The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual

Michael Willis, The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the establishment of the Gods, Cambridge, 2009.

Introduction.

…In a recent volumes, Sheldon Pollock has captured the general disillusionment of academics with legitimation theory and rejected the notion that royal inscriptions and Sanskrit literature were written to legitimate royal power.⁵  Nonetheless, Pollock is prepared to admit that poetry (kaavya) and power (raajya) were mutually constitutive, even if the relationship presents “interpretive challenges”.⁶  What Pollock advocates is that the autonomous aesthetics becomes, in this view, the study of power, even if a simple causal relationship did not exist between the two.—p. 4

5.. Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley, 2006): 18 and 511-24.

6.. Ibid. 9.

…Grants to temples, however, were fraught.  This was because temple deities were not regarded as “real” by the Vedic priesthood.  This powerful circle of orthodox specialists were responsible for royal sacrifices, including the raajasuuya, and they were prepared to sanction only those rituals and theologies that conformed to and confirmed the ancient Vedic way of doing and thinking.  Their objection was that temple gods were not sentient beings and that they were not, as a result, able or entitled to accept what was offered to them. In other words, they were not juridical personalities with rights to offerings and gifts of land and money.  To meet these objections, grants were sometimes held by trustees and priests.  Simultaneously, the legitimacy of image worship was asserted by transferring Vedic rituals from the domestic setting to the temple environment….—p. 6

…the argument in favour of temple puja was carried forward by analogy and appropriation: just as important guests were traditionally welcomed in well-to-do homes and offered things that pleased them, so too were the gods welcomed in temple-homes and offered things that pleased them.  This, if nothing else, settles the origin of puja.—p. 6

…The historical career of Sanskrit, in Pollock’s view, is that it “only slowly and reluctantly…emerges as a political language…from the sacerdotal environment in which it was most at home.”¹⁷  This is nothing more than the old division of church and state in fancy dress, transmuted by academic discourse into a polarity between fine art or literature and the workaday world of popular culture.  Modern people may choose to organize their thinking along these lines, but the question for historians is whether the Guptas and their contemporaries actually did so.  Little can be safely concluded about early Indian history, but given that almost every record in the epigraphic corpus is concerned with the establishment of temples, the record of religious acts, or the provision of religious endowments, any attempt to divide politics, property, religion, and ritual can be rejected as wholly misguided….—p. 7

17.. [Sheldon] Pollock, “The Sanskrit Cosmopolis,” 300-1300 CE: Transculturation, Vernacularization and the Question of Ideology” in Ideology and Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language, edited by Jan E. M. Houben (Leiden, 1996) p. 197, and The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley, 2006),passim, but notably p. 512 where he dismisses Sanskrit as a language of communication because there is “no direct evidence that Sanskrit was ever used to fulfil these needs outside certain scholastic and liturgical environments.”  Yet if ritual communication means political communication (compare, say, the suppression of the Latin Mass in Protestant England), then the use of Sanskrit in liturgical environments is one if its most important roles.—p. 254

Chapter One.  The Archaeology and Politics of Time at Udayagiri.

            The points we have made so far demonstrate that the theme of time-keeping at Udayagiri was determined by the natural features of the site and that the carvings introduced during the Gupta period elaborated these themes in a dramatic and visual manner….—p. 33

…At Udayagiri this resulted in Narayana being lit by the rays of the sun for a number of days.  Now the revelvant point is this: on the day when Visnu was supposed to be “put to sleep” for the rainy season in June 401, [for the varsaamaasvrata] the moon would have also illuminated the southern wall of the passage and the image of Narayana.  Of course the image is not actually dated, so it is possible that the moon only illuminated the space where the niche and its sculptures were subsequently carved.

            …At Udayagir, members of the Gupta court and their astronomers would have watched the setting sun and rising moon as they stood on the hill.  At sunset—the prescribed time for the king’s matins according to the Arthasaastra—they would have seen the moon rising in the passage and, as night closed in, the moon’s rays falling on the sculpture of Narayana or the place where it was going to be carved. And they would have seen the royal worshipper bathed in the moon’s light just below the recumbent image.

            …Based on this it does not seem unreasonable to say that the worshipper in the Narayana panel is none other than Candragupta himself, the “moon-protected” king reverently putting Visnu to sleep in the days before the full moon in Aasaadha.—p. 35

…Ananta—the “endless-one”—combines both time and water: he is not just ordinary time but endless time, the infinite itself; he is not just ordinary water but the unmeasured cosmic waters.  On him and out of him a whole new creation will be manufactured by Brahma the creator.  This is why Ananta is named Sesa, the “remainder”—he is the residue of the previous age, the sole survivor of a vanished world who will provide the seed for a new univers.⁴⁵—p. 37

45. Charles Malamoud, “Remarks on the Brahmanic Concept of the Remainder,” in Cooking the World (Delhi, 1998): 18-19.  The texts quite explicitly tell us that all leftovers, every remainder, belongs to Visnu….—p. 260

…Candragupta and his circle had rather large ambitions: through a massive reworking of the site, they sought to transform Udayagiri from an aniconic observatory into an astro-political node where the royal path of the Gupta king intersected the ecliptics of the sun and moon.  The purpose was to magnify Candragupta’s greatness as he embarked on a campaign of universal conquest. The final goal in this grand scheme was the establishment of Candragupta as a paramount sovereign in the Vaishnava mould. This was achieved in several ways: by the performance of royal rites, notably the raajasuuya, which combined the forces of the sun and moon in the king’s person, by situating the king in a place where the movement of these celestial bodies was charted and thus captured, and by a suite of Vaisnava images that developed astronomical and cosmological themes. The culmination and centerpiece of this project—at once ritual, geographical, and visual—was the colossal figure of Varaha cut into the side of the mountains just a few metres from Virasena’s cave.—p. 41

…we can readily see that water once lapped across the foot of the Varaha image, a fact proven by the crumbling stone and erosion at the bottom of the sculpture itself. This demonstrates that the great Varaha rose directly out of the water, especially during the rainy season…. (p.42) After Visnu’s “waking day” in Kaarttika, the rains have normally stopped throughout north and central India.  At Udayagiri, during the Gupta period at least, the Varaha would have stood ankle-deep in water—a fitting announcement that the god has indeed risen from his watery sleep.(p.45)…the sculptures of Narayana and Varaha at Udayagiri were conceived as a pair, that the images were iconographic indicators of the sleeping and waking of Visnu and, finally, that the two were physically positioned so the rising sun would accentuate their calendrical and ritual significance.—pp.42 &, 45-46

…Even the Colas felt obliged to make a raid northward to the Ganga and bring back the holy waters to Tamil Nadu. So although Ganga and Yamuna were integral to the cosmological symbolism of the northern temple, at another level they retained political meaning, even in Tamil Nadu where river goddesses are not normally included in the architectural programme….—p.53

…one of the main themes of this chapter, namely our attempt to show that a coherent cosmological, religious, and political programme informs the images, inscriptions, and shrines at Udayagiri.  As we have noted already, Narayana, Nrsimha, and Varaha can be linked in various ways: through the flow of water and the position of water bodies, through the annual cycle of the seasons and its ritual reenactment, through the passage of cosmic time and the mythic events marking that time.  The system of aeons connects Narayana and Varaha in an especially close way: Narayana belongs to the kalpa that has has just closed and is forever past, while Varaha presides over the present age.  In the annual cycle, too, Narayana and Varaha are intimately linked: Narayana represents Visnu’s formless sleep during the rainy season, while Varaha represents Visnu’s dynamic awakening in the month of Kaarttika.  These meanings, and the political metaphors that can be associated with them, are reinforced by the configuration of Udayagiri and the epigraphic texts that were (p.55) incised on the hill at key places….—p.55-56

…We cover this ground only to show that the Vaisnava images at Udayagiri have a definable relationship with each other and, more generally, that the theology we now find in the Visnu and Matsya Purana was prevalent in central India when the images were being made.

            The foregoing material is enough to show that Narayana is the theological starting point for the iconographic programme at Udayagiri just as Varaha is its end-point and culmination….—p. 56

…the term Visaakhadatta used to designate “king” is paarthiva, “being in or relating to the earth.”….—p. 61

            Further meanings of the Varaha image will attract us in due course (Section 1.11), but before turning to that I should test the patience of my readers by citing some supporting evidence that shows the degree which the Varaha incarnation was connected with the king and his dominion over the earthy during the post-Gupta period….—p.64

…For historians of Gupta culture and polity the most important point is that Candragupta styled himself paramabhaagavata and displayed this boldly and publicly in sculptural form at Udayagiri.—p. 65

…the historical questions that we raised in the introduction to this book: Why did the Guptas come to Udayagiri and what compelled them to impose their iconographic programme on the place with such vigour and thoroughness?  The answer lies in the nature of the site as an ancient centre of astronomical observation, a place where the movements of the sun and moon were observed and where the year was charted and the calendar made. The unction festival, the key moment of the raajasuuya, was always preceded by a year of preliminaries in the textual accounts.  And the king’s lustration took place on the first day of Caitra, the very day on which the new Gupta calendar was inaugurated.  Because Udayagiri was a place where the year was known, it became the preeminent place for scheduling, visualizing, and memorializing the sacrifice.  The mythological ties that were developed between the sun, Visnu, and the sacrificial performance all heightened the potency of Udayagiri and drew ambitious kings inexorably toward it.—p.67

            That these ritual and political aspirations can be situated at Udayagiri is reinforced by the cycle of the varsaamaasavrata, a ritual discussed in Section 1.6.  In this observance, Visnu sleps during the rainy season, his waking day being the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of Kaarttika.  On this day, the rising sun illuminated the figure of Kaarttikeya in Cave 7—the shrine located just a few steps from the Varaha image and the Sanakaanika inscription.  The reason for this arrangement is not difficult to understand: Kaarttikeya derives his name from the month of Kaarttika, and he is Skanda, the god of war.  Accordingly, the month of Kaarttika is the most auspicious time for military exploits.  So Candragupta’s statement that he came to Udayagiri for the purpose of “total world conquest” can be tied to both to Kaarttikeya, the god of war, and the month of Kaarttika, the time of war.  Candragupta’s campaign coincided, we would suggest, not only with the moment when Visnu was roused from his sleep but with the month when a war of ceremonial validation could be appropriately conducted.—p. 68

…The identification of Visnu with the sacrifice no doubt reaches back to the days of the Satapathabraahmana and other canonical works of the Yajurveda.  But it is only in the Gupta age that the sacrifice is incorportated—literally and completely—into Visnu’s body….—p. 69

The combination of bhakta and yajamaana in the person of the monarch is not explicitly stated in Gupta records nor indeed in Vaisnava texts—it has to be recovered from a collective reading of the inscriptions, coins, and the Udayagiri sculptures….—p. 70

…Hans Bakker has perceptively and succinctly summarized the socio-religious situation in his writing about Raamagiri, the holy mountain of the Vaakaatakas in the Deccan: “By the assimilation of popular cults like that of the boar and the man-lion, a dual aim was served, viz. to unite the subjects of the realm into a community of worship, and, secondly, to confirm the royal family’s sacrosanct, leading role in this community. In this way the symbolic texture of Vaakaataka kingship was given shape in the heyday of its rule.”¹⁹⁹  The same words can be applied to the Guptas and to Udayagiri.—p.73

199. Hans T. Bakker, “Memorials, Temples, Gods and Kings,” in Ritual, State and History in South Asia: Essays in Honor of J. C. Heesterman, Memoirs of the Kern Institute, no. 5, edited by A. W. Van den Hock, D. H. A. Kolff, and M. S. Oort (Leiden, 1992): 14.  Bakker flags up his differences with Burton Stein on the nature of the “divine king” given in Stein, “Mahaanavamii,” 89-90.  The matter is explored in greater detail (p.274) in “Throne and Temple: Political Power and Religious Prestige in Vidarbha.”  In The Sacred Centre as a Focus of Political Interest.  Edited by Hans T. Bakker, Gronlingen, 1992, pp. 81-100.  Our views also contra Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley, 2006), 279, who insists that “the king’s transcendent god was never the god of the political ethnie” The second of Pollock axioms (ibid., 279) is also incorrect, see note 355 in Chapter 2.—pp.274-75 [355: Pollock, Language of the Gods, 279, wants to reduce the relationship of the king and deity to “a talismanic presence or apotropaic force.”  He also asserts that the god was (p.309) never “a granter of heavenly mandate, a justifier of rule and a transcendent realestate agent awarding parcels of land.”  Exaggerated wording aside, this is incorrect….—pp. 309-10.

