Chapter 11 PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRĀHMAṆAS Herman Tull Abstract The authors of the Brāhmaṇa texts enriched their view of the Vedic rituals through building unique theories of identification and connection that served to establish a notion of shared being between the sacrificer, the sacrifice, and the cosmos itself. In exploring identifications that were not immediately available to the senses (but were said to be “mysterious”), these thinkers set the groundwork for later Indian speculation, as seen in particular in the Upaniṣads, the texts which follow them. Although long underappreciated by students of the Indian tradition, the Brāhmaṇas represent a rich source for understanding the beginnings of Indian philosophy. The Brāhmaṇas The Brāhmaṇas are a class of Vedic texts generally considered to have been composed in north India sometime between 1000 and 500 B.C.E. The precise derivation of the term “Brāhmaṇa” is unclear; it may refer to the ritualist-authors of the texts (from brahman, “priest”), or, it may refer to the texts as a collection of sacred knowledge (from brahman, “sacred utterance”) (Winternitz 1981 [1909], 174). There are ten extant Brāhmaṇas; in modern, printed Sanskrit editions, they range in size from a few hundred to a few thousand pages. Each Brāhmaṇa is attached to one of the four Vedic Saṁhitās or “collections”: the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda.1 However, between the Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas there are marked differences in language and in style; the language of the Saṁhitās, which is in verse, is more archaic than that of the prose Brāhmaṇas, suggesting a significant gap in years between these texts (Keith 1925, 19). The historic relationship between the Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas is further complicated by the apparent existence of earlier, non-extant Brāhmaṇa-type texts that were closely aligned with the Saṁhitās (Witzel 1997a, 298). This layer of “lost” texts may well account for the This is a facsimile of an article from P. Bilimoria, Mohanty, J. N., Rayner, A., Powers, J., Phillips, S., King, R., & Key, C. C., History of Indian Philosophy. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018. HERMAN TULL mass of shared material in the extant Brāhmaṇas, seen in the repetition of certain stock phrases; in the emphasis on a few key mythological episodes; and, in the common epistemological and ontological foundation that underlies much of the Brāhmaṇic discourse (see, further, Witzel 1997a, 288; 297-99).2 The raison d’être of the Brāhmaṇas—and, so, too, the point around which their authors’ discussions begin and end—are the great Vedic rites of sacrifice. These sacrificial rituals hearken back to the oldest layers of Vedic culture and are glimpsed—though not fully described—throughout the Saṁhitās. A chief characteristic of the Brāhmaṇas is their twoleveled discussion of the rites: as performance (vidhi, literally “injunction”) and as explication (arthavāda) (Winternitz 1981, 187; Gonda 1975, 340-1). Whereas the vidhi or “howto” portion of the text tends to be somewhat muted (the authors apparently presumed that their audience knew how to perform the rites), the explanations can be expansive, as the authors delve into the “higher” and “mysterious” meanings of the Vedic rites (cf., Malamoud 1998, 29-30). Thus, a rather simple direction (vidhi), such as, “Entering the vow, he stands between the āhavanīya and the gārhapatya fires, turning eastward, he touches water” (ŚB 1.1.1.1), leads to a discussion of the mystic import that connects the vow to the god Agni, and then to the (arthavāda) declaration of the “higher” meaning of the ritual object, namely, the water used in the rite, which connects it to “all this”: “He brings forward water because all this (the cosmos) is filled up by water; so by this first act, he acquires all this” (ŚB 1.1.1.14). Although the history of the Brāhmaṇas’ composition cannot be recovered, a number of significant developmental elements can be discerned beneath the surface of these texts. Thus, occasional references to one ritualist contradicting another, or to certain obsolete or “incorrect” practices or interpretations (often said to be regionally based), almost certainly reflect the expansion of Vedic culture during the first millennium BCE (Witzel 1997a, 301 ff). With expansion, new schools were founded (evidenced in the compilation of new Brāhmaṇas), providing an opportunity for fresh interpretations of the ritual forms. Coordinate with this expansion was the rise of a large class of ritualists whose charge was to ensure that the rites were performed with