why the veda has no author

American Academy of Religion

Why the Veda Has No Author: Language as Ritual in Early Mms and Post-ModernTheologyAuthor(s): Francis X. ClooneySource: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 659-684Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1464680 .Accessed: 13/01/2014 12:07

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Journal of the American Academy of Religion. LV/4

WHY THE VEDA HAS NO AUTHOR: LANGUAGE AS RITUAL IN EARLY MIMAMlISA

AND POST-MODERN THEOLOGY FRANCIS X. CLOONEY

Traditional religious discourse has been the subject of increasingly radical analysis in the "post-modern" West. Some of the most important work in theology and the study of religion no longer centers on questions about the nature of God, the revelatory capacity of Scrip- tures, or the explanation of religious experience in ways satisfying to the contemporary mind. Rather, scholars now ask: "What kind of theology can be done after the death of God? How does one determine and organize the meanings of a sacred text without appealing to the idea of an author who establishes meaning? What indeed is the meaning of 'meaning' when we no longer agree on a common human nature or an anthropocentric cosmos?" The ability to talk coherently about religious issues has itself become a subject of questioning. The discussion of religion has been systematically detached from the sure unifying foci-God, Scripture, and the meaning of life-that have tra- ditionally afforded at least minimal coherence within even the most acrimonious discussions.

This unsettling deconstruction (to use the term in a general sense) is a challenge of the first order to traditional religious discourse and to those who have articulated their faith and understanding of religion in terms of that discourse. But it also is a promising basis on which to purify, recover, and rebuild our manner of thinking and talking about the same traditional religious ideas. By calling into question the valid- ity of the operative concepts that have made religious discourse possible, this critique clears the way for a fresh re-envisioning of the entirety of that discourse, a way beyond the present fragmentation in "church and academy."

It is premature to venture even the outline of a new synthesis, and I do not venture here to describe what theology and the study of reli-

Francis X. Clooney, S.J., is Professor of Theology at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167


660 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

gion will look like after deconstruction and reconstruction. Rather, I wish to highlight an additional, often unheeded, observation about the status of our current situation and then to develop an example that illustrates it.

However new our situation in regard to religion and its understanding may seem to us, it is not without precedent. Our questions and problems are not achievements unique to contemporary thought or to our civilization, with its strong Judaeo-Christian and Hellenistic roots. Even if we grant that no situation merely replicates what has gone before, it is misleading to accept and employ notions of "pro- gress" and "post-modernity" as if the latest scholarship were the one unambiguous and undoubted achievement characteristic of our age. There are all kinds of precedents for our current debates, and we will benefit greatly in our quest for understanding if we attend to the ways our dilemmas have been debated in other times and places.

A school of thought in ancient India discussed many of the same issues that perplex us today and posed and answered questions in a way that should help us in our current situation. The school is known as the Mimamsa, a worldview and mode of inquiry that developed in a context of reflection on the meaning of the action of sacrifice. In Mimamsa, notions such as "God," the "sacred text," the "author" and the "anthropocentric ordering of reality" were already subjected to a radical critique more than two thousand years ago, and the primary vehicle of this critique was an uncompromising commitment to a reworking of religious discourse on a ritual basis. In the following pages I wish to explore aspects of the Mimamsa inquiry and its rele- vance to the modern study of religion.

The earlyI Mimamsa school took a definite shape in a text known as the Pdrva Mmindmsd Sitras, which is attributed to a teacher named J aimini (c.200 BCE) and was given a comprehensive commentary by Sabara (c.200 CE). Basic to the text are the following conclusions: 1) religion includes meanings and values appropriate to human beings, but the sum of its meaning necessarily exceeds the human perspective; 2) the sacred Sanskrit-language Scripture known as the Veda is not a "book" to be read, nor a source of information about a world exterior to itself; and 3) the Veda has no author, no meaning beyond the words and the sacrificial actions themselves; one cannot appeal to a pre-verbal intention to get beyond the words.

1I refer throughout to the "early" Mimmasa because I have restricted my considera- tion to the system before the development in the 7th and 8th centuries CE of its two great schools, those of Kumarila Bhatta and Prabh&kara Migra. I do not mean to suggest a radical division beween the earlier and later periods, but only that the debates between the two later schools would require a lengthy analysis before it would be possible to state succinctly how they contribute to the issues discussed in this paper.


Clooney: Language as Ritual 661

Each of these points is directly relevant to the modern study of religion. In addition, a school of thought known as the Vedanta or "Later Mimaimsd" responds to the Mimamsd with a "post-Mimamsr " rethinking of religious discourse that also contributes to the solution of contemporary problems in theology and religious discourse.

The environment in which Mimalmsa developed extends back well before the second century BCE, when Jaimini's Sitras took a fairly definitive shape. Some evidence of those earlier stages is evident in the text and Sabara's commentary. From the beginning, the text of the Stitras was incomplete in the sense that it intentionally remained in need of both elaboration in commentary and testing by example in ritual case studies. The tradition of commentary remained oral for centuries, and it was only four or five centuries later that Sabara composed a definitive explication of Jaimini's system. In turn, Sabara's text itself invited further elaboration in a process that continues even today.

The religious world of the Mim.imsakas

was comprised of two interconnected systems. First, there were the traditional sacrifices, which had been practiced and described even a thousand years earlier. In their primary and modified forms these sacrifices numbered in the hundreds and ranged from the simple, which took moments to perform, to the elaborate, which took years. But the basic form of a sacrifice was straightforward: when a deity is invoked and something material burnt in a fire "for" that deity, a sacrifice occurs. However complex a sacrifice might become, its core action is the destruction of something from one's property in a fire, in the presence of an invoked deity. Throughout this article I reserve the word "sacrifice" for this core action, while using the word "ritual" in a broader sense, to indicate the entire set of texts, actions, performers, deities, material things, and attitudes about life and death that constituted the environment in which sacrificing could make sense.

The second system was that of the Veda, the totality of the texts relevant to the sacrifices. Some texts described what was needed for the various sacrifices, who was allowed to perform them and for what reasons, when they were appropriately performed, which sacrifices were suited for which gods, when and why the sacrifice was first performed "in the beginning," etc. Other texts were the prayers recited during the sacrifices themselves, paired with specific actions.

The twelve books of the Pdrva Minamsd Stitras consist of discussions that deal with the corpus of orthodox sacrifices and orthodox texts in three basis ways. First, there are discussions that seek to resolve smaller and larger inconsistencies and ambiguities that pertain to the performance of particular sacrifices and to the interpretation of the texts about them. A discussion might focus on whether the designated



prayer for a certain sacrifice is to be used without modification if the designated god of the sacrifice actually goes by a different name than the one mentioned in the prayer; or as often happens, when several small sacrifices are combined as stages in a complex one, the Mima.m- saka asks if all the details pertaining to each still need to be performed for each or if, to avoid needless repetition, some might be done "once for all."

