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Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences
Rules Without Meaning is an original study of ritual and mantras which shows that rites lead a life of their own, unaffected by religion or society. In its analysis of Vedic ritual, it uses methods inspired by logic, linguistics, anthropology and Asian studies. New insights are offered into various topics including music, bird song and the origin of language. The discussion culminates in a proposal for a new human science that challenges the current dogma of «the two cultures» of sciences and humanities.
- GenresPhilosophyReligion
492 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1990
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October 12, 2019
A treasure ! Sans the academic meandering, Staal documents perhaps the last Vedic rite performed anywhere on the Indian subcontinent. Moreover, some chants are so ancient that they contain unintelligible non-Sanskrit sounds. This is a profound discovery, considering all Hindu mantras are codified and memorized verbatim, with zero window for errors. Lays the groundwork for how humans created language.
From his 1975 film : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvkY...
BACKGROUND
——————---
“… The Indian science of ritual… is closely related to Indian linguistics but has no counterpart among Western sciences.”
“If Western scholars of language had adopted the rationalism of the Indian grammarians, which was embodied in their notion of rule, linguistics could have been related to logic and mathematics… Instead, Western scholars abandoned logic and concentrated on texts.”
“No mantras may be learned from books. They can only be learned, at the appropriate time, by eligible students from eligible teachers.”
“Ritual is not for wish-fulfillment, since rites have to be performed by those who are eligible… Ritual requires precision, accuracy and an extreme degree of formality… The rites are traditionally transmitted from each generation to the next with… exclusive attention only to their form. Meaning is not mentioned, and interpretations are not given…”
“If one wants a brief, approximate and practical translation of the term mantra into English, ‘sacred formula’ or ‘spell’ is often appropriate.”
“Mantras should be pronounced correctly and completely; but they should in addition be recited with the correct degree of loudness, at the correct pitch, and at the correct pace.”
“Such techniques of oral transmission… minimize the probability of a single word being lost.”
“Most Indian mantras originated in the Vedas and have since become virtually indestructible.”
“…There are 70 million of them according to a Sanskrit text.”
“There are moreover traditional rituals which last 1,000 years…”
“The notion that deities are called down by mantras, songs or invocations, and that they heed those calls, is… common…”
“The mystical state is a state of awareness… a state of consciousness that is beyond language or ineffable. Mantras give access to this ineffable state.”
“In the earliest Vedic literature, rituals, along with mantra and chants, are used by gods and demons to fight and conquer each other, and sometimes to create worlds.”
“…Mantras are not only believed to conjure up deities which is what a spell may be expected to do; in Tantrism, they are deities. In other words, there must be more afoot.”
“…Silence plays a very important role… Many Vedic mantras are anirukta (not enunciated), upämsu (inaudible), or are recited manasa (mentally). The brahman priest is in principle always silent.”
“My second remark relates to the psychology of the chanters. All these chants are transmitted orally and learned by heart, together with their order, distribution, interrelationships, and ritual applications and uses. Such an astonishing feat of memorization…”
“Even a change in the order of two sütras — a simple inversion, for example — would have far reaching implications and consequences… just as an inversion of the amino acids within a gene may lead to diametrically opposed characteristics.”
“Perhaps Vedic ritual is too sophisticated, highly developed, and intellectual.”
“I believe that it would be profitable for Western psychologists who are studying memory to learn Sanskrit. This would enable them to go to India and study the mnemonic techniques and practices of those increasingly rare traditional pandits that are... walking encyclopedias.”
AGNICHAYANA OF 1975
-------------------
“Akkitiripad instructs his son Vallabhan… the youngest among the 17 officiating priests… He was already an excellent reciter, and had witnessed numerous rites and ritual performances, but at the time of the agnichayana he had never performed nihnava himself. His father appeared at the right time, and showed him precisely how to do it. No words were used. Neither father nor son would pause to think… what the nihnava rite is supposed to mean. This is how ritual is transmitted - successfully, one might add, since it has gone on in India for about 3,000 years. What is remarkable about this case of ritual transmission is that it disregards not only meaning, but does not even use language.”
“The 29th or final shastra recitation of the agnichayana, dedicated to the Ashvin twins, is recited by the hotri before sunrise on the final day and consists of 1,000 mantras. It is a tour de force not only because of the length of the recital but also because of its complexity. Its demands on the powers of memory are extraordinary…”
“…Among the 1,000 bricks, 10 are called ’rain-bringing' bricks.”
“The performers are totally immersed in the proper execution of their complex tasks. Isolated in their sacred enclosure, they concentrate on correctness of act, recitation and chant. Their primary concern, if not obsession, is with rules.”
“In long recitations from the Rgveda… the verses are recited uninterruptedly, without taking breath at the end of each verse.”