the utmost accuracy but who also served to explicate the ceremonies. These ritualists were subdivided into groups of specialized functionaries, each charged with undertaking a specific element of the rite (see, Müller 1859, 450; 469 ff.). Among these functionaries was the brahman who performed the rite mentally as a means of averting possible errors in performance (Müller 1859, 450). This ritualist was said to be “all-knowing”; that is, to encompass within his own mind the rite in its entirety (Gonda 1975, 271). Although there is no certain evidence connecting the mental performance of the rite to the emergence of Brāhmaṇic speculation, this element of the ritual resonates deeply with what has been broadly identified as the “internalization” of the sacrifice, “in which physiological functions take the place of libations and ritual objects,” a notion which stands as a foundational element in ancient Indian philosophy (Eliade 1969, 111-4). 114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRĀHMAṆAS European Indologists and the Brāhmaṇas Throughout the nineteenth century, European (and, in particular German) Indologists evinced an intense interest in the Vedic literature, producing critical Sanskrit editions and translations into European languages of these texts, a project that included several major Brāhmaṇas. However, as modern Indology changed direction from what was in fact a misguided focus on the Veda, the study of the Brāhmaṇas became peripheral. As a result, several Brāhmaṇas remain untranslated, and thus are inaccessible to Western scholars. Along with this early textual work, Western scholars produced a handful of important studies of the sacrificial ritual in the Brāhmaṇas (see, e.g., Lévi 1898; Oldenberg 1919; Bodewitz 1973; Heesterman 1985; 1993; and Smith 1989), and a few other studies that focus on Brāhmaṇic mythologies (see, e.g., Weber 1850; 1885; Hopkins 1909; and Doniger 1985). A. B. Keith, who translated several Brāhmaṇas, devoted considerable portions of his monumental work, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads (1925), to discussing (albeit often dismissively) the nature of Brāhmaṇic thought. Recently, Michael Witzel has produced a number of studies that draw deeply on the Brāhmaṇas, examining aspects of their thought (1979; 1996; cf., Oldenberg 1919) as well as exploring them for what they reveal of their socio-political milieu (1997a; 1997b; 1987; cf., Rau 1957). The first generation of European Indologists to study the Brāhmaṇas almost universally disparaged them (the one notable exception being Lévi 1898). In what may be the most oft-repeated description of these texts, F. Max Müller notoriously declared that the Brāhmaṇas were “twaddle, and what is worse theological twaddle” (1867, 1, 113), likening their thought to the “raving of madmen” (1859, 389). These same sentiments occur in nearly every nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarly work that examines the Brāhmaṇas (for a conspectus, see Doniger 1985, 5; Tull 1989, 9; 16ff.; Tull 1991, 39; Smith 1989, 32-3). In addition to being deeply troubled by the nature of Brāhmaṇic reasoning (see, Oldenberg 1919; cf., 1991, 12; Keith 1925, 440; Eggeling 1882, ix), these scholars took a dim view of the ritualistic atmosphere of the Brāhmanas. With their post-enlightenment protestant view of “priestcraft,” these scholars were repulsed by the Vedic ritualists’ description of themselves as “gods among men” (ŚB 2.2.2.6) and found abhorrent the priests’ demands for a heavy recompense for their ritual work (see, e.g., ŚB 2.2.2.2-5) (Tull 1989, 17; 129 n.24). The Brāhmaṇas as Philosophy As indicated in the foregoing, the Brāhmaṇas were composed with a singular focus on the Vedic sacrificial rites. Accordingly, areas that in modern usage broadly fall under the scope of philosophy, but that are related to everyday social existence—such as ethics, the nature of justice, political power, and so forth—have virtually no place in Brāhmaṇic discourse. On the other hand, however, the Brāhmaṇic thinkers were deeply engaged by metaphysical inquiry. Here, conditioned by the performance of the Vedic rituals, which entail a carefully orchestrated series of acts that are themselves divorced from ordinary reality, the 115 HERMAN TULL Brāhmaṇic thinkers developed a systematic method of inquiry that provided them access to meaning where no obvious everyday meaning existed (see, Keith 1925, 482). As noted above, this system of thought is built on the notion that any number of identities can be found between entities, a system that is, as Sylvain Lévi (1898, 9) noted long ago, “net, logique, harmonieux” (“neat, logical, and harmonious”).3 Of