Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GHost (His Enemies, Her Rivals: Gendered Expressions of Hostility in Ancient Indian Ritual Speech and Action, 1000 B.C.E.)
Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2025-01-31
How dangerous is speech? Around 1000 B.C.E. in Northern India, priests of the semi-nomadic Vedic peoples (or “Āryas” as they called themselves), trained in a sophisticated tradition of oral poetic composition, used their art not only to praise their gods and wealthy patrons but also to craft hymns full of hate in which they verbally attack their own rivals as well as their patrons’ enemies, often calling for nothing less than the death of the target. The hymns, composed in an archaic form of Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan, of the Indo-Iranian family of languages), were used in the liturgy of an ancient ritual tradition in which neither temples nor images had a place: the basic ritual act, performed at a carefully prepared but temporary site, was the offering of a substance into the fire along with hymn recitation. The only sources for the ancient form of this tradition are its texts, which have been codified in four ritual “sciences”—the four Vedas—and preserved through the millennia by complex memorization techniques as well as by manuscript transmission. The hymns calling for the death of an enemy are concentrated in the Atharva-Veda, often described as the Veda of “magic” in contrast to the mainstream “high” (śrauta) ritual of the other three Vedas: the R̥g-Veda of the oldest hymns, the Sāma-Veda of melodies, and the Yajur-Veda of sacrificial formulas. The Atharva-Veda is only slightly less ancient than the R̥g-Veda.
The Kauśika-Sūtra (5th century B.C.E.) an ancient AV ritual manual, devotes an entire chapter to rites called ābhicārikāṇi; that is, rites of hostile ritual (abhicāra), meant to cause harm. Among the violent AV hymns we find not only those expressing hostility between males, but also those in which female speakers call for the destruction of female enemies. It has not been previously noticed that the Kauśika manual assigns only male-centred violent hymns to the hostile ritual (abhicāra) chapter, while the hymns expressing conflict between females are relegated to the chapter on “women’s rites” (strī-karmāṇi) (not “rights”!). This project examines this later categorical separation of female and male expressions of hostility in light of the actual expressions of hostility themselves, that is, the AV hymns used in the ritual: is there any difference in the way hostility and violence are expressed, on a linguistic level, between hymns in which a female beneficiary directs violence against a female target, and hymns in which a male beneficiary directs violence against a male target? Do the hymns prefigure or contradict the Kauśika manual’s later categorical separation of rites concerning male and female hostility? What new aspects of AV hostile ritual does this comparison bring to light? What does this tell us about the dynamics of societal gender structuring through the prism of language and ritual evolution?
To answer these questions, the project focused on a corpus consisting of all hostile ritual hymns in the little studied 19th book of the AV’s Paippalāda hymn collection. This older collection of the Paippalāda branch was for a long time only known, and imperfectly so, from the existence of a corrupt Kashmirian manuscript (Open Access scan at the University of Tübingen library: urn:nbn:de:bsz:21-dt-32262). In the 1950s, Durgamohan Bhattacharyya discovered better manuscripts in the Indian state of Odisha, transmitted at the time alongside oral recitation within a living community of Paippalāda Brahmins. Images of the manuscripts are available from the SwissUBase (https://doi.org/10.48656/yyzd-bf48(opens in new window)).
The Kauśika-Sūtra (5th century B.C.E.) an ancient AV ritual manual, devotes an entire chapter to rites called ābhicārikāṇi; that is, rites of hostile ritual (abhicāra), meant to cause harm. Among the violent AV hymns we find not only those expressing hostility between males, but also those in which female speakers call for the destruction of female enemies. It has not been previously noticed that the Kauśika manual assigns only male-centred violent hymns to the hostile ritual (abhicāra) chapter, while the hymns expressing conflict between females are relegated to the chapter on “women’s rites” (strī-karmāṇi) (not “rights”!). This project examines this later categorical separation of female and male expressions of hostility in light of the actual expressions of hostility themselves, that is, the AV hymns used in the ritual: is there any difference in the way hostility and violence are expressed, on a linguistic level, between hymns in which a female beneficiary directs violence against a female target, and hymns in which a male beneficiary directs violence against a male target? Do the hymns prefigure or contradict the Kauśika manual’s later categorical separation of rites concerning male and female hostility? What new aspects of AV hostile ritual does this comparison bring to light? What does this tell us about the dynamics of societal gender structuring through the prism of language and ritual evolution?
To answer these questions, the project focused on a corpus consisting of all hostile ritual hymns in the little studied 19th book of the AV’s Paippalāda hymn collection. This older collection of the Paippalāda branch was for a long time only known, and imperfectly so, from the existence of a corrupt Kashmirian manuscript (Open Access scan at the University of Tübingen library: urn:nbn:de:bsz:21-dt-32262). In the 1950s, Durgamohan Bhattacharyya discovered better manuscripts in the Indian state of Odisha, transmitted at the time alongside oral recitation within a living community of Paippalāda Brahmins. Images of the manuscripts are available from the SwissUBase (https://doi.org/10.48656/yyzd-bf48(opens in new window)).
