Bruce Lincoln

H OW TO R E A D A R E L I G I O US T E X T : R E F L EC TIONS ON S OM E P A S S AG E S O F T H E C H A N D O G YA U PA N I S A D

i As a rst principle, noncontroversial in itself (I hope), but far-reaching in its implications, let me advance the observation that, like all other texts, those that constitute themselves as religious are human products. Yet pursuing this point quickly leads us to identify the chief way religious texts are unlike all others; that is, the claims they advance for their more-thanhuman origin, status, and authority. For, characteristically, they connect themselveseither explicitly or in some indirect fashionto a sphere and a knowledge of transcendent or metaphysical nature, which they purportedly mediate to mortal beings through processes like revelation, inspiration, and unbroken primordial tradition. Such claims condition the way devotees regard these texts and receive their contents: indeed, that is their very raison dtre. Scholars, however, ought not replicate the stance of the faithful or adopt a fetishism at secondhand. Intellectual independence, integrity, and critical spirit require that we treat the truths of these texts more cautiously (and more properly) as truth claims. Such a stance obliges us, moreover, to inquire about the human agencies responsible for the texts production, reproduction, dissemination, consumption, and interpretation. As with secular exercises in persuasion, we need to ask: Who is trying to persuade whom of what in this text? In what context is the attempt situated, and what are the consequences should it succeed?

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How to Read a Religious Text

As a case in point, I would like to consider a brief passage from the Chandogya Upanisad, one of the longest, oldest, and most prestigious texts of this category: a crowning accomplishment of Vedic religion. Like the other principal Upanisads, the Chandogya is hard to date with certainty, but probably took shape in northern India sometime in the middle of the rst millennium BCE. Assembled from preexisting materials and participating in the tradition of the Sama Veda, it is a work of vast scope and intellectual daring, marked by both rigor and imagination. Along with the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (itself in the tradition of the White Yajur Veda), the Chandogya establishes the great themes of Upanisadic thought, attempting to identify esoteric patterns in the arcane details of sacricial practice and to forge from these a unied understanding of the cosmos, the self, and the nature of being.1 Some years ago, I contributed a brief study of the sixth chapter (Adhyaya) of the Chandogya, a text that works out one such pattern.2 There, all existence is said to be composed of three basic qualities or elements. Most often, these includein ranked order(1) Brilliance (tejas), (2) Water (apas), and (3) Food (annam). At times, however, variant forms of the set appear, including (1) Speech (vac), (2) Breath ( prana), and (3) Mind (manas), which are understood as the essences of the basic categories. Thus, Speech is the essence of Brilliance (i.e., the loftiest, most rareed, most brilliant of all things); Breath, the essence of Water (being the loftiest and more rareed of life-sustaining uids); and Mind, the essence of Food (being the loftiest and most rareed of life-sustaining solid matter). A system of three colors(1) Red, (2) White, and (3) Black provides another means to describe this system, and to demonstrate the systems universal applicability, the text treats several concrete examples. Thus, for instance, it describes how Fire is properly understood as consisting of Brilliance (= the red portion, ame), Water (= the white portion, smoke, conated with clouds and steam), and Food (= the dark wood that re eats and the ashes it produces [= the res excrement]). This analysis further connects Fireand the givens of the systemto the three levels of the cosmos, homologizing Heaven, home of the red
1 For a good general introduction, see Patrick Olivelle, ed. and trans., The Early Upanisads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 327, 16669. Still useful are Arthur B. Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925); Louis Renou, Remarques sur la Chandogya-Upanisad, in his tudes vdiques et paninennes 1 (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1955), 91102; and H. Falk, Vedisch upanisd, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 136 (1986): 8097. 2 Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 136 41. See also the splendid discussion of Brian K. Smith, Classifying the Universe: The Ancient Indian Varna System and the Origins of Caste (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), which expands the analysis far beyond the givens of the Chandogya Upanisad.