“Only the omission and insertion of particular mantras can explain the extraordinary feat of memory that is here on display. The hotri knows thoroughly the Rgveda Samhitâ from beginning to end. Throughout the recitation, he never hesitates …”
“…118 pebbles, called sarkara in Sanskrit…are inserted between the bricks like mortar… The term sarkara incidentally is pre-Indo-European: it is cognate with Latin calculus and, via Arabic, with English sugar.”
“…The Sämaveda lists the melodies to which these verses are sung. It consists of the more common grämageyagäna (songs to be sung in the village) and the more esoteric aranyageyagäna or aranyegeyagäna (songs to be sung in the forest).”
“When the blindfolded Grâvastut priest recites his Rgveda verses at the midday pressing of the soma, he seems in fact—as his name indicates—to be addressing the pressing stones (grâvastut).”
“It is unlikely that we shall ever know how long oral traditions have been maintained in Africa, Australia, or the Americas. But in India and China, where the past is known as well as the present—and sometimes better known— solid results can be attained…”
EVOLUTION OF SOUND TO LANGUAGE
-----------------------
“Vedic ritual is not only the oldest surviving ritual of mankind, it also provides the best source material…”
“It is we who are obsessed by language and who have lost touch with ritual… For early man, ritual was at least as important as language…”
“…Monkeys and apes… have little relationship with human language, but much with the ways human beings express emotion through gesture, facial expressions, and tone of voice.”
“Innate knowledge of rules is the result of a process that may have gone on for millions of years. It may be unconscious because it may reflect knowledge acquired by the species that never became conscious in any individual.”
“It seems likely that human language is not as old as was once believed: perhaps around 100,000 years… Ritual is much older; Neanderthal man had elaborate rituals… It is likely that the same holds for mantras, for mantras occupy a domain that is situated between ritual and language.”
“…More than 250,000 years ago, man learned the use of fire but he could not make it. So fire was collected from natural conflagrations and was carefully kept and carried around. Elaborate techniques were devised for the preservation of fire. Finally, more than 50,000 years ago, man learned how to make fire. At this point ritualization and the cult of fire came into being.”
“A distinction was made between such ‘eternal’ fire and the ‘new’ fire which could now be made—a distinction we have since abandoned as irrational. To ancient man, and in several existing societies, fires have retained individuality. They should not be mixed. Fires have to be extinguished, or newly made, at set times by ritual experts.”
“Mantras are beyond the boundary of language, at the highest level of speech situated beyond language and eventually right to the zone of silence… the source of language, which is the source of all creation itself.”
“…Monosyllabics are earlier than polysyllabics.”
“Many chants are similar in structure… a triple repetition of six syllables… Such meaningless syllables from the Sämaveda are called stobha… very similar to the bija mantras of later Tantrism :
phut phut phut phut phut phut
hähu hau hau hau hau hau
kähvä hvä hvä hvä hvä ”
“Sounds did more than accompany rites; they developed into a language that refers to rites.”
“Language derived from mantras in the course of evolution.”
“Meaning was introduced last into an evolution that consists of 3 stages:"
I . Earliest - bija, stobha
II. Intermediate - elaborate constructions (hä bu hä bu hä bu bhä bham)
III. Final - language
"The earliest stage represents features that are found among vertebrates, and are certainly pre-human. The intermediate stage may be anthropoid or characteristic of early man, but is probably much older. The final stage corresponds to the last fifty to 100,000 years of the development of homo sapiens.”
“Human language developed from mantras…”
“…The most natural order of sound production is an opening of the mouth followed by its closure. This is a very apt description of the mantra om…”
“…Writing was not known in ancient India… Of the earlier Harappa civilization, a few hundred seals were found which contain symbols… which have not been deciphered, may be regarded as a script, ownership marks, astrological formulas, or something else… There are no links between these inscriptions and the later Indian scripts.”
“Writing was alright for keeping accounts but it continued to be emphatically and meticulously excluded from the ancestral traditions which were considered too pure to be written down.”
“Unlike epic descriptions, which are explicit and full of attention to detail, the Vedas, and especially the Rgveda, were allusive even in their original context… descriptions, addressed to insiders and presupposing specific knowledge…”
“Another difference between the transmission of the epics and that of the Vedas: the former were transmitted by bards, addressing villagers in open settings; the latter were handed down from father to son or from teacher to pupil in strict and often secret isolation.”
ON ANIMAL SACRIFICE
----------------
“When the victim is tied to the sacrificial pole, ‘the cord is fastened to the right foot, goes round the left side of the neck and is then wound round the right horn and finally fastened to the stake.’ This explains the origin of the rite: originally, the victim's head was cut off while it was tied to the stake.”
“The killing of sacrificial victims by ritualists was ridiculed in the earliest Vedic texts. It occurs in a verse of the Rgveda (10.82.7) : ‘Enveloped in mists and stammering, taking life, the reciters wander’ … The trend away from animal sacrifice, which culminated in the Upanishads, Jainism and Buddhism, is found throughout Vedic ritual itself.”
