Sacrificial Violence and Textual Battles PDF

Sacrificial Violence and Textual Battles: Inner Textual Interpretation in the Sanskrit
Mahābhārata
Author(s): Tamar C. Reich
Source: History of Religions, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Nov., 2001), pp. 142-169
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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TamarC. Reich SACRIFICIAL
VIOLENCE AND
TEXTUAL BATTLES:
INNER TEXTUAL
INTERPRETATION IN
THE SANSKRIT
MAHABHARATA
TEXTUAL EXPANSION AS INTERPRETATIONAND DEBATE

If "epic" means "long," then the SanskritMahabharata,traditionallyes-
timated to be 100,000 verses long, is the most "epic" of them all. The
text is highly heterogeneous, however, not only because of manuscript
variation but also because the narrative branches off into numerous
subnarrativesand is densely interwoven with theological discussions, rit-
ual lore, legal discourses, philosophical, cosmological, and astronom-
ical instruction.
This textual condition has generally been attributed to the massive
process of textual expansion that the traditionhas undergone. The tradi-
tion had evolved orally over a long period before it was put into writing
and has clearly continued to be performed and expanded on even after
writing became an importantfactor in the text's life. Throughoutthis life,
textual expansion has occurred. The oral narratorsexpanded on the re-
ceived text in performance, and the scribes tended to opt for the longer
version when two manuscripts varied. Certain formal qualities of the
text, such as the emboxed-frame (in other words, frame-within-frame)
structure,as well as the fact that the bard'snarrationis addressedto a lis-
An earlier version of this article was presented at a conference on "Epic: Performance

and Reception" at the Chicago Humanities Institute, University of Chicago, October 12,
1996. I am grateful to Laurie Patton for reading the manuscriptand making many helpful
suggestions. I alone am responsible for the conclusions reached here.
? 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/2002/4102-0003$02.00
History of Religions 143
tener who frequently poses questions and requests further elaboration,

also support,perhaps even invite, textual expansion.
Early (late nineteenth and early twentieth century) Eurocentricschol-
arship did not appreciatethe Mahabharata'stextual heterogeneity, which
obviously upset these scholars'genre expectations.They regardedthe ex-
pansion of the text as textual degeneration. More recent scholarship has
attempted to conceptualize the Mahabharata'stextual identity in more
positive terms, introducing a variety of theoretical models such as "na-
tional library,""fluid text," and "open text." My own approach,a sample
of which I will present here, is to view the process of textual expansion
in terms of "inner textual interpretation/reception."By using this term, I
am suggesting of course that the Mahabharatadefies our commonsense
distinctions between text and commentary,a text and its reception. This
article will use a relatively short unit from the Mahabharata'sfourteenth
book, the Asvamedhika Parvan, to demonstratemy approach.1
The Asvamedhika Parvantakes place after the great war of the Bhara-
tas, which is the subject of the epic, has ended. The main events of the
Parvan are two: the performance of a royal horse sacrifice (an asva-
medha) by Yudhisthira,the head of the winning party, and the still-birth
and miraculous revival of Arjuna'sgrandson, Pariksit, destined to be the
sole member of the Bharatadynasty to survive the war. The bulk of the
book, however, consists of excursions into a strangemix of subnarratives
and philosophical, theological, and ritual discourses. The only thing all
these materialsseem to have in common is some kind of association with
the notion of sacrifice, though they vary quite radically in their under-
standing of the term. The Parvanis thus an excellent example of hetero-
geneity of the Mahabharata.
Why the inclusion of all these materials, which appear to be both di-
gressive and generically varied, in this single book? I contend that they
constitute partof an ongoing culturaldebate about the meaning of a cen-
tral trope in the Mahabharata,the comparison of the bloody war of the
Bharatas to a huge sacrifice. The Parvan, like much of the Mahabharata
text, is a result of a textual expansion process motivated by various
agents' desire to insert their own position on what for them is an already
given text of canonical importanceThus, the Mahabharatatextual tradi-
tion is a case of the sedimentation of debate in Obeyesekere's terms.2
As Patton points out, Obeyesekere argues that when it comes to myth,
1
My treatmentof this unit is part of a more extended argument See TamarReich, "A
Battlefield of a Text: Inner Textual Interpretationin the Sanskrit Mahabharata" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Chicago, 1998). All quotations from the Mahabharataare from V. S.
Sukthankeret al., eds., Mahabharata, 27 vols. (Poona: BhandarkarOriental Research In-
stitute, 1927-70). All translations from the Mahabharataare my own.
2 Gananath
Obeyesekere, The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformationin Psycho-
analysis and Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 130-37.
144 Sacrificial Violence
debate is a "hidden process" and he distinguishes between collective

"myth association" and individual "myth interpretation."I agree with
Patton's objection that debate concerning myth can be more or less
explicit, depending on the circumstances.3Patton deals with the Brhad-
devatd, a text that is explicitly interpretive, and which has relatively
well-defined recensions, and is even able to treat textual interpolations
as archeological layers.4 The case of the Mahabharatais far more com-
plex. Here we have the whole range of debate, from hidden to fully ex-
plicit, and historical layers are notoriously difficult to separate,despite a
heroic attemptby Ian Proudfoot.5
Much of the debate within the Mahabharatais, however, quite explicit.
The short unit before us is a good example of this. Of the four stories
that constitute it, the first three stories are obviously quite critical of the
sacrificial ideology of the preceding section. The last story attacks the
view expressed in the first three. Furthermore,I will show below that
the authors of these stories use a discursive form that enables them to
articulate the debate in terms that are continuous with their sacrifice-
centered tradition.They resort to an old genre, the sacrificial verbal con-
test, and so they are able to place their revisionist interpretiveagendas in
the mouths of the authorityfigures of the Vedic sacrificial tradition,the
great dsis and the gods themselves.
Elsewhere I have argued that the same subtle but highly strategic
move shapes the debate concerning sacrifice and violence, which is the
subject of the Asvamedhika Parvan as a whole.6
3 Laurie L. Patton, Myth as Argument: The Brhaddevatd as Canonical Commentary

(Berlin: DeGuyter/Mouton, 1995), p. 43, n. 41.
4 Ibid., 404.
p.
5 Ian Proudfoot, Ahimsa and a Mahabharata
Story, n.s. no. 9 of Asian Studies Mono-
graphs (Canberra:AustralianNational University, 1987). Some years ago Proudfoothad in-
deed suggested a critical method by which he hoped more information about the point at
which differenttextual units have entered the manuscripttraditioncould be attained.He an-
alyzed the Tulddhdraepisode of the Moksadharmasubparvan(Mahabharata12.252-56),
taking into account sequential variations, and concluded that at least nine short passages in
that section are what he called "contaminations"despite being universally attested. On the
basis of this sample, he proposed a more rigorous form of stemmatics, which would take
sequential variation into account. The result of this method, if applied, would clearly be to
relegate an even great portion of the Mahabhgratato App. I, pp. 37-46). Proudfoot argued
that his method of separatingthe text into layers allows us to see the historical layering of
the very idea with which we are concerned, nonviolence (ahimsa), in the unit. Proudfoot's
subtle analysis of the differentformulations of what is often quite indiscriminatelyput un-
der the general rubric of the term ahimsd is excellent. I have elsewhere explained that I
agree with him that much of the material contained in the Mahabharatais probably a later
"expansion,"and yet the text critical method that he suggests in order actually to separate
layers of the text is not viable in my view. See Reich (n. 1 above), pp. 75-77.
6 Reich,
chap. 3.
SACRIFICE AND BATTLE IN THE MAHABHARATA

Scholars of Vedic literaturehave long been fascinated and perplexed by
a complex of motifs, which I will refer to here as "agonistic."7First and
foremost among these is the liturgical evocation of an eternal strife be-
tween Devas ("gods") and Asuras ("anti-gods"). Srauta rituals include
also a variety of ritual performanceshaving to do with conflict and com-
petition: activities such as mock fights, ritual attacks on the person of
the sacrificer, ritual exchanges of obscenities, ritual gambling, and rit-
ual verbal contests. Such practices seem to belong in a tribal and no-
madic social formation in which conflict over the control of pasture and
cattle is an everyday matter,and status relationsare relatively fluid. Thus,
it seems that such elements are residual from an earlier period. Scholars
are still debating the exact description of the society in which such ritu-
als prevailed and the exact nature of the transition from such a society
to classical Brahmanism. It seems that for "classical" Brahmanism-a
hierarchical, purity-orientedideology-the association of sacrifice with
power struggle has become problematic. Nevertheless, the existence and
centrality of such elements, even in the mid- and late-Vedic corpus, is
not in doubt. Stories about competitions between gods, between sages
and gods, between sages and sages aboundin these later texts too and at-
test to the continuing perception that an intimate connection exists be-
tween sacrifice and competition, sacrifice and power encounter.8
The Mahabharatatoo is replete with evocations of an agonistic cosmic
order. The epic battle is represented as a transposition from heaven to
earth of the ongoing conflict between the Devas and their heavenly ad-
versaries, the Asuras.9 It is not quite clear how this agonistic paradigm
should be understoodin the Mahabharata'sworld. The two more simplis-
tic explanations, namely, the historical one ("a battle once took place and
the story is a distant record of that battle") and the allegorical one ("the
story is really about the strife between good and evil") have long been
discarded.
A central trope in the Mahabharatais the triple equation of the sacred
order (dharma) with sacrifice (yajna, medha, vahni), on the one hand,
and with strife (rana, ahava, yuddha), on the other hand.10In the text of
the Mahabharataitself, the bloody battle of Kuruksetrais frequently
7 After Jan C.
Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985).
8 For example, Patton, pp. 215-53, deals with stories from the Brhaddevata about en-
counters between rsis and gods.
9 Mahabharata1.58.
10Mahabharata5.57.12-14; 139.29-44; 154.4; 18.2.2. See Alf Hiltebeitel, The Ritual
of Battle: Krsna in the Mahabharata (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 318;
and also Gerrit Jan Held, The Mahabharata: An Ethnological Study (Amsterdam: Uitge-
versmaatschappijHolland, 1935), pp. 270-71.
comparedto a sacrifice, because, as the story goes, a whole generationof

