The iconography and ritual of Śiva at Elephanta. By Charles Dillard Collins, pp. xvi, 331, 90 figs., map. Albany, N.Y., State University of New York Press, 1988. US $49.50 (cloth), US $19.95 (paperback).

Abstract

(Purusa-Prajapati), a mythical feat which was first articulated in the Rg Veda 10,90. Every great sacrificial ritual replicates this cosmogonic event and in the Brahmana texts this idea was propounded as the foundation of the entire Vedic ritual corpus. Theoretically every sacrificial ritual should therefore involve the self-sacrifice of the sacrificer himself, but in practice a substitute victim is offered and the performance of the sacrifice is entrusted to ritual specialists (priests) who, of course, obtain a sacrificial gift (daksina) for the service. The sacrificer thus avoids actual death, but undergoes it symbolically; yet he reaps the benefit of this (ritual) karmic process in his life. His actual death marked by funeral rites is then the final sacrifice, this time without substitution, and leads to rebirth in heaven. One cannot help feeling rather uneasy about this interpretation. According to the author the only distinction between the early Upanisads and the Brahmanas lies mainly in the concern of the latter with the attainment of the ritual world (and the benefits it brings), while the former look outward to the larger cosmos and the higher realms which the actual death of the correctly ritually cremated sacrificer opens to his experience; the basic principle of attainment through the correctness of ritual action is the same. The author may be right in stressing that there is no real breach between the Brahmanas with their ritual outlook and the early Upanisads substituting for that outlook a sudden emergence of the ethically orientated karma doctrine. The ritual connotations do linger on in the Upanisads within the newly formulated karma doctrine and were got rid of only in some schools of radical renunciates (and in early Buddhism). But it is quite wrong to deny ethical meaning to the early Upanisadic formulations of the karma doctrine, e.g. to Yajnavalkya's dictum that "one becomes good by good action and bad by bad action" and relate them purely to the Brahmanic world of correct or bungled ritual action. Awareness of the ethical dimension of the karmic process, along with its ritual one, was already present even in Rgvedic understanding where heaven was promised not only to those who brought sacrificial offerings, but also to those who sacrificed their lives in battle as well as to those who developed spiritual fervour (tapas; RV 10,154,2-5) and to those who chose to act in an orderly way (RV 10,14,8) and knew the law {rtajfia; RV 10,15,1), while the wicked and unrighteous ones (pdpasdh, anrtdh, RV 4,5,5) were destined for hell. Not even the Brahmanas are totally devoid of the ethical connotation of the karma doctrine (as hinted at in Satapatha Brahmana 11,5,6,9). The author failed to consider the topic of the karma doctrine (which, connected with the rebirth or reincarnation doctrine, is Indo-European and predates the creation of the Vedic ritual) in the light of the now well-established principle of multi-level meaning of the Vedic texts, although he lists works of authors in which this principle was described and applied (Eliade, Gonda, Werner). This principle enables us to see how ritual, ethical and spiritual connotations coexisted in all Vedic texts at all times, even though the emphasis on one or another kept shifting, depending among other things on the recipient's stance. The author chose to concern himself with one stance, but he should not lose sight of the other stances altogether.