course, that the system is neat and logical does not preclude the possibility that nothing of substance arises from it. The critical question in approaching the Brāhmaṇa texts as “philosophy” then becomes whether this system of identification is merely a form of hollow symbolism, as nineteenth century Indologists tended to see it, or if it holds within it substantial insights into the nature of being (ontology) and the nature of knowledge (epistemology). A fundamental question of philosophy is, “How is a thing known?” The Brāhmaṇas contain innumerable declarative statements identifying one entity with another, in effect, creating a series of equations that define things by what they are akin to. Often the entities being identified with one another are linked through quasi-syllogistic reasoning; that is, if A = B, and B = C, then A = C. Here, in seeking out the underlying meaning of the rites, even the thinnest connections might be exploited. Thus, a typical example drawn from the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa shows the author citing a numerical resemblance to connect the twelve verses in a particular prayer to the meter of the hymn (which has twelve syllables), then to the earth (since the name of the meter [jagati] approximates a word used for the earth [jagat]), to the god Agni (since the earth is the locus of the fire altar, also referred to as agni), and ultimately to the cosmos itself (since Agni, the god, is related to the creator god, Prajāpati) (ŚB 6.2.1.28-30). In addition to seeking all sorts of numerical correspondences, the ritualists also looked to language as an important means of establishing identity; here, words with common derivations (or, supposed common derivations, for the etymologies given are often “false” ones), as well as words that possessed homonymous qualities, are seen as expressing fundamental truths. For example, the authors of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa draw on the etymological connection between Agni (the fire god) and the priest known as the Agnīdh to establish that an essential identity exists between them (ŚB 5.5.1.8) and, to the homonymous quality of the two words agni (the fire god) and agre (“in front”) to establish an identification between the sacrificer (when he is positioned in front of the sacrifice) and the fire god (ŚB 2.2.4.2). Augmenting these linguistic identifications was a vast body of archaic mythology that could be used to create identifications between any number of seemingly disparate entities (see, Witzel, 1979; 1996); thus, for example, Agni’s ancient identification as a bird (ṚV 1.164.46) becomes the basis for his identification with the bird-shaped altar used in one particular ritual (the agnicayana) (see, e.g., ŚB 6.1.2.36). The Brāhmaṇic thinkers were keenly aware that these identifications were not empirically verifiable; accordingly, an oft-repeated phrase in declaring such identifications is that, “the gods love the unseen” (paro ‘kṣa, literally, that which lies “beyond the eye,” but which also expresses the sense of the “mysterious” [ŚB 14.1.1.14; 6.1.1.2; 6.7.1.23; 7.4.1.10.]). However, here again the question of meaning intrudes; for, given these interminable equations, and the numerous means of establishing them, it may be asserted that the Brāhmaṇic 116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRĀHMAṆAS thinkers created a system in which, as one scholar observed, “anything can result from anything; everything is all” (Thite 1975, 5); that is, a system so overburdened by equivalence that the possibility of real meaning is denied. However, it is important to point out here that the Brāhmaṇic principle of identity is built not merely on ideas of similitude but draws on the foundational concept of “connection” (bandhu), a notion often seen as the hallmark, if not the underlying principle, of Brāhmaṇic thought (for discussion and citations to relevant sources, see Smith 1989, 31). In general use, bandhu designates any association, but also indicates the particular type of connection that is established through family ties, thus suggesting an element of shared being.4 In the context of the Brāhmaṇas, bandhu has the particular sense of connecting ritual objects to the ritual performers (in particular, to the figure of the sacrificer, who may not actually perform the sacrifice, but who benefits from it) on the one side, and to the ritual act itself on the other (see, Gonda 1965). Here, connectedness goes beyond mere identification to assert a state of shared being so that actions that affect one element also affect identically the element or, elements, to which it is connected. From this point, the ideology