The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

The Vedas
in Indian
Culture and
History
Proceedings of the

Edited by Joel P. Brereton

Fourth International
Vedic Workshop
Edited by Joel P. Brereton

euro 58,00
www.sefeditrice.it Società Editrice Fiorentina
 Introduction Ù  1

THE VEDAS
IN INDIAN CULTURE AND HISTORY
Proceedings of the Fourth International
Vedic Workshop (Austin, Texas 2007)

Edited by Joel P. Brereton

2  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

‘Alti Studi di Storia intellettuale e delle Religioni’ Series

The volumes featured in this Series

are the expression of an international community of
scholars committed to the reshaping of the field of textual
and historical studies of religions and intellectual traditions.
The works included in this Series are devoted to investigate
practices, rituals, and other textual products, crossing
different area studies and time frames. Featuring
a vast range of interpretative perspectives,
this innovative Series aims to enhance
the way we look at religious and
intellectual traditions.

Series Editor

Federico Squarcini, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy

Editorial Board

Piero Capelli, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy

Vincent Eltschinger, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France
Christoph Emmrich, University of Toronto, Canada
James Fitzgerald, Brown University, USA
Jonardon Ganeri, British Academy and New York University, USA
Barbara A. Holdrege, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Sheldon Pollock, Columbia University, USA
Karin Preisendanz, University of Vienna, Austria
Alessandro Saggioro, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, University of Lausanne and EPHE, France
Romila Thapar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Ananya Vajpeyi, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
Marco Ventura, University of Siena, Italy
Vincenzo Vergiani, University of Cambridge, UK

Editorial Coordinator

Marianna Ferrara, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

 Introduction Ù  3

THE VEDAS
IN INDIAN CULTURE AND HISTORY
Proceedings of the Fourth International
Vedic Workshop (Austin, Texas 2007)

Edited by Joel P. Brereton

4  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

Società Editrice Fiorentina

www.sefeditrice.it

This edition first published in Italy 2016

by Società Editrice Fiorentina
via Aretina, 298 - 50136 Florence, Italy
Tel. +39 055 55 32 92 4 | Fax +39 055 55 32 08 5
info@sefeditrice.it

© 2016 Società Editrice Fiorentina

individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced
into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.

ISBN-13: 978 88 6032 386 6 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 88 6032 386 6 (Hbk)
 Introduction Ù  5

These studies are dedicated

to the memory of our colleague and friend,
Frits Staal
6  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History
 Introduction Ù  7

Contents

Preface 11
Introduction 13
Abbreviations 23

Ludo Rocher
The Onset of Vedic Studies: H.T. Colebrooke and the Asiatic Society 25

I. Grammar and Text

Eystein Dahl
A Note on the Temporal Semantics of the Early Vedic Past Tenses 43

Hans Henrich Hock

A Short History of Vedic Prefix-verb Compound Accentuation 61

Tamara Ditrich
Historical Development and Typology of dvandva Compounds
in the R̥gveda 75

Saraju Rath
Observations on Vedic Accents in Grantha Palmleaf Manuscripts 93

II . R e l i g i o n and I n t e r p r e tat i o n

Henry John Walker

The Birth of the Twin Horse Gods in India and in Greece 107
8  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

Madhavi Kolhatkar
Lakṣmī: Originally A Marked Animal 121

Madayo Kahle
Two Ways to Heaven: R̥ V 10.14 and 10.16 139

Julia Mendoza Tuñón

The Path to the Yonder World 147

Joel P. Brereton
The Funeral Hymn of Br̥haduktha 167

Mislav Ježić
Īśā-Upaniṣad: History of the Text in the Light of
the Upaniṣadic Parallels 181

III . R i t u a l , H i s t o r y , and Society

Stephanie W. Jamison
R̥ gveda 10.109 “The Brahman’s Wife” and the Ritual Patnī 207

Jarrod L. Whitaker
What Makes Indra Indra? On indriyá in the R̥ gveda 221

Shingo Einoo
Rites for Rain in the Vedic and Post-Vedic Literature 243

Thennilapuram P. Mahadevan
The Institution of Gotra, the R̥ gveda, and the Brahmans 259

