The Laws of Manu
Page 52
25. For a discussion of this point, see Brian K. Smith and Wendy Doniger, ‘Sacrifice and Substitution: Ritual Mystification and Mythical Demystification’ Numen 36:2 (December 1989), pp. 189–224.
26. Note that carnivorous animals (=‘wild’ animals in Vedic classification schemes) cannot be accounted for within this version of the food chain. Bruce Lincoln observes that ‘Once wild animals are excluded from consideration, the groupings of fluids, plants, animals, and humans into relations of eater and eaten assume a clear and elegant form … When one introduces wild animals – that is, carnivores – into this system, the system collapses, for such animals not only eat meat (the prerogative of humans) while scorning plants (the proper food of animals), they even go so far as to eat humans. Wild beasts thus not only are a physical threat, but also pose a threat to the structures of thought appropriate to cultured existence.’ Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), p. 200.
27. ‘For water is indeed food. Therefore when water comes to this world, food is produced here.’ Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 2.1.1.3; cf.8.61.20; Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 3.2.8.1–3; Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa 11.8.11–12; and Kauśītaki Brāhmaṇa 3.4. Alternatively, the gods in the beginning made it rain and ‘as many drops fell down, that many plants were born’ as food for animals (Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 2.1.1.1). For the cycle, see e.g. Manu 3.76.
28. Francis Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats (Berkeley, 1987), p. 1.
29. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 6.6.3.11.
30. Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.9.
31. Taittirīya Saṃhitā 2.5.10.1.
32. Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 7.29.
33. Taittirīya Saṃhitā 2.4.13.1.
34. For example, consider the intriguing text at Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 2.33, where instructions are given to the priests for secretly depriving the unwitting ruler-sacrificer of his power and rule by means of manipulation of certain recitations. A similar passage at Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 3.19 additionally provides the method for inciting a rebellion among the commoners against their ruler should the priests wish to do so.
35. For such a standard conceptualization in Indological studies, see, for example, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government (New Haven, 1942).
36. The Arthaśāstra is the paragon of such works. The Vedic viewpoint is also preserved in the medical texts of Ayurvedic traditions. But as Zimmermann notes in his The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats, p. 187, Ayurvedic treatises, like some of the early dharma texts, usually ‘provide two series of texts: one series praises the virtue of meat; the other prescribes abstinence and, above all, “non-violence” (ahiṃsā), which is fundamentally linked with vegetarianism’. Zimmermann quotes the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa (32.4) to help explain the apparent contradiction: ‘Whoever eats meat commits no sin either when it has been consecrated or when it serves as remedy.’
37. Mahābhārata (Southern Recension) 12.15. 10ff., translated by David Shulman, The King and the Clown in South Asian Myth and Poetry (Princeton, 1985), p. 29.
38. For an attempt at a history of the concepts in Indian religions, see Ludwig Alsdorf, Beiträge zur Geschichte von Vegetarismus und Rinderverehrung in Indien (Weisbaden, 1962). The author also argues that vegetarianism and ahiṃsā were originally separate ideals, and that contradictions in texts like Manu regarding the pros and cons of a carnivorous diet can be explained as the conflation of historically discrete stages of thought. For an outline of a rather different explanation of these contradictions, see Jan Heesterman’s review of Alsdorf in Indo-Iranian Journal 9 (1966), pp. 147–9. P. V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Poona, 1972), among many others, contends that ‘Another motive for the insistence on ahiṃsā was probably the idea of defilement caused by eating flesh’ (p. 776).
39. Hanns-Peter Schmidt’s assumption of a Vedic ‘ritual ahiṃsā’ that is later generalized (and to some extent moralized) by the world-rencuncers depends on the notion that ‘the ritualists were … deeply concerned with the killing and injuring of animate beings which occurs in the sacrifice itself’. While it is true that in Vedic ritualism there was expression of concern that the sacrificial victim should not suffer or cry out (the animal is strangled to ensure this), that he accept his fate voluntarily and eagerly and so forth, all this is part and parcel of sacrificial ideologies everywhere (see Smith and Doniger). As a virtually universal feature of sacrifice, this feature of the Vedic ritual provides no persuasive evidence for the origins of the peculiarly Indian conception of ahiṃsā and vegetarianism. Furthermore, Schmidt himself notes that ‘in a number of instances ahiṃsayai refers to the prevention of injury to the sacrificer, his progeny and cattle’. ‘The Origin of Ahiṃsā’, in Mélanges d’Indianisme à la mémoire de Louis Renou (Paris, 1968), pp. 625–55. Such a self-interested ahiṃsā in relation to oneself and one’s possessions is of course a desideratum in Vedism, but that is certainly not the ahiṃsā of post-Vedism.
40. Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats, op. cit., pp. 1–2.