of identification that pervades the Brāhmaṇas as a means of knowing becomes effectively a means of becoming; that is, in Brāhmaṇic thought, the means to knowledge (epistemology), which is the knowledge of identity, builds upon and reaffirms particular states of being (ontology). Thus, the ritualists state, “The one that knows this, he is indeed [firmly] placed and connected (bandhumān)” (PB 10.1.2 et seq.). This connectedness, which is to say this theory of being, however, is not a meaningless connectedness of everything to everything, but a connectedness specifically to the defined space of the ritual arena and through it to the cosmos as a created and ordered place. Underlying the Brāhmaṇic ritual form is the act of sacrifice; that is, a violent act that uses the death and destruction of a victim to create life anew. The quintessential expression of this ideology is found in the famed Ṛgvedic hymn of the sacrifice of Puruṣa, the (cosmic) man (ṚV 10.90). According to this hymn, before the ordered cosmos arose, there existed the primeval Puruṣa. The gods (whose origins are not here accounted for) use the Puruṣa as the oblation in a great first sacrifice, an act that is at once destructive and creative, as a series of hierarchically ranked beings and elements that, taken together, form the ordered cosmos—the beasts of air, forest, and village; the hymns, chants, and sacrificial formulae; horses, cattle, goats, and sheep; men of each of the four castes; the moon, the sun, and the three spheres of heaven, earth, and atmosphere—arise from the Puruṣa’s dismembered body (these entities are related hierarchically to the order of that body: the head above, the shoulder below, etc.). In Vedic thought, the hymn’s underlying ideology of creation through the sacrifice of a man can be seen in several fundamental ideologies regarding the ritual of sacrifice: (1) the Brāhmaṇic sacrificial ritual replicates the creative event of “world” creation—that is, establishing a place or foundation for the sacrificer (see, Gonda 1967); (2) the sacrificial victim should be a man, like Puruṣa (which simply means “man”), and therefore the man who seeks new life through the sacrifice must take the onus of death and destruction upon himself (see, Heesterman 1987, 91). This ideology is clearly 117 HERMAN TULL understood by the authors of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, as they declare, “The sacrifice is a man” (ŚB 3.5.3.1) and also tell us that the sacrificial fires “think about the sacrificer, they desire the sacrificer” (ŚB 11.7.1.2). However, unlike the god Puruṣa who, by definition, cannot die, the mortal sacrificer (Vedic thought distinguishes men and gods by the dichotomy of mortality/immortality) cannot be the victim of the sacrifice; for, if the sacrificer were to be the victim of the sacrifice, then the ritual would end not in a creative act but in self-defeating death (see, Heesterman 1987, 105). To avoid his own death in the sacrifice, the sacrificer employed any of a number of “substitute” victims, from the four domestic animals that arose from Puruṣa’s sacrifice (horse, cow, sheep, and goat) to offerings of milk, grains, and even an effigy (in the famed agnicayana ritual, a gold man is employed for this purpose [ŚB 7.4.1.15]). Additionally, the sacrificer “distanced” himself from the death and destruction implicit in the Vedic sacrifice by employing ritual specialists who actually performed the sacrifice on his behalf. The need to avoid his own death in the sacrifice, and the sacrificial theory that demanded that the sacrificer should be the victim, becomes a central tension in the ritual performance; thus the authors of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa equivocate on whether or not the sacrificer should hold the victim (that is, his own substitute, and in some sense, identical to him) and finally conclude that to establish a firm connection to the victim, the sacrificer must hold the victim, but he should do so in a “mysterious” (paro ‘kṣa) way (ŚB 3.8.1.10). At this point we must return to the Brāhmaṇic way of thinking that seeks identity (in knowledge) and correspondences (in being) as a means of establishing the relationship between the sacrificer, who ought to be the victim of the sacrifice, and the victim who gives up his life in the enactment of the sacrificial rite. Although the Brāhmaṇic thinkers’ ceaseless identifications may give the appearance that “anything can result from anything; everything is all,” in fact, the identifications that are made in the ritual world come to rest within the locus of the sacrificer’s own being. Thus, the entire sacrificial arena, the offering spoons, and