…I should like to make some suggestions about the festival cycle at Udayagiri and the place of the Gupta kings in it. This is speculative ground, certainly, but worth entering because it has the potential to explain how a number of features at Udayagiri functioned in the early fifth century.—p. 74

            Of course things are not quite so mechanical in the natural world.  While astronomers can tinker with their calendars until they coincide exactly with astronomical events and devotees can time their vrata-s accordingly, the arrival of the Monsoon is rather less predictable: it can be delayed, it can be weak, it can even fail.  But the logic of the Indian ritualist is nothing if inexorable.  Everything prescribed must be performed and performed correctly in due time. For the believer, a failure to put Visnu to sleep on the proper day could have calamitous results. The rituals must be done, so they are done.  There was only one problem: if the ritual was performed and nothing seemed to happen, the (p. 76) religious ideology, and the political order which it endorsed, could look absurd.  Legitimacy and stability could be undermined; the kingdom could topple.  Given the unpredictable nature of the Monsoon, these were distinct possibilities.  So what could guarantee a perceptible and dependable result?

            It is my contention that the Guptas ensured a result at Udayagiri through the water-management system.  This can be explained as follows. In the ordinary course of events, the mountain would have been very dry in the summer months of Jyestha and Aasaadha. The large tank above the passage—the tank that drew our attention at the beginning of this chapter—would have been empty at this time of year.  The only way the tank could have held water would have been for it to have been raised mechanically from the River Bes.  This would have been daunting but not impossible. In preparation for the festival in which Visnu was “put to sleep” in Aasaadha, we can imagine the tank being filled by hundreds of Baisnava devotees as part of their vrata.  On the eleventh day of the bright fortnight, the festival was duly performed and Visnu was “put to sleep.”  By then the tank would have been ready.  At the right moment, a leading priest would have uttered appropriate mantra-s and given a signal for a floodgate to be opened. A refreshing flow of water would have rushed through the passage and down the stepped cascade, filling the tank at the foot of the hill next to the Varaha image—an impressive spectacle indeed.  The assembled gentry, farmers, and common-folk watching the theatrics would have come away convinced of the power of the rituals and those who controlled them. The Monsoon clouds, perhaps looming already on the southern horizon, would have begun to bucket down rain in the days and weeks that followed….—pp. 76-77

Chapter Two. The Establishment of The Gods.

…In the pages that follow, my aim is to describe the legal, religious, and political workings of this dispensation and to elucidate the role that Udayagiri played, as an imperial centre, in its constitution.—p. 81

…Gift, inheritance, purchase, lending on interest, conquest, and employment in labour were all acknowledged as lawful. These means were not open to all, however: everyone in society was required to follow the course appropriate to their station.  Manu inveighs especially against brahmanas who sought to earn a living by any means other than studying and teaching the Veda, performing sacrifices, and accepting gifts from virtuous people.  And he instructs those who have acquired property otherwise to abandon it.¹⁶—p.83

16. Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. Oxford, 2005.10: 75-6 with near identical wording in 1: 88….—p. 277

…An important corollary is the notion that the merit of a grant is passed from king to king; that is, the current ruler, whoever he may be, enjoys the benefit of grants made in the past.  He thus has no reason to (p.84) disturb earlier grants or confiscate land already given.  Copper-plate charters show that these ideas were remarkably widespread by the fifth century.  In the Vaakaataka grants of Pravarasena II (circa CE 419?-55) the following lines were used repeatedly.¹⁸

18. J. F. Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1888): 247 Llines 39-41); V. V. Mirashi, Inscriptions of the Vaakaatakas, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 5. Ootacamund, (1963): 29

And on this point two verses sung by Vyasa should be taken as authoritative:

The giver of land rejoices in heaven for sixty thousand years (but) he who confiscates (granted land) and he who assents (to such action) shall reside in hell for that period!  Whosoever confiscates land that has been given, whether by himself or by another, he incurs the guilt of the slayer of a hundred thousand cows!—pp. 84-85

…Manu himself teaches that “He who knows the law must inquire into the laws (dharma) of each caste (jati), district (jaanapada), guild (srentii) and household (kula) and only then give his own legal opinion (svadharma).”⁹⁷—p. 100

97. Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. Oxford, 2005. (8:41): jaatijaanapadaan dharmaan sreniidharmaas ca dharmavit| samiiksya kuladharmaams ca svadharmam pratipaadayet.—p. 286.

            But what, exactly, is the meaning of bali, caru, and satra?  Here I am not proposing to study the long and sometimes contested history of these words…The material collected by Jan Gonda in his annotated digest Vedic Ritual shows that a bali was used to please or appease various deities in a number of different settings.¹⁰¹…Early sources, both textual and epigraphic indicate that bali meant the tribute paid to a king, a meaning confirmed by later lexicographers who understood bali and bhaaga as synonyms.¹⁰⁴  Although this may seem confusing, the basic idea is that bali is a portion of food that is presented to whomsoever it (p.102) is due, be it a king, a god, or some other deserving creature. This is how Manu came to define bali as bhuutayajna, the “sacrifice made to beings of all kinds.”…Manu also classed bali as prahuta, an offering that is meant to be scattered or cast away.¹⁰⁵…to appease or propitiate the gods, and to ask them to deter or control malevolent agencies, especially evil spirits….—pp. 102-03

101. Jan Gonda. Vedic Literature.  A History of Indian Literature, vol. 1. fasc. 1. Wiesbaden, 1975.—p. 287

104. D. C. Sircar, Studies in the Political and Administrative Systems of Ancient and Medieval India, Delhi, 1974. 6; Indian Epigrapical Glossary, s.v., bhaaga, meaning  a “share,” refers to the king’s share of the crops, which are payable by his tenants.  U. N. Ghoshal, Contributions to the History of the Hindu Revenue System (Calcutta, 1972): 393. [but I cannot find the publisher ref. for Indian Epigraphical Glossary but Indian Epigraphy. Delhi, 1965 is there—db]—p. 287

105. Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. Oxford, 2005. (3: 74)—p. 287

…In the old ritual literature, sattra referred to a long sacrificial session, normally one performed by priests for their own benefit and thus without a yajamaana.¹⁰⁹….—p. 104

109. Jan Gonda. Vedic Literature.  A History of Indian Literature, vol. 1. fasc. 1. Wiesbaden, 1975. p. 115; P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 5 Vols. Poona, 1930-62.  2: 1133—p. 288

…In Gupta times, the first occurrence of sattra in the sense of atithi is given in a series of records from Garhwa….—p. 104

…medical knowledge did not flouring in the Vedic schools because traditional brahmanas had very entrenched views about pollution and ritual purity.  This meant that medical knowledge—with its distinct epistemology based largely on observable phenomena—tended to develop in heterodox circles, especially among wandering mendicants. Before the emergence of classical Ayurveda, the Buddhist monastery provided an institutional home for the early medical tradition….—p. 106

            The copper-plate inscriptions show that the beginning of this Brahminical assimilation process—a crucial one for the history of Indian society—can be placed in the fourth century, the date of the first charters mentioning sattra-s in the temple setting.  These sattra-s were designed to support and strengthen the place of the temple and to advance the interests of temple-based theism in Indian society.  They seem to have been modeled on the mechanisms organized by Buddhists to support the sangha and developed as a deliberate counter to them…. So while the sattra of Gupta times certainly undertook charitable work, to understand the (p.106) institution as a “charitable almshouse”—as scholars have done to date—is to conjure up some sort of Victorian building for lost souls rather than a dynamic organization with ambitious socio-religious aims.  The almshouse notion is especially infelicitous because it obscures the fact that the sattra welcomed brahmanas, mendicants, devotees, and temple-servants.  Under the umbrella of the temple, backed by hefty endowments and protected by the state, the sattra gave these people a base from which they could propagate a new religious dispensation.  The temple and sattra provided an institutional place and space for those practices and knowledges that stood outside the tightly-circumscribed ambit of the old Vedic schools. Of course Buddhism had played this role and continued to do so in the Gupta period.  The point is that temples, unlike Buddhism, were allied with ancient orthodoxy.  Those responsible for introducing the powerful theistic vision of the godhead in the temple—and for introducing puja as an appropriate form of divine service—attempted to link their cult to the Veda and refer it to Vedic tradition.   This was because the Veda and its ancillaries were accepted as the final source of authority with regard to sacred knowledge. The point is that religious “innovation” could not be defined as such—it had to be understood in terms of the Veda rather than vice versa.  The aim was not to show that new practices were superior to the old, or even to shroud new cults in ancient clothing.  Rather, the aim was to prove that the new was nothing more than the old, a simple rephrasing of the old using contemporary terminology.—pp. 106-07

…This conclusively shows that if a sattra was a long sacrificial session undertaken for the benefit of the officiants, and if eating and charitable hospitality were equal to sacrificing, then any long-term arrangement that allowed brahmanas to provide food and clothing to need brahmanas, wandering mendicants, and the destitute could be deemed a sattra.—p. 108

…caru…is described in textual sources as a thick porridge prepared from un-pounded rice or barley grains, cooked in water with butter or milk…In the epigraphic lists, however, the word caru was used to describe a ritual rather than a substance, just as bali is actually short for baliharana, the offering of bali.  Manu clarifies the fact that bali refers to a ritual process by saying that it is also bhuutayajna. But what sort of yajna lies behind caru?  The problem is that caru, as a ritual rather than a substance, is peculiar to epigraphic usage, at least as far as I have been able to determine….caru ca only be homa/devayajna.

            The conclusion that caru referred to a homa or burnt offering is confirmed by textual sources….when all the evidence is taken into account, the indication is that the caru was offered as a homa. This means that the temple-gods mentioned in our copper-plate charters were offered cooked porridge as a burnt offering.  Although Vedic in origin, the homa has (p.108) been retained in nearly all extended puja ceremonies, and homa-s are still actively performed in south India with the particulars preserved in ritual manuals.—pp. 108-09

            The foregoing exploration of bali, caru, and sattra has embraced much incidental detail and prompted a number of digressions and subsidiary conclusions.  The impression—should we take the matter no further—would be that bali, caru, and sattra are entirely discrete items of religious service.  While these components of puja are obviously different in and of themselves, we need to remember that the early copper-plate charters dealing with temples almost always mention them together….—p. 109

…bali, caru, and sattra appear in epigraphic (p.110) accounts of both temple worship (puja) and the five great sacrifices (pancamahaayajna).  Now I hope the date given so far is enough to show that when bali, caru, and sattra are mentioned in the puja context, they are not simply parts of the pancamahaayajna…So to imagine that bali, caru, and sattra were elements of the pancamahaayajna that have slipped their domestic moorings and drifted willy-nilly into the temple framework would be to miss the point entirely.  Something rather more important has happened: priests have carefully and deliberately moved sacrifices from the domestic environment to the temple and attracted funding to support these rites in the new location.  This has happened because priests were directing the offerings towards certain deities….—pp. 110-111

…The Satapathabraahmana states, for example, that “there are two kinds of deva-s, the (heavenly) gods and the human gods, namely brahmanas who have studied the Veda and mastered it”.  Sacrifices is divided between these two (i.e., oblations to the gods and fees to learned brahmanas who are human gods).¹⁴⁷…If gods and men can be equated, then the things done to receive and please a brahmana at home can be applied, by analogy, to welcome and please the gods in their temple-homes.  The Vaikhaanasa bali-offering outlined here proves the point beyond doubt. This ritual establishes a parallel between brahmanas and Visnu-in-an-image because both are welcomed in a similar manner and receive similar gifts. The analogy is publicly reinforced by the activities being set in a single ritual framework and conducted in the same ritual space.—p. 111

147. Satapathabraahmana (2: 2: 2: 6).  The sources that claim braahmanas are gods on earth are taken up in Gonda, “Gifts,” In Changes and Continuity in India Religion.  Disputationes Rheno—Trajectinae IX. The Hague, 1965. pp. 229-83. p. 203.—p. 292

…This use of madhuparka in the worship of Visnu leaves no doubt that the oldest known puja-s for which we have concrete historical evidence—those recorded in the copper-plate charters—were modeled on the reception of guests in the domestic setting.—p. 112

…those who were involved in the promotion of puja as a valid form of religious activity advanced their cause by the application of well-established grhya-practices and ancient mantra-texts.  This allowed offerings of an ostensibly non-Vedic nature, such as flowers, to be appropriated without controversy.  This use of Vedic material was part of the correspondence-building exercise that made puja conform to received tradition—even Vedic invocations could be taken as the temple analogue of brahmayajna, one of the pancamahaayajna-s.  While this explains the mechanics of the liturgy-building process, the wider social and historical implications of the change are revealed (p.112) only by the physical setting in which the new rituals were performed and by the people who participated in the rituals at these places.—pp. 112-13