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sun, to Brilliance; Atmosphere, home of the white clouds, to Water; and Earth, home of the dark soil and the plants that grow from it, to Food. Similarly, it can account for the social order as a set of hierarchized strata: (1) Priests (Brahmanas), associated with the heavens, the ame of the sacricial re, and Brilliance; (2) Warriors (Ksatriyas), with the atmosphere, lightning bolt, storm clouds, and Water; and (3) Commoners (Vaiyas), with the dark earth, agricultural labor, dirt, excrement, and Food. Such an analysis helped sustain the social order by naturalizing its categories and the rankings among them. Rather than understanding the tripartite varna system of Priests, Warriors, and Commoners as the product of human institutions, conventions, and practicesor, alternatively, as the residue of past history and strugglesthe Chandogya represents it as one more instance of the same pattern that determines the cosmos and everything in it. When arguments of this sort are advanced, accepted, and invested with sacred status, the stabilizing effects are enormous. There are, however, other possibilities. If religious texts can help reinforce and reproduce the social order, they can also be used to modify it, either by agitating openly against its sustaining logic or, more modestly and more subtly, by using that same logic to recalibrate the positions assigned to given groups, shifting advantage from some to others. The passage I will cite, Chandogya Upanisad 1.3.67, provides a convenient example. Briey, it adopts a variant on the system of three ranked categoriesits version is (1) Breath, (2) Speech, and (3) Foodand it aims its intervention not at the varna system, but at a lower level of social classication: that which ranks different categories of priest in roughly parallel fashion. To appreciate the skill of this maneuver, one must set it against the normative order, in which the Hotr (Invoker) priests responsible for the hymns of the Rg Veda are accorded the paramount position. Udgatr (Chanter) priests, responsible for the Sama Veda, rank second, since their texts quote verses fromthat is, are dependent onthe fuller compositions of the Rg Veda. Finally, there are the Adhvaryu priests, responsible for the Yajur Veda. In contrast to the other two collections, this text is in prose, from which the Adhvaryuswho are responsible for the physical actions involved in sacrice (building the altar, pouring libations, killing and dismembering animal victims, etc.)quote the formulas deemed appropriate to accompany each discrete step of the process (table 1). Making matters more complicated still, the Saman chants have multiple parts, which can be performed in more and less elaborate fashion, with different sections assigned to various assistants of the Udgatr. At the center of each performance, however, is the Loud Chant or High Chant known as the Udg i tha, which is introduced by the most sacred of all

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TABLE 1

How to Read a Religious Text

Normative Ranked Order among Vedic Priests Rank 1 2 3 Quality Brilliance Water Food Priest Hotr Udgatr Adhvaryu Veda Rg Sama Yajur Genre Hymns Chants Prose formulae Action Invoking Chanting Physical action

Note.The qualities listed here are those that appear in Chandogya Upanisad 6, for which other like sets could be substituted, e.g., Purity (sattva)/Energy (rajas)/Darkness (tamas) or Speech (vac)/ Breath ( prana)/Mind (manas).

syllables (Om) and is sung by the Udgatr himself.3 The Chandogya Upanisadwhich, as we noted earlier, is a text connected to the Sama Veda and, as such, a possession of the Udga t r priestsis particularly concerned to assess the profound signicance and esoteric power of the Udgitha chant. Whence the following passage:
One should homologize the syllables of [the name] Udgitha in this fashion: udis really Breath. Truly, one stands up (ud-tisthati ) by the breath. gi- is Speech. Truly, speeches are regarded as words (giras). tha is Food. Truly, all this [= the body] is established (sthitam) on food. Heaven is really ud, the atmosphere gi, the earth tha. The sun is really ud, the wind gi, the re tha. The Sama Veda is really ud, the Yajur Veda gi, the Rg Veda tha.4

