The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture)

The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign

Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture Editors

Guy Stroumsa David Shulman Hebrew University of Jerusalem Department of Comparative Religion

VOLUME 6

The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign Edited by

S. La Porta and D. Shulman

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

The JSRC book series aims to publish the best of scholarship on religion, on the highest international level. Jerusalem is a major center for the study of monotheistic religions, or “religions of the book”. The creation of a Center for the Study of Christianity has added a significant emphasis on Christianity. Other religions, like Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religion, are studied here, too, as well as anthropological studies or religious phenomena. This book series will publish dissertations, re-written and translated into English, various monographs and books emerging from conferences.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISSN: 1570-078X ISBN: 978 90 04 15810 8 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. 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. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................................................ S. La Porta and D. Shulman

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PART ONE

CREATION 1. Creation through Hieroglyphs: The Cosmic Grammatology of Ancient Egypt ........................................................................... Jan Assmann

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2. KUN—the Existence-Bestowing Word in Islamic Mysticism: A Survey of Texts on the Creative Power of Language ............ Sara Sviri

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3. Adam’s Naming of the Animals: Naming or Creation? ........... Michael E. Stone

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4. Greek Distrust of Language ......................................................... Margalit Finkelberg

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PART TWO

CULTURAL ENCODING 5. This is no Lotus, it is a Face: Poetics as Grammar in Danˢdˢin’s Investigation of the Simile ........................................................... Yigal Bronner 6. The Performance of Writing in Western Zhou China .............. Martin Kern 7. Counseling through Enigmas: Monastic Leadership and Linguistic Techniques in Sixth-Century Gaza .......................... Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony 8. Devotional, Covenantal and Yogic: Three Episodes in the Religious Use of Alphabet and Letter from a Millennium of Great Vehicle Buddhism .............................................................. Dan Martin

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contents PART THREE

SELFTRANSFORMATION 9. Powers of Language in Kabbalah: Comparative Reflections ... Jonathan Garb

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10. The Poetics of Grammar in the Javano-Balinese Tradition ... Thomas M. Hunter

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11. How to Bring a Goddess into Being through Visible Sound David Shulman

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12. Translation and Transformation: Armenian Meditations on the Metamorphic Power of Language ................................. Sergio La Porta

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Index ....................................................................................................

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INTRODUCTION 1. A Sound Instead of Letters A great thing for them was the voice of the Creator, which shouted out over the earth, And he taught them a new book, which they did not know. As if for children, he wrote a sound instead of letters, And he caused them to meditate upon those characters concerning the existence of light. Like a line he made straight the expression before their sight, And they began crying, “Blessed is the creator who created the light!” “Let there be light,” cried the voice which possesses no voice, And the word issued forth to action without delay.

These verses are from the memrâ of Narsai of Nisibis (399–402) entitled “On the Expression, ‘In the Beginning’ and Concerning the Existence of God,”1 one of the most powerful statements about language in the Syriac Christian corpus. Narsai, the rabban (director) of the school at Edessa that focused on biblical interpretation, evokes in this passage the inherent tension between the semantic and trans-semantic modes of language—language as Creator and created, as sound and symbol, as model and actualization. Here language is the constructive element of the universe, its grammar the order and wonder of cosmic operation. According to Narsai, the creation, already formed by God but hidden as with a cloak, does not fully come into existence until communication between God and the intelligible universe begins. The previous verses of the poem tell us that God has already once exclaimed “Let there be light”, to which the angels now respond. Although the world has come into existence by means of God’s initial exclamation, He withholds its full actualization until the angelic host achieves awareness. It is only after their acclamation of praise that He once again releases His effectual pronouncement. The created universe is thus an echo, a reduplicated sound which refers to itself, but that sound is a voice that has issued

1 Trigg 1988, 213–214; Syriac text and French translation in Gignoux 1968, 570–3, ll. 249–56.

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from no-voice, from silence, and only derives its full meaning and efficacy from the angelic antiphonal. According to Narsai, God exits from his silence into this conversation in order to teach his remzâ—symbol, sign, mystery, suggestion—to the angels. In the work of Syriac authors of the 5th and 6th century, as Gignoux and Alwan have demonstrated, the remzâ also encapsulates the divine power that creates the universe, holds it together, arranges it, and refashions it at the eschaton (i.e., the end of days).2 The remzâ is the ultimate referent but is itself a symbol, transcending linguistic potential; it is an ineffable sign that refers to something that is beyond reference and therefore refers only to itself. The understanding and effectuality of that remzâ in Narsai’s poem, however, is related to the angelic praise—the actualization of the remzâ awaits the recognition and praise of the angelic host. It is clear from this emphasis on ‘praise’ that Narsai is here depicting the first heavenly liturgy. Through participation in this liturgical praise the angels become aware of the mysterious sign, the remzâ—‘more beautiful than the light itself ’—as well as of the universe, from the creation to the end, and of their own existence. The impact of this sacred act is not limited to the celestial sphere. As the reflection of the heavenly liturgy, the earthly, ecclesiastical liturgy partakes of this continuing cosmogonic revelation of the remzâ, and through communion in this liturgy, its participants likewise share in the knowledge of the ineffable beauty of the creation and of themselves. While God thus imparts His remzâ to the angels as a sound that attains actualization through the angelic echo of praise, He teaches his remzâ to humanity through scripture, whose fulfillment is attained through the liturgical act. The complete revelation of the remzâ transforms both angels and men and, ultimately, the universe itself. Narsai’s cosmogony of the remzâ exemplifies the kind of problems with which this volume is concerned. The remzâ is close to what we will be calling grammar—a paradigmatic mapping or reality made accessible to the angels as a creative sound functioning as a sign and to human beings as written signs, actualized in the audible, spoken liturgy. One could go much further in exploring this particular Syriac grammar; but in fact sounds and signs are everywhere, in all civilizations, saturated with metaphysical content. They always tend to be organized in ‘grammars’—sets of rules regulating the relations and transitions between

2

Gignoux 1966; Alwan 1988/89.

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perception and expression, that is, between primary cultural intuitions and their articulated modes. More generally, such grammars turn sounds into signs and define the range of signification. Each such grammar is itself a poetic enterprise, creating—or more accurately, refashioning—the world it purports to describe. 2. Grammar as a Privileged Mode In many civilizations, grammar, widely defined, is perceived as constituting the core of the cultural, intellectual enterprise as a whole. Probably the most striking example is that of ancient India, where grammar in its several modes evolved very early out of the attempt to preserve and analyze the sacred texts of the Veda. By the middle of the 1st millennium bc, the great grammarian Pānˢini had produced a systematic and generative system of Sanskrit articulated in its own meta-language with explicit hermeneutic procedures and devices for ‘reality-checking’. This system was so powerful that it became the paradigm for any scientific investigation in pre-modern India. For the early Sanskrit grammarians, linguistic science is heavily empirical and pragmatic. Nonetheless, its deeper metaphysical implications were never far from the grammarians’ own awareness. Patanjali, the author of the Mahābhāshya commentary on Pānˢini’s sutras, offers a series of justifications and rationales for studying grammar, culminating in the assertion that by studying grammar one becomes like God.3 Later Sanskrit grammarians claimed that they happened upon god in the midst of the arid materials of morphology as a man might by chance find a diamond buried under a heap of chaff. In short, for classical India, grammar offers privileged access to the primary forces that constitute reality. Such a view imparts a particular power and dignity to the grammarian. Thus for the Tamils in South India, the maverick Vedic sage, Agastya, the author of the first Tamil grammar, is the first culture hero and the creator of civilization. Similarly in Greece, the grammatical tradition was preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of linguistic analysis and yet served as a springboard for theological speculation. Plutarch, himself a priest at the famous Apollo shrine at Delphi, reveals that in the heart of the sanctuary was

3

Patanjali 1962.

