Absent Lord: Ritual Gifting

On the basis of his study of Brahman priests and other ritual specialists of Banaras (1986, 1994), Jonathan Parry has shown that in this milieu dan is conceived as a material vehicle for the transmission of donors' "sins" to priestly recipients. Such priests become "sewers" for the "moral filth" of their patrons, and because they are unable to ameliorate the evil, or pass it to others, they must suffer it themselves (1994: 123). The "sewer," says Parry, becomes a "cess pit," filled with the accumulated sins of others (ibid.). As a result, the priest "is liable to contract leprosy and rot; to die a premature death vomiting excrement, and to suffer the most terrible torments thereafter" (ibid.: 124). The priest would avoid all this if he could, but unfortunately the necessity of earning a livelihood requires his acceptance of dan. The principle underlying these ideas is that the gift of dan carries something of the giver with it - and not the best of the giver. Parry suggests that these ideas are rooted in the symbolism of the ancient Vedic sacrifice. Dan is a substitute for sacrifice in the current degraded era. In the sacrifice, offering and sacrificer are identified; the sacrificer is "reborn" and vanquishes death by "transferring the burden of death and impurity to the priest through his gifts" (ibid.: 132-33). The sacrificial identity between victim and sacrificer is, in the case of dan, transmuted into an identity between gift and giver; the gift carries the "sins and impurities" of which the giver wishes to rid himself, transferring them to the unfortunate recipient (ibid.: 133).

Similar priniciples are disclosed by Gloria Raheja's analysis (1988) of the ritual culture of villagers of Saharanpur District. In the village she studied, dan is seen as a material vehicle for the transmission of "inauspiciousness" (nasubh) from donors to receivers. ^[1] The giver of dan is considered the jajman, the sacrificer. Depending on the context, the receivers (patra s) may be married daughters and sisters or their husbands, or individuals acting in caste-specific roles in relation to donors. The donor is said to have a "right" (haq) to give dan, and the receiver the "obligation" (pharmaya) to further the welfare of the donor by taking it.

A good example of the pattern is a class of rites known as vrats, "votive fasts." Most vrats occur in two phases. The first is the performance of some kind of asceticism. Raheja interprets asceticism as "disarticulative"; it results in "heating," which loosens inauspicious or harmful qualities preparatory to their removal. Then follows the critical transfer, which occurs in a final ritual phase called udapan. Certain materials (called carhapa or pujapa in this context) are passed to specified recipients as a form of dan. The dan has absorbed the disarticulated inauspiciousness, which it then carries to the receiver.

When a deity happens to be involved (and deities are not involved in all vrats), the materials (foodstuffs, clothing, ornaments) are first offered to the particular deity presiding over the rite. This deity is usually thought to be the source of the difficulty (often afflicting brothers, sons, or husbands of female performers) the rite is designed to ameliorate. Having been presented to the deity, the offering is passed on (age dena) to a specified human recipient, the ultimate receiver of the inauspiciousness or difficulty.

An example of such a performance is the sanivar (Saturday) vrat (ibid.: 81-82). The katha (the story of the vrat, which Raheja takes from a locally available manual for the performance of such rites) tells of how an astrologer once predicted that King Dasarath would be afflicted by inauspicious Sani (Saturn) because this planetary god was about to move into a particular asterism. Having heard the prophecy, the king ascended to the world of asterisms and blocked Sani's way. Impressed by the king's bravery, Sani offered him a boon, and the king asked that he not enter the asterism in question. This Sani granted, and then taught the king the vrat. In the vidhi (method) provided with the katha, the performers of the vrat are instructed to bring the offerings (mustard oil, a black cloth, and various black grains) into contact with the afflicted person and then offer them to Sani. At the conclusion of the rite they are offered as dan to an appropriate recipient. It is not clear in the katha 's text who appropriate recipients might be, although a Brahman is said to be the right recipient for a black cow. In village practice, however, the dan of the vrat is received by Dakauts (a caste of "very low" Brahmans) (ibid.: 115).

According to Raheja, in such rites "the deity himself does not assimilate the inauspiciousness but acts only as an intermediary between the jajman and the patra [recipient]...." (ibid.: 82). There is an identity between the deity and the human recipient: The recipient is seen as belonging to a class or group of people who resemble the deity responsible for the trouble.^[2] When the offering is given to an appropriate human recipient, this seems to enable the deity to receive the offering while the inauspiciousness is actually passed to the human recipient (ibid.: 70). Instead of a deity, a specified kinsperson, also seen as the "source of the inauspiciousness," might receive the offering first before it is passed on to an ultimate recipient (ibid.: 71). ^[3]

This is a pattern reminiscent of one we have seen before. Although the content is certainly different, the structure of this series of acts is paralleled in Saiva ritual. The Saiva offering is positively, not negatively, valued, but it seems to be associated with negativities nonetheless. Siva accepts the offering (or part of it) - but the offering is then passed on not to the human offerer but to a quasi-divine entity who absorbs negativities. Canda is thus the structural equivalent of the human recipients of dan -borne inauspiciousness in Raheja's village. It is of interest, therefore, that at least one Saiva author characterizes the offering as samarpana and dana (Davis 1991: 137).

