Second, there are, alas, several “rites” currently performed for female infanticide today that do not have Vedic injunction of any kind. These include the “feeding of milk” to the baby, which is actually drowning the baby in a pot or a vat of milk. They also involve the feeding of a grain husk that could slit the throat of a small baby, or the mixing of food with “medicine” that is actually an overdose. All of these rites are given names that make it seem as if the work is innocuous and even dharmic. It is a very straightforward and helpful case to argue, as we have in this essay, that according to the principles of orthodox Vedic ritual thinking, these rites are not authoritative in any way, and go against dharma. Indeed, the arguments presented here could be even more effective because Vedic injunctions are so cr uc ia l to Ved ic worldv iew a nd h ave ne ver be en condem ned a s hetero -dox such as the Buddhist arguments were.27
Third, and perhaps most significantly, we could take full advantage of the indeterminacy and flexibility of artha, so that sacrifice can work together with ethical thought grounded in the dignity of the person. Some ethnographic work on contemporary Vaidika communities, such as that of David Knipe,28 suggests that the contemporary idea of a “moral person” is not incompatible with a traditional Vedic worldview. What is more, such a view might include even the development of new forms of artha such as the one we suggest earlier. Indeed, in one conversation with a traditional Mmsaka in 1999, on the way back from a soma sacrifice in Nanded, Maharashtra, I asked him this particular question about women, and whether sacrifices on their behalf could be made. He answered very much in the affirmative.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, recent work of women’s groups, particularly in South India, in trying to work against practices that harm women has shown that the more women can use traditional ideas to help with their arguments, the better off they are. They argue that cultural change and argumentation need to go hand in hand with legal change. Such cultural shifts would include the use of traditional H indu philosophy, mythology, and so on.29 Indeed, women’s groups report that prenatal care, in which t he woma n’s body and the child’s body are both understood to be inherently valuable, have significant effect in reducing the practice of female infanticide. The girl child that is born is understood to be inherently valuable, and can be imagined as valuable in future society.30 Thus, my argument in an earlier article would be relevant here: there are some early Vedic hymns that could be read as identifying the womb with the woman in whom it resides rather than as the property of the male Brahmin line. But more importantly for the purposes of this essay, the emphasis on the living mother and child found in RV 5.78 and AV 1.11 could be utilized in precisely this manner.
Let us be very clear what we are arguing here: Are we saying that the early Mmsakas were feminists? Of course not. Are we saying that women were freer in early India? Not at all. Are we saying that Mms is a more moral philosophy than other forms of Indian philosophy? Not in the least. Are we arguing that such rituals can replace allopathic and homeopathic health care for women? Absolutely not.
What we are arguing is that, given the preponderance of Hindu rituals being performed today, we can marshal the flexibility of traditional ritual philosophy, in tandem with a discussion about women’s health and the dignity of a person, to create ritual alliances with health care on behalf of women and girl children. Even if we espoused (and I do not) a radical mind-body dualism such that such ritual alliances may be beneficial only to the mind of the woman or the social fabric of a village, and not to their actual “bodies,” or to their actual “public health” epidemiological statistics, such ritual alliances are still worthwhile forms of persuasion. If homa-offerings can be performed on behalf of peace, as was done at the Hindu Temple of Atlanta after 9/11, then surely such basic rituals for women’s health can also be part of a contemporary ritual repertoire conducive to the public good. We return, then, to the women reciting Rma-raksa mantras in the delivery room of the hospital. Perhaps she knows something very important about ritual alliances and the health of women and can act as a resource for us in the future.
NOTES
1. This chapter was written in the spirit of rereading ancient Indian texts with a more sophisticated feminist hermeneutic than has previously been applied to early India. I am grateful to Tracy Pintchman, Francis Clooney, Donald Davies, Rita Sherma, Gyan Pandey, Shalom Goldman, and Joyce Flueckiger for their comments on this piece.
2. Among other important contributions of this article, McGee argues that the contemporary understanding of ancient India needs a basic reminder of the fact that Jaimini did indeed allow women to sacrifice.
3. See also Clooney, 1988a: 659-684, for a larger discussion of this issue in terms of authorship of the Veda.
4. Shlomo Biderman (1984) has made an argument that the claims of Mms should be taken seriously from a philosophical as well as a religious basis. As Pollock does also, I am assuming such philosophi cal value from the start. (See ibid., 73-81).
