Crossing the Lines of Caste: Visvamitra and the Construction of Brahmin Power in Hindu Mythology.

• Author: Bailey, Greg
• Position: Book review

Crossing the Lines of Caste: Visvamitra and the Construction of Brahmin Power in Hindu Mythology. By ADHEESH A. SATHAYE. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. Pp. xxii + 310. S99 (cloth); S35 (paper).

While this book traces the mythological persona of the irascible sage Visvamitra through Vedic literature to the present day, it does so in a quite different way from what one might expect if it were just another example of the German text-historical method, which produces good results with a strong philological rigor but within a very narrow frame. What Sathaye has achieved, in this reworked doctoral thesis from Berkeley, is to show how images of Visvamitra have been transformed across the ages, in large measure according to the way brahmins have sought to conceptualize themselves. As such, not only does it provide an excellent and detailed study of Visvamitra and the way he has been used to depict a fundamental fracturing in brahmin identity throughout the ages, but it also offers a model of how particular myths and mythic themes can be studied across the ages, particularly when a strong sociological perspective is brought in. At the broadest level Sathaye wants to show "What has Visvamitra meant to Hindu communities over the years?"

The underlying thematic frame of the book is determined by this conception relating to Visvamitra in the Puranas: "He and Vasistha continued to capture the dichotomy between the normative Brahmin Self and the transgressive Brahmin Other, but it was now upgraded for the social realities of the mid-first millennium" (p.112). As such, this fulfills the promise that this book is not just about Visvamitra, but that, as its subtitle indicates, it is also about "the construction of Brahmin power in Hindu mythology." It thus offers a much wider historical and social ambit than merely being a study of a particular mythic character, and it is here again that it will be a model for other such studies.

Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the initial appearance of the Visvamitra myth in Vedic literature and then present its development in the two epics, where the most prominent aspect of the myth is Visvamitra's successful attempt to upgrade his status from ksatriya to brahmana by the performance of terrifying austerities, and his conflict with the mild brahmin, Vasistha. Sathaye argues that the development of the myth in its various forms demonstrates the increasing rigidity of the varna system between late Vedic and post-Mauryan...