In a tour de force of Upanisadic argumentation, this brief passage treats the word Udgitha as if each of its syllables had its own profound inner essence, and it uses a pseudophilological analysis to show that these are the three basic qualities of existence. The word as a wholeand thus, a fortiori, the Udgitha chantis thus seen to contain everything necessary to sustain the cosmos. And before it is nished, the text homologizes the syllables ud , g i , and tha to the elemental qualities, levels of the cosmos, core entity of each cosmic level, and the three Vedas (table 2). Two innovations are striking here. First, although most other texts tend to rank Speech above Breath, treating the latter as a coarser, more material substance that provides a foundation for the more rareed, sublime exis-

3 On the place of this chant in the Saman performance and the mystical signicance attributed to it, see O. Strauss, Udgithavidya, Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 13 (1931): 243310. 4 Chandogya Upanisad 1.3.67: atha khaludgithaksarany upasitodgitha iti. prana evotpranena hy uttisthati; vag gir vaco ha gira ity acaksate nna tham anne hidam sarva sthitam. dyaur evot, antariksa gih, prthivi tham; aditya evot, vayur gir, agnis tham; samaveda evot, yajurvedo gir, rgvedas tham.

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History of Religions
TABLE 2 Homologies Connecting the Three Syllables in the Name of the UdgItha Chant to Other Dimensions of Existence Rank 1 2 3 Syllable ud gi tha Quality Breath Speech Food Cosmic Level Heaven Atmosphere Earth Dening Object Sun Wind Fire

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Veda Sama Yajur Rg

Note.These homologies are according to the analysis of Chandogya Upanisad 1.3.67.

tence of the former, this passage reverses those relations.5 In doing so, it introduces a certain confusion, for Breath would seem to be more easily homologized to Atmosphere and Wind (as it regularly is elsewhere) than to Heaven and Sun (as is the case here).6 In support of this move, the text offers a bit of wordplay. Grammatically, the syllable ud- is a preverb that adds the sense of up to the verbs it modies. The text uses this suggestion of height to make the connection between ud and Heaven, highest of the cosmic strata, then argues for the association to Breath by observing that it is Breath that provides all vital force, permitting one to stand up (ud-stha-). The argument is forced but mildly ingenious, at least within the rules of the game. Were one not paying close attention, it could pass unnoticed. And even should it be caught, one might be inclined to let it go, since nothing vital seems at stake in the matter. Not so the case with the second, more provocative innovation, which turns the normal ranking of priests topsy-turvy. Two classes of priest the Udgatr and Adhvaryuboth move up a notch, while the ordinarily paramount Hotr priest tumbles to last position. Tumbles? The metaphor is misleading, for the man was positively pushed. Pushed into the Food, what is more, which is to sayfollowing the logic of the textinto the material realm of earth, dirt, and shit. Moreover, it was the Chandogya Upanisadan extension of the Sama Veda, product and instrument of the Udgatr prieststhat performed this exquisitely cerebral act of pushing. ii In an earlier work, I offered a protocol for dealing with texts like the one we have just considered. For the sake of explicitness, let me restate the steps involved in this method of analysis.7
5 Thus, e.g., Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.3.1113, 1.3.2527, 1.4.17, 3.1.35, 5.8.1, 6.2.12; Chandogya Upanisad 1.7.1, 6.5.24, 6.6.35, 6.7.6. Certain passages do have the relations reversed, however, Thus: Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.3.24, 1.5.47, 6.1.114, 6.3.2; Chandogya Upanisad 5.1.115. 6 See, e.g., Aitareya Upanisad 1.12. 7 Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 15051.

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1.