warriorchieftains all but perished in it.
The sacrificial activities that figure prominently in the Mahabharata
have definite agonistic overtones. The Rajasiya (royal consecration rit-
ual), which occurs in the Sabha Parvan, culminates in what seems a
purely political and personal encounter between Krsna and an opposing
king by the name of Sisupala. Such encounters are however typical of
agonistic rituals. The Rajasiiya itself requires that "the sacrificer's son
should shoot an arrow at a prince.""1Van Buitenen has argued that "the
circumstancesof the Rajasuiyahave lent theirdesign to the [Sabha]Parvan
as a whole."12Not only the killing of Sisupala but also the gambling
match has ritual connotations,13in that it invokes the ritual game of dice
of the Rajasuya.14The royal consecration and the gambling match are
certainly among the most centralepisodes of the Mahabharata,since they
get the events, which eventually lead to the catastrophicbattle, rolling. I
think it has become clear with time that one cannot speak here of simple
and direct parallels. What we have here is, rather, an overall sense that
sacrifice and battle have much to do with each other. The Mahabharata
explores this troublesome connection in various ways.
The Asvamedha (royal horse-sacrifice), the main subject of the
Asvamedhika Parvan, is probably the most famous Vedic ritual, and
its agonistic nature is unquestionable. In this rite a consecrated horse,
accompanied by a protecting army, is set to roam through neighboring
kingdoms freely. The rulers of these domains are expected either to re-
ceive the horse and its retinue with honor, a gesture that will make them
the sacrificing king's tribute-payingsubjects, or to attack the horse, "dis-
rupt the sacrifice,"and make ready to fight the sacrificing king's army in
earnest.
Both "firstrecitations"of the Mahabharataare said to have taken place
in the context of a special type of sacrifice called a sattra.15I believe
11Jan C. Heesterman, The Ancient Indian

Royal Consecration (The Hague: Mouton,
1957), pp. 127-39.
12 J. A. B. van
Buitenen, "On the Structureof the Sabha Parvan of the Mahabharata,"
in India Maior (Festschrift Gonda), ed. J. Ensink and P. Gaeffke (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972),
pp. 68-84. In a 1975 reworking of the argument (J. A. B. van Buitenen's introductionto
The Mahabharata, trans. and ed. J. A. B. van Buitenen [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1975]), van Buitenen connects the ritual encounter with anotherepic encounter, the
killing of the king of Magadha, Jarasamdha(Mahabharata2.18-22). In this context one
must also mention Heino Gehrts, Mahabharata: Das Geschehen und seine Bedeutung
(Bonn: Bouvier Verlag HerbertGrundmann,1975). Gehrts has made a more ambitious and
less convincing argumentthat all main events in the Mahabharataare structuredafter ritual
elements of the Rajasuya.
13 Mahabharata2.43-65.
14
Heesterman,Ancient Indian Royal Consecration, pp. 140-57.
15ChristopherZ. Minkowski, "Janamejaya'sSattraand Ritual Structure,"Journal of the
American Oriental Society 109, no. 3 (1989): 401-20, esp. 402-6.
some comments concerning the sattra are necessary in order to clarify

the significance of framing the Mahabharataby such a ritual.
SATTRAS
In the classical ritual texts (i.e., the Brahmanasand Srautasftras),a sattra
is defined as any sacrificial session that extends over more than twelve
days. Some of the sattras described in these texts are much longer-in-
deed, sattras as long as a thousand years are mentioned!16One cannot
help considering the possibility that some of these are either priestly fan-
tasies or theoretical limit cases of the very concept of a sacrifice. Yet, it
seems that not all of the accounts found in the textual sources are merely
theoretical. Rather, the Brahman circles who engaged in sattras were
probably extreme ritualists who were preparedto explore the more radi-
cal implications of Vedic sacrificial thinking on their own persons.
Sattras are often offered not by a single sacrificer (yajamana) but by a
group of Brahmans,who are all equally yajamanas in the sense that they
all undergo the consecration(Diksa) and all share the fruits of the sacri-
fice. The joint sacrificers officiate for themselves, and, consequently,
there are no gifts for the priests (daksinds). Despite this apparentegali-
tarian quality of the rite, one of the participantsis singled out to have a
special role and is called the grhapati.17The Jaiminiya Srautasitra also
emphasizes that all participantsin a sattra must be followers of the same
sacrificial tradition "lest disagreement should arise among them about
the performanceof the rite."It seems that the warning was necessary pre-
cisely because there was a tendency for such disagreements to erupt in
sattra contexts.18
Both the Naimisa forest and the Khandavatract are often mentioned in
Vedic literatureas sites of sattras. There seems actually to have been a
circle of ritualists, the "Naimisiyas," who practiced sattras in the Nai-
misa forest.19
This is more or less what the classical texts tell us about sattras. Criti-
cal research suggests, however, that the sattra form is historically con-
nected with agonistic strands of the sacrificial tradition that have been
obscured in the classical texts. In particular,it shares many features with
the older vratyacult. Fragmentsof practicesthatpoint to such a connection
16P. V. Kane,
History of DharmaSastra,2d ed., vol. 1, pt. 2 (Poona: BhandarkarOriental
Research Institute, 1974), pp. 1239-46. See also ChristopherZ. Minkowski, "Snakes, Sat-
tras and the Mahabharata,"in Essays on the Mahabharata, ed. Arvind Sharma (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1991), pp. 384-400.
17
Kane, pp. 1239-46.
18Ibid.; Heesterman, Inner Conflict Tradition 7
of (n. above), pp. 85-86, 99.
19Kathakasamhita10.6. Jan C. Heesterman, "Vratyaand Sacrifice,"Indo-lranian Jour-
nal 6 (1962): 29-30. See also PatteriKoskikallio, "BakaDaalbhya:A Complex Characterin
Vedic Ritual Texts, Epics and Puranas,"ElectronicJournal of VedicStudies 1.3 (1995): 3-4.
are quite common in the classical accounts of sattras.20For example, on

the penultimate day of a classical sattra, a rite called the Mahavrata
should be performed. The classic Mahavratacontains a chariot race, an
arrow shooting, a tug of war between a person of high social status (an
drya) and a person of low social status (a sudra), and an exchange of
verbal obscenities between a man and a woman, who will later ritually
copulate. One text, the PaficavimsaBrahmana,also requires for the Ma-
havrata a verbal exchange between a "praiser"(abhigara), who eulo-
gizes the participants,and a "reviler"(apagara), who reviles them.
Stories about sattras found in the classic texts often disclose more
of the agonistic worldview that underlies the sattra form than do the
technical instructions.The story of Sthira's sattra21is a good example of
how conflict and violent death figure in sattra tales. As the story goes,
while engaging in a sattra, Sthura and his companions were surrounded
by a hostile band, defeated and plundered,and Sthiirahimself was killed.
While the survivors mournedtheir dead leader, one of them had a vision
of Sthurarising up to heaven. Now, the ritual instructionsdo not require
that a hostile band should interrupta sattra. The story, however, is sug-
gestive of a vratya context where two parallel groups "compete for the
sacrifice."In such a context, a violent interruptionof the rite is not only
to be expected, it is actually essential to the completion of the rite. In the
vratya cult the participant who got the losing throw of dice would be
selected as "grhapati."He would become possessed by the bad throw of
dice, Kali, and ritually turn into a "dead dog." Sometimes the grhapati
was requiredto engage in verbal contests with the opposing band and to
incur the sin (papman) by killing the cow for Rudra. The winner in the
game was the one who got the best (krta) throw, and he was also called
the svaghnin, or the "dog killer." None of this backgroundis explicit in
the classic ritual instructions but stories such as the account of Sthura's
sattra retain some elements from these violent rituals.22
As Harry Falk has shown, the older sattra and vratya cult was prac-
ticed in the Kurupancalaenvironmentin the late Vedic period, in the area
of the Naimisa and the Khandavaforests.23
SATTRAS IN THE MAHABHARATA

