Sourav Roy

Registration No: 34399

M A, Semester II School of Arts & Aesthetics

Tutorial 2

Book Review of Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion by Brian K Smith (1989)

M21424 Puranic and Tantric Religion

Prof. Kunal Chakrabarti Centre for Historical Studies

word count: 2506

If the previous book reviewed by me ('Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian

Culture', D D Kosambi, 1962) was about mucking around in the mud of materials that nourishes the

supramundane lily of the Indian culture, the current one ('Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and

Religion' by Brian K Smith, 1989) is somewhere in-between the base and the bloom, a microscopic

analysis of the stalk of the lily, if I may.

While the four-R alliteration in the title augurs well for a book that is about the structural process

that maintains a coherent core of 'Hinduism', yet allows the edges continual shapeshifting, the

subjectivity of it ('Reflections') leaves the door open for a continued debate about the author's

hypothesis, which intellectualy examines the nature of the continuity between Vedism and

Hinduism.

In the preface, the author talks about walking the 'difficult tightrope' (p. vii) while writing on

comparative religion where striking the perfect balance between the depth of intradisciplinarity

and the width of interdisciplinarity could be elusive. He, however, takes up the challenge and keeps

up with admirable dexterity throughout the book. Even though every part of this book has been

published elsewhere previously, the different facets of the arguments across the eight chapters

appear to coalesce into a central one in an almost crystalline way, when read for the first time.

The first chapter, Making Connections : Hinduism and Vedism (pp. 3-29) begins with a Rig Veda

quote about the connections between prototype and counterpart followed by another (Max

Jacob's) about the measure of sincerity of a work lying in its strength to give reality to an illusion,

bookending the impending central argument. In this chapter, Dr. Smith takes pains (without

causing any to the reader, thanks to his lucid style) to define the necessities of a working definition

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of Hinduism to aid rather than to hinder thinking, and arrives at the one already made familiar to

us. “ Hinduism is the religion of those humans who create, perpetuate, and transform traditions

with legitimizing reference to the authority of the Veda" (pp. 13-14). Each verb ('create',

'perpetuate' and 'transform') is of equal importance because they are the ones which connect the

intellectual aspects of Vedism with the ritual aspects of Hinduism. By introducing but not yet

defining 'Resemblance' (p. 19) which is neither reduplication (mimetic continuity like cloning) nor

ratiotination (causal continuity like Sherlock Holmes's deduction) nor homology (anthropological

continuity like similarity of rituals across continents) he argues that the 'underlying (which is not

to say unconscious or hidden) principles' (p. 29 ) and ' strategies of orthodoxy' (p. 29)' , which

maintain the all-too-familar perpetuity are embedded in Vedas themselves. It seems almost like a

built-in antibody generator in our biological bodies, only more discerning.

The second chapter, Constructing Vedism (pp. 30-49) starts as cautiously as the first one with an

acute sense of historicity before it can launch itself into the realms of ambitious originality. He

clears the air about the mistaken ways of the previous scholars to explain the raison d'être of

Vedic rituals either as a result of ' The Overactive Imagination' (pp. 34 – 38) or as a compilation of

'The Meaningless Theory' (pp. 38-46). Brahmanas themselves could be held culpable for the latter.

(Al-Biruni writes “ The Brahmanas recite the Veda without understanding its meaning and in the

same way they learn it by heart, the one receiving it from the other. Only a few of them learn its

explanation, and still less is the number of those who master the contents of the Veda and their

interpretation to such a degree as to be able to hold a theological disputation.”1) In the concluding

section, by defining Resemblance, he refutes the preconception that Vedic Text is a dense jungle of

random ideas but “there is a philosophical centre around which all Vedic thought resolves

(revolves?). That center I will call resemblance. Although Vedic writers do

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not utilize a Sanskrit word that adequately translates as “resemblance”, until the time of the

composition of the ritual Sūtras (sāmānya, see chapter 5 and 7 herein), the concept, I believe,

underlies Vedic religious and philosophical discourse in its entirety. Vedic resemblance is, in sum,

not unlike what Michael Foucault has called an “episteme”, a central principle or rule that

generates and governs knowledge of all sorts.”(p. 47)

The third chapter, Ritual and Reality, (pp. 50 -81) now gets on to argue that, rituals, stemming

from the concept of resemblance, are all about reining in the chaos of reality. ('ritual was the

workshop in which all reality was forged' – p. 50) as the creation by Prajāpati Himself is imperfect

and should constantly be ritually pefected (yet never suceedding entirely) by sidestepping two

excesses 'an excess of resemblances (jāmi in ritual terms)' and ' an excess of differentiation'