How to Read a Religious Text

Establish the categories at issue in the text on which the inquiry is focused. Note the relations among these categories (including the ways different categorical sets and subsets are brought into alignment), as well as their ranking relative to one another and also the logic used to justify that ranking. Note whether there are any changes in the ranking of categories between the beginning of the text and its denouement. Ascertain the logic used to justify any such shifts. Assemble a set of culturally relevant comparative materials in which the same categories are at issue. Establish any differences that exist between the categories and rankings that appear in the focal text and those in these other materials. Establish any connections that exist between the categories that gure in these texts and those that condition the relations of the social groups among whom the texts circulate. Establish the authorship of all texts considered and the circumstances of their authorship, circulation, and reception. Try to draw reasonable inferences about the interests that are advanced, defended, or negotiated through each text. Pay particular attention to the way the categories constituting the social order are redened and recalibrated, such that certain groups move up and others move down within the extant hierarchy.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

Some may charge that an approach of this sort shows disturbing cynicism, insofar as I focus on social, as well as material, issues and on the will to power, while ignoring all that they consider truly and properly religious. Although rigorous denitions of the latter category rarely accompany such defensive reactions, I imagine my critics would emphasize such things as the cosmic sensibility, moral purpose, and spiritual yearning they take to be constitutive of the religious or the sense of reverence and wonder they nd in religious texts. Surely, I would not deny that such characteristics often gure prominently in religious discourse. It is hardly my intention to renew vulgar anticlerical polemic by asserting that religion is always venal, petty, pretentious, or deceitful. Rather, my point is the more basic and, I trust, more nuanced observation with which I began: religious texts are human products. Like all that is human, they are capable of high moral purpose and crass self-promotion, spiritual longing and material interest. When both these possibilities assert themselves, however, religious texts take considerable pains to contain, elide, or deny the resultant contradiction, which impeachesor at least complicatesthe idealized self-understanding religion normally cultivates. The examples that fascinate meChandogya Upanisad 1.3.67, for instancetend to be those in which this kind of contradiction proves uncontainable and bursts into view, if only one has knowledge enough to see it. Admittedly, these are extreme, and not typical, cases. For that pre-

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cise reason, however, they are analytically revealing, since they mark the limit point where texts that characteristically misrecognize their nature as human products are forced to acknowledge their human instrumentality and interests. My goal in treating such examples is not to replace our disciplines traditional concern for the metaphysical content of religious texts with an equally one-sided focus on their physical preconditions and consequences. Rather, I want to acknowledge both sides and understand how they are interrelated: the discursive and the material, the sacred and the social, orto put it in Upanisadic terms, the realm of Speech, Breath, or Brilliance in its relation to the realm of Food. And here, another passage from the Chandogya holds considerable interest. iii This is Chandogya Upanisad 1.1011, which tells the story of Usasti Cakrayana, a needy man who dwelt in a wealthy village.8 Wealthy though the village may normally have been, the narrative describes it when it had been devastated by hail and its food supply was badly strained.9 We thus meet our hero in the act of begging from a rich man, circumstances having not been kind to the latter, who is reduced to eating a bowl of bad grain. From this, however, he gives Usasti Cakrayana enough to eat and still take home a bit for his wife.10 But as it turned out, she had had success in her own begging, so she stored this bit of food, now thrice left over: once by the rich man, once by her husband, and once by the woman herself.11 Waking early the next morning, Usasti Cakrayana remarked to his wife Ah! If we had some food, we could get some money. The king is going to sponsor a sacrice. He might select me for all the priestly duties.12 So the good woman gave her husband the leftover grain, and after eating, he made his way to the sacrice, which was already in progress.13 Sitting
8 9

Chandogya Upanisad 1.10.1: usatir ha cakrayana ibhyagrame pradranaka uvasa. Ibid.: matacihatesu. The term mataci is rare, and some commentaries have suggested that the village was devastated by locusts, rather than hail. The situation of need remains the same in either event. 10 Ibid. 1.10.25. According to Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1899), 296, kulmasa is an inferior kind of grain, half-ripe barley, or a sour gruel made from same. Hardly what a rich man (ibhya) would eat, except in times of privation, yet the text has him assert that he has no other food. Chandogya Upanisad 1.10.2: sa hebhya kulmasan khadantam bibhikse, ta hovaca, neto nye vidyante yac ca ye ma ima upanhita iti. 11 Chandogya Upanisad 1.10.5. The text comments on the shameful nature of leftovers at 1.10.3 4. On this point, see Charles Malamoud, Observations sur la notion de reste dans le brhmanisme, Weiner Zeitschrift fr die Kunde Sdasiens 1972, 526, esp. 20. 12 Chandogya Upanisad 1.10.6: sa ha pratah sajihana uvaca, yad batannasya labhemahi, labhemahi dhanamatram: rajasau yaksyate, sa ma sarvair artvijyair vrniteti. 13 Ibid. 1.10.78.

