Although the Dharmaśāstra tradition uses a number of different words to denote an expiatory rite or penance (e.g., nirveśa, niṣkṛti , etc.), by far the most common such word is prāyaścitta , a term whose seemingly clear etymology remains, nevertheless, difficult to account for. 1 Like many religious traditions, Dharmaśāstra understands a “penance” (prāyaścitta ) to be a ritual, through the proper performance of which a person is freed from some or all of the various effects of “sin,” a concept expressed in Sanskrit by several more or less synonymous terms (e.g., pāpa, agha, enas , etc.). 2 Therefore, within Dharmaśāstra the topic of penance is inextricably linked to the topic of sin. And sections of Dharmaśāstra works dealing with penance or prāyaścitta , in fact, deal not only with penance in the strict sense of the term, but also with the general topic of sin (i.e., its classifications, effects, etc.). This practice will be followed in this chapter. And, thus, we will examine in some detail Dharmaśāstric treatments of both sin and penance. However, because the limited amount of space here available makes an exhaustive treatment of these topics unfeasible, 3 this chapter will aim simply to provide a useful framework for understanding certain salient Dharmaśāstric ideas pertaining to sin and its ritual expiation. More specifically, it will focus on demonstrating how numerous features of the theory of sin and penance expounded in Dharmaśāstra reflect a pervasive concern with two fundamentally different human activities: (a) the personal quest to avoid an undesirable life after death and (b) the process of excommunicating and readmitting members of a given social community.
Given the well-known penchant for taxonomy within Brahmanical scholarly traditions, it should come as no surprise that Dharmaśāstra texts dealing with penance contain long lists of sins that they classify into various groups, ranging from the most to the least grievous in nature. The Āpastamba Dharmasūtra (1.21.7–1.21.11), probably the oldest surviving Dharmaśāstra work, refers to the most grievous sins as patanīyas , whereas the later tradition (GDh 21.2; MDh 11.55; ViDh 33.3; etc.) generally refers to them as pātakas . Importantly, both of these terms are derived from the verb root √pat , meaning “to fall”; and the reason for using nominal derivatives of this particular root to denote the most grievous sins is clear: unlike most lesser types of sin, these sins are held to cause a person to fall not only into hell, as one might expect, but also from his or her caste. Thus, the Gautama Dharmasūtra (21.4–21.6), one of the very earliest Dharmaśāstra texts, explains the sort of “falling” that certain major sins entail as follows: “Falling” is exclusion from the activities of twice-born men; and a lack of success in the hereafter. Some call this “hell.” Moreover, the Mitākṣarā , Vijñāneśvara’s celebrated commentary on the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra , clearly agrees with Gautama about the basic effects of sin, for it (on YDh 3.226) nicely summarizes these effects as follows: “Sin possesses two powers: that which brings about hell and that which prohibits social interaction.” Hence, throughout its long history, the Dharmaśāstra tradition consistently regards sin as possessing two distinct powers. The first of these is the power to cast a person into one or another of the various recognized hells (YDh 3.222–3.225), as well as to cause additional undesirable rebirths in the mundane world, specifically as a plant or an animal, a member of a low-caste community, or a person afflicted with a congenital disease or deformity (YDh 3.207–3.215). In other words, a sin is, according to Dharmaśāstra, an act that produces negative soteriological consequences. And this is, of course, quite close to certain popular Western conceptions of sin. The second power of sin, however, is perhaps more distinctively Indian, for it is the power to prohibit one from social and ritual interaction with other respectable people. That is, in addition to resulting in hell and other unpleasant rebirths, sin can also cause a person to lose his or her caste status and, thus, become an outcaste.
