When texts conceal: why vedic recitation is forbidden at certain times and places (Presidential Address).

• Author: Olivelle, Patrick
• Position: Presidential Address Gary Beckman of American Oriental Society - Report

During last year's (2005) Presidential Address Gary Beckman spoke on the "Limits of Credulity" (Beckman 2005), or more forthrightly stated, "when texts lie." We know that texts can lie, as when untruths or exaggerations are inscribed or when documents are forged or altered; and there are ancient versions of these in both texts and inscriptions. (1) Beckman (2005, 348) is correct in seeing political motives behind many of the statements in ancient inscriptions and texts: "In dealing with these official texts we come up against a significant inherent difficulty: telling the truth is not a value much honored by governments, but is at best secondary to the pursuit of their policy goals, and above all, to assuring their survival." This is true not just of government documents but also of texts originating from groups with hegemonic power within a given society, as in the case of Brahmanical documents of ancient India.

Although some texts do lie, it is much more common for texts to conceal. Sometimes the concealment may be deliberate and strategic, as when the Mahabharata fails to mention the Buddhists explicitly, even though, as it has been shown recently, the epic can be seen as an extended argument against the Buddhist views of society, religion, and kingship; (2) or when Madhava, a high official in the Vijayanagara court in the fourteenth century, wrote the voluminous Parasara-madhaviya without once mentioning the Muslims. More often, however, things are hidden due to the very nature of the discourse. To reveal what a text conceals is the task of the text critic; and this is a task that all of us perform every time we subject a text to a close reading.

Texts, even ancient and religious texts, are human products. Sometimes, therefore, insights from other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that are also engaged in the study of human cultural products can help us shed light on texts and reveal what hitherto has lain hidden. The British anthropologist Mary Douglas's work on the Abominations of Leviticus (in Douglas 1966) is a fine example. Legal texts (3)--and these are the kinds of texts that I will examine here--give prescriptions and prohibitions without going into the possible reasons for the rules they enunciate. The reasons and motives are concealed. Indeed, these legal minds may not know or even much care about the reasons for the rules, besides perhaps very formal reasons such as that they reflect the will of God or they are the prescriptions of the Veda. Mary Douglas's works (1966, 1982) provided new insights into the animal prohibitions in the Jewish dietary laws and the rules of purity and impurity governing the lives of people of many traditional societies from the perspective of an anthropologist.

I want to apply some of Douglas's insights into cultural rules regarding the pure and the impure to understand the reasons and the worldview behind the rules formulated in the Indian law books, the Dharmasastras, regarding the times when, and places where, a person is forbidden to recite the sacred scriptures of the Vedas. This subject has been viewed by modern scholars as arcane and obscure; I have not seen a single study devoted to this topic. Yet it clearly occupies such a prominent place within these legal treatises that it must have been viewed by their authors as singularly important.

I

A Brahmin householder was expected to spend about four months a year studying and reciting a section of the Veda, usually under the guidance of a teacher. This period started generally on a full-moon day between July and September and concluded on the first day of the fortnight of the waxing moon between December and February. The ritual commencement and conclusion of this period of study were designated by the technical terms upakarma and utsarga. During this period of intense Vedic study, as also at other times when a Brahmin was engaged in Vedic recitation such as his obligatory daily Vedic recitation (svadhyaya), there were occasions when he was required to suspend that recitation. These occasions, both temporal and spatial, were given the technical term anadhyaya, literally 'non-recitation'. Long and complex lists of these occasions are given in the legal texts, although the custom of anadhyaya appears to have been older than the composition of these texts. (4)

The times, places, and occasions contained in the anadhyaya lists in different sources are diverse and at first sight seem unrelated to each other, much like the dietary rules in the Abominations of Leviticus. Several questions arise. Behind this seeming lack of cohesion and system is there a logic? What is left concealed behind these formal rules? Why were Brahmins prohibited from reciting the Veda during these occasions? Is there a worldview, an ideological structure, that would give coherence to these diverse rules and reveal implicit meanings? These are the questions I shall address here. To provide the reader with a glimpse into how these complex rules are actually articulated by our authors, let me first give the list of the occasions for anadhyaya given in the Gautama Dharmasutra (16.5-49), because it is relatively brief and clear:

He should suspend vedic recitation during daytime when the wind whirls up the dust; at night when he can hear the wind blow; when the sound of a lute, drum, side drum, chariot, or wailing is heard; when dogs are barking, jackals are howling, and donkeys are braying; when the sky turns crimson; when a rainbow appears; when there is frost on the ground; when clouds appear out of season; when he has the urge to void urine or excrement; in the middle of the night, at the time of twilight, and while standing in water; when it is raining--but, according to some, only when the water is running down the eaves; when Venus and Jupiter are surrounded by halos, as also the sun and the moon; when he is frightened, traveling in a vehicle, lying down, or has lifted his feet; when he is in a cremation ground, at the village boundary, on a highway, or in an impure state; when there is a foul smell; when there is a corpse or a Candala in the village; when a Sudra is near by; and when he experiences an acrid belching. The recitation of the Rgveda and the Yajurveda, moreover, is suspended as long as the recitation of the Samaveda is heard. When there is a lightning strike, an earthquake, an eclipse, or the fall of a meteor, vedic recitation is suspended until the same time the next day; as also when there is thunder, rain, or lightning during twilight when the fires are visible. When these happen during the rainy season, however, the suspension lasts only that day. When there is lightning during the night, moreover, the suspension lasts until the last watch of the night; but if it occurs during or after the third part of the day, the suspension lasts the whole night. According to some, a meteor has the same effect as lightning with respect to the suspension of vedic recitation, as does thunder when it occurs in the afternoon or even at dusk. If there is thunder before midnight, the suspension lasts for the whole night; if it happens during the day, the suspension lasts throughout the daylight hours, as also when the king of that realm dies, and when one student goes on a journey and another stays behind with the teacher. The suspension lasts for a day and a night when there has been a social disturbance or a fire; when he has finished reciting one Veda; when he has vomited; when he has eaten at an ancestral offering or at a sacrifice to humans; on the new-moon day--alternatively, the suspension here may last for two days; and on the full-moon days of the lunar months...