overemphasis on magic

[thompson at handel.jlc.net]

In response to the recent posting by Cezary Galewicz, I checked Thieme's
review [in JAOS 77, 1957] of Renou's EVP I. It might be useful to quote
Thieme [p.54, fn.2]:

"I might formulate 'Rigvedic art may be described as a sort of artistic
magic, or magical art,' adapting, for my own purposes, Edgerton's
characterisation of Vedic philosophy...."

Elsewhere, of course, Thieme frequently resorts to the term "magic, Magie",
as do many other Vedicists [prominently Lüders in his landmark book
"VaruNa"; I might also note Witzel's article of 1979, which I cited in my
review, among others].

I did not mean to suggest that interest in "magical gramnmar" is entirely
new with Elizarenkova.  Clearly, there has been awareness of its key role
in the "Vedic world-view" from the beginnigs of Vedic studies.  What I
would suggest is that with her a *close and rigorous* examination of the
problem is resumed, and new insights have been the result.

As for Frederick Smith's observation about "indigenous categories," I
entirely agree.  In my own work on Vedic speech-acts, I have made a point
of starting from precisely such things.  Note that the brahmodya, the
satyakriyA, the ahaMkAra, the Atmastuti, are all "indigenous categories"
which I have applied to significant features of the language of the Rgveda
[even when the terms themselves are not Vedic, or are not early Vedic].  We
surely do need to be attentive to these "indigenous categories."

Srinivasan Pichumani has expressed interest in Staal's position on mantras.
Here we have another can of worms, since Staal, utterly indifferent to
"indigenous categories", has proposed that mantras are in fact meaningless,
based largely on his very Western conception of meaning and language
[fundamentally influenced by Chomsky].  But his is a position that is not
easy to dismiss, in spite of its "deconstructionist" spirit, because it is
so well-informed about the processes of language, and because to a
signficant degree his theoretical work is rooted in his fieldwork: there is
an interesting relationship between his view of mantras and his work on the
agnicayana.


Sincerely,
George Thompson