(pŗthak). (p. 51). The process involves, as the author explains, not simple and confused

identifications, but connections between otherwise unrelated elements (p. 53) which can be done

horizontally as well as vertically. (p. 73). Two examples are given as how soma mentioned in

mantras (a substance whose constituency is now historically untraceable) can be replaced now

with other oblations or how the name and gotra of the patron (yajnapati) is inserted to customize

the efficacy of a mantra. The principle of universal resemblance is then spelt out in interpreting the

concepts of brahman, ' the ultimate nexus of . . . all connections between the resembling parts of

the universal whole' (p. 72), of 'prototype' (rupa / prama), 'counterpart' (pratirupa /pratima) and

'appropriate form' (abhirupa), and of the connexion between them ( nidana, bandhu).' 2

As the book progresses, the fourth chapter, The Ritual Construction of Being (pp. 82-119)

departing from the universality of resemblance zooms further in to particularities of daily lives.

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Since the creation itself is not perfect, the human beings, as they pass through the phases of their

lives need rituals as an "ontological salve" (p. 91) the heal the fractures in their selves caused by

transitions, right from conception to upanayana to death and beyond, as he quotes Atri Smŗti

declaring that by birth everyone is a Śūdra(p. 88) and it is through the rituals (which have

resemblance as their central theme) the ascendency of social being is constructed. But since the

rituals have their own existing hierarchy (in p. 95, Dr. Smith discusses in detail the class differences

of upanayana rituals where right from the age to meters of the initiation verse to the height of the

staff to be carried by the initiated are hierarchised for the three varnas ). The ontological salve

clearly comes in colour-coded containers signifying varying efficacy, which is further clarified when

he reminds us that that during sacrifice, the sacrificer “begins by rising progressively into the

religious sphere, and attains a culminating point, whence he descends again into the profane” (p.

105). The elaborate Brahminical machination promising to keep ontological entropy at bay is thus

partly sisyphean. This is the key to understand the endless cautionary tales of hubris that leads to

the fall of the asura-s. Because “The Brahmins mince no words in their warnings to those who

spurn a two-way ticket to- and from-paradise, those who don't use the return portion of the

booking.” (p. 110) and to add the last nail to this fatalistic coffin, the paradise that can be attained

via rituals is not the original paradise of the Gods themselves, but an “inferior substitute.” (p. 111).

So the entire Vedic philosophy (as per the Brahmāna texts) becomes a “ relationship of mutual

resemblance – between three hierarchically calibrated registers: (1) the scale of ritual

performance... (2) the relative quality and realization of the sacrificer's earthly self and status...(3)

the hierarchical order of selves and worlds of the unseen spheres.” (p. 119) As the Brahmins take

the responsibility of mending the reality itself which was given birth in imperfection by Prajāpati,

they break it into different sized bits, and keep rearranging and repeating those bits till it forms a

coherent, perfect pattern.

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Seen metaphysically from above the pattern has caleidoscopic beauty but from the lived ground

reality, it is as violently entrapping as a hall of mirrors.

This pattern is further unfurled in Chapter 5, The Organization of Ritual knowledge (pp. 120 - 142)

and Chapter 6, The Organization of Ritual Practice (pp. 143 – 168). The former plumbs the depths

of Sūtra litearture, to specify general rules for ritual performance and ritual categories of prototype

and modification (the question of big and little traditions comingling comes up), in order to

illustrate “how analogy and resemblance regulate the shape and differentiation of yajna-s.”3 The

latter llustrates the relations between śrauta rituals and gŗhya rituals and the role of women in the

latter.

But what is of more interest to me that in the fifth chapter he finally gets around to discuss

sāmānya which he has compared to resemblance while defining it in the second chapter. Here he

conveniently equates them after a preamble that “ interplay between the general and the specific

is the heart of the science of ritual” and repeats the jāmi / pŗthak binary. As we know that the

concept of sāmānya ( genus, which denotes characteristic similarities that allow two or more

objects to be classed together - as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica) is central to Nyaya-

Vaisheshiks school(s) of Indic philosophy and extreme caution is advised there to apply the concept

of sāmānya classification as it can often err on the side of too-loose (ativyapti) or too-tight

(avyapti) defintion. As the author is extremely sensitive about this very topic of defining defintions

(as we see in the first chapter) I certainly expected a nuanced comparison of the ativyapti / avyapti

and jāmi / pŗthak binaries which should be central to the definition of resemblance.

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Chapter 7, Ritual Hierarchy, Substitution and Equivalency (pp. 143-168) explicitly draws the

continuity between śrauta and gŗhya rituals and argues extensively whether the latter is a

grudgingly accepted inferior substitute or miniature replica of the former as the former became

more and more elaborate and expensive. The concept of substitution becomes crucial for

resemblance to be successful here as the act of sacrifice itself is a double substitution according to

Hubert and Mauss (“the victim stands in for both the sacrificer and the deity”, p. 173) and is

understood more clearly how by the logic of resemblance and equivalency goat as a victim stands

for a horse that stands for the man who gets the rewards of the sacrificial act.

