussed in the previous chapter, however, demands that these more comprehensive considerations be explored more carefully. The first question to consider involves the claim made by the Brhaddevatä that language has its own autonomous rules and functions, and that these rules and functions are intrinsically related to canon. Such a claim has been made in a number of intellectual contexts—both European and Asian. Most recently, Martin Irvine has outlined analogous kinds of claims for the ars grammatica in early middle ages. Grammatica (defined as reading, interpreting, and parsing canonical texts) was not

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simply one discourse among many, but considered an autonomous, irreducible prerequisite for all cultural (in this case, textual) knowledge. As Irvine puts it, "In its role as a discursive practice at the foundations of culture, grammatica arrogated authority to itself alone to do the work of conceiving and representing linguistic and textual objects."1 Working from a slightly later period, Michel Foucault has also analyzed the motivation behind the study of language in European culture by examining the larger epistemological claims involved in its analysis. In the sixteenth century, for instance, the study of language was the study of resemblance—similarities of word and sound were part of the larger Writing that was the universe, and evidence of the presence of God. In the classical period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tabulation of language in a general grammar was part of the larger impetus to a taxonomía universalis, the "project of discovering in all the concrete domains of nature or society the same distributions and the same order."2 In the modern conception of language, language takes a double role as a historical, "discoverable" object of linguistic study on the one hand, and on the other, as the locus of the inner principles of tradition— "the unspoken habits of thought, of what lies hidden in a people's mind."3 The nineteenth- and twentieth-century study of religion, too, has accepted and utilized an idea of an autonomous, "discoverable" language to its fullest extent. Language is the primary impulse of religion, as Max Müller believed; the mechanical structure which also lends mythology its meaning, as Lévi-Strauss understood it; and the part of the "metaphoric process" which undergirds all cultural thinking, including those categories of ritual and myth, as Lakoff, Boyer,4 and other cognitive scientists are now claiming. The positing of an unconscious may or may not be necessary to such schemata; the important thing is that language be "uncovered" as an autonomous realm which can also provide the key to religious and mythological behavior. Finally, Frederick Newmeyer (1986) has studied the ideological 1 Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'Grammatica' and Literary Theory, 351-1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 2. 2 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Pantheon, 1970), p. 76. 3 Ibid., p. 276. 4 George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things; Pascal Boyer, Tradition as Truth and Communication.

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aspects of the twentieth-century academic debate over the question of an "autonomous" field of linguistics. H e writes, . . . the controversy over the value of the autonomous orientation has been long and bitter, and shows no sign of resolution. On the one hand, humanist intellectuals object to its failure to embody a system of aesthetic standards; on the other, Marxists see its much vaunted claim of "scientific neutrality" as nothing but a cover for an implicit support for the status quo, while moralist sociolinguists deplore its irrelevance to the important contemporary social concerns The very conception of an autonomous linguistics is quite threatening. To the humanist, who considers language our most intimate possession—the medium through which our humanity is manifested—the idea that language, or some central portion of it, might be isolable and capable of reification as an autonomous structural system poses a profound challenge. To those preoccupied with language as the medium for all socializing experience, the idea that at the core of language lies a langue, or competence, immune to social forces, is equally disturbing.^ Even within the walls of academe, the study of language is intensely ideological—perhaps all the more vehemently ideological because of its being camouflaged in objective language. Of all the disciplines, the study of language most dramatically highlights the Western conflict between the transcendent quality of structure and the m e s s of human finitude; the tension confronts one, embodied, in the speaking individual. Foucault refers to this conflict in his discussion of modernist literature's fascination with the limits of language. He writes, . . . a literature dedicated to language gives prominence, in all their empirical vivacity, to the fundamental forms of finitude. From within language experienced and traversed as language, in the play of its possibilities extended to their furthest point, what emerges is that man has 'come to an end,' and that, by reaching the summit of all possible speech, he arrives not at the very heart of himself but at the brink of that which limits him; in that region where death prowls, where thought is extinguished, where the promise of the origin interminably recedes.®

5 Frederick Newmeyer, The Politics of Lingustics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 129-30. An analogous situation, where the political aspect of linguistics is exposed as Newmeyer is trying to expose it, might be the political version of Babel in Fritz Lang's Metropolis·, the head plans the tower, the hands [workers] make it. See the screenplay of Metropolis, a film by Fritz Lang (London: Lorrimer Publications, 1973). 6 Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 33.