Second, the Mimai.sakas

sought to articulate the invariable rules by which such problems could be resolved. Thus (to use the same examples), the Mimamsakas proposed, refined, and qualified rules governing "changes in the names of gods in prayers" and rules governing the evaluation of "real and apparent useless repetitions in sacrificial performance." Moreover, the goal was not only the discovery of a complete set of particular rules, but also the complete set of the "meta- rules" that would regulate the application of rules in various cases. Thus, the

Mim.msakas fasioned rules such as, "In any given sacrifice,

the material objects used are instrumental to relation to the actions they are connected with" and "Rules pertaining to only one context take precedent in that context over rules that also pertain elsewhere." Each generation of Mimarnsakas sought to elaborate more and more sweeping rules by which to govern the preceding set of meta-rules, although the search for generality was constantly subverted by the precise demands posed by the concrete ritual situations to which the interpreter eventually would have to return.

Third, the Mimamsakas occasionally stepped back and discussed the presuppositions of their whole endeavor. They asked, for instance, about the overall purpose of sacrifices, or the basis on which one can say that the Vedic scriptures are absolutely true, or the manner of veri- fying the efficacy of sacrifices that apparently did not produce the material results promised to those who performed them. Many of these questions were raised clearly in response to objections from outside the Mimamsa itself.

These three kinds of discussions can be found throughout the Sgtras, often juxtaposed and intertwined, one kind of discussion shifting without warning into another kind. The first kind of discussion is the most frequent, and one gets the impression that the Mimamsa began with the effort to resolve inconsistencies in text and action and then expanded its realm of inquiry from there. But even if their proposed conflict-resolutions were of use to performers, the points at issue would not have warranted the immense project that

Mimad.msa became. There were other texts that described the performances step by step and in detail and resolved by some compromise most practical problems that would arise. Thus, concern for the larger rules governing the ritual world probably was the primary focus of

Mima.msa



from the start; its ultimate concern had to do with the why of sacrifice and with the intelligibility and predictability of a religious path founded on the performance of particular actions according to certain texts. Certainly, it was on the basis of its more general rules and meta- rules that Mimaimsa influenced much of later Indian thinking.

The question of intelligibility demanded attention because Jaimini's

Mimim.sa took shape in a world in which the traditional intel-

ligibility undergirding Vedic orthodoxy had lost its power to convince. It was no longer self-evident, for instance, that sacrifices would please deities and lead to rewards, that offering sacrifices would hold the universe together, or that the Veda itself was a reliable source of information. The Buddhists and Jainas, as well as world-renunciants still within the Vedic fold, de-mythologized the idea of sacrifice and con- tended that these actions were not qualitatively different from, and would lead to results no more permanent than, other actions. Skeptics of all sorts charged that the sacrifices did not produce what they promised to produce, while those whom today we might label "Vedic funda- mentalists" simply put aside questions of meaning and asserted that sacrifices had to be performed, no matter what one might think about them. Called into question, it seems, was the notion that there could be any perspective from which the whole of the ritual world could be comprehended and hence kept intact. The pieces were all there-- brahmin priests, fires, rice to be cooked, words to be chanted, gods to be invoked, etc.-but they no longer cohered convincingly.

Mimairmsa's response to the whole range of criticisms was to rethink its world without reliance on any single viewpoint, effectively undercutting the possibility of a single perspective. It sought a justifi- cation for sacrifice that needed no external validation, either from active gods or satisfied humans, and that required the positing neither of any supernatural realities nor a reliable world order beyond that of good Sanskrit texts, well-performed sacrifices, and a set of rules for integrating the two.

Jaimini and his commentator Sabara primarily wel :ncerned with achieving a right understanding of the rules of sacrificial action and sacrificial text so as to ensure that what one saw and heard at a sacrifice would cohere--be intelligible-regardless of what anyone might say about it from some particular perspective. In discovering these rules they sought to replace the "laws of the cosmos" with the "laws of language and ritual," and reliance on gods and humans (as norms for meaning) with an appreciation for the harmony of text and action (and everything accompanying them, even in orthodox society as a whole) that underlay the well-wrought sacrifice.

Such rules were desirable, since rules are by nature humanly intelligible (so that they can be obeyed) and not dependent on the humans



who observe them (so that they must be obeyed). When the rules are known and obeyed, they depend on no particular opinion, any more than do the rules of grammar. Because they govern the totality of experience, they overcome fragmentation by making the location and relation of any particular fragment-be it a god, a human, a word- more important than the stability of the thing itself. In the course of articulating these rules, the Mimamsakas made the three claims cited above, to which we will now turn, attending as well to their modern analogues.

1. Religion includes meanings and values appropriate to human beings, but the sum of its meaning necessarily exceeds the human perspective.

It is central to the Mimamsa analysis that sacrifices are not merely the instruments of the sacrificers who perform them, even if these sacrificers act only because they want the promised rewards of cows, sons, heaven, etc. and wish to use the sacrifices to get those rewards. The

Mim.msakas have no problem admitting that humans may think that

the sacrifices exist strictly for their satisfaction, and it is reasonable that the situation appear this way to performers. But the Mimamsakas also insist that this human perspective contributes to a more comprehensive primary goal: the enactment of the particular body of words and actions that constitute a particular sacrifice and, ultimately, the whole body of orthodox rites. The Veda states unequivocally that sacrifices are to be performed, and human performers are obviously required if any sacrifice is to be completed. No offering can actually be burnt in the fire unless some potential sacrificer is sufficiently motivated to expend the required effort and money. But, the Mimamsakas reason, if the sacrificer's gain were the "absolute" motivation of the sacrificial performances, there would be no basis for the obligatory nature of the command to sacrifice. If human satisfaction were the only warrant for the performances, there might eventually be a cessation of sacrifices altogether.

The Mimamsakas situate the performer in a world rightly ordered around the sacrifice, and this order is called dharma. When a sacrifice is properly performed-with all the words uttered at just the right point in the action, and all the actions performed in the right sequence using the right materials, by performers from the right families who have received the right education, etc.-this right performance embodies dharma, the ultimate value to which all else is subordinate. That humans contribute to dharma is what matters, whether or not they are aware of their role in it. In fact, if humans act out of self- interest, they are likely to play their parts better than if they do not,



and nothing of value is lost due to that self-interest. Self-interested humans are "themselves," just as a rice grain is "itself."

This relocation of the human perspective-from center stage to a supporting role-is an intellectually useful position that enables the Mimamsakas to affirm the human significance of sacrifice without reducing it to an expression of this or that human meaning. The meaning of sacrifice is multiple, projected from different positions, and irreducible to one perspective-even if someone might say, for example, "This is for me" or "That is just a necessary part of the sacrifice." There is indeed human meaning in ritual, but there is also much more than that.

