20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

From myth to ritual.The horse of Pedu and the remedyfor removing snake's poisonSHRIKANT S. BAHULKARTilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth – PuṇeThe relationship between the myth and the ritual has been a subjectof controversy among scholars from the nineteenth century onwards. As acontributor to this conference held in Bucharest, it is high time to mentionin this connection the Romanian scholar and the father of the history ofreligion, Mircea ELIADE. In his book The Myth of the Eternal Return orCosmos and History, he pointed out how myths ushered into rituals: "Everyritual has a divine model, an archetype; this fact is well enough known forus to confine ourselves to recalling a few examples. "We must do what thegods did in the beginning" (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, VII. 2, 1, 4). "Thus thegods did; thus men do" (Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa, 1, 5, 9, 4). This Indian adagesummarizes all the theory underlying rituals in all countries....all religiousacts are held to have been founded by gods, civilizing heroes, or mythicalancestors. It may be mentioned in passing that, among primitives, not onlydo rituals have their mythical model but any human act whatever acquireseffectiveness to the extent to which it exactly repeats an act performed at thebeginning of time by a god, a hero, or an ancestor." (ELIADE 1974: 21-22)With this brief introduction, we now turn to a hymn of the Atharvaveda(AV) and its rubrication in a ritual that show how an old myth has taken aform of a new one in the context of a totally new rite strengthened by themythical element forming the foundation of the ritual.Among the four Vedas, the fourth Veda, the AV, bears a somewhatdistinct character. The religion reflected in that Veda has often been regardedto be the religion of masses, representing the little traditions of Vedic India.The magic practices of the Atharvavedins have a two-fold purpose: the