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an inscription with the Greek word ei—‘you exist’ or, maybe, ‘if ’. . . .4 The word itself is clearly a trigger to altered perception, its grammatical ambiguity—verb, conditional particle—instigating theosophical ambiguity. Such effects may have been a normative component in oracular speech. Among Christian theologians, there developed a ‘sacred’ grammar in which the tools uncovered by their pagan predecessors unlocked the doors to knowledge of the Bible and its Creator. For example, Origen, in the Prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs, regards grammar as an absolutely necessary fundament to any intellectual and spiritual progress; grammar permeates all levels of science: There are three general disciplines by which one attains knowledge of the universe. The Greeks call them ethics, physics, and enoptics; and we can give them the terms moral, natural, and contemplative. Some among the Greeks, of course, also add logic as a fourth, which we can call reasoning. Others say that it is not a separate discipline, but is intertwined and bound up through the entire body with the three disciplines we have mentioned. For this ‘logic,’ or as we have said, reasoning, which apparently includes the rules for words and speech, is instruction in proper and improper meanings, general and particular terms, and the inflections of the different sorts of words. For this reason it is suitable that this discipline should not so much be separated from the others as bound in with them and hidden.5

While it is true that the object of Origen’s discussion is the correct reading and grasping of the biblical text, it is impossible to distinguish his textual world from the physical one, and thus the latter is equally amenable to a grammatical reading. In ninth-century Latin monasteries, grammar was the foundation of the liberal arts, the key to understanding the Bible and reality, and an instrument of salvation. Maurus Rabanus emphasizes the importance of grammar in the preface to his De clericum insitutione: Know, brethren, what the law requires Which fitly commands us to know the Word of God. It asks that he who has ears, should hear What the Holy Spirit speaks in the Church. Through grammar the Psalmist brings this to the people, Duly confirming their grasp on the law of God.

4 5

Plutarch 1969. Origen 1979, 231.

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So, brethren, we should strive always, With eyes and ears intent, to learn the Word of God.6

Such statements imply the notion of a universal grammar. It is however striking that often a particular linguistic paradigm retained its primacy even after its transposition to other languages. For example, the Armenian grammatical tradition struggled to resolve the tension inherent in applying Dionysius Thrax’s grammar of Greek to the Armenian language. However, the faith in a universal grammar, of which Greek and Armenian were just resonances, ensured that this Greek grammar in Armenian translation remained the standard grammatical text book well into the Middle Ages. Similarly, Sanskrit grammatical categories were projected, despite an inherent lack of suitability, onto medieval grammars of languages such as Tamil and Tibetan. It would be easy to adduce further examples of the privileged position of grammar in various civilizations. What needs to be stressed is the potential, always latent in the very notion of grammar, for applying this paradigm to contexts that transcend the purely morphological or syntactical study of speech. Grammar is magic. Let us try to explain what a sentence like this might mean. In a famous article from 1968, Stanley Tambiah proposed a method for making sense of the so-called “magical power of words.” Working with Malinowski’s Trobriand island materials—the spells and charms used in everyday rituals—Tambiah offers a highly rational, semiotic explanation for the expressivity activated by these ritualized forms of language. The problem here is not so much a purely logical one. To restate a Trobriand spell in terms of a metaphoric or metonymic semantics will not really help us to understand its dynamics. Such spells work. Even a word like metaphor used to explain such contexts seems hopelessly impoverished. In an organic cosmos like that of the Trobriand highlands or, indeed, of most of the cultures discussed in this volume—that is to say, in a cosmos in which everything is interconnected—what we call metaphor is almost always a statement about causality. These rituals are, of course, logical, and this logic can be analytically restated. More than logic, however, their grammar differs from ours. We would do better to ask ourselves what grammar they are using, rather than whether they are logical and rational in senses familiar to us.

6 Cited in Colish 1983, 64. On the importance of grammar for ninth-century Latin monasticism, see also Leclercq 1948, 15–22.

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Grammar in this sense offers a wider template than discursive logic or emotional and associative experience, both of which have served the historians of culture as readily accessible tools. By way of contrast, grammar, though selective, presents a methodology much more textured and elastic than other conceptual models. It is, for one thing, capable of containing both the semantic and the trans-semantic pieces of reality. It retains the contours of cultural expressivity, and allows for structured transitions among disparate domains. Grammar also accounts for iconic and symbolic effects, in which the intimacy, or indeed identity, between sign and signed or sound and meaning has been preserved. In an organic cosmos, the very existence of accidental effects within language may be precluded. Grammar is thus a privileged mode for perceiving or articulating such non-accidental relations. It is thus no accident that in culture after culture, grammar turns out to be dependably linked with creation and restoration. Knowledge of grammar allows access to the workings of reality, which the skilled grammarian is capable of using effectively—to bless or to curse, to kill or to heal, to make present or to transform. In this sense, grammar transcends the merely descriptive or referential analysis of linguistic systems. Such systems are perceived as subsets of a far more comprehensive poetics. The world itself is grammar-ed, though not necessarily in transparent ways. 3. What is Grammar? It is one thing to think of God as a grammarian and the Creation as essentially grammatical in its construction and operation, another to use the word grammar as a pragmatic system for describing and generating linguistic practices. Modern linguists in their more circumspect mode tend to operate on the basis of the latter perspective. They are not alone. Classical Greek, Sanskrit, Armenian, and Arabic grammarians, for example, were for the most part driven by empirical, highly analytical, and non-metaphysical concerns. Nonetheless, for these cultures, too, the grammarian may very easily shade off into the philosopher and, in some cases, into the healer/necromancer. Take the Armenian word for grammarian: k‘ert‘oł, which also means poet and philosopher; in the later grammatical tradition, the healing aspects of grammar are noted by the commentators.7 The whole history and self-perception of the 7

See S. La Porta’s contribution to this volume as well as Ervine 1995, 158.

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Sanskrit grammatical tradition—arguably the world’s most elaborate and sophisticated form of pre-modern linguistics—seem to be balanced somewhere between the blessing of divine omniscience [a gift of the god Śiva to the grammarians] and the curse of human forgetfulness. Moreover, from the very heart of the grammatical enterprise there emerged the figure of Bhartrˢhari (5th c.), a radical philosopher of the cosmos as a linguistic organism. Let us be clear. For the purposes of this book, we are using ‘grammar’ as a heuristic model that enables wide-ranging cross-cultural comparison. We think of the cosmos as grammaticalized—which is to say that all the sub-grammatical domains mentioned earlier are operative and accessible to analytic interpretation. Our usage extends and builds upon the latent linguistic presuppositions that we find in culture after culture. This view regards grammar not as a convention—even if specific intellectual traditions, and most modern linguists, think of language as largely or partly conventional—but as an inherent blue-print for reality, perhaps somewhat abstracted or generalized, but in any case, deeply woven into the fabric of cosmic experience. Sometimes we see a productive tension between the conventionalist and the naturally iconic understanding of language, with grammar poised somewhat uncomfortably between them. Take the Cratylus, for example. Much of Plato’s discussion revolves around the question of whether words, and especially names, are inherently or naturally linked to their referents. Throughout the text, Socrates, as usual, undermines the naive and absolutist positions of his interlocutors, Hermogenes and Cratylus, with a no-nonsense skepticism. Still, an understanding of the operation of the basic elements of language as organic and non-random keeps breaking through the surface of the debate, even in Socrates’s analysis. Look, for example, at Socrates’ deconstruction of Hermogenes’ conventionalist position (426d–427a–d): Well, the letter rho, as I was saying, appeared to be a fine instrument expressive of motion to the name-giver who wished to immitate rapidity, and he often applies it to motion. In the first place, in the words ῥειν (flow) and ῥοή (current) he imitates their rapidity by this letter, then in τρόμος (trembling), and in τρέχειν (run), and also in such words as κρούειν (strike), θραύειν (break), ἐρείκειν (rend), θρύπτειν (crush), κερματίζειν (crumble), ῥυμβει ːν (whirl), he expresses the action of them all chiefly by means of the letter rho; for he observed, I suppose, that the tongue is least at rest and most agitated in pronouncing this letter, and that is probably the reason why he employed it for these words. Iota again, he employs for everything subtle, which can most readily pass through all things. Therefore he imitates the nature of ἰέναι (go) and ἵεσθαι (hasten) by means of