in particular, the sacrificial stake (to which the victim is tied) are made to the proportions of the sacrificer’s own body (ŚB 1.2.5.14; 10.2.1.2; TS 5.2.5.1; see, Eggeling 1882, 78); the victim is equated with the sacrificer himself (see, Heesterman 1987, 105; Smith and Doniger 1989, 199-205); and the individual elements of the sacrifice are themselves identified with the sacrificer’s own body (“the āhavanīya altar is his mouth…the priest’s tent, his belly…the two fires behind, his feet…” ŚB 3.5.3.1 ff.). This is both the purpose and the great achievement of the philosophy of the Brāhmaṇas, to see the identities (often invisible, or “mysterious”) between the entities that inhabit the ritual world (the sacrificer, sacrificial arena, victim, and priests), and through this knowledge, to create a connection from the world of men to the sacrifice and through it to the cosmos itself, that which ultimately defines the very being of man, the sacrificer. Beyond the Brāhmaṇas: Connections to the Upaniṣads The Brāhmaṇas end with the Upaniṣads. However, the demarcation between these classes of texts is not a precise one, but rather one of a gradual merging. Although scholars tended 118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRĀHMAṆAS to denigrate the former and celebrate the latter—thus, Oldenberg contrasted ”the cold, stale rigidity, of the Brāhmaṇa tradition” with the “electrifying vivacity” of the Upaniṣads (1991, 36)—the fact is that Upaniṣadic thought is wholly built on the foundation of the Brāhmaṇas. In particular, the Upaniṣadic thinkers continued to seek connections between entities and build their philosophy around assertions of identity, such as the famous equation between ātman and Brahman, and to emphasize the unseen or “mysterious” nature of these connections. Where the Upaniṣadic authors diverge from their predecessors, however, is in their gradual movement away from the Vedic ritual performances per se (after all, they did not need to explore the rites beyond what the authors of the Brāhmaṇas had already exhaustively provided for them) to look more broadly at the human person (Olivelle 1998, 24), and such “real world” concerns as birth and death (see, BĀU 4.1 ff; 3.2.11-3). Yet, the connection to Brāhmaṇic thought remains vivid as the symbolism of the sacrifice remains a cornerstone in the Upaniṣadic thinkers’ approach to understanding the nature of man. Thus, the famed Upaniṣadic description of what becomes of a man after death, that “his speech disappears into the fire, his breath into the wind, his sight into the sun, his mind into the moon…” (BĀU 3.2.13) replicates precisely the ideology of Purusa’s cosmogonic sacrifice, or the Upaniṣadic notion that a man’s life is a sacrifice (“his first twenty-four years are the morning pressing…his next forty-four, the midday pressing…” [CU 3.16.1-3]), recalling the deeply etched bond between man and the ritual of sacrifice as it was established in Brāhmaṇic thought. Although the Upaniṣads mark the end of the Brāhmaṇas, it is through the Upaniṣads that the Brāhmaṇic thinkers continued to be heard in the Indian philosophical tradition. BĀU CU PB ṚV ŚB TS Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad Chandogya Upaniṣad Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa Ṛgveda Saṁhitā Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa Abbreviations Notes The extant Brāhmaṇas are the Aitareya and the Kauṣītaki (Ṛgveda tradition); the Tāṇḍya Mahābrāhmaṇa (also known as the Pañcaviṃśa), Ṣaḍviṃśa, and Jaiminīya (Sāmaveda tradition); the Taittirīya and the Śatapatha (Yajurveda tradition); and the Gopatha (Atharvaveda tradition). For references to critical editions and translations of the Brāhmaṇas, see Santucci 1976: 27-8. 1 2 The term “Brāhmaṇic” is used throughout this article to indicate the milieu of the Brāhmaṇa texts, and not the priestly caste generically referred to as the Brahmins. 119 HERMAN TULL Even Keith (1925: 455), who frequently denigrated Brāhmaṇic thought, noted, “it is impossible to deny the name of philosophy to an ordered view of the universe, fully thought out, and within its fundamental limitations logical and complete.” See also Mylius (1976), though his study is limited to the KauṣītakiBrāhmaṇa. 3 The term nidāna is also used frequently in the Brāhmaṇas to suggest connectedness. The oldest meaning of the term is that of “rope” or “halter”—that is, something that physically binds objects together; in later usage, it has the sense of a first or primary cause. See, further, Knipe 1975: 42-3. 4 120 Sources Bodewitz, H. W. 1973. Jaiminiya Brāhmaṇa 1-65: Translation and Commentary. 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