Frits Staal†
Rathakāro Manasā 289

I V. A t h a r v a v e d a S t u d i e s

Elizabeth Tucker
The Big-Bellied Heap of Indra 303

Julieta Rotaru
“The bráhman that was first born of old….”
As It Was Known by the Atharvavedins 319

Michael Witzel
A Prosopography of the Śaunakīya Atharvaveda Families
of Gujarat As Seen in Their Late Medieval
and Early Modern Manuscripts 333
 Introduction
Contents Ù  9

V. T h e C o n t i n u i n g life of the Veda

Karen Muldoon-Hules
Brides of the Buddha, or How Vedic Marital Customs Served
Buddhist Ends 385

Shrikant Bahulkar
Vedism and Brahmanism in Buddhist Literature 401

Alf Hiltebeitel
Epic Aśvamedhas 425

Federico Squarcini
To Be Good is To Be vaidika. On the Genesis of a Normative
Criterion in the Mānavadharmaśāstra 449

Madhav Deshpande
The Yājuṣa Hautra Dispute in Early Modern Maharashtra 467

Laurie L. Patton
Notes on Women and Vedic Learning in the 21st Century 477

David M. Knipe
Jīrṇa: Reflections of Andhra Āhitāgnis on Old Age and Dying 495
10  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History
 Introduction Ù  11

Preface

In his keynote address for the Austin Vedic Workshop, Ludo

Rocher quoted a passage at the end of Henry Thomas Cole-
brooke’s 1805 essay “On the Vedas,” in which he wrote, “The
ancient dialect in which they [the Vedas] are composed, and es-
pecially that of the three first Vedas, is extremely difficult and
obscure; and, though curious, as the parent of a more polished
and refined language (the classical Sanscrit), its difficulties must
long continue to prevent such an examination of the whole Ve-
das, as would be requisite for extracting all that is remarkable
and important in these voluminous works.” Fortunately, succeed-
ing generations of Vedic scholars have taken Colebrooke’s assess-
ment as a challenge rather than a deterrent. Over the last two
hundred years, building on scholarship within the Sanskrit tradi-
tion, Vedists inside and outside of India have made considerable
progress in clarifying Vedic language, history, and religion. As a
way of advancing that study and presenting its results, in 1989
Michael Witzel organized the first Vedic Workshop at Harvard.
Since then there have been five Vedic Workshops. The second
was held in Kyoto in 1999, the third in Leiden in 2002, and the
fifth in Bucharest in 2011. The papers in the present collection
are from the fourth Vedic Workshop, held in Austin, Texas, in
May, 2007.
The principal organizers of the Austin Workshop were Joel Br-
ereton, Patrick Olivelle, and Oliver Freiberger, all of The Univer-
sity of Texas. The theme of the workshop was “The Vedas in Cul-
ture and History,” from which the current volume takes its title.
One of the aims of the committee was to bring together as diverse
a group of Vedic scholars as possible, since it saw the Workshop as
12  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

an opportunity to promote discussion among scholars from dif-

ferent traditions in different parts of the world. Altogether there
were 55 papers presented at the Workshop by scholars from the
United States, Japan, Europe, and India.
The conference began with a keynote address by Ludo Roch-
er, who discussed the contributions of H.T. Colebrooke to Ve-
dic scholarship. Two of Colebrooke’s articles had particular sig-
nificance for the history of Vedic study: his first published essay
(1795), which traced the origins of satī to the R̥ gveda, and a later
article (1805), which outlined the texts and contents of the Veda.
In the first article, the key R̥ g vedic passage that Colebrooke trans-
lates as evidence for satī in the R̥ gveda differs from the transmit-
ted text. As Rocher notes, this is a question of the reception of
the R̥ gvedic text, not of a deliberate falsification as some early
scholars were prone to believe. In his later article Colebrooke il-
lustrated the importance for Vedic study of the anukramaṇīs and
other texts of ancient and traditional scholarship. Colebrooke’s
essays and Rocher’s address thus raise two central concerns that
occupy the contributions in this volume: the text and the inter-
pretation of the Veda and the continuing life of the Veda within
a still living tradition.