Some of the people involved in the creation of the Mahabharatatradition
were obviously fascinated by the sattra form. To begin with, both "first
20 Jan C.
Heesterman, The Broken Worldof Sacrifice (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993), pp. 175-82.
21
Jaiminiya Brahmana 2.297-99. Heesterman, Inner Conflict of Tradition,pp. 8, 85-
86, 99 (n. 7 above).
22
HarryFalk, Bruderschaftund Wiirfelspiel:Untersuchungenzur Entwiklungs-geschichte
des vedischen Opfers (Freiburg: Hedwig Falk, 1986). Also Heesterman, "Vratya and
Sacrifice,"pp. 29-30.
23 Falk.
recitations" of the Mahabharataare said to have taken place in the con-

text of a sattra. The first telling, by Vaisampayanain Vyasa's presence,
took place at Janamejaya'ssacrifice of snakes at the city of Taksasila.
The rite described in the Mahabharatais an odd variation on the Vedic
"Snake Sacrifice." It seems to be called a sattra only because of its
length, since the yajamana is a single ksatriyapatron.The second telling,
by Ugrasravas, is said to have taken place during the twelve-year-long
sattra that was performed in the Naimisa forest by the Bhargava rsi
Saunaka.This sattra seems to have been of the joint-Brahmantype, since
no royal patronis mentioned. Scholars have often noted that storytelling
is a pleasant way to pass breaks between the sacrificial sessions, but the
connection between sattras and the Mahabharata'scentral concerns is
much more complex.
Janamejaya'ssacrifice of snakes is intriguing.The ritual literaturedoes
describe a "sarpa-sattra,"but the Srautarite referredto by this term is an
offering by snakes, not of snakes. The original sarpasattra is said to have
been offered in the Khandavaforest by the snakes, and they are said thus
to have obtained their venom as well as their ability to shed their skins
and become "twice-born."24Janamejaya'sis not a joint Brahman-only
sacrifice, but it fits the minimum classical definition of a sattra, since it
certainly is a lengthy rite. Furthermore,Janamejaya'ssacrifice contains
many agonistic elements. It is an attemptto offer all the members of the
snake clan into the fire in revenge for Taksaka'skilling of his father
Pariksit. It is interruptedin-process by an intruder,Astika, who is part
snake. Indeed, the events at the backgroundof Janamejaya'sritual enter-
prise reveal quite clearly the agonistic worldview that underlies it. As
ChristopherMinkowski put it, Janamejaya'saggression toward the snakes
was the last link in a vendetta between the snake "clan" and the Bharata
clan. It began with Arjuna'sburning of the Khandavatract, the abode of
Taksaka,the king of the snakes, and with his killing of Taksaka'sdaugh-
ter-in-law.25In the more basic sense, the sacrificer,Janamejaya,is moved
by desire for revenge and power, not by otherworldlygoals.
What do the Mahabharata'sauthors make of these agonistic ritual
elements? The formation period of the Mahabharatais roughly 400
B.C.E.-400 C.E. This is precisely the time when tribal societies were pro-
gressively marginalized and replaced by emerging kingdoms and even
empires. The Mahabharatais situated right in the middle of, or soon
after, the cultic transitionfrom the earlier vratya and sattra forms of rit-
ual to the classical ritual system. In the earlier forms, sacrificial activity
had everything to do with power and violence, in the classical ritual
system motivations for worship were expected to be otherworldly,
24 Minkowski, "Snakes, Sattras and the Mahabharata,"

pp. 386-90.
25 Ibid.,
esp. p. 390.
and the agonistic elements are obscured. This does not mean that they
have become fully irrelevant and opaque.26The authors of the Maha-
bharataare obviously fascinatedby agonistic ritualpractices and the lore
and imagery connected with them. This is the case, despite the fact that
they feel uncomfortablewith the violence of these rituals, and that they,
as well as modem scholars, associate these practices with hoary antiq-
uity. Despite the importanceof the Mimamsa school of Vedic interpreta-
tion, which stresses the otherworldlynatureof sacrificial works, the fact
is that a power-orientedunderstandingof Vedic ritual was not a thing of
the past for the creators of the Mahabharata.These people perceived a
necessary connection between sacrificialritual, politics, and violence and
felt this connection to be disturbing.To them, the metaphoricexpression
"the sacrifice of battle" was both alive and problematic.
THE SACRIFICIALVERBAL CONTEST

We have so far discussed the general fascination in the Mahabharata
with sattras and with their agonistic overtones. The rest of this article will
focus on one, relatively obscure, agonistic practice: the ritual contest
between a praiser and a reviler, or the related practice of reviling the
sacrifice during its performance.27I have elsewhere argued that, in the
Asvamedhika Parvan,this practice plays a central structuringrole.28
The classical ritual texts (Brahmanasand Srautasitras) record a num-
ber of such practices. For example, according to the Paficavimsa Bra-
mana, at the end of the yearlong Mahavrata sacrifice, an exchange
between a "reviler" (apagara) and a "praiser"(abhigara) regarding the
correctness of the ritual proceedings should take place. In this case the
reviler declares that the sacrifice has been violent. On the last day of
the ten-day period preceding the Mahavrata sacrifice, a special "de-
clarer" should proclaim the faults of the sacrifice and enumerate the
faults of Prajapati'screation.29The Aitareya Brahmanatells of a king
who excluded some Brahmans from his sacrifice. They nevertheless
26 Heestermanhas
argued (in all his works, but see his most recent integrated statement
in The Broken Worldof Sacrifice) that a "break"took place between classical Brahmanism
and the old agonistic order, and he reads the Mahabharataas a condemnationof (agonistic)
sacrifice, a tale of "sacrifice gone wrong." See also James L. Fitzgerald, "India's Fifth
Veda: The Mahdbharata'sPresentation of Itself," Journal of South Asian Literature 20,
no. 1 (1985): 125-40 (reprinted in Sharma, ed., Essays on the Mahabharata, pp. 150-
70). Fitzgerald argues along similar lines that the Mahabharatasets out to replace the old
agonistic order with a single virtuous king. I am not convinced that a clean break was ever
attempted.
27 Jan C. Heesterman, "The Origin of the Nastika," Wiener Zeitschriftfur die Kunde
Siid-und Ostasiens 12-13 (1968-69): 171-85 (reprintedin Heesterman, Inner Conflict of
Tradition).
28 Reich (n. 1 above).
29
Heesterman, "The Origin of the Nastika,"pp. 75-76, and nn. 24-25, 28-30.
came and gained the upper hand by recounting Indra's sin (papman),
namely, his killing of the Brahman-Asura,Tvastr.30
This article will focus on the use of the verbal contest in one unit of
the Asvamedhika Parvan. The Asvamedhika Parvan includes a number
of variations on the theme of reviling the sacrifice, and in each case the
fault in question is the violence of the rite. Sacrificial violence is cer-
tainly not a new concern for the Vedic ritualists, but during the time of
the formation of the Mahabharatathe issue may have gained in polemi-
cal importancebecause of the presence of the completing dharmas,Bud-
dhism and Jainism, which were gaining popularity and royal patronage.
The heretic who denies the authorityof the Veda is cast at one point in
the Asvamedhika Parvanin the role of a ritualreviler who charges, "This
(sacrifice) is violence."31Such recognition of the claims of competing
dharmas is quite atypical, however. The Asvamedhika Parvan, and the
Mahabharataas a whole, address the issues as internal to the Vedic tra-
dition and in strictly Vedic terms, thus denying any legitimacy to the his-
torically real Buddhist and Jaina dharmas.
The use of the verbal contest to articulatedebate concerning the par-
ticular issue of violence seems to be a unique innovation of the creators
of the Asvamedhika Parvan.Sacrificial verbal contests feature elsewhere
in the Mahabharata,but in all those cases, it is not the heretic but the sec-
tarian opponent who is cast in the reviler's role. This is how I interpret
the figure of Sisupala32and of Daksa.33
The unit to which we shall now turn demonstrateshow the Asvame-
dhika Parvanuses the verbal contest form to articulatethe internaldebate
over ritual violence within the community of those who do recognize
Vedic authority and do assume the validity of Vedic sacrifice.
THE MONGOOSE UNIT: JUST ONE MORE STORY