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down beside the Udgatr and his two assistants, he warned them not to sing the chants with which they were charged, since they did not know the real deity associated with these verses.14 The resultant commotion attracted the notice of the king who was patron (yajamana) of the sacrice, which is probably just what Usasti Cakrayana wanted. Be that as it may, discussions followed, at the end of which he was hired to instruct the three Sama Veda priests, and the king agreed to pay him the same salary as each of these worthies.15 So it was that Usasti Cakrayana came to tell the Prastotr priest that Breath is the true deity of his Prastava chant (i.e., the introductory praise hymn). By way of explanation, he noted that the word for BreathSanskrit pranahas the same rst element as do the priests title ( pra-stotr) and that of his chant ( pra-stava).16 In similar fashion, he taught the Udgatr that the true deity of the Udgitha is Sun (aditya), as indicated by the resemblance of the two words. And nally, he told the Pratihartr that Food (annam) is the deity of his Pratihara chant (i.e., the response that is the last phase of Saman recitation), although here he had to work a bit harder to produce a philological justication. Truly, all these beings live by obtaining food (annam . . . pratiharamanani ). That is the deity connected to the Pratihara.17 With this piece of esoteric wisdom the story comes to a close. While the priests seem to have accepted the teachings of Us asti Cakrayana with gratitude, we might hesitate briey before following their lead. Thus, although Breath and Food are often associated, nowhere else in Vedic literature does his triad of Breath/Sun/Food appear. Further, the insertion of Sun seems forced and a bit confused, since it is set in the second position, rather than the rst, which it normally occupies by virtue of its association to Heaven.18 To cite the most relevant comparative example, the much fuller, more rigorous, and more orthodox discussion of Chandogya Upanisad 2.219 homologizes Sun to the Prastava, not the Udgitha, as Usasti Cakrayana has it (table 3). The reputation of the latter sageif sage he beonly compounds the difculty, for he makes only one other appearance in all Vedic literature, in a passage where he plays a weak foil to the innitely more learned Yajavalkya.19
Ibid. 1.10.811. Ibid. 1.11.13. 16 Ibid. 1.11.45: na svid ete py ucchisthah iti, na va ajivisyam iman akhadann iti hovaca, kamo ma udakapanam iti. sa ha khaditva tiesa jayaya ajahara, sagra eva subhiksa babhuva, tan pratigrhya nidadhau. 17 Ibid. 1.11.9: annam iti hovaca, sarvani ha va imani bhutany annam eva pratiharamanani jivanti. The homology of the Udgitha, Udgatr and Sun (aditya) occurs at 1.11.67. 18 Compare, e.g., Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.5.313 (Sun/Fire/Moon), Chandogya Upanisad 3.15.6 and 4.17.1 (Sun/Wind/Fire), and Taittiriya Upanisad 1.5.2 and 1.7.1. 19 Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 3.4.12.
15 14

History of Religions
TABLE 3 Homologies Posited by USasti CAkrAyaNa 1 CU 1.11.49 CU 2.2.219.2 Prastava Breath Prastava Sun Cloud Summer Sunrise Speech Skin 2 Udgitha Sun Udgitha Atmosphere Rain Rainy season Noon Sight Flesh 3 Pratihara Food Pratihara Fire Lightning Autumn Afternoon Hearing Bone

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Note.These homologies are according to the narrative of Chandogya Upanisad (CU) 1.11.49 compared to those developed in greater detail in the same text, 2.2.219.2. Note the different placement of Sun in the two systems.