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s. la porta and d. shulman iota, just as he imitated all such notions as ψυχρόν (cold, shivering), ζέον (seething), σείεσθαι (shake), and σεισμός (shock) by means of phi, psi, and zeta, because those letters are pronounced with much breath. Whenever he imitates that which resembles blowing, the giver of names always appears to use for the most part such letters. And again he appears to have thought that the compression and pressure of the tongue in the pronunciation of delta and tau was naturally fitted to imitate the notion of binding and rest. And perceiving that the tongue has a gliding movement most in the pronunciation of lambda, he made the words λει ːα (level), ὀλισθάνειν (glide) itself, λιπαρόν (sleek), κολλωː δες (glutinous), and the like to conform to it. Where the gliding of the tongue is stopped by the sound of gamma he reproduced the nature of γλισχρόν (glutinous), γλυκύ (sweet), and γλοιωː δες (gluey). And again perceiving that nu is an internal sound, he made the words ἔνδον (inside) and ἐντός (within), assimilating the meanings to the letters, and alpha again he assigned to greatness, and eta to length, because the letters are large. He needed the sign O for the expression of γόγγυλον (round), and made it the chief element of the word. Thus the legislator seems to have applied all the rest [of the letters], making a sign or names for each existing thing out of [these] letters and syllables; and in like fashion [he seems] then to have formed out of these [names and signs] everything else—by means of these same [letters and syllables]. That is my view, Hermogenes, of the truth of names.8

In the conclusion to his list of examples, Socrates says that God or the divine legislator first created the universe, including apparently its linguistic constituents, then produced names that have an intrinsic relation to the phonetic materials which constitute them. The process includes several stages including a final one compounding the coordinated phonetic materials to produce further names and signs and the phenomena construed out of them. Implicit in this view is a strong notion of a grammaticalized universe—mostly iconic, logically and syntactically ordered, and generative. This vision of a linguistically imprinted universe exerts so powerful a fascination that even Socrates, for all his radical skepticism, seems unable to escape it. A line leads from this point in the direction of a magical or sympathetic pragmatics such as we see in the Greek and Coptic magical papyri (circa 2nd c. bc to 2nd c. ad). As Patricia Cox Miller aptly observes, “when juxtaposed with the magical papyri, the Cratylus reads like the manual of instructions out of which the authors of those texts worked,

8 Plato 1977, 145–7 (426D–427D). We have altered the last two sentences of the translation.

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patiently dividing language into letters, letters into vowels, and so on.”9 There is an implicit notion of grammar as a systematic mechanics ordering the use of these efficacious materials. The papyri do not offer us a grammar; they presuppose one. There are still more far reaching possibilities to mention only a few that are germane to the following essays: We have Abulafia’s theology of the name as well as Kabbalistic theories of creative sounds and syllables (as in Sefer Yezˢira); Bhartrˢhari’s vision of a buzzing, humming, inherently divine linguistic world underlying and predating words and objects; the Christian apotheosis of grammar in God as Logos; the earlier Biblical insistence that God is a verb (‘to be’); and Ibn al-ʚArabī’s reading of the cosmos as an evolution from the divine imperative.10 For all such conceptual models, some notion of grammar, however minimal, provides a necessary condition for the operation of a linguistic cosmos. Yet if grammar comes to provide an authoritative paradigm for reading the world, we inevitably find voices that reject or rebel against this patterning. There are two skeptical approaches to the inherently linguistic ordering of the cosmos, both of which paradoxically end up reaffirming that very principle. One distrusts language as an accurate medium for truth without denying the latent grammaticality of reality. In such a view, ordinary language is incapable of expressing or containing the true underlying richness of experience. The only hope lies in repackaging and reordering the linguistic materials, sometimes in a trans-semantic mode. As M. Finkelberg says in her essay in this volume, “For Plato as for many others, rather than in language, the true grammar of the universe resided in the all-embracing harmony of music and number that represented the world order as it really is.” A second, more radical and subversive attitude seeks to undermine and dissolve anything that looks like authoritative syntax or semantics. There is a continuing tradition of such voices from the Nag Hammadi codices of Late Antiquity11 to the Dadaist poets of the twentieth century. W. Bohn remarks in the introduction to his anthology of Dada poetry that “opposing discursive and nondiscursive structures to each other, the Dadaists were among the first to discover that words could be used to convey information that was essentially extralinguistic.”12 Note, 9 10 11 12

Miller 1989, 492. See S. Sviri’s essay in this volume. See, e.g., Miller 1989, 481–2. Bohn 1993, xviii.

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however, that this vision, too, ultimately acknowledges and uses the linguistic building blocks that it finds so repulsive. If even conventionalist and skeptical views cannot avoid conceiving reality grammatically, it is no wonder that grammar serves as a culturally privileged mode for cognitive mapping. As such, it is also a good basis for the cross-cultural comparisons we are attempting here. IV. A Typology of Themes We have divided this volume into three relatively delimited domains, each of which takes up one major strand of the grammatical paradigm: issues of creation through grammaticalized language, of cultural encoding as poetics, and of meta-linguistic existential transformation. Let us take them one by one. 1. Creation Often we find a strong notion of creativity as an inherently linguistic act. As we saw in Narsai and as we know from other biblical and post-biblical traditions, God creates the world by speech of one kind or another— imperative, dialogic, meditative, mantric. In India, too, language is the creative mode par excellence, embodied in the goddess Vāc (‘voice’), without whom no cosmos is possible. Jan Assmann’s article uncovers a differential typology of linguistic creativity in ancient Egypt. Creation, whether conceived as an ‘intransitive’ cosmogony or a ‘transitive’ intentional act ultimately evolves a mythology which “shows the structure of the divine world to be primarily linguistic.” In the Egyptian case, this linguistic blueprint for reality materializes itself in the cosmic grammatology of the hieroglyphic signs. This link between writing and speech or sound is a rich comparative theme in its own right, as we see from M. Kern’s essay on Chinese bronze inscriptions in section 2 and in S. La Porta’s essay on Armenian theories of Logos and sign in section 3. Sara Sviri explores the immense ramifications of a single Arabic word (spoken by God), namely, kun, ‘be’! This Qur’ānic theme exfoliates itself in Sufi theories of creation as a divine linguistic imperative, which the human mystic assimilates and imitates in his own being. As Sviri shows, the creative power of this single word becomes in Ibn al-ʚArabī the key to the insoluble but generative “perplexity between the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’,” which lies at the heart of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s mystic anthropology.

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Michael Stone surveys the various and complex ways Armenian authors view the relationship between naming and creation in connection with Adam’s bestowal of names on the creatures. Stone elucidates the intimate link between naming and creation based upon the theology of Adam as the image of God in the Armenian exegetical tradition. According to these authors, the very word for God (֭‫[ קך׻ױ׸׶‬Astuac]) in Armenian is derived (by Volksetymologie) from the fact that God led (‫[ ׫ױקך ׸׶ך‬ast acoł]) the animals before Adam to be named. Thus, Adam’s God-given ability to bestow names actually produces God’s own name in a moment of profound mutual self-reference. As the tradition evolved, this power became associated with the sacerdotal function of naming at the rite of baptism. Finally, Margalit Finkelberg shows us the inevitable negative to all the above positives that imply an optimistic understanding of the potentiality of language, either for conveying truth or for shaping reality. In her paper, she argues that the classical Greek world was highly suspicious of language, viewing it as a social convention. But here, too, the world remains saturated with eloquent signs requiring interpretation and organized grammatically—in our use of the term. 2. Encoding To postulate grammar as an underlying grid or template allows the possibility of mapping the cultural topography which is often deeply encoded. As we stated earlier, visions of culture as grammaticalized sometimes privileged non-semantic or trans-semantic effects. Language may operate in a highly regular but non-transparent manner. In all such cases, the culture will elaborate a set of rules of interpretation, or protocol of reading—what we would call poetics. In other words, we take poetics as the hermeneutics of a grammaticalized universe. Since each culture encodes its grammar differently, distinctive configurations stand out clearly when we attempt to formulate or formalize such a poetic hermeneutic in a cross-cultural comparison. In India, for example, poetics is a natural extension of the grammatical sciences whose terminology and hermeneutic procedures it adopts. Y. Bronner reveals the operation of one primary mechanism, the simile, that becomes a building block for the logical analysis of figuration. Poetic language, for these poeticians, operates by a set of logical relations that diverge radically from ‘normal’ speech. Such operations require decoding and philosophical formulation. In other words, poetics

