Speech Acts and Kings' Edicts: Vedic Words and Rulership in Taxonomical Perspective Author(s):...

8/12/2019 Speech Acts and Kings' Edicts: Vedic Words and Rulership in Taxonomical Perspective Author(s): Laurie L. Patton

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Speech Acts and Kings' Edicts: Vedic Words and Rulership in Taxonomical PerspectiveAuthor(s): Laurie L. PattonSource: History of Religions, Vol. 34, No. 4, Representations of Rulers (May, 1995), pp. 329-350Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062952 .Accessed: 15/07/2013 05:25

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Laurie L. Patton SPEECH ACTS ANDKINGS' EDICTS: VEDICWORDS ANDRULERSHIP INTAXONOMICAL

PERSPECTIVE

In a recent article, "The History of a Hoax," Barry O'Neill, a professorat Yale University's School of Management, describes with great gleethe discovery of a hoax behind the lists of the top problems of publicschools in America.1 First discovered by the author on a piece of papertacked to a Yale bulletin board, the "survey" showed that, in the 1940s,the problems of American public schools were (1) talking out of turn,(2) chewing gum, (3) making noises, (4) running in the halls, (5) cuttingin line, (6) breaking dress code, and (7) littering. By comparison, the1980s list ran as follows: (1) drug abuse, (2) alcohol abuse, (3) preg-nancy, (4) suicide, (5) rape, (6) robbery, and (7) assault. O'Neill de-scribes the subsequent citations of the same list by conservatives andleft-wing activists alike-Rush Limbaugh and Joycelyn Elders bothfeeding at the same trough of "fact" in order to further their radically di-vergent programs of social reform.

O'Neill decides to trace the origin of the list and finds it, not in the lab-oratories of educational reform, but in the pen of a single man, a born-again Christian fundamentalist, T. Cullen Davis. The lists were writtenimpressionistically in 1982 in a sweep of religious fervor and modifiedwilly-nilly by those who quoted them as "evidence." O'Neill concludes

I would like to thank Bruce Lincoln, Kay Read, Wendy Doniger, Paul Griffiths, MarkMacWilliams, Stephanie Jamison, and Mark Howe for their comments on earlier drafts ofthis paper, given at the 1993 American Academy of Religion conference in Washington,D.C.

1 Barry O'Neill, "The History of a Hoax," New York Times Magazine (March 6, 1994).

? 1995 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0018-2710/95/3404-0002$0 1.00

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Speech Acts and Kings' Edicts

that the lists do not contain facts but are "fundamental expressions of

attitudes and emotions." They have remained persuasive pieces of rheto-ric, he implies, because of their anonymity and the scientific aura of thelist format itself. The lists are thus a rare variety of folklore-the folk-lore of the eminent and powerful.

In what follows I will argue that O'Neill's folkloric lists from "the em-inent and powerful" are neither so new nor so rare as he would have usbelieve. Lists, and the "science" of lists, have a long and revered traditionin the production of religious canon. Using the particular case of Vedic

Indian lists of mantras, I show that, despite their aura of anonymity, theyare far from anonymous. Their statements as to the formal and aestheticproperties of an appropriate mantric utterance show the particular in-vestments of the list makers, whether they be priests or politicians. Whatis more, the different contexts in which these mantric ists have been useddemonstrate he ways in which lists perform a kind of double social func-tion: On the one hand, they are a vehicle for continuity with Vedic tra-dition. On the other, precisely because of this conservative aura, they are

the best vehicles for intellectual and ideological change-in particular,the change from oral to written forms of communication.It has become a truism in the past ten years of religious studies that the

creation of a religious canon involves the building and refining of lists.J. Z. Smith has proposed the term Listenwissenschaft for the study ofcanon creation in religious traditions.2 The approach s salutary becauseit examines what is at stake in the inclusion and exclusion of elementsin a debate about canon: by examining what is included as canonical and

what is not, the scholarly perspective of Listenwissenschaft permits in-spection of the criteria involved in manufacturing knowledge. Moreover,by emphasizing the problems involved in list making, the scholar intro-duces the question of agency into the study of canon. As O'Neill wantedto ask of his public school lists, so too the scholar inquires, Who is it thatformulates the rules for such determinations, and why?

Various projects have been conducted with this particular view in mind,and with profitable results.3 Many of these studies have focused on the

2 Jonathan Z. Smith, "Sacred Persistence" in Imagining Religion (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 36-52.3 Ibid., p. 48. In general, the process involves the collection of data, the discovery of apattern, and the determination f some common principle that underlies he pattern. This prin-ciple is then used for prediction (omen), interdiction (taboo), or retrospection history). Seealso Bruce Lincoln, "The Tyranny of Taxonomy" in Occasional Papers of the Universityof Minnesota Center or Humanistic Studies, no. 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota,1985). Other fields, e.g., cognitive science, have broached the question of religion only spo-radically. See George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1987), pp. 90-100. Pascal Boyer's Tradition as Truth and Communication

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) is a welcome systematic attempt to study asingle ritual from the perspective of cognitive science.

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History of Religions

criteria by which such lists are made, usually resulting in an outline of

particular ropes, an exposure of the persuasive and lasting images andcategories that serve best as factors of coherency in list making.Listenwissenschaft has provided the study of religion with a kind of cog-nitive science whereby scholars can better understand he categories withwhich the exegetes of a particular culture think.

Further, Listenwissenschaft has demonstrated hat religious list makersmake particular claims. First, once "enlisted," such knowledge is invio-lable, surrounded, as were the public school surveys, by an aura of fac-

tuality and importance. Second, when new data are introduced into theculture, they are generally absorbed within the list, usually in a mannerthat does not consciously challenge its claims to central cultural signifi-cance. Attempts are made to accommodate earlier and later forms ofknowledge to each other, ostensibly motivated by the same principle oforganization that the earlier list possessed. J. Z. Smith calls this a recur-rent process of arbitrary imitation and of overcoming limitation throughingenuity.4

NATIVE WORDS FOR NATIVE TAXONOMIES

This recent emphasis on the study of taxonomies encourages Indologiststo turn again to the list-laden larder of Vedic exegesis. Indian commentaryon sacrificial performance rom the late Vedic period is rife with enumer-ations and catalogings of all kinds.5 More specifically, Rg-Vedic commen-tary is obsessed with the problem of grammatical and aesthetic forms ofVedic speech, or mantras. Mantras are defined here not in the broad sense

of any sacred utterance but in the narrow sense of all the rks, or verses thatoccur in the Rg-Veda.) The lists enumerate what the appropriate kinds ofcanonical Vedic speech should be in sacrificial situations.

