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.