According to Dharmaśāstra, all sins possess the first of these powers, that is, the power to produce negative otherworldly results; only the most serious possess the second. These are, however, by far the most extensively discussed and analyzed sins within Dharmaśāstra literature. For instance, Dharmaśāstra works invariably treat the pātakas or “sins causing loss of caste” before any other sins and typically divide these into a number of important subcategories. Specifically, the five most grievous pātakas are called the “great pātakas ” (mahāpātaka ), which are universally understood to be: killing a Brahmin, sleeping with an elder’s wife, drinking liquor, stealing a Brahmin’s gold, and associating with an outcaste. 4 Following these in seriousness are slightly lesser sins regarded as equivalent to one or another of the five great pātakas (pātakasama ). 5 And, thereafter, one finds in various texts miscellaneous lists of “lesser pātakas ” (upapātaka ). 6 Only at this point, after having listed the pātakas of different types, do the texts generally treat sins of less grievous sorts; and this they do in a comparatively cursory fashion. Moreover, sometimes the titles of even these relatively minor sins suggest a connection with social ostracism. Thus, for example, one lesser type of sin in Manu is the “sin causing a fall from caste” (jātibhraṃśakara ) 7 and another is the “sin causing one to become mixed” (saṃkarīkaraṇa ). 8 Therefore, Dharmaśāstric theory places roughly equal emphasis on the soteriological and social effects of sin. Thereby, it addresses within its system of sin and penance two fundamentally distinct cultural phenomena: the quest for personal salvation and the process of excommunication from and readmission to good society.
Although not explicitly stated within Dharmaśāstra works, the logic underlying the ubiquitous connection made between undesirable rebirths, excommunication, and sin is fairly easy to surmise. The belief that certain acts, which we can appropriately call “sins,” yield negative otherworldly results is essential to the karmic worldview upon which Brahmanism and, indeed, all early Indian religions are based. Therefore, sin’s close association with soteriology within Dharmaśāstra is entirely unsurprising. Moreover, it is crucial to note that like many religious traditions, Brahmanism evinces a strong propensity to identify entities as impure and to prohibit contact with such entities lest one contract their impurity and, thus, suffer horrible calamities. 9 Therefore, it makes sense that participants in this culture would regard those who have committed sins as impure and, as a result, fastidiously shun them until they are deemed to have removed their impurity. And, in fact, Dharmaśāstric texts frequently cite purification (śuddhi ) as the purpose of penance. 10 Hence, one can reasonably account for the link between sin and excommunication within Dharmaśāstra as a result of the Brahmanical preoccupation with purity.
Turning to what precisely excommunication means within the context of Dharmaśāstra and how it was theoretically enacted, several early texts (GDh 20.2–20.7; BDh 2.1.36; MDh 11.183–11.184) prescribe slight variants of an apparently ancient rite used for formally outcasting a person known or at least widely believed to have committed a grievous sin. According to all accounts, the central element in this ritual comprises the overturning of a water pot in the presence of the sinner and his relatives, an act typically performed by a male or female slave of the family. Following this ritual, an outcaste person then loses—at least temporarily—all rights to inherit property, and respectable people are strictly forbidden from associating with him (MDh 11.185–11.186). The Āpastamba Dharmasūtra (1.29.8–1.29.9) further explains the manner of living that an outcaste should adopt:
Reviled persons should congregate and conduct themselves focused on what is right, sacrificing for one another, teaching one another, and marrying amongst themselves. To any sons they beget they should say, “Go away from us, for you would thus have been accepted as Āryas amongst us (in our former lives).”
If, however, an outcaste successfully performs the appropriate penance to expiate his sin, several texts (GDh 20.10–20.20.14; BDh 2.1.36; MDh 11.187–11.188) prescribe rather different rituals that he and his relatives are supposed to jointly perform in order to effect his full readmission to caste. Hence, penance is widely considered capable of restoring a sinner’s caste status, and a set public ritual is supposed to mark the occasion of such restoration.