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is the science that maps that level of language—always slightly twisted (vakrokti) in comparison with everyday speech—in which the poet’s visionary truth embodies itself. Such a grammar of poetic speech is clearly privileged over standard denotative language. Writing is perhaps one of the most deeply encoded, culturally specific, forms of language; and the Chinese case is unique in this respect. Martin Kern describes the cultural valency of writing during the Western Zhou period (ca. 1200–ca. 1045 bce) and the formation of an official culture that the bronze inscriptions reflect. In the evolution of court ritual at this time, “writing transcended its principal functions of storing and circulating information” and “visually displayed cultural and social accomplishment.” As is clear from the Chinese example, implicit in the process of encoding and decoding is the question of power: who is authorized to conceal and reveal the message? In her contribution to this volume, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony reveals how the sixth-century Gazan ascetic, Barsanuphius, both deciphered signs and employed coded language to empower and grant authority to his teachings. In addition, Ashkelony argues, the technique of what the ancient redactor of Barsanuphius’s writings termed ‘counseling through enigmas’ created an intimacy between the master and his distant pupils. Dan Martin offers a rich typology of uses of and attitudes to phonemes and the raw stuff of Sanskrit and Tibetan syllabaries. There is a cross-cultural element to this typology which takes account of Tibetan appropriation of Sanskrit phonetic analysis. The northern Buddhist tradition rearranges its inherited linguistic materials in ways that are deliberately related to a theory of breath-driven metabolism, yogic innerness, and a Buddhist epistemology. Such a theory aims ultimately at “transforming our instruments of engagement with the world, not just the body, but also speech and mind.” Each of the articles in this section exemplifies what may turn out to be a normative evolutionary sequence from grammar as primarily creative, in various modes, via the elaboration of culturally sanctioned intra- and meta-linguistic codes toward the possibility of radical transformation of the self that inhabits this grammaticalized cosmos. 3. Self-Transformation One of the most striking features of the diverse traditions studied here— all presupposing a grammatical foundation culturally encoded and

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poetically elaborated—is the ease with which they open up the possibility for existential transformation. Stated differently, the particular poetics of grammar construct a bridge between the structured metaphysical domain and the individual self. Again and again, our texts offer programs for potential re-formation of the person who knows the grammar and the valence of sounds and signs. The final section of this volume presents four distinct cultural approaches to a language-based pragmatics of self-transformation. J. Garb focuses on the power of those radically non-semantic aspects of language, such as voice and breath, in certain strands of Kabbalistic praxis. Although these aspects have received much less attention than the powers operative within Hebrew letters and words, they nonetheless possess a theurgic potential rooted in the isomorphic relationship between human and divine breathing. Here we find a grammar of perhaps the most elemental aspect of language, that is, the breath that precedes and sustains articulation. The Kabbalist who gains access to this level of awareness, either individually or as part of a communal voice, impacts upon the internal composition of the deity and, in consequence, upon his own state of being. Garb situates his discussion within a comparative framework drawing parallels between Kabbalistic and tantric reflections on the power and uses of non-semanticized speech. Tom Hunter’s article begins with the theme of encoding, which in Java takes the form of an ‘orthographic mysticism’. The sheer graphic shape of the syllables turns out to be pregnant with vast energies available to the mystic. The grapheme resonates with the sonic levels of reality defined and contoured by poetry. The guiding principle is one of aesthetic condensation of metaphysical forces that, once controlled within the highly structured domain of kakawin poetry, are capable of revolutionizing the listener’s self-awareness. The Javanese example emerges in part from the kind of transformative linguistic practices that we find in Hindu-Buddhist tantra. David Shulman attempts to work out a rule-bound semiotic of mantric syllables both in South Indian poetics and in a major text of the Śrīvidyā cult. The successful application of syllable sequences by a practitioner who knows and understands their grammar of resonance enables him or her to materialize the goddess—who is the world—in her full, immediate presence. Readers who want to try it out for themselves should follow the rules given in the article—carefully. Finally, the Armenian materials discussed by S. La Porta offer perhaps the most complete elaboration of a grammar of sound and sign.

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Grammatical materials proper, derived from the Greek tradition, are recycled by the medieval Armenian theologians Grigor Narekac‘i and Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i so as to explain the underlying order of the universe infused by the divine Logos. In such a universe, the linguistic sign— sonar, graphic, and mathematical—serves the self as a primary means of divinization. Here grammar in the deepest sense becomes the preferred channel connecting and transforming the cosmic and the mundane. Grammar translates the divine into intelligible human language just as it translates the human soul into the divine Word. References Alwan, K. 1988/89. “Le ‘remzō’ selon la pensée de Jacques de Saroug.” Parole de l’Orient 15: 91–106. Bohn, W. (tr.) 1993. The Dada Market: An Anthology of Poetry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Colish, M. 1983. The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge. Rev. ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Ervine, R. 1995. “Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i Pluz’s Compilation of Commentary on Grammar as a starting point for the study of Medieval Grammars.” In New Approaches to Medieval Armenian Language and Literature, ed. J.J.S. Weitenberg. Dutch Studies in Armenian Language and Literature 3. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 149–66. Gignoux, P. 1966. “Les doctrines eschatologiques de Narsaï.” Oriens Syrianus 11: 321–52 and 461–88. ———— 1968. Homélies de Narsaï sur la Création, Patrologia Orientalis 34.3–4. Turnhout: Brepols. Leclercq, J. 1948. “Smagarde et la grammaire chrétienne.” Revue du Moyen Age Latin 4: 15–22. Miller, P.C. 1989. “In Praise of Nonsense.” In Classical Mediterranean Spirituality, ed. A. Hilary Armstrong, 489–505. New York: Crossroad. Origen 1979. “Prologue” to the Commentary on the Song of Songs. In Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works. Ed. R. Greer, The Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press. Patanjali 1962. Paspaśāhnika. Poona. Plato 1977. Plato: Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias. Tr. H.N. Fowler. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plutarch 1969. “De e apud Delphos.” In Moralia. Tr. F.C. Babbitt. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 384–94. J. Trigg 1988, Biblical Interpretation. Wilmington, Del.: M. Glazier.

PART ONE

CREATION

CREATION THROUGH HIEROGLYPHS: THE COSMIC GRAMMATOLOGY OF ANCIENT EGYPT Jan Assmann I. Creation and Cosmogony There are two fundamental models of conceiving the origin of the world, an intransitive and a transitive one. The intransitive model views the origin of the world as a spontaneous growth, developing all of itself out of a primordial chaos or matter, mostly water. The transitive model takes the world to be the object of a constructive activity of a creator. In what follows, I shall refer to the intransitive model by the term “cosmogony” and to the transitive one by the term “creation”. To us, creation, the transitive model, is the more familiar one, since it is shared by the three monotheistic religions, biblical and rabbinical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In ancient Egypt, the two models combine and interact in a rather complex manner. The first cosmogonic impulse is generally represented as a spontaneous process. Out of the primordial waters, a god arises. His name, Atum, signifies “non-being” and “complete being”; it is a typical example of what Sigmund Freud called “der Gegensinn der Urworte”, the contrarious meanings of primal terms.1 The cosmogonical moment is when Atum turns from non-being into being, adopting in the act the shape of the sun and emitting, according to Egyptian conceptions, air and fire, i.e. the god of air, Shu, and the goddess of fire, Tefnut. From then on, the process of creation or cosmogony continues in the “biomorphic” form of begetting and giving birth and unfolds in four generations. This is the famous cosmogony of Heliopolis which, in Egypt, holds the place of a Great Tradition, all other cosmogonies and creation accounts (of which there are a great many) being just variations of and commentaries on this basic conception. Shu-air and Tefnut-fire beget Geb-earth and Nut-heaven, who in turn gives birth to

1 Freud 2000, 227–34, a short article published in 1910 and based upon K. Abel, Über den Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884, which in its turn is dependent mostly upon Ancient Egyptian examples.