If close inspection shakes ones faith in the doctrine a bit, the frame story raises the suspicion that this is no esoteric wisdom at all, merely a simulacrum of the same, invented by a poor, hungry, and clever man.20 That Usasti Cakrayana was not above exploiting the opportunities presented by a royal sacrice is surely suggested by his words to his wife: If we had some food, we could get some money (yad bat a nnasya labhemahi, labhemahi dhanamatram).21 Food is convertible to money, the story shows us, via several mediations. Thus, as other portions of the Chandogya suggest, food is the material basis that makes breath and speech possible.22 Under the right circumstances, speech is then convertible to wealth, for, as the vehicle of wisdom and the necessary accompaniment to sacricial practice, priestly speech wins
20 To gain an initial hearing and not be rejected outright, such a simulacrum needs to meet two conditions: (1) in form, it should resemble other, more orthodox doctrines sufciently closely that a knowledgeable audience should nd it plausible; (2) in content, it should be sufciently different from others that the same audience would nd it novel and intriguing, thereby entertaining the possibility that it is an esoteric teaching, previously held secret by a spiritual elite. Should it become widely accepted, it loses its nature as simulacrum and becomes a doctrine proper. 21 Chandogya Upanisad 1.10.6. 22 Thus, e.g., Chandogya Upanisad 1.3.6 (quoted above), 1.8.4, 1.11.59 (quoted above), 5.2.1, 6.5.4, 6.6.5, 6.7.6, 7.4.2, 7.9.1. Numerous like statements are found in the other Upanisads. On the importance of Food (annam) in Vedic speculative thought, see R. Geib, Food and Eater in Natural Philosophy of Early India, Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda 25 (1976): 22335; B. Weber-Brosamer, Annam: Untersuchungen zur Bedeutung des Essens und der Speise im vedischen Ritual (Rheinfelden: Schauble, 1988); Brian K. Smith, Eaters, Food, and Social Hierarchy in Ancient India: A Dietary Guide to a Revolution in Values, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58 (1990): 177205; and Carlos Lopez, Food and Immortality in the Veda: A Gastronomic Theology? Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 3 (1997), http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs0303/ejvs0303.txt.

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compensation from wealthy patrons. But, as our story ever so slyly hints, pretentious chatter can also win money, provided it conveys the semblance of wisdom to gullible priests and patrons. iv Again, it is possible that I may be charged with cynicism or with abusively misinterpreting this text. Perhaps it is so. The chapter that immediately follows the story of Usasti Cakrayana, however, provides an indigenous commentary similar to my own, while surpassing the latter in its cynicism. Ch a ndogya Upani s ad 1.12perhaps the most scandalously irreverent passage in all Vedic literature, sufciently rich in truth and irony to have won the admiration of Kafkareads as follows:23
Now, there is the Udgitha of dogs. One day Baka Dalbhyo (or Glava Maitreya) left home for his Vedic recitation. A white dog appeared to him. Other dogs gathered around him and said: Good sir, obtain food for us by chanting. We are very hungry. He said to them Approach me together, early in the morning. So Baka Dalbhya (or Glava Maitreya) kept watch. Just as [priests] who chant the Bahispavamana praise-hymn le in, each one holding the shoulders of the man in front of him, in this fashion the dogs led in. Having sat down, they [began the saman chant by] pronouncing the syllable Hum. Then they chanted: Om. Let us eat! Om. Let us drink! Om. May the gods Varuna, Prajapatih, and Savitr bring food here! O Lord of food, bring food here! Om!24

