Food for humans is more than a mere biological necessity. It is also a cultural construct, and cultural meanings underlie all aspects of the human relationship to food: production, preparation, exchange, and consumption (Lévi-Strauss 1969; Douglas 1975). The cultural construction of food, furthermore, is part of the broader social construction of reality (Berger and Luckman 1967; Berger 1969). Cultural ideas and norms relating to food are thus linked to other significant aspects of culture such as kinship, purity, ritual, ethical values, and social stratification. As Khare (1976) has argued convincingly, no aspect of food can be studied adequately except within the broader cultural system to which it belongs.

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of the roles food plays in defining types of ascetic ideology and levels of ascetic practice in India. Even within the context of asceticism, however, food needs to be studied within the broader cultural system of India, in spite of – one might indeed argue precisely because of– the fact that the Indian ascetic ideology is deeply anti-cultural, rejecting most social and cultural products and categories.

The Role of Food in the Indian Socio-Cosmic Order

It will be useful, therefore, to examine briefly at the outset the place food occupies in the Indian cultural system. I deal here principally with what Khare (1976) calls the primordial level of food circulation, namely, the role food plays in Indian cosmological speculations.

1. Among the founders of the Ceylon Studies Seminar, which began at Peradeniya in late 1968, was the then recently appointed professor of sociology, Gananath Obeyesekere. It was on the new premises of his department that the participants used to meet. He was also one of the earliest to provide papers to be discussed at those meetings. His first contribution, stemming from his long-term interest in the Pattini cult, was on an historical topic, “Gajabahu and the Gajabahu Synchronism” (Obeyesekere 1970). I happened to follow soon afterwards with a paper on “Millennialism in Relation to Buddhism” (Malalgoda 1970). My presence at Peradeniya owed something very directly to Gananath Obeyesekere. It was he who recruited me to teach in the sociology department (where, some seven years earlier, he himself had given me my first lessons in that subject). In paying tribute to him now, I am reminded naturally of that happy and stimulating academic year 1968-69, when I saw him almost daily and got to know him well. It is appropriate, therefore, that an essay completed in that year provides the starting point for the present contribution.

One of the unusual items cited in that essay of mine was a brief text called Sumana Sūtraya, unpublished but available in manuscript at the libraries of both the Colombo Museum and the British Museum (Malalgoda 1970: 438-439).

In this volume we, the authors, honour and celebrate, individually and collectively, the work of Gananath Obeyesekere, one of the most inspiring and provocative anthropologists of our time. Professor Obeyesekere's work, prolific by any standards, covers a wide range of subjects and crosses disciplinary boundaries. It nevertheless falls within two broad academic areas, anthropology and Asian Studies. With the exception of two papers, this collection consists of Asianist work from different disciplines — Anthropology, Religion, Sociology, History, Art and Languages.

In the course of his long and distinguished career, Professor Obeyesekere has accumulated a very large number of students, friends and colleagues, making the task of editing a collection like this both easy and difficult, easy because there is no scarcity of willing and eager contributors, and difficult because of the practical considerations of limiting the collection to a manageable size. Coherence was another issue. While it is desirable to have a collection of essays focussed on a single theme, that choice brings along with it the question of what the theme should be, and the constraint to leave out eager contributors merely because their chosen topic does not come within the bounds of the selected theme. For this reason I decided to ask our contributors to write on any subject of their choice. When the contributions arrived however, it was possible to bring about a degree of coherence by grouping them into categories that evoked different areas of Professor Obeyesekere's wide-ranging work.

A stick carried in the hand is one of the more interesting themes in the history of religions. Gods and kings, priests and holy men, carry an assortment of sticks: scepter, mace, wand, baton, and the like. Many studies have examined the religious and practical significance of carrying a staff. In ancient India the best known examples are associated with the Vedic sacrificer (yajamāna) and the Vedic student (brahmacārin). Both carry staffs made of different wood corresponding to their varṇa. The Gṛhya and the Dharma literature contain rules that govern every aspect of their manufacture and use.

It comes as no surprise then that the staff is also associated in India with holy men. Literary, inscriptional, and art-historical sources indicate that hermits in the woods as well as itinerant mendicants carried staffs.

Already in Pāṇini we find the term maskarin, staff bearer, as an epithet for a renouncer. Gosāla, the founder of the Ājīvikas, also had the epithet maskarin, and the carrying of a single bamboo staff was a hallmark of Ājīvika ascetics (Basham 1951: 99-100). Jain sources indicate that Jain monks used a variety of staffs and sticks for several purposes. One type bearing the technical term daṇḍa was used as a walking stick during begging (Deo 1956, 273–74). Buddhist Sanskrit literature uses the term khakkhara for a monk's staff. In none of the other ascetic traditions, however, did the staff assume the centrality that it did in the Brahmanical tradition.