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five children: Osiris, Seth, Isis, Nephthys, and Horus. Horus, however, is also the child of Osiris and Isis, forming the fourth generation. Atum is the only god who has no parents and came spontaneously into being. He is therefore called kheper-djesef, “the self-generated one”, in Greek “autogenes”. This idea of a self-generated primordial deity personifying the origin of the universe had an enormous influence not only within the three millennia of ancient Egyptian cosmo-theological speculations but far beyond. The terms autogenes and monogenes abound in the Hermetic, Neoplatonic and related writings. In the Heliopolitan cosmogony, his mode of generating Shu and Tefnut is depicted as an act of masturbation and ejaculation, or of coughing and spitting, all of which are images for the idea of motherless procreation. Since the Egyptians ascribed the same mode of procreation also to the scarabbeetle scarabaeus sacer, this animal became a symbol of the “autogenic” god. Creation through procreation is a “biomorphic” concept, which is closer to cosmogony than to creation. There is no planning and no goaldirected activity involved. Also the unfolding of a genealogy in four generations may be seen as a form of natural growth, rather than of technical construction. The gods, however, interfere with creative acts into this natural process. Atum, having turned into the sun god Re and ruling his creation as the first king, decides after rebellious intentions against his rule by humankind to separate heaven and earth, to raise the sky high above the earth and to withdraw thither with the gods, leaving the kingship to his son Shu, who, being the god of the air, is perfectly fit for the task both of separating and connecting the spheres of gods and humans. The Egyptian story of the separation of heaven and earth has many parallels in the biblical story of the flood. In both cases, humankind is nearly annihilated and a new order is established which guarantees the continuation of the world under new conditions: in the Bible under the conditions of the Noachidic laws, in Egypt under the conditions of the state, which serves as a kind of church, establishing communication with the divine under the conditions of separation. The Heliopolitan cosmogony is at the same time what may be called a “cratogony”: a mythical account of the emergence and development of political power. At the beginning, be-reshit, is kingship. Kingship or rulership is conceived of in Egypt as the continuation of creation under the conditions of existence. It is first exercised by the creator himself in a still state-less form of immediate rulership and passes from him to Shu, to Geb and to Osiris. With Shu, it loses its immediate character and takes on the forms of symbolic

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representation, with Geb, the god of the earth, it becomes terrestrial and with Osiris, the god of the netherworld, it becomes political and historical. The line of succession describes a downward movement: from the sun via the air and the earth down into the netherworld. Moreover, it describes the transition from cosmogony to history, from the dynasties of the gods to the dynasties of human kings, from “deep time” to “historical time”. In the context of the Heliopolitan cosmogony, the central term is not “to create”, in Egyptian jrj “to do, to create, to produce”, but kheper, “to become, to take shape”. Kheper refers to the ideas of transformation, emanation and evolution. The god transforms himself into an active, conscious being emanating air and light, from which then the other gods evolve. There is a clear distinction between what emanates or evolves from god’s own substance and what is created out of external material. Typical of this thought are the metaphors of “secretion”: the first gods were spat and coughed out, while men arose from the tears of god.2 Even when the “issuing from the mouth” is no longer understood as secretion, but as a speech act, the names of the gods arise, as it were, incidentally and certainly unintentionally from the conversations of the god with himself or the primeval waters from which he emerged.3 II. Creation by Speech The creation by speech, or the speech act as a major means of creation, seems to be the great innovation of the New Kingdom, after some significant precursors in the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom. Let’s listen to a creation account in a hymn to Amun-Re dating from about 1400 bce: He came forth as self-generated, all his limbs speaking to him He formed himself before heaven and earth came into being the earth being in the primeval waters in the midst of the “weary flood”.4

2

CT VII 464–5; cf. also infra 1.4. Cf. the emergence of the “Eight Heh Gods” on the occasion of a conversation between Atum and Nun CT II 5–8; cf. Sauneron and Yoyotte 1959, 47. 4 Or, with Zandee 1992, 36f.: “between these” (nn = demonstrative, referring to “heaven and earth”). The words, jmjtw nn, occur in a similar context in pLeiden I 344v., i, 7. 3

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jan assmann You have started to create this land to establish what has come from your mouth (= the gods) You have raised heaven and kept earth down to make this land wide enough for your image You have taken on your first form as Re to illuminate the Two Lands for that what you have created. as your heart [planned], you being alone You created them, the gods being in your retinue after you came forth alone from the primeval waters You created humans together with creatures great and small and all that has come into existence and all that exists.

The text starts with the motif of self-generation (kheper-djesef ). The god takes on bodily shape, and this body forms already the first pantheon: a community of limbs who start speaking with their god and master. According to this text, this sacred conversation took place already before the origin of the world. This is the first act of cosmogony. The second act is described as “creation”, jr.t. The land is “created” for the gods who issued from the mouth of god, obviously in form of utterances. The third act is the separation of heaven and earth, leading to the establishment on earth of the divine image, i.e. the replacement of real presence by a representation. The whole process is then traced back to an act of willful planning preceding both cosmogony and creation. Before anything originates or is created, the world is already conceived in the heart of god. I call this idea “creation through the heart”, the heart being the organ of planning and thinking according to Egyptian anthropology. This is an idea becoming more and more prominent in the course of time. Let me just quote a short selection of pertinent passages in order to illustrate the idea. Queen Hatshepsut praises the god Amun-Re as “he who devises (thinks, plans) everything that exists.”5 The same epithet occurs in a short hymn to Re: Re who planned everything that exists, lord of humankind, creator of what exists.6 You created the earth according to your will, you being alone.7

5 6 7

Zandee 1992, 99, ll. 15–16. BM 29944 ed. Steward, JEA 53,37. Amarna ÄHG no. 92,79.

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The one who created the earth in the seeking (enquiring spirit) of his heart.8 The one who initiated everything that exists as his heart planned.9 The one who created heaven and earth with his heart.10

Conspicuously frequent is this motif in hymns to Ptah, the god of Memphis: The one who created the arts and gave birth to the gods as a creation his heart.11 The one who created the arts as a discovery of his heart.12 Who made heaven as the creation of his heart.13 The things that are said (or “thought”) in his heart one sees that they come into being.14 The one who formed the earth by the providence of his heart.15

The activity of the heart, in planning, devising and conceiving, is obviously related to the way of working characteristic of the artists and craftsmen, whose patron is the god Ptah. Besides planning, the most typical modes of creation are begetting, shaping and speaking. We have already dealt with the biomorphic model of begetting; it remains the most fundamental concept throughout Egyptian pharaonic history. The act of shaping or molding may be labeled as the technomorphic model. In Egypt, it is related to the god Khnum who is believed to form humans on a potter’s wheel. Interestingly enough, in the Bible, man is also “formed” by god, whereas the rest of creation comes into being through god’s commanding speech.

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Leiden K1. pBerlin 3049,XI,3–4 = ÄHG no. 127B,80. Neschons, 9–10 = ÄHG no. 131,26. Berlin 6910, Ägyptische Inschriften 1913–1924, II:66–7. TT 44(5) (unpubl.). pHarris, I,44,5 = ÄHG no. 199,7. Copenhagen A 719 = ÄHG no. 223,7. pBerlin 3048,III,1 = ÄHG no. 143,22.

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The third mode, speaking, gains enormously in prominence during the New Kingdom. In texts of the 15th and 14th centuries, speaking is still exclusively related to the creation of the gods. The gods are constantly referred to as having issued from the mouth of god. The concept of creative utterance does not in the first instance interpret the relationship of “god” to the world, but of “god” to the other gods. To the creation of the gods by speech refers the very widespread motif that correlates the gods with the mouth or lips of the creator, and humans with his eyes. The gods originate by speaking, humans by weeping: Humans issued from his eyes the gods emerged on his mouth.16 Humans issued from his eyes, the gods from his lips.17 He secreted everybody from his eyes, but the gods issued from his mouth.18 Gods issued from his mouth and humans from his eye.19

There are very many variants to this motif. The theme still plays an important role in Greco-Roman texts20 and is related, in a way that has yet to be explained, to the particularly Orphic21 and generally Greek idea22 that the gods issued from the laughter, humans from the tears of the primeval creator god.23 The relationship between tears and human beings in Egyptian texts is clearly based on the homophony of the words rmt ˰ (human beings) and rmjt (tears). But what could be the relationship between the gods and the speaking mouth? These gods embody the hidden verbal order of the world, as it were, its conception, as it was devised and uttered by “god,” the one who, as it is expressed in a contemporary hymn,

16

pCairo 58038,vi,3. prr.n must be a mistake; read prrw or pr.n. STG Text no. 188 (e). 18 RT 13, 163.16. 19 Ramses III’s hymn, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak I, OIP XXV pl. xxv = ÄHG no. 196. 20 Otto 1964, 58ff.; Schott and Erichsen 1954, no. 2,12; Sauneron 1963, V 261 (a). 21 Orph. fr. 28 Abel. 22 Dieterich 1891, 28; Proclus on Plato, Politics 385. 23 Esna no. 272,2–3; cf. also Sauneron 1963, V, 142. 17