…From the perspective of medieval and modern India, the workings of puja are so unremarkable that those reading this essay might wonder why I have paid so much attention to them.  The reason is that the copper-plate inscriptions are the oldest historical and extra-textual records of puja. This is significant….Yet if the Gupta charters do not record the actual origin of temples and puja, what do they mark as the very first documents of these religious phenomena?  To answer this question, a central one for the religious life of the Gupta period and the themes explored in this book, we need to look at the proto-history of temples, that is, the history of temples before they became permanent and monumental structures in the fifth century….—p. 113

…Shrines…were few in number and peripheral from the Vedic perspective is shown by the fact that the deities in these shrines are seldom named.  The rituals too are never detailed, indicating they stood outside the general purview of the Vedic and sutra-literature….—p. 113

…To put the matter in practical terms, because the offering of bali was not rigidly particularized in its application, it could find its way to a caitya and be appropriately offered there.  Once this happened, other types of offerings could easily follow.  This gives socio-religious perspective to the historical information contained in the Gupta copper-plates.  They do not record—as we have said—the absolute origin of certain kinds of worship, but rather the process by which Vedic offerings and ritual performances were rationalized in the temple setting.—p. 114

…a comprehensive survey, however fascinating for the ritual specialist, does not alter the basic point that Aapastamba teaches and that we have already concluded from other material, namely, that the building-blocks of temple-puja can be found in the ritual repertoire of the grhya-tradition.—p. 117

…because there are no fourth-or fifth-century Vaisnava ritual texts in the north, the Vaikhaanasa school provides the best evidence by analogy.  The usefulness of Vaikhaanasa literature is reinforced by the school’s persistent effort to create a religious system that combined Vedism and the worship of Visnu Narayana.  This synthesis was developed theologically and ritually.  The Vaikhaanasa are indeed convinced that their form of image-worship is nothing but a continuation of the Vedic sacrifice…The school does not reject fire offerings and other forms of Vedic ritual that are “shapeless” or “imageless” (amuurtaa).  Rather they combine the two, making the worship of Visnu-in-an-image obligatory  at the close of every domestic fire rite…in the offering of bali to Narayana…the Vaikhaanasasuutra prescribes that the priest should recite the well-known verse, “I shall proclaim the might deeds of Visnu,” that is Rgveda 1:154:1, the famous Visnu suukta.¹⁷⁰  This effectively fused the Purusa of the old Vedic hymns with Visnu Narayana as a consecrated image.—p. 118

170. W. Caland, ed. Calcutta, 1927. Vaikhaanasasmaartasuutra (10: 10) and similarly the Visnubali (3: 13), which is also centred on an image.—p. 295

…the five forms of the Highest Being (viz. Visnu, Purusa, Satya, Acyuta, and Aniruddha) are incarnations of the Vedas and represented by the five Agnis (viz. Gaarhapatya, Aahavaniiya, Dasksinaagni, Anvaahaarya, and Sabhya).¹⁷⁴  The chasm between the fourfold Veda, varna and aasrama systems and the fivefoldness of Vaikhaanasa theology was bridged by the well-known assertion that the combination of four components make five as the whole counts for one more.—p. 118

174. Atri, Samuurtaarcanaadhikarana, edited by Ramakrishna Kavi (Tirupati, 1943): vii.—p. 295

…The flowers, incense, lights, garments, food, and drink offered to this god are accompanied by mantra-s drawn mainly from the Kaathakasamhitaa.  This use of ancient mantra-s is meant to show that puja-offerings are not a religious innovation but actually inherent in the Veda—despite every appearance to the contrary.  To confirm that this was the case, the officiant was instructed to mutter the Purusasuukta at the close of the performance (VSm 65:15).  So the Kaathakas—like their Vaikhaanasas contemporaries—were fusing the Vedic Purusa with Visnu in a consecrated idol….—p. 119

The material surveyed in the foregoing pages allows us to address the question with which we opened this section, namely, if the Gupta charters do not record the actual creation of puja and temples what do they record as the oldest documents of these phenomena?  The answer does not lie in the individual components—the objects or the people—recorded in the charters.  A list of these elements clarifies out point: (1) the brahmana proficient in the worship of images, often at a shrine; (2) the rituals he performs and the mantra-texts he uses; (3) the deity, in an image, to whom the priest directs his religious service; (4) the land given as an endowment; and (5) the ruling elite endorsing and protecting the arrangements.  The copper-plates do not herald the advent of any of these things. What they do announce is their combination.  The integrity of each part was maintained, and the authority of settled tradition accordingly preserved, but the combination generated a new institutional reality: a deity established in a temple controlled by a priest holding endowments endorsed by the state.  So the copper-plates are important sign-posts on the route to mature Hinduism and its temple practices.  Yet they are even more: if the temple as a (p.119) socio-political institution is the palladium of mature Hinduism, then the copper-plates announce the birth of medieval India.

@ [see below] Another feature of the copper-plates that anticipates the beginning of the medieval world is the public nature of their contents and the publicly visible results the grants were intended to produce.—pp. 119-20

…the sutra-texts, in the words of Jan Gonda, “deal solely with country or village life.  Of the social and political conditions they contain almost nothing.”¹⁸⁰  In actual fact, the world of the sutra-s is consciously ahistorical and circumscribed. The texts appear timeless because their compilers have turned their backs on the urban centres and international economic networks of Buddhism and early historic India…(p.120) Tucked away in their villages, the Sutrakaaras resolutely maintained their domestic rites, focused on their literary traditions, and, in some cases, carried out the worship of Visnu Narayana in the privacy of their homes and village shrines.  They purposefully shunned the dominant discourse of Buddhism and had no corporate networks like the great Buddhist monasteries and their subsidiaries.

            @This inward-looking world is not what we encounter in the copper-plate charters.  These documents give us priests at centre stage, politically connected and socially dominant.—pp.120-21

180. Jan Gonda. The Ritual Sutras. A History of Indian Literature, vol. 1, fasc. 2. Wiesbaden, 1977.—p. 295

…The juxtaposition of the domestic world of the sutra-tradition with the public cult of the temple may be overdrawn—the two overlapped for centuries—but it highlights the degree of which ritual, social, and economic relationships were changing in the time of the Guptas.  As already noted, this was a change of configuration rather than components. The new relationship between puja, priest, image, patron, and land was a powerful synergism that produced temple-based Hinduism. This world-in part Vedic but radically different from what went before—did not emerge in an organic, subconscious, or accidental fashion from some sort of socio-religious plasma; it was consciously created by members of the priesthood—an intellectual and religious elite with clear aims and certain purposes…The temple priests of Gupta India established images in increasing numbers, accumulated endowments to support their work, and grew ever more powerful. As they did so, ancient forms of worship and everything they represented were displaced.  By the early sixth century, these priests and their temples had changed the religious landscape of India forever.—pp.121-22

…Without images, there would be no need for puja offerings; without puja offering, no need for specialist priests; without specialist priests, no endowments to support their ritual work.  And without all these things working together, there would be no economic or religious basis for monumentalisation: no inscribed stone tablets chronicling the construction of temples; no copper-plates recording endowments; no manuals and commentaries explaining the nature, purpose, and meaning of temple ritual; no architecture, sculpture, and attendant arts; no parading of gods on festival days; no great religious centres with their myriad shrines; and no pan-Indian networks of pilgrimage.  So living images are essential and necessary.  The student of Indian religion will not find this an insightful observation—indeed the obviousness of the point is more noteworthy than not. We highlight the matter because the copper-plate charters of the Gupta age provide the first written evidence of these living images. This is not immediately obvious from the records themselves: they present us with a mature cult in almost every particular—nothing about them seems “formative.”—p. 122

…In the memorable words of Lionel D. Barnett, Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and MSS at the British Museum: “In India there is no twilight before dawn. In the darkness the eastern sky suddenly flushes, and the ruddy edge of the morning sun swiftly leaps upon the horizon.  And it is so with the history of the great people which has led the van of Indian culture.”¹⁸⁶.  The Gupta charters conform to Barnett’s perspicacious maxim in every respect: they do not hint at the naissance of temple-gods by making apologies in their favour—they simply present them as fully formed and self-evident.—p. 123

186. Lionel D. Barnett. Antiquities of India: An Account of the History and Culture of Ancient Hindustan. London, 1913. 1.—p. 295

…The working model for puja, as we have seen, was the domestic sacrifice and the reception of guests. These rites, also as we have seen, were moved from the domestic environment to the temple to develop a ritual repertoire for the image-cult. Just as guests received offerings in the home, so the gods received offerings in the temple. This is clearly laid out in the Vaikhaanasasmaartasuutra….—p. 123

…So temple-gods behave like real people who enjoy what is given to them and respond in turn. Now if a living image in a temple is a person, albeit a great one—a mahaapurusa—then in legal terms it is also a juridic personality.  To put the matter another way, if the gods could enjoy food, flowers, and the like, and so demonstrate corporeality, then it follows that they could exercise various legal rights like other sentient beings.   The most important of these rights for the historian of the temple and its cultural apparatus was the ability of the gods to hold the property that had been gifted to them.—p. 123

…So just as puja was based on what might be offered to a worthy guest (i.e., a brahmana), so temple endowments were based on the kind of benefice that might be established to support a brahmana versed in sacred lore.  This again highlights the degree to which men and gods were treated in an analogous fashion.  We should not forget that copper-plate charters are legal documents pure and simple: they were issued solely to record actual and real transactions.  The term devaagrahaara in the early copper-plates thus demonstrates that temple-gods were juridic personalities in the eyes of the law.—p.125

Perpetuity and permanence are constant themes in the copper-plate charters.  The records frequently assert that the endowments were meant to be enjoyed forever, to endure, in fact, as long as the sun, moon, and stars: sasvataad aacandraarkkataarkakkabhogya.¹⁹⁴  This intention was backed by lines from the Mahabharata that promised heaven for those who maintained endowments and hell for those who tampered with them…

            …Charters were not so much “documents” in the ordinary sense but instruments through which interested parties established economic power and maintained social dominance. What I mean to say is that charters possessed a degree of constitutive power….—p. 125

194. Daamodarpur copper-plate of Kumaaragupta I, dated Gupta year 124; D.C. Sircar, Select Inscriptions bearing on Indian History and Civilisation, 2 vols. Calcutta, 1965-83., 1:292 (lines 8-9).—p. 296

            The switch to copper from palm-leaf was not a technological improvement of a coincidental nature.   The change was driven forward by a desire on the part of donors, donees, and the state to make their endowments permanent, stable, and perpetual.  This intention is highlighted by the frequent statement that benefactions were to be enjoyed by the recipient, and the line descending through his son and grandson. Temple-gods held land on similar terms…The point is that if a donee and his descendants could be parted from their holding only when their lineage was extinguished, then a temple-god’s holding could only be alienated if the god and his temple were destroyed….—p. 126

…As the kings of Delhi sought to extend their control over the Malwa region, they directed campaigns against the temple [at Udayagiri], the first in 1234, the second in 1292.  The image was carried away and cast down at the gates of Badaaun, desecrated there by the feet of all those entering the city.  The temple building at Udayagiri, to judge from the tiny fragments that survive, was literally smashed to bits.²⁰³  Why Bhaaillasvaamin should have been repeatedly attacked and so thoroughly destroyed is explained by an inscription from Kadwaaha dating to the early fourteenth century.  This recounts how the barbarians—in this context Muslim Turks—overran the earth and desecrated the temple nineteen times in the reign of Alaa’ al-Diin Khaljii (d. 2 January 1316).  Despite these efforts, holy men rededicated the linga and pundits composed an inscription memorializing this fact.  This shows why a living temple had to be attacked again and again: in order for the religious and juridic vitality of the god to be effectively and finally destroyed, the temple had to be razed to the ground and its very location expunged from local memory. (p.126)  Only then could the god’s land be liberated and assigned to new owners and new causes.  Such efforts could fail however, Sultanate troops entered the temple of Jagannath at Puri and consigned his wooden image to the flames.  But Jagannath was not so easily polished off.  Through a temporary image that had to be constantly remade and reconsecrated, the temple priests at Puri turned impermanence into permanence—a reincarnating god who was so unassailable that his vast land-holdings survived even to the twentieth century.—pp. 126-27

203. Illustrations in Meera I Dass and M. Willis “The Lion Capital from Udayagiri and the Antiquity of Sun Worship in Central India.” SAS [South Asian Studies]18, 2002. pp. 25-45.,” Figure 14.—p. 297

