Review

Author(s): STEPHANIE W JAMISON

Review by: STEPHANIE W JAMISON
Source: Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1996), pp. 103-108
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23549624
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Book reviews MTSR 8-1 (1996) 103

book to be read for its theoretical or methodological approach to religion
in particular, Wolf's text is a quick and engaging read that provides both
innovative form and intriguing content of interest to ethnographers of all
persuasions
Drew University

PAMELA E KLASSEN

References

Abu-Lughod, Lila (1993) Writing Women's Worlds Bedouin Stories Berkeley: Uni
versity of California Press

Behar, Ruth (1993) Translated Woman Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story
Boston: Beacon Press

Brown, Karen McCarthy (1991) Mama Lola A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Berke
ley: University of California Press

Clifford, James - George E Marcus (eds ) (1986) Writing Culture The Poetics and
Politics of Ethnography Berkeley: University of California Press

J C Heesterman, The Broken World of Sacrifice An Essay in Ancient Indian

Ritual Chicago and London University of Chicago Press, 1993 296 pp

ISBN 0-8014-2433-X $60 00, $25 95 (pbk)
The system of solemn (s'rauta) ritual of Vedic India is by far the most elab
orate and best documented of any ancient culture Though it has much to
teach scholars interested in ritual and ancient religious practice in general,
it has not been sufficiently exploited in such studies - no doubt because of
the enormous amount of difficult textual material and the almost fantastic
fussiness of its detail Whatever "fame" Vedic srauta ritual has achieved in
recent years is due in great part to the work of J C Heesterman, the distin
guished Dutch Indologist, whose book under review synthesizes a lifetime of
stimulating work on Vedic ritual
For those who already know Heesterman's work, particularly the studies
of various dates collected in The Inner Conflict of Tradition (1985), many

of the ideas in this new book will be familiar However, the amplitude of
a book-length form, which allows each of the ideas to be fully worked out
and integrated with the others, makes it seem in many ways a wholly new
work Heesterman's profound knowledge of Vedic ritual texts, the masterful
control of a complex argument, the deft deployment of ritual minutiae and
mythological narrative are all handled so effortlessly that those unfamiliar
with Vedic ritual texts are not burdened with the knowledge of how difficult

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104 Book reviews MTSR 8-1 (1996)

it is to control even a fraction of this material But those of us who have ven

tured into the srauta swamp can regard his achievement with a connoisseur's

appreciative eye
In the following paragraph let me briefly summarize Heesterman's views
on the nature and development of Vedic ritual, as contained in this and ear

lier works srauta ritual as presented in the texts of the middle and late
Vedic period is a flat and mechanistic procedure, whose extravagance of de
tail was developed in response to the loss of its emotional core But behind
this technocratic ritual facade we can discern its prehistoric origins in real,
emotionally engaging sacrifice The primary shift has been the loss of the
element of danger, which was embodied in the agonistic character of the
earlier system In prt-srauta ritual individual sacrificers competed with each

other in the same arena, even to the death, and this competition was em
bedded in a ceaseless round of exchanging of roles and shouldering of risk,
of "conflict and alliance", that planted sacrifice firmly in the centre of the
socioeconomic world Sacrifice mattered But by "classical" srauta ritual the

contest, and hence the peril, have been eliminated The ritual has become
"monistic", centred on a single sacrificer, who therefore can be fully confi
dent of his ritual success - but who in consequence loses his connection to
the larger social world Ritual doesn't matter

In this book Heesterman develops this argument by a searching inves

tigation of a number of separate elements in the ritual complex, asking of
each "[w]hy is it there and where did it come from?" The topics treated are

"Sacrifice" (7-44), "Ritual" (45-85), "The cult of the fire" (86-110), "The
periodicity and mobility of the fire" (111-141), "Priest and sacrificer" (142

164), "The consecrated" (165-187), and "The sacrificial meal" (188-214),

with an introduction (1-6) and an epilogue (215-222) rounding out the text
In this space I cannot do justice to the subtlety of his provocative main
argument - or to the light it throws on numerous details One of the pleasures

of reading this book for me was to see familiar (if peculiar) pieces of Vedic
ritual given entirely novel interpretations within the overall structure of the
primary argument Some of these interpretations are more compelling than
others like any strongly focussed lens, Heesterman's thesis sometimes reveals
vivid detail in all its clarity and sometimes grotesquely distorts it But, unlike
Frits Staal, the other well-known commentator on Vedic ritual, whose title,
"The meaninglessness of ritual" (1979), crudely but not misleadingly sums

up his views on the subject, Heesterman always does ritual the justice of
treating its content seriously - but, unfortunately, only in the distant and
unrecoverable past