Such mantric ists should indeed be quite fertile ground for the study ofwhat is at stake in the inclusion and exclusion of elements in a debateabout canon, in this case, the canon of the Rg-Veda. Students of the Vedashould be able to develop a kind of Indological Listenwissenschaftwhereby they can inspect the criteria involved in the manufacture of

sacred knowledge. Until recently, however, these taxonomies have beenconfigured by Western scholars either as primitive forms of Indian aes-thetic criticism or (more ubiquitously in the past decade) under the lin-guistic heading of J. L. Austin's "speech act," which is generallydefined as an utterance that is not simply a statement of fact but a doingof something, a purposeful act. Most have used the linguistic categories

4 J. Z. Smith, p. 41. For a discussion of this process, see pp. 47-52.5 Brian Smith writes that, in general, the schools of Vedic exegesis "are far better un-

derstood as taxonomies than as handbooks of manuals for practice" (Brian Smith, Reflec-tions on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 21).

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of John Searle, who, in a sophisticated revision of Austin's ess elaborate

linguistic taxonomy, distinguishes among several types: (1) assertives,whose function is to commit the speaker to the truth of an expressed prop-osition, (2) directives, which aim at getting the hearer to do something,(3) commissives, whose point is to commit the speaker to some futurecourse of action, (4) expressives, which express some psychological atti-tude toward the proposition, and (5) declarations, whose function is tobring about the state of affairs ndicated n the proposition by the mere factof their being said. The utterances in this fifth category-declarations-

create a reality as they are being spoken.6 Whileit

is unnecessary for thepurposes of this article to delve too deeply into the much-discussed detailsof speech-act theory,7 my larger point is that, in the description of themechanics of mantra, his kind of Western inguistic terminology has beenconsistently preferred over Indian terminology.

For some scholars, such as Frits Staal, Western linguistic terminologyis of use because parallels between ancient and modern ritual behavior canbe made intelligible.8 For Staal, Indian-specific terminology mirrors re-cent Western

linguisticdiscoveries and

helpsto

provea more universal

theory about the relationship between ritual and language as rule-governed

6 This taxonomy follows Wade Wheelock, "The Problem of Ritual Language" Jour-nal of the American Academy of Religion 50, no. 1 (1982): 54. See the urtexts on speechacts, J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words (1965; reprint, New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1978); and John Searle, "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts," in Expres-sion and Meaning, ed. John Searle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979),pp. 1-29.

7This debate engages not only the question of mantra but the entire question of thepossibility of meaning. For an approach that posits a certain continuity of mantra usage inthe midst of cultural change, see Louis Renou, "Les pouvoirs de la parole dans le Rg Veda,"in ttudes vediques etpanineennes 1 (1955): 1-27; Jan Gonda, The Vision of the Vedic Poets(The Hague: Mouton, 1963), and "The Indian Mantra," Oriens 16 (1963): 244-97. For amore mystical, bhakti-oriented view of mantra, ee Willard Johnson, Poetry and Speculationof the "Rg Veda" (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980). For astrictly syntactical analysis of mantra usage, see Frits Staal, "The Concept of Metalanguageand Its Indian Background," Journal of Indian Philosophy 3 (1975): 315-54, "Rg Veda10:71 on the Origin of Language," n Revelation in Indian Thought: A Festschrift in Honourof Professor T R. V Murti, ed. Harold Coward and Krishna Sivaram (Emeryville, Calif.:Dharma, 1977), pp. 3-14, "Ritual Syntax," n Sanskrit and Indian Studies: Essays in Honour

ofDaniel H. H.

Ingalls, ed. M. Nagatomi et al. (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1980),pp. 119-43, "The Meaninglessness of Ritual," Numen 26 (1979): 2-22, "The Sound of Re-ligion," Numen 33 (1986): 33-64, and "Vedic Mantras," n Mantra, ed. Harvey Alper (Al-bany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1989), pp. 48-95. For a more performative perspective, see WadeWheelock, "The Ritual Language of a Vedic Sacrifice" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago,1978), "A Taxonomy of the Mantras in the New- and Full-Moon Sacrifice," History ofReligions 19, no. 4 (1980): 349-69, "The Problem of Ritual Language," pp. 49-69, and"The Mantra in Vedic and Tantric Ritual," n Alper, ed., pp. 96-122; Ellison Banks Findly,"Mantra kaviSasta: Speech as Performative n the Rg Veda," n Alper, ed., pp. 15-48; andLaurie Patton, "Vac: Myth or Philosophy?" n Myth and Philosophy, ed. Frank Reynolds andDavid Tracy (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1990), pp. 183-214.

8 See, e.g., Staal's "Ritual Syntax" for the use of the linguistic term "embeddedness"in an analysis of ritual components.

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behavior. For example, certain Vedic rules of transformation viharanam),

which allow the movement of mantra from one ritual into another, aremarkedly similar to linguistic rules of syntax. This similarity thus raisesquestions about the nonsemantic nature of both mantra and ritual.

For other scholars, such as Wade Wheelock, Indian-specific terms areinadequate because they are based on formal characteristics of the man-tras but not on their meanings. By having recourse to modern linguisticterms instead, Wheelock focuses on the semantic and pragmatic use ofmantra within a sacrificial situation. Speaking very much like Austin,

Wheelock argues that Vedic mantra is spoken by the priests in order tocreate and allow the performance of a known and repeatable situation,9thus functioning as Austin's more general "performative" speech act andSearle's more specific "declarative" speech act mentioned above.

Wheelock does admit, however, that indigenous Indian terms may besignificant for other purposes. He writes that "the brahmanas and srautasutras do themselves occasionally classify the mantras or use differentverbs to describe their purpose or effect, e.g., 'to pray,' to consecrate,'"

but that "such statements were not systematic enough to found a com-prehensive classificatory program but do deserve a closer scrutiny in thefuture."l0 It is my argument that the future-the time for closer scru-tiny-has arrived. In the course of this article I hope to achieve twothings: First, I intend to show that a study of the formal and aesthetic clas-sifications of mantra provided by the texts themselves reveals the indige-nous forms of classification to be as sophisticated in meeting their ownends as those of the West are in meeting theirs. Second, I argue that these

aesthetic taxonomies, when analyzed in larger ritual and mythologicalcontexts, show intriguing developments in attitudes toward Vedic lan-guage. Specifically, it is possible to examine what is entailed in the trans-formation of Brahmin, or priestly, speech into Ksatriya, or kingly/warrior, speech and how the traces of brahminically derived power re-main present even within the rhetoric of royal administrative authority.