In the beginning of the last and eighth chapter, The Destiny of Vedism (pp. 200-225), Brian K Smith

invokes Mark Twain to emphasize that the death of Vedism has been greatly exaggerated. In a

“continuity of idea but discontinuity of form”3 it continues in Buddhism as a dissolution of self (we

mustn't forget that the sacrificial act is essentially a self-sacrifice in order to facilitate a higher state

of being) and then he concludes by drawing an analogy between this elaborate attempt of

intellectually ordering the chaotic reality in Vedism and the goal of all religions, even the goal of

academic studies of religions.

While reading this exceptional book “which is neither too complicated nor too dense; nor is it ever

too casual and overconfident”3 there was a vague uneasiness that was rising inside me, which felt

familiar to the one I felt while reading 'Veda and Varna' 4 by the same author recently. I could

'dimly perceive' (like the Mahars in Robert Miller's writing) something vital amiss in his web of

logic which is as seemingly seamless as that of the Brahamanas. (To be fair to this astounding work

of scholarship, I must mention here, even though this book a veritable how-Brahmanas-see-

themselves guidebook, the author is neither an exhortor nor an apologist and very aware of both

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the epistemic and social violence wrought by this philosophical construct.)

Then I read J. C. Heesterman's (1925 – 2014) review5 of the book and the uneasiness was partly

dissolved. In the review, he sharply disagrees with the central premise of the book (despite calling

it “an intellectual achievement of the first order, if not a breakthrough” ) hinting at its the self-

fulfilling nature, as he writes, “The malleability of resemblance, on the other hand, appears to be

perfectly suited to the purpose of covering the gaps and interstices, and especially to paste over

the divide that separates the imagined world of ritual from unorderly living reality. It smoothly

provides for an overlay of meaning that does not overly tax the imagination or require too much

ratiocinative pressure. This, I feel, may well be the reason for our author to pin so much on

resemblance as to make it the center of his argument; Vedic ritual, like religion, should smoothly

and painlessly reduce the entire world to comprehensible order.”

Finally, my uneasiness took an inevitable visual turn on its way to the resolution, when I found a

description of the dust jacket image (which was missing in my libray copy) in Frederic M Smith's

review3 : “the photo on the cover, of a ritualist offering an oblation into a fire, is that of

Ramacandra Bhatta Kodlekere from Gokarna (N. Kanara dist.), the last of the true vidvans of the

Baudhayana school of srauta performance in Karnataka, whose knowledge of Srauta ritual easily

outdistances that of Western scholars..., who spend their lives trying to understand just what it is

he is doing.”

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If we take the cover image as the signifier (which is equated with rūpa in p.76) standing for the

entire book (of which the author's central argument is a part) would be a pratirūpa in a prototype-

counterpart / form-reflection correlation. But as we know any work of art (a photograph) is a

pratirūpa (Śatapatha Brāhmaņa 3.2.1.5) and is most certainly chosen to represent the book after it

was written, so the identities are switched.

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Now we are left with two mirrors facing each other and a series of infinite reflections. If we

consider the similar kind of mirroring correlation between the Vedic 'process' and Smith's

enunciation of it, (whether Brian Smith's own overarching perfection-in-an-imperfect-world

hypothesis is derived from Vedas or merely reflected from his own worldview in his explanation of

Vedic principle) the only concept which can break this pattern is abhirūpa, that elusive concept of

appropriate form which has the right resemblance and is neither exactly alike nor completely

different (p. 77). Whether we would stop at that (Smith's concept of 'Resemblance' being an

abhirūpa of central Vedic principle ) is entirely up to us. To borrow from Heesterman's conclusion,

“Vedic ritualism did indeed lay the foundation and as such continued as a "canon," but it does not

answer the human predicament. It does not even offer an either-or to guide one. ... Human beings

still have to find out for themselves.”

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End notes:

1. India by Al-Biruni, Edited by Queyamuddin Ahmad, National Book Trust India, 2013, p. 57 2. Book Review by: Peter Schreiner, Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,Vol. 53, No. 2 (1990), pp. 360-362 3. Book Review by: Frederick M. Smith, Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society,Vol. 110, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1990), pp. 735-737 4. Canonical Authority and Social Classification: Veda and Varna in Classical Indian Texts first published in History of Religions, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Nov., 1992), pp. 103-125 reprinted as 'Veda and Varna' by Critical Quest in 2012

5. Book Review by: J. C. Heesterman, Source: History of Religions,Vol. 30, No. 3 (Feb., 1991), pp. 296-305