Reviews of Books 863

Sanskrit, this chapter is especially enlightening on the actual practice of textual criticism in commen-
tarial culture.
Chapter five focuses on allegorical readings of the Naiṣadhīya in the Sanskrit commentarial tradi-
tion, particularly śleṣa-based interpretive strategies. Śleṣa, which can perhaps be translated as parano-
masia or bitextuality, is the reading of sequences of phonemes giving two different meanings. With the
development of specialized lexicons, religiously motivated hidden or esoteric readings were more read-
ily available for erudite and adventurous commentators. The Naiṣadhīya lends itself to such readings
since many sections like the famed Pañcanalīya episode rely heavily on śleṣa. In it the Goddess Speech
introduces five gods in the form of Nala to the princess Damayantī. Each verse can be read as referring
to Nala and a disguised god simultaneously. Damayantī thus becomes a sort of ideal reader, who must
discern the true meaning hidden within speech. Later commentators attempt to extend such śleṣa-based
analyses to encompass the entire “point” of the Naiṣadhīya, positing Advaita or Tāntrika subtexts.
In chapter six, Text to Tradition turns to the other extra-textual material surrounding the
Naiṣadhīyacarita, from “semi-historical” narratives found in works like the prabandhas. In these texts
Śrīharṣa often appears as a “historical” actor whose work is produced within a specific constellation of
historical and intellectual actors. For instance, Śrīharṣa is often tied to the eleventh-century Kashmiri
alaṃkāraśāstrin Mammaṭa. While this is chronologically almost certainly impossible, the fact that the
tradition actively constructs such linkages points to debates within the reception of the work. Patel
offers a way to see these oft-derided prabandha accounts as central to the reception history among the
Naiṣadha’s reading community.
In his final chapter, Patel looks at the ways in which Śrīharṣa’s Sanskrit text is adapted and adopted
by later texts, both in Sanskrit and in vernacular languages. In a particularly insightful analysis, Patel
places the Naiṣadhīya’s original verses next to a vernacular translation in Old Gujarati. He convinc-
ingly shows that the author of the vernacular read the Sanskrit text closely and provided his own take
on Śrīharṣa’s original. Patel also looks toward the Tamil and Telugu translations of the Naiśadhīya and
argues that while not commentaries per se, these translations were deeply involved in processes and
communities of reading. Patel shows that vernacular and Sanskrit were not separate spheres of literary
activity, but rather actively engaged in constituting each other. This chapter touches upon a number
of important issues in the study of second-millennium South Asian culture and will add much to our
understanding of the role of Sanskrit literary culture in the creation of vernacular poetry and poetics.
Patel helpfully provides an appendix giving the original Sanskrit of a large number of the com-
mentarial sources translated elsewhere in the book. This is especially useful given the difficulty of
accessing many of the manuscript sources drawn upon. Sometimes this material can be difficult to find
in the book itself; to find many quotations one has to flip between various appendices and notes to find
the corresponding primary text. However the book is a treasure trove for Sanskritists interested in the
language of commentary.
Text to Tradition opens new doors to thinking about the afterlives of literature in South Asia and
about the communities of readers and their interpretive interventions that have shaped and defined San-
skrit intellectual culture. Patel’s work calls scholars to turn to the reception histories of canonical texts
and to pay closer attention to the multifaceted world of interpretive engagement in second-millennium
South Asia.

Luther Obrock
University of Pennsylvania

Feeding the Dead: Ancestor Worship in Ancient India. By MATTHEW R. SAYERS. New York: OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013. Pp. xvi + 187. $29.95 (paper).

In this concise monograph, Matthew R. Sayers describes the history of ancestor worship in ancient
India over a period of more than a thousand years, from the first millennium B.C.E. through the early
centuries of the Common Era. Taking as his point of departure the tension between the competing
864 Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.4 (2015)