The Mimamsakas achieve this restructuring of meaning by profound reflection on how and what words and actions mean and by developing rules for the ascertaining of meaning that do not depend on attention to the views of the human speakers and doers. Considera- tion of the Mimamsa treatment of one Sanskrit word, artha, offers a shorthand way of appreciating the convergence of multiple meanings their analysis suggested. Artha is frequently and legitimately translated as "meaning" and is often used to refer to the meaning of words. Yet artha is not only "word meaning" (s'abda-artha), even if the Mimiimsakas never forget that it is such; it is also "the purpose of action" (kriyd-artha), which integrates a set of ritual materials and a group of words by giving them an intrinsic finality-a goal that is the intended proper completion of an action.2 A ritual includes many words, things, and minor actions, which mean only through their relationship to one another as parts of the ritual act. Even if the connection of each individual word and its meaning is innate, words, in the plural, are expressive of dharma only when composed into statements which refer to and contribute to the ritual. (1.1.26)3

Later in the Stitras, the purpose around which the text-performance as a whole coheres is differentiated into two kinds of purpose: the human goal (purusa-artha) a person (purusa) has in performing actions-"meaningfulness", and the sacrificial purpose (kratu-artha), the meaningful interconnections of the parts of the sacrifice, its words, actions, utensils, offering materials-"inherent cohesion." The notion of "inherent cohesion" provides a rule by which to judge how certain actions and things fit at certain points in the ritual (4.1-2), while the notion of "meaningfulness" organizes sacrifices and parts of sacrifices

2 When the word artha appears, it is often difficult to discern whether a verbal or ritual artha is meant; as a general principle one can assume that it is a ritual goal supported by a verbal elucidation. 3 "Words already (individually) formed (before use) are handed down together (to

express) a ritual purpose. This (handing down together) is the cause (of the knowledge of dharma)."



according to how they directly or indirectly contribute to the satisfaction of human desires (4.3-4).4 These further determinations of "purpose" guide both the reading of texts and the performance of actions.5

In its treatment of the human perspective and meaning, the Mimramsa anticipated by millennia the current debate over the meaningfulness of ritual. By noting the comparable structures of the perspective of the performer of ritual and the speaker of language and placing them firmly within a ritual whole--the meaning of which extends beyond both perspectives-the Mimams.kas defend the variety of meanings a human being may give ritual and text, but they deny any such perspective the privilege of being the meaning. A ritual can appear meaningful and meaningless at the same time, from different perspectives, because meaning depends on where one is standing. It can appear to be solely one or the other, if one forgets that there are the other perspectives. Ritual is "for its own sake" (sva-artha), from the performer's viewpoint, when participation is interpreted as strictly instrumental toward the accomplishment of the larger goal; in this case the performer is "for the other" (para-artha), for the ritual. Con- versely, when the performer interprets ritual as ordered exclusively to the satisfaction of personal interests, he acts "for his own sake" and the ritual is "for the other."

The necessary appreciation of multiple perspectives recalls the parallel position proposed by S.J. Tambiah, who suggests that rituals are not static but dynamic and embody both a conservative tendency toward the loss of their semantic component and a revivalist tendency toward the infusion of new, purified meaning. The two tendencies are in tension, and the interpretation of ritual has to take into account the continuing movement from one extreme to the other and back. When Mimamsd allows the multiple perspectives on artha to remain in oper- ation without further simplification, it invites a similarly "dynamic" reading.

To say then that ritual is meaningless because it is "for itself" (Staal, 1979; 1986) is according to

Mima.msa partially true but need-

lessly sensational. Notwithstanding the claim that "what the Mimunms in fact ended up teaching is that the rituals have to be performed for their own sake" (Staal, 1979:7), it is evident that even the most general Mimamsaka notion of sacrificial dharma never excludes the satisfac-

4 For a fuller examination of the meaning of artha in the Sutras, see my 1984 University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, "Retrieving the Pfirva Mima.msu of Jaimini", due to appear as Volume 17 in the series, Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Indo- logical Institute, University of Vienna--especially Chapter IV, and the briefer 1986 exposition. 5 In commenting on 12.4.37 Sabara asserts that in cases of conflict the "inherent cohe-

sion" of the ritual takes precedence over "meaningfulness."



tion of human desires and needs, including the demand for intelligibility. The sacrifice does serve its performer's interests, even if it does not have that as its sole or primary purpose. Penner (13) is correct in his criticism of Staal's strained effort to interpret as meaningless what is evidently meaningful to the ritualists who performed and described the elaborate rites. Semiotics aside, one can simply point to the Mima-msa elaboration of the complex structure of meanings within and around the sacrifice to see that we have-at least as far as the Indian ritual theorists themselves are concerned-not a lack of meaning but a lack of an exclusive determination of meaning by self-interested performers.

2. The sacred Sanskrit-language Scripture known as the Veda is not a "book" to be read, not a source of information about a world outside itself We have seen that the Mima~sa systematically implicates the

human perspective within the ritual whole of word and action and subordinates it to that whole. The early Mimrmsa also elected to make language inseparable from ritual. It stated that the Veda is not a book or text that can be considered in isolation from the performance of the sacrifices it refers to. There are all kinds of intelligible statements made in the Veda, but none of them is meant to be understood "for its own sake," as providing neutral information about its future use. Of course, many religions similarly argue that their sacred texts have a specific religious usefulness and command a certain kind of behavior in response, but Mimrnmsa works out the details of this position more thoroughly than any other school.

At the beginning of the Stitras, Jaimini gives the fundamental tenet that underlies the Mimuamsa contextualization of the Veda: "The relationship between word and purpose (or meaning) is innate (autpat- tika, "original"; 1.1.5). At issue first of all is how (or when) Vedic statements get their meanings. Jaimini's view is that they are not assigned meanings by a conventional, societal process; instead, the statement- referent relationship precedes any speaker's use of either the statement or the words comprising it. This point is defended by Jaimini in a complex argument. First (1.1.6-23), he argues in favor of the position that speech presumes a prior "always-there" relation of the individual word and its referent. His position is elaborated by the later commentators, with increasingly complex linguistic arguments. Then (1.1.24- 45) he defends the view that the meaning of statements cannot be learned from adding together the meanings of the words in the statement, but only by noting that to which the whole statement purpose- fully refers-usually an action rather than a thing, and usually a ritual



action (in the religious context).6 The larger point to be drawn is that the "Word"-the Veda as a

whole-is in an innate, original, and indivisible harmony with the larger "purpose" (artha), which is the continuing enactment of the corpus of Vedic sacrifices. The Veda intends the performance of the sacrifice, and a sacrifice is impossible without words that determine its structure and illuminate its meaning. Mimasa saw language and language questions "with ritual eyes" and effectively undermined the notion of a separate text or "book."

Because of the centrality and importance of this ritual implication of language, I wish to examine in detail several examples of how the

Mimdamsakas ritually interpret language-terms that might easily have

been otherwise used. First I will consider the terms "statement" or "sentence" and "context," and then mantra ("prayer") and brdhmana ("rubric"). All four terms are used to make the Veda inseparable from the sacrificial performance.