            While these charters take us very close to the naissance of the temple as a socio-economic enterprise, they do not take us to its absolute beginning.  This is not due to some unfortunate lacunae in the evidence.  We should not think that some missing plate will reveal everything if only it can be found. The reason for this is that the charters—to emphasise a point already made—are circumscribed in their purpose and exist only to record actual and real transactions. Without the relevant constituents—an asset available for disposal, an owner ready to give or to sell, a god or brahmana ready to receive—there would be no transaction and no need for a charter.  So the gods, of necessity, precede the endowments made in their favour: legal instruments are not issued to govern nonexistent situations or control nonexistent entities.  The copper-plates we have cited as example are, in fact, clear on this point….—p. 127

…the practice of establishing images and other votive objects was especially favoured by Buddhist and Jains. Closely related practices were also being developed in other religious circles—notably by brahmanas of the Yajurveda who appear to have been at the vanguard of image-based forms of worship.—p. 129

            The most informative early work to describe the establishment of images is the Baudhaayanagrhyasuutra, a domestic book of the Taittiriya branch of the Black Yajurveda….—p. 129

            A small bronze of Narayana in the British Museum provides an idea of the domestic images intended by these texts.  The image was collected by David Simpson, a surgeon in Trichinololy, and purchased by Charles Townley in 1792.  The sale catalogue, which is unusually informative, tells us that the images “belonged to a Brahmin of high caste and family in the island of Syringham, whose circumstance being much reduced in consequence of the war, he was with great difficulty prevailed upon by a brother Brahmin (a friend of the present proprietor’s) to part with his household Gods, upon a valuable pecuniary consideration, and a promise that they were never to be removed from the house of a Brahmin.”²¹⁹  As the images are now in the British Museum whose curators are, in the judgment of the atirikta managing director Suzanna Taverne, a “priesthood of relics” (Gurdian, 15 September 2001), the promise made that the images not be “removed from the house of a Brahmin” may be regarded as kept.—p. 129

219. A Catalogue of the Indian Idols, Indian Paintings, Drawings, &c. which were collected by Mr. Simpson during a long residence in India, in the Company’s Service which will be Sold by Auction by Mr. Christie (London, 26, May 1792): lot 16. David Simpson was in Trichinopoly from 1780 and returned home in 1786; see D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service (Calcutta, 1930): 265, for which reference I am grateful to Jery Losty.—p. 298

…The Pratisthaamayuukha, for instance, says that “for the sake of customary transactions one should always give the deity a name compounded with that of the patron.”²⁴².  That names were given in this way to support property ownership—what we have described above as the de jure legal fiction of assets being held by the deity….—p. 136

242. Pratisthaamayuukha (Bombay, 1862): 30b7: atha kartrnaamayutam devanaama kuryaat sarvadaa vyavahaaraartham.  Cited with further instructive examples in  Alexis. Sanderson, “The Saiva Religion among the Khmers, Part 1,” BEFEO [Bulletin de l’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-orient.]91-92 (2003-04): 415, n. 250. Reference to the practice of naming of gods using the suffixes—isvara and –svaamin is also found in the Raajataranginii….—p. 301

…Vaisnava images are known to have been named after deceased persons. The names of these gods normally ended with-svaamin, in contradistinction to the Daivas who, as we have just noted, generally used the suffix—isvara. An illustrative case is Vaaillabhattasvaamin, the deity installed in the Caturbhuj temple at Gwalior. This god was named in memory of Vaaillabhata, an officer who served the Pratiihaara kings.  A precedent for this practice in Gupta times is provided by the temple of Mundasvaami in the Vaakaataka kingdom that seems to have been named after Prabhaavatiiguptaa whose childhood name was evidently Mundaa…

            The naming of Vaisnava temple-gods after specific individuals brings us to the relationship between Visnu and his worshippers through the medium of (p. 139) images…Because the temple is the pre-eminent place for contact between man and god, the builder of a temple, he who makes this contact possible, will be the first to profit. He is the yajamaana—the terminology is deliberately archaic—and he will gain the same result as if he had built a Vedic fire-alter. The various stages of the undertaking produce increasingly elevated results: when the “lotus of Brahma” is deposited in the soil at the centre of the building site, he obtains Visnu’s world (saalokyam); when the image has been established, closeness to Him (saamiipyam); when the temple is completed, equality in form to Him (saaruupyam); when the sacrificial ceremony for Visnu is completed, enjoyment and dominion (bhogaisvaryam); when the consecration ceremonies are finished, communion with Him (saayujyam)….—pp. 139-40

…the function of images underwent significant changes at this time [fourth century]. While theological speculation about the place of departed souls in a theistic universe no doubt developed before the rise of the Guptas, it was only in the fourth century that cult-objects—actual images and symbols made of permanent materials—began to have an instrumental role in the religious career of individual souls.—p. 141

            Cave 6 is a more complex harbinger of mature ritual and its supporting architectural space. To make the necessary points, I am compelled to describe the cave and its precinct in some detail as the relevant features have not been discussed in the published literature….—p. 142 –rev.

            The surfeit of detail given in the foregoing paragraphs may seem diffuse and confusing, but the crux of the matter remains simple and straightforward: the establishment process was a means by which gods were encouraged to take up actual and living residence in their respective images….—p. 143 rev.

…Modern apologists, embarrassed by idol-worship, have sought to explain the establishment process as a symbolic undertaking, something that ennobled the worshipper so he or she could realize the presence of divine power through the instrument of an image.  But this was not the ancient understanding. In Gupta times, the term pratisthaa meant “to place a definite power in an object, to endow an object with faculties, etc.”—at least for those who did not subscribe to the Mimamsa school of thoughts…took considerable exception to images and their worship.  Beyond their ambit, the pratishthaa-process made the idol a living entity—a real being entitled to receive offerings and legitimately hold the property assigned to it by its patrons.—p. 143

            Skandagupta, like all the patrons encountered in these pages, wanted his temple to last as a monument and religious institution.  The long-term viability of his temple—as with all temples—rested on its permanence and ongoing authority as a socio-economic entity.  Permanence was achieved through the introduction of durable materials: land-grants were written on sheets of copper, dedicatory inscriptions were engraved on pillars or slabs, sacred images were carved in stone or cast in metal.  The frequent use of the word “stone” to describe images and temples shows that physical permanence was an important preoccupation in the fifth century.  At Udayagiri, a place that witnessed the naissance of temple religion, permanence was affirmed by the conflation of cave and temple: nothing could be more permanent and unshakable than a shrine excavated into a mountain and an image carved from the living rock.  Permanence was otherwise buttressed by the insistence that grants were irrevocable and meant to last as long as the sun, moon, and stars.—p. 150

…But a king, however influential, and a priest, however charismatic, and a merchant, however rich, were not enough to guarantee the longevity of a temple.  The vibrancy of a cult in the longer term—its hold over the hearts of devotees and its grip on the resources from granted lands—rested on succeeding generations acceding to the authority of the god and the priests who managed that god’s religious service.  How this was achieved is a crucial historical and religious question.

            The favoured mechanism for guaranteeing the life of a temple and its cult was to make appeals to an authority that transcended the particular circumstances of the ruler, temple priest, and economic patron, to make appeals, in short, to the authority of the Veda…because the Veda is deemed timeless, eternal, and perennially valid, anything that depends on the Veda or is derived from the Veda, is necessarily timeless, eternal, and perennially valid.  Strategies of validation thus involved showing that particular undertakings were essentially (p. 150) “Vedic”—especially undertakings that might be called into question because they appeared to depart from the Veda…puja-offerings were understood in terms of the Veda and referred to Vedic tradition: the use of Vedic forms—bali, caru, and sattra—demonstrated that this type of worship was faithful to received tradition.  Similarly, the use of Vedic invocations to accompany the offering of flowers, incense, and lamps—as we find in Visnusmrti 65: 3-14—showed that these offerings “unpacked” meanings inherent in the mantra-texts.  Land-grants were, by a circuitious route, subject to the same hermeneutic…..—pp. 150-51

…As J. A. B. van Buitene has elegantly observed, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Mahabharata in which it is embedded, has authority for all the wrong reasons: it has a person as its author, it is a product of time, and it has no regard for sruti.³⁰⁹  But Indian thinkers were not interested in highlighting divergence, novelty, and innovation.  Their concern was to show convergence, fidelity, and congruity: texts were incorporated into the Vedic tradition by showing that they conformed to sruti and smrti.  This was the only way they could be valid and meaningful….—p. 151

309. van Buitenen, The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata. Chicago. 1981. p. 9. –p. 306

…in the first place, Vainyagupta invokes sruti, smrti, and itihaasa.  Notable by its absence in this list is Purana, an omission that indicates these scriptures were not considered authoritative as far as land grants were concerned….—p. 152

… “whosoever possesses the earth at any given point in time, to that king belongs the reward of grants previously made.”  The reward included the king’s (p.152) customary share of religious merit, typically one-sixth.³¹⁴—pp. 152-53

314. Examples cited in D. C. Sircar, “Epigraphic Notes, 9. Creation of Rent-free Holdings,” EI [Epigraphica Indica]33 (1959-60): 50, n. 2….—p.306

…kings have no grounds for disturbing earlier grants or for confiscating land already given…they are obliged to respect land-grants made by their predecessors, even those who are or were politically hostile to them.—p. 154

…This reflects the position of the Visnusmrti that is unequivocal on the question of land tenure:

…

If possession has been held of an estate by three (successive) generations in due course, the fourth in descent shall inherit it as his property even without written title. (188).³²¹—p. 155

321. V. Krishnamacharya, ed. Visnusmrti with the Commentary Kesavavaijayantii, 2 vols. Adayar Library Series, vol. 93. Madras, 1964.—p. 307

            Even though the brahmanas who received land had a vested interest in grants and so endorsed the system in their literature, and the main legal tension seems to have been the establishment of property rights over and above the potentially capricious power of individual kings. The whole process was authored, nonetheless, by kings and those in their service.  Administrative arrangements varied from grants to grant, but everyone involved—kings, subordinates, officers, and bureaucrats—were warned against meddling.  They, in their turn, warned those to come that it was imprudent to interfere with established holdings.  We have cited the declaration of Vainyagupta as a good indicator of these concerns, but many charters, including those of the Parivraajakas, Uccakalpas, and Vaakaatakas, have words to the same effect.  The implications of this information are clear and important: each king was supposed to make grants of land, yet each king was required to respect grants made in the past.  With land increasingly encumbered in this way—and the possibility of confiscation more or less excluded—the only option was to push into the hinterland. In other words, the whole system was inherently expansionist.

            This system was not exactly being invented as the plates of the Gupta period were being issued, but it was enjoying unprecedented application and support.  The exact nature of land-tenure within the system has been a subject of much study and debate. Scholarly controversies have been compounded by the complexity of the epigraphic and literary evidence, not to mention the potential for variation from region to region and the development of practice over time.  Moreover, the historiography has been distorted by colonial presuppositions on the part of earlier writers and ideologically charged forms of analysis on the part of historians in post-independence India.  Taking a broad swipe at ideologically driven interpretations and narrow datasets, D. C. Sircar opened his Political and Administrative Systems of Ancient and Medieval India with the following comments: “Some scholar have expressed their views on the early Indian land system, though their writings appear to be based on a rather inadequate study of the epigraphical material.  This is easily explained by the fact that the inscriptions in the various Indian languages are too many and their interpretation is difficult in many casus.”³³²—p. 158

332. D. C. Sircar, Studies in the Political and Administrative Systems of Ancient and Medieval India.  Delhi, 1974. 1.—p. 308

…Arthasaastra 13:5:3-18…advocates that a king should firstly adopt the custom, dress, and language of the region he rules, paying due respect to festive gatherings, hermitages, and local deities (desadaivata).  He should then make grants of land, money, and exemptions to men of learning and piety.  He is advised to displace thieves and barbarians (mleccha), settling in their place people of his own country or those inclined to disfavour his enemies.

            The ways in which this policy was enacted can be understood from the distribution of Vaakaataka charters—a meaningful exercise because a significant number have survived.  Distribution patterns prove, firstly, that the great majority of donated estates were in outlying districts and, secondly, that the Vaakaataka kings strove “to extend their sphere of influence by means of brahmanical colonization.”³³⁴—p. 159

334. Hans T Bakker. “Throne and Temple: Political Power and Religious Prestige in Vidarbha.”  In The Sacred Centre as a Focus of Political Interest.  Edited by Hans T. Bakker, Groningen, 1992. 99. 83-100. p. 92.—p. 308

…The central issue for the historian of social and religious institutions is that the new estates—whether agrahaara or devaagrahaara– were a means by which the state could insinuate its authority into the hinterland and establish there an infrastructure that would develop the economy and, in due course, increase the revenues of the treasury.  A crucial part of this infrastructure was the encouragement of a stable and complex social structure (i.e., the varna-system).—p. 159

…Areas outside the system were viewed as barbarian: “those countries are called mleccha where the system of the four varna-s does not exist”—even drinking the water in such places turns one into a savage.³⁴².—p. 160

342. VSm (84:3-4) V. Krishnamacharya, ed. Visnusmrti with the Commentary Kesavavaijayantii, 2 vols. Adayar Library Series, vol. 93. Madras, 1964.

