In any religion, ritual is an essential part of life, but South Asia is probably special for various reasons: it covers three thousand years of ritual tradition, from Vedic rituals to Cyber rituals; it offers probably the largest corpus of historical ritual texts, including an indigenous ritual theory, the Pūrvamīmāṃsā; and it presents a very rich variety of rituals owing to the transcultural complexity of the subcontinent, its polytheism, and its many religions incorporating countless local folk traditions. However, South Asia did not develop a cover term for the many types of rituals such as sacrifice, life-cycle rituals, worship, festival, pilgrimage, vows, and the like. Sanskrit terms that can be considered equivalent to ritual are the following (see Michaels 2005b : 86–90 and 2016 : 8–10):
The last sense is important for the possibility of including nonreligious acts within the category of ritual, acts that were carried out in everyday behavior or included in legal procedures. The parallels between ritual and legal procedure have been noted by the Mīmāṃsakas, hermeneutical interpreters of Vedic rituals.
From a Euro-American point of view, rituals have mostly been understood as hierophantic events, or as events that help to overcome life crises, to build up identity and personhood, or to strengthen the solidarity of a social group. However, such functionalistic theories are insufficient to grasp the specific components of such events. Instead, it is better to concentrate on polyvalent and polythetic aspects and the specific elements of rituals. When so viewed, rituals appear to be structured by the following formal components (Michaels 2016 : 32):
Thus, rituals are framed, stereotypical, repetitive (therefore, imitable), public and irrevocable acts. Consequently, they cannot be spontaneous, private, revocable, singular, or optional for everyone. Ritual acts are not deliberately rational; they cannot simply be revised to achieve a better or more economical goal. Therefore, formalism constitutes a central criterion in most definitions of ritual. One important element of the ritual act is the formal, usually spoken, decision that is required to carry out the act, that is, the ritual declaration (saṃkalpa ) that is found in almost every handbook for Sanskritic life-cycle rituals (see Michaels 2005a ). Rituals cannot be private acts because they can be imitated. Being a public event, in this sense of intersubjectivity—even if it concerns only a small secret or tantric circle of initiated specialists—is thus another formal criterion. Moreover, rituals are often believed to be effective independent of their meaning: ex opere operato . This means that they cannot be reversed, for that requires a new ritual.
Along with these three strict, formal criteria, many rituals also contain another one, which Victor Turner has described as “liminality” (from the Latin, limen , “threshold”). He uses this term to refer to the non-every day and yet reversible, paradoxical, sometimes absurd, and playful parts of rituals, especially in performances or life-cycle border situations.
Almost every ritual act also takes place in an everyday context. But whether the act of “pouring water” is performed to clean or to consecrate a statue cannot be decided solely on the basis of these external and formal criteria; it also depends on “internal” criteria regarding intentions, which can relate to social aspects (societas ), that is, solidarity, hierarchy, control, or establishment of norms; psychological and more individual aspects (individualitas ) such as alleviating anxiety; experiences of enthusiasm, desire, and the like; or to transcendental aspects (religio or apūrva ) concerning the other, higher, or sacred world. In the latter case, everyday acts acquire sublimity or elevation, and the immutable, non-individual, non-every day is staged. Although this criterion is particularly controversial, because it links religion with ritual, the majority of rituals, at least most life-cycle rituals, cannot do without it.
Finally, many rituals, especially life-cycle rituals, involve temporal or spatial changes; they refer to biological, physical, or age-related alterations or changes. Consequently, a tangible change is brought about by the ritual. For example, the participants must acquire an ability they did not previously have, or a new social status with new social repercussions: for example, the initiate becomes a marriageable twice born; the initiated girl a potential mother; the deceased a “departed one” (preta ) or a forefather (pitṛ ).
Most important, however, is that rituals are not limited to just one meaning or purpose, such as auspiciousness. They are complex events in which actions and words are constantly adapted to diverse situations and needs of the ritual specialists or other participants. Only in some cases do the priests or family members know what exactly they are doing and why exactly they are doing it in this or that way.