THE SACRIFICIAL AXONOMIES

At the risk of plunging the reader into reconditeness, I will begin withan overview of the taxonomies of mantra from the sacrificial sources. Itake my taxonomies from three texts: the first list is from the etymolog-ical dictionary of the Nirukta, attributed o Yaska, from the fifth centuryB.C.E.; the second is from the commentary of Sabara on the ritual philo-sophical text called the Purva Mimamsa Sutra, from the first several

9 Wheelock, "Ritual Language of a Vedic Sacrifice," and "Taxonomy of the Mantras,"pp. 349-69, esp. p. 353. See also Wheelock, "Problem of Ritual Language," and "Man-tra in Vedic and Tantric Ritual."10Wheelock, "Taxonomy of the Mantras," p. 352, n. 7.

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centuries C.E.;and the third is from the Brhaddevatd, an index of names

and deities from the Rg-Veda compiled from the fourth century B.C.E. tothe first centuries C.E. and attributed to Saunaka.Yaska, author of the Nirukta, states quite clearly at the outset of his

work that he aims to achieve nothing less than the explanation of theentire Vedic canon through the process of etymology. Yaska's taxonomyof mantra is primarily concerned with discerning the appropriate formof addressing a deity in the sacrifice and with cataloging the different ap-propriate orms encountered in the canon of the Rg-Veda. In Nirukta 7.3,

nine categories of mantra are listed, all of them variations on the basiccategories of praise (stuti) and censure (ninda) (all translations of theNirukta are mine).

YASKA'S Nirukta

Motivation: the illumination of the words of the Vedic verses, which,contrary to human knowledge, are permanent (1.1-2).

Three main types of mantra (7.1):

Indirectly addressed mantra (paroksakrta)Directly addressed mantra (pratyaksakrta)Self-invocation (adhyatmika)

Six additions to the main types (7.3):Praise of a deity without a statement of desire (stutir eva

bhavati naslih)A statement of desire without praise of a deity (dsir eva na stutih)Curses and accusation (sapathabhisapau)Intention of describing a state (kasyacidbhavasyacikhyasa)Complaint arising from a particular state (paridevand

kasmadncidbhavat)Censure and eulogy (nindaprasamse)

These provide the basic building blocks for appropriate and expect-able forms of Vedic speech. Here we can see Yaska emphasizing that

mantra is concerned with the bhava, which I have translated as "state."Bhiva is perhaps better translated as the essential activity of someone,usually a deity.

Yaska's list focuses on this idea of bhava for a particular reason. Oneof Yaska's basic methods of etymologizing obscure Vedic words is byfinding another word that is both similar in sound and descriptive of thedeity or character's bhdva, or essential activity. To take a rather tragicexample, Yaska argues that Pururavas, he famous Vedic king who has

been separated from his wife, is so called because "he cries too much"(bahudha roruyate; roruyate being both similar in sound to Pururavasand effectively descriptive of the king's activity of mourning or his wife).

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Thus, a felicitous, if circular, relationship between mantric form and ety-

mological interpretation nsues: if mantras are shown to have the descrip-tion of bhava as one of their primary formal properties, then Yaska'sproject of word derivation, which is already based on bhdva, is supported.

The Nirukta's ist has much in common with the list given by Sabara nhis commentary on Jaimini's philosophical text the Puirva Mimarms Sutra,the core Sutras of the philosophical school called Mimamsa and thought tobe composed several centuries later than Yaska's Nirukta. Sabara com-posed his work in the first several centuries c.E., contributing to the

growthof

Mimamsa.11 Jaimini and later commentators such as Sabara arecredited with systematizing Vedic knowledge to a point of transcendentalelegance. Their central problem is the investigation of dharma, or duty, asit is stated in the Vedas. Because the Vedas are the main source of dharma,they are eternally valid and uncreated-as Sheldon Pollock puts it, an"always-already-given discourse."12 Most important, dharma s taught byVedic injunction (codana)-that which is laid down in the Vedas as "tobe done" within the ritual sphere. All of Vedic language is organized ac-

cordingto this

basic principle.Mimamsa divides the Vedic literature nto four different categories-mantra, brahmana, arthavdda, and namadheya. Although an extended dis-cussion of these distinctions need not detain us here, some important pointsshould be noted. For Mimamsa, the most important distinction is betweenmantra and brahmana. Mantras are those texts that merely make an asser-tion13 but are not themselves injunctive. They function only during theperformance of an act. The brahmana exts have been defined as all thatis not mantra.14 While

argumentsabound

as to how the brahmana, whichcontains "all the rest" is to be divided up, what remains clear is that, what-ever else they contain, brahmana exts do contain injunctions that are in-dicative of dharma. The brahmana portion is where injunctions areprimarily to be located.15

11For a full treatment of Sabara's work, see Sabara Bhdsya, trans. Ganganatha Jha,3 vols. (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1933-36). All citations of Sabara and the Purva Mi-mamsf Sutra are from The Mimamsa Darsana of Maharsi Jaimini with Sabarabhdsyaof Sabaramuni with the commentaries of Tantravdrtika of Kumarila Bhatta, and itscommentary of Nyayasudha of Somesvara Bhatta, Bhasyavivarana of Govindamrtamuniand Bhdvaprakadika, ol. 2, ed. Mahaprabhulala Gosvami (Varanasi: Tara, 1986). All trans-lations are mine.

12 Sheldon Pollock, "Mimamsa and the Problem of History in India" Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society 109, no. 4 (1989): 610.

13Purva Mimamsa Sutra 2.1.32.14 Purva Mimamsa Sutra 2.1.33.15The third category, arthavada, consists of those brfhmana texts that are not injunctive

in character but are purely descriptive or declamatory. They commend the act of sacrificeto a deity or describe the reason for performing a certain act. The final division, ndmadheya,consists of those texts primarily made up of the proper names of sacrifices and other things,and whose meaning depends upon the knowledge of those names.

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How does Rg-Vedic mantra it in this larger scheme? Does this Mimamsa

systemmean that

mantras, being merelyassertive

statements, are useless,or even meaningless, given the centrality of injunction? On the contrary: asGanganatha ha notes, if the mantra exts were meaningless, they could notconvey any information regarding dharma, and this would vitiate the au-thority of the Veda.16 For Mimamsa, mantras erve two purposes-to assertthings in connection with the acts enjoined by injunctive texts and to recallsuch injunctions to mind. Thus, mantras are clearly helpful in providingknowledge of dharma.