In what follows I propose to point out (a) an erroneous meaning of lokāyata, and (b) a redundant entry, lokāyatana, in the Sanskrit-Wörterbuch (abbreviated later as S-W) and to account for the mistakes.

(a) Lokāyata

S-W inter alia says: “In Pali (it) is said to mean an imaginary story, romance, cf. Burnouf in Lot (us), de la b(onne) 1(oi), 409 and lokāyatika.” Under lokāyatika it refers to “perhaps another meaning of the word” (other than “a materialist”) and cites Burnouf, ibid., 168 and 409.

Burnouf in his French translation of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra (Ch. 13) writes, “[A Boddhisattva Mahāsattva] does not court the Lokāyatikas” (ne recherche pas les Lokāyatikas) and explains in a note:

He refers to Moggallāna's Abhidhānappadīpikā as printed in Clough (1824) as his source.

T.W. Rhys Davids strongly objected to this interpretation:

What does it mean to be a native anthropologist? Is there such a thing as native anthropology? If so, how does it differ from non native anthropology? As anthropology is traditionally a discipline that studies the ‘Other’ and it sets as a goal for itself, “to grasp the native's point of view?”, the question of nativism is important. Yet, it has not been given the attention it deserves. This essay tackles the issue of nativism and ask questions about its meanings and its implications for anthropological knowledge. The essay argues that anthropology as a discipline, that is as a field regulated by specific epistemology and certain rules for its writings give its adherers a specific identity that makes them part and parcel of the same temple. Yet, the essay also shows that anthropology requires a double belonging. A discussion of the well known debate between Gananath Obyesekere and Marshal Sahlins shows that the question of nativism is not about being from there, as it is about being from here and from there, not necessarily ethnically, but culturally, and especially epistemologically.

Since the publication of Writing Culture in 1986, anthropologists have better recognized that their craft is first and foremost about writing and that writing is not merely a means by which one comprehends the real, but instead, is a way to give it meaning (Clifford, Marcus 1986).

As the oldest extant complete commentary on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, the Kaśikāvṛtti (KV) occupies a unique place in the history of Indian grammatical literature. It is generally believed to have been composed in the 7th century C.E. and it is traditionally considered the work of two authors, Jayāditya and Vāmana, about whom virtually nothing is known. A number of questions about its composition and relationship with other texts belonging either to the early Pāṇinian tradition or to other grammatical schools— in particular, the Cāndra and the Jainendra—still remain unanswered and require to be investigated in depth, as is pointed out by the authors of the articles that form the second part of this volume.

This chapter and the following one present our motivations for undertaking the task of preparing a critical edition of the Kāśikāvṛtti (KV). A brief editorial history of the KV, revolving around two major events, its editio princeps and its first purportedly “critical” edition, will help to place our effort in a broader perspective. This will be followed in the next chapter/section of this book by a description of the methodology we have adopted in the various stages of our research, and a discussion of the variant readings that we have accepted into the reconstituted text. A description of the manuscripts used for this edition can be found in the end of the Introduction of this volume, before the beginning of the edition.

The first printed edition of the KV

In 1938, in his Descriptive Catalogue of the manuscripts kept at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, Belvalkar had already expressed the opinion that a critical edition of this work was most needed. In fact, even seventy years later, the KV, like the majority of the texts belonging to the Pāṇinian tradition, has still not had a proper critical edition.

Most of the editions of the KV seem to be influenced by the first printed edition by Paṇḍit Bāla Śāstrī, which appeared in Benares in the journal The Pandit between 1873 and 1879.

Suicide committed by the young and the old alike, by nobles and peasants, men and women, for what may be termed broadly “religious” motives has been a common phenomenon in the history of India down to the present day. It is, however, primarily in the ascetic traditions that suicide came to be considered a proper way, and in some cases the most excellent way, of bringing to an end one's earthly sojourn.

Greek records show that a naked philosopher (gymnosophist) named Kalanos, who accompanied Alexander the Great back from India, burnt himself on a pyre. It is, moreover, recorded by Strabo that the Indian ambassadors to Augustus Ceasar were accompanied by a man who committed his naked body to flames. These classical accounts are corroborated by the frequent allusions to such suicide in ancient Indian literature and more especially in treatises on the life and conduct of ascetics.

Among the Jains the most excellent way to end one's life is by starvation (sallekhana). All the founders of the Jain faith (Jina or Toerthaṃkara) are said to have committed suicide in this fashion. A similar practice existed among the Ājīvakas. Buddhism is the only ascetic tradition that firmly disapproved of suicide on any grounds whatsoever. The Buddhist tradition includes the wish to end one's life among the three desires that feed the fire of existence.

Turning to the Brahmanical tradition, we find that a vānaprastha (forest hermit), that is, a member of the third stage of life (āśrama), was permitted to commit suicide when he found himself too feeble to perform the duties of his state.