41. This is a line of speculation that could obviously stand further development. Since, however, Manu (unlike a text like the Bhagavad Gītā) appears relatively unaffected by the bhakti movement, such a discussion is perhaps best left for another forum.
42. See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1959).
43. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 11.7.1.3; cf. 12.8.3.12.
44. See Mircea Eliade’s Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, 1958) for this interpretation of the goal of yoga and other ascetic practices stemming from Upaniṣadic times.
45. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. 2, p. 780, however, points out that ‘Centuries were required before the views propounded by Manu [and thus a certain segment of Brahmins] became predominant. Gradually large sections of the population of India gave up flesh-eating and even those who did not regard it as forbidden to them rarely partook of it or did so in an apologetic way.’
46. Culminating in the pan-Indian reign of Asoka Maurya, who was, at the least, influenced by Buddhism and perhaps a fully-fledged convert.
47. N. C. Sen-Gupta, Sources of Law and Society in Ancient India (Calcutta, 1914), p. 15.
48. For a fine discussion of the implications of these lists, see Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats, op. cit., pp. 96, 99, and 133. See also Jack Goody, ‘What’s in a list?’, pp. 74–111 of The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977).
49. ‘It should be recalled that although the Brahman is characterized in the Vedic period by his sacrificial function, in the Hindu period, in harmony with the decline of the sacrifice in favour of other rites, the Brahman is, above all, purity.’ Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, trans. Mark Saisbury, Louis Dumont, and Basia Gulati (Chicago, 1980), p. 70.
50. Correlatively, in the Upaniṣads one finds the proposition that it is no longer necessary to sacrifice to the gods. That is, one is no longer called upon to offer oneself up (deploying substitutes, of course) as food to the divinities who are higher on the food chain. See, for example, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.10.
51. In terms of the imitation of the priest’s vegetarian diet and non-violent lifestyle, it might be better to speak of the imitation of the ascetic or world-renouncer. There are other reasons for being wary of speaking about ‘Brahminization’ or ‘Sanskritization’. As has often been noted, the imitation of the ruler (‘Kṣatriyization’) is also an operative factor in caste India, as is imitation of the foreigner (‘Westernization’).
52. For other citations from other texts, see Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 10–11.
53. Homo Hierarchicus, op. cit., pp. 71–2.
54. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 94–9.
55. This conflict is exhaustively and imaginatively explored by Jan Heesterman in T
he Inner Conflict of Tradition (Chicago, 1985).
56. Brian K. Smith, Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (New York, 1989), pp. 203–18.
57. The violence inherent in the sacrifice continues to cause trouble for those who actually perform it. See Frits Staal’s account of the recent controversy in India over the issue of whether animals should be sacrificed, as is called for, in the performance of the agnicayana ritual. ‘The Agnicayana Project’, in Staal (ed.) Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar, vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1983), esp. pp. 464–8. Staal writes that ‘the chief objection was against the sacrifice of goats, a custom that was felt to be not merely barbaric, but contrary to the spirit of a nation dedicated to ahiṃsā, “non-violence” ’ (p. 464).
58. Cf. Vedānta Sūtra 3.1.25 and Dalhana on the Suśruta Saṃhitā 10.3 (cited in Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats, op. cit., p. 191): ‘The medical practitioner no more commits a crime [when he prescribes fresh blood] than he who kills animals in the accomplishment of a sacrifice.’ One result of this declaration that black is white was to make possible the eating of certain meats under sacrificial circumstances. Consuming flesh under the many conditions categorized as constituting an ‘emergency’ (āpad) is also allowable.
59. Madeleine Biardeau and Charles Malamoud, Le Sacrifice dans l’Inde ancienne (Paris, 1976), p. 42.
60. As Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out long ago, it is the purpose of a myth – and much of Manu is mythical in the broadest sense – to ‘provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (an impossible achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is real)’. Structural Anthropology (New York, 1963), p. 229.
61. For a discussion of the synthesis of sacrificial and anti-sacrificial traditions in India, and the parallel developments in Judaism and Christianity, see Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Other Peoples’ Myths: The Cave of Echoes (New York, 1988), Chapter 4.
62. Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge, 1954), p. 5.
63. See Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities (Chicago, 1984).
64. A. K. Ramanujan, ‘Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal essay’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 23:1 (1989), pp. 45–8.
65. I am indebted to Sheldon Pollock for this phrase and for the basic argument of this paragraph.
66. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (London, 1975), pp. 296–7.
67. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zoh, edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt (New York, 1969), pp. 69–82; p. 78 (italics added).
68. Cited by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty in Tales of Sex and Violence: Folklore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa (Chicago, 1985), pp. 4–5.
69. See 8.380–81, 9.235, 11.55, etc.
70. See also 3.1, 222 and 275, and 4.161.
71. Āśvalāyana Śrauta Sūtra 1.1.22.
72. Jack Goody argues that such lists are a distinguishing feature of written texts, but this does not seem to hold true for India, where lists occur widely in the genres of aphorism and oral Epic.