…Uchahara charter of maharaja Jayanaatha, of Sarvanaatha dated Gupta year 193 give an indication of the ways in which barbarian land could be transformed into a civilized—in fact we may say Saskritised-estate.  As we have seen already in our discussion of the public nature of the early temple-cult, this particular charter  describes how administrative and priestly elites were imposed on a pre-existing village.  The temple was an important element in the programme. Purpose-built for the grant, it became a tangible and permanent manifestation of the devaagrahaara and, at one remove, the king who sanctioned its creation.  Estates of the agrahaara typeinvolved brahmanas alone. These brahmanas attracted patronage on account of their Vedic knowledge and the rites they were supposed to perform, principally the pancamahaayajna.  Although this “cultural packet” had different constituents—it lacked a temple and the special forms of worship that went with it—we have (p.160) already seen that brahmanas functioned as analogues of temple deities and that puja and smaarta ritual were closely related in Gupta times.  The agrahaara-holders thus served the same colonizing role as their temple-based compatriots. The brahmans installed by kings on these estates had, in Bakker’s words, “an enormous influence on the spread of the ideology on which the prestige of these kings was based.  Often they may have been the main upholders of law and order and in this way may have proved themselves indispensable, though ultimately merely instrumental to their political masters.”³⁴⁴

The degree to which brahmanas were “merely instrumental to their political masters” brings us to the workings of the revenue system and the degree to which kings delegated tax-collecting and other forms of authority to local landlords…an order from the local king telling the villages that they must obey the donee and pay their taxes to him.—pp. 160-61

344. Hans T Bakker. “Throne and Temple: Political Power and Religious Prestige in Vidarbha.”  In The Sacred Centre as a Focus of Political Interest.  Edited by Hans T. Bakker, Groningen, 1992. 99. 83-100. p. 92.—p. 309

…This may be framed as follows: If the king already received a share of the land’s produce by tradition, what motivated him to introduce a new layer of bureaucracy—in the form of brahmanas and other settlers—and to alienate some of his entitlements as a result?  The answer is both political and economic.  The establishment of agrahaara-s and devaagrahaara-s created a network of individuals who would support the king politically because he had settled them on the land and guaranteed their tenure. On the economic side, brahmanas and the varna-system (i.e., landlords with attendant specialists and supporting technologies) had the potential to generate new forms (p.162) of wealth through pastoral and agrarian development, banking, trade, and micro-management.  Quite apart from the entitlements the king may or may not have retained, there was an obvious incentive to innovate and develop: as each new estate prospered, so the economy expanded as a whole.   The royal share would thus increase, either directly or by proxy.  This is actually stated in the Baigram copper-plates.  These record that when the land is granted to the donee, there will be no loss to the king’s interest, but rather a possibility of gain in addition to the acquisition of religious merit…This analysis is based on the assumption that villages were not some kind of sacrosanct, timeless, and fundamental element of Indian culture.  Rather, historical agents consciously changed the constitution of villages for specific and clearly understood reasons.  Their actions show, more generally, that religion and its cultural apparatus directly structured political and economic relationships rather than simply reflecting or expressing them.—pp. 162-63

…The crux of the matter lies in the establishment of the gods—as indicated at the outset by our chapter title [The Establishment of the Gods].  The several processes by which gods were settled in their temple homes transformed them into real persons in a religious and legal sense (i.e., into sentient beings with unassailable rights to the things that were offered to them).  The forms of worship developed for temple-gods were validated by establishing correspondences between men and gods: thus while brahmanas were obviously and manifestly sentient, temple-gods were shown to be sentient through ritual service. And while brahmanas had the pancamahaayajnaa as their main framework for ritual exchange, temple-gods were given puja as theirs. As we have seen, these analogies allowed grhya-performances to be used as a template for constructing puja.

            Flowers, garlands, lights, food, incense, perfume, garments, and mantra-texts were offered to the gods for their enjoyment.  Property too was provided.  Naturally, the gods did not enjoy property immediately and directly like other offerings.  Nevertheless, land was crucial because it supplied, on a steady and sustainable basis, the requisite items for temple service… (p.163) Property also supported the priests who managed the enterprise and conducted the god’s worship.  These specially created estates—devaagrahaara—were sometimes established by reorganizing existing villages, at other times they seem to have been new colonies in the hinterland. Estates of the agrahaara-type lacked the temple ingredient, as already noted, but operated in the same way, the analogy between brahmanas and gods guaranteeing that the agrahaara and devaagrahaara were analogous institutions.

            The king, according to our model, established new estates to strengthen his political networks and to benefit his economy and his treasury…For all this to happen, the king’s ability to intervene in land-tenure was crucial…The king’s authority to do these things rested on the precedent of king Sagara: just as Sagara’s performance of the horse-sacrifice in hoary antiquity gave him possession of the earth, so kings in history could possess the earth by following the same ritual path. Some of the Gupta kings did indeed perform the horse sacrifice, but the same result could be achieved more efficiently and directly by engaging with Visnu—the living god who, in the form of Varaha, was the theistic embodiment of sacrifice.—pp. 163-64

…The king’s intimacy with Visnu, generated through the engine of sacrifice and the culture of devotion, sanctioned his position as cakravartin and paramabhaagavata and confirmed his possession of an earth that he had “rescued” through war and conquest.  Accordingly, Varaha legitimated the king’s overall control of the land in his kingdom and…fixed his right to make divisions in the land according to his wishes. To sum up: if Varaha’s rescue of the earth anticipated the king’s conquests, then Varaha’s desire to establish and divide the earth anticipated the decrees by which kings created landed estates in the territories under their control.

            The intimate link between the king, the earth, and a theistically reconceived sacrifice does much to explain the prominence of Varaha at Udayagiri… (p.164) […]

If the science of ordering time is means of knowing the sacrifice, and if the sacrifice is the Purusa in the person of Visnu, then knowing time is knowing Visnu…All this means that if Udayagiri was a place for charting time and knowing the year, then it was also a place for charting a course toward Visnu and a place for knowing him. This is, of course, the exact experience of the Gupta kings as depicted in the Udayagiri reliefs.

            …The gods are not beyond the reach of time and its endless cycles—even Visnu sleeps during the rainy season and the cosmic night of creation.  The link with Udayagiri, and its special importance for the establishment of the gods, should now be plain.  As a preeminent “place of time,” Udayagiri simultaneously embodies Visnu, the sacrifice, the year, and the firm foundation of all things.  The establishment of the gods in such a place—gods made manifest in images and consecrated in permanent homes—gave cosmic sanction to the gods as sentient beings in temples.  These beings were fully real and could, for this reason, lay a firm hand (p.165) on the offerings given to them by their votaries. The special relationship of the king to these gods affirmed the king’s power to divide the earth, sanctioned the creation of landed estates, and advanced the social order that supported divine service. This is how Udayagiri can be fittingly called a sacred landscape—a place that sustains and authenticates cosmology and religious belief far beyond oral or textual traditions, beyond even the individual icons of the gods and goddesses that are carved into the rocks at the site…More historically, Udayagiri is a place were the rising power of theism was harmonized with ancient systems of ritual and knowledge, a place where the gods were established and made ready to dominate the religious landscape of later India. In every way, then, Udayagiri is the starting point for all that is fundamental to the temple culture, social dispensation, and political constitution of the medieval world.—pp. 164-66 [Is it possible to narrow down the entire political and social dispensation, even that of Gupta to Udayagiri rock temples alone?  Though Willis theory is based on scholarly research, yet as a student of Hinduism and also born and brought up as a Hindu, all the theories which he builds around temples, puja, copper plate charters and rock edicts are completely overwhelms me as I never heard or think about temple and land grand of the past in this way—db]

Chapter Three. Ritual action and Ritual Actors.

The practice of establishing gods as visible and permanent entities in temples meant that Indian deities came to be accepted as corporeal and sentient. These kinds of gods, advanced by the patronage of the Guptas and their subordinates from the fourth century, were thought to enjoy the offerings made to them by their votaries and were understood to respond by granting blessings, merit, and the fulfillment of desires. The sentience of temple gods also meant that they were treated as competent beings with proprietary rights.  This elicited the formation of endowments to support religious service, a new development that did much to enrich temples and lay the foundation for the cults of medieval India….—p. 167

…the ways in which priests shaped the edifice of Gupta civilization is a subject that has not drawn much attention. Side-stepping the reason why—it may be put down to a modern need for secular and political histories….—p. 168

…To briefly recap [the previous chapter], the terminology in the inscription clarifies that when a representation (pratimaa) was changed into a living image (muurti) it became a juridic personality with permanent legal rights to the property given to it by donors. This change of the image—to focus on the religious aspect of the event—was achieved by establishment rituals that transformed an inanimate object into a sentient being….—p. 168

…The copper-plates give some insight into priests and their work, while the Brhatsamhitaa furnishes a general introduction to the rituals…these sources do not provide information about the priesthood as a social organization (p.168) or information abut its relationship with royal power. And no text otherwise is explicit on these matters.  This obliges us to reconstruct the situation from indirect evidence, much of it fragmentary…My purpose here, therefore, is to explore the institutional identity of the purohita, rtvij and acarya and to outline their respective domains of knowledge, action, and power.—pp. 168-69

The Arthasaastra is a useful guide to the general organization of the priesthood given its historical proximity to the early Gupta court….—p. 169

…To put the four@ qualities of the purohita in general perspective, then, the Arthasastra can be said to present the theoretical; the Niitisaara, practical….—p. 171

@(1). to come from an exalted family and have a good reputation…(p.170)…(2) to be trained in the Veda and its supplements; (3) to be versed in divine portents, omens, and the administration of justice and (4) to be capable of counter-acting divine and human calamities using the special techniques of the Atharvaveda—pp. 170-71

For rev. on purohita see p. 171 (evidence is, prima facie, nonexistent)…p. inscriptions are few in number and none explicitly Gupta…Arthasaastra does not describe this explicitly….we can draw relevant conclusions…..  On this topic of purohita alone he gives so many minute details.  It is like the story of Vikramaditya in which there will be story inside story….—rev.

            Another point worth noting in the Skandayaaga is the description of Skanda as Dhuurta, literally the “rogue” or “cheat.”  Summarising and supplementing what has been expressed about this appellation, Modak remarked: “Skanda is a god of cunning and roguery, a patron of thieves and has a number of resemblances with Hermes as described by Homer.  His knavery can be seen from the fact that (p.177) he is a libertine (svacchanda) and is desirous of the wife of his brother Visaakha in spite of the thousand damsels who always surround him”.⁵²—pp. 177-78

52. B. R. Modak. The Ancillary Literature of the Atharva-Veda: A Study with Special Reference to the Parisistas.  Delhi, 1993.p. 296. The point about Hermes is derived from Charles J. Goodwin, “The Skandayaaga: Text and Translation.” In Proceedings of the American Oriental Society 1890. pp. v-xiii. In JAOS [Journal of the American Oriental Society] 15, 1893. vii. Such comparisons have little place here and in any case have been superseded: A. M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors: An Essay in the Comparative Anatomy of Human Society, edited and with an introduction by Rodney Needham with a foreword by E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Chicago, 1970): 16-19, makes a more convincing case for the identity of Hermes and Agni.—p. 316

            The information given in the preceding pages about the purohita is far from encyclopaedic, but it is enough to show that this priest moved in two very different worlds….[he] mediated between the tightly circumscribed world of orthodoxy and the dangerous but necessary power of everything that lay outside the varna-system. And while the purohita’s work involved ways and things deemed impure by the orthodox world, his motivation was, ironically, the well-being, (p.180) betterment, and expansion of that world. As the Arthasaastra declares in the opening verse of Book 14: “For the sake of protecting the four varna-s, he should use secret practices against the unrighteous.”⁶⁵  To put the matter in socio-political terms, the activities of the purohita were part of the strategies formulated by the king and his circle to extend their power and influence, expand the compass of dharmic acts, and shape the destiny of their subjects….—pp. 180-81

65. R. P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra. 3 Parts.  Bombay, 1960-65. (14:1:1)

…These priests are three in most enumerations: (1) the Hotr who knew the sacred invocations of the Rgveda, (2) the Udgaatr who knew the hymns of the Saamaveda, and (3) the Adhvaryau who knew the formulae and manual operations of the Yajurveda.  Each in turn had three helpers: the Hotr was assisted by the Maitraavaruna, Acchaavaaka, and Graavastut; the Udgaatr was assisted by the Prastotr, Pratihartr, and Subrahmanya; and the Adhvaryu, by the Paratiprasthaatr, Nestr, and Unnetr….—p. 182

But before taking up these points we need to complete our review of the glosses put forward for utsanna.—p. 185 [it took more than three pages for this.—db]rev.