CONTEXTIN THEPARVAN
The Asvamedhika Parvan takes place after the war has ended. The unit
immediately preceding the Mongoose Unit, the lengthy description of the
horse sacrifice,34 is no doubt one of the two narrative hearts of the
Asvamedhika Parvan (the other being the birth of Pariksit). In the de-
scriptionof the sacrifice, most of the attentionis given to the roundof the
sacrificial horse under Arjuna's"protection"during the yearlong conse-
cration period, while the descriptions of the offerings, of the utensils, of
30 Ibid., pp. 76-78.
31 In The Debate between the
Wandering-Asceticand the Sacrificing-Priest (yati-adh-
varyu-samvada) (Mahabharata14.28.6-28); Reich, pp. 250-53.
32 Mahabharata2.337-42; Reich, pp. 276-78, 282-83.
33 Mahabharata12.274 and passage 28 of App. I; Reich, pp. 279-83.
the gifts to the priests, and so forth are relatively brief and conventional.
This is no accident. The agonistic characterof the horse's round in the
Asvamedha rite perfectly encapsulates the problem at the heart of the
Parvan.
The Asvamedhika Parvan'sdescription of the horse's round is highly
sensitive to the violent potential of this royal ceremony. Before the horse
and its retinue set out, Yudhisthirainstructs Arjuna, who was appointed
as the guardianof the horse, to try to avoid killing. We are then given a
detailed account of how Arjuna indeed tries, and usually succeeds, in
keeping the killing to the minimum. The success of the sacrifice is as-
sessed not only in terms of the grandeurof the utensils but also in terms
of the ability to avoid fighting. No wonder the sacrifice is said to have
effectively cleansed the patronof the sacrifice, Yudhisthira,from the sin
of having killed his kinsmen in battle. What better closure to the Parvan
of the Horse Sacrifice could one expect than "The best of the Bharatas,
his purposefulfilled, having gotten rid of the evil (of killing his kinsmen)
entered his city."35
But the closure is not allowed to occur. The still unsatisfied Janame-
jaya requeststo hear something about "the miraculousevent" (ascaryam)
that (he seems to know) took place at Yudhisthira'ssacrifice. This is how
we get the last part of the Asvamedhika Parvan,36which consists of a
chain of four separate stories. The first of these, the Mongoose's Story37
is told in response to Janamejaya'srequest, but it leaves Janamejayaper-
plexed. His insistent questioning results in a dialogue between himself
and Vaisampayana(14.94-96) in the course of which Vaisampayanaad-
duces three more stories. I refer to the Mongoose's Story, together with
its introduction (14.92) and the ensuing dialogue consisting of three
more stories, as the Mongoose Unit.
Thus, the Mongoose Unit seems an afterthought, a final digression.
One might be tempted to agree with the Parvan'seditor, RaghunathDa-
modar Karmarkar,that the unit has been "tacked on at the end of the
Parvan."38Nothing about the manuscript evidence supports such a hy-
pothesis, however. On the contrary, the unit is recorded in all extant
manuscripts.39The variations that exist are all local, and sequence vari-
ations are few and, at most, cast doubt on the "originality"of a few lines.
From the point of view of the narrationframe, too, the unit is simply an
extension of the ongoing dialogue between Janamejayaand Vaisampa-
35 Mahabharata14.91.41; for a fuller discussion of the description of the horse sacrifice
and its connection with Pariksit'srevival, see Reich, pp. 345-457.
38 See R. D. Karmarkar'snotes to the AsvamedhikaParvan, in the critical edition of
the Mahfbhairata(Poona: BhandarkarOriental Research Institute, 1960), 18: 471, n. 96.
39 With two insignificant exceptions, manuscriptsB2 and Dnl.
yana. Thus, the Mongoose Unit seems to have been well established in
its place relatively early. There is no reason to consider it to be any more
a latecomer than most other portions of the Parvan. Rather than try to
excise it, we had better try to understandthe logic by which it has come
to take its place.
Let us now look at the four stories.
THE FIRST STORY: THE MONGOOSE'S STORY (14.92-93)
JANAMEJAYA'S REQUEST AND THE MONGOOSE'S ENTRY (14.92)
Janamejaya asks to hear something about "the miraculous event" that

took place at the sacrifice, and Vais'ampayanaobliges by recounting the
tale of the strange mongoose who suddenly, when the sacrifice was done,
came out of a hole in the ground and declared in a thunder-likehuman
voice: "Kings! This sacrifice of yours is not equal to the (gift of a) sakta
of barley-meal which a generous (brahman), a dweller of Kuruksetra,
whose vow was to subsist on gleaning, has offered!" (14.92.7)
Since the mongoose was blessed with the power of (Sanskrit) speech,
and since he was blue eyed, and one side of his body was made of pure
gold, his declarationwas taken quite seriously by the worthy members of
the assembly. To make a long story short, the mongoose proceeded to
justify his apparentlysacrilegious statementwith the following story (re-
told in my own words).
THE MONGOOSE TELLS THE STORY OF THE BRAHMAN'S GIFT (14.93)
A Brahman,his wife, his son, and his daughter-in-lawonce lived in Ku-

ruksetra. They practiced the difficult vow of gleaning. In other words,
they subsisted "as the pigeon does," only on grains freely found in the
fields, and ate only once a day. Even when a famine hit the land and the
family had to go hungry for many days, they did not break their vow.
One day, during this period of distress, the Brahmansomehow succeeded
in collecting a small amount of barley, a single prastha. Together they
ground the barley, divided the course flour into four equal parts, and
performed all the appropriaterites in preparationfor the much-awaited
meal.
Just as they were ready to sit down and eat, a Brahmanguest turnedup
at their door. The pious family was delighted at the opportunity to re-
ceive a Brahman ceremoniously. They invited him in and honored him
properly.There was no food besides what they had planned on eating, so
the head of the family joyfully offered his own portion of the meal to the
guest. The guest ate it all up but was still hungry, so the wife convinced
her reluctant husband to allow her to offer her portion as well. This too
did not satisfy him, and now it was the son's turn to offer his portion.
When this bit of food did not suffice, the daughter-in-lawgave her mor-
sel of food away too.
Only when the Brahmanhad eaten the very last portion did he reveal
himself to the family as the god Dharmaincarnate.The dwellers of heaven
showered flowers from above as Dharma praised the gleaners' gift. Fi-
nally, he invited the whole family to join him (with their own bodies, it
seems) in heaven. And so they did.
THE MONGOOSE'S CONCLUSION

The mongoose now explains that, at the time, he himself was just an or-
dinary mongoose, who happened to be hiding in the ground nearby, and
so it was his good fortune to become a witness to these events. When the
family had risen to heaven he came out of his hole to eat. To his surprise,
the mere touch of the remains of the barley meal, which had fallen to the
ground, as well as the contact with the remains of the incense, flowers,
and so on, caused half of his body to turn into pure gold. Ever since, he
has been trying to convert the other half of his body into gold. In order
to achieve this goal, he started going to places of religious merit like
ascetics' retreats and royal sacrifices. When he heard of the wise Yu-
dhisthira'ssacrifice, he naturallyhoped that finally the miracle would re-
cur. He was, however, again disappointed. Even at this grand sacrifice,
the other half of his body did not turn into gold. This is why, the mon-
goose concludes, the gleaners' offering must have been more powerful
than Yudhisthira'ssacrifice.
VAISAMPAYANA'S CONCLUSION
Vaisampayana,who is narratingall of this to Janamejaya,offers his own

comment: "King, you should not, on any account, regard sacrifice with
awe. Numerous rsis have gone to heaven through the practice of pen-
ance. Abstention from injuringcreatures,contentmentwith one's lot, vir-
tue, honesty, penance, self-restraint,truthfulnessand gifts are considered
equal to it" (14.93.92-93).
INTERPRETATION
The tale partakesof the widespreadmotif of the unknownBrahmanguest
whose requests must be fulfilled at all costs. The motif has many Vedic
precedents.40The figure of the wandering ascetic, often hungry and
prone to wrath if his demands are not satisfied, is in some respects the
heir of the vratya bands of the middle Vedic period. These untamed
ascetics would wander through the settlement of a neighboring tribe,
40 For Vedic
precedents see Stephanie W. Jamison, Sacrificed Wife, Sacrificer's Wife:
Women,Ritual and Hospitality in Ancient India (New Yorkand Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996), pp. 153-203.
demanding gifts from householders and turning violent if refused. In

the much later, and theologically very different, context of South Indian
devotional tradition we find a structurallysimilar story about a devout
couple who offer, even cook and feed, their only son to a hungry Brah-
man guest who turns out to be Siva.41
The same motif can mean very different things in different contexts.
Read in isolation from its context, even the story of the gleaners' gift is
open to a broadrange of interpretations.For example, what exactly about
the gleaners' gift is so wonderful?This is not specified in the story itself.
Is it the severe natureof their vow, the level of ascetic control involved?
Is it the spirit of humility and faith with which the gift was offered or the
perfect harmony between the family members?
The story itself could very well have been plucked out of some float-
ing oral tradition that has little to do with the Mahabharataand its con-
cern with battle and politics. But the story is set in a particularcontext.
The very position of the story right after the horse-sacrifice episode cre-
ates a contrast. The story not only praises the gift offered by the gleaners
but also casts some doubt on the value of royal Vedic sacrifices like the
Asvamedha. The mongoose says this, and Vaisampayana'scomment and
Yudhisthira'ssubsequentresponse affirmas much (94.1-6). But what ex-
actly about royal sacrifices is being attackedhere?
THE SECOND STORY: INDRA'S SACRIFICIALDISPUTE WITH THE RSIS

(14.94)
JANAMEJAYA'S QUESTION
Janamejaya is disturbed by the mongoose's attack on royal sacrifices.

"The merit of royal sacrifices is well known,"he insists. "Why then did
that mongoose censure Yudhisthira'ssacrifice?"(94.1-6). Vai'ampayana
again answers with a story.
THE STORY
Once the king of the gods, Indra,was offering a sacrifice. Just as the rsis
who officiated as priests were about to slaughter the victims, they felt
pity for the animals. They stopped the procedure and tried to convince
Indra that animal sacrifice was the wrong way to worship. They sug-
gested that if Indra wished to make an offering, he should have his
priests perform the rite "according to the tradition (dgama/Agama),"
namely "with seeds."42Indradid not accept the rsis' position, and a great
41 David D. Shulman (The Hungry God: Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion
[Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993], pp. 18-86), has dealt with the motif in
the Tamil and Telugu traditions:the figure of the "little devotee" in the Periya Puranaand
the Story of Siriydla in the Basava Purana.
42 Agama can mean either "tradition"in general or
"scripture,"referring to later texts
that claim scripturalstatus.
dispute (or debate, vivida) ensued, and went on for quite a while, since
Indraand the rsis were unable to resolve their differences. Finally, when
they were all worn out by argument, they decided to turn to an arbi-
trator.They went to king Vasu of Cedi and presentedthe question to him,
"With what material should one sacrifice? Should one use animal flesh,
or rather, grains and liquid oblations?" Vasu answered, without reflec-
tion, that one may sacrifice with whichever material is available at hand,
and because he answered falsely he went to hell.
VAISAMPAYANA'S CONCLUSION
Just as in the first story, Vaisampayana offers his own explanation

