20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Sviṣṭakṛt: formal structure and self-reference in Vedic ritual 597In a further analysis, the Nihnava turned out to presuppose intra-ritualreference, which renders the ritual as a whole self-referential. Together withthe meaning that is needed to identify distinct units within the ritual, intraritualreference and ritual self-reference (within the canonical dimension)constitute the minimal meaningfulness to be accepted in a formalrepresentation of ritual that abstracts from collateral aspects of meaning.We will here have a closer look at another episode in Vedic ritual,the Sviṣṭakt offering, with respect both to its position within the formalstructure of Vedic ritual and to its representation in Brāhmaṇas and otherVedic ritual texts. The Sviṣṭakt offering is a regular element not only inthe Iṣṭi of the new and full-moon sacrifice but also in other Iṣṭis and ritualsthat follow its outline. In order to appreciate the importance of the study ofritual structure, it is important to have first a brief overview of how ritualtheory has discovered and forgotten formal structure, and has now startedto rediscover it again. Then we will investigate how formal ritual structure,rather than the rare mythological elements associated with it, help tounderstand the Sviṣṭakt offering in Vedic ritual, and, at the same time, tocontribute to exploring the importance of ritual grammar and morphologyin the domain of Vedic studies.2.1 Attempts to understand the puzzling phenomena of rituals of unfamiliarcommunities and tribes have led to interpretations and analyses which ofteninvolve the narratives (myths) that either are associated with rituals, or aretold within the context of these rituals by those who perform and transmitthem. A third option for these mythologies is that they are reconstructed bythe researcher on the basis of his study of the ritual.For the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer (1854-1941),who became a passionate researcher of myths and rituals from all over theworld, present (as accessible through anthropology) and past (as accessiblethrough ancient literature) mythology was crucial for reconstructing theworld views of distant communities; rituals were interesting only to theextent they reveal or clarify myths and worldviews (Frazer 1894,1900), and they were fitted into an evolutionary scheme from primitiveto modern (a scheme that in outline goes back to TYLOR 1871 [1873]).In contradistinction to an approach such as the one of Frazer thatemphasized the interpretation and attributed or supposed “original”meanings of ritual, Henri HUBERT and Marcel MAUSS (1899) placedemphasis on the formal structure of ritual, in their case mainly Vedic andHebrew ritual. Eighty years before Frits STAAL, HUBERT and MAUSSrepresent the first moment in ritual studies (at that time just emerging) thattake both Vedic ritual and ritual structure as important starting points.