"Statement" (vdkya; often translated as "sentence") is defined by Jaimini as: "A group of words serving a single purpose forms a sentence (vdkya), if on analysis the separate words are found to have mutual expectancy" (2.1.46).7 To begin with a simple example of my own making, consider these two statements: "I ate" and "I ate. After dinner I returned home." While one can say "I ate" without adding "After dinner I returned home", one cannot omit the first "I" and say "ate." Therefore, "I ate" and "After dinner I returned home" can be considered separate sentences, while "I ate" is a single statement, the words of which "need" one another.

For centuries this definition has served in India as a basis for linguistic and philosophical definitions of the sentence, since it stresses both the single overall meaning of the group of words and the "bond- ing" of the words, the insufficiency of each without the others. Yet it is not meant to be primarily a contribution to grammar. It occurs within a discussion of the kinds of texts found in the Veda (2.1.30-49), and it is introduced in order to clear up a ritual difficulty. "Statement" designates one kind of text, the prose passages (yajurs) recruited dur- 6 How sentences come to mean what they mean is a subject of heated debate in later

Mimamsa. Around 700 CE the schools of Kumrrila Bhatta and Prabhakara took the positions, respectively, that the sentence meaning is in some way communicated through the sum of word meanings or that the sentence meaning cannot be traced back to the word meanings; the subtleties of their positions, however, go far beyond what can be said in this context. In my view, the Prabhdkara school more faithfully represents Jaimini's Mimamsa. 7 I.e., if they "need" one another to make complete sense. The translation is that of K.

Kunjunni Raja, p. 152. His comments (152 ff.) on the later use of Jaimini's definition are pertinent.



ing the ritual. The priest told to recite a yajur (identified merely by its starting words) may not be sure where the yajur ends or when he is to stop reciting, since there is no necessary linguistic stopping point in a prose passage.

This would not be the case with the other two kinds of texts, "rgs," which are poetic verses divided into metrical feet, and "sdmans," which are verses set to music and sung, most often some of the same rgs. Hearing either of these, one would come to natural stopping points without having to refer to meaning.

Jaimini's definition of "statement" solves the problem by identify- ing a prose unit as a group of words with a complete meaning (artha), which "lacks nothing." But this "meaning" is a ritual referent, some aspect of the ritual referred to by the words in the prose passage, and not a coherent syntactical meaning separable from the ritual context. This ritually grounded "statement" can be comprised of two or more grammatical sentences, however many are required to denote properly the ritual referent at hand. For example, in discussing the definition of "statement," (PMS 2.1.40) the commentator Sabara introduces the following text from the Taittiriya

Sam.hita (1.1.4.2), one of the

Vedic collections of texts related to the sacrifices: On the impulse of the god Savitr, with the arms of the

Agvins, with the hands of Pisan, I offer thee dear to Agni, to Agni and Soma.8

Correct reading of the passage allows for repetition of the verb, "I offer," with each phrase-"I offer on the impulse ... I offer with the arms ... etc."-and there would then be no strictly grammatical reason that each should not be a separate sentence. But in the appropriate context of the Dariapfirnamisa sacrifice, it is clear that only one offering is at issue, modified by the mentioned deities-Savitr, Aivins, etc. This ritual location, not an independent reading of the words themselves as a grammatical unit, determines the limits of the unit of meaning. One cannot read properly without knowing the ritual context.

The second term in this first pair is prakarana, often translated as "context" or "leading subject matter." It too has a more than verbal reference and is carefully distinguished by the Mimramsakas from "place" (sthdna), which more closely refers to words or ideas placed contiguously "on a page" or, better, placed together in the units to be memorized in a particular school of Vedic practice.9 The notion of prakarana comes into use for the following reason. Sacrifices are often

8 As translated by A.B. Keith. 9 Sthdna too has a ritual meaning, referring to the location of things in the sacrificial

arena.



enjoined in abbreviated rules, with only their main sacrificial action, designated deity, and promised result identified. For actual performance, they require the addition of nearby means of performance (such as accessory actions, preparations, or foresacrifices), which are observed normally to accompany this kind of ritual even if there is no text that makes the connection explicit. Conversely, these accessory actions would never be performed-fruitless in themselves, they would be pointless-unless there were some purposeful primary sacrifice with which they are connected and that motivates their performance.

Thus, an offering into fire cannot be made without a prior lighting of a fire, and the lighting is pointless unless there is to be an offering. These actions "need" one another. They are, in Sabara's words, a "context"

(prakaran.a), "the declaration of that which needs to be

done, in need of a manner of doing."10 In the Mimrimsa framework, "context" pertains only secondarily and by extension to words in need of one another, i.e., the other words one needs to know (the other sentences that have to be read) in order to understand the point of any particular sentence. One must take into account other-usually, but not always, physically-nearby statements to understand what one is reading. Originally, this too pertained to the texts accompanying the above-mentioned primary and accessory actions, but by extension it came to refer to any text and its context(s).11

These examples of "statement" and "context" show that in Mrh-nisa the meaning of texts is ascertained by reference to ritual actions, which are themselves meaningful; meaning contributes to purposefulness, and purpose is first of all ritual purpose. The position suggests that for the Milmarmsakas, intelligibility-in the widest sense-is a property neither of independent texts, nor of the actions taken separately from the words pertaining to them, nor of external referents such as performers and gods, both of whom are merely actors within the language-ritual process. Rather, meaning is disclosed in the complex, multi-perspectival sacrificial event, which includes all these.

The interdependence of sacred text and ritual action is genera- lized when the Mimnimsakas divide the Veda into two major portions, each of which is ritually defined: mantras and brdhmanas, with

10 Bhdsya on 3.3.14. Cf. 3.3.11 and Bhdsya. 11 In commenting on PMS 3.3.14, Sabara gives as an example of "context" the case of

the ritual of royal consecration [the rdjasdya], which consists of a series of sacrifices. In one of these only, one particular myth is told to illuminate the action taking place. Because the same myth is needed to illuminate all the sacrifices in the series, it is understood to belong to all of them. The myth and the series of sacrifices form a single "context."



arthavdda as an important "subdivision" of the two.12 Mantras are verses sung or recited in the course of the perform-

ance of a sacrifice; usually their utterance inaugurates the particular action, within the whole, with which each is associated. Their role is to name and thereby focus attention on some sacrificial element, be it the action itself, or the material used, or the deity who is the recipient of the sacrifice (2.1.30-31; 3.2.1). Thus, for instance, the mantra "I am cutting the grass which becomes the seat of the gods" (cited by Sabara at 3.2.1) illuminates with meaning the act of cutting grass blades to use at the altar. Because the mantras are used directly in the performance (2.1.31; 5.1.16), they are more authoritative than the accompanying injunctive texts (brdhmanas), which talk about the action of the sacrifice. If the words of a mantra imply something that contradicts what an injunctive text states, whatever fits best with the mantra's meaning is preferable. Thus, if the way mantras are listed in their portion of the Veda suggests an order of performance different from the prescrip- tions given in the injunctive portion, the former takes precedence over the latter. This very precedence permanently imbeds the mantras in the ritual; they are essential to it, but unimportant (useless) in any extra-ritual context. Mimaimsa rejects the notion that mantras have separable, intrinsic value apart from the sacrifice.