Somewhatlonger

than that of theNirukta,

theMimamsa ist enumeratesfourteen classifications, including the expected classifications of praise

and statement of desire.

?ABARA'S COMMENT ON PURVA MIMAMSA SUTRA 2.1.32

Motivation: o elaborate upon the definition of mantra as that which denotesthings connected with prescribed actions (codana), that s, to declare mantraas merely expressive of an assertion and recollection and not injunctive n

and of itself (Sabara on Purva Mimamsa Slitra 2.1.31-53).Three main types of mantra (Purva Mimamsa Sutra 2.1.35-37):

rkyajussaman

Fourteen variations on the main types (Sabara on Purva Mimamsa Siutra2.1.32):

Those ending in the word asi (asyanta)Those ending in the word tva (tvanta)Statement of desire (adss)Praise (stuti)Enumeration (samkhya)Chatter (pralapita)Complaint (paridevana)Summons (praisa)Searching (anvesana)Questioning (prsta)Narrative (dkhyana)Extension (of one mantra onto another) (anusanga)

16 Ganganatha Jha, Pirva Mimamsa in Its Sources (Banaras: Banaras Hindu University,1942), p. 162. To argue this point, in Sutras 1.2.31-53 Jaimini picks up the skeleton of thearguments provided by Yaska against Kautsa, the great opponent of the meaningfulness ofthe Vedas, and develops them in more elaborate detail.

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Application (prayoga)

The power of expression (samarthyam abhidhanam)Sabara's ist adds some classifications that the Nirukta does not have,

such as the categories of summons, chatter, questioning, and narrativemantras. The Mimamsa list also includes more mundane classifications,such as mantras ending in asi and mantras ending in tva.

In reviewing this taxonomy, it should be noted that the Mimamsa cate-gory of mantra tself is broader and more far-reaching han the Nirukta's.First, mantra s defined as those utterances that serve the purpose of de-noting things connected with prescribed actions-the all-important cate-gory of codana, or ritual injunction. The classifications of mantra end toreflect that fact. While Sabara does include more colorful classifica-tions such as complaint (paridevana), he also gives weight to the practicalconcerns of the sacrifice. Thus, Sabara's nclusion of the category of man-tras ending in asi ("you are") or tva (you) adds an important class of man-tra because they present the particular itual problem of how to discern theappropriate deity in the sacrifice. In particular, he hotr priest, who recitesthe Rg-Veda, acts as gracious host; he often invokes the gods, requestingthem to officiate, praising them, and petitioning them to aid the sacrificer,thus using the second-person pronoun quite frequently. Yet it is occasion-ally ambiguous which deity is being addressed. Rules concerning the ritualproblem of the "second person" are mentioned in other Vedic texts:Brhaddevata 1.11, for instance, states that when there is a form of directaddress that is ambiguous, such as that of the second person, the way todiscern the deity is by looking elsewhere in the mantra for the deity'scombination of distinguishing marks.

So, too, mantras that enumerate, or tell a number (samkhya), presentparticular issues in terms of ritual procedures. Should the offerings begiven to a single or predominant deity of the mantra, o all of those men-tioned in the mantra, or to the deity of the entire hymn? And how doesthe deity relate to the purpose of the rite; and are there several rites, orsimply one? Jaimini discusses this whole question of the number anddifferentiation of rites (karmabheda) n PulrvaMimamsa Suitra .2. Othertexts, such as Brhaddevata 1.11 and 1.19-20, are also concerned withthe overall problem of number; these verses address the problems ofmultiplicity and variety of names for a particular deity that occur in amantra and thus how to account for that mantra properly.

Finally, Sabara goes on to show that his own list is not exhaustive; thereare several mantras hat do not fit the exact criteria of the taxonomy, suchas those mantras that have asi in the middle and not at the end. And sev-eral Vedic texts that would not be classified by Mimamsa as mantras butas brahmana exts also fit the classificatory schema. Thus Sabara s careful

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to say that the list is neither inclusive of all mantras nor exclusive of all

nonmantras.17The final sacrificially oriented commentary, the Brhaddevata, 18 s alsofrom a slightly later period, compiled from the fourth century B.C.E. to thefirst centuries C.E.and attributed to the author Saunaka. The core of theBrhaddevatd s an anukramani-literally a "right ordering," but perhapsmore intelligibly called an index. Its eclectic contents are gathered arounda core index of Vedic deities. This index enumerates for each mantraof the Rg-Veda the deity that properly "belongs" to that mantra. Thus, by

implication,the

Brhaddevata is concerned with the appropriate use of themantras in Vedic ritual. The text also tells a number of itihasas, or nar-ratives, to complete the picture, detailing the circumstances in which thatmantra was spoken to the deity. In the same Vedic vein, the basic functionof the Brhaddevata's tihdsas is the explanation of mantra for ritual pur-poses. Such stories make mantras meaningful and thus render he sacrificemore efficacious. In this aspect, the itihasas of the Brhadde-vata continuethe particularly Vedic projects of the Nirukta and Mimamsa texts of as-

sertingthe

everyday meaningfulnessof

the Veda.19While the Brhaddevata shares many of the Rg-Vedic examples andclassifications quoted in the Nirukta and Sabara's commentary on thePurva Mimamsa Sutra, its taxonomy is far more elaborate than either,involving thirty-five categories.

17 See Jha, Purva Mimramsa, . 166, for a full discussion and citation of these texts.18All translations of the Brhaddevatd are mine. Rfijendralala Mitra attempted a criticaledition in 1892. See Brhaddevata; or An Index to the Gods of the Rigveda by Saunaka, towhich have been added "Arsdnukramani," "Chandonukramani" and "Anuvdkanukra-mani" in the Form of Appendices, ed. Rajendralala Mitra, Bibliotheca Indica Series,vol. 127, n.s., nos. 722, 760, 794, 819 (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1889-93). Thisedition was quickly eclipsed by Arthur A. Macdonell's edition in 1904; his introductionroundly criticized Mitra's editorial principles (see Brhaddevata, ed. Arthur A. Macdonell,2 vols., Harvard Oriental Series [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1904]).Macdonell's edition was well received. Moriz Winternitz's generally favorable review("Brhaddevata," Wiener Zeitschrift fur die kunde des Morgenlande 19 [1905]: 422-26)made only the slight demur that Macdonell may have included a larger number of redun-dant or

superfluouslines than

necessary.Isidore

Scheftelowitz, who reviewed the workmainly with an interest in the khila portion of the Rg-Veda, agreed with this idea andremoved some lines from the text as later interpolations (see Isidore Scheftelowitz, "Re-view of Macdonell's The Brhaddevatd," eitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Ge-sellschaft 56 [1902]: 420-27, and Die Apokryphen des "Rgveda," no. 1 of IndischeForschungen [Breslau: Verlag von M. & H. Marcus, 1906]).

19 See Nirukta 1.15, where Yaska refutes Kautsa, who questions the authority of the Ve-das and asserts that Vedic mantras are meaningless. The substance of Kautsa's criticismsof Yaska and Yaska's rejoinder are discussed and amplified in the first chapter of Jaimini'sPuirvaMimamsa Sutras. See also Francis X. Clooney, Thinking Ritually (Vienna: de Nobili,1990.) See Ptrva Mimamsa Sutra 1.5 for the eternal relationship between words and their

meaning, 1.26 for an assertion of the everyday quality of Vedic language, and 2.1-23 fora discussion of significance of arthavdda. These are explanatory passages that are subor-dinate to codana, or ritual injunctions, but nonetheless meaningful as passages that provideincentives to and augmentation of sacrificial action.

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THE Brhaddevata

Motivation: to make known in the order of tradition, the deity of thepadas, the half-verses, the verses, and the hymns (1.1).20

Three main types of mantra (1.34):21Those prompted by the praise of a deityThose prompted by the power of a deityThose prompted by the power of one's own speech

Thirty-five variations on the main types (1.35-39):

Praise (stuti)Eulogy (prasamsa)Censure (ninda)Doubt (samsaya)Complaint (paridevana)Longing (sprha)Statement of desire (asis)Bragging (katthana)Entreaty (ydcna)Questioning (prasna)Summons (praisa)Enigma (pravalhika)Command (niyoga)Solicitation (anuyoga)Boasting (slagha)Lament (vilapita)Narration (dcikhydsatha)Dialogue (samlapa)Protecting statement

(paritrakhyana)2220 The Sanskrit reads,

Lewd verse (dhanasyd)Homage (namaskdra)Verbal hindrance (pratiradha)Resolve (samkalpa)Chatter (praldpa)Response (prativakya)Prohibition and instruction

(pratisedhopadesau)Intoxication (pramada)Denial (apahnava)Invitation (upapraisa)Agitation (samjvara)Astonishment (vismaya)Reviling (akrosa)Laudation (abhistava)Disdain (ksepa)Curse (sapa)

mantradrgbhyo namas krtva samamnayanupurvasah/siktargardharcapadanam gbhyo vaksyami daivatam//

In pada d, Muneo Tokunaga has rksu for rgbhyo. See his "Texts and Legends of theBrhaddevata"

Ph.D. diss.,Harvard

University, 1979), p. 1.21 As I have tentatively rendered this rather recalcitrant list, the first two classifica-tions, those mantras prompted by the praise (stutya) and power (vibhatya) of a deity, cor-respond to the classifications that the Brhaddevata makes earlier, those of praise (stuti)and desire (adis), or wanting something from a deity who has the power to give it (Brhad-devata 1.7-10). The final classification, "the power of one's own speech" (vakprabhdvaatmanah) perhaps conveys the idea that certain kinds of mantras may not be so plainly mo-tivated by the aims of the sacrifice as the first two kinds but derive their efficacy insteadfrom other suggestions made in the speech of the mantra tself. This idea is echoed in theSabara's Bhdsya on Pirva Mimdmsd 2.1.32, where, in his own taxonomy of mantras, heincludes a similar category of mantras that connote "powerful designation" or "powerful

expression" (sdmarthyam abhidhanam).2 Tokunaga substitutes paritra for Macdonell's pavitra, "purifying story." Tokunaga'sreading makes more sense, since an example of it from the Atharva Veda is given in 1.54,and nowhere does the Brhaddevata give an example of a purifying story.

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TAXONOMY RANSLATED

Intriguingly enough, the next place these formal taxonomies occur is inKautilya's Arthasastra,26 a manual of statecraft thought to have beencomposed at the beginning of the Mauryan empire under CandraguptaMaurya. It was developed, therefore, at approximately he same time as theBrhaddevata and the flourishing of the Mimamsa philosophy.27 And yet,the Arthas'stra's list has to do with the administration of the state, spe-cifically the infliction of sanction and punishment, and it involves writingin the style of an edict (sasana).

Certainly, it is no accident that Arthasdstra concerns itself with writ-ing, since it is primarily a manual of the state and not of the sacrifice.While it is not our purpose here to engage in the lengthy debate about thenature of writing in early India,28 t is clear from the Sitra literature, andcertainly suggested in the Aranyakas, that writing (of whatever degree ofsophistication) and oral forms were segregated according to these twoseparate spheres of statecraft and priestcraft. As is well known, oral in-struction was the jealously guarded purview of brahminical earning, and

writing, as many of the Sftras suggest,29 was the purview of legal pur-suits, complaints against fellow citizens, and so forth.

It is enticing, therefore, to pursue the question of how much the tax-onomies change when their referent is a written form of edict and not anoral form of mantra. Indeed, it becomes immediately apparent hat it doesmake a difference. Instead of a lengthy discussion on the qualities of tone,accent, and the like, as would be found in treatises on the pronunciationof mantra,30 Arthasdstra 2.10 discusses in detail both lekhasampad and

26 All references to the Arthasdstra are from R. P. Kangle's classic edition, The KautiliyaArthasdstra, 3 vols. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1988). I have modified the translationwhere necessary.27 See Kangle's lengthy discussion of the relationship between the Arthasdstra and theDharmasdstra, where he argues, in turn, with Stein on the "derivative" nature of theArthasdstra's ists and with E. H. Johnston, who put forward the idea that there was a fun-damental difference between the idea of Dharmasastra and that of Arthasdstra. Kangle'soverall argument is that, while the spheres of statecraft and priestcraft are to remain dis-tinct, the textual evidence shows that they are integrally connected and refer to each other(Kangle, ed., 3:89-96).

28 For the most recent addition to this debate, see Oskar von Hiniber's Der Beginn derSchrift undfruhe Schriftlichkeit in Indien (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und derLiterature; Stuttgart: F Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989); and Gaurisankara HiracandraOjha's Bharatiya pracina lipimala: The Palaeography of India (New Delhi: MunshiramManoharlal, 1971). See also T Vimalananda, "Evidence for the Use of Writing beforeAsoka," in Paranavitana Felicitation Volume, ed. N. A. Jayawickrama (Columbo: Guna-sena, 1965); and S. H. Levitt, "The Indian Attitude toward Writing," Indologica Taurin-ensia 13 (1985/86): 229-50.

29 See Gautama Dharmasutra 13.4; Vasistha Dharmasutra 16.10; and Visnu Dharmasutra6.23; Yajfiavalkya 2.22. More ambiguously, Manu 8.51 and 8.168 use the word karana inthe sense of a legal instrument that might be written or oral.

30 The PratiSakhya material has the most detailed commentary on the pronunciation ofmantra, although we find in works as early as the tenth mandala of the Rg-Veda and many

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lekhadosa-excellences and errors n writing. However, what is more in-

triguing is the fact that, given all the evidence for the discrete spheres ofwriting and orality in the Vedic and late-Vedic periods, the similaritiesbetween the sacrificial and royal taxonomies are so striking.

The little scholarship that exists on this passage in the Arthasastra doesnot make much of these similarities between it and Vedic sacrificial textsbut succumbs instead to the usual temptations either to exalt them or todenigrate them. Otto Stein, in his article "Versuche einer Analyse des Sas-anadhikara" has argued that the list is derived from the beginning of aes-

thetic theory of the classical period, the Alamnkarasastra, nd its referencesto lekhadosas, the above-mentioned errors n writing, are a case in point.31On the other hand, Stein argues that the pieces of the list that are notAlamkarasastra-derived are basically "primitive" n nature, plagiarizingthe learned treasuries of the early commentaries of the Nirukta and theBrhaddevatd. What is worse, according to Stein, is that all these lists rep-resent an early stage of thought that is decidedly pre-Paninean n nature.And, if anything s clear in the mire of Vedic scholarship, t is that the term

"pre-Paninean" an often be a carefully constructed euphemism for "notworth studying much because of its annoying lack of systematicity."That this taxonomy is pre-Paninean n nature s clearly the case, yet can

we be more specific about the intriguing dynamics of this plagiarism?To assert that the borrowing was motivated by self-aggrandizement (or,to use the more fashionable word, legitimation) is the least interestinghypothesis that can be made. What is more interesting is to inquire aboutthe form of aggrandizement and what can be learned about the nature of

the late-Vedic world in which Arthas'stra was written.First, the structure of the particular Arthasdstra passage echoes thestructure of the Vedic commentarial texts on mantra in some strikingways. The Arthasastra begins by stating the overall purpose of an edict,or utterance, as do Sabara, Saunaka, and Yaska. In addition, the Arthasas-tra articulates both the main types of edicts and the variations on the typesof edicts, just as the three previous taxonomies have listed the main typesof mantras and the various subtypes of mantras.

The Arthasdstra (2.10.13-21) goes on to include a number of gram-matical principles about the nature of nouns, verbs, and the like, thatecho directly the grammatical passages in the Nirukta (1.1-2) and theBrhaddevatd (1.30-31; 2.121) that preface their own taxonomies. (Allof these have to do with the distinction between "being" as the qualityof a noun, "becoming" as the quality of a verb, how many words should

brahmanas, elaborate reference to the importance of tone and accent as animportant

for-mal quality of mantra.31 Otto Stein, "Versuche einer Analyse des Sasanadhikara," eitschriftfur lndologie undIranistik 6 (1928): 45-71.

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be placed in an appropriately uttered mantra, etc.) Moreover, the general

principle of a good edict in the Arthasastra is the same as that of a goodmantra n the sacrificial texts; it is composed with consideration for thecircumstances for which it is written and in a manner benefiting therecipient (Arthasdstra 2.10.5). Similarly, in the Brhaddevatd, a mantrais composed with the devatd, or object of a mantra, always clearly inmind (Brhaddevatd 1.2-4, 76; 8.130-32). In addition, a well-composededict avoids redundancy of letters and contradiction of meaning(Arthasdstra 2.10.6-12), as does a well-composed mantra (Brhaddevatd

2.99-101).The Arthasdstra's ctual taxonomy of the properties of an edict is wherewe see the most striking parallel to sacrificial texts. The formal propertiesof mantra, used when a priest talks to a deity, are the same as the formalproperties of edict, when a king talks to his subjects, as is evident in thefollowing list.

KAUTILYA'S Arthasastra

Motivation: to compose edicts (sdsana) in order to give directions or or-ders, for kings principally depend on edicts, peace and war being rootedin them (2.10.1-2).32

Eight main types of edict (2.10.38):33Communication AuthorizationCommand News-givingGift-giving Reply

ExemptionUniversal

applicationThirteen variations on the main types (2.10.23-24):

Censure (nindd) Prohibition (pratisedha)Eulogy (prasamsd) Instruction (codand)Questioning (prcchd) Appeasement (sdntva)Narration (dkhydna) Help (abhyupapatti)Entreaty (arthand) Threatening and solicitationHindrance (pratydkhdna) (bhartsandnunayau)Derision (upalambha)

As is evident from the list, about half of these edicts derive di-rectly from the previous commentarial lists. Thus, the "extrasacrifi-

32 The Sanskrit reads,"sasane gasanam ity acaksate/sgsanapradhana hi rajanah, tan milatvat samdhivigrahayoh//."

33 The Sanskrit reads,

"prajfiapanajnfi aridanalekhas tatha parihara nisrstilekhau pravrttikas ca pratilekha evasarvatragag ceti hi sasanani/."

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cial" situations presumed by the Brhaddevata and its narratives abouthow mantras

were composed become truly extrasacrificial: these arepolitical situations in which speech travels through a messenger as achannel of the state, paralleling sacrificial situations in which speechtravels through a Brahmin as a channel of cosmic forces.34

Indeed, the Arthascstra goes on to give examples of each edict-utterance, again in formal similarly with the Brhaddevata's ong list ofexemplifications of particular mantras quoted above. Yet, the Arthasastradoes not use the charming narrative situations that the Brhaddevata doesto illustrate the use of a

particular form of speech. As the Arthasdstra2.25-36 states: Mention of defects concerning birth, body, or actions isa king's form of abuse. Mention of the merits of birth, body, or actionsis a king's form of praise. "Give it to me" is a king's form of request. "Iwill not give" is a king's form of refusal. A king's solicitation is threefold:solicitation for a person to do a thing, solicitation when a person hastransgressed a law, and, finally, solicitation in an emergency situation.Gone are the star-crossed lovers, the bragging gods, and the dialoguesbetween human and

animal or husband and wife. Instead, stark politicalscenarios are invoked in which the persuasive force of language takes ona whole new dimension.

KINGLY SPEECH

In the light of all this, it is possible simply to conclude that the mantra hasbecome secularized-extracted from sacrificial negotiations with deitiesand other picturesque Vedic characters and placed into negotiations

between ruler and the ruled. Such a conclusion would be valid only if wesaw secularization as a linear, irreversible process, as applicable to theMauryan empire of the fourth century B.C.E. s it is to twentieth-centuryIndia. However, I think another model applies, one that is less concernedwith the misleading categories of sacred and secular and more con-cerned with the ritual role of the king. This is a very old paradigm wherebyKsatriya, or royal, power can only be legitimate if it derives from brah-minical, sacrificial power.

The details of the ancient Indian consecration ceremonies, for example,the abhiseka, and the rajasuya and the vajapeya, have been admirably an-alyzed by Jan Heesterman, and it would be unnecessary at this point to re-hearse all of Heersterman's hypotheses about the nature of kingship intheir detail. However, one of his basic tenets involves the ambivalence inthe early Vedic period between the Ksatriya sacrificer and the Brahmin

34 In a similar vein, Robert Lingat, in his Les sources du droit traditionel de l'Inde (Paris:Mouton, 1967), has argued that the king's "punishment" parallels the priests "purification"(pp. 260-62).

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performer of the sacrifice.35 The dilemma is that the king has to be

both part of the community and external to it, and Indian civilization usesthe opposition between the settled agricultural ommunity (grama) and thealien outside sphere of the jungle (dranya) to achieve this paradigm. Theking must belong to the grama, where he is consecrated, but his authoritymust be placed in the alien sphere of dranya, where one sacrifices. And be-cause that authority is sacrificial, it is also ultimately brahminical innature.

At first glance, the later texts seem to indicate that kingly authority does

indeed seem to have some independence from brahminical power and thatthe secularization hypothesis might hold. From the Vedic rajasuya rit-ual36 we know that a principal symbol of temporal power, implying pun-ishment, is the danda, or staff. In later texts danda comes to meanpunishment tself and is identified with dharma, hus gaining in status. Infact, the term's use in the Arthasdstra has led some to speculate about theincreasing secularization of the nascent Indian state.37 In the Athasastra,danda, or political science, is elevated in status to one of the four sci-

ences, the others being philosophy (anviksiki), dharma, and the increaseof prosperity (vartta) (1.2.1-8). Later, Kautilya states that danda is evenmore than this: it the instrument of the prosperity of the other three pur-suits. The conduct of danda (dandaniti) aims at acquiring that which hasnot been acquired, protecting that which has been acquired, increasingthat which has been protected, and bestowing that which has been in-creased on a worthy recipient (1.4.4-6).

However, despite such strong assertions about the power of danda,

there is a great deal of the old ambiguity still remaining with respect toroyal relations with Brahmins. The Arthasastra lists kings of earlier timeswho perished because they lusted after Brahmin women or used violenceagainst Brahmins (1.6.5-6). The purohita, or king's advisor, wieldedgreat influence over the king and was considered a member of the family(1.9.9-10), and Brahmins were also appointed as ambassadors becausethey were more immune from the wrath of other kings whose courts theyvisited (1.16.14-15). They were also able to avert divine and human ca-

lamities by means of Atharvan remedies (1.9.11). For our present pur-35 See, among many other works, Jan Heesterman, Inner Conflict of Tradition Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1986), and Ancient Indian Royal Consecration (The Hague:Mouton, 1957); W. Caland and V. Henry, LAgnistoma (Paris: Leroux, 1906); Jan Gonda,Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View (Leiden: Brill, 1966); Lingat;J. F Richards, ed., Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Madison: University of Wis-consin, Department of South Asian Studies, 1978); and Louis Dumont, "The Conceptionof Kingship in Ancient India," Contributions to Indian Sociology 6 (1962): 48-77.

36 See Atharva Veda 4.8.1; 11.7.7; Satapatha Brahmana 5.2.3; Aitareya Brahmana 8.16-17; Taittiriya Samhita 1.8.1; Kathaka Samhita 15.1; Maitrayani Samhita 2.6; and VajasaneyiSamhita 10.37 See esp. Dumont, pp. 54-56.

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pose, it is especially relevant that calamities like fire, flood, and plague

could be overcome not only by propitiating deities but by propitiatingBrahmins themselves (9.7.83-84; 4.2.44).38 Thus, despite whateverclaims might be made for the autonomy of danda, brahminical power al-ways looms in the background.

This model of ambivalence is intriguingly relevant to attitudes towardspeech itself. Much has been written about the brahminical relationshipto speech, but indeed very little about the king's relationship to that samespeech or what traditions might lie behind it. Not surprisingly, kingly

speech is very much in keeping with this kind of ambivalent, derivativenature of kingly authority.Some specific examples will be of use here. In the Vedic sacrifice, the

danda is a typical attribute of the consecrated sacrificer, and, in the ra-jasuya, the staff is handed to him at the time when he is supposed to setout on his symbolic expedition to the forest. The ritual texts say that inthis context it represents "voice," or speech, who took refuge in the trees,that is to say, the aranya, or forest. No power is manifest without the pres-ence of

voice.39 The king's danda, then, is intimately associated withspeech, and it must be found outside, in the sacrificial realm. Even moreinteresting, however, is the fact that in the ritual manual, this danda is notgiven to the king once and for all but must be returned after the king hassymbolically wandered to the Maitravaruna priest, the Brahmin who actsas a leader of sacrificial priests.40 The authority of speech is quite literally(as well as figuratively) derived from the Brahmin and must be returnedto the Brahmin. Notice, too, that in the Arthasastra passage quoted above,where

Brahmins are propitiated n times of calamity, the Brahmin moveseven beyond his role as the bestower of powerful speech and becomes thereceiver of it as well.