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In their exposure of the "autonomy" of linguistic study, both Foucault and Newmeyer question the ways in which the details of language are separated from the larger concerns of limit, death, and change. For Foucault in particular, it is not a question of the "relevance" of the study of language, but of its capacity to disclose finitude. He must make use of an "archaeology" to uncover the relationship between transcendence and claims to autonomy of the discipline of linguistics. This claim to autonomy, as Martin Irvine also suggests of the medieval grammatica, is not just intellectual, but also sociological in nature. Its essential sovereignty over other forms of knowledge means the creation of an elite. And the existence of such an elite has broad social effects that extend beyond the classroom and into the cultural practices of literacy and learning.

Grammar and Cosmology in India In contrast, no such archaeology is needed in the study of language in Vedic India. From Rg Veda 10.71 onwards, Vedic speech is uninhibitedly and explicitly reserved for the priestly elite; its autonomy (in the sociological sense) must be self-consciously preserved and protected from damage in order for it to remain powerful. Much of Indological scholarship on this topic attempts to show how this attitude has developed into views of the eternality of language, found in Kasmir Saivism, Tantrism, and Mïmâmsâ. Scholars have covered its devotional, mystical, and philosophical aspects thoroughly.7 The discussions of the cosmological implications of the actual components of language, however, have been left behind—avoided by the linguists for their disorderly quality, and avoided by historians of religion because of their technical patina. They are doomed to be, as Renou puts it, "neighbors of proper grammar, yet appertain[ing] in reality to a 7 Among others, see Johnson, Poetry and Speculation; Staal, "The Concept of Metalanguage," "Rg Veda 10.71," "Meaninglessness of Ritual," "Ritual Syntax," "Sound of Religion"; Arapura, "Some Perspectives on Indian Philosophy"; Harold Coward, Sphota Theory of Language (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980); and André Padoux, Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tanträs, translated by Jacques Gontier (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).

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very different system." 8 Ironically, it is precisely its unabashed marriage of an ideological/cosmological approach with a grammatical approach—a quite ««hidden agenda—that renders early Indian works on language uncomfortable as objects of study. Edwin Gerow's e s s a y 9 on karma in grammatical, Advaita

Vedänta, and Buddhist understandings

is perhaps the only essay which attempts to link grammatical, cultural, and philosophical ideas. While his emphasis on the interplay between Paninean ideas and later philosophical systems such as Advaita

is not

relevant here, it provides us with a model "to see in what way their universalizing structures may illumine each other to shed light on the problems of their formulation." 1 0 D. D. Mahulkar has begun to address the "problem" of the early grammarians from a linguistic perspective. A s he sees it, the

Prätisäkhya

tradition never developed a metalinguistic, algorithmic grammar in the form of sütras as Panini did: It is indeed true that Panini has been highly admired for the technical syntax that he developed for this sort of systematization of his grammar, but we do not know of the amount of give and take that happened between his school and the popular tradition in this regard. . . . None of them nor their later followers attempted a thoroughgoing technical syntax as Panini had done. The reason usually set forth for this limitation of theirs is that they were far inferior to Panini in this regard. It might equally be true that their disinclination to cast their discipline in this rigid mould was due to their having entertained a notion of language study altogether different from that of the Panini tradition.1 ' Mahulkar asserts that PrätiMkhyas

were rooted in the practical con-

8 Renou, Terminologie, p. viii. 9 Edwin Gerow, "What is Karma (Kim Karmeti)? An Exercise in Philosophical Semantics," Indological Taurinensia 10 (1982): 87-116. 10 Ibid., p. 116. 11 D.D. Mahulkar, The PrâtiSâkhya Tradition and Modern Linguistics (Baroda: University of Baroda, 1981), p. 44. He writes earlier: Whereas the techniques of Panini's grammar were highly algebraic and could be understood and mastered only by those who were initiated into the tradition, the popular grammars remained rooted in their phonetic tradition, and did not aim at any high theoretical rigour in the presentation of their materia l . . . . It is quite obvious that Pänini's aim in writing the grammar of Sanskrit was not to help a novice to learn the language but to formulate the grammar of the language as a formalized system.

