Marko Geslani - Rites of the God-King: Śānti and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism

Series Editors

Ronald Grimes, Ritual Studies International

Ute Hsken, University of Oslo

Barry Stephenson, Memorial University

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HOMO RITUALIS

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RITUAL GONE WRONG

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SINGING THE RITE TO BELONG

Ritual, Music, and the New Irish

Helen Phelan

RITES OF THE GOD-KING

nti and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism

Marko Geslani

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Geslani, Marko, 1982 author.

Title: Rites of the God-King : nti and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism / Marko Geslani.

Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. | Series: Oxford ritual studies |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017030139 (print) | LCCN 2018005574 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190862893 (updf) | ISBN 9780190862909 (epub) |

ISBN 9780190862916 (online content) | ISBN 9780190862886 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Atonement (Hinduism)History. | HinduismRitualsHistory. |

IndiaKings and rulersReligious aspects.

Classification: LCC BL1226.82.A85 (ebook) | LCC BL1226.82.A85 G48 2018 (print) |

DDC 294.5/38dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030139

For parents and teachers:

Mila, Nestor, Phyllis, and Koichi

Over and above such gains, is the fact, that the Pariias are in themselves important documents for the history of the development of Indian civilization, because they give an outline of the whole religious life of the later Vedic period from the point of view of the Atharvan priest. To what extent this may be true, may be seen from the following sketch of the contents of the collection, and of their bearing upon some wider problems of Indic Philology.

GEORGE MELVILLE BOLLING, A Contribution to the History of Religion in India

IN 1910, IN an obscure issue of the Catholic University Bulletin, the American classicist and comparative philologist George Melville Bolling published a brief lecture, modestly titled A Contribution to the History of Religion in India. Among other things, it presents a compelling picture of the tenuous relationship between the study of Sanskrit and the study of religion in early twentieth-century America. Once described as an unapproachable Sanskrit scholar, Bolling had studied with the noted American Sanskritist Maurice Bloomfield at Johns Hopkins University, earning his PhD in 1896.

How exactly did Bolling intend that such texts might contribute to the history of Indian religion? Sketching the contents of the text collection, he presents several topics of potential interest to be illuminated by the Appendices: the interpretation of Vedic hymns, the origin of the lunar zodiac, the history of Atharvan priestly institutions, the duties of the royal chaplain, the details of the ritual apparatus, the system of atonements for ritual errors, and the early development of Indian astrology. Seemingly content with this piecemeal account, he declines to generalize further: the wider problems of Indic Philology speak for themselves.

Pivoting abruptly from this review of the myriad delights of the Appendices, Bolling instead describes his plan to publish, in continued partnership with Negelein, two additional volumes of interpretive work on these and other related texts. Then comes the following plea:

A practical difficulty that will confront us, will be the securing of the funds necessary to defray the costs of publication. The work, in spite of its importance, appeals necessarily to a very limited audience, and there is not the slightest possibility of the returns from its sale equaling the cost of publication. After ten years of labor we were compelled to begin the printing of the first volume at our own risk. From the certainty of loss we were

Bollings appeal to the history of religion to garner patronage for his textual project evokes Max Mllers well-known vision of the privileged place of philology in the science of religion, the broad appeal of the latter requiring the specialized work of the former.

What I find lamentable about this pedestrian footnote of academic history is not the decline of American Orientalism that it mightmisleadinglyhave portended but rather the dead end of a train of thought, a path not taken in the history of South Asian religion. For Bolling and Negeleins long engagement with the