I would like to add a word of thanks to two people who made

this conference and this volume possible. The first is my col-
league and friend Patrick Olivelle. It was he who suggested at
the Third International Vedic Worshop that we at The University
of Texas should host the next Workshop in Austin and it was he
who arranged support for doing so. Those who know Patrick are
well aware of the contributions he has made to this field both on
the page and behind it. The second is Federico Squarcini of the
Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia and the Università di Firenze.
He has carefully and patiently worked with me to prepare these
papers for publication and with the publisher of this volume. I
appreciate all that the two of you have done more than I have
said here and more than I can say.
 Introduction Ù  13

Introduction

In his introduction to the Proceedings of the first Vedic Work-

shop (1997), Michael Witzel outlined some of the desiderata of
Vedic Studies and discussed the contributions of the volume’s
papers to developing new ways of exploring the Veda. His discus-
sion made clear how much needs to be done and how much is
being done. Many of the tasks he described remain: we still do
not have a full critical edition and translation of the Paippalāda
Saṃhitā or a complete translation of the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā, the
Kaṭha Saṃhitā, and the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa. We still need a com-
prehensive study of the Vedic verbal system. But progress has
been made on a variety of fronts. The work on the Paippalāda
Saṃhitā at Leiden has continued, and now we have new editions
and translations of eight of its twenty books. Since Witzel wrote,
detailed studies of aspects of the Vedic verbal system have ap-
peared, which include, for example, books by Martin Kümmel on
the perfect (2000), François Heenen on the desiderative (2006),
Eystein Dahl on verbal tense and aspect (2010), and Leonid
Kulikov on the ya-presents (2012). These and other significant
works are establishing the foundation for a full presentation of
the Vedic verbal system. There is a new English translation of the
R̥ gveda by Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton (2014), and we
now have two volumes of a four-volume German translation un-
der the editorship of Michael Witzel and Toshifumi Gotō (2007,
2013). While we still do not have a complete translation of the
Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā, Kyoko Amano (2012) has given us a German
translation of the prose sections of books I and II together with
a valuable study of the language of the text. In addition, Thomas
Oberlies (1998, 1999, 2012) has published substantial studies of
14  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

R̥ g vedic religion that not only consolidate a great deal of scholar-

ship but also offer a distinctive interpretation of the R̥ gveda. Even
this very incomplete review of major publications in Vedic stud-
ies illustrates the substantial progress that has been made. The
papers in this volume show the continuing effort to open up the
Vedic corpus and to develop ways of connecting Vedic texts to the
study of early Indian history, society, and culture.
Foundational to Vedic scholarship are studies of Vedic gram-
mar and Vedic manuscripts. Among the essays in this volume, the
four in Part I “Grammar and Text” deal with these basic issues.
Eystein Dahl provides a good example of an analysis that both
takes account of traditional scholarship and utilizes the insights
of contemporary linguistic theory. His paper examines the use of
the aorist and imperfect in early Vedic. Pāṇini, followed by many
modern scholars, distinguishes between the imperfect indicative,
which he understands to denote the remote past, and the aorist
indicative, which denotes the recent past. But there are instan-
ces in the R̥ gveda, however, which do not show this distinction.
Dahl considers verbal aspect as a means of explaining both the
normal uses of the aorist and the imperfect and the exceptional
cases that do not conform to this usage. The aorist indicative,
he argues, has a past perfective character, while the imperfect
has a past neutral character. Because it is past perfective, the ao-
rist normally —but not inevitably— signals the immediate past,
for the immediate past typically implies that a situation has been
completed before the speech time. On the other hand, remote
past contexts are semantically less marked because they imply
only that there is significant interval between the event described
and the speech time. The remote past has therefore generally,
but again not necessarily, fallen into the sphere of the more neu-
tral imperfect. The addition of aspect to the interpretation of
the aorist and imperfect thus allows a more accurate description
of their actual deployment in early Vedic. In his paper, Hans
Hock looks at the historical development of the accentuation
pattern of verbal prefixes. He shows that the accentuation pat-
tern evolved during the Vedic period, from an early, partly pre-
R̥ g vedic stage, in which every prefix was accented, to a later stage,
attested in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and described by Pāṇini, in
which the accent alternated between the verb and the immedi-
ately preceding prefix. Between these temporal boundaries, the
R̥ gveda itself and earlier Yajurvedic texts illustrate varieties of ac-
cent patterns that mark the movement from the earlier system to
the later. The third paper is by Tamara Ditrich, who investigates
the development of dvandva compounds in the R̥ gveda. Ditrich’s
analysis focuses on the two earliest types of dvandva compounds:
that in which the constituents of the compound are both dual,
 Introduction Ù  15