“Säkyamuni does not oppose the pagan gods of Hinduism. He recognizes that the deities, honored and worshipped by man, will in turn honor and worship him. He does not condemn pagan rites: he disapproves of sacrifice in which living beings are killed.”
.
From his 1975 film : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvkY...
BACKGROUND
——————---
“… The Indian science of ritual… is closely related to Indian linguistics but has no counterpart among Western sciences.”
“If Western scholars of language had adopted the rationalism of the Indian grammarians, which was embodied in their notion of rule, linguistics could have been related to logic and mathematics… Instead, Western scholars abandoned logic and concentrated on texts.”
“No mantras may be learned from books. They can only be learned, at the appropriate time, by eligible students from eligible teachers.”
“Ritual is not for wish-fulfillment, since rites have to be performed by those who are eligible… Ritual requires precision, accuracy and an extreme degree of formality… The rites are traditionally transmitted from each generation to the next with… exclusive attention only to their form. Meaning is not mentioned, and interpretations are not given…”
“If one wants a brief, approximate and practical translation of the term mantra into English, ‘sacred formula’ or ‘spell’ is often appropriate.”
“Mantras should be pronounced correctly and completely; but they should in addition be recited with the correct degree of loudness, at the correct pitch, and at the correct pace.”
“Such techniques of oral transmission… minimize the probability of a single word being lost.”
“Most Indian mantras originated in the Vedas and have since become virtually indestructible.”
“…There are 70 million of them according to a Sanskrit text.”
“There are moreover traditional rituals which last 1,000 years…”
“The notion that deities are called down by mantras, songs or invocations, and that they heed those calls, is… common…”
“The mystical state is a state of awareness… a state of consciousness that is beyond language or ineffable. Mantras give access to this ineffable state.”
“In the earliest Vedic literature, rituals, along with mantra and chants, are used by gods and demons to fight and conquer each other, and sometimes to create worlds.”
“…Mantras are not only believed to conjure up deities which is what a spell may be expected to do; in Tantrism, they are deities. In other words, there must be more afoot.”
“…Silence plays a very important role… Many Vedic mantras are anirukta (not enunciated), upämsu (inaudible), or are recited manasa (mentally). The brahman priest is in principle always silent.”
“My second remark relates to the psychology of the chanters. All these chants are transmitted orally and learned by heart, together with their order, distribution, interrelationships, and ritual applications and uses. Such an astonishing feat of memorization…”
“Even a change in the order of two sütras — a simple inversion, for example — would have far reaching implications and consequences… just as an inversion of the amino acids within a gene may lead to diametrically opposed characteristics.”
“Perhaps Vedic ritual is too sophisticated, highly developed, and intellectual.”
“I believe that it would be profitable for Western psychologists who are studying memory to learn Sanskrit. This would enable them to go to India and study the mnemonic techniques and practices of those increasingly rare traditional pandits that are... walking encyclopedias.”
AGNICHAYANA OF 1975
-------------------
“Akkitiripad instructs his son Vallabhan… the youngest among the 17 officiating priests… He was already an excellent reciter, and had witnessed numerous rites and ritual performances, but at the time of the agnichayana he had never performed nihnava himself. His father appeared at the right time, and showed him precisely how to do it. No words were used. Neither father nor son would pause to think… what the nihnava rite is supposed to mean. This is how ritual is transmitted - successfully, one might add, since it has gone on in India for about 3,000 years. What is remarkable about this case of ritual transmission is that it disregards not only meaning, but does not even use language.”
“The 29th or final shastra recitation of the agnichayana, dedicated to the Ashvin twins, is recited by the hotri before sunrise on the final day and consists of 1,000 mantras. It is a tour de force not only because of the length of the recital but also because of its complexity. Its demands on the powers of memory are extraordinary…”
“…Among the 1,000 bricks, 10 are called ’rain-bringing' bricks.”
“The performers are totally immersed in the proper execution of their complex tasks. Isolated in their sacred enclosure, they concentrate on correctness of act, recitation and chant. Their primary concern, if not obsession, is with rules.”
“In long recitations from the Rgveda… the verses are recited uninterruptedly, without taking breath at the end of each verse.”
“Only the omission and insertion of particular mantras can explain the extraordinary feat of memory that is here on display. The hotri knows thoroughly the Rgveda Samhitâ from beginning to end. Throughout the recitation, he never hesitates …”
“…118 pebbles, called sarkara in Sanskrit…are inserted between the bricks like mortar… The term sarkara incidentally is pre-Indo-European: it is cognate with Latin calculus and, via Arabic, with English sugar.”