(94.23-34), Vaisampayanacondemns Vasu'sindifferenceto the means by
which the wealth used in a sacrifice has been attained.He repeats in vari-
ous forms the general principle that if the materials for a sacrifice have
not been obtained lawfully, the sacrifice is worthless. For instance,
Thatfool who, desiringdharma,sacrificeswith extensivewealthobtainedin a

way which is contraryto dharma,does not obtainthe fruits of dharma.He
like the wicked man who gives wealth to
who vends the flesh of dharma,43
brahmans,causingthe worldto trusthim; the uncurbedbrahman,filled with
passionanddelusion,who obtainswealththroughwickedaction/sacrifice(kar-
man)-when finaltime comes, he attainsa foul end. (14.94.23-25)
INTERPRETATION
The Story of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis dramatizes a ritual

dilemma concerning the sacrificial slaughterof animals. Animal sacrifice
is a time honored practice. It is an essential partof the old Vedic religion,
which is here representedby the god Indra.Nevertheless, the rsis in this
story reject animal sacrifice because it involves injuring living things,
violence (himsa). They prefer to offer grains. The rsis' position in the
story is quite a radical revision of the old Vedic sacrificial tradition.The
fact that this view is put into the mouths of the rsis, the same cultural
figures who are said to have "seen" the Veda, means that the authors of
this story wished to give their revisionist view as much "Vedic" author-
ity as possible.
It is not surprising that Indra is made the rsis' disputant. Indra has a
lengthy traditionof disputing with the rsis. His characteras chief warrior
and killer-sacrificer of Vrtra also makes him the best representativeof
the idea that sacrifice has to involve killing. King Vasu's role is less ob-
vious. Why do Indra and the rsis need to turn to this relatively obscure
ksatriya figure for arbitration?How does the land of Cedi figure in this
43 It is quite a strong image. The word is dharmavaitamsiko.Some manuscripts have
variations here-dharmavaihimsaka or dharmavidhvamsako-"injures dharma."
dispute? I have no complete answer to these questions. King Vasu's in-

volvement in debates concerning violence is briefly mentioned elsewhere
in the Mahabharata.In the context of a discussion of the effect of action
on one's destiny, the Mahabharata(13.6.34) tells us, "Vasu, like a second
Vasava (Indra), sacrificed a hundredsacrifices, and yet because of a sin-
gle false assertion went to the lowest hell."44Mahabharata(13.116.53-
55) gives a somewhat more detailed story in the context of a discussion
of the evils of killing living things and meat eating. "We learn from
Sarutithat the men of ancient times, desiring meritoriousworlds, used to
sacrifice and offer victims (pasu) fashioned out of grains.45And King, in
those days of yore, Vasu the king of Cedi who was presentedwith the di-
lemma by the rsis, knew that meat is inedible, yet answered that it is ed-
ible. This is why that lord of the earth fell from heaven to earth; and
when he repeated his statement once more, he sank into the ground."
Even without knowing all there is to know about Vasu of Cedi, one
can identify the interpretive move that this story's introduction at this
particularpoint of the text achieves. It answers the question that we our-
selves have just asked, namely, why did the mongoose claim that Srauta
sacrifices are inferior? This story narrows down the possible readings of
the mongoose's story by stating that Srauta sacrifices are faulty because
they involve the killing of animals. The invocation of the figure of Vasu,
who is known to have been involved in such a debate, places this read-
ing of the Mongoose's Story in a context that perhaps makes it more
plausible.
If so, it is strangethat Vaisampayana'sratherlengthy comments on the
story do not address the issue of meat offerings or of killing animals at
all. According to Vaisampayana,the issue is not necessarily the natureof
the substance that should be offered into the fire-whether it should be
animal flesh or plants. The issue is ratherthat all materials involved in
the rite, including utensils and gifts presented to Brahmans, should be
lawfully obtained. They should not be stolen or obtained dishonestly, for
instance. Vaisampayana'sinterpretationallows the possibility that animal
flesh "lawfully" obtained, that is, properly purchased, slaughtered, and
prepared, would be perfectly lawful. The story itself is quite blatantly
about the killing of sacrificial victims. Vaisampayana'scomments have
the effect of obscuring the specific thrust of the story: The rsis' stand
against ritual killing. It begins to be evident that our unit contains more
44 Vasu is
obviously a competitor of Indra. He has almost the same name, and by
sacrificing a hundredsacrifices he shows his intention of becoming a second Indra.
45 The seventeenth-century commentator Nilakantha
explains that a victim made of
grains means a grain offering (purodasa). They would say, "These are dead offerings,
beasts are unfit for sacrifice" (ta etad utkrantamedhdamedhydhpasavah); see the Brfh-
mana: "This is why they pronouncedthat a sacrifice made of grains is conducive to a better
world" (tasmdd ahuh puroddgastramlokyam).
than one point of view regardingVedic sacrifice and the killing of living
things that they require. In spite of the lack of positive manuscriptevi-
dence, I would even venture to argue that these are different textual lay-
ers, inserted by different agents.
THE THIRD STORY: AGASTYA'S SACRIFICE (14.95)

JANAMEJAYA'S
QUESTION
Janamejayahas no problem accepting the idea that the gleaners' gift was
very meritorious,but he does not feel that his own concern has been ad-
dressed. He insists, "How can the supremeend be ascertainedwith regard
to every sacrifice ?" As a king, he obviously cannot practice the gleaners'
vow-his dharmais to offer royal sacrifices, so he needs to know about
their spiritualmerit. So Vais'ampayanatells him one more story, this time,
about a sattra. As before, I narratethe story in my own words, but this
time I weave some of my own comments through the telling.
THESTORY
The rsi Agastya once held a sattra. "The many priests competent in mat-
ters of fire (agni)" who participatedin Agastya's sattra were not your
regularVedic priests but rathervarious types of radical ascetics, such as
"root eaters, water eaters, ones who grind (their meal) with stones only,
ones who subsist on particles of light only."46Some of them were even
radical renunciates: "yatis" and "bhiksus,"the sort of people that one
would not expect to find in a priestly role, because they are practitioners
of a heretical dharmathat denies the validity of sacrifice.47
Despite being a bit unconventional,the participantsin Agastya's sattra
are described as highly accomplished religious specialists. All were
pratyaksadharmano, "highly dedicated to dharma,"or-an alternative
translation of the phrase-had a personal vision of the god Dharma. I
prefer the second translationin this context because it makes these ascet-
ics the equals of the Brahmangleaner of the mongoose's story, who lit-
erally had a personal vision of the god Dharma. This places Agastya's
fellow sacrificers, as well as the Brahman gleaner, on a par with Yu-
dhisthira, to whom Dharma appearedpersonally on two occasions.48 In
any case, all these priests had conquered their senses and were free of
hypocrisy and delusion.
Agastya'ssacrificealso passes the test of the criterionposed by Vaismpa-
yana at the end of the previous story (94.23-24) since "the illustrious
(Agastya) had acquiredthe food offerings according to his means. Not a
46 Mahabharata14.95.6bc.
47 Mahabharata14.95.7cd.
48 Once as the
yaksa owner of the enchanted pond in Dvaitavana forest (Mahabharata
3.298), and again as the dog who accompanied him on his last pilgrimage (18.3).
thing in that sattra was unfit to be offered"(14.95.10a-d). In other words,

Agastya's sacrifice is presented as a highly meritorious,if unusual, ritual
performance.The story goes on.
Intent on benefiting all creatures, Agastya entered a twelve-year-long
consecration period (diksa). This is where the trouble began, for Indra
decided to stop the rains from falling as long as Agastya was undergoing
his diksa. There must have been something about Agastya's sacrifice, de-
spite all its merits, that Indradid not like. Was it the excessive length of
the diksa? Indeed, even for a sattra, which is supposed to be a long rite,
a twelve-year diksa is unusually long, for the diksa of a sattra usually
takes anywhere from three days to a year.49But the story goes on.
The participatingascetics said to each other, "This sacrificer,Agastya,
is giving food away without any self-regard, And the God of Rain (Par-
janya) is not raining. How will there be food?" (14.95.13).
And they decided that they ought to talk matters over with the over-
heated (or extremely ascetic-atitapah) Agastya. The text does not tell
us directly what they said, but obviously Agastya did not share their
doubts, since he confidently declared to them:
If Indrawill not rainfor twelve years,I shallperformthe sacrificeof

thought(cintd-yajfa).This is the eternallaw.
If Indrawill not rainfor twelve years,I shall, by meansof exertion,offer
yet othersacrifices,of even moreexceedingvows.
This seed-sacrifice(bia-yajia) of minehas been collectedover manyyears.
I shall do with cultivatedseeds, therewill be no obstaclein this matter.
Thissattraof minecannotbe madevainby anymeans,whethersomegod
pours-forth rainin this world,or not!
And if Indradoes not freelyheed ourpetition,I shall myself becomeIndra.
I shall sustaincreatures!(14.95.17-21)
And to prove to his companions that they could count on him, Agastya
ordered all gold and precious substances in the world, all the wealth of
the NorthernKurus,50to come to the place of the sacrifice. Furthermore,
he ordered the celestial dancers and musicians to come and serve these
rsis. He even ordered heaven, and the gods, the dwellers of heaven, and
Dharma itself, to attend. And they all came just as he said.
The story goes on.
The rsis were undecided at first; they were concerned about the good
of the world. But hearingAgastya's speech and seeing the marvels that he
performed,they soon came to accept Agastya'sposition: "Master,this non-
violent understandingof yours is correct. Mighty One, may you always
declare this non-violence with respect to sacrifices; This will gratify us,
49 Kane (n. 16 above), p. 1249.