This general description of the process and effects of societal excommunication within Dharmaśāstra strongly suggests that one should understand sins within this tradition to be essentially equivalent to violations of caste laws, against which two basic and closely related worldly sanctions were devised: loss of caste and the need to perform an arduous penance in order to restore it. 11 To be more precise as to the relationship between sin and caste within Dharmaśāstra, the various lists of sins found in Dharmaśāstra works seem to reflect the communal rules of the orthodox twice-born social classes, which above all, mean Brahmins. This would explain why Gautama (21.4) cites “exclusion from the activities of twice-born men” as a principal effect of sin, as we have seen, and also why acts such as neglecting the Veda (brahmojjha ), which apply only to twice-born men, are commonly listed as sins (e.g., ĀpDh 1.21.8; MDh 11.57). There are, however, one or two references in Dharmaśāstra sources to penances specifically for Śūdras (e.g., ĀpDh 1.26.4), which shows that Dharmaśāstric discussions of prāyaścitta apply, at least on rare occasions, to lower-caste people as well. Such references naturally complicate to some degree the straightforward equation of the various sins laid out in Dharmaśāstra with the rules governing twice-born communities.
Before directly discussing the other major worldly sanction against sin, namely, the need to perform penance in order to restore caste status, it is worth noting a few significant factors that are held to affect the seriousness of a sin aside from its classification as a mahāpātaka or the like. One such factor is whether a person has committed the sin in question habitually or simply on one or two occasions. A belief that habitual sinning is especially grievous is fairly well attested in textual sources. It is, for instance, detectable in Āpastamba’s list of patanīyas or “sins causing loss of caste,” which concludes with the sin of “constantly performing unrighteous acts” (1.21.11). 12
Probably the most important factor in determining the seriousness of a sin, however, aside from its basic classification, is whether it was done intentionally or unintentionally. Unsurprisingly, the Dharmaśāstra tradition consistently regards intentional sins as far weightier than unintentional ones. Again, Āpastamba (1.29.2–1.29.4) explicitly articulates this general principle:
If a person kills someone accidentally, he reaps the fruit of that sin, but it becomes greater, if he acted with intention. The same applies to other sinful acts as well.
With regard specifically to the archetypal Dharmaśāstric sin, Brahmin-murder, Baudhāyana (2.1.6) quotes an authoritative verse to the effect that expiation is only possible if the deed was done unintentionally. Furthermore, both Vasiṣṭha (20.1–20.2) and Manu (11.45) hold that while unintentional sins are always expiable through penance, only some people believe this to be true of intentional sins. It is noteworthy, however, that the Dharmaśāstra tradition on the whole sides with these unnamed people. 13
Beyond this, the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra contains a statement on the relative seriousness of intentional and unintentional sins that is especially informative for the purpose of this chapter. In Sanskrit, the relevant verse (YDh 3.226) reads: 14
prāyaścittair apaity eno yad ajñānakṛtaṁ bhavet |
kāmato [']vyavahāryas tu vacanād iha jāyate ||
The first line of this verse is fairly unambiguous and can be reasonably translated as, “Sins that are done unintentionally depart through penances.” Thus, by all accounts, it denotes that penances thoroughly expiate sins that a person unwittingly commits, indicating again that such sins are markedly less serious than intentional ones are. The second line, however, is by far the more telling part. But it also contains a crucial ambiguity, for Sanskrit grammar allows one to analyze the words kāmato [‘]vyavahāryas there as either kāmataḥ vyavahāryaḥ or kāmataḥ avyavahāryaḥ . Readers with a moderate proficiency in the language will likely recognize the implication of this. A person can justifiably translate the line in one of two diametrically opposed ways, either as:
However, if a person sins intentionally, he just becomes fit for association in this world on account of scripture.
Or as:
However, if a person sins intentionally, he is still unfit for association in this world on account of scripture.
Consequently, the verse can mean either that (a) penances negate all the effects of unintentional sins, but just the worldly effects of intentional sins or (b) penances negate all the effects of unintentional sins, but just the otherworldly effects of intentional sins. In other words, it allows for two radically contradictory interpretations, both of which are adopted by different commentators. 15 Nevertheless, in accordance with the above verse of Yājñavalkya, all exegetes within the Dharmaśāstra tradition seem to agree not only that sin has distinct social and soteriological effects, but also that these effects, in an important sense, exist independently of one another, for penance has, under certain conditions, the power to negate one of them without necessarily affecting the other. Hence, the above verse of Yājñavalkya allows us to see how the Dharmaśāstric theory of sin and penance assumes a rather stark separation between social and soteriological concerns.