73. T. S. Eliot, ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925), in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1962).
74. T. S. Eliot, ‘Murder in the Cathedral, Part 2’ (1935). (Spoken by Thomas Becket.) In The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950, op. cit.
75. See Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India (Berkeley, 1984).
76. In a contemporary Indian Classic Comic version of the great Sanskrit Epic, the Mahābhārata, Pandu says to Kunti, ‘Manu has said that men, failing to have offspring of their own, may beget them through other chosen ones.’ (Amar Chitra Katha, Mahābhārata ¶3. ‘The Advent of the Kuru Princes’, p. 13, paraphrasing the Sanskrit text, Mahābhārata 1.111.31, which in turn paraphrases – and, indeed, reverses the point of – Manu 9.158–60).
77. The best are those by A. Burnell and E. W. Hopkins, Mānavadharmaśāstra; G. Jha, Manusmṛti; and J. D. M. Derrett, Manuśāstravivaraṇa. Derrett includes English translations of six of the twelve books of the text as the basis for a translation of Bhāruci’s commentary on it (the chief purpose of Derrett’s publication), but his text is intentionally over-literal (serving, as it does, only as a point of departure for the translation of the commentary), highly technical, and directed to an audience of fellow experts.
78. Both of these measures may appear innocuous, even sensible, but they go so deeply against the grain (pratiloman) of the long academic tradition that has claimed Manu as its special property that they constitute a heresy, and hence must be justified here.
79. In this van Buitenen differed, and I differ, from Robert P. Goldman et al., who have translated the other great epic, the Rāmāyaṇa (also in ślokas), in discrete verses without paragraphs, as Manu has always been translated.
80. At 9.70 and 9.75 and 11.150, for instance, to choose almost at random three of hundreds of possible examples.
81. Sudhir Kakar, Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality (Chicago, 1990), pp. 18–19.
82. Similarly, at 8.375, Manu says: ‘A ruler should … be shaved with urine,’ and the commentaries suggest that this might be the urine of a man, a donkey, or a dog. Bühler elevates one of these suggestions into the text: ‘A Kshatriya shall … be shaved with the urine (of an ass).’
83. Indeed, even in cases where an author writes his own commentaries (as, for instance, Abhinavagupta did), we may maintain the option of interpreting him differently, through the hermeneutics of suspicion, and accuse the author of misrepresenting himself and even, perhaps, of misunderstanding his own motives.
84. Again I am indebted to Sheldon Pollock for the ideas in this paragraph.
85. Cf. Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree (Princeton, 1986); H. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1986); G. Ebeling, trans. R. A. Wilson, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought (London, 1970).
86. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Illuminations, op. cit., p. 79.
87. Jayantakrishna Harikrishna Dave, Manusmṛti, with the commentaries of Medhātithi, Sarvajñanārāyaṇa, Kullūka, Rāghavānanda, Nandana, Rāmacandra, Maṇirāma, Govindarāja and Bhāruci, 5 vols. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bharatiya Vidya Series, vol. 29 ff.; 1972– ).
88. Vishvanath Narayan Mandlik, Mānava-Dharma Śāstra (Institutes of Manu), with the commentaries of Medhātithi, Sarvajñanārāyaṇa, Kullūka, Rāghavānanda, Nandana, and Rāmachandra, and an Appendix by the Honourable Rao Saheb, 2 vols. (Bombay: Ganpat Krishnaraji’s Press, 1886). Vol.3 appends the commentary of Govindarāja, edited by Rao Saheb. This rare volume was generously lent to me by Cornell University.
89. I included two verses in Chapter 11 that Dave omits; see the note on 11.6 . and 11.52. I also followed the commentaries in making minor emendations in Dave’s readings of the following verses: at 3.151, I read not yācayanti but yājayanti, following several commentators; at 3.226, ‘ritually pure’ follows the commentators in reading prayatas for prahatas; at 4.173, I read adharma (‘irreligion’) for Dave’s dharma (‘religion’); at 6.66, I read dūṣita (‘flawed’) for Dave’s bhūṣita (‘adorned’); at 7.69, the commentaries’ reading of sasya (grain) is preferable to Dave’s satya (truth); at 8.76 I read pṛṣṭa (‘questioned’) for Dave’s dṛṣṭa (‘seen’); at 9.189, ‘in the absence of all (heirs)’ (sarvābhāve) is the reading emended from Dave’s sarvabhāve, following the commentators; at 10.89, wine (madya), as in all other editions, is surely the preferred reading over the misprint na in the Dave edition; at 11.193 I read dvijaḥ and brāhmaṇā. At 12.99, several syllables are transposed in the Dave edition; the text at the end of the first line should read, vedaśāstram sanātanam; and at the end of the second line, yajjantor asya sādhanam.