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creates what is created, who speaks, and the gods come into being.24

A similar formulation occurs in a longer text of fundamental importance for the theology of Amun in this period, Papyrus Boulaq 17 (= Cairo CG 58038), which contains hymns to Amun-Re.25 I shall cite the formulation in its context, which makes it clear that we are dealing with more than creation theology: Hail to you, Re, lord of Maat, who hides his chapel, lord of the gods, Khepri in his barque, who commands and the gods come into existence, Atum, creator of humankind, who distinguishes their characteristics and creates their means of subsistence, who distinguishes their skin color, one from the other. He who listens to the entreaty of one in distress, gracious to one who calls to him, who saves the timorous from the hand of the violent, who pronounces justice between the poor and the rich. Lord of cognition, on whose lips is creative word, for whose sake the Nile inundation comes; the lord of affection, the great of love, when he (i.e., the inundation) comes, humankind lives.26

The god from whose will and commanding utterance the other deities emerge is none other than the “lord of Maat,” the supreme judge who “pronounces justice between the poor and the rich,” “saves the timorous from the hand of the violent,” and “listens to the entreaty of one in distress.” This is clearly a god who speaks, not only as a creator who by his words brought the gods into being, but also as the maintainer of the universe who rules it by what the Egyptians call “Sia”, cognition” and “Hu”, authoritative and performative utterance. Hu and Sia are epithets both of the creator and of the ruler. Sia refers to the recognizing and devising heart, Hu to the speaking, ordaining and commanding mouth.

24 25 26

Cairo JE 11509; see J. Assmann 1995, 127. See J. Assmann 1995, 120–5. ÄHG, no. 87C; RuA, pp. 176–177.

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That the idea of a creation through the word is originally related to the divine world and not the world as such seems to me highly significative. The pantheon appears in this tradition as a speech act, an act of verbal articulation. The gods are articulations of reality, their names, competences, and powers give shape and differentiation to the diffuse experience of reality and makes it addressable. This mythology shows the structure of the divine world to be primarily linguistic. In the later stages of the New Kingdom and during the Late period, however, the speaking mode of creation becomes generalized, referring now not only to the gods but to “everything that exists”. For this idea, let me quote just one example from the tomb of the high-priest Nebwenenef dating from the first half of the 13th c.: Who created heaven and earth and gave birth to human beings, who brought forth all that is through the utterance of his mouth. Who spoke and it happened, who gave birth to what exists, Great One, creator of the gods and human beings. Who came into being alone and gave birth to himself as millions. It was his limbs that answered him, it was his tongue that formed everything he created.27

The idea of verbal creation, according to a plan conceived in the heart, emphasized the organisational aspect of the created world, its rational character. What was conceived in the heart of god and came forth from his mouth were not the things themselves, but the “names of all things”,28 which the Egyptians imagined to be arranged hierarchically in the form of an onomasticon. An onomasticon does not enumerate individual objects, but classes of objects.29 It can therefore be understood as an exhaustive inventory of the cosmos and a replica of its structure. The doctrine of verbal creation envisaged the well-appointed nature of the world, its fullness and order, and attributed them to the wisdom of the creator, the spiritual conception in the heart. This was an aspect of the world especially emphasised by Amarna religion, which also influenced Psalms 104 and Wisdom in Hebrew literature.30

27

STG, No. 149 p. 188f. Memphite Theology 55; similarly pBerlin 3055 XVI 3ff. = ÄHG no. 122,7. 29 This is true of entities such as “heaven”, “sun”, “moon” “king”, which have to be understood as one-element classes. 30 Cf. n. 1. 28

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III. Creation through Hieroglyphs in the Memphite Theology The Memphite Theology has always been interpreted as the closest Egyptian parallel to the Biblical idea of creation through the word.31 The gods that originated from Ptah/became Ptah (. . .) originated through the heart as symbol of Atum, originated through the tongue as symbol of Atum, being great and powerful. But Ptah transferred [his strength] to the gods and their ka’s by means of this heart through which Horus originated from Ptah, by means of this tongue through which Thoth originated from Ptah. It came to pass that heart and tongue gained power over all other parts on the basis of the teaching that it [the heart] is in every body and it [the tongue] in every mouth of all gods, humans, animals, insects, and all living things, the heart thinking and the tongue commanding whatever they desire.

In the guise of tongue and heart a portion of Ptah’s original creative power remains in all living things that have come forth from him. An anthropological discourse now beings: His Ennead stood before him as teeth, that is the seed of Atum, and as lips, that is the hands of Atum. Verily, the Ennead of Atum originated through his seed and through his fingers. But the Ennead is in truth teeth and lips in this mouth of him who thought up the names of all things, from whom Shu and Tefnut came forth, he who created the Ennead.

This section of the Theology has always been interpreted as a polemical engagement with Heliopolis. However, it seems to me much more convincing to read it as a commentary, in which the ancient, supra-regionally valid teachings are specifically related to Memphis. The “seed” and “hands” of Amun, by which in an act of self-begetting he brought forth Shu and Tefnut, are interpreted as “teeth” and “lips,” forming the frame for the tongue that creates everything by naming it: 31

Cf. Koch 1988, 61–105.

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jan assmann That the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose breathes air is in order to make report to the heart. This it is that makes all knowledge originate. The tongue it is that repeats what is thought by the heart.

The process of creation is here conceived in bodily terms. “Phallus” and “hand”—the traditional physical symbols of creativity—are represented as or replaced with “teeth and lips.” The genuinely creative organs are heart and tongue. As the Egyptians made no strict distinction between “body” and “mind/spirit,” knowledge and language are also understood as bodily phenomena. Knowledge originates in the heart on the basis of the perceptions reported to it. The knowledge formed in the heart is communicated by the tongue. And thus were all gods born, that is Atum and his Ennead. But all hieroglyphs originated from that which was thought up by the heart and commanded by the tongue. And thus were all ka’s created and the Hemuset determined, which bring forth all food and all offering meats by this word, [the word invented by the heart and commanded by the tongue]. [And thus is ma’at given to him] who does what is loved, [and isfet to him] who does what is hated. And thus is life given to the peaceable and death given to the criminal. And thus were all trades created and all arts, the action of the arms and the walking of the legs, the movement of all limbs in accordance with the instruction of these words that were thought up by the heart and uttered by the tongue and provide for all things. (. . .) And so Ptah was well pleased (or: rested) after he had created all things and all hieroglyphs, after he had formed the gods, after he had created their towns and founded their names, after he had endowed their offering cakes and established their chapels, after he had created their bodies [= images of them] in their likeness, such that they were content. And thus the gods entered their bodies of every kind of wood and mineral, all kinds of clay and all other things that grow on him from whom they originated. And thus assembled around him all gods and their ka’s, content and united with the lord of the two lands.

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This is the most elaborate Egyptian account of creation by the Word, and it differs from the Biblical account in two ways. The first is the role of the heart, i.e. the planned conception of creation—an idea absent from the Bible. The second is the role of script, the hieroglyphs, mentioned on two occasions. These two points are closely related. For what the heart thinks up are not the names of things but their “concepts” and their “forms.” Hieroglyphic script is a pictorial rendering of the forms. It relates to the concepts by way of those forms. The tongue vocalizes the concepts, which were “thought up” by the heart and given outward and visible form by hieroglyphic script: But all hieroglyphs originated from that which was thought up [conceived of] by the heart and commanded by the tongue.

Ptah is the god of artists and craftsmen, the one who endows things with their “design,” their immutable form depicted by the written signs. Thus Thoth, the god of the “tongue,” is also the god of hieroglyphic script. He is able to transform the thoughts of the heart into spoken and written language. Creation is an act of articulation—conceptually, iconically, phonetically. The written signs originate at the same time as the things they stand for and the names they bear: And so Ptah was well pleased after he had created all things and all hieroglyphs.

The totality of creation is encompassed in the term “all things and all hieroglyphs.” The Egyptian word for “hieroglyphs”, which the Greeks translated as ta hiera grammata is zS n mdw nTr “the writing of divine speech”.32 Thoth, the god of writing, is called “the lord of divine speech”.33 The sacred texts which were written in hieroglyphs are called “scrolls of divine speech”.34 Thus it is quite evident that “divine speech” refers to the signs (and not to the sounds), which Thoth commands, which the sacred books contain and which constitute the sacred script. If the distinction between a sphere of original forms (Ideas) and a world of infinitely reproduced copies is a principle of Plato’s philosophy, then the Egyptian division of Creation expresses a primal, pre-theoretical Platonism. The hieroglyphs are the forms of the things that constitute 32 33 34

Wb II, 181.2. Wb II, 181.6. Wb II, 181.1.