Further evidence of such a clear separation between worldly and otherworldly concerns can be found in the final significant factor that helps determine the seriousness of a given sin, namely, whether its commission is a matter of public knowledge or remains a secret known only to those directly involved. For sins of these two basic types, two completely different sets of penances, determined via very different processes, are prescribed in texts as early as the Gautama Dharmasūtra 16 and throughout the later tradition. These are the so-called “public penances” (prakāśaprāyaścitta ) and “secret penances” (rahasyaprāyaścitta ). And of these two sets of penances, public penances are invariably far more severe than the corresponding secret ones. To give an example that illustrates the extent of the difference in severity between these sorts of penance, one might compare the public penance for Brahmin-murder with the secret penance for the same sin, both as prescribed in the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra . The standard public penance for this sin in Yājñavalkya (3.243), as in other Dharmaśāstras (e.g., GDh 22.4, BDh 2.1.2–2.1.3), consists of living as an itinerant beggar for twelve years, while carrying a skull and announcing one’s sin to all those whom one meets. In comparison with this, the secret penance for Brahmin-murder (YDh 3.301) is extremely mild: one must simply fast for three nights, recite the Vedic aghamarṣaṇa hymn (= RV 10.190) while submerged in water, and give away a milk cow.
Seeming to recognize that the comparative mildness of secret penances might be troubling to some within the Brahmanical community, the commentator Viśvarūpa writes when introducing the topic: 17
And one should not object to this by asking why the penances for those whose sins are not publically known should be so mild, for scripture should never be called into question. Moreover, since a man who performs them must be learned, he cannot be generally associated with sin; and, thus, Yājñavalkya himself will state later on that “sins do not touch a man who delights in reciting the Veda, is forbearing…” (3.310). And because they are undertaken essentially to purify oneself, the mildness of such penances is, indeed, proper.
Here Viśvarūpa proposes three reasons that secret penances should be so relatively mild. Firstly, he points out that this is the view of the authoritative scriptures and, as such, requires no further support. Secondly, Viśvarūpa does not allow those ignorant of the scriptures to learn the appropriate secret penances for their sins from others. 18 Consequently, he argues that since a person must be quite learned to perform a secret penance, he cannot be generally associated with sinful behavior and, therefore, can reasonably be expected to perform a lighter penance than an ordinary person would. Finally, and most revealingly, Viśvarūpa states that the purpose of undertaking a secret penance, unlike a public penance, is simply to purify oneself and not to regain caste status. Therefore, it is fitting in his mind that such penances should be rather mild. Here we find explicit recognition that secret penances are intended to negate merely the soteriological effects of sin and the strong implication that the comparative severity of public penances is intended primarily to mitigate the social opprobrium connected with sin and, thus, to facilitate sinners’ readmission to caste. However, in order to appreciate fully how public penances are designed in Dharmaśāstra to facilitate the restoration of caste status and how secret penances avoid the issue of social ostracism altogether, it is necessary to examine the distinguishing features of such penances, to which we will now turn.
The essential differences between public and secret penances are most clearly laid out in the digests and commentarial literature. As is often the case, the Mitākṣarā is especially eloquent in this regard. It (on YDh 3.300c–d) explains a “secret penance” as follows:
A man whose sin is unknown to persons other than the perpetrators of the act should carry out a secret, i.e., non-public, penance. Hence, one should understand, for instance, that because in cases of illicit sex, the woman is also a perpetrator, a man whose sin is unknown to anyone other than her should perform a secret penance. In such an event, if the perpetrator is himself learned in Dharmaśāstra, he should undertake the penance appropriate for what occasioned it (i.e., the sin) without informing anyone else. If, however, he is personally ignorant of the subject, he should carry out the correct secret penance after learning it through some pretext or other, such as saying that somebody has secretly killed a Brahmin and asking what is the secret penance for that.