accented, and declined, and that in which the constituents are

dual and accented but only the last constituent is declined. Al-
though there are exceptions, most compounds of these two kinds
are devatādvandvas, theonyms invoking two closely related dei-
ties. Ditrich supports Stanley Insler’s argument that the constitu-
ents of such compounds should be viewed as separate words by
pointing out that only these two early types of dvandvas are at-
tested in tmesi and that when in tmesi, the devatādvandvas are not
viewed as compounds either by the R̥ gvedapadapāṭha or by Pāṇini.
Implied in this analysis is that devatādvandvas are different from
other kinds of dvandvas and that their special treatment reflects
the power and significance of deities’ names for the Vedic poets.
Lastly, Saraju Rath’s paper returns to the issue of Vedic accents,
but her concern is the interpretation of the different systems of
accentuation found in South Indian Grantha manuscripts. These
manuscripts have been ignored by past scholars because their sys-
tems of accent notation developed late in the history of South
Indian manuscripts (ca. early to mid-16th c.). However, South In-
dia has conserved ancient features of Vedic recitation that have
disappeared or are rare elsewhere, so that even a late manuscript
may provide evidence of early recitation.
The essays in Part II “Religion and Interpretation” build on
such foundations and offer new interpretations of Vedic texts
and new perspectives on Vedic religion. One of the traditions of
scholarship on the early Veda has been to study the evidence of
other Indo-European cultures in order to clarify the the back-
ground and development of R̥ gvedic religious practices and
deities. Henry John Walker applies this method, together with a
careful reconsideration of Vedic evidence, to understand the na-
ture of the Aśvins in the R̥ gveda. As have earlier scholars, Walker
argues that the Aśvins and the Greek Dioskouroi are reflexes of
one another. One of the characteristics they share is that there
are different traditions involving their status —whether or not
they are fully gods— and about their parentage. Although both
pairs are referred to as twins, there are a number of traditions
regarding their paternity and maternity. In the case of the Aśvins,
one R̥ g vedic verse attributes a divided paternity to them, and a
mantra quoted by Yāska gives them a divided maternity. As a re-
sult of his examination of such traditions, Walker shows that sim-
ple formulations that offer a uniform description of the origin
and meaning of twins in pre-modern societies have little to re-
commend them in the face of the complexity of ancient evidence.
A second essay that also looks at the origins of a divinity is Mad-
havi Kolhatkar’s study of the Vedic origins of the goddess Lakṣmī.
She argues that Lakṣmī’s name ultimately derives from lákṣman,
a “mark,” and more especially, a mark on a cow or other animal
16  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