soteriologies of ritual and renunciation, Sayers focuses on ritual action, exploring the development of
the paradigmatic rite of ancestor worship (śrāddha) on the basis of a wide array of Sanskritic texts.
His book makes two broad claims: first, that rites of ancestor worship and discourses about them were
fundamental to the development of new modes of religiosity based on Vedic antecedents; and second,
that the establishment of a new role for the “religious expert” (p. 69) was decisive in fostering these
developments. Sayers’ argument has important implications for our understanding of the history of
South Asian religions and deserves careful consideration.
Central to the argument is a dynamic “process of integration and synthesis” (p. 55) playing out
across textual strata, whereby extra-textual traditions of ancestor worship are gradually incorporated
into Brahmanical and Buddhist discourses. In this way, Sayers argues, “both Brahmanical and Bud-
dhist thinkers participate in the transformational construction of a new form of religiosity, often in
direct competition with each other” (p. 22). This new religiosity emphasizes religious giving, most
notably the act alluded to in the book’s title: “feeding the dead.” But the dead are not the only recipi-
ents of these acts of giving: human specialists vie to earn their livelihood from mediating between
the householder and his ancestors. Sayers takes a particular interest in this competition for patronage,
reconstructing a “marketplace” (p. 69) of religious expertise that drives the developments in the textual
record. Among the most significant outcomes of these developments are the emergence of the śrāddha
rite as a ritual paradigm in its own right and the construction of a new role for human mediators in the
performance of ancestral rites.
After a brief but thorough introduction to Vedic and Buddhist religious cultures and sources, the
main argument proceeds according to the relative chronology of the texts. Sayers demonstrates that
early Vedic poetic texts (Ṛgveda and Atharvaveda), though lacking detailed accounts of praxis, clearly
attest funerary practices in which offerings are made to the deceased (chapter 1). Elements of a “funer-
ary language” (p. 39) from these early texts anticipate the technical terminology of ancestor worship in
subsequent strata, the Brāhmaṇas and Śrauta Sūtras, which deal with the solemn Vedic rites (śrauta).
Sayers stresses that this is not grounds for assuming continuity in the form of ancestor worship across
strata, but rather an indication that later authors codified their praxis within an inherited framework
(p. 39). This observation gets to the heart of the challenges involved in historical engagement with
the Vedic corpus, what Christopher Minkowski has called the “diachronic question” (Priesthood in
Ancient India: A Study of the Maitrāvaruṇa Priest [Vienna: Sammlung de Nobili, 1992: 29]): how to
reconcile the apparent continuity of diction and ritual paradigms over many centuries, on the one hand,
with the evidence of ongoing change and revision, on the other. Sayers is sensitive to these challenges
and skillfully demonstrates throughout his work how the texts’ authors innovate while simultaneously
conserving traditional modes of authority.
The Brāhmaṇas and Śrauta Sūtras (chapter 2) present two śrauta rites in which offerings are made
to the Ancestors (pitṛ). Sayers regards the piṇḍapitṛyajña (“rice-ball sacrifice to the Ancestors”) as the
core rite, pointing to features such as the place and type of offering and manner of wearing the sacred
thread that are alien to śrauta and hence indicative of a heretofore “extra-textual tradition” (p. 50) of
appeasing the dead. He regards the other (pitṛyajña, “sacrifice to the Ancestors”) as reflecting a subse-
quent integration of the core rite into the prevailing Vedic sacrificial model. This is a signal instance of
Sayers’ “process of integration and synthesis,” representing “the perpetual efforts of the educated reli-
gious class . . . to integrate religious practice and in the process secure for themselves the privilege to
define the tradition . . .” (p. 55). This process reaches a culmination of sorts in the G4hya Sūtras, which
codify the rites of ancestor worship as the Ninth-Day Ancestral Offerings (anvaṣṭakya) and the Eighth-
Day Offerings (aṣṭakā) (chapters 3 and 4). The latter, frequently called śrāddha, is “remarkably similar
to the rite described in the Purāṇas and practiced among contemporary Hindus” (p. 57). Sayers discerns
four innovations in the Gṛhya Sūṭras that separate these novel codifications from śrauta antecedents:
the offering of meat; the inclusion of Brahmins as guests to be fed; the claim that these Brahmins rep-
resent the Ancestors; and the establishment of the śrāddha rite as a paradigm in itself. Sayers places
particular emphasis on the role of “professional guest” played by the invited Brahmin, an innovation
he ascribes to the authors’ desire to carve a place for themselves in the Vedic ritual cycle and “claim
new modes of authority” (p. 67). The Brahmin now serves as intermediary between the householder
 Reviews of Books 865