Thus, a “secret penance” is not just a penance used to expiate a sin known only to the sinner and others directly involved in its commission but also a penance that one must secretly perform. According to Vijñāneśvara, as well as other commentators, if a person is learned enough to already know the scripturally prescribed penance for his sin, he should simply proceed to perform it. If, however, he does not know the penance prescribed in scripture, Vijñāneśvara recommends a rather different course of action than Viśvarūpa does. For he enjoins a sinner to find out the appropriate secret penance for his sin from a knowledgeable person, but to take special care in so doing not to inform him or anyone else of his guilt. In other words, Vijñāneśvara recommends inquiring under some pretext. And in this regard, it is noteworthy that the generally mild character of secret penances makes it plausible that one could theoretically perform them without drawing public suspicion. Indeed, Viśvarūpa even goes so far as to spell out that “one should perform a secret expiatory rite under the pretense of a pious act or the like so that even bystanders do not recognize it.” 19 Hence, the public awareness upon which all societal excommunication must depend is decidedly absent in the case of secret penances.
In direct contrast to this, a “public penance” is not only a penance designed to atone for a publicly known sin, but also a penance that one must publicly perform. Vijñāneśvara (on YDh 3.300a–b) explains penances of this sort as follows:
A man whose sin is apprehended, i.e., known, by people other than those necessary to commit the sin should perform the penance instructed by an assembly of learned Brahmins (parṣad ). Even if he is personally adept at ascertaining the meaning of all the scriptures, he must approach such an assembly, ascertain together with it the correct penance, and perform only what it has approved.
Hence, public penances directly contrast with those of the secret variety in that even if a person knows the scripturally enjoined penance for his sin, he is not permitted to go ahead and perform it. Instead, he must approach a parṣad , 20 which is a specially constituted assembly of learned Brahmins, and have it assign him the appropriate penance.
Unsurprisingly, the precise and legitimate makeup of such an assembly or parṣad is a subject of considerable discussion within Dharmaśāstra. In one passage (11.84–11.86) that seems to describe specifically the sort of parṣad that should assign public penances, Manu states that a sinner should announce his sin before a gathering of the local king and learned Brahmins and that three Veda-knowing Brahmins there should prescribe for him the appropriate penance. Yet in another more general passage (12.110–12.112), he describes the makeup of a parṣad slightly differently:
One should not violate any law that a learned assembly (parṣad ) of at least ten or at least three members who adhere to right conduct has established. Men learned in each of the three Vedas, a logician, a hermeneut, a grammarian, a legal scholar, and men belonging to the first three orders of life—these comprise a learned assembly of at least ten members. A man who knows the Ṛgveda , one who knows the Yajurveda , and one who knows the Sāmaveda are to be known as a learned assembly of at least three members that may decide doubtful matters in the law.
Beyond this, Madanapāla, in his fourteenth-century legal digest, cites a passage ascribed to the sage Aṅgiras that again differs somewhat from Manu and gives an even more detailed description of the ten members of a proper parṣad . 21 In any case, whatever the precise makeup of such an assembly might be, its social function in issuing public penances appears to be fairly obvious. An individual performing a penance on his own—however knowledgeably—may well be unable to convince many of his fellow caste members that he has expiated his sin truly and successfully. A properly constituted parṣad , however, is much more likely to have success in this regard, for the judgment of an assembly of well-known, revered, and erudite Brahmins would surely have carried much more weight than that of an individual sinner. And in the society portrayed in Dharmaśāstra literature, popular consensus is essential if a sinner is to recover his former caste status, for, as mentioned above, Dharmaśāstra texts consistently list association with an outcaste as one of the five most grievous sins (mahāpātaka ). Hence, one can plausibly interpret the strict requirement of a parṣad in public penances as an attempt to meet the high standards that members of Brahmanical society adhered to when assessing whether or not a person had truly expiated his sins.