…There is a simple and obvious exit from this conundrum: inscriptions are not to be read as statements of empirical fact but rather as political rhetoric.

            This is not an innovative suggestion.  Most historians have accepted this dimension of the epigraphic sources and have accepted additionally that it was only our Victorian predecessors who were obsessed with extracting “the facts” fro the sources that might then “speak for themselves.”….—p. 185

…the performance of Vedic sacrifices by ancestors was generally used by dynasts to claim high political status for themselves and their lineage….—p.188

            In the ideologically charged context of eulogistic inscriptions, these were not simply factual accounts of Indravisnu’s academic brilliance and liturgical diligence. Rather they were dialectical statements of great subtlety and practical importance: their purpose was to advertise the accomplishments of the Maitraayaniiyas in the person of Indravisnu and to justify thereby his descendant’s claims to privilege and power.  Without openly criticizing other Vedic schools or making crass comparisons—almost always unacceptable in orthodox rhetoric—the Maitraayaniiyas were announcing their encyclopaedic command of Vedic tradition. This confidence was founded squarely on the school and its texts….—p. 190

…In most rituals, and certainly during the raajasuuya and asvamedha, the yajamaana was expected to refrain from sexual intercourse throughout the performance….—p. 193

…A range of factors studied in this book point in this direction: it was under the Guptas that the Maitraayaniiyas were called upon to reactivate complete Vedic sacrifices for their royal patrons and it was under the Guptas that epic passages, in increasingly correct Sanskrit, were used in copper-plate charters to buttress the king’s title to the earth and his right to make grants of land to brahmanas learned in the Veda.  It was under Guptas also that theological strategies were elaborated for absorbing and surpassing the sacrifice in the Vaisnava royal cult….—p. 197

…many important people in the Gupta hierarchy came from brahmana stock. The Parivraajaka rulers in the Vindhyas provide a striking example….—p. 198

…Aside from the problematic constitution of tribes in ancient India—they have been viewed through the distorting lens of the scheduled tribes and castes in modern legislation—the entire edifice of these propositions is unsound….—p. 199

            Brahmanas also controlled positions of considerable power at the Gupta court itself.  The Karamdandaa inscription, for example, records that Prthiviisena served as a personal advisor to Kumaaragupta II and rose to be a Great Commander (mahaabalaadhikrta), a military position of ministerial rank.  In giving an account of his forebears, Prthiviisena reveals that he belonged to Asvavaajin gotra and was descended from a brahmana who knew the Saamaveda.

            The prevalence of brahmanas in the political hierarchy raises the contentious issue of the Gupta’s own caste affiliation.  Goyal reviewed earlier opinions on the matter and made a polemical case for the Guptas as brahmanas.  This view has enjoyed some currency, but has been critiqued by Hans Bakker, who has remarked that “the gotra of the Guptas, if any, is unknown, since it is never mentioned in their own inscriptions, indicating their humble origins.’¹⁵⁵  While it is certainly true that there are no inscriptions naming the gotra or varna of the Gupta family, there are some indications that the Guptas were indeed brahmanas. The most immediate is their intermarriage with the Naagas, a powerful network of brahmana families.(p.199)…It might be said that Prabhaavatiiguptaa’s mention of the Dhaarana gotra in her charters indicates that the Guptas were brahmanas and the Naga intermarriage with them was unproblematic.  Alternately, it could be argued that the Gupta’s were of humble origin and that Prabhaavatiiguptaa retained the gotra as a token of her family’s high status—even though she herself was half Gupta by birth and thus not a brahmana by normal standards.

            …Mayuuurasarman’s successor Kaakusthavarman subsequently gave his daughters in marriage to the Guptas and other royal princes.  Given that the Kadambas openly declared that they were brahmanas and made this the historical basis for the establishment of their dynasty, it would seem contradictory for them to have intermarried with a non-brahmana family.  But again the evidence may be construed in two ways. It might show that the Guptas were brahmanas and that intermarriage with them was appropriate and desirable.  Alternately it might show that whatever the marriage rules may have been in those days, there was an urgent need to build an alliance with the Guptas, even if they were low-caste upstarts.  Offering a daughter in marriage would have been a small and innocuous price to pay for a powerful alliance.

…Parivraajaka king was Susarman, a brahmana of the Bharaadvaaja gotra.   The charters describe him as a “great see: (maharsi) and “an ascetic who was a ruler of men” (nrpatiparivraajaka).  Fleet noted that this terminology puts Susarman in the same class as the royal saints or raajarsi.  Fleet also drew attention to the fact that Candragupta II is described as raajaadhiraajarsi—the supreme king of royal saints—in the Cave 8 inscription at Udayagiri.¹⁶¹  The concept appears again in the Kevala Narasimha inscription where Samudragupta is titled raajarsi.¹⁶².  If we accept the method outlined in Section 2.12, namely that subordinate kings followed the imperial centre in (p.200) matters of protocol, then if the Guptas called themselves raajarsi and raajaadhiraajarsi and if brahmanas serving as their subordinates called themselves maharsi and viprarsi, the Guptas must have been signaling, though the use of these epithets, that they themselves were brahmanas.—pp.199-201

155. Hans T. Bakker. Vaakaatakas Heritage. Groningen, 2005., 12.—p. 325

161. J. F. Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1888): 95, n. 1.—p. 325

162. Hans T. Bakker. Vaakaatakas Heritage. Groningen, 2005., 163.—p. 325

            Based on the information given so far, it is possible to suggest—reasonably I think—that the Guptas pushed forward their programme of political, social, and economic expansion using a network of fellow brahmanas. That the Guptas chose to avoid public declarations of caste seems related to their role as paramabhaagavata—the supreme leader of the Vaisnava faithful…Just as Lord Visnu stepped over the whole creation as Trivikrama, taking everything and everybody in his stride, so the Guptas sought to establish authoritative and universal domination over all their subjects and territories.  In pursuing this ambition, declarations of origin would have represented a particularization of identity and localization of power that would have impeded Gupta efforts to control the Indian subcontinent, a region of remarkable social, linguistic, and cultural diversity—if not fractious competition—from very early times.

            Before turning to the historical implications of priests in government, we need to examine the sources that appear to contradict our suggestion that the Gupts were brahmanas. These sources are varied and confusing, but have as a common thread the story of the Nandas and their downfall at the hands of Caanakya Kautilya and Candragupta…(p.201) […]

            The problem here is neither the grammatical correctness nor historical veracity of our sources, but what modern commentators have come to expect from them.  Some historians, informed by a delightfully naïve literalism, have attempted to extract “kernels of factual truth” from these quasi-historical narratives. This may yield homogenized accounts suitable for schoolboys, but the texts are rather more rhetorical in their purpose and sophisticated in their literary structure than the classroom setting will allow.  Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu texts look back to the Mauryan period as a great imperial age and arrange memories of it according to their particular agendas. These agendas determined what was possible and what was not, and what kind of lessons could and should be drawn from historical precedent….—pp. 201-02

            However the Guptas may have distanced themselves from their social origins, the migration of priests from the world of learning to the mundane concerns of government was a problematic matter that called for interpretive intervention.  Texts and inscriptions put forward a number of apologies for the change, but the overarching framework was the yuga-theory, the well-known system of ages set out in a number of sources but most famously and formatively in Maanavadharmasaastra (1: 81-86). This outlines the historical idea that the conditions of life steadily worsen over time….—p. 203

..the treatment that Mayuurasarman had to endure at the Pallava court and his subsequent decision to take up the sword.  Quite exceptionally, Mayuurasarman’s motivations are recorded in a direct quote. From this we learn that he regarded his problems as symptomatic of the Kali age and its squalid conditions¹⁷⁵:

There (at Kaanchii) enraged by a fierce quarrel at the completion of the Pallava horse-sacrifice, [Mayuurasarman reflected]: “Alas!  In this Kali age brahmanas should be so much feebler than the ksatriyas!  For if the fortune of a brahmana who has earnestly studied his branch of the Veda and duly served his preceptor’s family is dependant on a king—what can be more painful than this?”

Because brahmans were responsible for articulating the yuga cosmology and because government was ultimately derived from sacrifice, it could be argued that government was nothing but ritual action appropriate to the moment.  In this intellectual climate, it is not surprising that the Maanavadharmasaastra allows brahmans to take the law into their own hands¹⁷⁷:

The twice-born may wield arms when the dharma is threatened

And in times when there is a violation of the twice-born castes.

The question appears again in Maanavadharmasaatra (12:100) where brahmanas are allowed sweeping political powers, not simply presented with a political option in pressing times.

The knower of Vedic saastra is fit for generalship, sovereignty

And judicature, even overlordship of the whole world.—p. 204

Situating these statements historically brings us to the controversies that surround the formation and dating of the Maanavadharmasaastra….—p. 204. [The author while analyzing one point, then take a sub-point and began to analyse it in detail.  This is another such example—db]—rev.

175. D. C. Sircar, Select Inscriptions bearing on Indian History and Civilisation, 2 vols. Calcutta, 1965-83. 1: 476 (line 4).—p.326

177. P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 5 Vols. Poona, 1930-62.  2: 122-23 and 3: 39, gives some further examples and additional legal views.—p. 326

            This chronological horizon helps explain why the author (or authors) the Maanavadharmasaastra sought to justify the involvement of priests in political matters.  The date is reasonably close to the time of the Maitraayaniiyas at Eran and overlaps directly with the migration of the Parivraajakas, Kadambas, and others into governmental affairs.  If the Guptas themselves were brahmanas as we think, then explaining priests in government would have been an urgent matter for the Maitraayaniiyas, the verses cited earlier being all but a direct apology for the behaviour of their royal patrons—not to mention their own Vedic compatriots.  This understanding is fortified by close parallels between Gupta-period inscriptions and the text of Manu.  Thus, for example, Mauyyrasarman is recorded to have assumed the role of a general (senaapati), while Manu allows brahmanas to assume generalship (senaapatya).  At the imperial level, the Guptas set about conquering the entire earth (krtsnaprthiviijaya) in order to claim absolute sovereignty (saarvabhauma), while Manu allows brahmanas to assume overlordship of the regions (sarvalokaadhipatya).  This is a position tantamount to that of a universal king or cakravartin.—p. 205

…Because the redactors of the Maanavadharmasaastra were Maitraayaniiyas and because this school enjoyed a privileged position under the Guptas, it was only natural that Mau’s dharma was held in high regard, that it had great influence, and that it was especially universal in its legal ambitions.  Just as the Guptas sought to create an imperial formation that embraced all of India, so the Maitraayaniiyas sought to produce a definitive legal work that supported the political edifice of their patrons and advanced their own position as authorities in law.  At several points in this book we have noted that subordinate kings followed the Gupta court in matters of administration and protocol.  The pundits who served as legal experts in subordinate courts would have been equally attentive to developments at the centre.  In legal matters, as in all else, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  As the Saastric dictum puts it: “what is not stated in one’s own saakhaa may be taken from others, if it is not found to be contradictory.”¹⁹¹—p. 206

191.  P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 5 Vols. Poona, 1930-62.  2: 328—p. 327

            Sabara’s commentary, called Sabarabhaasya or Miimaamsaasuutrabhaasya, holds pride of place in the Mimaamsaka system insofar as Sabara’s understanding of Jaimini was accepted as definitive by subsequent writers like Kumaarila Bhatta and Medhaatithi…Sabara’s date has also been carefully scrutinized, all authorities agreeing that he flourished in the late fourth or early fifth century…

            Sabara’s purpose was to expound a comprehensive rational for the rituals sanctioned by the Vedas.  In the course of this exercise, he examines the popular understanding of the gods in Devataadhikarana (9: 1: 5: 6-9).  The gods are generally described, Sabara says, as having material bodies, as eating food in the form of offerings, as owning wealth, as being actually pleased by what is offered to them, and as rewarding worshippers with the fruit they desire.  These statements show that Sabara was fully aware of the increasing popularity of image veneration and the endowments that were being established to maintain the puja-cult.  To put the matter in concrete historical terms, Sabara was very much alive to the religious, economic, and social activities documented by the copper-plate charters…The amount of attention Sabara gives to these issues is indicative of the ways in which the new cults were seen by him as eroding the centrality of Vedic worship. For Sabara this was anathema…(p.208)