1920s Republic

When the military interrupted parliamentary democratic politics in Turkey in 1980, the Turkish population did not know or predict that this was indeed the harbinger of far-reaching transformation in the position Islam has been used to occupying in the social and public life of Turkey. José Casanova's (1994) thesis about the significant “deprivatization” of religion applies well to the noteworthy presence that Islamic religiosity has achieved in Turkey's social, cultural, political and economic life in the last two decades or so. The term “deprivatization” signifies the emergence of new historical developments that entail the reversal of a certain secular trend, involving the entrance of religion into the public sphere and the arena of political contestation. Religion is called upon not simply to defend the territory that has been allocated to it,

Following Casanova's thinking, it is possible to talk about a process of “deprivatization” of Islam in Turkey since the 1980s. Since then, not only has Turkey's political life become fairly volatile and unpredictable, but the social and cultural life has been characterized by the confrontation or clash of secular and Islamic ways of living, styles of dressing and manners, targeting the constitution of bodies and subjectivities.

Introduction

A collection of all available Cārvāka fragments has been a desideratum since Henry Thomas Colebrooke first wrote on the materialist tradition in India in 1827. For a pretty long time scholars relied almost exclusively on S-M's exposition in the SDS, Chapter 1. Slow but steady discovery of many a Cārvāka fragment, specially in the Buddhist and Jain works and other compendia of philosophical systems, made it clear that there was more than meets the eye. Formerly only two legendary names were associated with the materialist system: Bṛhaspati and Cārvāka. Śāntarakṣita's TS and Kamalaśīla's TSP provide three historical names of Cārvāka authors: Aviddhakarṇa, Kambalāśvatara and Purandara. Cakradhara mentions two more: Bhaṭṭa Udbhaṭa and Bhāvivikta. Several aphorisms and extracts from the works of these commentators were welcome additions to the meagre number of Cārvāka fragments known before the 1920s.

D.R. Shastri (1894-1961) first attempted to compile the Cārvāka fragments in his English-Sanskrit work, Chārvāka Shashṭi (1928). Not satisfied with those attributed to Bṛhaspati or the Cārvāka-s in general, he sought to find materialist traits in other systems of philosophy. Thus he compiled one hundred aphorisms from various sources, some of which, however, are not of Cārvāka origin (he quoted from the Mīmāṃsā-, Nyāya- and Sāṃkhya-sūtra-s as well). He also reproduced sixty verses (hence the title of the work, Cārvāka-ṣaṣṭi). They are taken from the NC by Śrīharṣa (verses 1-47), SDS by Mādhavācārya (48-55, 57-59), VMT by Cirañīva Bhaṭṭācārya (56) and ṢDSam by Haribhadra (60).

Introduction

‘The field’ and ‘the field trip’ are central tropes in the world of development practice. Whilst some development people work ‘in the field’, most are based in cities and towns, whilst others —visitors from head office or regional offices or consultants visiting for specific purposes— are even further from ‘the poor’ whom the development industry is meant to benefit. But for all, visits to ‘the field’ are highly significant moments where the development professional and the ‘native’ come face to face.

Yet precisely what the point is of these visits to ‘the field’ remains unclear. The trips by expatriate or foreign development personnel to urban slums or rural villages obviously have an importance to those who undertake them, but what can be gained through a few hours in a slum or a few days visiting remote fishing villages in Southeast Asia is uncertain. After all, such visits are carefully orchestrated and usually closely controlled, ‘development tourism’ of the most extreme sort. To an anthropologist even calling such jaunts ‘field visits’ is clearly to imbue them with qualities which they lack. And the clear contrast is made between ‘fieldwork’ —the sort of thing anthropologists do over long periods of time and which generate ‘authentic’ knowledge', and ‘field visits’— the sort of thing which development people do and which simply reinforce stereotypes and prejudices.

If caste in India has never been static, the pace of change accelerated from the mid-nineteenth century onward. This was a time during which elite members of many castes, in particular those most affected by urbanization and related social and economic changes, were beginning to develop new understandings of the nature of caste itself in parallel with new ways of managing their affairs as communities. This paper deals with an example of this process, particularly as it unfolded during the twentieth century. The extent to which it is typical is hard to say, but it seems likely to me that the scenario to be described here had many parallels elsewhere in the India of that period. The caste in question is a Brahman community of Rajasthan usually called Dahima or Dayma Brahmans. Many caste members, however, prefer to be called Dadhich Brahmans, and we shall respect this preference here. The caste was once concentrated in the hinterland of a temple located in Nagaur district between the villages of Goth and Manglod. This temple contains an aniconic image of a goddess named Dadhimati. She is, in fact, the focus of the caste identity of the Dadhich Brahmans and is at the center of our story.

The temple is of great interest on its own account. Although the present structure dates from the ninth century, an inscription found at the site and dated 289 G.E. (608 CE) shows that it existed in some form in the early seventh century (Meister 2000; 2003; Meister, Dhaky 1991).