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cerns of the speech community, which attempted to protect and preserve Vedic language in the face of a continual change, and grammar as a subsidiary activity keeping watch on those concerns. 12 A part of the Vedic rituals was the recitation of prayers and invocations—the hymnal language having two forms, the samhitäpätha, the synthesized or connected text, and the padapätha, the analyzed or dissected text, mentioned in Chapter One. The samhitäpätha, which was historically earlier, was used for continuous recitation at the time of ritual ceremonies, while the padapätha was needed for developing an analytical understanding of the language for pedagogical practice. (Pada, or "word," should here be distinguished from päda, or quarter-verse, which the Brhaddevatâ discusses below.) The PrâtiÉâkhya writers had to know the living voice of the text as well as its anatomical limbs. What Mahulkar does not take adequately into account, however, is the motivation of the speech community itself. Although as part of a living tradition, the writers of the PrâtiÉâkhya?, were distinct from the detached voice of Panini, the PrâtiÉâkhya^ also had their investments; they were not open to anything but transcendent claims. He mentions, but does not give enough weight to, the controversy over the intepretation of the statement "samhitä padaprakrtih."—"The samhitä text has disjointed words as its basic material" (Rk PrâtiÉâkhya 2.1). This controversy clearly indicates that there existed a question in the minds of the grammarians as to which work should be considered basic and which as derived. Although they accepted the fact that the samhitä text came earlier, that it was the inspired utterance, and that therefore it was basic, the logic of grammar required that they should consider the pada text as basic and the samhitä text as derived (vikrti). The aim of grammar as they visualized it was to frame the rules of derivation of the samhitä text from the pada text. 13 This discussion in the Rk PrâtiÉâkhya raises the basic question of justifying grammar in the first place. The Rk PrâtiÉâkhya, no less than the Rg Veda, justifies it from a cosmological perspective. It begins with formulaic homage, but then continues on to a debate about the nature of the universe: 12 Ibid., p. 45. 13 Ibid., p. 51.

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1. Having done homage to the supreme first God, the lotus-bom, to him whom, from the beginning to the end of the Veda, the great sages always describe as the self and the abode of the Veda, Saunaka states the form of the rk stanzas. 14 2. MändQkeya says that the union [of earth and heaven] is the wind. Likewise, Mäksavya in this connection [says] the ether alone. Agastya, thinking that there is an identity between the wind and the ether, [says that the union is] the same [i.e., the ether] without omitting [the air].

Interestingly, the Rk PrätiSäkhya regards the distinction between the samhita text (the euphonic combination) and the pada text (the resolution of the samhita into pure words) as a function of the larger entities of speech and mind, a very old debate in Vedic literature: 3. With regard to the unity of the self, Suravira and [his] son dispute about the order of speech and mind. The turning into euphonic combination they call nirbhuja and the pronouncing of pure syllable pratrnna}^

Although it is impossible to be certain, the text seems to be referring to a debate about the path of communication that results in sound. Does the mind inspire speech? Or does speech inspire the mind? If one follows the grammatical texts of the Siksas, the self urges the mind to give some expression, to vocalize the thought within. The mind, so stimulated, acts upon the physical fire which in its turn brings about movement in the region of the internal air. The internal air, thus moved, goes upwards until it reaches the vocal apparatus.17 The speech that results is in two forms: the form of euphonic combination, and the modified form of syllables pronounced separately according to rules. (The difference between these two might be somewhat akin to the difference between natural speech and speech which has been diagrammed by a linguist.) At any rate, while it is not explicitly cosmological, the text implies that speech has to do with the larger, more cosmological questions of the nature of

14 par avare brahmani yam sadähur vedätmänam vedanidhim munïndrahl tarn padmagarbham paramam tv ädidevam pranamy arcäm laksanam äha [iaunakahjH 15 mändukeyah samhitäm väyum äha tathäkäiam cäsya mäksavya eva/ samänatäm añile cambare ca matvägastyo 'viparihäram tad evali 16 adhyätmaklrptau iûravïrah sütäS ca vänmanasayor vivadanty änupürvyel samdher vivartanam nirbhujam vadanti iauddhäksaroc cäranam ca praîrnnamll 17 As discussed in Chakravarti, Linguistic Speculations, pp. 86-91.

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the self. The discussion moves from atman itself, to speech and mind, to nirbhuja and pratrnna. Then, the two forms of speech are combined into a single concept—the ubhayamantra, or krama recitation. These recitations are a special way of learning the Veda, in which recitation proceeds from the first member, either word or letter, to the second, then the second is repeated and connected with the third, and so forth. Thus there is room for both individual element and euphonic combination: 4. Both are embraced by the ubhayamantra", and so are desires known as food and heaven. The breath, i.e., the letter s, the strength, i.e., the letter n, and the mutual sacrifice of speech and breath,^ 5-6. heaviness, lightness, homogenousness, [of sounds] short, long, and prolated [syllables]; dropping, insertion, and modification; natural state; the unchanged visarjaniya, and duplication; the quality of the sliding, high, and low tone; sound, tone and [their] combination—all this must be understood by one studying the Vedic s p e e c h . ^