Brdhmanas, by contrast, define and make possible the performance by enjoining it and organizing its components. For the most part they are in the form of injunctions, "ordering" words, although there is a wide variety of literary forms in which the intended ordering is made known. By these brdhmanas, hitherto commonplace elements of daily experience are identified, gathered, prepared, and related to one another in special ways. The right performers are made to perform the right actions, with the right materials, for the right purposes, and with the right results in mind. Thus, as Sabara illustrates in commenting on 2.1.33, the statement "The branch of the udumbara tree is of the same height as the sacrificer" is meant to guide the cutting of the branch by telling us how long a branch is to be cut off. These brdhmanas are certainly statements with meaning-they communi- cate-but they have no purpose apart from the ritual that they enjoin and order. The Mimi~imsakas' focus on ritual purpose disallows any effort to glean from the brdhmanas knowledge not related to the ritual. We do not need a sacred text to know about udumbara trees and men who cut branches, but only the Vedic text will relate the tree and the man to the cutting action in this particular way. The view that

12 My intention is to understand what Mimdmsakas say about mantras and brdhmanas, although they are not the only ones to divide the Veda into such parts, and probably not the first (cf. for example Apastamba Srauta Sutra 24.1).



the Veda is comprised only of texts used in the performance of sacrifices and texts about sacrificesl3 provoked a sensible objection: What about those parts of the Veda that give us information about this world, the gods, creation, etc.? Can we not turn to the Veda for this information? Jaimini is aware of this question. Soon after he has defined the Veda as sacrificially-oriented (1.1.25-26), the thesis is proposed that since the sacrificially-oriented parts of the Veda have a purpose, guide action, and hence are "truly authoritative." The rest, lacking this orientation, must be irrelevant, whatever the meaning of the words may be. (1.2.1)

Jaimini knows that there apparently are purely informational statements in the Veda and does not wish to concede that a large part of the Veda is useless. But he insists equally that there are no texts that merely give us information. He therefore introduces the category of "supportive statements" (arthavdda):14 statements in the Veda neither uttered in the performance nor helpful in organizing it. Such statements, he says, are in "praise" of what is being done (1.2.7). They assist the performance by encouraging the performer, describing the results in glowing terms, explaining how the world is such that the sacrifice works, etc. Such information found in the Veda is useful only when identified as supportive of the ritual. Thus, for instance, after potential performers have been urged to sacrifice an animal dedicated to the god Vayu, a text says "For Vayu is the swiftest of all deities." The point of this citation, Sabara explains (1.2.7), is not to give us information about Vayu, but rather to encourage us to sacrifice, since Vayu is a god who will surely be swift in awarding the desired results.

3. The Veda has no author, no meaning beyond the words and the sacrificial actions themselves; one cannot appeal to a pre- verbal intention to get beyond the words. If we connect the ritual implication of language with the earlier

claim that in a sacrifice the sacrificer is only an instrument, and neither the creator of the rites nor their finality, it should not come as a sur- prise that like the sacrifices themselves, the Veda has no creator, no author. People do not invent their rituals, nor author their sacred texts, says Mimfamsa.

This authorlessness is based on a homologization of the speaker or text-performer to the sacrificial-performer. Because the Veda is insep- 13 It is interesting to note in addition that the division of the Veda into three Vedas is a

ritual one, grouping texts to be used by the three active priests at major rites: texts for the chanter (hotr) are in the Rg Veda, for the singer (udgatr) in the Sdma Veda, and for the priest performing the actions (adhvaryu) in the Yajur Veda. 14 But without using this term until a subsequent discussion of the meaningfulness of mantras, in 1.2.43.



arable from the ritual, the "performer" of the Veda, the expounder or reciter of its words, is likewise inseparable from it. His function with regard to the text is subject to the same strictures governing the performer of sacrificial actions: he speaks it because it makes sense to him, either in its content (and Mimurmsakas insist that the content of the Vedic texts should be understood) or because he hopes to attain some goal, such as the reward accruing to the sacrifice, but he does not determine the meaning. His participation is necessary, but he makes no creative contribution; he utters them, he can understand them as he wishes, but he cannot change them or "own" them. He "activates" the text by making it audible, but has no role in its composition, which is already set and inter-structured with the ritual. He is ever preceded by the word.15

The position is presented without fanfare and briefly in the Stitras. When, near the beginning of the Sttras, an opponent proposes the argument that the Vedic scriptures cannot be a source of certain knowledge because their authors may be fallible, Jaimini simply states that the sacred text is prior to and, in regard to its composition, independent of those who have taught it; i.e., it has speakers but no authors: "It has been explained that word is prior (to its speakers)." (1.1.29-30) Only later was the assertion formalized as the doctrine of the "authorlessness" (apauruseyatva) of the text.16

The reduction of the author to speaker/expounder makes it

15 As suggested above, this notion of subordinate agency, in speech as well as ritual, is supported by the fundamental structures of the Sanskrit language, and later Mimam- sakas note this point. Thus Prabha.kara, an important eight-century Mim&imsaka, offers citations from Panini's grammar in defense of Jaimini's theory. But Jaimini relies simply on an understanding of how ritual uses its performers to indicate the limited role of apparent authors. 16 The idea of authorlessness in ancient India can be analyzed from a variety of per-

spectives. For instance, one could look at the grammar of classical Sanskrit itself, in which most Indian theological and philosophical texts were composed. Sanskrit does not understand the structure of a sentence to be that of subject/predicate, but rather that of a verb qualified by various relationships, including to agent and instrument, place, etc. The "subject" of the sentence is, grammatically speaking, only apparent. Edwin Gerow has explored at length the relationship between certain grammatical structures in the Sanskrit language and philosophical structures in Vedanta philosophy in particular. His observations on the impersonal structure of Sanskrit are pertinent for a comprehensive understanding of the notion of "authorlessness."

Or, one might begin by attending to the general orthodox Brahmanical notion that the original seers (rsis) saw the Veda at the beginning of the age but did not compose it. I have chosen to place the notion of authorlessness against the specifically Mimamsa background because it is in this school that the important connection of language to ritual is most clearly explored, and the "theological" implications of authorlessness most developed; also, because it is in response to this school's formulation of the matter that some of the most interesting theological responses are formed. I do not intend, however, to suggest that the Mim~msa viewpoint developed in isolation from grammatical



unnecessary to defend textual authority by defending the competence and sincerity of authors. A veda composed by human authors would depend on them and be fallible as they are, and even divine authors may have intentions not perfectly expressed in their words, or may even intentionally obscure what they mean. Authorlessness allows one to concede these points without the risk of damage to the Veda; it does not really matter what an apparent author may have intended, since what actually is constructed in language according to the rules of language and gleaned from it by the rules of interpretation transcends the author's intentions and only by chance coincides with what this author may have meant. The Veda in effect uses the instrumentality of an "author" to express itself.

Penner approaches Jaimini's viewpoint when he takes up this issue of the author.

