Look at Me! the Mimetic Impersonation of Indra
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Look at Me! the Mimetic Impersonation of Indra The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40046478 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA LOOK AT ME! THE MIMETIC IMPERSONATION OF INDRA a dissertation presented by Caley Charles Smith to The Department of South Asian Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of South Asian Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2017 © 2017 Caley Charles Smith All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Michael Witzel Caley Charles Smith LOOK AT ME! THE MIMETIC IMPERSONATION OF INDRA ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the impersonation of Indra in the R! gveda (conventionally Rigveda), arguing that a ‘textualized self’ emerges during performance. What does it mean to disguise oneself verbally during ritual sacrifice? In order to answer this question, I examine how the text conceives of poetic performance, a kind of speech act which occurs in the same time frame and spatial proximity of its speaker. Reference to that performance, I argue, is marked by proximal deixis and performative verbs, both of which characterize actors and events as being in the here and now of the text. Through these traces, I distinguish two distinct Indras. One Indra is the mythological figure responsible for cosmogonic events, and the other is the present speaker. To collapse these two Indras into one is to collapse time and make the primordial Indra present at the performance. Stylistically, this is often accomplished through the so-called injunctive, a finite verb form which is temporally and modally unspecified; its use renders narrative time ambiguous. The hymns are not only linguistically marked, but articulate what I term a ‘mimetic circle’, in which the song presents itself as its first singing, establishes its origin, and imagines a future in which it shall be re-performed. Each new performance of the song repeats the mimetic circle, re-creating the connection between primordial Indra and the performer who asserts he is Indra. These ‘mimetic circles’ reveal a curious relationship beteen text and self which bears further investigation. To pursue that investigation, I use the ‘grammar of mimesis’ developed by studying the impersonation of Indra to approach mimetic impersonation in the rest of the R! gveda. I find evidence that during the Soma sacrifice the seven priests mimetically impersonate the seven seers, who accompany Indra to the Vala cave to re-enact that cosmogonic event. The idea of a iii ‘textualized self’ restored to life in performance constitutes a developmental missing link between the Indo-European concept of 'immortality in song' and the notion of an immortal self reincarnated in body after body which is ubiquitous in Hinduism and other South Asian religions. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PROLOGUE ..................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: THE INVISIBLE MASK ....................................................................................4 1.1 On the Phenomenology of Text ....................................................................................5 1.2 On the Phenomenology of Disguise .............................................................................7 1.3 Poetic Impersonation and Self-Assertion ......................................................................8 1.4 The Problem of Authorship ........................................................................................17 1.5 The Problem of Detection ...........................................................................................19 1.6 Superficial Mimesis vs. Essential Mimesis ................................................................21 1.7 Mimesis in Performance .............................................................................................26 CHAPTER 2: TRACING THE SACRIFICE ..........................................................................33 2.1 Oral Traditions Produce Diachronic Texts .................................................................34 2.2 In Defense of Double Meaning ...................................................................................35 2.3 Double Entendre, Implication, and Ambiguity ...........................................................41 2.4 Performative Utterances and Narrative Assertions .....................................................46 2.5 The Double Scene in the R! gveda ................................................................................50 2.5.1 The Double Scene in the V"luspá ................................................................50 2.5.2 Pimentel’s Para-Narration ............................................................................54 2.5.3 Theorizing the adhiyajña Level of Narration ..............................................57 2.6 Deixis as a Marker of Present Performance ................................................................60 2.6.1 Reported Perception .....................................................................................60 2.6.2 Textual Deixis as Reported Perception ........................................................61 2.6.3 Temporal Deixis ...........................................................................................62 2.6.4 Spatial Deixis ...............................................................................................68 2.7 Concluding Remarks ...................................................................................................71 CHAPTER 3: THE EYE WITNESS .........................................................................................72 3.1 ahám mánur abhava! s"# riya$ ca (R! V IV.26) ............................................................73 CHAPTER 4: THE MAN OF ACTION ...................................................................................81 4.1 Indra Vaiku#$ha ..........................................................................................................81 4.1.1 ahám bhuva! vásuna% p"rviyás pátir (R! V X.48) .......................................83 4.1.2 ahá! dã! gr& 'até p"# rviya! vásu (R! V X.49) ...............................................93 4.1.3 Concluding Remarks ..................................................................................103 4.2 káy( $ubh(# sávayasa% sán)*(% (R! V I.165) ...............................................................104 CHAPTER 5: THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES ..............................................................127 5.1 ásat sú me jarita% s(# bhivegó (R! V X.27) ..................................................................128 5.2 ví$vo hí anyó arír (jag(# ma (R! V X.28) .....................................................................155 CHAPTER 6: PEEKING INTO THE CAVE ........................................................................166 6.1 The Mimetic Impersonation of a Seer ......................................................................170 6.2 Ma#%ala as Persona ...................................................................................................178 6.3 The Seven Threads of the Sacrifice ..........................................................................183 EPILOGUE ...............................................................................................................................197 ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................................207 BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................................208 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The long road of this dissertation would not have taken its first step without my teacher, Michael Witzel, who took me as his student and his friend. He put me on this path, and to him I owe eternal gratitude. I also wish to express my thanks and my affection to the members of my committee. I want to thank Jay Jasanoff, who whiled away many an hour tolerating my social calls, for his infinite patience and his avuncular kindness. In addition to his tireless editing, I want to thank Frank Clooney for showing me that I had a better story to tell than how many syllables I could count. P. Oktor Skjærvø inspired the germ of this dissertation, yet, at times, he was its harshest critique. I want to thank him for being a sustainer of order and a speaker of truth. I also want to thank those who read my many early drafts, wandering through its overgrown thickets and trying their best to clear a path. I thank Carlos Lopez, Stephanie Majcher, Steven Lindquist, Jacqueline Vayntrub, Joanna Jurewicz, Sonam Kachru, and Jarrod Whitaker for never being out of earshot whenever I ululated. I would like to thank Joe Harris, for introducing me to the ‘double scene’, Velizar Sadovski, who first turned me to the thoughts of Indra, and Jared Klein, my first Sanskrit teacher. I also want to thank Alexander Forte, who, as my occasional co-author, has endured more of me than most. I must apologize here, for I would like to name all of my many friends and colleagues who gave me their thoughts on