Vedic Myths and Rituals

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Vedic Myths and Rituals, edited by Jan E.M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, explores the intricate relationship between Vedic myths and Vedic rituals. The book delves into the symbolic and practical dimensions of Vedic traditions, offering fresh insights into ancient Indian religious practices. The essays in this volume address both problems of the textual sources of the most ancient myths and rituals, and reflections on different models of theorizing the Vedic myths and rituals. The volume presents a rich tapestry of topics, ranging from the study of myths and their employment in rituals, as seen in the story of the horse of Pedu and its connection to snake poison remedies, to the formal structures of Vedic rituals like the Sviştakṛt that is an important part of numerous Vedic rituals such as the Agniştoma. The book also examines the role of myths in understanding rituals such as the Saumikī Dīkşā, the consecration for the Soma sacrifice, and questions the authenticity of female puberty rituals in ancient Vedic and Indian culture. In an exploration of the significance of commendations in the Atharvavedic tradition from ancient Kauśikasūtra to current practices of the Odisha Paippalādin scholars, ritualistic performances of entrusting individuals to divine protection through symbolic acts and prayers are highlighted. Additionally, it provides interpretations of lesser-known rituals, such as the bride with the yoke in the Kausikasūtra, and explores interplay of word, style, and myth in the operation of Vedic rituals including medicinal magic. A contribution on the history of Sanskrit and Vedic studies in Romania, relevant to the history of the essays it contains, concludes the volume.

This volume is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Vedic studies, offering a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the deep connections between myth, ritual, and symbolism in ancient Indian culture. Through detailed analyses and innovative interpretations, the contributors shed light on the enduring signi-ficance of Vedic traditions in shaping religious and cultural practices.

Jan Houben is Professor (Director of Studies) in the chair ""Sources and History of the Sanskrit Tradition"" at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris Sciences et Lettres. A specialist in Sanskrit, Vedic studies, Linguistics, Philosophy, he studied and lectured at several international universities, visited Vedic schools, libraries in India, where he delved into traditions of Vedic culture, studying rare manuscripts and deciphering ancient rituals. He is author of several books and numerous scientific articles.

Julieta Rotaru is a philologist specializing in the Kausikasūtra. During her formative years, she studied Sanskrit at Delhi University and Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune, under ICCR scholarships, working with Prof. S.S. Bahulkar. Currently teaching Sanskrit and Romani language at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, she serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of ""Romani Studies"" (Liverpool University Press) and General Secretary of the Gypsy Lore Society, contributing to both Vedic and Romani studies.

The present volume, Vedic Myths and Rituals, brings together a col-lection of scholarly contributions that explore the rich and complex interplay between mythic narratives and ritual practices in the Vedic tradition. Most of the papers included here were originally presented at the international conference ""Cartea. România. Europa"" held in Bucha-rest in 2009, where scholars from various disciplines gathered to discuss the intersections of literature, history, and cultural transmission across Europe and beyond. A relatively small but significant segment of the conference was devoted to the study of Vedic texts, myths, and rituals, reflecting the enduring relevance of ancient Indian thought in contemporary academic discourse.

As co-organizers of the 2009 conference, we had the privilege of inviting and collaborating with specialists in Vedic studies, whose insights have greatly enriched our understanding of these ancient traditions. The papers presented at the conference were subsequently published in the conference Proceedings, but over time, this publication became difficult to access, leaving many of these valuable contributions obscured. Recognizing the importance of these studies, we are pleased to present them anew in this dedicated volume, ensuring that they receive the scholarly attention they merit.

In addition to these original conference papers which have in no way lost their relevance, we have included an unpublished article by the late Professor Dr. Dipak Bhattacharya, whose work remains foundational in the field of Vedic studies. This precious contribution, though intended for a different academic occasion, namely the conference of the Centre for Eurasiatic and Afroasiatic Studies (CEAS) organised at Mamaia, Romania, in 2012, aligns seamlessly with the themes explored in this volume and serves as a fitting tribute to Bhattacharya's enduring legacy.

The papers in this volume can be briefly described as follows:

Shrikant Bahulkar's paper shows how the famous myth of Pedu's horse from the Rg Veda has given way in the SS 10.4 to a ""secondary"" myth of a legendary creatures called Paidva endowed with the same powers of destroying serpents, like Pedu's horse. Further, the horse of Pedu was made by Kauśika into an insect or some substance used as an anti-dot against snake poison. Further Bahulkar treats on the hymn ŚS 6.80, which contains the oldest reference to three Kālakāñjas and ""the heavenly dog"", which appear as demons in the Mahabharata, and as Kälakäñ-jakas, a class of Asuras in the Pali Tipitaka. In the Brahmanas, Kālakän-ja demons built a fire-altar to reach heaven. When they climbed up with Indra, he removed his brick, making them fall. Most became spiders, but two flew up and became Yama's dogs-the sun and moon. The hymn ŚS 6.80 on Kālakāñjas is employed by the Kauss in the medical rite of transfer of disease from the patient to a dog, by using the clay from the place where a dog has placed its foot, or the cattle-fly taken from the body of a dog.