and his ancestors: in contrast to śrauta offerings conveyed to the gods through the mouth of the sacred
fire, Agni, the śrāddha offerings are conveyed to the Ancestors through the Brahmin guest’s hand and
mouth (p. 77). Sayers regards these innovations as a paradigm shift, a weaving together of the solemn
and domestic into a new sacrificial model that remains influential down to the present day. He sees the
development of the new paradigm as partly motivated by economic concerns: for example, the require-
ment for monthly śrāddha rites creates a “cycle of ritual dependency” (p. 85), ensuring the livelihood
of the Brahmin officiant.
Broadening his scope, Sayers draws on sections of the Pāli Canon to sketch the outlines of ancestor
worship as reflected in early Buddhist texts (chapter 5). While the Pāli passages seldom attend to details
of praxis, their authors are familiar with the basic structure and technical terminology of Brahmanical
śrāddha (Pāli saddha), a situation that Sayers attributes to the influence of Brahmanical rites of ances-
tor worship on Buddhist discourse. Sayers shows that the Buddha, in keeping with a rhetorical pattern
found across the Pāli Canon, accepts Brahmanical terminology and practices but reinterprets them,
in this case casting śrāddha in terms of the “morality and benefit of gifting” (p. 91). The other Bud-
dhist text analyzed here is the Petavatthu, literal “Ghost Stories” that feature ancestors as supernatural
visitors. In these stories, gifts to the departed, especially food offerings, evoke for Sayers the cultural
memory of ancestor worship.
Next Sayers turns his attention to the dharma literature (chapter 6), where ancestor worship figures
as a central component of a “ritualist soteriology” (p. 100) that serves as a bulwark against the ideo-
logical challenge posed by renunciation. He argues that these authors defend the efficacy of ritual by
investing the śrāddha rite with the soteriological authority of older Vedic models—for example, by
ascribing the full suite of benefits previously associated with solemn rituals, “long life, heaven, fame
and prosperity” (p. 105; Baudhāyana Dharma Sūtra 2.14.1)—to the domestic rites as well. Compar-
ing issues of soteriology in the Pāli Canon, Sayers finds that Buddhist texts do not register the same
ideological conflict between ritual and renunciation. He points out that the Buddhists nevertheless feel
obliged to address the practice of ancestor worship, which lives on among their householder constitu-
ency, by reinterpreting the ancestral rites in line with Buddhist ideology.
Having demonstrated how Brahmanical and Buddhist discourses retooled the ancient act of feeding
the dead to include a role for a specialized human mediator, Sayers wraps up his argument by exam-
ining the nature of this mediation (chapter 7). Looming large is the older Vedic model, in which the
sacrificial fire receives the ritualist’s offerings to supernatural entities. Sayers demonstrates how Brah-
manical and Buddhist discourses build on Vedic antecedents by promoting their own specialists—the
Brahmin guests on the one hand, the Buddha or Saṅgha on the other—as recipients of these offerings,
effectively “marketing themselves as heir to Agni” (p. 131). Brahmins and Buddhists alike are keen
to assert their worthiness as mediators, focusing on the learning and character that ensure ritual suc-
cess and authorize them to define the “proper religious life” (p. 141). In this way, Sayers concludes,
discourses on ancestor worship, carried out over centuries and across textual strata, were central to the
formation of Buddhism and Classical Hinduism.
Throughout this work, Sayers shows himself to be a philologist in the most expansive sense, very
much in the manner of his teacher Patrick Olivelle: he translates and analyzes specific passages with
rigor, and at the same time ventures beyond the confines of the texts to consider their wider social,
economic, and cultural implications. Given Sayers’ interest in economic justification for religious
developments, it is surprising that he devotes little space to the history of priestly compensation, from
the poet’s prize of a thousand cows in the Ṛgveda to the officiant’s fee (dakṣiṇā) in the śrauta milieu.
Another area where his argument could be improved concerns the differences that attend the new role
for the Brahmin officiant in the emerging ancestral paradigm. Though arguing for a strong discontinu-
ity between śrauta and gṛhya modes of officiating—what he calls the “marginalization of the Vedic
priest” (p. 67)—he does not engage literature on Vedic priesthood or delve deeply into the history of the
Brahmin’s hieratic role. Finally, as Sayers himself admits (p. 40), the scope of his argument prevents
him from considering much of the evidence in the context of the history of Vedic “branches” (śākhā).
The development of any Vedic rite and its patronage was foremost a local phenomenon, negotiated
within individual branches by Brahmin families settled in specific locations and following their own
866 Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.4 (2015)