In the absence of a cover term, Indian philosophers, theologians, and Dharmaśāstra specialists developed a number of classifications and typologies by which they demonstrated their view that there was unity behind the diversity of ritual acts. Basic distinctions are, for instance, the one between laukika (“wordly, secular”) and vaidika (“related to the Veda, religious”), or the one between acts that are “compulsory” (nitya ), “occasional” (naimittika ), and “optional” (kāmya ). Other differentiations are acts performed externally (bāhya ) or internally in one’s mind (mānasa ); secretly (gopya ) or in public; and for oneself (ātmārtha, svārtha ) or for somebody else (parārtha ). The Mīmāṃsā texts differentiate between prototypes (prakṛti ) and subordinate rituals (vikṛti ).
Sacrificial acts are further divided according to different words, repetitive acts, numbers, accessory details, contexts, and names. 1 Moreover, the Mīmāṃsakas defined (śrauta ) sacrifices (yāga ) by three constituents: dravya (material, substance), devatā (deity), and tyāga (abandonment), 2 implying that the sacrificer offers (and, thereby, abandons) substances to deities. Kane (II: 983) paraphrases it correctly: “yāga means abandonment of dravya intending it for a deity.” Western scholars classify rituals according to the main sacrificial oblations (vegetables or meat); the gifts (dāna, bhīkṣā, prasāda, dakṣiṇā ); the sacrificial techniques (fire); the place (domestic, in temples, on public places, diasporic); the forms of worship (pūjā, arcana, darśana ); and other criteria.
Given this multitude of ritual forms, the question arises whether such events are held together by common structures or even a kind of ritual “grammar.” A close study of both texts and rituals reveals, indeed, a basic structure of Hindu rituals that includes:
The structure of the repetitive ritual action elements and the decorum make for a kind of “grammar” of the ritual. The parallel between ritual and grammar has been discussed for a long time, 3 especially since Frits Staal wrote his seminal article “The Meaninglessness of Ritual” (1979 ). Staal proposed that the entire ritual consists solely of the syntactical connection of the ritual elements. Only when ritual elements are related to one another does the ritual emerge as a whole. Each ritual element, each detail must, therefore, be understood as part of an entire ritual. He even claimed that ritual should be studied not as religion but as syntax without semantics and semiotics, which is to say, in purely formal terms. It can, indeed, be noticed that the formal structures of many rituals show certain semigrammatical patterns—among them are repetition or reduplication (the doubling of ritual elements), seriality (ritual elements recurring in sequences that can also spread to other rituals), substitution (the replacement of one ritual element by another viewed as equal in value), option (the optional or alternative employment of a number of ritual elements viewed as equal in value), transformation (the temporal staggering or interpolation of ritual elements), fusion (the merging of two or more different ritual elements), reduction (abbreviations of the combinations of ritual elements), omission (the elision of stipulated ritual elements, more the rule than the exception), transfer (transferring ritual elements to another ritual, e.g., as a ritual quote), or framing (the emphatic commencement and emphatic end of a ritual).
Religious Studies and anthropological theories on ritual have been significantly influenced by philological and empirical studies of South Asian rituals. 4 They basically concentrate on sacrifice, 5 life-cycle rituals (saṃskāra ), 6 worship (pūjā ), 7 and the meaninglessness of ritual.
