Conference: The Fourth International Vedic Workshop:
The Vedas in Culture and History, Austin, Texas, May, 2007
Panel: The Reception of the Veda: Then and Now
"The Altar and the Liṅga: the Adoption and Supersession of Vedic Ritual in Medieval Śaivism"
(Benjamin J. Fleming)
Abstract:
This paper will explore the depictions of Vedic rituals in Purāṇic literature, focusing on the medieval Śaivite story traditions. I will first consider narratives that depict the supersession of Vedic altar worship by liṅga worship. I will then suggest, however, that these narratives may reflect a more ambivalent relationship between Śaivism and Vedic religion, possibly pointing to internal debates over the proper modes of Śaivite worship. My primary focus will be on the story traditions related to Mahākāla from the Avanti-khaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa and from the Śiva Purāṇa tradition. In some medieval Śaivite stories, Śiva is clearly celebrated as an outsider to Vedic sacrifice. This is exemplified by the corpus of stories surrounding the Destruction of Dakṣa’s sacrifice. Śiva’s role as Vedic outsider seems, at one level, to also be the focus of story traditions related to Mahākāla found in the Avanti-khaṇḍa. There, for example, Śiva enters a beautiful forest in which Brahmā dwells. The forest (Mahākālavana) is full of sages and ascetics performing Vedic altar rites. Having decapitated Brahmā and carrying his skull in his hand, Śiva makes his way to the center of the forest and lays the skull down on the ground, relieved of his sin of brahman murder. On the very spot the skull is set a liṅga appears, suggesting the liṅga’s supersession of the Vedic altar worship. Another story of the Avanti-khaṇḍa describes how brahmans worship Śiva at a Vedic altar, only to have skulls appear in place of the central fire. The brahmans discard these skulls as defiling to the altar, but they continue to appear, and the result is a large pile of skulls outside the sacrificial arena. At the end of the story, however, the brahmans discover that the pile of skulls marks the location of a primordial liṅga. It is the liṅga, not the altar, which is the proper focus of worship. Such stories raise interesting questions regarding the reception and adoption of Vedic practices by medieval Śaivites. Do the stories of the Avanti-khaṇḍa represent an adoption or extension of earlier ideas about Śiva as an outsider to Vedic sacrifice? Or might they reflect a more complex relationship between Vedic and Śaivite ritual in the medieval period? In my view, the image of the altar in these stories proves intriguing in light of our other evidence for Śaivite worshipers who pay homage at Vedic altars. We may find a precedent for this practice, for instance, in the Mahābhārata, when Aśvatthāman becomes possessed by Śiva while worshipping at a golden vedi. Even Arjuna is known to have worshiped Śiva at an altar (sthaṇḍila) in some versions of this epic. In the Śiva Purāṇa tradition, we also find cases in which both altar worship and Vedic religion are depicted in positive terms. When read in light of such sources, the possibility arises that tales about the supersession of Vedic altar worship reflect internal Śaivite debates, possibly critiquing Śaivite groups who worship Śiva at an altar rather than through the liṅga. My paper will suggest that we find, in medieval Śaivite story traditions, an impulse to embrace Vedic worship as well as an impulse to supersede it. Exploring their dynamic interaction, I will ask whether the supersessionist impulse might reflect an internal Śaivite discourse about the place of Vedic ritual in Śaivite practice. I will further consider whether this discourse is new to the medieval period or is, instead, a development of a more ancient phenomenon, bound up with the historical rise of Śiva and Śaivism itself.