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Viniyogavijñāna: The Uses of Poetry in Vedic Ritual
Author(s): Laurie L. Patton
Reviewed work(s):
Source:
International Journal of Hindu Studies,
Vol. 4, No. 3 (Dec., 2000), pp. 237-260
Published by:
Springer
Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20106739
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Viniyogavij?ana:
The uses of poetry in
Vedic ritual
Laurie
L. Patton
AITASA AND THE APPLICATION OF
VEDIC MANTRA
6.33, there is a story about a poetic mystical vision, one
that is curiously resistant to mystical
interpretation. The story is told of how
Aita?a has a mystical vision of the life span of the fire god, Agni, and tells his
In Aitareya
Br?hmana
speak about it. They are not to disregard what he says. Even if
Aita?a's sons think he is speaking meaningless
chatter, they should listen to
him. One of his sons, Abhyagni Aita?ayana, hears these verses at the wrong
sons that he will
moment
and seizes his father's mouth, declaring him to be out of his mind. The
father, in anger, accuses him of spoiling his speech just at the moment when he
was about to make the 'cow of a hundred years of life' and a "man of a thousand
years of life.' Aita?a curses his son's offspring because of the boy's interference.
In this story, the question of incomprehensibility
is dealt with rather directly.
to others but not
The rsi declares his verses to be potentially
incomprehensible
semantically empty. He does not 'chatter' (pralap) at first; he only declares that
(abhilap) his vision. Only later in the Br?hmana passage
after it has been ill-received by others or,
is the speech designated as pral?pa,
more importantly, designated as ritually improper.1
'speak about'
the so-called
later in the Br?hmana,
However,
incomprehensible
speech of
'freedom from exhaustion,'
Aita?a is called 'the sap of the meters,'
and 'unfail
ingness in the sacrifice.* How could something
initially designated as 'chatter'
become such efficacious
speech? These puzzling, seemingly contradictory state
ments of the Aitareya Br?hmana go to the heart of a conversation about the uses
of poetry
inVedic
ritual.
he will
International
Journal
?
of Hindu Studies 4, 3 (December 2000): 237-60
2003 by theWorld Heritage Press Inc.
238
/ Laurie L. Patton
MYSTICAL VISION OR MATHEMATICAL GRAMMAR?:
THE CONTINUING DILEMMA
and the arts, I begin with this story
In a journal issue focusing on Hinduism
because it focuses on a central dilemma that has to do with our understanding of
Vedic poetry more generally: the problem of the use of poetry in ritual. The
on
or poetic chatter, raises important questions
story of Aitasa's
pral?pa,
several
When
counts. What
does
is the nature of Aita?a's
one hear or say something
in ritual? Can one recite a 'bad poem' such that the gods are not
moment,
a
properly worshipped? What is the nature of a 'good poem' in ritual context?
in Vedic
the debate about mantra
The answers to these questions?and
ritual?has
cognitive
formulae, and lists). However,
poetry about them are aesthetic,
with
those
tools
in mind
Granted
into two categories. Vedic ritual is rule-governed and
and has been analyzed with those tools in mind (syntax, mathematical
tended to fall
ritual (the deities) and the
and have been analyzed
intuitive, and mystical
and comparative mysticism).
(poetics, philosophy,
the objects
of Vedic
ritual and poetic
impropriety?
'wrong,' or at the wrong
poetically
significant differences among the authors, recent studies by Brian Smith
(1989, 1994), Frits Staal (1975, 1977, 1985, 1986, 1988), and others tend to
fall into the first category, and Antonio De Nicolas
(1978), Ellison
Findly
(1998) into the second.
(1989), Willard Johnson (1980), and William Mahony
In this article
I do not want
something
has been well
I would
to provide critiques of either group; all have
important and unique to the world of Vedic ritual, and
provided
by
others
in mutual
engagement
and
contributed
discussion
dialogue.
Rather,
like to attempt to join the two worlds
together in a more
in ritual, one which
is more
grounded understanding of the use of poetry
have to say about poetic
texts themselves
squarely based in what the Vedic
and 'poetic vision' are present but in a specific way that
usage. Aesthetics
as
not solely on metaphor as a poetic quality but also on metonymy
I want
a function of both poetic and ritual efficacy. In the article that follows,
and its related
to use the Vedic category of viniyoga, or application of mantra,
to make an argument for
and manasi
samnas)
concepts (such as yath?lihgam
focuses
as central to Vedic
sacrifice. Vini
poetic category of metonymy
the literary practice
yoga might be viewed as the Vedic analogue for metonymy,
in this case, it is the associa
of association between two contiguous elements;
in a poem and the concrete actions of the
tion between the concrete actions
the complex
ritual.