“The sacrifice is the highest and best work (of ritual),” says the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa . 8 From a Brahmanical point of view, rituals are seen as constructions of a world with which man ritually identifies himself: “Man is born into a world made by himself” (ŚB 6.2.2.7). Only by ritual, and not by “normal” (karma ) action, can he be liberated—or, conversely, by no action at all. Thus, ritual action has to be separated from non-ritual action, as the Bhagavadgītā clearly says: “This world is bound by the bonds of action (karma ) except where that action is done sacrificially.” 9
Particularly relevant in this context is the Pūrvamīmāṃsā theory of sacrificial efficacy, which can also be seen as a general indigenous theory of the ritual. 10 It holds that only normal actions can become ritual actions (see Clooney 1990 : 134), and the Veda “is a particular arrangement of the ordinary according to injunctions found in the Vedic text” (Clooney 1990 : 160). Thus, the starting point for the Pūrvamīmāṃsā is the Veda, which is declared to be absolute and eternal (nitya ), so that it cannot be doubted or questioned by anyone. Dharma , which in the Pūrvaṃīmāṃsā is equated with sacrifice (yāga ), the ritual par excellence, is defined as “an aim characterized by a [Vedic] injunction.” 11 The sacrifice/ritual needs such injunctions (vidhi, codanā ); they predate the actions: 12 “‘Injunction’ is called a verbal expression that enjoins one to actions.” 13
Pūrvamīmāṃsā also claims a relationship of the whole or primary (pradhāna, mukhya ) ritual and its secondary (guṇa ), subsidiary (aṅga ), or accessory (śeṣa ) parts. Ritual acts are, therefore, divided into primary acts (pradhāna or arthakarma) and (several) subsidiary acts (kratvartha or guṇakarma ), 14 and “if it is not clear how to proceed, the basic form is valid.” 15 There is also an interdependence of rituals according to the archetype- and ectype-structure (prakṛti-vikṛti ), because the relationship of the whole ritual and its parts had to be explained, as well as the interdependence of rituals. The Full Moon or Darśapūrṇamāsa rituals, for instance, functions as the archetypal iṣṭi , and the Jyotiṣṭoma ritual does so for the soma rites. Nevertheless, modification (ūha, vikāra ) of Vedic injunctions and mantras is sometimes necessary. After all, the Vedic texts are full of variations within the rituals.
Rituals result in apūrva , “an impersonal and substrateless (anāśrita ) potentiality, a kind of cosmic principle or power to be manifested or actualized by the ritual acts (kriyāvyāṅgya ; yāgādikarmanirvartya )” (Halbfass 1991: 302). According to Jaimini, there can only be one result of a sacrifice, 16 which basically only holds true for independent, archetypal rituals. Only these create something new (see PMS 8.1.5). According to Śabara (fifth century, on PMS 2.1.6–2.1.8 and 2.2.1), subsidiary acts alone, therefore, cannot produce and accumulate apūrva . However, Kumārila (seventh century) assumes that the subsidiary acts have their own apūrva and are combined in the ritual to a comprehensive apūrva of the complete ritual. The basic problem the Vedic ritualists and, in fact, all ritualists, face is the proof of the efficacy of ritual, and the notion of apūrva is designed to solve this problem. The standard example of the Mīmāṃsā is that of the sacrifice burning down to ashes without any immediate result. The standard, post-Jamini “apūrvic” answer to this problem is that the result is unseen (adṛṣṭa ), or it will come into effect later, in heaven (svarga ) or the next life.
Mīmāṃsā is also important for the development of Hindu jurisprudence. As Jonardon Ganeri (2004 ) rightly argues, Vedic rituals are a source of moral action. The Mīmāṃsakas had to decide which action is permitted in a sacrifice and which is not. For this they developed a rational method of ritual reason, which was extended into the moral realm—dharma or more specifically (see Davis 2010 : 47) vaṇāśramadharma— where one also has to decide what to do and what not to do. Like sacrificial action, dharmic action is rooted in the belief of the transcendental consequences of action. Both are based on the authority of the Veda, and sacrifice and dharma —“in Mīmāṃsā…merely the ritual act” (Lingat 1973 : 149)—are both based on the concept of karman (see Francavilla 2006 : 25).