50 The northernKurus were a
legendary tribe living north of the Himalayas.
Best of the Twice Born! We shall leave when the rite is complete, when
we have been (ritually) dismissed from this sattra" (14.95.31-32).
The rsis, who at first opposed the vegetarian sacrifice and, it seems,
even threatenedto break Agastya's sattra up by abandoning the rite be-
fore its propercompletion, finally came around.They approvedof Agas-
tya's innovation and even enjoined him to further propagate his non-
violent form of worship. And lo and behold, even as they were speaking,
the king of the gods realized the power of Agastya's asceticism and
caused the rain to fall.51 He even propitiated Agastya by attending his
sattra along with Brhaspati,his royal chaplain (purohita), and serving as
a priest in it.52
INTERPRETATION
Agastya claims that he is able to replace Indra.In his view, being an In-
dra or "Indrahood"is a function ratherthan an individual. This view is
also one of the opening themes of the Asvamedhika Parvanitself. In the
Story of the Rivalry between Brhaspati and Samvarta (14.4-10), the hu-
man king MaruttathreatensVasava's (Indra's)newly attained Indrahood
by planning to offer a sacrifice that is just as potent as the sacrifices that
Indraoffers. The idea that by sacrificing one can compete over chieftain-
ship is of course the essence of the agonistic legacy, and it is no accident
that the story of Marutta'ssacrifice is the opening story of the Asva-
medhika Parvan, which is concerned with just this legacy. But Agastya
aspires to Indrahoodnot quite in the same way as Marutta,who as a ksa-
triya and king strives for military and political supremacy.Agastya plans
to offer a vegetarian sacrifice, to replace the customary animal flesh
offerings with grain offerings. He is not competing for royal power (ksa-
tra) obtained by the sacrifice. Rather, he intends to subvert the very
power-orientedstructureof the sacrifice by eliminating the violence that
is at the heart of the rite. Indra'sunusual, indeed, Vrtra-like,behavior, of
blocking the fall of rain, is directed against this plan. Indra,the slayer of
Vrtra, is so closely identified with the agonistic worldview that he will
not tolerate an attempt to subvert it. Its demise would spell his own de-
mise as chief divinity. Agastya probablyforesaw this reaction and under-
took the long diksa in order to accumulate sufficient ascetic heat for
facing up to Indra'shostility.
Why is Agastya of all rsis made the representative of vegetarian
sacrifice?
51 Mahfibharata14.95.33.
52 Just as in a previous Asvamedhika Parvan episode, he had attended and served in
king Marutta'ssacrifice when that king overcame his hostility by proving to be a hundred
percent faithful to his purohita (Mahabharata14.10.15-32).
Agastya does have a traditionof doing unexpectedand annoying things

with sacrificial offerings and getting in trouble with the rainmakingpow-
ers. Three hymns, Rg Veda 1.165, 1.170, and 1.171, are concerned with a
fight between Indra,the Maruts,and Agastya. Letter texts disagree on the
precise natureof Agastya's offense: either Agastya dedicated an offering
to the Maruts and then took it to himself, or sacrificed it to Indra, or the
other way around, first dedicated it to Indra and then sacrificed it to the
Maruts.53In any case, Agastya is obviously not intimidated by these
gods' supposed control over rain.54
The choice of Agastya may nevertheless seem peculiar, since else-
where in the MahabharataAgastya is known as an especially competent
flesh eater and digester. Agastya is generally famous for his digestive
powers. Once he gulped up the whole ocean, and nothing remained of
it.55 His powerful digestive system is consistent with his description in
our story as the "overheated (atitapdh) rsi," since the digestive process,
like asceticism, is a form of heat (tapas). In particular,he is known as
having totally consumed the anti-god (daitya) Vatapi.
As the Mahabharataversion of this story goes, the daitya Ilvala hated
Brahmans and wished to destroy them. He began to cook up his brother
Vatapi in the form of a goat and to feed his cooked flesh to Brahmans.
When Vatapi arrived in the Brahmans'bellies, Ilvala would revive him.
The trappeddaitya would tear his way out of the poor Brahmans'bodies,
ripping apart their stomachs in the process. Ilvala's nasty plan posed an
unpleasantthreat to the Brahmancommunity, but Agastya got rid of the
problem. He voluntarily ate the cooked Vatapi, and then digested him so
quickly that his brotherwas not able to revive him in time.56
It may seem peculiar that such an outstandingconsumer of flesh would
be chosen as the advocate of divine vegetarianism. If we consider, how-
ever, that we are dealing here with a sattra of which Agastya is the
grhapati, the situation may become clearer. In the old form of the sattra
the grhapati was considered the "dead dog."57He got the evil of killing
the victim (papman) so that the disease, which Rudra inflicts, will be
diverted from the community. In the old sacrificial cult, the life of the
53 Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty,The Rigveda (London: Penguin, 1981), pp. 167-68; Pat-
ton (n. 3 above), pp. 371-75.
54 Another rsi who was not intimidated divine
by attempts to control ritual procedures
by stopping the rain is, according to the Brhaddevata, King Devapi, who got a skin disease
and decided to leave his older brother Santanu on the throne and become a purohita. Par-
janya did not approve of the reversal of roles between older and younger brother and
stopped the rain, but Devapi sang a hymn (Rg Veda 10.98) and brought rain anyhow (Pat-
ton, p. 327).
56 Abbreviated from Mahabharata3.94-97.
57 Heesterman,
"Vrftya and Sacrifice,"(n. 19 above), pp. 1-37; Falk (n. 22 above), esp.
pp. 132-33, 188-90.
community was won by the death of a victim. The evil of killing the vic-
tim, however, could never be completely eliminated. It could only be cir-
culated, passed on to someone else. In the story of Agastya's Sacrifice,
Agastya manages to bring the sacrificial cycle of life obtained through
death to a complete stop. He uses the same means by which he was able
to destroy the cycle of death caused by Brahmansrepeatedly eating the
flesh of Vatapi-his extraordinaryinner fire, his tapas.
The story of Agastya's Sacrifice puts forth the view that tapas such as
Agastya possessed is an apt substitute for, or perhaps even a superior
means of, achieving the goal of the Vedic blood sacrifice, namely, the
fall of rain, the regenerationof nature,and the obtainmentof livelihood
for living beings. This is why Agastya was just the right person to de-
clare that, henceforth, there will be no need to kill for a sacrifice to be
efficacious.
The story of Agastya's Sacrifice not only addresses the internaldebate
within the Brahmanic tradition about whether killing a victim is essen-
tial to sacrifice. It also interprets the Mongoose's Story in terms of
this specific debate. In this respect it agrees with the story of Indra's
Sacrificial Dispute with the Rsis. Both stories make the great Vedic god
Indra, the famous killer of the asura Vrtra, to be the representativeof a
concept of sacrifice requiringthe slaughterof an animal. The position of
the rsis in the debate differs, however, in the two stories. In the story of
Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis, the rsis unanimously speak for
vegetarian sacrifice. In the story of Agastya's Sacrifice, Agastya alone
stands for the idea of a vegetarian sacrifice against Indra, while the po-
sition of the rest of the rsis is more complex. Their announcementthat
they have decided to stay until the end of the sattra suggests that they
have previously threatened to break up the joint sacrifice. Why? They
must have worried that a bloodless sacrifice may not be efficacious, may
not ensure the fall of rain. In other words, the rsis' initial position in the
story of Agastya's Sacrifice must have been the same as Indra'sposition
in the story of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis.
The story of Agastya's Sacrifice adds an interesting complication.
According to this story, the rsis, the representativesof Vedic authority,
first sided with a concept of sacrifice requiring the killing of a living
victim, and it took strong persuasion to turnthem into supportersof veg-
etarian sacrifices. It was ultimately a power contest that made them
come through-when the superiorpower of Agastya's tapas became evi-
dent, the sages and, finally, even Indragave up.
One might argue that the story of Agastya's Sacrifice tells us about a
historical process. The conservative supportersof blood sacrifice, Indra
and the majority of the rsis, at first resisted the emerging ideology of
nonviolent ritual, but eventually they lost the struggle and vegetarian
sacrifice became the respectable norm. The story describes a conflict
situation within the community of rsis. In this case the conflict is suc-
cessfully resolved without a breakup,but a breakup seems to have been
a real possibility. We have seen above that the Jaiminiya Srautasitra
warns that all participants in a sattra must be followers of the same
sacrificial tradition "lest disagreement should arise among them." The
sattra form, with its agonistic connotations,is felt to be dangerouslyclose
to conflict. Despite the warning that disagreementshould be avoided, the
form is obviously felt to be appropriatefor articulatingthe issue of de-
bate and its inevitable connection with conflict, since every debate is, in
some sense, a match of persuasive powers. It is therefore not surprising
that the story of Agastya's Sacrifice places the debate over animal sac-
rifice a sattra context.
With historical hindsight we know, of course, that animal sacrifice
continues to play an important role in Hindu rituals, though such
offerings are now normally made only to gods of lesser purity and status.
Violent sacrifice has been degraded and stigmatized as non-Vedic in
various ways, but despite Agastya's fierce tapas, the demon of sacrificial
violence has never been fully exorcised from the Vedic tradition. Dis-
putes concerning the substitution of vegetarian offerings for animal vic-
tims in Srautarituals go on to this very day even within the community
of Vedic scholars, as the controversy surroundingthe performanceof the
Agnicayana sacrifice in Kerala in 1975 proved.58
Are the story of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis and the story
of Agastya's Sacrifice records of specific historic disputes? Klostermaier
has indeed made a similar argument with reference to the story of
Daksa's Sacrifice.59Klostermaier is certainly right that the Daksa story
addresses sectarian strife. His identification of the specific historical
58 Jan C.
Heesterman, "Veda and Society" Studia Orientalia (1981), p. 53.
59 Klostermaier reads the Daksa story as a legend with a "real historical kernel." That
kernel, he believes, was the Pagupatatakeover of a tirtha at Kanakhala,close to today's
Hardwar.The tirtha is associated with the Vedic patriarchDaksa Prajapatiand is praised
many times in the Mahabharataalong with Prayaga. According to Klostermaier'srecon-
struction of the event, at some point the tirtha was dominated by Vaisnavas who had al-
ready achieved Vedic respectability and were headed by a sectarian leader called Daksa.
The Pgaupata Saivaites were religious upstarts in the area and were struggling to gain
influence. The way to gain influence was to be accepted by the Brahmanestablishment or,
in other words, to become incorporatedinto Vedic worship and to gain control of presti-
gious holy places. The Pasupatasfinally enlisted the help of a local strongmancalled Bhai-
rava, and his gang of thugs, and took over the place violently. Daksa and his companions,
"the Vedic gods," were beaten and humiliated until Daksa was forced to convert to Saivism
by publicly praising Siva. Finally, a "compromise" was worked out according to which
Siva was from now on to get "his part of the sacrifice." See Klaus Klostermaier, "The
Original Daksa Saga," Journal of South Asian Literature 20, no. 1 (1985): 93-108.
context for the origination of the story may even be accurate. He is mis-
taken, however, if he believes that the structureof a singular historical
event has shaped the structureof the story as it was told in the Maha-
bharataand retold in the Puranas.Rather,the patternof agonistic sacrifice
was already there. If the story of Daksa's sacrifice is about particular
events that really happened, then these events were themselves shaped
by the culturally given pattern.The struggle for sectariansupremacywas
articulated in agonistic or contestatory sacrificial terms, because these
were the culturally available forms for articulatingsuch power contests.
Our stories are so deeply enmeshed in legend that we cannot recon-
struct any precise historical events out of them. Even if we could, the
reconstruction would remain hypothetical unless we had external veri-
fication. All we have are two names: King Vasu of Chedi and the rsi
Agastya. I think the story of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis and
the story of Agastya's Sacrifice are more likely to be statementsconcern-
ing the very existence of conflict over the issue of animal sacrifice. At the
same time, they are also part of the debate-they take sides and support
the substitution of plant substances for the flesh of animal victims.
One might call such a proposed change in the ritual "a reform,"if we
had evidence that there ever was an organized attemptto implement such
a change, which we do not. The Mahabharataas a whole does not sys-
tematically advocate vegetarian sacrifice. The Asvamedhika Parvan it-
self describes in quite positive terms how the victims in the Asvamedha,
both beasts and birds, were tied to the poles and assigned the names of
the appropriategods, according to the Sastras.The three hundredsacri-
ficial victims included bulls, watery animals, and, of course, the horse
himself.60 There is only a brief mention that the priests "pacified" this
veritable zoo, and that they "made the sacrificial horse acquiesce."61The
text goes on to reportthat the priests had Draupadi"sit (or lie) with" the
horse, cooked the horse's marrow,had Yudhisthiraand his brotherssmell
the purifying smoke, and offered the remaining limbs into the fire.62In
sum, the authorsof the unit dealing with the description of the sacrificial
proceduresare prettyunapologetic about the killing of sacrificial victims.
In contrastwith that, we have seen that the authorsof the section dealing
with the horse's roaming are clearly uncomfortablewith the real connec-
tion of the Asvamedha rite with war.
The supporters of vegetarian sacrifice represented only one voice
within the Mahabharatatradition, and not necessarily the dominant one.
60 Mahabharata14.91.31-34.
61 Mahabharata14.92.1-2b. The word for
"having pacified" is samayitvd and for "hav-
ing made to acquiesce" is sarjniapya. Some commentators and manuscripts have
sajniiapya (having suffocated) instead.
62 Mahabharata14.92.2c-5.
They inserted their position into the Mahabharatatext using the Mon-
goose's Story as a link on which they were able to impose their view.
Why was the Mongoose's Story necessary? If the point of the Mon-
goose Unit is really to raise the issue of sacrificial violence, why can this
issue not be raised directly? What makes the Mongoose's Story spe-
cifically an effective link for the introductionof the debate? We will be
able to address this question after dealing with the last story.
THE FOURTH STORY: THE STORY OF ANGER (14.96)