I make
this argument
on
the basis
of
two points
that need
to be stressed:
Viniyogavij?ana:
Vedic
as
studies
lacks a sufficient
The uses of poetry
in Vedic ritual
I 239
theory of imitative
'magic' by nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Patton 1996); and Vedic studies has not taken seriously enough the concept of
(wherein the mystical
viniyoga, the linking of mantra
object of the deity is
invoked) to yaj?a (wherein the rules of Vedic ritual apply). If these two things
in place, a new view
patterned by ritual performance,
are put
of Vedic
emerges.
poetry, which
is both
aesthetic2
and
(frequently classified
see discussion
in
Indologists;
thought
WHAT DOES ITMEAN TO IMITATE?: SPECIFYING THE
MICROCOSM /MACROCOSM VIEW OF VEDIC IMAGERY
usual assumption has been that the Vedic ritual microcosm
or provides a mini-model
macrocosm
for the macrocosm.
This
The
imitates
the
is represented
both in terms of the ritual's imitation of the seasonal and fertility cycle and in
to
its poetic reconstruction of rta or sacred order. Yet is it really productive
of the macro
present the model whereby Vedic ritual reproduces a microcosm
cosmic processes happening in the universe? Of what does the 'model' or the
imitation consist? What are the dynamics of imitation and modeling? What
processes are involved? When we speak of Vedic sacrifice as a 'microcosm' of
it is
the 'macrocosm,' as it is frequently referred to in introductory textbooks,
never made clear what exactly ismeant by this phrase in terms of the exactitude
or the dynamics of imitation. Is it an exact, physical replica of the universe that
is being reproduced in the sounds and actions of the yaj?a? If not, on what
grounds can we justify this connection between the two spheres? Many writers
1989; Witzel
1965; Smith
(see Gonda
recently written about bandhu
1979), the category of connection, and have restored it to its properly philoso
phical place in Vedic thought. With bandhus as powerful cognitive categories,
have
we have a suggestion
to ritual action.
How,
as to how poetry might
be
linked in some
imitative way
then, are we to determine what kind of imitation is actually occurring in
yaj?a? First, it is clear that for the most part, imitation does not consist of the
in
complete physical representation of all of the statements in all of the mantras
act in the voice and character of particular gods
the ritual. Priests occasionally
1982). However,
(see the debates in Alper 1989; Wheelock
just as frequently,
gods' deeds are referred to that are hardly ever directly enacted in ritual (say, the
act of slaying of the demon Vitra or the sage V?madeva's
battle with Indra, to
name two of a myriad of possible examples).
Rather, the connection between what is said in a hymn and what
is enacted
in
240
/ Laurie L. Patton
a ritual is somewhat more
that what is created
fluid, based on an understanding
to a larger law. In other words, in Vedic ritual there
in ritual is true, conforming
link between word and action that is not necessarily physically
is an associative
imitative in nature.
In her book, The
Elizarenkova
explores
language and style of the Vedic rsis (1995), Tatyana
this linkage between word and ritual at a general level and
sets an important stage for our more specific study of viniyoga in this article.
She refers to the work of Bernfried Schlerath (1974: 201-21),
who wrote that
the main purpose of the Vedic hymn consists
in the formulation
of truth.3
L?ders
a quality
truthful hymn
ideas Schlerath developed,
(1959), whose
a definite place in the cosmos
occupying
is one that conforms
held that truth (rta)
above the gods. A
Heinrich
was
to the law of rta, and in order to create such
and phrases. Thus Schlerath concludes,
is that the seemingly
loosely connected
a hymn, a rsi must use 'true' words
'The almost inevitable result of this
elements?thought,
(1974: 220, cited
word,
and act?are
linked together in a most
intimate way'
in Elizarenkova
1995: 17).
As Elizarenkova also notes, these elements certainly reflect a definite proto
are equally
findings
important for a
Indo-European concept, but Schlerath's
each stage of the
purely synchronie approach. Such an interpretation models
truth-achieving, cognitive process; it represents the creation of a hymn as part of
the general ritual worship of the gods. In other words,
the making of a hymn
becomes an integral part of the circle of exchange between deity and worshipper.
Both
of the world and artistic creativity are inseparable from the
knowledge
1995: 17). Vedic
problem of the subject of cognition and creation (Elizarenkova
imitation, then, is artistic and creative in the sense that poetry does not simply
reproduce or mirror the ritual activity, nor does ritual activity simply reproduce
the statements
of mantra.
The
recitation of a Vedic
hymn has a more
or mirror
generative relationship to ritual.
We can also turn to some old but important debates in aesthetics to make the
emphasis on the artistic, we can see
point clearer. If we follow Elizarenkova's
the same point being made on a theoretical level by early philosophers
of art.
in his work 'Imitation and imagination' (1962), deals with the
Jacques Maritain,
issues of physical representation as well. He writes:
Art
as such,
in imitating but in making,
or
in composing
and that according to the laws of the very thing to be placed in
house, carpet, colored canvas, or hewn block of stone). This
consists
not
constructing,
being
(ship,
requisite of its generic concept preponderates over everything else in it, and to
allot to it for essential end the presentation
of the real is to destroy
it
(Maritain 1962: 26).

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