20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Sviṣṭakṛt: formal structure and self-reference in Vedic ritual 611when it would have been easy to distinguish the Agni that worships now(Agni Sviṣṭakt) and the one that had been worshipped (in a precedingritual episode: Agni of the butter-portions and of the bread-offering) bydistinctive names or epithets. Circularity is even more crudely expressed inthe offering of Agni Sviṣṭakt to “his own greatness”.The self-referentiality is, as can be expected, not expressed in a formalor mathematical way. In the latter formula to be pronounced by the hotar,it is stated that Agni should worship-in-a-ritual his own greatness. From afunctional perspective, the hotar's prayer implies that the Sviṣṭakt offeringis here (after having first confirmed the offerings in preceding episodes: toAgni, to Soma, again to Agni in another offering) indeed directly selfreferential.We can therefore say that the prayers and offerings that consitutethe Sviṣṭakt offering are evidently derived from the preceding offerings towhich a fully self-referential prayer and offering are added, that “he mayworship-in-a-ritual his own greatness.” The references in this passage tonegative effects from the side of Rudra appear to have no profoundconnection with the Sviṣṭakt offering. On the contrary, the negative resultssuggested as consequence from neglecting the Sviṣṭakt offering seem tobe no more than the arthavāda way 19 of emphasizing the importance of itspositive execution.If we represent the preceding offerings byA, B, C, the sequence including the Sviṣṭaktoffering becomes: A, B, C, Sv. If we nextindicate how the complex Sviṣṭakt offeringrefers to (confirms the validity of) other A, B, C, Svofferings we arrive at the scheme:Here, Sv refers to the preceding offerings A, B, C, but the last arrowstarting at Sv returns at itself. Inadequate would be the analysis suggestedby STAAL (1989: 86f) 20 in which he tries to abstract completely from allaspects of meaning:a god (his ‘favourite emplacement on which his thoughts are fixed’, hence the god’sfavourite object through which the worship attracts the god’s favour).19In the Vedic exegesis of Mīmāṁsā the arthavāda (cf. GARGE 1952: 260f;VERPOORTEN 1987: 13) is a “statement of purpose” that is subsidiary to an injunction(it impels the ritualist to follow it) or prohibition (it discourages him to go against it).20Both STAAL and WITZEL have been, each in their own way, fascinated by"mere" recursive patterns ; Staal (1989: 85-99; 1993) wanted to formalize them throughrewriting rules and inverted trees (inspired by generative grammar of the 1970s-1980s),Witzel (1992) in terms of a structure of frames within frames.