Moreover, one can see how the need for a parṣad would have become particularly pressing, when one notes the confusing array of penances laid out for assorted sins in various authoritative texts. As Gautama (19.11) accurately explains, penances within Dharmaśāstra—whether secret or public—generally comprise some combination of reciting sacred texts, performing austerities, making ritual offerings, fasting, and gifting. Nevertheless, determining the precise combination of these actions suitable for expiating a specific act of sin is far from a simple task. To begin with, for some sins, such as having sex with an elder’s wife, an array of specific penances is prescribed; 22 and some of these are tantamount to ritual suicide, 23 which Āpastamba (1.28.16–1.28.17) and other authorities seemingly forbid. Yet, for certain, other recognized sins, Dharmaśāstra texts do not seem to enjoin any specific penances at all. Furthermore, these texts also lay down an array of generic penances that are not prescribed exclusively for any specific sins, but instead presented as generally and powerfully expiatory, such as the oft-discussed “lunar penance” (cāndrāyaṇa ). 24 Thus, given the confusing state of the scriptural corpus and the variety of seemingly legitimate options available, determining the correct penance for a given sin would seem to require both considerable erudition and a great deal of personal discretion. With this in mind, it is easy to see why members of Brahmanical society would have felt much more comfortable entrusting this task to a properly constituted parṣad than to an individual sinner.
Beyond this, an earnest desire to allow sinners to regain their caste status seems to underlie several other notable features of public penances, as prescribed in textual sources. For instance, a smṛti cited in several medieval commentaries flatly forbids a parṣad from refusing to issue a penance for a sin if it knows of one, 25 and another instructs that to the greatest extent possible, it must avoid issuing needlessly harsh penances. 26 Both of these passages suggest that a parṣad was not, at least in theory, simply a committee of staunchly orthodox Brahmins responsible for the vigilant guardianship of their community’s purity. To the contrary, they make a parṣad appear more like a benign institution charged with curbing overly stringent standards of purity within Brahmanical society. And this benevolent character of parṣads would appear to explain why Dharmaśāstric texts sometimes refer to the process of issuing a penance with the curious expression “to do a favor” (anugrahaṁ kuryāt ). 27 It also supports Timothy Lubin’s (2007 : 109–10) significant contention that a major difference between penance and punishment within Dharmaśāstra is the element of coercion, which is generally missing in the former, but present in the latter.
Lastly, it is worth noting a special ceremony that the Parāśara Smṛti (8.41–8.42) prescribes to mark a cow-killer’s formal readmission to caste after his proper completion of his assigned penance: a ceremony that the commentator Mādhava fittingly refers to as the “publicizing of purity” (śuddhiprakāśana ) and extends to all public penances. Given that the fundamental component of this ceremony is the ritual feeding of Brahmins, the creation of social consensus would again seem to be its clear purpose, for strict dietary rules and limits placed on commensality are ubiquitous characteristics of Brahmanical culture. Therefore, if a man can successfully perform śuddhiprakāśana and get Brahmins to eat his food, it would be very hard for his fellow caste members to deny his caste status, for to do so would be to impugn all those whom he has fed.
To summarize then, in laying down rules for the performance of public penances Dharmaśāstra texts repeatedly show a deep concern with the creation of social consensus. Evidence for this starts with the necessity of a parṣad ; continues with the marked severity of public penances in comparison to secret ones; and concludes—according to Parāśara at least—with the sinner’s final act of formally feeding Brahmins. This deep concern of the Dharmaśāstras with social consensus regarding the expiation of publicly known sins likely stems from the extremely high standards of purity that prevailed in orthodox Brahmanical communities. Therefore, it would appear that the Dharmaśāstra tradition provides in public penances an authoritative institution capable of establishing two matters of grave importance for Brahmanical social order: (a) how sinners can expiate their sins and (b) when they have done so. This is not to deny that the spectacle of public penances in Brahmanical communities also served as a means of naturalizing the wrongness of sin and, therefore, essentially of deterrence, as some scholars have recently argued. 28 Instead, the point is simply to stress that while the Dharmaśāstra tradition sees unchecked sin as a serious danger to society, it also recognizes a similar danger in the puritanical attitudes fostered in traditional Brahmanical culture.