            Sabara deals with the gods in a detailed manner, attacking their alleged corporeality, their supposed consumption of offerings, and their apparent ownership of wealth.  Here I will deal with these issues point by point, rephrasing the relevant arguments in a modern style for the sake of historical clarity.  It should be noted at the outset that Sabara does not target temples and temple-gods in a direct fashion.  His main preoccupation appears to have been with the Vedic schools that had begun to incorporate image-worship into their ritual repertoire…Our view is that Sabara sought to correct what he understood to be misconceptions within the Vedic fold; once these were addressed the larger problems connected with image worship would be resolved by default.—pp. 208-09

..A cornerstone of Sabara’s argument is that the gods do not have material bodies like human beings…Citing Vedic statements that seem to show that the gods have bodies—for example, “O Indra, I take your right hand”—Sabara argues that this does not mean that Indra has a body.  This is proven by the simple fact that the offerings made to Indra and other gods do not perceptibly diminish in size when the offering is made.  So the statements about Indra and the other gods are either absurdities or eulogistic declarations²⁰¹…On this point, Sabara argues that a god can only be invoked for the purpose of speaking to him, but because there is no recognized means whereby one might speak of a god, and no Vedic evidence that this ever happened, the process of innovation is necessarily useless.²⁰²  Thus the vocatives in the Vedic texts can serve only to indicate the deity and have a eulogizing purpose.  As a consequence, there is no scriptural authority to support the idea that the gods have material bodies like sentient beings.  Indeed, Sabara asserts, the essential form or character of anything consists in the word only, thus a divinity is nothing but a word forming part of a (p.209) mantra that may be used in a prescribed ritual setting.  The deities, in other words, are only words.  Outside this context they are nothing.—pp.209-10

201. Ganganaatha Jha, Shabara-Bhaasya. 3 vols. Baroda, 1933-36. 3:1434.—p.328

202. ibid. 3: 1434.

…Sabara is concerned with the nature of deities only to the extent that they play a part in ritual performance….Sabara notes that it is the act of sacrifice and not the deity that accomplishes the desired result.²⁰⁴  The gods and the substances to be offered are accomplished entities and produce nothing; it is only when they are brought together by a sacrificial act that there is some kind of result.  From this Sabara concludes that the gods are subordinate.  Like the substances that are going to be offered, the gods are mentioned only for the purpose of achieving heaven or some other end.  So contrary to popular belief, the worshipped entity is not the principal factor. Rather, the worshipping of the worshipped entity is the principal factor: na lokavad iha bhavitavyam, iha puujamaanapuujaa pradhaanam.²⁰⁵—p. 210

204. Ganganaatha Jha, Shabara-Bhaasya. 3 vols. Baroda, 1933-36. 3:1432.—p.328

205. Mahescandra Nyaayaratna, ed. Sabara ad Jaimini, Mimamsasutra.  With the commentary of Sabarasvaamin. 2 vols. Calcutta, 1863-89. 2: 141; Jha, ibid. Shabara–Bhaasya, 3: 1433.—p. 328

…In the case of the Mahabharata, it simply classed itself as the “fifth Veda.”  For Mimasakas, this was nonsense.  The Mahabharata was not a Veda because it was manifestly human in origin and concerned itself with human events—all very interesting, no doubt, but inadmissible as evidence for the definitive understanding of ritual acts.  The point, of course, is that Vedic evidence is apauruseya—nonhuman—and so wonderfully free of human fallibilities.—p. 211

… He [Sabara] is not, we must note, against the digging of tanks or other activities of this kind. It may be useful to dig a tank for a host of practical reasons, but in the absence of Vedic authority, it is not right to assume that this act will bring merit or some other intangible result, like a felicitous rebirth.—p. 212

…kings gain merit through land-grants and will, as a consequence, enjoy heaven after death. Inversely, those who overturn land-grants or assent to such actions will end up in hell.  An important corollary was the notion that the merit was passed from king to king: the current ruler, whosoever he might be, enjoys the benefit of grants made in the past.  Thus, kings who maintain and protect earlier grants will enjoy heaven too.

            The Mimamsakas took exception to this not because land-grants were necessarily a bad thing—Vedic pundits were frequent beneficiaries—but because the conceptual framework was inherently flawed…..The Vedas say svargakaamo yajeta, “he who desires heaven should sacrifice”; the Vedas do not say that “he who desires heaven should make grants of land.”  So the propositions in the charters are entirely bogus.—p. 212

…So while some might hold that the king as “lord of the earth” may give the earth away, Sabara notes that the “lord of the earth” enjoys ownership no different from other men.  The peculiarity of the king’s lordship derives from the fact that he is obliged to protect and preserve the produce of others, from which he receives an appropriate share (p.212) in the form of tax.  This alone he possesses, not the earth.  “From all this,” Sabara concludes, “it follows that the earth cannot be given away.” ²¹⁴

            Although Sabara’s concern was with ritual rather than polity, his conclusions are highly politicized….—pp.212-13

214. This conclusion may also be read as a critique of the bhuumidaana ceremony described in Atharvavedaparisista 10 of which Sabara probably had knowledge.  This details how an image of the earth was to be made and given away to a brahmana.  B. R. Modak, The Ancillary Literature of the Atharva-Veda: A Study with Speical Reference to the Parisistas. Delhi, 1993. 242-43.—p. 328

…the Mimamsakas regarded the king as possessing no inherent title to the earth.  Should a king wish to make a donation of the earth, (i.e., a donation of absolute title as opposed to a donation of his tax entitlements), then he was obliged to purchase the relevant property from its owners.

            The Mimamsakas had fairly obvious reasons for taking this stand.  Quoting one of their own aphorisms back at them, we may say: “Also we find motives” (Mimamsaasutra 1: 3: 2:4).²¹⁷  The most obvious motive, from the historical (p.213) perspective of Gupta times, was their dislike of temple-gods and attendant religious practices.  If the king assumed absolute title to the earth, lands could be appropriated and assigned to temple-gods as inalienable endowments.  Specific cases of this are documented by Gupta-period copper-plates…Several charters from central India record how villages were reorganized into devaagrahaara-s and given over to temple-gods under the control of new elites. The king’s orders dictating the terms of these arrangements were addressed to the village residents, including cultivators and brahmanas. We know nothing about these people otherwise, but there can be little doubt that the brahmanas already living in the villages would have resented the insinuation of state power and the expropriation of village resources by a new-fangled temple-priest from the outside.  These brahmans would have heartily agreed with the Mimamsakas that the temple-cult was an innovation based on false premises [given by Smrits particularly Mbh.].

            Shrines and sanctuaries had long been an accepted part of Indian life and we find them mentioned coincidently and unproblematically in several sutra-texts.  What disturbed the status quo was royal patronage and the creation of permanent endowments in favour of the deities in these shrines. This diverted resources away from traditional forms of Vedic worship.  To their discomfiture, the Mimamsakas discovered that they could not buck the trend…the distinction between Vedic and non-Vedic cults was becoming blurred as the Vedic Purusa was conflated with Visnu Narayana in a consecrated image, an agenda advanced by the use of Vedic mantra-s in the puja-framework.  This was both a theological and economic threat to Vedism.  Sabara’s commentary shows that the practitioners and upholders of the Vedic tradition understood this perfectly well and were determined to take a stand against the innovations.—pp. 213-14

217. Ganganaatha Jha, Shabara-Bhaasya. 3 vols. Baroda, 1933-36. 1:95.—p.328

…The anointed king should, the Aitreyabrahmana (39: 6) says, make gifts of gold, fields, and cattle.  But there were natural limits.  The next passage of the same text tells the story of Visvakarman Bhauvana who wished to make a gift of the earth as a sacrificial fee to his priest Kasyapa.  The earth appeared and declared: “No moral must give me away as a gift, O Visvakarman Bhauvana.  You desired to give me away.  I shall plunge into the midst of the water so this promise of yours to Kasyapa is fruitless.”²²⁴  Nonetheless, gifts of villages were made from an early time, as we learn from Chaandogya Upanisad (4: 2: 4-5), and the earth plunged down into the waters, as we learn from Matsya Purana (248: 64-78).

            These were serious matters. The earth had to be rescued from the waters and Mimamsaka concerns had to be addressed.  The earth was rescued, firstly, by Varaaha who, as the theistic embodiment of sacrifice, raised the earth from the murky deep.  This was done so sacrifices could be offered on the earth once again.  Picking up the narrative thread of Visvakarman Bhauvana, the Varaaha myth can be read as an expiatory rite made manifest—a mighty remedy for a situation gone wrong on a cosmic scale.  At Udayagiri, the Varaaha also announces (p.215) a new age with new rules; the earth is now possessed of Varaaha and the king has a special relationship with that god—and so also to the earth.

            Mimamsaka concerns also needed to be addressed, as we have just said, but a preliminary question is why their views should have mattered very much.  If life was moving away from the Veda—as indeed it clearly was—one might ask why anyone should have bothered with Sabara’s cantankerous intellectual gymnastics and the ancient ritualists he was defending.  The answer lies in the power of the rituals that the Vedic tradition possessed, in particular the royal rituals that the Maitraayaniiyas were especially qualified to perform.  In order for Samudragupta and his successors to be brought forth into kingship through the raajasuuya, and for their imperial status to be ratified through the asvamedha should they have chosen to perform one, the Gupta kings needed Vedic priests to perform the necessary rites.  It was a marriage of necessity born of a quest for Vedic legitimacy.  In their official representations, therefore, the Guptas needed to articulate their claims in a Mimamsaka framework.  The Varaaha panel represents the god’s hold over the earth as supreme and the king’s relationship to Varaha as special….The maintenance of the earth after the withdrawal of the incarnation falls to those who do their duty and uphold the varna-system.  Because the king is the prime guarantor of dharma and varna, the care of the earth is largely his responsibility.  For Mimamsakas, this was well and good, but it still gave the king no absolute title to the earth: individual parcels of land are in the hands of individual men, if the king wanted these lands, he was obliged to purchase them.

            …For this, the Udayagiri inscription had a ready reply: Candragupta bought the earth with the “purchase-money of his prowess” (vikramaavakrayakriitaa).²²⁶  This statement is of utmost importance.  We could not ask for a clearer justification of Gupta claims to the earth within the framework of Mimamsaka thought.  The inscription unambiguously addresses the Mimamsaka assertion that if a king wanted title then he was legally bound to pay an appropriate price.—pp. 215-16

224. I couldn’t find any bibliography information about Aitreyabrahmana—db

226. J. F. Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1888): 35 (line 2).

[Willis tactfully connects one story (of Brahmana) with another (of Upanishad) and arrives to his own conclusion, to prove his thesis based on Purana and copper charters.—db]

            The wording of the Udayagiri inscription shows that Candragupta II and his chief minister Viirasena…understood the necessity of engaging with the Mimamsakas in a public forum. (p.216)…Epigraphic “readers” would have included a wide range of people, some of whom may have been unable to read but who would have been told the import of what was written. A public understanding that the king had indeed paid the necessary price and met all the requirements allowed the Guptas and their subordinates to develop the hinterland through the system of temple-building and brahmanaical colonization…The Guptas were obliged to pursue this course to increase their networks of power and revenue collection and so face down competing kings who might follow similar programmes of development.        