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the totality of the real world. Egyptian “hieroglyphic” thinking presents a relation between thing and written sign similar to that between thing and concept in Greek philosophy. When Ptah conceives of the Ideas of things, he at the same time invents the script that Thoth has only to read. The act of thinking or conceptual articulation is represented in this mythology as an act of interior writing. The act of speaking, on the other hand, is conceived of as an act of reading aloud, reciting the inner script. The speaking tongue, or Thoth, recites what the thinking heart, or Horus, writes. However, Thoth appears in this mythology not only as a reciter but also as a copyist. Thoth, the god of script, only has to find, not invent, what is inherent in the structure of things. He copies the interior writing of the heart onto papyrus. Thus an onomasticon, a list of words arranged not alphabetically but in an order reflecting the structure of reality, is titled as a catalogue of “all things that exist: what Ptah created, what Thoth copied down.”35 The collaboration between Ptah, who creates all things, and Thoth, who records them, is reminiscent of the collaboration between God and Adam in Paradise. God creates living things and “Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field” (Gen. 2:20). Adam’s act of naming and Thoth’s act of recording both fulfill the same function of linking things and words. And as this is creation by the Word, Adam and Thoth both “read” from the created things what they then utter or record. In his Mysteries of the Egyptians, the neo-Platonist Iamblichus perceptively identifies the latent Platonism of hieroglyphic thinking in his interpretation of Egyptian script as an imitation of divine “demiurgy”: The Egyptians imitate the nature of the universe (τὴν ϕύσιν τουː παντὸς) and the divine ways of creation (τὴν δημιουργίαν τωː ν θεωː ν μιμούμενοι), in that they also produce “icons” (εἰκονας eikonas) as symbols of mystic, occult and invisible conceptions (τωː ν μυστικωː ν καὶ ἀποκεκρυμμένων καὶ ἀϕανωː ν νοήσεων), in a similar manner as of Nature (the productive principle), in her peculiar way, makes a likeness of invisible principles through symbols in visible forms and expresses in writing (ὑπεγράφατο) the truth of ideas by visible icons (εἰκονες).36

“Nature” (φύσις) takes here the place of Ptah in the Memphite Theology. Like Ptah, nature conceives “invisible principles” and expresses them

35 36

Gardiner 1947, I, *1. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, VII.1.

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through symbols in visible form. The world as we see it is the visible expression of an invisible conception. The Egyptians imitate this procedure in their hieroglyphic script. In using the visible forms of nature for letters, they refer to invisible principles, i.e. to meanings. If god or nature created the world by inventing signs, the Egyptians imitate this device by using these signs for their script. IV. Cosmic Grammatology The creation account of the Memphite Theology teaches us, therefore, above all two things: one regarding the conception of the cosmos and another regarding the conception of hieroglyphs. It stresses the “scriptural” structure of the cosmos and the “cosmic” structure of the hieroglyphic signs. Let me first explain what I mean by the scriptural structure of the cosmos. All creation accounts that view the world as generated by verbal articulation presuppose a structural analogy between language and cosmos. The late-Egyptian account, however, goes even a step further in conceiving of the world as the result not only of an act of speech but of writing. It presupposes an analogy between cosmos and writing and establishes a relationship not only between res and verba but between res and signs. In the Biblical creation account, god speaks and the world appears. In the Egyptian text, god first conceives the signs in his heart and only then, in a second step, expresses them in phonetic language. In the Bible, we have the two-step procedure from verba to res, in Egypt we have three steps: from signs via verba to res. It is only with the rabbinic commentary on Genesis, Bereshit rabbah, that the Biblical conception of the creation is also extended to a three step procedure. In this text, the phrase be-reshit is interpreted not as “in the beginning” but “by means of the beginning”, and the beginning is identified as the Torah. God created heaven and earth by means of the Torah: be-reshit = be-torah. First there was Torah, a universe of signs, which God only had to read aloud in order to create a universe of things. The Torah here plays the role of a preexistent script or blueprint of the universe which God only had to read out in order to create the world. If we consider the iconic character of hieroglyphs, the analogy between writing and cosmos becomes obvious. It is much more evident to postulate a correlation between the iconic signs of the hieroglyphic script and the things of reality than between the words of language and the things of nature. The relationship of hieroglyphic signs to the world seems

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much more direct than the relationship of words to what they denote. To use a term coined by Aleida Assmann, we may speak, with regard to hieroglyphs, of “immediate signification”.37 The iconic sign immediately shows what it means, without the detour of a specific language. To be sure, this is not the way hieroglyphs normally function, but it is a plausible assumption about hieroglyphs, given their pictorial character, and it is this assumption that underlies the creation concept of the Memphite Theology. The only difference between a stock of iconic signs and a stock of existing things is the number. The set of signs is necessarily much smaller than the set of things. But this is exactly what the late Egyptian priests and grammatologists strived at correcting. They extended the stock of signs by approximately a factor 10, turning a well functioning script of about 700 signs into an extremely difficult and awkward system of about 7,000 in order to make the script correspond as closely as possible to the structure of reality: a universe of signs representing a universe of things, and vice-versa. By approximating the number of signs to the number of things, the late Egyptian priests stressed the cosmic structure of their script as well as the grammatological or scriptural structure of their universe. However, immediate signification is precisely what the Bible shuns as idolatry. Already the church fathers recognized the idolatrous character of the hieroglyphic script and destroyed the Egyptian temple schools because they considered them to be schools of magic. In the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno made the same connection but inverted the valuation. Hieroglyphs were the superior script because of their magical power, which derived from their principle of immediate signification: . . . . the sacred letters used among the Egyptians were called hieroglyphs . . . which were images . . . taken from the things of nature, or their parts. By using such writings and voices, the Egyptians used to capture with marvellous skill the language of the gods.38

37 A. Assmann 1980. See also Greene 1997, 255–72. In exactly the same sense as A. Assmann, Greene distinguishes between a “conjunctive” and a “disjunctive” theory of language. Cf. also Tambiah 1968, 175–208. 38 Giordano Bruno, De Magia (Opera Latina III, 411–12), quoted after Yates 1964, 263. The connection between hieroglyphics and magic is provided by the church historian Rufinus who reports that the temple at Canopus has been destroyed by the Christians because there existed a school of magic arts under the pretext of teaching the “sacerdotal” characters of the Egyptians (ubi praetextu sacerdotalium litterarum (ita etenim appellant antiquas Aegyptiorum litteras) magicae artis erat paene publica schola; Rufinus, Hist.eccles. XI 26).

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Bruno is clearly thinking of Iamblichus and what he has to say about the Egyptian ways of imitating in their script the demiourgia of the gods. Still, one wonders how closely he comes to the Egyptian term designating the hieroglyphs: md.t nature, divine speech, language of the gods. Some 150 years later, the Anglican bishop William Warburton made the same connection between hieroglyphs and idols.39 As Warburton pointed out, the second commandment forbids not only the representation of God because he is invisible and omnipresent,40 but also the making of “any graven images, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth” (Dt. 4.15–18, Warburton’s translation). Images are idols because by virtue of ‘immediate signification’ they conjure up what they represent. Hieroglyphs are idols because they are images. Warburton’s interpretation emphasizes the anti-Egyptian meaning of the prohibition of idolatry. It is the exact “normative inversion” of the very fundamental principles of Egyptian writing, thinking, and speaking: “Do not idolize the created world by representation.” The second commandment is the rejection of hieroglyphic knowledge because it amounts to an illicit magical idolization of the world. The second commandment is, at least originally, directed against all kinds of magic, necromancy, divination and other religious practices operating with images. Precisely this magical power is connected, in the Late Egyptian imagination and far beyond, with the hieroglyphic script which they call “god’s words” or “divine speech”. Their magical power lies in their “cosmic structure”, corresponding to the “scriptural” or hieroglyphic structure of the cosmos. This magical conception of hieroglyphic writing, the Egyptians handed down to the Greeks who, in their turn, handed it down to the renaissance and Enlightenment. Hieroglyphs were regarded as “natural signs”, a “scripture of nature,” a writing which would refer not to the sounds of language, but to the things of nature and to the concepts of the mind. To quote Ralph Cudworth’s definition: “The Egyptian hieroglyphicks were figures not answering to sounds or words, but immediately representing the objects and conceptions of the mind.”41 39 40 41

See J. Assmann 2001, 297–311. Cf. Halbertal and Margalit 1982, 37–66 (“Idolatry and Representation”). Cudworth 1678, 316.