23 One of Kafkas nest stories, Researches of a Dog, seems to have been inspired by this chapter of the Chandogya. Consider, e.g., the following passage: I began to enquire into the question: What the canine race nourished itself upon. Now that is, if you like, by no means a simple question, of course; it has occupied us since the dawn of time, it is the chief object of all our meditation. . . . In this connection, the essence of all knowledge is enough for me, the simple rule with which the mother weans her young ones from her teats and sends them out into the world: Water the ground as much as you can. And in this sentence is not almost everything contained? What has scientic enquiry, ever since our rst fathers inaugurated it, of decisive importance to add to this? Mere details, mere details, and how uncertain they are: but this rule will remain as long as we are dogs. It concerns our main staple of food: true, we have also other resources, but only at a pinch, and if the year is not too bad we could live on this main staple of our food; this food we nd on the earth, but the earth needs our water to nourish it and only at that price provides us with our food, the emergence of which, however, and this should not be forgotten, can also be hastened by certain spells, songs, and ritual movements. Franz Kafka, Researches of a Dog, in The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reections, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken Books, 1937), 2022 (emphasis added). 24 Chandogya Upanisad 1.12.15: Athatah auva udgithah. tadd ha bako dalbhyo glavo va maitreyah svadhyayam udvavraja. tasmai va vetah pradur babhuva: tam anye vana upasametyocur anna no bhagavan agayatv aanayama va iti. tan hovacehaiva ma pratar upasamiyateti; tadd ha bako dalbhyo glavo va maitreyah pratipalaya cakara. te ha yathaivedam bahispavamanena stosyamanah sarabdhah, sarpantity evam asasrpus te ha samupaviya hi cakruh. aum adama, aum pibama, aum devo varunah prajapatih savitannam ihaharat. annapate annam ihahara, aum iti.

History of Religions Standard view 1. Speech 2. Breath 3. Food Usasti Cakrayana 1. Money 2. Speech 3. Breath 4. Food Udgitha of Dogs 1. Food 2. Speech 3. Breath

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Fig. 1.Recalibration of standard Upanisadic values in Chandogya Upanisad 1.1011 (Usasti Cakrayana) and 1.12 (the Udgitha of Dogs).

If Usasti Cakrayana is a dubious source, Baka Dalbhyo holds a rather different status. When presenting the mythic genealogy of the Udgi tha chant, the Ch a ndogya names three quasi-divine gures as its original masters (Agiras, Brhaspati, Ayasya), after which our man is listed as the rst Udgatr priest of the Naimisa people. In this capacity, he won fulllment of all his peoples desires by the force of his chanting and the depth of his sacred knowledge, thereby establishing himself as the paradigmatic model for all subsequent Udgatrs.25 By citing Baka Dalbhyo as the witness to the Udgitha of dogs (auva udgithah), the text plays with our sensibilities by attributing a seemingly parodic story to an unimpeachable source.26 Whatever its origins, genre, or intent, the narrative is striking for the ways it inverts the normal relations between the categories of Food and Speech, for in so doing it entertains a novel system of value, much as Usasti Cakrayana had done. Comparing the three systems is instructive (g. 1). In effect, these passages represent not just different systems of value but rival economic orders. Thus, the standard view makes the capacity to produce speech, more specically learned and ritual speech, the highest value and primary form of capital, while assigning a subordinate position to the production and consumption of material sustenance, here treated as simply the means to an end. Usasti Cakrayana keeps this order intact but introduces a new category in the paramount position, thereby transforming
25 Chandogya Upanisad 1.2.1314: tena tam ha bako dalbhyo vidam cakara. sa ha naimisiyanamudgata babhuva. sa ha smaibhyah kaman agayati. agata ha vai kamanam bhavati ya etadevam vidvan aksaram udgitham upaste. Baka (or Vaka) Dalbhya consistently appears as an Udgatr priest of great stature and a sage whose deep learning is rooted in his mastery of the Udgitha chant (Kathaka Samhita 10.6, Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana 1.9.3 and 4.68, and the Chandogya passages cited here). The fullest discussion to date is P. Koskikallio, Baka Dalbhya: a Complex Character in Vedic Ritual Texts, Epics, and Puranas, Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 13 (November 1995), esp. 1113, http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs0103/ index.html#art1. 26 Glava Maitreya is usually regarded as an alternate name of Baka Dalbhya, but he may be another Udgatr priest of mythic stature. He appears at Pacavima Brahmana 25.15.3, Sadvima Brahmana 1.4.6, and Gopathabrahmana 1.1.31.