“…The Sämaveda lists the melodies to which these verses are sung. It consists of the more common grämageyagäna (songs to be sung in the village) and the more esoteric aranyageyagäna or aranyegeyagäna (songs to be sung in the forest).”
“When the blindfolded Grâvastut priest recites his Rgveda verses at the midday pressing of the soma, he seems in fact—as his name indicates—to be addressing the pressing stones (grâvastut).”
“It is unlikely that we shall ever know how long oral traditions have been maintained in Africa, Australia, or the Americas. But in India and China, where the past is known as well as the present—and sometimes better known— solid results can be attained…”
EVOLUTION OF SOUND TO LANGUAGE
-----------------------
“Vedic ritual is not only the oldest surviving ritual of mankind, it also provides the best source material…”
“It is we who are obsessed by language and who have lost touch with ritual… For early man, ritual was at least as important as language…”
“…Monkeys and apes… have little relationship with human language, but much with the ways human beings express emotion through gesture, facial expressions, and tone of voice.”
“Innate knowledge of rules is the result of a process that may have gone on for millions of years. It may be unconscious because it may reflect knowledge acquired by the species that never became conscious in any individual.”
“It seems likely that human language is not as old as was once believed: perhaps around 100,000 years… Ritual is much older; Neanderthal man had elaborate rituals… It is likely that the same holds for mantras, for mantras occupy a domain that is situated between ritual and language.”
“…More than 250,000 years ago, man learned the use of fire but he could not make it. So fire was collected from natural conflagrations and was carefully kept and carried around. Elaborate techniques were devised for the preservation of fire. Finally, more than 50,000 years ago, man learned how to make fire. At this point ritualization and the cult of fire came into being.”
“A distinction was made between such ‘eternal’ fire and the ‘new’ fire which could now be made—a distinction we have since abandoned as irrational. To ancient man, and in several existing societies, fires have retained individuality. They should not be mixed. Fires have to be extinguished, or newly made, at set times by ritual experts.”
“Mantras are beyond the boundary of language, at the highest level of speech situated beyond language and eventually right to the zone of silence… the source of language, which is the source of all creation itself.”
“…Monosyllabics are earlier than polysyllabics.”
“Many chants are similar in structure… a triple repetition of six syllables… Such meaningless syllables from the Sämaveda are called stobha… very similar to the bija mantras of later Tantrism :
phut phut phut phut phut phut
hähu hau hau hau hau hau
kähvä hvä hvä hvä hvä ”
“Sounds did more than accompany rites; they developed into a language that refers to rites.”
“Language derived from mantras in the course of evolution.”
“Meaning was introduced last into an evolution that consists of 3 stages:"
I . Earliest - bija, stobha
II. Intermediate - elaborate constructions (hä bu hä bu hä bu bhä bham)
III. Final - language
"The earliest stage represents features that are found among vertebrates, and are certainly pre-human. The intermediate stage may be anthropoid or characteristic of early man, but is probably much older. The final stage corresponds to the last fifty to 100,000 years of the development of homo sapiens.”
“Human language developed from mantras…”
“…The most natural order of sound production is an opening of the mouth followed by its closure. This is a very apt description of the mantra om…”
“…Writing was not known in ancient India… Of the earlier Harappa civilization, a few hundred seals were found which contain symbols… which have not been deciphered, may be regarded as a script, ownership marks, astrological formulas, or something else… There are no links between these inscriptions and the later Indian scripts.”
“Writing was alright for keeping accounts but it continued to be emphatically and meticulously excluded from the ancestral traditions which were considered too pure to be written down.”
“Unlike epic descriptions, which are explicit and full of attention to detail, the Vedas, and especially the Rgveda, were allusive even in their original context… descriptions, addressed to insiders and presupposing specific knowledge…”
“Another difference between the transmission of the epics and that of the Vedas: the former were transmitted by bards, addressing villagers in open settings; the latter were handed down from father to son or from teacher to pupil in strict and often secret isolation.”
ON ANIMAL SACRIFICE
----------------
“When the victim is tied to the sacrificial pole, ‘the cord is fastened to the right foot, goes round the left side of the neck and is then wound round the right horn and finally fastened to the stake.’ This explains the origin of the rite: originally, the victim's head was cut off while it was tied to the stake.”
“The killing of sacrificial victims by ritualists was ridiculed in the earliest Vedic texts. It occurs in a verse of the Rgveda (10.82.7) : ‘Enveloped in mists and stammering, taking life, the reciters wander’ … The trend away from animal sacrifice, which culminated in the Upanishads, Jainism and Buddhism, is found throughout Vedic ritual itself.”
“Säkyamuni does not oppose the pagan gods of Hinduism. He recognizes that the deities, honored and worshipped by man, will in turn honor and worship him. He does not condemn pagan rites: he disapproves of sacrifice in which living beings are killed.”
.
October 26, 2007
Very strange argument, very good argumentation.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews