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Numen Book Series

Studies in the History of Religions

Series Editors

Steven Engler

(Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada)

Richard King

(University of Glasgow, Scotland)

Kocku von Stuckrad

(University of Groningen,

The Netherlands)

Gerard Wiegers

(University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

VOLUME 139

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Sins and Sinners

Perspectives from Asian Religions

Edited by

Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara

LEidEN • BOSTON 2012

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from the photographer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Sins and sinners : perspectives from Asian religions / edited by Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara.   p. cm. — (Numen book series, iSSN 0169-8834 ; v. 139)

 Proceedings of a conference held in the fall of 2010 at Yale University.  includes index.

 iSBN 978-90-04-22946-4 (hardback : alk. paper) — iSBN 978-90-04-23200-6 (e-book)  1. Asia—Religions—Congresses. 2. Sin—Congresses. i. Granoff, P. E. (Phyllis Emily), 1947– ii. Shinohara, Koichi, 1941–

 BL1033.S56 2012  202’.2—dc23

2012017165

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, iPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.

iSSN 0169-8834

iSBN 978 90 04 22946 4 (hardback) iSBN 978 90 04 23200 6 (e-book)

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, idC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood drive, Suite 910, danvers, MA 01923, USA.

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Acknowledgements  ... vii introduction  ... 1

PART ONE

SiNNiNG iN ASiAN RELiGiOUS TRAdiTiONS Social and Soteriological Aspects of Sin and Penance in Medieval Hindu Law  ... 9 David Brick

Sin and Expiation in Sikh Texts and Contexts: From the Nānak

Panth to the Khālsā  ... 31 Denis Matringe

“Living Without Sin”: Reflections on the Pre-Buddhist World of

Early China  ... 57 Michael Nylan

Sin, Sinification, Sinology: On the Notion of Sin in Buddhism and Chinese Religions  ... 73 James Robson

“The Evil Person is the Primary Recipient of the Buddha’s Compassion” The Akunin Shōki Theme in Shin Buddhism

of Japan  ... 93 James C. Dobbins

The Sin of “Slandering the True dharma” in Nichiren’s Thought  .... 113 Jacqueline I. Stone

Ritual Faults, Sins, and Legal Offences: A discussion About

Two Patterns of Justice in Contemporary india  ... 153 Daniela Berti

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PART TWO

dEALiNG WiTH SiN

After Sinning: Some Thoughts on Remorse, Responsibility, and

the Remedies for Sin in indian Religious Traditions  ... 175 Phyllis Granoff

The Role of Confession in Chinese and Japanese Tiantai/Tendai

Bodhisattva Ordinations  ... 216 Paul Groner

Removal of Sins in Esoteric Buddhist Rituals: A Study of the

Dafangdeng Dhāraṇī Scripture  ... 243 Koichi Shinohara

Redeeming Bugs, Birds, and Really Bad Sinners in Some Medieval Mahāyāna Sūtras and Dhāraṇīs  ... 276 Gregory Schopen

Sometimes Love don’t Feel Like it Should: Redemptive Violence in Tantric Buddhism  ... 295 Jacob P. Dalton

Sin and Flaws in Kerala Astrology  ... 309 Gilles Tarabout

Sin and Expiation in Nepal: The Makar Melā Pilgrimage in

Panautī  ... 324 Gérard Toffin

Sin and Expiation Among Modern Hindus: To Obey One’s duty

or Following Freely Accepted Rules?  ... 357 Catherine Clémentin-Ojha

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We would like to thank Rev. Brian Nagata and the Bukkyō dendōkyōkai for their support of the conference at Yale, where some of these papers were presented. The BdK also provided support for preparing the papers for publication. Additional assistance for the conference was provided by the Shelley and donald Rubin Foundation and the Lex Hixon Fund, department of Religious Studies, Yale University.

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the essays in this volume grew out of a conference that was held at Yale university in the fall of 2010. our choice of topic was guided by our belief that ‘sin’ in its many forms has always been and continues to be a central concern of Asian religious texts and practices. So important is sin that changes in religious practice and doctrine might fruitfully be understood as responses to a compelling need to do something about the frailty of the human condition, our propensity to sin, and to make religion suitable for this degenerate age in which we live and in which sinning is inevitable. it is not only in the primary source material that sin looms so large; debates about the nature and even the very existence of sin in Asian religions continue to enliven the scholarly literature.

the complexity of the subject is apparent from the table of contents. this book brings together scholars from very different disciplinary per-spectives and presents material from india, nepal, tibet, china, and Japan. Some of the essays explore texts that are among the earliest to have been preserved, while others examine modern and contemporary religious practices or contemporary judicial proceedings. included are essays on pre-Buddhist china, Buddhist china and Japan; classical and contemporary indian law; the Sikh tradition; Jainism and Hinduism; tibetan Buddhism, and Hinduism in nepal.

Across the diversity of these chapters, certain common themes emerge. Although we did not set out to solve the old conundrum of finding a perfect word to substitute for the imperfect term ‘sin’ with its history of christian connotations, many of the essays deal either directly or indirectly with the basic question of what we are to understand by ‘sin’ in the religious texts and practices we are studying. Michael nylan in her essay challenges certain presuppositions about ‘sin’, guilt, and shame, subtly illustrating how inapplicable they are to early china, where there is no omniscient punishing God, and the relationship between internal and external, cen-tral to the dichotomy of guilt and shame, is so very differently understood. But this does not imply that there is no understanding of wrongdoing or no moral sense; a belief in human perfectibility goes hand in hand with a recognition of the difficulties of its achievement and the many opportuni-ties for failure. Wrongdoing, moreover, has its consequences, whether or not anyone else is there to witness it. James robson begins his essay with

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an exploration of Western reluctance to speak about sin in Buddhism. Western scholars, he argues, saw sin as a Buddhist contribution to chi-nese religion. robson challenges this notion and points to early daoist texts that treat sin and its remedies.

Studying a very different context, the South indian state of Kerala, and not the distant past but the present time, Gilles tarabout opens his essay on sin and flaws in astrology with brief remarks on the pitfalls of assuming that ‘sin’ in the christian sense with its concomitant concepts of guilt and repentance is a universal. What is regularly translated as ‘sin’ by astrolo-gers in conversation and in the texts they use has little to do with guilt or repentance and much to do with ritual faults and impurity, and even with attacks by sorcery. david Brick, studying early indian legal texts, draws a distinction between sins that have consequences in this life, that is, social consequences, and those that have consequences in the next life. With the development of the doctrine of karma, sins can have these two very different and damaging results. Brick’s essay also raises the question of the treatment of sins that are not publicly known and whether it was neces-sary publicly to confess one’s sin in order to be free of its consequences. the question of social versus karmic consequences can be seen in a very different context in Paul Groner’s paper on medieval Japanese Buddhism, where ‘social’ means the monastery, and various rituals of confession are important in insuring that a monk maintains his good standing in his monastic community. catherine clémentin-ojha focuses on a very public sin and its social consequences in a very different time and place, in a study of narayan Ganesh chandavarkar, who violated the prohibi-tion against traveling abroad when he went to London in 1895 as part of a delegation to represent the political demands of indians at the British Parliament. the contrast between guilt and shame as motivations for not sinning reappears in Phyllis Granoff ’s essay, which draws on material from Pali Buddhist texts, Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras, Jain texts and india’s great epics. in their essays denis Matringe, daniela Berti, and Gérard toffin all address the different types of wrongdoings that are brought together under the one term, ‘sin’, ritual mistakes and ritual impurity, violations of social rules, and moral failings. Berti’s paper makes clear the staying power of the discourse on sin; she studies contemporary indian High court rul-ings in which crimes are very much also sins. Matringe highlights a major change in the definition of ‘sin’ that occurred when the Sikhs became a militant order and deserting the cause on the battlefield became the most egregious of all sins. this also brought about a change in the understand-ing of how to deal with sin: only martyrdom could expiate such a sin. the

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example of the transformation of the concept of sin in the Sikh tradition alerts us to the importance of concrete historical circumstances in the most abstract discussions.

Another central theme of these essays is what may be done after a sin has been committed. the essays make clear that a wide range of techniques were offered to ward off the consequences of sin. not all of them required the sinner to do anything except be what he or she is: wicked through and through. two of the essays address the problem of lowly creatures and those most abject sinners who were not in a position to do virtuous acts and thus might have seemed to be condemned to suffer forever. Gregory Schopen’s paper examines texts that promise salvation even to bugs and birds, even to the most wicked sinners of all, those who commit the five cardinal sins of killing father, mother or an arhat, of causing a schism, or physically harming the Buddha or a stūpa housing the Buddha’s relics. they are all immediately saved when the sounds of a special mantra fall on their ears. Schopen argues further that texts that promote such beliefs were widely circulated in medieval india, and he suggests that they were a response to the success of Buddhist proselytizing efforts and certain doc-trinal developments, in particular, the concept of universal salvation. the masses, he surmises, would have wondered how they might in their sinful condition really be saved. A similar awareness of universal sinfulness and a similar concern for abject sinners with their poor prospects for engineer-ing their own spiritual progress underlay the medieval Japanese Buddhist movement that James dobbins studies. Shinran (1173–1262 ce) taught that the sinner was paradoxically the perfect object for the Buddha’s compas-sion, which alone could save him or her from the consequences of those sins. For him Buddhism was the ideal religion for his sinful age and offered the promise of salvation to the most reprobate sinners. the Shin school of Buddhism that coalesced around Shinran and successive generations of his followers would come to dominate the Japanese Buddhist scene for many centuries. in her chapter Jacqueline Stone investigates the central role of sin and its expiation in the doctrine of another medieval Japanese Buddhist figure, nichiren (1222–1282). nichiren is known for his message of exclusive devotion to the Lotus Sūtra, which he revered as the Bud-dha’s highest teaching. now in the degenerate age of the Final dharma, he maintained, only the Lotus Sūtra leads to the attainment of Buddha-hood. For that reason, in nichiren’s view, the gravest of all sins—“worse than killing one’s parents a thousand times”—is “slander of the dharma,” which he understood as rejecting the Lotus in favor of “lesser” teachings. to this evil he attributed the collective sufferings besetting Japan in his

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day: famines, epidemics, and the threat of Mongol invasion. to rebuke attachment to other, provisional teachings and assert the unique truth of the Lotus Sūtra thus became for him a form of compassionate practice aimed at rescuing others from the fearful consequences of dharma slan-der as well as a mode of expiating one’s own offenses against the dharma committed in prior lifetimes. in this way, nichiren gave meaning to the persecution from the authorities that he and his disciples incurred in the course of their proselytizing efforts.

A major point of debate that we see through these essays concerns the role of remorse, repentance, and confession. in his paper, Paul Groner argues that confession has been integral to Buddhism since its inception. His discussion focuses on repentance rituals and the practice of con-fession in Japanese Buddhism, tracing the importance of concon-fession in various types of ordination ceremonies. He also mentions a unique Bud-dhist answer to the problem of sin: the doctrine of Emptiness. Some of his texts insist that a proper understanding of the insubstantiality of sin is the best means to remove sin. this notion reappears in some of the texts studied by Koichi Shinohara and Phyllis Granoff. Granoff ’s texts reveal mixed responses to the question of whether the sinner needs to feel remorse, repent and confess. While Jain texts stress the importance of repenting and confessing, other texts, including some Mahāyāna Buddhist texts and the Mahābhārata, regarded remorse and repentance as so much wasted effort. robson treats repentance rituals in daoism, where disease is considered a mark of sin, and healing rituals center on confession and repentance. Sins can be tabulated and kept track of, making it easier to formulate the appropriate rituals to eliminate them.

Several of the essays examine ritual means to ward off the consequences of sin. Schopen’s paper focuses on dhāraṇī texts, which teach spells that ward off sin and have a host of other benefits. Koichi Shinohara traces the evolution of esoteric Buddhist understandings of such dhāraṇī recita-tion as the means to remove sin. in his detailed explorarecita-tion of the history of some early dhāraṇī texts preserved in chinese, Shinohara argues that if mantras initially had very this-worldly goals, they soon came to take on distinctive soteriological goals. the removal of sin becomes a crucial result of practicing dhāraṇī recitations, as a first step towards ultimate sal-vation. Both Schopen and Shinohara comment on the nature of esoteric dhāraṇī texts, which are often obscure and show several layers of complex development. Shinohara also highlights the importance of visions of the Buddhas to confirm the success of the dhāraṇī rituals. tibetan Buddhism

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offered a more extreme ritual to free the sinner of his or her sins; this was ritual murder, which Jacob dalton explores in his paper.

there were other rituals to deal with sin. david Brick’s essay deals with penances in the early Hindu law books. Brahmanical penances are at the core of clémentin-ojha’s discussion as well. Gérard toffin focuses on the very important pilgrimage to Panautī in nepal and the rituals of fasting and bathing, so central in Hindu religious culture. His paper also men-tions supernatural confirmamen-tions of the efficacy of the rituals undertaken, something highlighted by Shinohara. clearly, anxiety about sin could extend to anxiety about the efficacy of the rituals offered to ward off its effects. Anxiety over sin dominates another group of rituals and the role of another religious specialist, the astrologer. Gilles tarabout examines the techniques of astrologers in Kerala today, who must uncover the sins or ritual faults that have resulted in misfortunes for their clients. theirs is also the responsibility of providing remedies to stop the calamities that are occurring and restore order.

Sin, remorse, repentance, confession, mantras, murders, pilgrimage, penances, court judges, astrologers—this collection of essays includes all of this. Yet even this is still only part of the picture. our hope is that this volume will be a first step in a continuing discussion of sin and its central-ity in Asian religious cultures.

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david Brick

the scholastic and literary tradition known as dharmaśāstra, often referred to in english as ‘Hindu law,’ is the branch of Brahmanical scholarship (śāstra) that takes as its subject dharma, a term denoting in this context the rules of right conduct governing virtually all aspects of Brahmanical Hindu life. as such, dharmaśāstra prescribes sets of specific normative rules for a massive and varied array of topics, including, among other things, statecraft (rājadharma), judicial administration (vyavahāra), pil-grimage (tīrthayātrā), life-cycle rites (saṁskāra), and world-renunciation (saṁnyāsa). Moreover, this prodigious tradition spans over two millennia of indian history from roughly the third century bce to the eighteenth century ce; and during this time, important dharmaśāstric works were composed in virtually all areas of the subcontinent. thus, taken in its entirety, dharmaśāstra literature is incredibly vast, surprisingly so to non-specialists. Broadly speaking, however, it can be divided into two periods. during the first period, which extends from approximately the third century bce to the seventh century ce, authors working within the dharmaśāstra tradition composed works called ‘Smṛtis,’ which typically present themselves as divine revelations and eventually took on the status of authoritative scriptures. in the second period, which covers more or less the eighth to eighteenth centuries and which scholars loosely refer to as ‘medieval,’ dharmaśāstric authors composed primarily exegetical works that strive to create a clear, comprehensive, and systematic account of the rules of right conduct (dharma) prescribed in the earlier Smṛtis.

indologists have long recognized that under the rubric of prāyaścitta (‘penance’), dharmaśāstric texts of this second period present, with unprecedented clarity and detail, perhaps the most well-developed and influential theory of sin and penance in the entire Hindu religious tradi-tion. nevertheless, remarkably few modern scholarly writings have been devoted to elucidating and interpreting this theory, which as a result remains poorly understood.1 it is the purpose of this paper to help remedy

1 Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. 4, 1−178, and gampert, Sühnezeremonien, provide

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this situation by providing a useful framework for understanding certain salient dharmaśāstric ideas pertaining to sin and penance. in particular, i will demonstrate how numerous features of the theory of sin and pen-ance expounded in medieval dharmaśāstra reflect a pervasive concern with two fundamentally different human activities: (a) the personal quest to avoid an undesirable life after death and (B) the process of excommu-nicating and readmitting members of a given social community.

an examination of the effects of sin theorized in dharmaśāstra is a natural place to begin the present analysis, because these effects are what link sin to both of the aforementioned activities. furthermore, since pen-ance is by definition a means of negating sin, sin’s effects also provide the connection between the aforementioned activities and penance. the Mitākṣarā (c. 1075−1125), a celebrated commentary on the Yājñavalkya Smṛti (c. 300−500), contains the following straightforward formulation of how sin works:

Sin possesses two powers: that which brings about hell and that which pro-hibits association.2

thus, the Mitākṣarā postulates that sin possesses two distinct powers. the first of these is the power to cast one into hell. in other words, a sin is—among other things—an action that produces negative soteriological consequences. and this is, of course, quite close to certain popular west-ern conceptions of sin. the second power of sin, however, is more dis-tinctively Hindu, for it is the power to prohibit one from social and ritual interaction with other respectable people. that is, in addition to resulting in hell and other unpleasant rebirths, sin can also cause a person to lose his caste-status and, thus, become an outcaste.

according to dharmaśāstra, all sins (pāpa) possess the first of these powers, that is, the power to produce negative otherworldly results; only the most grievous possess the second. these grievous sins, however, are by far the most commonly discussed sins in dharmaśāstra literature, where they are technically classified as mahāpātakas, pātakas, and upapātakas-all terms derived from a causative form of the verb root √pat, meaning ‘to

from these sources, very little scholarship has been dedicated exclusively to the topic, although several scholars have recently written insightful comparative analyses of sin/ penance and crime/punishment within dharmaśāstra (see lubin, “punishment and expia-tion,” davis, Spirit of Hindu Law, 128−43, and olivelle, “penance and punishment”).

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fall.’3 the reason for this particular shared derivation is that these sins, unlike all lesser ones, cause a person to fall not only into hell, but also from caste. thus, the Gautama Dharmasūtra (c. 200−100 bce), one of the earliest works of the dharmaśāstra tradition, explains the sort of ‘falling’ that certain major sins entail as follows:

‘falling’ is exclusion from the activities of twice-born (i.e., high-caste) men; and a lack of success in the hereafter. Some call this ‘hell.’4

Hence, dharmaśāstric theology places effectively equal emphasis on the soteriological and social effects of sin and, thereby, addresses within its system of sin and penance two fundamentally distinct cultural phenom-ena: the quest for personal salvation and the process of excommunication from and readmission to good society.

although not explicitly stated in the Mitākṣarā and other dharmaśāstric texts, the logical connection between undesirable rebirths, excommunica-tion, and sin is fairly easy to surmise. the belief that certain acts, which we can appropriately call ‘sins,’ yield negative otherworldly results is essential to the karmic worldview upon which Hinduism and, indeed, all early indian religions are based. therefore, sin’s close association with soteriology within dharmaśāstra is entirely unsurprising. its association with excommunication, however, is somewhat more remarkable and, consequently, requires special explanation. in this regard, the crucial thing to note is that Brahmanical culture evinces a notoriously strong propensity to identify entities as impure and to prohibit contact with such entities lest one contract their impurity and, thus, suffer horrible calamities.5 therefore, it makes sense that members of this culture would regard those who have committed sins as impure and, as a result, fas-tidiously shun them until their impurity is deemed to have departed. and in fact, dharmaśāstric texts frequently cite purification as the purpose of penance.6 Hence, one can reasonably account for the link between sin

3 etymologically, a pātaka is something that causes one to fall. the terms mahāpātaka

and upapātaka mean ‘great pātaka’ and ‘lesser pātaka’ respectively.

4 Gautama Dharmasūtra 21.4−6: dvijātikarmabhyo hāniḥ patanam | paratra cāsiddhiḥ | tam eke narakam |

5 for a detailed discussion of traditional Brahmanical notions of purity/impurity, see Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. 4, 267−333.

6 See, for instance, Yājñavalkya Smṛti 3.20a–b:

therefore, he (= a sinner) should perform a penance in this world in order to purify himself.

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and excommunication within dharmaśāstra as a result of the Brahmani-cal preoccupation with purity.

considering the strong negative social and soteriological effects of sin, it is unsurprising that dharmaśāstra defines a penance (prāyaścitta) as a rite with the specific power to counteract these effects. for example, Mādhava (c. 1340−60), a commentator on the Parāśara Smṛti (c. 500−700), writes:

the power of sin is twofold: there is the power to bring about hell and the power to prohibit association. Hence, the power of penance, which negates that (= sin), is also divided in two: there is the power to ward off hell and the power to engender association.7

the author of this passage is clearly familiar with the Mitākṣarā’s earlier statement that sin possesses two powers and, indeed, repeats it nearly ver-batim. from this, he explicitly draws the conclusion, implicitly accepted in all dharmaśāstric commentaries, that since a penance is an act that negates a sin, it must have two potential powers, one to counteract each of sin’s effects. therefore, a penance must be able to (a) preclude negative otherworldly results and (B) restore caste-status.

although there is nothing unexpected in this description of penance, it is perhaps surprising that in certain circumstances, penances are able to negate only one of sin’s effects, not both. in other words, dharmaśāstric texts specify conditions under which a penance can negate the loss of caste generated by a sin, but not the negative rebirths and vice versa. the medieval literature discusses this most explicitly in the exegesis surround-ing Yājñavalkya Smṛti 3.226:

prāyaścittair apaity eno yad ajñānakṛtaṁ bhavet | kāmato [‘]vyavahāryas tu vacanād iha jāyate ||

the first line of this verse is fairly unambiguous and can be reasonably translated as:

Sins that are done unintentionally depart through penances.

thus, by all accounts, it denotes that penances thoroughly expiate sins that a person unwittingly commits. the second line, however, contains a crucial ambiguity, for Sanskrit grammar allows one to analyze the

7 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.1: dvividhā hi pāpasya śaktiḥ narakotpādikā vyavahāravirodhikā ceti | atas tannivartakasya prāyaścittasyāpi śaktir dvidhā bhidyate narakanivārikā vyavahārajananī ceti |

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words kāmato [‘]vyavahāryas as either kāmataḥ vyavahāryaḥ or kāmataḥ avyavahāryaḥ. readers with a moderate proficiency in the language will immediately recognize the implication of this. a person can justifiably translate the line in one of two diametrically opposed ways, either as:

However, if a person sins intentionally, he just becomes fit for association in

this world on account of scripture.

or as:

However, if a person sins intentionally, he is still unfit for association in this

world on account of scripture.

consequently, the verse can mean either that (a) penances negate all the effects of unintentional sins, but just the worldly effects of intentional sins or (B) penances negate all the effects of unintentional sins, but just the otherworldly effects of intentional sins. in other words, it allows for two radically contradictory interpretations. vijñāneśvara, the author of the Mitākṣarā, makes no explicit acknowledgement of this fact. instead, he simply adopts the interpretation that penances expiate just the worldly effects of intentional sins.8 Mādhava, by contrast, cites both interpreta-tions and, rather than deciding between them, concludes that penances for various sins causing loss of caste can negate either their worldly or their otherworldly effects.9 all exegetes agree, however, not only that sin has distinct social and soteriological effects, but also that these effects, in an important sense, exist independently of one another, for penance has, under certain conditions, the power to negate one of them without affecting the other. Hence, the dharmaśāstric theory of sin and penance assumes a rather stark separation between worldly and otherworldly con-cerns, while simultaneously addressing both.

8 it is unclear why vijñāneśvara takes this position. one plausible reason is his view of penances ending in death (maraṇāntikaprāyaścitta), of which the Smṛtis prescribe a

num-ber for especially severe sins (e.g., Yājñavalkya Smṛti 3.247−48). according to him, these

lethal penances have the unique ability to expiate the otherworldly effects of very serious intentional sins (see Mitākṣarā 3.226). thus, if all penances negate merely the otherworldly

effects of intentional sins, these lethal penances would have no advantage over non-lethal penances and, therefore, be unacceptably pointless.

9 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.1: “thus, this is the established position: penances for

inten-tional mahāpātakas and upapātakas are, indeed, either for the purpose of worldly

asso-ciation or for the purpose of the next world.” tad evam aihikavyavahārāya paralokāya vā kāmakṛtānāṁ mahāpātakānām upapātakānāṁ cāsty eva prāyaścittam iti siddham |

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to this position, universally held within the dharmaśāstra tradition, that penance can separately destroy the social and soteriological effects of sin, Mādhava raises the hypothetical and humorously worded objection:

if this is so, then penance would expel one power of sin, but not the other. the result would be like a woman that is old in only half her body, for nowhere is it ever seen that part of a chicken gets cooked, while another part still lays eggs!10

He then refutes this objection as follows:

this is not valid, for on account of scripture even a woman that is old in only half her body must be accepted, because there is the maxim: “what can’t scripture do? no burden is too great for scripture.” otherwise, via what example, would some self-styled logician construe the power of sin and the power of penance?11

its amusing qualities aside, this refutation gives a good indication of the reverent view of scripture within medieval dharmaśāstra. even more importantly, it also illustrates the indispensable role that scripture plays in determining genuinely efficacious sins and penances, for the tradition holds that however clever a man may be, he cannot ascertain these merely through logical enquiry, but must ultimately rely upon the statements of scripture.

Significantly, the fact that sin produces both social and soteriologi-cal results has a clearly discernible effect on the forms of penance that dharmaśāstric texts prescribe. at the most basic level, this effect is evident in the distinction made between prakāśaprāyaścitta (‘public penances’) and rahasyaprāyaścitta (‘secret penances’). this fundamental differentia-tion between public and secret penances neatly divides all acts of ritual repentance within dharmaśāstra into two underlying types. indeed, the topical shift from public to secret penances within Yājñavalkya is deemed important enough by vijñāneśvara that he introduces it with a verse that he has specially composed and that stands out markedly from his usual

10 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.1: nanv evaṁ sati prāyaścittaṁ pāpasya kāṁcic chaktim apa-nudati kāṁcin nety ardhajaratīyaṁ prasajyeta | na hi kukkuṭyā eko bhāgaḥ pacyate aparo bhāgaḥ prasavāya kalpate iti kvacid dṛṣṭam |

11 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.1: na | vacanād ardhajaratīyasyāpy aṅgīkāryatvāt | kiṁ hi vacanaṁ na kuryān nāsti vacanasyātibhāra iti nyāyāt | anyathā yauktikaṁmanyaḥ pāpaśaktiṁ prāyaścittaśaktiṁ ca kena dṛṣṭāntena samarthayīta | it is noteworthy that a

distinguishing feature of the syllogism within the classical indian school of logic (nyāya) is

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prose.12 despite the importance of this distinction, however, it is not the case that these two types of penance are given equal weight within dharmaśāstra, for dharmaśāstric texts unambiguously treat public pen-ance as the norm and secret penpen-ance as the exception. thus, for example, Yājñavalkya spends just twelve verses (3.300−11) laying down the rules for secret penances after previously spending fifty-eight verses (3.243−300) discussing the rules for public penances.

the commentaries of the medieval period describe the essential dif-ferences between these two underlying sorts of penance in rather precise terms. as is often the case, the Mitākṣarā is especially eloquent in this regard. it explains a ‘secret penance’ as follows:

a man whose sin is unknown to persons other than the perpetrators of the act should carry out a secret, i.e., non-public, penance. Hence, one should understand, for instance, that because in cases of illicit sex, the woman is also a perpetrator, a man whose sin is unknown to anyone other than her should perform a secret penance. in such an event, if the perpetrator is him-self learned in dharmaśāstra, he should undertake the penance appropri-ate for what occasioned it (i.e., the sin) without informing anyone else. if, however, he is personally ignorant of the subject, he should carry out the correct secret penance after learning it through some pretext or other, such as saying that somebody has secretly killed a Brahmin and asking what is the secret penance for that.13

thus, a ‘secret penance’ is a penance that one secretly performs in order to atone for a sin that no one else—or at least no one else uninvolved— knows about. if a person is learned enough to already know the scriptur-ally prescribed penance for his sin, he should simply proceed to perform it. if, however, he does not know the penance prescribed in scripture, he should find it out from someone who does, but in doing so—the Mitākṣarā stipulates—he must take special care not to inform anyone else of his guilt. in other words, he must inquire under some pretext.

12 Mitākṣarā 3.300:

Having just explained the many ritual observances that destroy known sins, the sage (= Yājñavalkya) now proclaiming those that remove all sins done in secret . . .

vyākhya khyātaduritaśātanīṁ vratasaṁtatim | rahaḥkṛtāghasaṁdohahāriṇīṁ vyāharan muniḥ ||

13 Mitākṣarā 3.300c–d: kartṛvyatiriktair anabhikhyāto doṣo yasyāsau rahasyam aprakāśaṁ prāyaścittam anutiṣṭhet | ataḥ strīsaṁbhogādau tasyā api kārakatvāt taditarair avijñātadoṣasya rahasyavratam iti mantavyam | tatra yadi kartā svayaṁ dharmaśāstrakuśalas tadā parasminn avibhāvya svanimittocitaṁ prāyaścittam anutiṣṭhet | yas tu svayam anabhijño ‘sau kenacid raho brahmahatyādikaṁ kṛtaṁ tatra kiṁ rahasyaprāyaścittam ity anyavyājenā vagamya rahovratam anutiṣṭhet |

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a ‘public penance,’ by contrast, is a penance that one publicly performs to atone for a sin that is publicly known. the Mitākṣarā explains penances of this sort as follows:

a man whose sin is apprehended, i.e., known, by people other than those necessary to commit the sin should perform the penance instructed by an assembly of learned Brahmins (parṣad). even if he is personally adept at

ascertaining the meaning of all the scriptures, he must approach such an assembly, ascertain together with it the correct penance, and perform only what it has approved.14

Hence, public penances directly contrast with those of the secret vari-ety in that even if a person knows the scripturally enjoined penance for his sin, he is not permitted to go ahead and perform it. instead, he must approach a parṣad,15 which is a specially constituted assembly of learned Brahmins, and have it assign him the appropriate penance.

from this description, it is clear that rahasyaprāyaścittas (‘secret pen-ances’) must be understood to negate exclusively the soteriological effects of sin and have no connection whatsoever with excommunication from caste, which is the primary social effect of sin, for they are prescribed explicitly for the atonement of sins of which only the sinners are aware. it is, moreover, expressly enjoined that in the case of such secret sins, sin-ners must take special care not to inform anyone else of their guilt; and, in fact, the penances prescribed for these sins are generally short enough in duration and mild enough in character that one could—conceivably at least—have performed them without attracting anyone else’s suspicion. for instance, Yājñavalkya prescribes the following secret penance for the unintentional killing of a Brahmin, the paradigmatic dharmaśāstric sin:

if he fasts for three nights, chants the aghamarṣaṇa hymn (Ṛgveda 10.190)

while submerged in water, and gives away a milk-cow, a Brahmin-killer is purified.16

14 Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b: yo doṣo yāvatkartṛsaṁpādyas tato ‘nyair vikhyāto vijñāto doṣo yasyāsau parṣadupadiṣṭaṁ vrataṁ kuryāt | yady api svayaṁ sakalaśāstrārthavicāracaturas tathāpi parṣatsamīpam upagamya tayā saha vicārya tadanumatam eva kuryāt |

15 it is noteworthy that certain texts prefer to use the word pariṣad instead of its

short-ened form parṣad. throughout this paper, however, in order to avoid the unnecessary

proliferation of Sanskrit terms, i will consistently refer to an assembly of learned Brahmins as a parṣad.

16 Yājñavalkya Smṛti 3.301:

trirātropoṣito japtvā brahmahā tv aghamarṣaṇam | antarjale viśudhyeta dattvā gāṁ ca payasvinīm ||

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on the topic of such penances, viśvarūpa (c. 800−1000), an early commen-tator on Yājñavalkya, specifically adds that “one should perform a secret rite under the pretense of a pious act or the like so that even bystanders do not recognize it.”17 Hence, the public awareness upon which all societal excommunication must depend is decidedly absent in the case of secret penances. these penances must, therefore, be intended merely to negate the negative otherworldly results of sin, if they are to make any sense at all.

Beyond this, it is striking how lenient secret penances tend to appear when compared with the public penances enjoined for the same sins. for example, as the standard public penance for unintentionally kill-ing a Brahmin, Yājñavalkya prescribes the followkill-ing twelve-year rite (dvādaśavārṣikavrata):

if he carries a skull, bears one as his banner, consumes only almsfood that he begs while announcing his deed, and eats sparingly for twelve years, a Brahmin-killer attains purification.18

when compared with the previously cited secret penance for this sin, it becomes clear that Yājñavalkya regards the cosmos as much less demanding of sinners than their fellow caste-members. and in this regard, he appears to be highly representative of the dharmaśāstra tradition in general.

Seeming to recognize that the comparative mildness of secret pen-ances might be troubling to some within the Brahmanical community, viśvarūpa writes:

and one should not object to this by asking why the penances for those whose sins are not publically known should be so mild, for scripture should never be called into question. Moreover, since a man who performs them must be learned, he cannot be generally associated with sin; and, thus, Yājñavalkya himself will state later on that “(sins do not touch) a man who delights in reciting the veda, is forbearing . . .” (3.310). and because they are undertaken essentially to purify oneself, the mildness of such penances is, indeed, proper.19

17 viśvarūpa 3.296: rahasyaṁ vrataṁ pārśvasthair apy aviditaṁ dharmavyājādinā kartavyam |

18 Yājñavalkya Smṛti 3.243:

śiraḥkapālī dhvajavān bhikṣāśī karma vedayan | brahmahā dvādaśābdāni mitabhuk śuddhim āpnuyāt ||

19 viśvarūpa 3.296: na cātraitac codyaṁ kim ity anāviṣkṛtainasām alpaṁ prāyaścittam iti | amīmāṁsyatvāc chāstrasya | vidvattayaiva ca tasyainasā saṁbandhābhāvāt | tathā ca vedābhyāsarataṁ kṣāntam ity ādi vakṣyaty eva | ātmaśuddhipradhānatvāc ca pravṛtter yuk-tam eva prāyaścittālpatvam |

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Here viśvarūpa proposes three reasons that secret penances should be so relatively mild. firstly, he points out that this is the view of scripture and, as such, requires no further support—a position that we have already seen articulated in a different context by Mādhava. Secondly, unlike vijñāneśvara, viśvarūpa does not allow those ignorant of the scriptures to learn the appropriate secret penances for their sins via pretext.20 conse-quently, he argues that since a person must be quite learned to perform a secret penance, he cannot be generally associated with sinful behavior and can, therefore, reasonably be expected to perform a lighter penance than an ordinary person. finally—and most revealingly—viśvarūpa states that the purpose of undertaking a secret penance, unlike a public penance, is simply to purify oneself and not also to regain caste-status. therefore, it is proper—he argues—that such penances should be rather mild. Here we find both strong support for the thesis that secret penances are intended to negate merely the soteriological effects of sin and an explicit recogni-tion that their mild character is a reflecrecogni-tion of this.

another particularly interesting point that logically follows from the dharmaśāstric treatment of secret penances is that a person who had committed a sin that, if publicly known, would result in loss of caste was under no obligation to bring about his own excommunication. to the contrary, he was encouraged not to do so by keeping silent if circum-stances allowed. from this, one can draw two important conclusions. firstly, despite the fact that public penances require sinners to publicly announce their crimes, medieval dharmaśāstra lacks a strong belief in the redemptive power of confession per se. Secondly, a person’s becoming an outcaste was not an inherent result of any sin in and of itself. instead, excommunication was simply a reaction that scripture required of people if they became aware that a member of their own caste had committed

20 instead, viśvarūpa (3.296) explains the proper secret penances for such individuals as follows:

for the uneducated and the non-twice-born (i.e., non-high-caste) whose sins are unknown, the subsequent verse of Manu (11.228) himself begins the topic:

a sinner is freed from his sin by announcing it, through remorse, through austeri-ties, by reciting the veda, and, during a calamity, by giving a gift.

aviduṣām advijātīnāṁ cānāviṣkṛtainasām apy uparitanaḥ ślokārambho mānava eva—

khyāpanenānutāpena tapasādhyayanena ca | pāpakṛn mucyate pāpāt tathā dānena cāpadi || iti |

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certain infractions. this again illustrates how separable the two powers of sin theorized in dharmaśāstra are.

now, let us turn to prakāśaprāyaścittas (‘public penances’). clearly, what distinguishes these from rahasyaprāyaścittas or ‘secret penances’ is their power to negate the social effects of sin, for they are explicitly pre-scribed for the expiation of sins that are publicly known. this is not to deny that these penances can also negate sin’s otherworldly effects, only to maintain that their primary distinctive feature is the ability to nullify the negative social consequences of sin; and most importantly, this means the ability to bring about readmission to caste. in fact, when viewed from this perspective, the special ceremony whereby all public penances are issued appears to have been specifically designed to convince members of the sinner’s caste that when correctly performed, the issued penance will truly result in his purification. Moreover, the special ceremony that concludes all such penances appears to be for the specific purpose of con-vincing the sinner’s fellow caste-members that he is now truly purified and, thus, safe for social interaction. in other words, the rituals marking the beginning and end of all public penances seem intended to generate social consensus on two points: firstly, that a particular rite is the appro-priate means for a sinner to expiate his sin and, secondly, that the sinner has successfully performed the rite.

the special ceremony with which public penances necessarily begin has already been alluded to in the Mitākṣarā’s statement:

even if the sinner is personally adept at ascertaining the meaning of all the scriptures, he must approach an assembly of learned Brahmins (parṣad),

ascertain together with it the correct penance, and perform only what it has approved.21

Hence, as this statement indicates, a person guilty of a publically known sin must have his penance formally issued by a parṣad, that is, a spe-cial assembly of learned Brahmins; and it is cruspe-cial to note that this rule applies even to a person who already knows the scripturally enjoined pen-ance for his sin. only by recognizing that public penpen-ances aim principally to bring an end to social opprobrium can one understand the reason for

21 Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b: yady api svayaṁ sakalaśāstrārthavicāracaturas tathāpi parṣatsamīpam upagamya tayā saha vicārya tadanumatam eva kuryāt | note that i have

slightly changed my translation of this passage from that given earlier simply to make it more readable in this present context.

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this strict requirement: an individual performing a penance on his own— however knowledgeably—may well be unable to convince many of his fellow caste-members that he has truly and successfully expiated his sin. a properly constituted parṣad, however, is much more likely to have suc-cess in this regard. in other words, if an assembly of well-known, revered, and erudite Brahmins proclaims that a particular penance will expiate the sins of a particular sinner and that sinner dutifully performs that pen-ance, members of a caste are likely to agree that the sinner has, indeed, expiated his sins. and social consensus of this sort is absolutely essen-tial if a sinner is to recover his former caste-status. this point becomes especially vital when one notes that dharmaśāstric texts consistently list association with an outcaste as one of the five mahāpātakas, the great-est of all Brahmanical categories of sin.22 therefore, readmission to caste without overwhelming consensus or partial readmission to caste creates the strong risk, according to the dharmaśāstric worldview, that a com-munity will become deeply divided.

considering a parṣad’s responsibility to issue authoritative religious judgments likely to garner widespread approval, it is unsurprising that the precise and legitimate makeup of a parṣad is a subject of much discussion within dharmaśāstra. in order to establish this, the medieval commentar-ies cite a number of passages from a variety of Smṛtis, which for most part differ from one another only in minor details. of these texts, the following passage from the Smṛti of aṅgiras23 gives probably the fullest description of a parṣad:

Knowers of the four vedas, a deliberator (vikalpin), a master of the

ancil-lary sciences, a scholar of dharmaśāstra, and inhabitants of the three elder life-stages—these constitute a parṣad with a minimum of ten members.

tradition states that ‘knowers of the four vedas’ are exemplary Brahmins who have mastered the four vedas in their proper order even without their ancillary sciences. a ‘deliberator’ is a Brahmin who knows the established

authorities pertaining to three things: the law (dharma), learned assemblies

(parṣad), and the system of penances. a ‘master of the ancillary sciences’

is a man well-educated in grammar, prosody, the study of ritual, pronun-ciation, astrology, and etymology. a ‘scholar of dharmaśāstra’ is said to be

22 See, for instance, Mānava Dharmaśāstra 11.55 and Yājñavalkya Smṛti 3.227.

23 an independent Aṅgiras Smṛti no longer exists, but medieval commentaries and

digests contain numerous citations from a work or works ascribed to the mythological sage aṅgiras.

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a man who has graduated after completing his vow to learn the vedas, is true to his word, has conquered his sense-organs, and knows numerous dharmaśāstras. ‘Members of the three elder life-stages’ are members of the life-stages following studentship (i.e., a householder, forest-dweller, and world-renouncer). these people should state for a person the laws (dharma)

that i (= aṅgiras) have proclaimed.24

thus, according to this Smṛti and the medieval commentators, a parṣad was ideally supposed to comprise at least ten members, which together represented something close to the entirety of Brahmanical orthodoxy. dharmaśāstric texts universally assume that all members had to be male Brahmins and seldom bother to make the point explicitly.25 instead, as in the above passage, they focus primarily on the particular kinds of knowl-edge that these male Brahmins should possess. Broadly speaking, this knowledge is of two kinds. on the one hand is knowledge of the oldest and most sacred texts of Brahmanical Hinduism, i.e., the vedas and their ancillary scholastic treatises, which would have been of little direct rel-evance to the issuing of penances, but absolutely essential to any serious claim of religious authority. on the other hand is knowledge of a more practical kind, including specifically knowledge of dharmaśāstra and the procedural rules of a Brahmin assembly. thus, given its multiple and diverse members and their combined expertise in all of the pertinent

24 Madana-Pārijāta 776:

c[ā]turvidyaṁ kalpanīyam aṅgavid dharmapāṭhakaḥ | trayaś cāśramiṇo vṛddhāḥ parṣad eṣā daśāvarā || caturṇām api vedānāṁ pāragā ye dvijottamāḥ | yathākramaṁ vināpy aṅgaiś cāturvidyam iti smṛtaḥ || dharmasya parṣadaś caiva prāyaścittakramasya tu | trayāṇāṁ yaḥ pramāṇajñaḥ sa vikalpī bhaved dvijaḥ || śabde chandasi kalpe ca śikṣāyāṁ ca suniścitaḥ | jyotiṣām ayane caiva saniruktāṅgavid bhavet || vedavidyāvratasnātaḥ satyasaṁdho jitendriyaḥ | anekadharmaśāstrajñaḥ procyate dharmapāṭhakaḥ || brahmacaryāśramād ūrdhvaṁ vṛddhā āśramiṇas trayaḥ | vadeyus tasya te dharmān ye mayā parikīrtitāḥ ||

for similar passages, see Mānava Dharmaśāstra 12.111 (cited at Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b and Madana-Pārijāta 774) and Parāśara Smrti 8.27.

25 an exception to this is the following verse cited in the Madana-Pārijāta (772):

the wise know that neither a Kṣatriya nor a vaiśya nor a Śūdra should in any way enjoin a penance.

kṣatriyo hy atha vaiśyo vā śūdro vai na kathaṁcana | prāyaścittavidhānaṁ hi kurvīteti vidur budhāḥ ||

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fields, a parṣad—at least an ideal one—would seem to have been capa-ble of issuing judgments on matters of religious practice that a person in medieval india would have been hard-pressed to repudiate.

at the same time, however, it does not appear that a parṣad of at least some legitimate variety would have been especially difficult to actually convene, for commentaries quote a number of Smṛtis that permit four, three, or even one properly learned Brahmin to comprise a parṣad.26 after citing these scriptures, the Mitākṣarā argues that the choice between the larger and smaller types of parṣad should depend upon both the practi-cal availability of Brahmins of the prescribed sorts and the seriousness of the sin for which the parṣad is convened.27 Specifically, it concludes that larger parṣads are necessary for more grievous sins. therefore, in laying down rules for the constitution of a parṣad, dharmaśāstric works seem to stress the need for authoritativeness, while also accommodating practical concerns in less than ideal circumstances. and this reinforces the view that the unique purpose of a parṣad was to produce actual social consen-sus with regard to the expiation of sin.

in this same vein, vijñāneśvara adds that the king is likewise supposed to be involved in issuing penances for major sins; and as support for this position, he cites the following verse of the Devala Smṛti:28

Brahmins should by themselves pronounce the expiations for minor sins, but the king and Brahmins should, after careful examination, pronounce the expiations for major ones.29

although the precise nature of the king’s role in the system of public pen-ances is left unclear in the Mitākṣarā, it is possible to glean important details of this from other dharmaśāstric texts. for example, the following

26 See, for instance, Mānava Dharmaśāstra 12.112−13 (cited at Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b), Yājñavalkya Smṛti 1.9 (cited at Madana-Pārijāta 773), and Parāśara Smṛti 8.7, 11−14.

27 Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b: “and the choice between these parṣads should depend upon

either their feasibility or whether the sin is a mahāpātaka, etc.” āsāṁ ca parṣadāṁ saṁbhavāpekṣayā vyavasthā mahāpātakādyapekṣayā vā |

28 an independent Devala Smṛti is no longer extant. Medieval exegetes, however, cite

numerous passages from a work or works ascribed to devala. 29 Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b:

svayaṁ tu brāhmaṇā brūyur alpadoṣeṣu niṣkṛtim | rājā ca brāhmaṇāś caiva mahatsu ca parīkṣitam ||

Parāśara Smṛti 8.28 expresses a similar notion; and in his commentary on it, Mādhava cites

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verse, which is also ascribed to devala, specifies the roles that different persons are to play in such penances:

the king causes the penance to be given; the scholar of dharmaśāstra instructs it; the sinner performs it; and the protector guards the penance.30

commenting on this verse, the Madana-Pārijāta, a fourteenth-century digest of Smṛti citations, explains that the “protector” (rakṣitṛ) referred to is a “servant of the king who guards the penance by seeing whether or not it is done.”31 this indicates that through his servants, the king was supposed to oversee the performance of penances and act as a guarantor of their genuine completion.

clearly, however, this was not the king’s only role in public penances, for the texts also state that together with the parṣad, he should play a part in issuing such penances for major sins. the following passage from the Parāśara Smṛti sheds considerable light on how dharmaśāstric authors may have envisioned this to work:

a parṣad should issue a penance after waiting upon the king’s approval

and not issue one on its own, although it can issue expiations for very minor sins. and if, overstepping those Brahmins, the king wishes to issue a penance on his own, the sin becomes a hundredfold and hounds the king.32

Summarizing the contents of this passage, Mādhava writes, “the author says this, understanding that just as the parṣad should not overstep the king, so the king too should not overstep the parṣad.”33 that is, Mādhava envisions the relationship between the king and parṣad to be complimen-tary. Specifically, in apparent agreement with the above citation from the Parāśara Smṛti, he believes that the parṣad should be solely responsible for determining penances, but that the king’s approval is required before they can be issued.

30 Madana-Pārijāta 777:

kṛcchrāṇāṁ dāpako rājā nirdeṣṭā dharmapāṭhakaḥ | aparādhī prayoktā ca rakṣitā kṛcchrapālakaḥ ||

31 Madana-Pārijāta 777: rakṣitā rājapuruṣaḥ kṛtākṛtāvekṣaṇena prāyaścittapālakaḥ |

32 Parāśara Smṛti 8.28−29:

rājñaś cānumate sthitvā prāyaścittaṁ vinirdiśet | svayam eva na kartavyaṁ kartavyā svalpaniṣkṛtiḥ || brāhmaṇāṁs tān atikramya rājā kartuṁ yad icchati | tat pāpaṁ śatadhā bhūtvā rājānam anugacchati ||

33 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.28: yathā pariṣad rājānaṁ nātikramet tathā rājāpi pariṣadaṁ nātikramed ity āha |

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Having established the proper constitution of a parṣad, the medieval commentaries divide the procedure through which such an assembly publically issues penances into two formal parts. the first of these is called ‘approaching the assembly’ (parṣadupasthāna/parṣadupasatti); the second is referred to in various texts either as the ‘determination of the penance’ (prāyaścittanirṇaya) or as ‘instructing the rite’ (vratādeśana). the major scriptural source for both parts of this procedure is the Smṛti of aṅgiras.34 according to this frequently cited text, a person who is known to have committed a sin or known to have done something suspected to be а sin should perform a series of preliminary acts quite typical of Brahmanical rites in general. Specifically, he should fast, bathe, don wet clothes, silently approach the assembly, and immediately fall prostrate before its member. other Smṛtis and numerous commentaries add to this that the sinner or suspected sinner must also present to the assembly a suitable gift, technically referred to as a dakṣiṇā, which is again a standard component of Brahmanical rites.35 Hence, based upon these features, the act of ‘approaching the assembly’ (parṣadupasthāna) seems intended to imbue the proceedings with an air of sacrality.

at this point, after the sinner’s approach, the more strictly legalistic or juridical activities of the parṣad begin. according to aṅgiras, the members of the assembly should respond to the person who has approached them by asking what sin or suspected sin he has done; and he should, in turn, answer them truthfully, leaving nothing out lest his sin increase.36 the parṣad is then supposed to dismiss the sinner or possible sinner to dis-cuss his case in private. in the event of an unambiguous sin, its members must simply determine the correct penance, which is, of course, the pen-ance prescribed for the offense in the Smṛtis. in the event of a possible

34 for citations of the relevant passages of this text, see Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b, Parāśara-Mādhava 8.2, 30, and Madana-Pārijāta 775−80.

35 the texts typically allow the size of this dakṣiṇā to vary, sometimes explicitly based

upon the financial capabilities of the sinner or the severity of his sin. See, e.g., Madana-Pārijāta 776 and Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b.

36 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.2:

one who commits a sin should not hide it, for when hidden, it grows. whether it is small or large, one should announce it to those who know dharma.

kṛtvā pāpaṁ na gūheta gūhyamānaṁ vivardhate | svalpaṁ vātha prabhūtaṁ vā dharmavidbhyo nivedayet ||

the Madana-Pārijāta (775) also cites this verse in a somewhat different form. as an aside,

it is crucial to note that commentators clearly cite this verse within the context of public penances and, thus, do not interpret it to mean that one should not conceal secret sins. instead, it must be taken to indicate that when confessing their publically known sins to a parṣad, sinners must be scrupulously honest.

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sin, they must also first determine whether or not a sin has actually been committed.

Beyond this, when properly approached by a petitioner, a parṣad is under three specific obligations that reveal much about the character of the system of public penances. the first of these obligations is that it can-not refuse to issue a penance for a sin if it knows of one.37 the second is that to the greatest extent possible, it must avoid issuing especially harsh penances.38 these obligations suggest that a parṣad was not—at least in theory—simply a committee of staunchly orthodox Brahmins responsi-ble for the vigilant guardianship of their community’s purity. to the con-trary, they make a parṣad appear more like a benign institution charged with curbing excessively puritanical tendencies within Brahmanical soci-ety, tendencies that may have led simultaneously to a zeal for excom-munication and a reticence to readmit even repentant sinners to good society. and this benevolent character of parṣads may well explain why dharmaśāstric texts sometimes refer to the process of issuing a penance as ‘doing a favor’ (anugrahaṁ kuryāt).39 the third and final obligation of a parṣad is that when formally issuing a penance, it is required to publically quote the actual scriptural passage that justifies its decision. one grounds for this requirement is the following oft-cited Smṛti:

they should first cite the words corresponding to the case as they were spo-ken by the authors of the dharmaśāstras and, afterwards, do a favor (i.e., issue a penance) to the best of their ability, for due to their knowledge, wise men will be unable to ignore the words of those great men (i.e., the authors of the dharmaśāstras) and say anything contrary.40

37 Mitākṣarā 3.300a–b, Madana-Pārijāta 779, Parāśara-Mādhava 8.30:

when Brahmins who know the correct penances refuse to give them to tormented solicitors, they become the same as them.

ārtānāṁ mārgamāṇānāṁ prāyaścittāni ye dvijāḥ | jānanto na prayacchanti te yānti samatāṁ tu taiḥ ||

38 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.30:

taking into account concerns of age, time, and mortality in the case of a Brahmin, Brahmin scholars of dharmaśāstra should issue a penance through which the sinner will attain purification and neither be robbed of life nor experience great torment, for one should never instruct rites of that sort.

yathāvayo yathākālaṁ yathāprāṇaṁ ca brāhmaṇe | prāyaścittaṁ pradātavyaṁ brāhmaṇair dharmapāṭhakaiḥ || yena śuddhim avāpnoti na ca prāṇair viyujyate |

ārtiṁ vā mahatīṁ yāti na caitad vratam ādiśet ||

39 See, e.g., note 40. 40 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.6:

vacaḥ pūrvam udāhāryaṁ yathoktaṁ dharmakartṛbhiḥ | paścāt kāryānusāreṇa śaktyā kuryur anugrahaṁ ||

(35)

this obligation to quote explicit scriptural support seems to be yet another means of ensuring confidence in the judgments of a parṣad. indeed, the above passage appears to make exactly this point. it, therefore, provides further evidence that the primary purpose of such an assembly was to create social consensus with respect to the expiation of sin.

once the parṣad has unanimously agreed upon the appropriate pen-ance, one of its members is supposed to inform the sinner of the assem-bly’s decision and instruct him in the penance’s details. these details vary greatly from penance to penance and are, thus, too heterogeneous to dis-cuss here. according to the Madana-Pārijāta, the sinner “should receive the rite in the evening on the day before he undertakes it.”41 and it is generally mandatory that he have his head shaved beforehand.42

this brings us to the completion of the public penance. as i have already mentioned, this occasion is marked by a special ceremony that seems spe-cifically designed to convince the sinner’s fellow caste-members that he is now truly purified of sin and, therefore, safe for social and ritual interac-tion. Hence, it is fitting and should come as no surprise that this conclud-ing ceremony is called the ‘publicizconclud-ing of purity’ (śuddhiprakāśana). the Parāśara Smṛti, which discusses public penances as a tangent to the issue of cow-killing, describes the ceremony as follows:

na hi teṣām atikramya vacanāni mahātmanām | prajñānair api vidvadbhiḥ śakyam anyat prabhāṣitum ||

the Madana-Pārijāta (778) also cites the first of these verses in a slightly varied form.

41 Madana-Pārijāta 781: vratagrahaṇaṁ vratānuṣṭhānadivasāt pūrvadine sāyāhne kāryam |

42 the Madana-Pārijāta (782−83), however, allows this exception:

Hārīta states the following for those who do not want to shave their heads:

a king, prince, or learned Brahmin should perform a penance after shaving his hair, but in order to preserve his hair, he may perform twice the penance instead; and when twice the penance is done, there should be twice the dakṣiṇā.

. . . and this giving of twice the dakṣiṇā is for those who do not want to shave their

heads in cases of sins other than mahāpātakas, etc. (i.e., in cases of minor sins). yas tu vapanaṁ necchati taṁ prati hārītaḥ—

rājā vā rājaputro vā brāhmaṇo vā bahuśrutaḥ | keśānāṁ vapanaṁ kṛtvā prāyaścittaṁ samācaret || keśānāṁ rakṣaṇārthaṁ tu dviguṇaṁ vratam ācaret | dviguṇe vrata ācīrṇe dakṣiṇā dviguṇā bhavet ||

(36)

thereafter, when the penance is done, he should feed Brahmins and give them a dakṣiṇā (sacrificial gift). a Brahmin should then chant purifying

mantras. Having thus fed Brahmins, a cow-killer is undoubtedly purified.43

as the above passage indicates, the central component of this ceremony is the feeding of Brahmins (brāhmaṇabhojana). apparently assuming the cow-killer in this passage to be a Brahmin, Mādhava specifies that “he should feed all the Brahmins who are related to him in order to announce his own purity.”44 given the strict dietary rules and limits placed on com-mensality that characterize Brahmanical culture,45 the purpose of this meal seems obvious: if a man can get Brahmins and his kinsmen to eat his food, it will be hard to deny his purity and caste-status, for to do so would be to impugn all those whom he has fed. that is to say, there can be no greater testimony of a person’s purity than Brahmins’ acquiescence to eating his food. thus, the feeding of Brahmins constitutes an extremely fitting conclusion to a public penance.

we are now in a position to venture some broader characterizations of how the theory of sin and penance expounded in medieval dharmaśāstra incorporates worldly and otherworldly concerns. to this end, i believe it is useful to adopt a model of Hindu law that envisions the enforcement of normative rules as taking place at roughly three levels.46 the highest of these levels comprises the royal state-run courts of pre-modern india, which dharmaśāstra literature discusses voluminously, if only theoreti-cally, under the topic of vyavahāra (‘judicial administration’). the lowest level is the individual person who believes in the standards of behavior dictated by both dharmaśāstra texts and compatible local custom and, as a result, strives on his own to live up to such standards. Between these two levels is a diverse array of more or less organized corporate groups, includ-ing villages, castes, merchant guilds, monastic orders, and the like, which each possess their own binding laws and means of enforcement. these

43 Parāśara Smṛti 8.41−42:

prāyaścitte tataś cīrṇe kuryād brāhmaṇabhojanam | viprāṇāṁ dakṣiṇāṁ dadyāt pavitrāṇi japed dvijaḥ || brāhmaṇān bhojayitvā tu goghnaḥ śuddho na saṁśayaḥ ||

44 Parāśara-Mādhava 8.42: svakīyaviśuddhikhyāpanārthaṁ svabandhūn aśeṣān brāhmaṇān bhojayet |

45 for an excellent discussion of Brahmanical dietary rules in pre-modern india, see olivelle, Abhakṣya and Abhojya.

46 My conception of these three levels of Hindu law is adopted with considerable modi-fications from davis’ analysis of what he terms “intermediate-level corporate groups” (see davis, “intermediate realms”).

References

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