that identifies its owner. The goddess Lakṣmī, she concludes, was
originally such a marked animal, which later became anthropo-
morphized and deified.
The papers of Madayo Kahle and Julia Mendoza Tuñón, also
are concerned with Vedic origins, but in these, the focus is the
development of Vedic concepts of the journey of the dead to
heaven. Kahle’s study examines two ways to heaven described in
R̥ g vedic funeral hymns. In one, the deceased rejoins his body,
transformed and transported by the cremation fire, in heaven.
The other way describes the transition of the ásu, the “life,” to
heaven. In addition to exploring the differences in these two
ways, Kahle’s essay links them to the development of the two
“paths” of later Vedic tradition, the devayāna, the “path of the
gods,” and pitr̥yāṇa, the “path of the ancestors.” In her essay, Men-
doza Tuñón investigates the way to immortality in three passages
in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa. The path passes through various units
of time and culminates in liberation from time, which is repre-
sented by the largest unit of time, the year. Such a journey has
parallels in other cultures. A similar path described in the Zoro-
astrian Hadōxt Nask suggests that the Indian and Iranian escha-
tologies are descendants of a myth common to the two cultures.
A comparable Orphic eschatology attests the influence of Indian
descriptions of the path of the dead on the Greek tradition.
To these two studies of Indian eschatology, Joel Brereton adds
a third, a close study of R̥V 10.56. Although this hymn has often
been taken as a eulogy for a dead horse, Brereton argues that it is
actually a funeral hymn for a person. The first half of the hymn is
dominated by the image of Agni as the horse that transports the
body of the deceased to heaven. The second half describes the
continued life of the deceased both in heaven and, through his
descendants, on earth. Like Brereton, Mislav Ježić also closely ex-
amines one Vedic text, but his text is the late Vedic Īśā Upaniṣad.
This Upaniṣad has been transmitted in two recensions. By com-
paring them and parallel passages in other Upaniṣads, Ježić of-
fers a reconstruction of the history of the text, a description of
its compositional techniques, and an analysis of its intertextual
relations. Such observations on the inner workings of the text
also contribute to a clearer exegesis of the Upaniṣad.
The papers in Part III “Ritual, History, and Society” show how
study of texts can lead to broader observations about the inter-
sections of Vedic ritual and Vedic social roles and about the early
history of India. In her essay, Stephanie Jamison builds on her
earlier observation that the wife of the sacrificer was brought into
the Vedic sacrifice during the late R̥ gvedic period. The focus of
her essay is R̥V 10.109, which, she argues, deals with anxieties
attendant upon the introduction of the patnī into the solemn
 Introduction Ù  17

ritual. The principal problem for the ritualists was that bringing
the wife of the sacrificer into the sacrifice separates her from her
normal social identity as a wife and mother. At least during the
time of the rite, she becomes the possession of the gods and risks
being completely lost to her husband and family. This hymn re-
flects the attempt to ensure her return into the human world and
into her normal social roles. Jamison notes that later exegetes
of the hymn miss its point partly because their interpretations
reflect the ritual and social conditions of their times. Her essay
thus illustrates the need to consider the historical context of both
text and commentary in using the latter to understand R̥ gvedic
hymns. In his essay, Jarrod Whitaker studies the term indriyá in
order to show how R̥ gvedic ritual shaped the ideals R̥ gvedic rulers
were expected to embody. The word indriyá denotes the “Indra-
hood” of Indra, his unique powers and traits as a warrior, which
he attained through the ritual. But humans can also aspire to
such characteristics and can also gain them by the ritual. The
ritual thus defines a warrior ideal and enables men to possess the
power to act according to that ideal. In this way, the ritual has a
direct influence in defining social roles. In his essay, Shingo Ei-
noo looks at reflections of societal change in the rites for rain in
Vedic and post-Vedic literature. While there are many rites for the
control of the rain in Vedic literature, there are fewer in the texts
compiled after the Veda. Later texts show rather an increasing
number of rites for consecrating water reservoirs. This change
reflects a technological and economic shift: the advancing ability
to build water tanks and the increasing dependence on them. It
also reflects a religious one: the development of rites that carried
less risk of failure and therefore less risk of compromising the sta-
tus and reputation of the brahman priests who performed them.
The last two essays of the third section also illustrate the ef-
fort to understand social history embedded in Vedic texts. T.P.
Mahadevan provides a detailed and nuanced study of the devel-
opment of gotras, brahman lineages that trace lines of descent
from r̥ṣi composers of the R̥ gveda. These brahmanical gotras arose
from the poets who created the R̥ gvedic hymns and from their
descendants who preserved and transmitted the Vedic oral tradi-
tion. Indeed, the enactment of these lines of descent in pravara
ceremonies replicates the oral transmission of the Veda. The oral
tradition was thus instrumental in creating the brahman caste,
which is comprised of these brahmanical gotras, and perhaps, Ma-
hadevan suggests, they were instrumental in creating the caste
system itself. The last article in this section is by Frits Staal. He
looks back at the very earliest history of the Vedic peoples and at
the formation of one of the distinctive elements of Vedic culture,
its emphasis on knowledge and speech. He approaches this topic
18  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