5. See Pollock, 1989: 608ff, for a full discussion of these proofs of tran-scendence in abara, Kumrila, and other commentators.
6. In addition to Bilimoria, 2001, also relevant is Bilimoria’s “Who is ‘The Subaltern’ in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion?”
7. Also see McGee, 2002, which we will discuss more extensively later.
8. I will be discussing these at length later in the essay, but for now, see Patton, 2004.
9. Jamison also provides a detailed discussion of the mythic imagery of failed birth, abortion, and miscarriage in early India. Although her main focus is the Svarbhanu myth, whereby the sun is wounded by Svarbhanu, she also discusses the ways in which the healing of the sun, and its brightening, is compared to a birth process, whereby the caul, or covering, of the embryo is progressively stripped away from the newborn. [Jaiminya Brhmana (JB) 1.80; 3.3.34.5; 4.3.4.21; Maitrya Sainhit 1.65; Khaka Sainhit (KS) 11.5-12.13; 8.5]. Moreover, Jamison connects anxiety about the birth of the sun with the motif of the failed birth of the sun. In one myth in the Pancvia Brhmaa (PB; 4.5.9-12; KS 12.6, 13.6; TB 1.2.4.2), the gods feared the “falling down” of ditya, or the sun, from the heavenly world; they then secure the sun with reins or fasteners of various kinds. Moreover, the same verbal root to describe the falling down of the sun, ava pad, is also used for the miscarriage of an embryo (TS; 5.1.6-7; JB 1.306). In the case of the falling-down embryo, the umbilical cord is sometimes used as the fastener that keeps the embryo in place. See Jamison, 1991: 202-211; see also Patton, 2002: 54.
Further cosmological implications of miscarriage are contained in the well-known myth of Mrtnda Aditi’s eighth child, who is aborted by his brothers and born as a shapeless egg (KS 11.6; MS 1.6.12). In certain version the Mrtnda becomes Vivasvant ditya by name, the ancestor of humans, as the dead parts of the miscarried embryo are cut away and he is shaped into a living whole (SBM 3.1.3.4). As Jamison notes, several stories of miscarriage are about the birth of the sun, or a form of the sun, where he is a patched-up result of a failed birth. Moreover, his rebirth after injury must be accomplished in the prescribed manner (see Jamison, 1991; and Patton, 2002).
10. Translation is my own, in consultation with Doniger, Maurer, and Geldner.
11. Translation is my own.
12. The second hymn, Rg Veda 1.101, seems to have a divergent etymology, in which garbha is misunderstood as “embryo” and is not the name of a people.
13. Jamison (1991) also discusses at length the role of the treya, the descendant of Atri, in the vamedha ritual, the grand year-long horse sacrifice. In this ritual, the treya is someone with mottled skin, brought into the sacrificial arena and then ritually banished from the territory. Mantras that invoke abortion, or bhrahatyam (to be discussed later), are recited over him. In Jamison’s interpretation, the treya represents the miscarried/aborted fetus, and his appearance reflects the nebulous shape of an embryo not brought to term. The man in his ugliness is the aborted Atri of the myth, who survived an abortion and lived to tel
l the tale. As she puts it, “By invoking abortion they acknowledge its power, but by invoking it while libating an treya, they undercut its power.” As Jamison also writes of Atri, in a story recounted in atapatha Brhmana 2.4.2.15 and in the Vdhula Stra, Atri resulted from a miscarriage or abortion. The premature fetus is placed in a pot or a skin, mentioned earlier as a common “womb substitute” in Vedic mythology. In the atapatha Brhmana, the gods assemble, in a rather ad hoc way, the aborted material (similar to marta, the eighth birth of the sun, mentioned earlier). The end product is the seer Atri. In a parallel story in the Jaiminya Brhmana (1.151), a mother violently casts a child into a cleft, and the child, Sudïti (“very bright”), is then freed by an Avin-like pair.
14. See, for instance, Madhav Deshpande (2007), which examines the yjusa-hautra priestly dispute in “Early Modern Maharashtra,” at the Fourth International Vedic Workshop, Austin, Texas, May 2007.