The relationship between Mīmāṃsā and Dharmaśāstra is thus based on two principles: the concept of dharma and the application of hermeneutical and exegetical rules. Davis (2010 : Chapter 2) has demonstrated how the Dharmaśāstric concept of dharma differs from the Mīmāṃsā concept. Whereas in the Mīmāṃsā, dharma is equivalent to the Veda, and the sacrifice is the source for the injunctions to lead a good life in this world and beyond, the Dharmaśāstra is based on the norms of the good (śiṣṭācāra ), which lead to a good life within the varṇāśramadharma . Thus, the authority for the ritual injunctions of the non-human (apauruṣeya ), revelated (śruta ) Veda is given through the “absolute denial of any human capacity for direct awareness of the truths the Veda is taken to convey” (McCrea 2010 :124). In contrast, the authority of the Dharmaśāstra depends on remembered (smṛta ) “products of human authors” (McCrea 2010 : 125). As regards the application of Mīmāṃsā exegetic rules in Dharmaśāstra, they often are simply general rules of good sense and maxims (nyāya ), which, however, are taken from the ritual context the Mīmāṃsakas dealt with. To underpin this proposition, Lingat refers to the maxim of the black beans (māṣamugdanyāya ):
A Vedic text declares that black beans and some other cereals are unsuitable for sacrifices. Another text prescribes that on certain occasions offerings must be made with green beans (mugda ). If green beans are unobtainable can they are replaced with black ones?…The conclusion (siddhānta ) is that since the black kind have been expressly forbidden, one must avoid them even when they are mixed with the green variety and even when it would be difficult to distinguish the one from the other. When carried over into usage of the śāstric interpreters, the rule means that every act contrary to the law is forbidden (cf. contra legem facit qui id facit quod lex prohibit , he breaks the law who does that which the law prohibits). (Lingat 1973 : 151; see PMS 6.3.20)
In Western ritual theory, life-cycle rituals are often regarded as paradigmatic. This is partly due to Arnold Van Gennep’s (1909 ) and, even more, Victor Turner’s (1969 ) path-breaking studies. Both have introduced key terms for the discussion of rituals: “rites de passage ,” “rites de séparation ,” “rites de marge ” and “rites de agrégation ,” or “liminality,” “communitas,” “social drama,” and “anti-structure.” The Indian term saṃskāra for life-cycle rituals is usually translated as “transition rite,” “rite of passage,” or “sacrament,” but these terms can only partially grasp its significance. For, as Brian K. Smith (1989 : 86) has emphasized, with the saṃskāras someone or something is made suitable, appropriate, or fit (yogya ) for a holy purpose, for example, as a sacrificial offering. The gods accept only what is appropriate for them, that is, something correctly composed and perfect. Similarly, Jan Gonda (1980 : 364) defined saṃskāra as “composing, making perfect, preparing properly and correctly with a view to a definite purpose.”
From a traditional Indian perspective, a saṃskāra is, therefore, not a divine punctuation, or an esoteric mysterium as the Greek mysterion (lit., secret) or the Latin sacramentum (originally “oath of allegiance”). Nor is it just the celebration of a phase of life. It is rather a ritual identification with the absolute or the Veda. In the initiation rite, for instance, the son is equated with the father, the Veda, the sacrifice and the fire; and only through such an identification can he achieve immortality. If this substitution is perfect (saṃskṛta ), the rite works ex opere operato , through the action itself and the power of the ritual equivalence, independent of the mental state of the adept.
The pūjā has been analyzed as honoring a deity like a respected guest (Thieme 1939 ), a deliberated subordination under the power of the deity (Babb 1975 ), or a commensal act, which shows the union between worshiper and god (Fuller 1992 ). In the center of such theories are the items (prasāda, dāna ) given to the deity or the priest and returned to the devotee. By eating what the devotee offers the deity, a relationship is created between him or her and the god, which corresponds to the social position and the rules of commensality. In the process, it is not altogether clear whether the deity has eaten food from the point of view of the devotee or only consecrated it. The distinction is quite important. If the deity took the food and “ate” it, the devotee eats (impure) leftovers. The devotee thus expresses his submission to the god.
Christopher J. Fuller (1992 : 78), however, thinks that the prasāda is not a return gift but a transmuted food. Moreover, in social life, it is a sign of higher rank to reject food, especially cooked rice. So, if the gods take food, they basically behave contrary to the fundamentals of the social hierarchy. Instead, the relationship between god and devotee reflects the relationship between man and wife. The wife cooks for the man and explicitly eats his leftovers, thus demonstrating her subordination. So, what is expressed in the prasāda is not social caste hierarchy—for then the gods might not take anything, not even cooked rice—but rather marriage.
Lawrence A. Babb (1975: 310), however, thinks that the devotee basically identifies himself with the supernatural form of the deity. He points out that the god’s leftovers are no longer impure but, on the contrary, the purest substances. Babb has seen correctly that, in essential parts, the pūjā is also an identificatory process: by taking the prasāda of the god into himself, the devotee has an equal share of the highest substance and overcomes all worldly caste and kinship limits: “The result is the closest possible intimacy, tending toward identity, and any analysis not taking this into account is incomplete” (Babb 1975: 307).