by studying the rathakāra, the “chariot-maker.” Even though the

chariot is one of the distinctive cultural elements of the Vedic
tradition, there is no evidence that chariot-makers or their ances-
tors entered South Asia by chariot. Rather, the chariot existed
in the minds of chariot-makers. Such specialized and valuable
knowledge was one source of the strength of the Vedic peoples,
for whom the possession of such knowledge carried social and
religious prestige. Staal’s emphasis on the power of knowledge
and of words in explaining the cultural dominance of the Indo-
Aryans thus stands in contrast to Whitaker’s analysis, which em-
phasizes the cult of the warrior. The two articles suggest a tension
that further scholarship might usefully explore in understanding
how and why the Indo-Aryan peoples came to dominate Indian
culture.
Partly as a reflection of the on-going preparation of a critical
text of the Paippalāda recension of the Atharvaveda, there has
been a renewed interest in the Atharvaveda and the Atharvavedic
tradition more generally. The three papers in Part IV “Atharvave-
da Studies” advance this effort. The essay by Elizabeth Tucker is
a close study of two Paippalāda hymns that have no equivalents
in the Śaunaka tradition, AVP 11.10 and 11. The two hymns con-
cern a harvest rite, and their focus is the indrarāśi “the heap of
Indra,” also called “the big-bellied (mahodara) heap of Indra.”
This “heap of Indra” designates a particular portion of grain re-
served for brahmans and dangerous for anyone but brahmans.
These hymns probably reflect a custom of making an offering to
brahmans that removed evil from the harvest and thus brought
prosperity to the people. That purpose connects this Atharvave-
dic rite with later rituals, in which brahmans absorb and thereby
eliminate what is inauspicious. The second Atharvavedic study is
Julieta Rotaru’s analysis of the application and interpretation of
the Atharvavedic pratīka “brahma jajñānam,” “the bráhman that was
born.” This phrase serves as the pratīka for two different hymns,
AVŚ 4.1 and 5.6, which share the same opening verse. Rotaru’s
study examines the Kauśika Sūtra to determine when it uses the
pratīka to indicate just the verse and when a whole hymn. And if
it indicates a whole hymn, then how —and whether— the Sūtra
makes it possible to distinguish which of the two hymns it intends.
Her study also examines the various strategies commentaries and
later texts use to indicate which hymn they intend by the pratīka.
Finally, Michael Witzel reviews the manuscript traditions of the
Śaunaka Atharvaveda from the 15th to the 20th centuries to study
the copyists, patrons, and families by whom these manuscripts
were created and through whom they were transmitted. His study
reveals the thin line of transmission of both the oral and the writ-
ten traditions of the Śaunaka Atharvaveda and the interaction be-
 Introduction Ù  19