JANAMEJAYA'S QUESTION
The story of Agastya'sSacrifice could have provided a neat closure to the

Parvan. It would have agreed with Vaisampayana'scomment at the end
of the Mongoose's Story, "King, you should not, on any account, regard
sacrifice with awe. Numerous rsis have gone to heaven throughthe prac-
tice of penance. Abstentionfrom injuring creatures, contentment with
one's lot, virtue, honesty, penance, self-restraint, truthfulness, and gifts
are considered equal (to sacrifice)" (14.93.92-93).
But the closure does not occur. The ever-inquisitiveJanamejayawishes
to learn about the mongoose's identity (96.1), and Vaisampayanacom-
plies by telling the following story.
THE STORY
Once the sage Jamadagniintended to perform the rites for the ancestors
(sraddha). He personally milked his homa cow, which came to him of
her own free will, and placed the fresh milk in a new, durable, and pure
vessel. But then Anger incarnatedhimself and overturnedthe pot.63Fool
that he was, Anger wanted to test the rsi. He wanted to know what the rsi
would do when offended, so he struck against the rsi's milk. The sage,
however, controlled that anger of his-indeed, he did not become angry.
When Anger realized that he had been defeated, he stood, embodied,
with his hands folded, and addressed the sage as follows:
Best of the Bhrgus,the popularsaying thatthe descendantsof Bhrguare ex-

ceedinglyproneto angermustbe false, since you have defeatedme. I depend
on you now. Youare able to forgive,you have a greatsoul, Sage! Please show
me yourfavor,for I fear yourfire(tapas),0 MightyOne!
Jamadagnisaid:
I have seen you in person,Anger.Go, your afflictionis gone. You have not
offendedagainstme, I am not angry.However,you oughtto respectandsuppli-
cate those for whomthe milk was intended,(namely)the blessedancestors.
63 The
manuscripts K1; B1,3-5; and D2,4-6 have a significantly different reading,
which translates, "then Dharma in the form of anger entered the pot" (my emphasis).
But Angerwas afraidand hid himself (insteadof supplicatingthe ancestors);

andbecauseof theircurse,he becamea mongoose.He propitiatedthem:
"Pleaselet therebe an end to the curse."
They told him:
"Whenyou have reviledDharma,you shall be set free."
So he went aboutto places of sacrificeand to sacredgroves wheredharmais
practiced,and abuseddharma.[Thisis how] he reachedthat sacrifice[of Yu-
dhisthira].Now thathe has reviledthe son of Dharmawith thattale of a pra-
is Dharma.
sthaof barleymeal,Angeris releasedfromthecurse,forYudhisthira
This is what took place in the sacrificeof thatgreatone. And the mongoose
disappearedeven as we were looking.64
INTERPRETATION
The story of Anger locates the Mongoose's Story within an existing ritual
traditionof reviling the sacrifice. This places the apparentlyodd behav-
ior of the mongoose in a familiar context. Why would anyone want to
turn up uninvited at a sacrifice and insult the function? The mongoose's
appearanceat Yudhisthira'ssacrifice was not a singular event; it was part
of the ritual'sstructure.The mongoose is not an idiosyncratic fellow, he
is a ritual functionary,the sacrificial "reviler" (apagara). This explana-
tion helps to integrate the Mongoose unit, which even the editor of the
Parvanfelt to be "tacked on" to the end of the Parvan,with the Descrip-
tion of the Horse Sacrifice. If every decent sacrifice ought to be inter-
rupted by an outsider who breaks into the compound and reviles it, it
only seems right that this should happen also in the case of Yudhisthira's
Asvamedha.
The Story of Anger agrees with the previous two stories in placing the
Mongoose's Story in an agonistic context. It differs, however, from those
two in its negative assessment of the agonistic practice of reviling the
sacrifice. It presents the very existence of the practice of ritualreviling as
a necessary evil-either as a curse or, at best, as a form of penance, a rite
of expiation that certain sinners must undergo.
The Story of Anger takes a very different hermeneutic stance toward
the Mongoose's Story than the stories of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with
the Rsis and the story of Agastya's Sacrifice. It does not claim to bring
out the "true meaning" of the events narratedby the mongoose. Rather,
it attempts to discredit the narrator,the mongoose, and, with him, the
story itself. The mongoose's unusual condition of possessing a half-
golden body and speaking Sanskrit is not interpretedhere as a sign of a
blessed state. The mongoose claims to be an ordinary being raised to
semisacred status throughcontact with a holy event. The Story of Anger
rejects the mongoose's explanation of his unusual state and offers an al-
64 Mahabharata14.96.3-15.
ternative explanation, a story that presents the mongoose negatively in