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How to Read a Religious Text

an economy of priestly distinction into a monetized economy, open to entrepreneurship (such as his own) with unexpected prots, losses, and opportunities for accumulation. Finally, the narrative of the dogs entertains an economy more imaginary than real, which inverts the standard order. This is an economy of consumption and pleasure, where priestly speech and not foodis simply the means to an end. In this alternate universe, the ultimate beneciaries and ruling stratum are those whom other systems judge animals: those for whom material existence and bodily pleasure are not degraded and degrading but the goal and supreme joy of existence. Dancing, singing, and feasting together, they inhabit a world whose supreme deity is Lord of food (annapati ) and their most sacred chant has as its refrain Om. Let us eat! Om. Let us drink!27 v By way of conclusion, let me return to the question of how the metaphysical and the physicalor, more precisely, the speculative and the sociopoliticalinterpenetrate in texts of the sort we have been discussing. The conscious goal of the Upanisads, as I understand them, is not to provide ideological support for a discriminatory social hierarchy. Rather, they struggled to explicate the fundamental unity and essential nature of all being. And given the total nature of their inquiry, most of the domains for which these texts offered analysisthe levels of the cosmos or the constituent elements of the sacricial re, for instanceare not themselves affected by such theorizing. People inuenced by it, however, ought to change the way they regard these (and all other) entities. This is to say that the prime effect of such discourse is on consciousness. Only through the mediation of human subjects does it reach and potentially reshape other parts of the cosmos. Its capacity to do this, moreover, varies with the nature of the entity in question. No matter how many people a given text reaches and inuences, it will not change the position of the sun in the heavens. Nor will it change the res need for oxygen and fuel, although it can change the way people build res: the kind of fuel they use, the shape in which they build hearths and altars, and so forth. If texts acquire their agency only through the mediation of those subjects whose consciousness they reshape, it follows they have their greatest effects on entities that are themselves most fully the product of human activity. The shapes of houses and cities, for instance, are more open to human intervention than is the shape of a re. The extreme case here is the way humans organize themselves and their relations with others. Rather than treating this as an extreme case, however, the Upanisads treat the social order as a case like any other, that is, one more instance of the
27

Chandogya Upanisad 1.12.5: aum adama, aum pibama.

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same overarching pattern that undergirds the entire cosmos. In this moment, they simultaneously collapse the physical into the metaphysical and naturalize the social. Those whose consciousness has been shaped by such a vision are conditioned to see, accept, ponder, and admire the same cosmic order in all its (putative) instantiations. They are also conditioned to reproduce that order through their conscious interpretations and, where relevant, their active labor as well. Insofar as they do this in their relations with other (similarly conditioned) subjects, they create a social order. Moreover, they experience that order as one more conrmation of the pattern they have learned to identify with the nature of the cosmos, for all that it is the product of their own discourse and practice. The point of critical analysis, then, is not to question the sincerity or integrity of those who speculate about the nature of the cosmos, nor to charge them, ad hominem, with bad faith. Rather, it is to suggest that the nature of their speculation is informed and inected by their situation of interest, which has always already been normalized and naturalized by the prior speculations of others like them. Beyond this, one must realize that the nature of the cosmos is not signicantly affected by the content of human speculation. The nature of society, in contrast, exists only insofar as it is continually produced and reproduced by human subjects, whose consciousness informs their constitutive actions, perceptions, and sentiments. When any given discoursemetaphysical or cosmological, as well as explicitly sociologicalsucceeds in modifying general consciousness, this can have profound consequences for social reality, even if cosmic reality remains serenely unaffected. University of Chicago