variants of shared ritual paradigms. Sayers for the most part glosses over this diversity by focusing on
the “lowest common denominator” of ritual (p. 40), although his treatment of branch variations in the
Gṛhya Sūtra codifications of the śrāddha rite is a welcome exception (chapter 4). All the same, Sayers’
decision to streamline his presentation in this way is understandable, since immersion in the diversity
and minutiae of the Vedic branches could overwhelm the broader arc of his argument.
On the whole, Sayers’ history of ancestor worship makes a substantial contribution to the history of
South Asian religions, demonstrating in great detail how a new paradigm emerged and how efforts to
integrate this paradigm into ideologies and practices exerted a strong and lasting influence. It joins the
ranks of philological studies that draw on the Vedic ritual corpus to make bigger arguments about South
Asian religiosity (e.g., Stephanie Jamison’s Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife, Oxford 1996). Sayers’
book is exemplary in the way it engages its Sanskritic sources: attention to integration and synthesis
across strata reveals a fundamental strategy of religious discourse during this period, namely, innova-
tion within an inherited framework.
Beyond its bibliography and index, Feeding the Dead contains extensive notes and an appendix cit-
ing the relevant texts describing ancestor worship; there is also a useful glossary of Sanskrit terms. One
minor quibble: I wish Oxford University Press had been more discerning in its art direction—instead of
a photograph from a Hindu wedding ceremony, an image of contemporary śrāddha on the cover would
have more effectively evoked the book’s theme.

Finnian M. M. Gerety
Brown University

An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation: Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Paramokṣanirāsakārikāvṛtti, a Com-

mentary on Sadyojyotiḥ’s Refutation of Twenty Conceptions of the Liberated State (mokṣa). Edited
and translated by ALEX WATSON, DOMINIC GOODALL, and S. L. P. ANJANEYA SARMA. Collection
Indologie, vol. 122. Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, École française d’Extrême-Orient,
2013. Pp. 508. €38.

The Sanskrit text edited and translated in this book is by Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha, a Śaiva Siddhānta
commentator who lived in the late tenth c. C.E. He comments on the Paramokṣanirāsakārikā of
Sadyojyotiḥ (circa 675–725 C.E.), a text in verse whose concern was to refute the erroneous ideas about
liberation held by other schools. Rāmakaṇṭha’s work offers a remarkable glimpse of the intellectual
landscape of tenth-century India through the lens of Śaiva Siddhānta’s dualist theology. While much
of the text is devoted to intramural disputes among Śaiva sects, Rāmakaṇṭha also targets others, such
as Buddhists, Naiyāyikas, Cārvākas, and Advaita Vedāntins, who hold erroneous views on mokṣa and
are in need of refutation.
The authors Watson, Goodall, and Anjaneya Sarma have organized this book into three main parts:
a scholarly introduction, a critical edition of the Sanskrit text, and an amply annotated English transla-
tion. They write that their translation was not intended as “an independent text in smooth English,” but
rather as a tool to help readers follow along with a very demanding Sanskrit commentary. Some of this
commentary’s difficulty comes from the great number of arguments Rāmakaṇṭha uses to attack oppos-
ing views. Understanding these arguments and counter-arguments requires an almost encyclopedic
knowledge of Indian philosophy and theology. Fortunately, the translators are up to the challenge, and
in their extensive footnotes explain what is at stake in each of the arguments. Rāmakaṇṭha’s polemical
approach is similar to that of Bhāviveka’s celebrated sixth-century Madhyamaka Buddhist text, “The
Heart of the Middle Way” (Madhyamakahṛdaya). Both are refutations of competing schools. Neither
text is primarily concerned with summarizing viewpoints, but in the process of refutation Bhāviveka
and Rāmakaṇṭha present many doctrines that were unfamiliar to later doxographers. Some of the doc-
trines that Rāmakaṇṭha examines are quite exotic indeed, and rarely or never discussed elsewhere.
There are also surprising omissions of major schools. For instance, Sadyojyotiḥ and Rāmakaṇṭha make
no mention here of Jain doctrines of liberation, though they certainly knew of them.