three complementaryways. First, he is really not a mongoose at all but a
human impulse, and a negative impulse for that matter,one that needs to
be curbed. Second, he is not an elevated being, an ordinary mongoose
turned into a half-golden one, but a fallen being, a human faculty turned
into an animal.65He is also presentedin this story as something of a fool.
He does not understandthe ancestors' promise of release. They say that
he would be freed of his curse when he abuses the specific person called
"Dharma,"that is, Yudhisthira. Instead he goes about abusing dharma,
the sacred order itself!
The Story of Anger certainly does not accept the ideology of nonvio-
lent sacrifice propagated through the former pair of stories. And why
should it? Once the mongoose's behavior is properly identified as a case
of ritual reviling, the substance of the mongoose's criticism need not be
addressed. The reviler reviles only because he is under a formal compul-
sion to do so on account of some stain on his character.
In other words, the Story of Anger recognizes the institution of revil-
ing the sacrifice in such a way that this institution'ssubversive potential
is contained. The contents of the mongoose's criticism of Yudhisthira's
sacrifice, or the contents of any other sacrificial reviler's attack, say, that
of Sisupala, need not be taken seriously. The reviler has been turned
from a real antagonist into a ritual clown. He has been marginalizedinto
a carnivalesque figure.
In the Story of Anger, the mongoose is said to have eventually disap-
peared. The force of this specific narrativeelement may similarly be to
locate the very practice of reviling the sacrifice in the distant past even as
it is recognized as a cultural "fact." "Yes, people used to do that sort of
thing in the old days, but not anymore,"it suggests. This is yet another
way to neutralize the subversive potential of the objections to Vedic sac-
rifice, which have been addressed even in the Asvamedhika Parvan.
The Story ofAnger's stance is a strategy of defense. A centralreligious
institution, Vedic sacrifice, has been attacked, and it must be defended.
The defense is to try and discredit in principle, to sully the characterof
anyone who might venture to criticize sacrifice. This is not to say that the
Story of Anger is nothing but a strategy.It has more to offer, for it is well
grounded in the sophisticated theological position of the Bhagavadgita.
The connection is achieved by the psychological interpretationof the
figure of the opponent. According to the teaching of the Bhagavadgita, a
sacrifice offered in a spirit of true equanimity is free of violence. When
sacrifice is offered in such a spirit there can be no subjective interests,
any apparently agonistic element would be neutralized. The agonistic
65 As noted
above, manuscripts KI; B1,3-5; and D2,4-6 identify the mongoose not as
Anger himself but as "Dharmain the guise of Anger."This, of course, complicates matters
a little.
elements found in actual Vedic sacrifices, such as the numerous Vedic

mantrasthat evoke war imagery or, for that matter, the verbal duels and
so forth, are interpretedaway as traces of aggressive impulses that still
need to be curbed.Jamadagniexemplifies the correctway of dealing with
anger-one must simply dismiss it with a spirit of equanimity.
The Story of Anger basically rejects the agonistic worldview and the
sacrificial model based on it. Conflict is unreal. The only real conflict is
with the enemy within, the struggle to end all struggles.
CONCLUSION
If war and sacrifice are two sides of the same coin, how can sacrifice
claim transcendentalvalue? The anxious suspicion that sacrifice and, by
extension, the Brahmansocioreligious order, dharma,is faulty because it
is unavoidably founded on violence permeates the Asvamedhika Parvan
and, in a broadersense, the Mahabharataas a whole. Not only the fasci-
nation but also the depth, the true greatness of the Mahabharata,lies pre-
cisely in the fact that it does not offer a single answer to the problem.The
very concept of sacrifice and the understandingof the nature of sac-
rificial violence keep shifting in it.
Even in our small unit we find a range of views. The Mongoose's Story
tells us that something is not quite right with sacrifices like the one
offered by Yudhisthira.It describes a differentkind of offering and claims
that it is superior.The stories of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis
and the story of Agastya's Sacrifice tell us that the fault with royal rituals
is their inherent connection with violence, as exemplified by the need to
slaughter an animal. These stories supportan alternativeconcept of sac-
rifice, based on renunciatoryasceticism, and calls for replacing the Vedic
type of sacrifices with grain offerings. The first three stories contrastop-
posing models of sacrifice. The Story of Anger attemptsto turnthe tables
against the agonistic model based on oppositions altogetherby proposing
that conflict itself is nothing but an inner state. It calls for cultivating a
spirit of equanimity without changing the external forms of worship.
The overall story-complex raises as many questions as it answers. One
might find here a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis movement: violent
sacrificial practice is opposed by an ascetic-renunciatoryideal, and the
opposition is eventually surpassedby the ideal of detachedaction. Or one
might feel that here, or in the Mahabharataas a whole, we are left in the
end with only a brahmodya-like66silence, a sdnti rasa,67if you will.
Or else one could read the unit, as I prefer to do, as a fragment of the
textual record of a historical cultural process, an emerging community's
66 The Vedic
brahmodya is a form of ritual verbal exchange in which enigmatic state-
ments are opposed to each other and no resolution is reached.
67 This is how the later
poetic theoretician Abhinavaguptaread the Mahabharata.
attemptto define what a dharmabased on sacrifice could be. The process

took many forms, but here it is articulated in the form of stories com-
menting on stories and contesting their meaning. By offering a different
interpretationto the Mongoose's Story, the Story of Anger takes a differ-
ent stand in the debate than the story of Agastya's Sacrifice.
The Mongoose's Story thus contains different voices in a cultural de-
bate. We can even see a line of argument.The Story of Anger seems to
be a response to the story of Agastya's Sacrifice. It is therefore tempting
to think that the story of Agastya's Sacrifice was introduced into the
manuscripttraditionbefore the Story of Anger entered it, and the pattern
of textual expansion found throughout the Mahabharatainvites us to
consider this possibility. The state of the manuscripts,however, will not
allow us to know for sure whether this was so.
If my reading is correct, then we encounter here an early instance of
what has later become a typical hallmark of Hinduism. As long as one
pays due honor to the authorityof Veda, dharmaand yajia, one can par-
ticipate in an internaldebate about what exactly Veda, dharmaand yajna
mean. This allows some room for internal critique and even change. In
our unit we find that the very possibility of such debate is legitimized in
terms of agonistic sacrifice. The debate is cast as a ritual praise-blame
contest or simply as a power contest between parties to a joint sacrifice.
Even the Story of Anger, which ultimately denies the validity of the ago-
nistic worldview, participatesin the agonistic patternsimply by entering
the debate.
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Sacrificial Violence and Textual Battles: Inner Textual Interpretation in the Sanskrit

TEXTUAL EXPANSION AS INTERPRETATIONAND DEBATE

An earlier version of this article was presented at a conference on "Epic: Performance

? 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

tener who frequently poses questions and requests further elaboration,

debate is a "hidden process" and he distinguishes between collective

3 Laurie L. Patton, Myth as Argument: The Brhaddevatd as Canonical Commentary

SACRIFICE AND BATTLE IN THE MAHABHARATA

comparedto a sacrifice, because, as the story goes, a whole generationof

11Jan C. Heesterman, The Ancient Indian

some comments concerning the sattra are necessary in order to clarify

are quite common in the classical accounts of sattras.20For example, on

SATTRAS IN THE MAHABHARATA

recitations" of the Mahabharataare said to have taken place in the con-

24 Minkowski, "Snakes, Sattras and the Mahabharata,"

THE SACRIFICIALVERBAL CONTEST

THE MONGOOSE UNIT: JUST ONE MORE STORY

THE FIRST STORY: THE MONGOOSE'S STORY (14.92-93)

JANAMEJAYA'S REQUEST AND THE MONGOOSE'S ENTRY (14.92)

Janamejaya asks to hear something about "the miraculous event" that

THE MONGOOSE TELLS THE STORY OF THE BRAHMAN'S GIFT (14.93)

A Brahman,his wife, his son, and his daughter-in-lawonce lived in Ku-

THE MONGOOSE'S CONCLUSION

Vaisampayana,who is narratingall of this to Janamejaya,offers his own

demanding gifts from householders and turning violent if refused. In

THE SECOND STORY: INDRA'S SACRIFICIALDISPUTE WITH THE RSIS

Janamejaya is disturbed by the mongoose's attack on royal sacrifices.

Just as in the first story, Vaisampayana offers his own explanation

Thatfool who, desiringdharma,sacrificeswith extensivewealthobtainedin a

The Story of Indra'sSacrificial Dispute with the Rsis dramatizes a ritual

dispute? I have no complete answer to these questions. King Vasu's in-

THE THIRD STORY: AGASTYA'S SACRIFICE (14.95)

thing in that sattra was unfit to be offered"(14.95.10a-d). In other words,

If Indrawill not rainfor twelve years,I shallperformthe sacrificeof

49 Kane (n. 16 above), p. 1249.

Agastya does have a traditionof doing unexpectedand annoying things

THE FOURTH STORY: THE STORY OF ANGER (14.96)

The story of Agastya'sSacrifice could have provided a neat closure to the

Best of the Bhrgus,the popularsaying thatthe descendantsof Bhrguare ex-

But Angerwas afraidand hid himself (insteadof supplicatingthe ancestors);

ternative explanation, a story that presents the mongoose negatively in

elements found in actual Vedic sacrifices, such as the numerous Vedic

attemptto define what a dharmabased on sacrifice could be. The process

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