This project tested the analysis of the gendered rhetoric of hostile ritual on a limited corpus taken from hymns of the Atharva-Veda which were not yet available in critical edition and translation. The following hymns selected from the 19th book are not found anywhere else in Vedic literature: 2.4–15; 21.1–7; 35.10–15; 36.7–10; 38.10–14; 39.1–12 (50 total stanzas made up in principle of units of three stanzas, tr̥ca, which are sometimes expanded). This project has achieved their critical edition from digital images of Indian manuscripts (Odia manuscripts Ji4, JM3, Pa, V/71, V122; Kashmir manuscript K) with translation.
The analysis of this material, enriched by parallel passages sought out from the rest of the literature, identifies several features of gendered language and style beyond basic grammatical indications of speaker gender. Specifically, hymns concerning women’s hostile ritual are generally more varied in theme and are also more difficult to translate, containing more obscure or unidentified vocabulary items as well as corruptions in their transmission. This points to more colloquial or local registers in female language, or the imitation of such a language if we assume all hymns preserved were put into their exact form in the collection by male poet-priests. However, several formulae or fixed expressions are used across hostile hymns, and the rhetoric of male-oriented hymns can be found in female-oriented ones.
The project also achieved the translation into English of the chapter on hostile ritual from the Kauśika manual (the 6th chapter on ābhicārikāṇi, or sections 47–49), as well as the part of the chapter on “women’s rites” which concerns the destruction of a woman’s enemy (36.15–21). The analysis of the structure of the ritual sequences described in these sections gave very clear results. On the surface, while men’s hostile ritual is structured to match a full paradigm of high Vedic ritual, women’s hostile ritual is given no such framework. However, the analysis of the sub-structures for both reveals clear parallels, specifically that of the mock funeral of the enemy. Furthermore, the study of abhicāra-specific ritual vocabulary and usage shows that women’s hostile ritual belongs to the same original ritual conception as men’s. In the beginning, male priests must have offered the service of hostile ritual to clients of both genders using the same basic structures. The standardization required to codify the Atharva-Vedic ritual manual led to a categorization of types of ritual in which women were excluded from the realm of official abhicāra.
The analysis of this material, enriched by parallel passages sought out from the rest of the literature, identifies several features of gendered language and style beyond basic grammatical indications of speaker gender. Specifically, hymns concerning women’s hostile ritual are generally more varied in theme and are also more difficult to translate, containing more obscure or unidentified vocabulary items as well as corruptions in their transmission. This points to more colloquial or local registers in female language, or the imitation of such a language if we assume all hymns preserved were put into their exact form in the collection by male poet-priests. However, several formulae or fixed expressions are used across hostile hymns, and the rhetoric of male-oriented hymns can be found in female-oriented ones.
The project also achieved the translation into English of the chapter on hostile ritual from the Kauśika manual (the 6th chapter on ābhicārikāṇi, or sections 47–49), as well as the part of the chapter on “women’s rites” which concerns the destruction of a woman’s enemy (36.15–21). The analysis of the structure of the ritual sequences described in these sections gave very clear results. On the surface, while men’s hostile ritual is structured to match a full paradigm of high Vedic ritual, women’s hostile ritual is given no such framework. However, the analysis of the sub-structures for both reveals clear parallels, specifically that of the mock funeral of the enemy. Furthermore, the study of abhicāra-specific ritual vocabulary and usage shows that women’s hostile ritual belongs to the same original ritual conception as men’s. In the beginning, male priests must have offered the service of hostile ritual to clients of both genders using the same basic structures. The standardization required to codify the Atharva-Vedic ritual manual led to a categorization of types of ritual in which women were excluded from the realm of official abhicāra.
This project has wide-ranging scientific impact going beyond Vedic studies by providing a model for the meaningful application of gender research objectives in the scientific study of ancient textual cultures, South Asian or otherwise. The monograph containing the results of the project, expected to appear in Open Access in 2026, should be a classic work on gendered aspects of Vedic hostile ritual as there is to date no other work on this subject. The role of gender in the progressive standardization of Vedic ritual can be further linked to the overall phenomenon of the transition of the Vedic people in the last millennium BCE from a pastoralist, semi-nomadic life to sedentary, agricultural village communities. The project also addresses an intersectional aspect of gender research, that of the social status of the probable “clients” hiring priests for hostile ritual: not only male rulers but their wives, in line with the hypothesis that the Paippalāda collection of hymns was redacted specifically for the priest attached to a ruler’s household. Finally, the project renders an ancient South Asian text, contained in manuscripts in rare scripts and inaccessible to most, available in a digestible format for other fields: comparative linguists can exploit linguistic data, historians and anthropologists can glean information on material and social realities, and the material will enable comparative approaches in the light of recent work on the role of language in ritual contexts.