Neither rituals nor myths have an author. Thus there is a sense in which performers of ritual learn to perform a ritual as we learn how to speak our language in spite of the fact that we cannot explain the rules on which both are based. In either case it simply will do no good to search for an original performer who first taught the ritual or the language, for this simply leads us into a infinite regress.(13)

Although he does not refer to the Mimadmsd doctrine explicitly, Penner actually presents with admirable clarity the substance of that view on ritual/scriptural authorlessness.

The larger effect of the implication of performer, text, and speaker in the ritual action is to define dharma, the entirety of ritual and scriptural intelligibility, as a closed system: complex and nuanced, but internally- and self-justifying. The coherence of rules in relation to one another makes both speaking and acting meaningful without making that meaning depend solely on the intentions of an external referent, an author. Understanding the rules of the text allows one to use it and perform its corresponding actions, but without the added illusory effort to understand some intended meaning beyond what is written and done.

Later Mimamsa elaborates this theory of authorlessness, in support of the basic point that (ritual) text, like (ritual) act, has no personal originator. In their general theory of interpretation, which later on is not made to rest explicitly on a ritual foundation (although this may simply be presumed as obvious), they refuse to equate tdtparya, the "intent" of the text, with the author's intent. ". . . the

Mim.msakas maintain that the tdtparya or the real purport meant by it can be stud-

and mythical perspectives; it may be properly understood as an effort at a formal con- ceptualization of ideas implicitly available elsewhere in Indian thought.



ied objectively without any reference to the intention of the speaker." (Kunjunni Raja: 184). They seek rather to ascertain the meaning of texts strictly on the basis of internal evidence, the stated topics of paragraphs, conclusions drawn, etc.

The Mimrnimsi theory of authorlessness, with its underlying concern to "liberate" the sacred texts from its author, approaches Michel Foucault's influential interpretation of the common (though not uiver- sal) way in which the author-function is used as a societal tool to restrain language, assign responsibility, and confine the meaning of texts. Foucault shows how this author-function--despite its appeal to the "infinite creative resources" which are culturally supposed to lie within the speaker- actually restricts texts by ordering them to a designated author, whose intentions determine what the texts are allowed to mean. Authors are used to confine the encompassing, unbounded "event" of language within manageable limits. Foucault likewise reex- amines the notion of subject connected with the author-function, and questions

the absolute character and founding role of the subject ... not in order to reestablish the theme of an originating subject, but to grasp the subject's points of insertion, modes of functioning, and system of dependencies ... it is a matter of depriving the subject (or its substitute) of its role as originator, and of analyzing the subject as a variable and complex function of discourse. (118)

By refusing to take for granted the author-text relationship, Foucault seeks to free the text from the "system of constraint" that is the author; but he admits that some other constraint might yet emerge.

I think that, as our society changes, the author function will disap- pear, and in such a manner that fiction and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode, but still with a system of constraint--one which will no longer be the author, but which will have to be determined or, perhaps, experienced. (119)

Mimaimsa sought to secure the authority of the Veda by founding it on an ever-precedent weaving of word into ritual action. It decided that reference to the author as the privileged source of meaning limited the Veda, cut it off from its ritual context, and made it liable to the mistakes and limitations of the author. By locating author and performer in the ritual context, the instrumental role of the speaker of words is accounted for, yet in proper subordination.

Foucault's suggestion that focus on the author overly restricts the text likewise points to an appreciation that text and language possess horizons and scopes of significance wider than those belonging to any given set of authors and readers. Indeed, his search for some other "system of constraint" seems open to the way in which something like



ritual might constrain the text, or in which grammar (particularly if ordered as Sanskrit grammar is) might be given precedence over authors' meanings. The two projects illuminate and reinforce one another, and it is perhaps unfortunate the Foucault was not familiar with the Mimuamsd analogue to his position. Anyone seeking to develop the implications of Foucault's position has a very promising resource available in the Indian material.

The remaining question I wish to address takes us in a different direction. I am concerned about the viability of traditional religious discourse after Mimamsa's deconstruction of the notion that sacrifice is anthropocentric, the notion of Veda as a distinct, independent text, and the notion of author (divine or human). Conversely, we may ask whether or not the Mimamsd positions are of any use to people who wish to remain religious and continue to use some of the traditional categories and limits. One medieval commentator is reported to have said that "the study of Mimamsd withers the soul." We must at least consider the possibility that a thorough

"Mima.msification" leaves

hardly anything to religion but a never-ending series of sacrificial performances, or a religion so peculiarly defined that just about no one can believe in it.

Analogously, one must wonder what is left of religion after modern deconstructionism, or what, if anything, deconstruction might mean for theologians in Christianity and other highly developed tradi- tions. Referring to Derrida's claim that "in the void remaining after the death of God, veils veil veils and masks mask masks," Mark C. Tay- lor has vividly summarized the larger and initially devastating effect of this phenomenon:

Such ceaseless masking has a domino effect on much Western philosophy and theology. One after another, central concepts and dominant notions-God, self, history, book . . .-tumble. As entanglement in a very different world once led us to suspect ... this domino effect carries serious consequences for all of western society and culture. (Wyschogrod, et al.: 549)

Elsewhere he has shown how the "God is dead" theme is necessarily connected with other important "deaths" which together shake the whole of traditional religion:

God, self, history, and book are, thus, bound in an intricate relationship in which each mirrors the other. No single concept can be changed without altering all of the others. As a result of this thorough interdependence, the news of the death of God cannot really reach our ears until its reverberations are traced in the notions of self, history and book. The echoes of the death of God can be heard in the disappearance of the self, the end of history, and the closure of the book. (1984: 7-8)



How is Christianity, for instance, to be visualized without "God," the "Bible," the "self" and "history?" Taylor argues, however, that deconstructionism by its radical extension of the death of God critique offers a way beyond the perceived theological stalemate in the face of the death of God: not by the denial of this "death," but by the working out of its implications in other areas of religious discourse.

Similarly, Mima.msa's

relentless critique significantly shaped the new theological discourse that was to be essential to Hinduism. Taylor himself has suggested that attention to non-Western religious tradi- tions is invited and facilitated by the deconstructionist move, and even that the connections of language and ritual in Buddhism might be specifically helpful.

For example, it might be possible to establish a constructive comparison between the textual strategies of deconstruction and those deployed in some Buddhist texts. Inasmuch as deconstruc- tive critics subscribe to a performative view of language, it might not be unreasonable to expect similarities between the practice of deconstruction and certain Buddhist meditative and ritual places. (Wyschogrod, et. al.: 553)

The suggestion of comparison with Buddhism is appropriate and promises to be fruitful if seriously pursued. But I prefer to search out the comparison with Mimamsa, precisely because the

Mim~.amsakas were interested in reappropriating, albeit by drastic measures, the "old religion" of the Vedic Scriptures and sacrifices, placing them on a new basis. Except perhaps in a very extended sense, the Buddhists did not share this goal.