15. See discussion in McGee, 2002: 36-37 See also Pini Adhyyi 1.2.67 and 1.2.64-71, where one gender is used to refer to groups of mixed gender within a single genus.
16. The larger discussion of whether women could own property is a thorny one, and relevant to their actual capacity to sacrifice, even if they had the formal adhikra to do so. The evidence seems to suggest that even in Manu (9.192-193) they had the possibility of owning and inheriting property, albeit in limited estate. See McGee, 2002: 38-40.
17. It goes without saying that I agree with critics who charge Levi-Strauss might state incorrectly that the Cuna women have an easier time in childbirth, or that his implication that access to medical care is unnecessary in these cases. However, the larger question, of how these rituals might well work in alliance with appropriate prenatal care, is the concern of this piece. See, e.g., Wall, 1995: 12-15.
18. See, e.g., Atharva Veda 6.11.3.
19. See, e.g., Jha, 1907: xxxviii.
20. Also see Clooney, 1986: 105ff
21. See Jaimini, 4.1.26 and 4.2.10-13, and discussion in Clooney, 1986: 206.
22. lokavrtika 2.235-78.
23. Staal, 1980, 1985, 1986, and 1988; Gonda, 1977.
24. In this work, Deshpande discusses the changing nature of priestly “recited” Sanskrit, from the early treatment of changes in mantra to the present-day usage of Sanskrit in American temples.
25. Also see discussion in Clooney, 1990: 105ff.
26. Ganesh Thite, personal communication, 2006. Also see Lubin, 2001, for a discussion of the revival of Vedic sacrifice as “civic spectacle”; and Smith, 2001, for a recent history of Vedic ritual in Maharashtra.” Also see Patton, 2007, for a discussion of sacrifice as it pertains to women’s lives.
27. See Clooney, 1990: 216–219.
28. See, e.g., Knipe, 2007, which focuses on jirna, or aging in a traditional Vedic perspective.
29. For example, see Frontline (February/March 2002) and Shineath, 2004, for discussions of how one might engage traditional narratives and symbols to change cultural attitudes toward female infants.
30. See, among others, the activities of the Association for Rural Development, Family, Health Care Counselling and Training Center, outside of Madurai. I am grateful to Deepika Bahri, personal communication, September 2007, for this information.
REFERENCES
Bhat. M. S., ed. 1987. Vedic Tantrism: A Study of the Vidh na of aunaka with Text and Translation. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Bhatta, Kumrila. 1898. Mmsslokavrtikam. Caukhamba-Samskrta-granthamala 11, 12, 15, 18, 21. Kasi: n.p.
Biderman, Shlomo. 1984. “Orthodoxy and Philosophy in India: Philosophical Implications of the Mms School.” In Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Dissent in India, eds. S. N. Eisenstadt, R. Kahane, and D. Schulman, 73–84. Berlin: Mouton.
Bilimoria, Purushottama. 2001. “H indu Doubts about God: Towards a Mms Reconstruction.” In Philosophy of Religion: Indian Philosophy, Vo l u m e 4 , ed. Roy W. Perrett, 87–106. London & New York: Garland Publishing Inc.
———. 2006. “Who is “The Subaltern” in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion?” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 53, no. 3, 340–366.
Clo oney, Fra ncis X . 1986. “Ja i m i n i’s C ont ribut ion to t he T heor y of Sacr if ice as the Experience of Transcendence.” History of Religions, Vol. 25, no. 3 (February), 199–212.
———. 1988a. “Devat dhik rana: The Theological Re-conception of God in M m ms and Ved nta.” Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 16, 277–298.
———. 1988b. “Why the Veda Has No Author: Some Contributions of the Early Mms to Religious and Ritual Studies.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 55, 659–684.
1990. Ihmking Kitually: Rediscovering the rrva Mms of Jaimini. Vienna: Denobili.
Deshpande, Madhav. 1996. “Some Aspects of Priestly Recited Sanskrit.” In The Ideology and Status of Sanskrit, ed. M. E. J. Houben, 401–436. New York: E.J. Brill.
———. 2007. “The Yajusa-Hautra Dispute in Early Modern Maharashtra.” Paper given at the Fourth International Vedic Workshop, Austin, Texas, May.