Jan Houben's paper examines the Svistakṛt offering-a regular ele-ment in both the new and full-moon Isti sacrifice and similar rituals-focusing on its position within Vedic ritual structure and its representa-tion in Brähmanas and other ritual texts. To understand the significance of ritual structure analysis, Houben amply reviews ritual theory through various scholars: from Frazer, through Durkheim's sociological school (Hubert and Mauss), to Sanskritists (Lévi, Renou, Caland), to Staal's theory of meaningless ritual, and finally to Rappaport's view of rituals transmitting two message types: canonical (encoded by non-performers) and self-referential (conveying participants' current status). Tracing the core meaning of the ritual in the yajñéna-yajñám type of offering (RV 1.164.50ab10.90.16ab), the paper demonstrates that while the Svistakṛt offering has minimal mythology, it holds significant ritual importance. Its value lies in its structural position, serving to confirm, support, and protect other offerings and itself.

Madhavi Kolhatkar's article explains the significance of the Saumikī dīksä the ritual of initiation or consecration undergone by the sacrificer in the Soma sacrifice to make himself ready and eligible for the rite. She begins by posing key questions: What is the significance of this dīksā? Why must the sacrificer undergo embryogenesis, a process unique to this rite in Vedic śrauta ritual? Why does the birth not occur? The paper traces the myth underlying the rite in the Aitareya Brahmana, chapters 34 to 39, and interprets it through Mircea Eliade's paradigm of embryogeny in the rājasūya: the recreation of the Universe, return to the embryonic state of the sacrificer-sovereign, year-long gestation, and mystical rebirth as Cosmocreator-identified with both Prajapati (the All-God) and the Cosmos. Kolhatkar also examines important related themes, such as the rivalry between ksatriya and brāhmaņa in Vedic literature.

1. As an Introduction to this volume of essays on Vedic Myths and Rituals, I would like to explore here some aspects of the nature and function of myths and rituals, more specifically Vedic myths and rituals. Both myths and rituals play an important role in religious practice, and for students of religion since the end of the nineteenth century the question arose which one is to be regarded as primary, myth or ritual. In this introductory essay I will deal with myth and ritual primarily from the perspective of the experience by the ritual actors. This angle of approach has the advantage of integrating these two valuable but seemingly opposed theoretical approaches, the one which considers ""myth"" as primary and as crucial for the reconstruction of distant and ancient worldviews-a meaning oriented approach adopted by scholars such as James George Frazer (1854-1941) and later on also Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)-and the other which considers ""ritual"" as primary- a formal approach adopt-ed by Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935) and his students Henri Hubert (1872-1927) and Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) and in a somewhat extreme form (radical rejection of meaning in order to focus on ritual structure) by Frits Staal (1930-2012).

2.1 The interplay between myth and ritual in the Vedic tradition offers a profound window into how ancient Indian society experienced time and created communities. Central to this inquiry is the distinction be-tween ""historical time"" marked by historically anchored narrativity, linear progression, social change, and individual mortality - and ""ritual time"", a transcendent, cyclical temporality that participants experience as temporal distance and ""time out of time"" (HOUBEN 2003) This introductory essay examines Vedic myths and rituals mainly through the theoretical framework of Roy A. RAPPAPORT's Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999), which posits that ritual acts establish ""liturgical orders"" capable of creating communal realities that transcend mundane existence. We explore how Vedic rituals, grounded in myths and legends, negotiate the tension between historical agency and eternal cosmic order. It is further argued that the Vedic ritual system, just as ritual systems belonging to other geographic and cultural contexts, is transformative for its principal actors (most clearly in the case of rites of passage, but also a ritual such as the Pravargya) and for the environment (a point further elaborated in ""Ecology of Ritual Innovation in Ancient India"", HOUBEN 2019). In this way this essay revisits and expands upon the discussions initiated during the conference. Adopting a dialogical approach, it engages with each of the volume's contributions, highlighting their collection and organization of precious data and the interpretive challenges they addressed, and potential avenues for future research.

2.2 From the outset, the approach which emphasizes the importance of myths for understanding a people's or a community's world view, and at-tributes a secondary place to the rituals which are simply enactments of the primordial myth, would seem to represent what is called in anthropology an ""emic"" position, which takes the view point of the community and the ritualists as starting point. The ritualists are the ones who tell the myth to their children or to new generations of performers, or recite them in intervals in larger rituals, and they are assumed to be also believers in those myths. On the other hand, to consider the myths as mere stories that provide justification to a ritual that is already current in the community would seem an outsiders' view, an ""etic"" position, adopted by non-believers. The primordiality of myth as ""etic"" position may be applicable to many cultures and communities, but the situation is more complex in the ancient and pre-modern Vedic context, since precisely the primordiality of ritual and the merely motivational function of myths and temporally distant narratives is what is emphasized in an important ancient philosophical system, the Mimämsä, which focuses on herme-neutics and on problems of interpretation of Vedic authoritative texts.

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