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Jamison & Witzel VEDIC HINDUISM 28 II. AN OUTLINE OF VEDIC RELIGION AND RITUAL a. Overviews of Vedic Religion A new general treatment of Vedic religion is badly needed, as those available are, at best, much out of date, and are often seriously misleading as well. The early, massive (3 vol.) work of A. Bergaigne, La réligion védique (1878- 83) in fact, as the rest of its title indicates (d'après les hymnes du �g-Veda), essentially limits its purview to the earliest text. It is, moreover, primarily concerned with mythology and should be discussed under that rubric. The work that remains the most useful treatment is probably H. Oldenberg's Die Religion des Veda (2nd ed. 1917, Engl. 1896). This is a balanced account, which is not too seriously influenced by the then prevalent nature mythology. Pioneering is the use Oldenberg makes of ethnographical parallels. He extracted Vedic religion from the sphere of the "classical" tradition. It is unfortunate that Vedic studies subsequently have disappeared from the view and the agenda of anthropologists. Yet Oldenberg's work nonetheless relies too heavily on the evolutionary concept of a still "primitive Vedic mind" preceding the evolution of the structure of our supposedly so much more developed mind. As Oldenberg put it: the bråhma�a type texts represent, after all, "vorwissenschaftliche Wissenschaft", pre-scientific science. As such, they are the fountainhead of Indian thought and sciences. Also of utility is Keith's The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads (1925), though marred, like most works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by an excessive reliance on the nature mythology paradigm. M. Bloomfield's The religion of the Veda (1908), actually a series of lectures, unfortunately displays a patronizing and superficial attitude to the subject, surprising in one who gave us so many useful research tools and penetrating insights into particular problems. More recent treatment include Renou's brief but reliable discussion in Renou and Filliozat's L'Inde classique I (1947), Chap. V. "Le Védisme" (pp. 270- 380) [translated and issued as a separate small volume, Vedic India (1957)], and Gonda's survey of 1960, which is sound if uninspired and still somewhat too reliant on the notion of the 'primitive mind'. Th. J. Hopkins' generally well balanced, if necessarily short The Hindu religious tradition (1971) is very useful as a general introduction. For certain aspects of Vedic religion cf. also Basham 1989, and for the Bråhma�as, Devasthali 1965.
Jamison & Witzel VEDIC HINDUISM 29 b. Ritual The central importance of elaborate ritual activity throughout the Vedic period cannot be overemphasized. However, it is also important to remember that our views of Vedic ritual are somewhat distorted by the chronology of the text-types that concern the ritual. It is only at the very end of the Vedic period, in the Śrauta Sūtras, that we have straightforward, detailed descriptions of ritual. This means that we have handbooks only for the latest form of the Vedic ritual, as it had developed from the �gveda through its restructuring during the pre- Mantra period, some less pronounced developments in the time of the YV Sa�hitås, Bråhma�as, and the early Sūtras.31 The earliest texts of the "classical" Vedic ritual, the mantra texts, are ritual internal, consisting of verbal formulations to be pronounced in the course of ritual performance. The context of ritual action in which they were used can only be inferred, often very dimly, from these formulations. The next level of texts, bråhma�ic exegesis, assumes detailed knowledge of the ritual; the exegesis concerns itself with the function and meaning, often esoteric, of selected details of ritual activity or verbal expression, passing over the rest without comment. It is thus difficult to know to what extent the rituals of these different times resembled or were identical to each other, how much they changed over time. In general, the highlighted ritual events of bråhma�ic exegesis fit neatly into the more detailed picture found in the Śrauta Sūtras, but the evidence for the mantra period, and certainly for the �gveda, is more difficult to evaluate. Although much of what characterizes middle and late Vedic ritual was undoubtedly there in the earlier period in some fashion -- given the presence of technical terms for particular priests, rituals, offerings, etc., already in the �g Veda -- we cannot be certain that these terms meant the same thing in different periods or were arranged in the same system.32 Moreover, there are some clear systematic differences between earlier and later ritual in terms both of practice and of beliefs, which will be discussed below 31 Falk (1988) indicates, on the basis of Påli texts, that the development of the ritual did not stop with the Sūtras and that the accounts of Śrauta ritual in the Bråhma�as and even in the Sūtras are not complete, in spite of their pronounced aim. 32 For example, see Geldner's discussion of ritual terms in the introduction to his translation to book 9 of the RV.
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