Doniger, Wendy. 1980. The Rig Veda. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Press.
Frontline. 2002. “A Merely Legal Approach Cannot Root Out Female Infanticide: Interview with Salem Collector J. Radhakrishnan,” Frontline on Net 19:4, February 16; March 1, 2002; April 14, 2002 (http://www .frontlineonnet.com/fl1904/19041320.htm).
Geldner, Karl F., trans. 1951. Der Rig Veda. Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 33. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Gonda, Jan. 1977. The Ritual Stras. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz.
Gosvami, Mahaprabhulala. 1986. The MmsDrana of Mahufsi Jaitnini. Varanasi: Tara Printing Works.
Iyer, Subramania. 1945. “The Point of View of the Vaiy karanas.” Journal of Oriental Research, Vol. 18, 84–96; reprint 1972 in A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, ed. J. F. Staal, 393–400. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Jamison, Stephanie. 1991. Ravenous Hyenas and the Wounded Sun. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jha, Ganganath, trans. 1907. Mms lokavrttik of Kumrila. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press.
1942. Prva Mlms in Its Sources. Banaras: Banaras Hindu University Press.
Johnson, Mark. 1993. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kasulis, Thomas P. 1992. “Philosophy as Metapraxis.” In Discourse and Practice, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, 169–195. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Knipe, David. 2007. “Jra: On Aging in Traditional Vedic Perspective.” Paper given at the Fourth International Vedic Workshop, Austin, Texas, May.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1967. “The Effectiveness of Symbols.” In Structural Anthropology, ed. Claude Levi-Strauss, 181–207. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books.
Lubin, Timothy. 2001. “Veda on Parade: Revivalist Ritual as Civic Spectacle.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 69, no. 2, 377–408.
McGee, Mary. 2002. “Ritual Rights: The Gender Implications of Adhikra.” In Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, ed. Laurie L. Patton, 32–51. New York: Oxford University Press.
Patton, Laurie. 1996. Myth as Argument: The Bhaddevat as Canonical Commentary. Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton.
———. 2002. “Mantras and Miscarriage: Controlling Birth in the Late Vedic Period.” In Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, ed. Laurie L. Patton, 51–69. New York: Oxford University Press.
2004. “If the Fire Goes Out, The Wife Shall Fast: Notes on Women’s Agency in the valyana Grhya Stra.” In Problems in Vedic and Sanskrit Literature, ed. Maitreyee Deshpande, 300-307. Delhi: New Bharatiya Books.
———. 2007. “Cat in the Courtyard: The Performance of Sanskrit and the Religious Experience of Women.” In Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, ed. Tracy Pintchman, 19–35. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pollock, Sheldon. 1989. “M m ms a n d t h e P r o b l e m o f Hi s t o r y i n T r a d
i t i o n a l India.” Journal of American Oriental Society, Vol. 109, no. 4, 603–610.
Scharf, Peter M. 1995. “Indian Grammarians on a Speaker’s Intention.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 115, no. 1 (January), 66–76.
Sineath, Sherry. 2004. “Son Preference and Sex Selection among Hindus in India.” Master’s thesis, Florida State University.
Smith, Frederick M. 2001. “The Recent History of Vedic Ritual in Maharashtra.” In Vidyarnavavadanam. Essays in Honour of Asko Parpola, eds. Klaus Karttunen and Petteri Koskikallio, 94: 443–463. Studia Orientalia.
Staal, Frits. 1979. “The Meaninglessness of Ritual.” Numen, Vol. 26, fasc. 1, 2–22.
———. 1980. “Ritual Syntax.” In Sanskrit and Indian Studies: Essays in Honour of Daniel H. H. Ingalls, eds. M. Nagatomi et al., 119–143. Dordrecht, Holland; Boston: D. Reidel.
———. 1985. “Mantras and Bird Songs.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, 549–558.
———. 1986. “The Sound of Religion.” Numen, Vol. 33, fasc. 1, 33–64.
———. 1988. Universals: Studies in Indian Logic and Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Van Nooten, Barend, and Gary Holland, eds. 1994. Rig Veda: A Metrically Restored Text With an Introduction and Notes. Edited by Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 50. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Woman and Goddess in Hinduism Page 21