Theories of the meaninglessness of rituals (see Michaels 2006 ) mostly concern the invariability of prescribed actions and the polysemy of rituals (i.e., the multiplicity of meanings). They stress the idea that rituals are not only formal actions but that the forms of actions are basically independent and that the symbols in rituals do not refer to anything; rather they are context independent and thus meaningless. It was Frits Staal (1979 ) who most radically proposed such a theory of the meaninglessness of rituals. For him “ritual has no meaning, goal or aim” (1979: 8); it is “primary” and “pure activity…without function, aim or goal” (Staal 1989 : 131). Staal denies that rituals are translations of myths or stories into acts (the myth-and-ritual school), or that they are communicative or symbolic activity. For him orthopraxis, not orthodoxy, is decisive in the analysis of rituals. However, he does not deny that rituals can have more or less useful side effects, but these side effects should not be mistaken as the functions or aims of rituals (Staal 1979 : 11). In rituals, thus, means are not clearly related to ends (see Goody 1961: 159). If there would be a specific purpose to rituals (within rituals), other (or better) means could also—and sometimes more effectively—achieve the same purpose. Thus, no ritual is limited to just one such function, since then one could use other means, which also would achieve the desired purpose. Since rituals are in this sense meaningless, many meanings can be attached to them: “The meaninglessness of it explains the variety of meaning attached to it” (Staal 1979 : 12).
Staal’s syntactical theory of rituals is based on the theory of their meaninglessness and is influenced by generative transformational grammar. His point of departure is that rituals do not reflect meanings and point to something, just as words do not simply reproduce reality. Hans H. Penner (1985 ) has shown, however, that Staal’s understanding of language and ritual is unsatisfactory. He quite rightly points out that “language as we all know is composed of signs, and all linguistic signs have phonological, syntactic and semantic components” (1985: 9). So if rituals are supposed to have a syntax, they must also have semantics because the two cannot be separated from one another. Syntax means the combination of signs, and signs are always pointers to something; that is what gives them their meaning. “Staal…does not argue that rituals are not semiological systems. On the contrary, he argues that rituals have a syntax, but they are meaningless. Given the…evidence from linguistics, Staal’s position is simply wrong” (1985: 11).
What is controversial is precisely the intentionality of ritual acts. This was also brought up by Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw (1994 ), whose starting point is the actor’s ritual “commitment, a particular stance with respect to his or her actions” (1994 : 88). Asking what differentiates acting in a ritualized way from acting in a non-ritualized way, they speak of rituals as always being nonintentional but not necessarily unintentional. They can be performed with a variety of motives, but whatever they are, these wishes or motives do not change the ritual acts and, more importantly, they are not at all necessary for recognizing ritual acts as such. Whereas in the case of normal actions the intention is necessary to distinguish them from other actions or to perceive them as such, ritualized actions are not characterized by the intentions accompanying them.
Alexis Sanderson (1995 ) has given a detailed example of an indigenous theory of meaninglessness. In Kashmiri Śaivism, rituals are performed in explicit opposition to the Vedic prescriptions of the meaning of these rituals. To be true, certain Śaiva texts mention aims of specific rituals: liberation (mokṣa ) from the bondage of transmigration (saṃsāra ) or desire for supernatural powers and effects (siddhi ) to enjoy rewards (bhoga ) in this world or after death. For the seekers (sādhaka ) of liberation, however, a problem of purpose and meaning arises: if rituals were performed in order to reach a liberated state, why then should these rituals continue to be performed after reaching liberation? If all the impurity (mala ) of the soul has been destroyed, rituals having the “meaning” of destroying impurity seem to be obsolete. The answer given to this problem by the so-called left-hand Tantrism is consistent: rituals must continue to be performed because the bondage of māyā (illusion) remains, but one should no longer attach any meaning to them. Thus, perfect knowledge, which does not have any object any more, itself becomes ritualized, losing all meaning. Such examples make clear that the meaning of rituals is more often hidden (unconscious) or esoteric than self-evident, even for insiders. Rituals must be performed consciously, and, at the same time, the consciousness should not affect the rituals too much.