            To achieve this complex end, the Guptas had to mediate between different factions in the priesthood, specifically between traditional Vedic ritualists—who legitimated their kingship—and priests in newly established temples—who insinuated royal power into the hinterland and advanced social and economic change….—pp. 216-17

…there were real tensions between sacerdotal groups [Vedic vs. Agamic] is perfectly evident from the Sabarabhaasya.  We  also find hints elsewhere, for example in the Maanavadhaarmasaastra, which does not countenance temple service (devalaka) as a suitable livelihood for brahmanas—by which Manu means proper Vedic brahmanas.  Medhaatithi, the ninth-century commentator, understood the term devalaka to mean pratimaaparicaarakaah, those who attend on images.²²⁷  Then there is Krsna’s celebrated critique of the “flowery words” of the Veda in Bhagavad Gita (2:42-43).  The energy of Krsna’s attack leaves little doubt that the traditionalists were intransigent and hidebound in the extreme…That Vedic brahmanas were effective in defending these life-ways is evident from the copper-plate charters that were issued in their favour well into the medieval period.  In contrast, the new world of the temple reveals, as Jan Gonda has so succinctly said, “a religious life considerably different from that recommended in the Veda.”²²⁸…Enriched by endowments and supported by the state, the temple advanced a pan-Indian programme of image-worship and innovative institutions like the Sattra, the operation of which involved social engineering and new forms of production and exchange.(p.217) […]

            …the Mimamsakas were concerned with existing land and the status quo.  In the hinterland—the primary focus of the colonization process—Mimamsaka opinion did not necessarily apply.—pp. 217-18

227. Medhaatithi ad Manavadharmasastra (3:152).—I couldn’t find any reference for this in bibliography. But there is one: Maanavadharmasastra with the commentaries of Medhaatithi and others, ed. Vishvanaath Narayan Mandlik.  But I could not find the publisher information and year for this in Bibliography.  This reference on Mandlik is found in notes. 239. p. 330—db

228. Jan Gonda, Visnuism and Sivaism: A Comparison. London, 1970. 75.—p. 329

…Thus, sruti, smrti, and ithihaasa—the second often with theistic and devotional content as in the Visnusmrti or Vaikhaanasamaarthasuutra—were manoeuvred into a self-validating triad.  This triad was used to manufacture an encyclopaidic endorsement of the land-granting system. It is implicit in the organization of (p.218) fifth-century charters and cited openly for the first time in the Gunaighar copper-plates of Vainyagupra.  Seemingly contradictory statements in the vast literary corpus of sruti, smrti, and itihaasa were handled through the hermeneutic of ekavaakyataa—“all sages are in harmony”…Co-opted through royal patronage and grants of land, sruti-holders could neither resist the new classifactory structure of knowledge nor the harnessing of their authority to the land-granting system.—pp. 218-19

…the king was supposed to be roused in the morning by the sound of musical instruments and to receive blessings from his preceptor (acarya), sacrificial priests (rtvij), and chaplain (purohita).  After that the king was to see his physician, chief cook, and astrologer.  Otherwise, the acarya and purohita were to accompany the king when he visited religious places or investigated the affairs of brahmanas and ascetics.²³⁷….—p. 219

237. R. P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra. 3 Parts.  Bombay, 1960-65. (1:19:31).—p. 330

            The twice-born man who initiates a pupil and teaches him the Veda,

            Together with the kalpa and the rahasya, is declared to be the acarya.

• Manavadharmasastra (2:140)@

This shows that Manu understood the acarya to be a person who took disciples, taught them the Veda, and initiated them into special spheres of knowledge. The kalpa was ceremonial procedure—all important in the Vedic tradition as we have seen—while the rahasya consisted of secret or esoteric wisdom. The commentarial tradition beginning with Medhaatithi understood this to mean Upanisad.  The type of initiation ceremony or upanayana which Manu has in mind when he speaks of a pupil’s initiation is first described in the Satapathabrahmana.  In this, the acarya assigns the disciple to Prajaapati and Saavitr.  The transformative power of this procedure is outlined in Manavadharmasastra (2:148) where initiation through the Saavitr is said to confer a new birth, exempt from age and death. For these reasons the acarya (p.219) was ranked high on the social scale and was seen as presiding over the highest world

            The teacher is the muurti of Brahma, the father the muurti of Prajapati, while the mother the muurti of the earth and an (elder) full brother the muurti of one’s self. (2:226)@

            The acarya is the lord of brahmaloka, the father has power over the world of Prajapati, while the guest rules the world of Indra and the rtvij the world of the gods. (4:182)@—pp.. 219-220           

@Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. Oxford, 2005. [Though Willis didn’t give the reference for these quotes from Manavadharmasastra, I assume it should be from Olivelle—db]

            The exact relationship of the acarya to the guru is problematic, and there is no unanimity about their respective duties and obligations I the Sanskrit sources.  In assessing the statements of various dharma-texts, Gonda concluded that in the first place and originally the guru was a father who maintained the child, performed the sacraments (samskaara) and introduced him to the Veda.  The acarya took charge after initiation, teaching the student more advanced knowledge as well as his socio-religious duties (dharma) and traditionally correct conduct (aacaara).²⁴² Side-stepping the ritual and educational duties and speaking generally, the word guru may be judged the overarching term and acarya the more specific. Thus, Gautama (2:50) states that the acarya is the chief guru, while Visnusmrti (32:1) declares that father, mother, and acarya are the three highest guru-s a person may have.²⁴³  Manu, with characteristic ingenuity, negotiates his way through the terminological debates taking place in the early Gupta period: “The man who benefits (the pupil) by (instruction in) the Veda… is called his guru in this (law-book) in recognition of that assistance with Vedic knowledge.”²⁴⁴  With this statement, Manu is basically admitting that the ideal of a parental guru followed by an acarya for advanced studies had to be qualified definitive fashion….—p. 220

242. Jan Gonda “The Guru.” In Change and Continuity in Indian Religion.  Disputationes Rheno-Trajectinae IX.  The Hague, 1965. Pp. 229-83. p. 241.—p. 330

243. V. Krishnamacharya, ed. Visnusmrti with the Commentary Kesavavaijayantii, 2 vols. Adayar Library Series, vol. 93. Madras, 1964. 32: 1.

244. Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. Oxford, 2005.2:149. p. 102..—p. 330

…The Saatvatas were an important strand within the early Vaisnava fold.  They had as their central object of veneration—at least originally—a group of five deified heroes: Vaasudeva, Samkarsana, Pradyumna, Saamba, and Aniruddha.²⁵⁵  According to the Naaraayaniiya section of the Mahabharata, the Vrsni clan of Yadavas belonged to the Saatvata race.  Devotees of the Vrsni heroes were called Saatvata, and their religion, the Saatvata dharma.²⁵⁶  The first archaeological evidence we have for these religious ideas is an inscription from Mathuraa which records the existence of a stone shrine for images of the “five exalted Vrsni heroes” (bhagavataam vrsniinaa(m) pamcaviiraanaam pratimaa[h] sailadevagr[ha].²⁵⁷  How the Saatvatas regarded these images is indicated by the description: they were “five objects of adoration, made of stone, radiant, as it were, with highest beauty” (aarcaadesaah sailaah pamca jvalantah iva paramavapurasaa) ….—p. 223

255. Hans T. Bakker. Vaakaatakas Heritage. Groningen, 2005. 59-65,on which I have freely drawn for the account given here.—p. 331

256. Mahabharata (12: 336: 31), cited and contextualized in Hans T. Bakker. Vaakaatakas Heritage. Groningen, 2005, 60.—p. 331

257. Heinrich Luders, Mathuraa Inscriptions.  Edited by Klaus L. Janert.  Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 3. Folge, Nr. 7.  Gottingen, 1961. 154.—p. 331

…by the close of the fourth century Visnu-Vaasudeva had emerged as the principle object of worship among the Saatvatas. The Vrsni heroes are alluded to in an indirect way, so Samkarsana, Balarama and Saamba were perhaps still foci of veneration but…they had become associated with or absorbed into abstract principles in early version of Samkhya and Pancaraatra.  These developments removed the heroes from the domain of immediate representation and devotional veneration.  The supremacy of Vaasudeva is clarified in the Naaraayaniiya section of the Mahabhatata where he is identified with Visnu-Krsna and described as Hari, the supreme soul and the internal ruler of all.²⁶⁰—p. 224

260. Hans T. Bakker. Vaakaatakas Heritage. Groningen, 2005. 60.—p. 331

…The Vaikhaanasa …school is confined to south India and, more particularly, by the fact that the Vaikhaanasasmaartasutra shows Dravidian influences in its Sanskrit. This proves that by the time of the sutra—about the fourth century CE—the custodians of this tradition had long resided in Andhra and Tamil Nadu….—p. 226

…By the fourth century, significant speculation about the nature of ritual and the godhead had developed outside the core of Vedism, the Vaisnavas in particular advancing a new understanding of the sacrifice.  Drawing on older Vedic ideas in which the deity was understood as present in the sacrifice, early Vaisnava thinkers developed the idea that the sacrifice could become a kind of epiphany—indeed that the transcendent Purusa created the ritual as an immanent representation or pratimaa of himself.  This allowed the traditional power of Vedism to be linked with theism, devotion, and the worship of images.  The combination of these themes…sits at the heart of Udayagiri and the disposition of its sculptures: Chandragupta II was both yajamaana and bhakta (i.e., the patron of an old-style sacrifice and the (p.227) devotee of a god who was the living physical embodiment of that sacrifice)….—pp. 227-28

…The Pancaraatras…school, which existed in an inchoate state in Gupta times if at all, revered Vaasudeva and built a theology around his emanations (vyuuha) rather than Visnu and his incarnations (avatara)….—p. 228

…the Gangetic plain seems to have been a place of special importance for the development of image worship….—p. 234

…the cadre of Vedic specialists may have performed the king’s sacrifices and the purohita protected them, but it was the acarya who mediated the king’s relationship with Visnu as established and invoked in an actual living form….—p. 235

…Pravarasena (circa CE 419(-55) asserts in his inscriptions that he had “established the golden age (krtayuga) by the grace of Sambhu.” ³⁰⁰  He was not alone in making this kind of assertion.  The Maitraka ruler Dharapatta, a near contemporary, is recorded to have been “a most devout worshipper of the Sun, who, by the water of his very pure actions washed away the stains of the Kali age.”³⁰¹  In north India, the Bilsad inscription of Kumaaragupta I describes Dhruvasarman, the donor of a sattra and builder of a temple gateway, as “a follower of the path of true religion and of the customs of the Krta age.”³⁰²  The implications of these statements are clear and important: the golden age can be brought back by worshipping images and supporting religious activities connected with them.  The Gupta king as paramabhaagavata was effecting just this end through his worship of Visnu.  The representations at Udayagiri, like the inscriptions just cited, show that the medicine for curing the ills of kaliyuga came neither from the purohita, with his incantations and bag of magical tricks, nor from the rtvij-s, with their formidable yet antiquated ritual machine.  Rather, regeneration was effected by holy men who, thanks to yoga and devotion, had a direct link to the redemptive power of god.  So although the Bhaagavata acarya followed Manu’s patters in his spiritual and social relationships…he absorbed and surpassed the old Vedic paradigm.  Standing above the sacrificial framework, this “new acarya derived authority from the highest possible source: Visnu as the living embodiment of both Veda and sacrifice.—p. 237

300. V. V. Mirashi, Inscriptions of the Vaakaatakas, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 5. Ootacamund, 1963.—p. 335

301. Maaliaa copper-plate of Dharasena II, J. F. Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1888): 165 (lines 9-10)…..—p. 335

302. J. F. Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1888): 44 (line 8).—p. 335

…two terms to describe the image: pratimaa and muurti.  The first word refers to a preliminary likeness, the second a consecrated living (p.238) divinity.  The same terms are used among the Vaikhaanasa,  pratimaa meaning an image or representation, muurti an actual manifestation of the divine.  These meanings are elaborated in the Vaikhaanasa theology of images: the god has both a lower form, which is concrete and manifest, and a higher form, which is sublime and limitless.  The first takes shape as Visnu’s incarnations and is spoken of an “having parts” (sakala).  The other is “without parts” (niskala).  The latter is immoveable and resides forever in the temple’s sanctuary….—pp. 238-39

…The durability of the king’s fame, and the reputation of his family, rested on the public memory of his greatness.  Wandering bards sang the king’s praises in different parts of the realm and reminded the people of the king and his achievements.  But in an empire of unprecedented size, communication presented difficulties.  The Guptas and their subordinates addressed the problem of consistency and continuity of communication by mobilizing Sanskrit learning and by using monuments to externalize the fix memory….—p. 245

            The development of new genres in Sanskrit and the use of Sanskrit for inscriptions co-opted brahmanas and their impressive culture of memory to the Gupta imperial project.  These traditions of memory were endorsed by perpetual endowments to brahmanas, sometimes large groups of them, showing that kings were effectively establishing “colleges” for Sanskrit learning within their territories.  The people in these establishments produced literatures that reflected the culture of courtly life, but their primary purpose was rather more sober and practical: they were the knowledge-holders par excellence, responsible for the moral, legal, and religious order of the society around them.  Beyond supporting brahmanical memory through endowment, kings externalized and extended memory—both temporally and spatially—through physical objects….—p. 245

…To put the matter another way, the acts that traditionally generated fame—heroism in battle, noble conduct, generosity to brahmanas, and the performance of transformative rites—were supplemented by the creation of fame-producing monuments.  The Kahaaum inscription describes the pillar on which it is cut as a “creator of fame” (kiirtikartr), that is, a material object that, by its mere physical presence, generated fame. So in addition to acts of old, monuments were built as autonomous fame-making machines. In the case of temples, perpetual endowments guaranteed the performance of puja through time and thus the accretion of fame to the temple’s patron….—p. 246