Let us be as clear as possible about what is being said and not being said. There are obviously fundamental differences between the ritual cultures discussed previously in this chapter and this book and that described by Raheja, and we are certainly not saying that they are the same. Saiva ritual culture is soteriological in its basic thrust in that it is concerned with the soul's final deliverance, not with the worldly goals inherent to the rites Raheja describes. The same is true of Jain, Buddhist, and Vaisnava ritual traditions. All these traditions stress the view that the attainment of worldly benefits is - at most - a kind of by-product of ritual action that should have the supreme goal as its true aim. But it is surely significant that, when ritual transactions are abstracted from their theological matrixes, we find that there are indeed structural similarities between such ostensibly different ritual cultures as Saiva Siddhanta and Raheja's village traditions. Leaving aside all justifications and rationales, in both cases the offering carries negativities that are borne past the presiding deity and deposited with a third party.

The same pattern can be seen in Jain (and, for the same reasons, Buddhist) ritual; the only difference is that the Jains push the logic to its furthest limits. From the encompassing ascetic perspective, a central theme in Jain worship is "shedding"; morally and spiritually dangerous materials are gotten rid of by passing them on, ultimately to a non-Jain human receiver. The ultimate point of the rite is renunciation, "getting rid" of the world. There is no ambiguity in the matter of the gift's return; the Tirthankar is completely nontransactional, and there can be no question of the offering's becoming - as in the Pustimarg - a vehicle for the return of a deity's grace or blessing. Thus, as in Raheja's village, the gift cannot return. The non-Jain recipient, usually a temple pujari, becomes the structural equivalent of Saivism's Canda.

These points seem to suggest that the principles underlying dan -type transactions can help us understand Jain ritual culture as part of a wider South Asian world. We must start with the fact that among the Jains, worship (puja) is sometimes said to be a form of dan.^[4]Dan, of course, is also given to living mendicants. Now, Jains certainly do not see dan -giving as a transfer of "sins" (Parry) or "inauspiciousness" (Raheja). Nonetheless, the gift does have certain negative associations. Certainly this is true of food, which is perhaps the most important gift received by mendicants from laypersons. Food fuels the calamity of bodily existence, and is also associated with the sins inevitably occasioned by its production and preparation. As we saw in Chapter One, ascetics are protected from these negativities by the strategy of taking food from households randomly and consuming it - at least ideally - without any sense of enjoyment. The Tirthankar represents the perfection of this principle. If the living mendicant takes without really taking, the worshiped Tirthankar takes nothing at all. The worshiper, as we have seen, therefore "gives" nothing; what he gives he "gives up."

The logic of the situation is reminiscent of the dilemma of dan -style gifting to Brahmans as analyzed by Trautmann (1981: 285-88). Because of its implication of dependency, to accept gifts - even from kings, and perhaps especially from kings - compromises the Brahman's sense of his own superiority. This anxiety is transmuted into the idea that such gifts are spiritually dangerous; the Brahman who accepts the fewest gifts is the most worthy and powerful, for the acceptance of gifts erodes the Brahman's tapas (austerity). The greatest merit is therefore gained by the donor who gives to the Brahman who is least inclined to take (on this point, see also Parry 1994: 122). Trautmann concludes:

Only the purest, most disinterested brahmin can accept gifts without danger to himself. But the purest brahmin does not solicit gifts or, better yet, will not accept. Pushed to its logical extreme, the gift finds no recipient. The brahmin, having rejected reciprocity in favor of an asymmetrical, hierarchical form of exchange as a basis on which he deigns to be a party to the social contract, abandons even this one-sided exchange for the individualistic self-sufficiency of the ascetic. The theory of the gift tends toward its own destruction. (ibid.: 288)

Although he is certainly no Brahman, the Tirthankar represents the full realization of the same logical involution. The ritual culture of Jainism reflects the exigencies of worshiping a being who apotheosizes asceticism; the greatest benefit results from gifting to one who cannot take gifts at all. The worshiper therefore cannot connect; he can only emulate.