I choose to treat the content of his book just as seriously, and here I
must admit to considerable disagreement with many of his procedures and
assumptions about Vedic ritual and, indeed, ritual in general The sum of these

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Book reviews MTSR 8-1 (1996) 105

disagreements leads me to doubt that Heesterman's elaborate reconstruction
of the past is necessary to infuse rauta ritual with meaning, which seems
amply present in the ritual as we have it
The first doubt I have about his methodology is his careful avoidance of
actual history for imagined history The texts of "classical" rauta ritual are
the theological commentaries known collectively as the Brhmanas and the
somewhat later prescriptive ritual manuals, the rauta stras, but these are
not the earliest Vedic ritual texts we possess The first Vedic text, the Rig
Veda (RV), contains over a thousand hymns to various divinities, hymns that
are employed in the later classical rauta ritual It is quite clear from the large
amount of shared technical terminology (names of priests, ritual implements,

emplacements, and techniques, names of rituals themselves, etc ) that the RV

represents an earlier stage of the same ritual system found in the later rauta

texts If one wishes to trace the history of classical rauta ritual, the most
obvious place to begin is the earliest attestation of this cult But Heesterman

essentially never uses the evidence of the RV, not even as a way-station
on the route from his reconstructed prehistory to the classical rauta texts
Instead he creates this prehistory entirely from hints found in the rauta texts

His avoidance of the RVic evidence is not surprising to those who know that
text, for it provides little or no support for Heesterman's reconstructions

Several of the methods he uses to create these reconstructions raise ques

tions about the validity of the assumptions underlying them One of these
procedures is a familiar one in linguistic reconstruction and, as such, unex
ceptionable When one discovers a fact, be it a grammatical form or a ritual
procedure, that does not make sense in the synchronic system (grammar or
ritual), it is often useful to consider it the relic of an older stage of that
system, unthinkingly preserved even after the systematic support for it disap

peared Heesterman is a master at identifying such details and turning them

to the advantage of his argument Examples abound, I will only mention here
the discrepancy between the means of sacrificial killing in classical rauta
ritual (suffocation) and the need to procure "heads" for the building of the
fire altar (73 and passim), which Heesterman uses to argue for different and

bloodier procedures in earlier times

My question here is not about the use of this technique for reconstruction,
but rather its reverse There are numerous other cases in which Heesterman

asserts that details that do not make sense are the result of recent tampering
with the ritual The latterday ritualists, in modifying a procedure that is no
longer to their taste, have inserted or altered details that fracture the internal
consistency of an older system (see, e g , the discussion of the agnydheya

['establishment of the fires'] in sections 3 3 and 3 4) In other words, some

jarring details are precious survivals of the old agonistic, sacrificial stage
and others were invented by reforming theologians to solve the intractable

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106 Book reviews MTSR 8-1 (1996)

problems caused by their reform Heesterman gives us no principled way of
deciding which is which - beyond the criterion that some support his theory
and some don't

A more dubious method of reconstruction is the constant derivation of

the figurative and symbolic from the literal Heesterman regularly argues
that apparent symbolic representations in srauta ritual are denatured, "de
constructed" survivals of actual, literal procedures in the older system For
example, the presence of a chariot or even a chariot wheel points to a real,
lengthy journey embedded in the older sacrifice, a symbolic contest (with

dice or with words) to a real fight to the death, even a somewhat warily
viewed cow harkens back to the early days of bovine domestication Here I
would pose a general question about ritual - to what extent are we required
(or allowed) to assume that a particular element in a ritual is the diachronic
schematization of something originally real? can the construction of ritual not

begin with the controlled, symbolic representation of something desired or

feared? If we answer affirmatively to the latter question (as I, at any rate, do),

much of the theoretical support for Heesterman's reconstruction evaporates

And, in fact, is this reconstruction necessary? Is attested srauta ritual so

pat, so mechanistic, so devoid of risk, benefit, and emotional intensity, in
short so bankrupt that only endowing it with a gloriously different history
will explain how it came to exist at all? Has the whole enterprise been reduced

to a solipsistic failsafe procedure in which one man, cut off from all social
interaction, goes through motions so meaningless that the ritual system must

ultimately collapse in on itself? I do not think so, and I think Heesterman

ignores or misconstrues the evidence for the essential seriousness of attested
srauta ritual

First of all, we differ on the reasons for the astounding complexity of ritual

detail Heesterman suggests (e g 62-63) that the gradual elaboration and

refinement of ritual practice filled "the vacant space" left on the elimination

of the agonistic sacrifice, is a substitute for it I would contend in contrast

that the elaboration is actually an attempt to control the risky activities and

fearsome forces involved in ritual every contingency is covered because

every one brings potential danger Heesterman himself seems to make a
similar argument when he suggests that the regulations concerning the sacred

fires are an attempt at "strict ritual control" of fire, because "there always
lurks the danger of its going out of control" (section 4 3) The sheer baroque
complexity of srauta ritual seems to me to testify to the chaotic and powerful
forces the ritualists felt they were confronting
These forces are inherently bound up with the contact between the sac

rificer and others As I have already noted, Heesterman believes that the
sacrificer of classical srauta ritual acts alone and is caught in a "monistic"
trap that isolates him from the social world around him Heesterman recog

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Book reviews MTSR 8-1 (1996) 107

nizes but does not entirely explain away the social aspects of srauta ritual
the assemblage of priests belonging to different ritual schools, the artisans
who prepare the implements, the extras who figure in the more elaborate
rites However, he does not even recognize perhaps the most important hu
man contact, namely the sacrificer's wife In order to be a srauta sacrificer, a
man must be married, and his wife must participate in all the rituals 1 So, by
virtue of the required wife, the sacrificer is enmeshed in the life of society,
the familial alliances established by his marriage and the continuance of the
familial line through offspring The success (or failure) of his ritual involves
and crucially affects these social bonds There is no place in this system for
monkish isolation

But there is a much more important set of actors on the ritual stage,
who are responsible for the real danger and the real potential benefit of its
performance, namely, the gods and divine forces who throughout the ritual

are invoked, worshipped, offered to, beseeched for blessings - and feared
The most curious aspect of all of Heesterman's work on Vedic ritual is that he
utterly ignores the beings to whom the ritual is ostensibly (and, in my view,
really) directed he treats the ritual as entirely secular and this-worldly, with

the gods mere pasteboard props In his view the only contact the sacrificer
ever made was with his (reconstructed) human rival, and when this rival
vanished from the system, the opposing and complementary party to the
sacrificer vanished, too Heesterman properly emphasizes the model of the
ritual as a hospitable meal offered to guests, he identifies the guests with the
sacrificer's rivals in his reconstructed contest, and contends that the hospitality

model no longer fits the classical srauta ritual since the rivals/guests have
disappeared But this reckons without the gods, who are constantly depicted as
the guests of the sacrificer Classical srauta ritual remains at heart a hospitality

rite, with a set of divine guests who may always disrupt the feast if they are
not properly entertained

In deemphasizing the gods Heesterman is tacitly following a commonplace

in Vedic studies that by the middle Vedic period the ritual has transcended

the gods and controls them, but this is a commonplace that we take more

seriously than we perhaps should It is a species of wishful thinking the

sacrificer hopes that through correct performance of the ritual he will compel
the gods to do his bidding and will keep in order the cosmic forces that control

the natural world, but these gods and these forces are ever on his mind and
not entirely predictable The continued and painstaking performance of ritual
is necessary to make contact with and exert influence on them, and such
contact is a very risky business Far from a flat and affectless procedure,
1 For an extended investigation of the wife's role in srauta ritual, see my forthcoming book,
Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer's Wife

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108 Book reviews MTSR 8-1 (1996)

s'rauta ritual as presented by its practitioners is a fraught and frightening
enterprise, but the game is worth the candle
In dwelling at this length on matters of disagreement, I do not at all intend

to detract from the great importance and the many pleasures of this book
In his lifework Prof Heesterman has almost singlehandedly made reflection
on and interpretation of Vedic ritual an intellectually exciting venture, and 1

would hope that, with his appreciation of the exhilaration and the rewards
of the contest, he would welcome other contestants in this most challenging
arena

Harvard and Yale Universities

STEPHANIE W JAMISON

References

Heesterman, J C (1985) The Inner Conflict of Tradition, Essays in Indian Ritual,

Kingship, and Society Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Jamison, Stephanie W (forthcoming) Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer's Wife Women, Rit
ual, and Hospitality in Ancient India Oxford: Oxford University Press
Staal, Frits (1979) The meaninglessness of ritual Numen 26:2-22

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