tween the two traditions. This fragile transmission helps explain

the number of mistakes that occurred and that were perpetuated
in both manuscripts and oral recitation of the Atharvaveda. His
study alerts scholars to be wary of taking too seriously deviant
forms in the Śaunaka traditions, since these may reflect Gujarati
peculiarities of script or pronunciation or simply errors in trans-
mission. He further argues that his review shows that not only
do we need a critical edition of the Paippalāda recension, but
we also need a new edition of the Śaunaka recension, one which
more thoroughly documents and examines the oral and manu-
script traditions.
In the last part of this collection, Part V “The Continuing Life
of the Veda,” seven papers carry the discussion of the Veda into
the period after its composition. Two of these papers study the
relation of the Veda to Buddhism. Karen Muldoon-Hules discuss-
es the reflection of Vedic marital customs in the stories of the
Buddhist avadāna literature. The orthodox dharma tradition set
marriage as the only desirable option for women, a prescription
that left no room for the Buddhist ideal of a celibate life. Two
avadāna stories subversively use the Vedic tradition of svayaṃvara,
a bride’s “self-choice” of a husband, to justify two women’s en-
try into monastic life by becoming “brides of the Buddha.” The
paper demonstrates both the continuing power of the Vedic
tradition and the ability to apply it against brahmanical inter-
preters who claimed sole authority over it. In his essay, Shrikant
Bahulkar demonstrates the continuing influence of Vedic tradi-
tions in Buddhist Tantra. Tantric texts show ritual customs, ele-
ments, and terminology that derive from Vedic and brahmanical
usage. Thus, the Tantras use mantras, including sounds such as
om̐, svāhā, and vauṣaṭ, which come directly from Vedic recitation.
Similarly, tantric ritual uses sacrificial utensils and ritual practices
that derive from Vedic ritual. However, the Tantras employ Ve-
dic terms in a distinctively Buddhist tantric sense, and they adapt
Vedic practices to a tantric context. His study demonstrates that
Buddhists had knowledge of the Vedic tradition generally, al-
though not of Vedic texts, and it attests to medieval India’s fa-
miliarity with Vedic practices, even if the Veda itself remained the
possession of ritual specialists. Such general familiarity with the
Veda is also apparent in other literature.
The next two papers look at the life of the Veda in later Sanskrit
literature. In his study, Alf Hiltebeitel examines allusions to the
Veda in the Mahābhārata. His focus is the story of Vyāsa’s sexual
union with the two princesses, Ambikā and Ambālikā. Hiltebeitel
argues that this narrative alludes to the episode in the Aśvamedha
in which the mahiṣī or chief queen lies with the sacrificial horse.
He supports this interpretation by showing similar oblique ref-
20  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

erences to the rites of the Aśvamedha in the Mahābhārata and

in the Rāmāyaṇa. While Vedic rites such as the Rājasūya or the
Aśvamedha may have been rarely performed in the period of the
epics’ composition, these rituals were sufficiently familiar that
epic poets could make knowing allusion to them to give great-
er depth to their narratives. Federico Squarcini examines how
the application of the term vaidika in the Mānavadharmaśāstra
reflects the historical and cultural context of the text. At the
time of the Mānavadharmaśāstra, brahmans’ claim to social and
religious primacy was under challenge by other religious groups,
especially Buddhists. In order to help brahmans regain their sta-
tus, Manu urged them to adhere to “Vedic” norms and by thus
clothing themselves in the Veda, to rest their claim to social and
religious privilege on the Veda. Manu defined “Vedic” to include
a broad range of acts and beliefs understood to rest on the au-
thority of the Veda. Thus for him, living according to the Veda
meant to trust in the ritual efficacy of Vedic rites, to accept Vedic
teachings about the consequences of certain beliefs and actions,
to study the Veda, to act according to what Manu understood to
be its restrictions and prescriptions, and to identify with a spe-
cific brahmanical lineage connected to Vedic study. In that way,
Manu envisioned the Veda as defining brahmanical life and with
it brahmanical prestige.
Bringing us into the early modern period, Madhav Deshpande
examines a dispute in 18th- and 19th-century Maharashtra that con-
cerned the right of Yajurvedic priests to perform the functions of
a Hotar. The Taittirīya Saṃhitā contains Hautra mantras for non-
soma sacrifices, and therefore the Taittirīyakas claimed that in
such rites a Taittirīyaka Yajurvedin could act as Hotar, a role typi-
cally belonging to a R̥ gvedin. R̥ gvedins argued that they alone
should perform the office of Hotar in all rites. Deshpande docu-
ments the arguments, counter-arguments, and even clashes that
surrounded this conflict between Yajurvedins and R̥ g vedins. He
also notes that this dispute had obvious economic consequences,
since exclusion from all but soma rites would have caused severe
economic loss for R̥ g vedic communities.
The last two papers of this part concern the life of the Veda
in contemporary India. In her essay, Laurie Patton discusses the
motivations of women to study the Veda and the social accept-
ance of their study. Based on interviews of women in Pune and
Chennai, her paper describes significant differences in attitude
and practice concerning Vedic study by women in the two cities.
In Pune, most women studying Sanskrit studied Vedic, although
few of them participated in priestly recitation. In Chennai, where
approximately 50% of the women Sanskrit scholars were non-
brahmans, most of the women studied aesthetics. None studied
 Introduction Ù  21