This ritual derivation of kingly authority from brahminical speech isalso borne out mythologically in a number of Vedic commentarial tales.One rather charming tale we find in the Brhaddevati (5.50-81)-thestory of Syavasva. In summary, the story goes as follows: The boySyavasva accompanies his father to perform a Vedic sacrifice as an ap-

prentice.At

the sacrifice, he falls in love with the daughter of the royalpatron of the sacrifice. However, Syavasva is not prestigious enough towin the daughter of the king; he is only an apprentice accompanying hisfather on his sacrificial duties. The words of the king's wife reinforce this

38 See also Arthasastra 1.19.29, 31; 5.2.37; and 3.5.28 for evidence of preferentialtreatment of a special class of Brahmins, the stotriyas, over other Brahmins.

39 Taittiriya Samhita 6.1.4.1; Maitrayani Samhita 3.6.8, 70.16; Kathaka Samhita 23.4,79.11. See also the discussion in Caland and Henry: "II ne devient plus desormais tenir

aucun propos qui ne soit sacre" (p. 19).40 Apastamba Srauta Sutra 10.27.2.

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quite strongly: he is not a rsi and thus cannot marry into the family. The

queen herself comes from a family of royal rsis. Syavasva then meetswith good fortune. He encounters Kings Taranta and Purumi ha andQueen Sasiyasi on the path, and they bestow on him great wealth. How-ever, here he utters a statement that essentially functions as the mainpoint of the story: he knows that kingly wealth and prestige will not bethe right form of "exchange" to win her. No amount of wealth can matchthe power of mantric speech. Syavas'va must be initiated into being a rsi,and only the gods can do this for him. Obligingly, the Vedic gods the

Maruts appear, and, in a comical moment's blunder, he asks them bluntlywho they are. Responding to his father's horror, he remembers that man-tras must indeed be produced and does so accordingly. The mantras sat-isfy the Maruts, who give him their breastplates, and he, "only just a rsi"sends the goddess Night off on an errand to recite mantras as proof ofhis newfound status as a rsi. Thus the king, the royal patron of the sac-rifice and the father of the young woman, is convinced of Syavasva'spower of speech. The king apologizes profusely, allows Syavasva to take

his daughter, and gives him gifts besides.In this story, it is only brahminical mantras that make it possible forSyavasva to earn the status of a rsi, to win the bride, and to obtaingifts. All three benefits are produced from the mantras arising from asingle vision of the Maruts. Even more relevant to our topic, however,is that Syavas'va is going to marry into a royal family, and it is theroyal family itself that insists that he earn his stripes as a brahminicalrsi. His brahminical power of speech is necessary for the king's royal

authorityto be continued and maintained.

Another tale, told by these sacrificial commentators and found in otherVedic texts, acts as a kind of negative example of this relationship be-tween kingly authority and brahminical speech-the well-known story ofVrsa Jana. According to that tale, King Trayaruna f the line of Iksvakuis sitting in his chariot, and his purohita, Vrsa, son of Jana, takes over thereins. The chariot, going along, severs the head of a Brahmin youth. "Youare at fault " says the king to the purohita. "No, you are at fault," saysthe

purohitato the

king.In the

JaminiyaBrahmana version of the

story,the two repair to the Iksvaku elders for a judgment. The elders proclaimthat the one who holds the reins is the murderer; hus, Vrsa Jana is ac-cused. Vrsa Jana utters an appropriate mantra o bring the boy back to life.However, he then goes to his father and complains of the false judg-ment against him. In all versions of the tale, because of the anger of thersi, the heat of the king's fire disappears, and none of the oblations castonto the fire are cooked. Then the king goes to find Vrsa Jana, propitiateshim, brings him back, and establishes him as a

purohita again.After he

is justly propitiated, Vrsa Jana looks for the heat of the fire in the house

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of the king, and he discovers that the wife of the king is a ghoul and has

covered the fire with her cushion. Sitting with her on the cushion on achair, he then addresses her with Vedic verses and restores the fire to thehouse (Brhaddevata 5.13-23; Jaminiya Brahmana 3.94-96; PaicavimsaBrahmana 13.3.12).

In all versions of the story, Vrs' Jana s upset because a faulty judgmenthas been pronounced against him, either by King Trayaruna imself or bythe Iksvaku court to which the two go for appeal. And it is the Ksatriyajudgment that, because of its faulty nature, destroys the crucial element of

a royal household-the domestic fire. Vrsa Jana's Vedic verses come tothe rescue. Thus, the king cannot put his own house to rights; it is only themantras, or speech of a Brahmin, that can reverse the effect of the faultyroyal judgment.

To conclude: such a rich amount of material associated with the tax-onomies of mantra shows that it might be best to part company with thosescholars who find such indigenous categories uninteresting or unhelpful.First, I have shown that the aesthetic forms of sacred speech are in-

tegrally bound up with motives of the taxonomizer. In the terms of Lis-tenwissenschaft, we have better understood the persuasive and lastingimages and categories that serve best as factors of coherency in Vedic andlate-Vedic list making. The Nirukta's taxonomy emphasizes the mantrasthat involve bhdva, or the essential activity of a deity, because such em-phasis best facilitates its own process of etymology. The Mimamsa textslist the kinds of mantras that might be concerned with that philosophy'sown emphasis on ritual injunction and clarification of ritual procedure.

The Brhaddevatd's axonomy depends heavily on the narrative contextsthat most amply support ts project of naming and illustrating the appro-priate deity for each mantra.

However, it is also possible to discern the ways in which persuasivetaxonomical categories are transferred rom one list to another. As if thevarious brahminical attitudes toward sacrificial speech were not complexenough, the taxonomy of mantra also mediates the even more complexrelationship between royal and priestly powers. These lists are also mod-els for

kings, the matrices of a transformation rom an aesthetics of sac-rifice to an aesthetics of administrative governance through the languageof writing. Yet such borrowing is not simply borrowing: it is based onvery basic ideas about the brahminical nature of an appropriate utter-ance. Simply put, speech moves in one direction-from priest to poten-tate-and Kautilya was wise enough to remember that statecraft andspeechcraft must be configured accordingly.

Such an examination of the early Indian case adds a particular modifi-cation to the

enterpriseof

Listenwissenschaft,both ancient and modern.

The four taxonomies reveal that lists are not only objects to be protected

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350 Speech Acts and Kings' Edicts

anxiously, whose limitations must be overcome by the ingenuity of the

interpretive elite. Lists can also provide the stability and authority thatcan legitimate a change in perspective, whether it be from oral to writtenor from sacrifice to statesmanship. Thus, Rush Limbaugh, JoycelynElders, Kautilya, and Saunaka have more in common than one mightthink; they all have used lists as the agents, as well as the objects, of so-cial transformation.

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