We have already seen that the Mimamsa, in its de-emphasis on the gods and the human person and its reintegration of the Veda into a ritual context precedent to any author or performer, parallels many deconstructionist themes. For a few Hindus, perhaps, the Mimamsa defense of the meaningfulness of the Veda was a sufficient rehabilita- tion of the tradition. But I wish now to explore a particular response to Mim~msa, by a school of thinkers not entirely satisfied with the Mimamsa synthesis but also unwilling and unable to revert to the pre- Mimamsa orthodoxy. Certain developments within the Vedanta, which has accurately been called the "Later Mimamsa," offer us a model we should seriously consult in fashioning a post-deconstructionist religious thinking that is not in total disrupture from the recogniza- ble religious tradition of Christianity.17

There were many responses to the Mimamsa doctrines, particularly their displacement of the human performer and the author. It 17 For simplicity, from this point on I treat the problem of deconstruction as a problem

for Christian theology although, of course, deconstruction challenges all (religious) ways of thinking.



seems that even Sabara, the authoritative first commentator on Jaimini, stepped back from Jaimini's radically non-anthropocentric perspective and argued that the purpose of sacrifices is to bring about the satisfaction of the performer's desires.'8 Some, such as the logicians of the Nydya school, sought to refute the notion of authorlessness on the grounds that it made no sense to say that there are texts no one has composed, and that since God is a perfectly reliable source of information, there is no need to doubt the reliability of texts God authors.

The Vedanta approach is most interesting because it develops only in a context where the major stratgegies and achievements of Mimamsd have been taken seriously. The Vedinta, on the basis of the late Vedic texts called the "upanisads," expounds the theory that underlying all reality is a perfect, conscious absolute, brahman. On the basis the Vedantins necessarily disassociate themselves from the Mimamsakas, who do not recognize the authority of the upanisads. Unlike the logicians, however, who departed from a Mima5ms view of the world by focusing meaning in a transcendent Lord, the Vedintins sought to effect a re-centering without shifting the meaning of the system to a reality merely outside it. Like the Mimnmsakas, they also resisted the introduction of the author concept, and declined to base Vedic authority in the will or intention of a higher being; brahman does not author the Veda.

The question of the relation of the Veda to brahman is raised in the seminal Vedanta text, the Brahma Stitras of Badaraya.ia, first in 1.1.3 and later in 1.3.29 ff. The claim is two-fold: the Veda has its source in brahman and yet it is eternal, beginningless. Sankara (c. 700 CE), the first great Vedanta commentator, does not offer us a fully elaborated theory of how this is so, but merely insists, with Bddarayana, that brahman is the source and cause of the Veda (1.1.3), and that even the periodic total destructions of the universe do not include the dissolution of the Veda. It does not require re-creation by brahman (1.3.30), and is simply manifest again in each new age. The view that the Veda is eternal but somehow dependent on brahman is more clearly explained by later commentators. The view of PrakiSatman, the author of a commentary entitled Vivarana (c. 1200 C.E.), is summed up by Satchidananda Murty:

At the beginning of each world-cycle God merely utters the Vedic sentences, just as today we might quote the sentences of the Mahabharata (the great epic of India, generally acknowl- edged to have a human author). So the Vivarana school says that the purport of the Veda is not to express an 'opinion'-not even

18 Sabara thus sparked a controversy which occupied the two main Mimamsa schools in later generations. I developed this theme in Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book (see n.4 above).



that of God; its purport through the injunction to study consists in injunctions. (46)

Prakaiitman discards the model of an author-text relationship rooted in intentionality and instead points to how a material cause relates to its elaborated effects: "Brahman is only the material cause of the Veda, not its author." (Murty: 48) A standard example of material causality is clay, which can be seen in many forms as a "cause" for various things (a jug, a plate, a cup, etc.), without ceasing to be clay; and the Vedanta thinkers appeal to such examples, even if they do not hold any crassly material monism. What concerns them is to root the Veda in brahman as the only reality in which anything can be rooted, without resorting to the notion that language is the product or composition of an author's mind. The Veda is rather a dependent yet distinct evolute of brahman, its externalization or "self-manifestation" (if this term can be used without implying an intentional choice to communi- cate). Its eternity and unchangeability are founded directly in brahman's essence. It explicitates the otherwise unrecognized power of brahman in an objectifiable form-just as a jug, for instance, gives clay a material form under which it is perceptible to the senses.

The Vifistadvaita Vedanta school preeminently connected with Ramnnuja (c. 1100 C.E.) interprets brahman not simply as pure consciousness, but as a personal absolute, the deity Vis.nu. But it too rejects the logicians' appeal to a divine author of the Veda and accepts the same Mimamsa-Vedanta theory of authorlessness, but with a different nuance. Julius Lipner summarizes Rm~nanuja's basic position thus:

The Vedas (during the periodic dissolutions of the universe), in some way exist continuously, eternally, in the mind of brahman-their source and goal-who is eternal ... the Vedas repose deep within the consciousness of brahman in potency proximate to their pre-established empirical form ... when the time for re- emitting the world arrives, they are evoked or manifested ... rather than composed by the supreme person.... (9)

The Veda eternally resides in and manifests the mind of brahman; it is, as it were, God's "verbality," his consciousness transformed into word. Its eternity is dependent on and derives solely from his eternal, complete thought; it is as unchanging-unchangeable even by him-as his own essence. As Lipner rightly suggests, Rmnanuja's position is analogous to that of the European scholastic theologians who distinguished between God's essence and God's will; for Ramanuja the Veda is rooted in the former, not the latter (Lipner: 9) The difference, Rmanuja says, between human teachers of the Veda and brahman in regard to the set order of Vedic words, is not that brahman composes while others see what has been composed, but that brahman "irre- spective of mental impressions himself apprehends (the sequence)



directly." (Lipner: 12) To learn of brahman from the Veda, therefore, is not to learn of a message directed to us, but rather to become engaged in the language itself and hence simultaneously in brahman.

Parahara Bhattar (c. 1150 C.E.), a disciple of Ramanuja, adds to our set of explanatory images of the authorlessness of the absolute and the sacred text by suggesting that the Veda is the "body of God." In his commentary on the litany called the Vis.nusahasrandma ("The 1000 Names of Vis~nu") he explains the title veda-ariga as follows: "Veddai- gah means that the Vedas, with all their innumberable branches, are his limbs (ariga), body; because they manifest his inner portion."'19

The soul-body analogy is standard in Rrminuja's school; it is simply specified here in relation to the Veda. According to Rrmn.nuja, a "body" is first of all "any substance that an intelligent being is able completely to control and support for his own purposes, and the essential nature of which isentirely subservient to that intelligent self..." (Carman: 127). To say that the Veda is God's body is therefore to stress its dependence on, essential inherence in, and its inseparability from him. Dependence is mutual: because the Veda reflects his inner being, God is not free to change it in any way, any more than he could alter his own perfect being. Epistemologically, the interdependence is even more striking: just as our bodies make us perceptible to other people, the Veda is God's way of being known. Yet it is not God's intentional, willed self-expression, it is not his word and he is not its author. Its way of expressing God is not limited by the strictures of a mind "behind the text." It is God's "word," or, as suggested above, the intrinsic "verbality" of divine being.