Notice the analogical language: speech and breath are perceived to be in relation to each other as a "mutual sacrifice," implying that they are similar to the larger sacrifice which takes place in the physical world. Moreover, the connections between the sacrifice and the parts of speech are also made by juxtaposition; the larger sacrificial, even cosmological concerns of food and heaven are classed alongside of the quality of the circumflex. These connections are continued in verses seven and eight: 7. For the sake of knowledge of [all] this, I will expound, in the following, this whole discourse with reference to the SaiSirïya text, as well as the knowledge of the meters, their form, the knowledge of beings, the omnipresence of the meters, and the achievement of heaven and immortality.2^

18 ubhayamantarenobhayam vyäptam agre pare kämä annanäkobhayäkhyähl pränah sakâre yac ca balam nakäre väkpränayor yaS ca homah parasparamll 19 gurutvam laghutä sämyam hrasvadïrghaplutâni cat lopägamavikäräS ca prakrtir vikramah kramahll svaritodättariicatvam Svaso nadas tathobhayam! etat sarvam ca vijñeyam chandobhäsäm adhXyatäll 20 chandojñanam äkäram bhütajnänam chandasäm vyäptim svargämrta tv apräptiml asya jnanärtham idam uttaratra vaksye Sästram akhilam SaiSirlyell

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8. One who knows the distinction of the pada and the krama text, is expert in the succession of sounds (i.e., the samhitâ text), and distinctly knows accents and quantity, will attain the perfection of a teacher. 21

The knowledge of meters and the pervasion of the meters throughout Vedic speech are mentioned alongside the achievement of heaven and immortality, and the perfected person. Although it is not the purpose of this exposition to delve into the details of Vedic language according to the PrätiSäkhya, it is important to note that the work moves full circle within a "closed system"—from cosmology to the components of language back to cosmology. The qualities of air, ether, the order of speech and mind, all lead to a discussion of the pronunciation of Vedic language; and the pada, samhitâ, and krama texts all lead to the larger goals of the sacrifice—food, heaven, the attainment of immortality.

The Motivated List: Supporting Canonical Language The verses above demonstrate that such grammatical lists can be fruitfully viewed from within a larger intellectual context. 22 The historian of religion can make the observation that the Rk PrätiSäkhya's enumeration of the constituent parts of language is doubly motivated by broader concerns—first by the necessity of pronunciation and recitation of mantra, and second by the larger purpose of linking the practice of mantra recitation to established cosmological principles. So, too, the Brhaddevata's list of the constituent parts of language is also informed by its overall purpose—connecting the canonical language of mantras to the deities. Thus, not surprisingly, its exposition of grammar and the mechanics of recitation is much shorter than that of the Rk Prätiiäkhya, and it spends a good deal more time on a taxonomy of mantras instead, 21 padakramavibhägajno varnakramavicaksanahl svaramatraviíesajño gacched äcärya samsadamll 22 For instance, in his The Language of the Nirukta (Delhi: D. K. Publishing House, 1975), Mantrini Prasad attempts to distill the words which were unintelligible in Yäska's time, and to shed light on the semantic and morphological features of the Sanskrit of the Nirukta, distinct from both Vedic and from Classical Sanskrit.

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to be discussed below. For the Brhaddevatä, the particular character of the rsis' utterances is as much a component of language as the mechanics of their sentences. Both are, however, essential aspects of mantra which render it canonical, inviolable, and efficacious speech. The Brhaddevatä begins its list by giving particular definitions of noun, verb, and substantive. It begins, not surprisingly, with a general statement. 1.41. Verses, half-verses, and padas have as their purpose the revelation of the object of their utterance; some of the [Rg Vedic verses] in this work are also quoted in the Brähmanas and the Kalpa Sutras7·^

The earlier, shorter recension verse has a slightly different reading: "For the purpose of illustration, some of the verses, half-verses, and pädas in the vidhi [the Brahmano], the ritual text, and the Veda are here quoted." As discussed in Chapter Fifteen below, here is an example of how the earlier recension actually takes pains to distinguish between the different canonical texts from which it quotes, whereas the later recension often does not do so, and quotes from all different kinds of texts without always designating the source. The longer recension's introduction to this section, on the other hand, does not enlighten the hearer any further. The later recension goes on to discuss the importance of noma, here used in the grammatical sense of "noun," instead of in the earlier, more cosmological sense of "divine name." 42. The spoken sound by which a thing is apprehended, joined in the manner of syllables, the wise ones call a "noun."2