the Veda itself. Patton points out that Pune has thus preserved
a brahman lineage in which women can study the Veda, while
Chennai has more thoroughly challenged brahman exclusivism
in Sanskrit study but removed Vedic study from the areas pur-
sued by women. Patton’s paper documents the already significant
role of women in continuing the traditions of Sanskrit learning,
including the traditions of Vedic study. David Knipe’s paper is
also based on fieldwork. Since 1980, Knipe has conducted inter-
views with several generations of pandit families in one area of
Andhra Pradesh. One of the topics he has pursued with them has
been their reflections on growing old. In this contribution, he
discusses their attitudes regarding the inevitablity of illness, their
methods of prolonging life, and their performance of the agni-
hotra and its significance for them. Although his paper concerns
old age and death, it is also about how traditional families live the
Veda and define their lives according to the Veda.
Overall, therefore, these papers show scholars’ efforts to move
Vedic studies away from the description of Vedic ritual and Vedic
religion as a self-contained system and toward showing how the
Veda reflects and forms social and political organization. They
also present a more nuanced analysis of the dynamics of the Ve-
dic period. Rather than freezing the early history of Indian reli-
gion into discreet categories of early, middle, late, and post-Veda,
scholars show an increasing effort to understand the histories
within each of these periods and the continuities among them.
And finally and most importantly, these papers demonstrate the
enduring vitality of both the Vedic tradition and Vedic study.

Joel P. Brereton

References

Amano, Kyoko. 2009. Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā I-II, Übersetzung der Pro-

sapartien mit Kommentar zur Lexik und Syntax der älteren vedi-
schen Prosa. Bremen: Hempen Verlag.
Dahl, Eystein. 2010. Time, Tense, and Aspect in Early Vedic Grammar.
Leiden–Boston: Brill.
Elizarenkova, Tat’jana Ja. 1989-99. Rigveda. Moscow: Nauka.
Heenen, François. 2006. Le désidératif en védique. Amersterdam–
New York: Rodopi.
Jamison, Stephanie W. and Joel P. Brereton. 2014. The Rigveda:
The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. 3 Vols. New York: Oxford
University Press.
22  Ù The Vedas in Indian Culture and History

Kulikov, Leonid. 2012. The Vedic -ya-presents: Passives and Intransi-

tivity in Old Indo-Aryan. Leiden Studies in Indo-European,
Vol. 19. Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi.
Kümmel, Martin. 2000. Das Perfekt im Indoiranischen. Wiesbaden:
Richert Verlag.
Oberlies, Thomas. 1998. Die Religion des R̥ gveda I: Das Religiöse Sys-
tem des R̥ gveda. Publications of the De Nobili Research Li-
brary, Vol. 26. Wien: De Nobili.
______. 1999. Die Religion des R̥gveda II: Kompositionsanalyse der
Soma-Hymnen des R̥gveda. Publications of the De Nobili Re-
search Library, Vol. 27. Wien: De Nobili.
______. 2012. Der Rigveda und seine Religion. Berlin: Verlag der
Weltreligionen.
Witzel, Michael. 1997. Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. Harvard
Oriental Series, Opera Minora, Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: De-
partment of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard Univer-
sity.
Witzel, Michael and Toshifumi Gotō. 2007. Rig-Veda. Erster und
Zweiter Liederkreis. Frankfurt am Main–Leipzig: Verlag der
Weltreligionen.
______. 2013. Rig-Veda. Dritter bis Fünfter Liederkreis. Berlin: Verlag
der Weltreligionen.