These developments within the Veddnta suggest a new "face" for religious discourse after deconstruction, one that does not ignore or minimize the radical depth and importance of that critique. The notion that the Veda is either the material effect of brahman or God's body (as a kind of verbal emanation, language as one's exteriority) offers a way of reimagining what revelation in books like the Bible might be about or "look like." In particular, the notion that the sacred book as verbal-ritual event, in all its words, sound, images, patterns and redactions, is God's externalization or "verbalization" seems to offer a way of recovering, in a post-historical age, an interpretation of the whole of the Christian sacred texts that allows for "word-play" without a complete forgetting of the canonical boundaries of the texts. Two potential developments in this project exemplify what I have in mind.

19 "VedLngah" is the 132nd name, in the recently published Sanskrit-English edition of

the text: Sri Vishnu Sahasranama with the Bhdsya of Sri ParSiarabhattar (Visishadvaita Pracharini Sabha: Madras, 1983), 259-60.



First, however invaluable the historical-critical interpretation of the Bible has been, the limitations of its effort to uncover the "mind" of the original authors and communities have become evident on both scholarly and pastoral levels. The religious power of a biblical text is not adequately explained by discovering what its authors meant in composing it, nor by trying to imagine what God must have meant in allowing this or that community to fashion a certain kind of text. The appeal to the historical author has been a useful corrective to other kinds of abuses of the text, but is not sufficient to recover and maintain its sacredness. Moreover, historical-critical interpretation has risked fragmenting the Bible, transforming it from the (single) "Scripture" into a collection of redacted documents (themselves often compila- tions and redactions) arranged according to various principles. The notion that it is indeed a single "writing," each part of which is written with the rest in mind, has been obscured and almost ceased to be a possibility to be conceived of-except, again, by an appeal to the entire Israelite "people" as author. The Vedanta's effort to establish the Veda as brahman or as God's body, in a context already "purified" by Mimrmsd's critique of authorial intent, supports current moves to return to a "literary" and therefore multi-perspectival reading of sacred texts and encourages the tendency to do so without being restricted to the notion that a work of literature is an author's self- expression.

Second, Wyschogrod (544) notes correctly that deconstruction entails "a world that is scriptic but without Scriptures, a field of later- ally interpenetrating texts . . . an ahistorical world;" Taylor's Erring, she suggests, invites us into a "brilliantly contrived maze . .. without exit or closure" (544). This is a world of endless commentary, such as is modelled by Mimimsa/Veddnta's still unfinished set of multiplying, intertwined commentaries. What I find in need of critique, however, is the prospect of commentary without a "text," "scripture" without a "Scripture"-such that commentary and the commented on become virtually indistinguishable. There is the danger that commenting and interpreting may remain just an ultimately anthropocentric endeavor, a game we play simply because we enjoy playing it-instead of something binding and transcending us in the manner of a ritual which, though we may enjoy it and find it endlessly freeing, nevertheless con- strains us by concerns and rules that are not reducible to our interests and the confines of our creativity. The Mima~sa implication of the Veda in ritual performance, the ritualization of its meaning, and its systematic reduction of the author-function in a sense restores the "canon" of Scripture without leaving it as something external to human understanding and volition.

The Vedanta response too, shows us a way in which this can be



transformed into a new kind of theology with its own thoroughly revised understanding of how God is to be found in Scripture. Again, Taylor speaks to the point:

Writing is an unending play of difference that establishes the thoroughgoing relativity of all "things." This complex web of interrelationships is the divine milieu. Within this non-totaliz- able totality, nothing is itself by itself, for all things emerge and face through the interplay of forces ... The absolute relativity of the divine milieu renders all other things completely correlative. (Wyschogrod, et. al.: 537)

I diverge from what Taylor is saying in my view that there is nothing about this recovery of the "unending play of difference" that excludes "writing" in the specific sense of the "writing that has already been definitively written"--a Bible, a Veda, a Qur'an-even if as such it is then the subject of unending commentary. In this view the "absolute relativity of the divine milieu" can be read with the Vedanta as "the relatedness of everything as the divine body." In suggesting this, however, I freely concede that I am taking sides with the Mimmsakas and Vedantins against their Buddhist opponents in that "post-Bud- dhist" reconstruction of Vedic orthodoxy that ultimately becomes "Hinduism." Indeed, we might well suppose that as deconstructionism develops it will split more clearly in "Buddhist" and "Hindu" schools.

The widest extension of what I have been suggesting is that we must "demythologize" our notions of distance in time and space and the disciplines we define in conformity with these notions. We locate other religions and cultures and older periods in Europe's own tradition as objects of study, as if they are merely prior to our own evolving modern/post-modern thinking, materials to use, but not peers to learn from who have already grappled with questions comparable to those we raise. Given the very fascinating and endangering problems which today confront anyone who wishes to be and act and think religiously, we cannot afford to ignore the ways in which our current problems have been thought out before. Even if we have just been introduced to Mimamsa, we might do well to learn to see this thinking as our own thinking.20

20This paper is a significantly revised and greatly expanded version of a paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting at Anaheim in Novem- ber, 1985 and at the South Asian Language Analysis Roundtable held at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in May, 1986.



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Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 657-874Volume Information [pp. 865-871]Front Matter [pp. 657-854]Why the Veda Has No Author: Language as Ritual in Early Mms and Post-Modern Theology [pp. 659-684]Two Types of Narrative Theology [pp. 687-717]Shamanism: A Psychosocial Definition [pp. 721-739]American Myth and Biblical Interpretation in the Fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman [pp. 741-763]Who's Kidding Whom?: A Serious Reading of Rabbinic Word Plays [pp. 765-788]Sacrifice, Interpretation, and the Sacred: The Import of Gadamer and Girard for Religious Studies [pp. 791-810]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 813-815]Review: untitled [pp. 815-816]Review: untitled [pp. 816-817]Review: untitled [p. 818]Review: untitled [pp. 818-819]Review: untitled [pp. 820-821]Review: untitled [pp. 821-823]Review: untitled [pp. 824-826]Review: untitled [pp. 826-829]Review: untitled [pp. 829-830]Review: untitled [pp. 830-832]Review: untitled [pp. 832-833]Review: untitled [pp. 833-835]Review: untitled [pp. 835-837]Review: untitled [pp. 837-839]Review: untitled [pp. 839-840]Review: untitled [pp. 840-841]Review: untitled [pp. 841-842]Review: untitled [pp. 842-844]Review: untitled [pp. 844-846]Review: untitled [pp. 846-848]Review: untitled [pp. 848-850]Review: untitled [pp. 850-851]Review: untitled [pp. 851-853]Review: untitled [p. 853]

Books Received [pp. 855-864]Back Matter [pp. 873-874]

why the veda has no author

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