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However, we may not draw too sharp a distinction between writing and language. The two are constantly confounded, by the Egyptians, the Greeks and by Europeans well into the 18th century. The Egyptian term md.t nTr, literally meaning “divine speech”, refers not only to hieroglyphs but also to what the Hebrews would call d’barej ha-Elohim. If there is any Egyptian specificity, it lies in the particularly strong association of script and language. Md.t nTr “divine speech” means “hieroglyphs”, it is true, but the orally spoken word of the gods is also of enormous importance. Whenever a god opens his mouth, we may be sure that something very important comes forth, an irrevocable order, an institution which is still existing, a being, a rite, an element of reality. A divine word becomes immediately reality, even independent of any conscious intention of the speaker, by way of pun or assonance or whatever association. The utterance is treated as another bodily secretion such as blood, sweat, semen, saliva—all of them generating various things. The divine word appears here rather as a kind of sonoric/semantic substance containing not just one, but all possible meanings which may be associated with its homonyms, antonyms, its connotations and assonances without being limited by any intention, syntax or context. The constructive creativity of divine words unfold under the conditions of deconstruction. Divine speech is over-determined like the symbolism of dreams according to Freud. In consequence of the typical non-distinction between script and language, Iamblichus applies the characteristic of the Egyptian sacred script, i.e. hieroglyphs, to the Egyptian sacred language. If hieroglyphs refer “immediately”, that is iconically, to reality, the words of the sacred language “depend on” the things they denote (τῃː φύσει συνήρτηται τωː ν ὄντων). This is “the conjunctive theory of language” (Th. Greene) in its purest form. Treatise XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum forbids the translation into Greek of texts in the sacred language in rather violent terms: Preserve this discourse untranslated in order that such mysteries may be kept from the Greek and that their insolent, insipid and meretricious manner of speech may not reduce to impotence the dignity and strength of our language, and the cogent force of the words. For all the Greeks have . . . is empty speech, good for showing off; and the philosophy of the Greeks is just noisy talk. For our part, we use not words, but sounds full of energy (φωναι ːς μεσται ːς τωː ν ἔργων).42

42

Festugière and Nock 1945, II:232; Fowden 1993, 37.

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Instead of “sounds” (phonais), we may as well read “signs”. The Egyptians were convinced of the power of language, not only in spoken but above all in written form. This is the reason why they never changed or reduced the pictorial realism and the iconic character of the hieroglyphs. They would rather invent, at first a second and then a third script alongside the hieroglyphs than adapt the hieroglyphs to everyday purposes. In their iconity lay their cosmological character which corresponded to the “grammatological” structure of the cosmos. References Ägyptische Inschriften 1913–1924. Ägyptische Inschriften aus den Königlichen Museen zu Berlin. Herausgegeben von der Generalverwaltung. Leipzig: Hinrichs. Assmann, A. 1980. Die Legitimität der Fiktion, Munich. Assmann, J. 1995. Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the crisis of polytheism. Tr. A. Alcock, New York: Kegan Paul. ———— 2001. “Pictures versus Letters: William Warburton’s Theory of Grammatological Iconoclasm.” in Representation in Religion: Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch, ed. J. Assmann and A. Baumgarten, Leiden: Brill, 297–311. Cudworth, R. 1678. The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the First Part, wherein All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted and its Impossibility Demonstrated. 1st ed. London: 1678; 2nd ed. London: 1743. Dieterich, A. 1891. Abraxas: Studien zur Religionsgeschichte des späteren Altertums. Leipzig: Tuebner. Erichsen, W. and S. Schott 1954. Fragmente memphitischer Theologie in demotischer Schrift (Pap. demot. Berlin 13603), Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Festugière, A.J. and A.D. Nock 1945. Corpus Hermeticum, Paris, Société d’édition “Les Belles lettres”. Fowden, G. 1993. The Egyptian Hermes: a historical approach to the late pagan mind, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Freud, S. 2000. “Über den Gegensinn der Urworte,” Studienausgabe Frankfurt, vol. 4:227–234. Gardiner, A.H. 1947. Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, London: Oxford University Press. Greene, T.M. 1997. “Language, Signs and Magic”, in Envisioning Magic: a Princeton Seminar and Symposium, ed. P. Schäfer and H.G. Kippenberg, Leiden, New York: Brill. Halbertal, M. and A. Margalit 1982. Idolatry, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Koch, K. 1988. “Wort und Einheit des Schöpfergottes in Memphis und Jerusalem. Zur Einzigartigkeit Israels,” Studien zur alttestamentlichen und altorientalischen Religionsgeschichte: zum 60 Geburtstag von Klaus Koch, ed. E. Otto, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Nelson, H.H. 1936. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak I, Oriental Institute Publications XXIV, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Otto, E. 1964. Gott und Mensch nach den ägyptischen Tempelinschriften der griechischrömischen Zeit; eine Untersuchung zur Phraseologie der Tempelinschriften, Heidelberg: Winter. Sauneron, S. 1963. Le temple d’Esna, Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Sauneron, S. and J. Yoyotte 1959. “La Naissance du monde selon l’Égypte ancienne.”

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In La Naissance du monde; Égypte ancienne, Sumer, Akkad, Hourrites et Hittites, Canaan, Israel, Islam, Turcs et Mongols, Iran préislamique, Inde, Siam, Laos, Tibet, Chine. Sources Orientales I, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 17–91. Tambiah, S.J. 1968. “The Magical Power of Words,” Man, n.s. 3:175–208. Yates, F. 1964. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zandee, J. 1992. Der Amunshymnus des Papyrus Leiden I 344, Verso, Leiden: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

KUNTHE EXISTENCEBESTOWING WORD IN ISLAMIC MYSTICISM: A SURVEY OF TEXTS ON THE CREATIVE POWER OF LANGUAGE* Sara Sviri I. Introduction According to the Qurʙān, the divine power to create by language manifests through the command Kun! (Be!). God says: “Our command to a thing when We will it, is to say to it kun and it is”.1 Several verses attest to this mode of creation.2 That a prophet may also be endowed, with God’s permission, with the miraculous power to bestow life is seen in Qurʙānic reports concerning Abraham and Jesus: both were able, the one through calling out (2:260) and the other through breathing (3:49, 5:110), to bring dead and inanimate birds into life.3 Ever since the “science of the friends of God” (ʚilm al-awliyāʙ) was laid down by al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī in the ninth century, Islamic mystics have associated empowered language with the holy man (walī, pl. awliyāʙ).4 The creative power by kun is an aspect of this “science.” A previous paper concerned with mystical linguistics alluded only briefly to the possibility that man, too, may be endowed with the creative power of kun.5 I wish to devote this presentation to a more detailed discussion of speculations and dicta, circulating mainly in mystical literature, that arise from the claim that kun (or an equally empowered command), whether spoken by God or by an extraordinary human being, possesses the power to bestow life and bring forth existence.6

* This article is a sequel to Sviri 2002. My thanks go to Prof. Meir Bar-Asher for reading a draft of this paper and for making very useful comments. 1 “          ”. 2 See 2:117, 3:47, 3:59, 6:73, 16:40, 19:35, 36:82, 40:68—translation of Qur. verses by SS. 3 For the Qurʙānic foundation of the discourse on miracles, see Gril 2000; for early discussions on prophetic and saintly miracles, see Radtke 2000. 4 Sviri 2002, esp. 206ff. 5 Sviri 2002, 216, nn. 38–40. 6 In the context of this presentation I have only sporadically referred to Shīʚite literature; it is worth noting, however, that the Shīʚite imāms, too, were believed to be the

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In the process of searching for the literary prooftexts relevant for this topic, I have come upon material that show that such a claim made, allegedly, by Sˢūfis of previous generations, is even currently the target of strong criticism by Muslim spokesmen engaged in an animated combat against Sˢūfism. Thus, searching for kun on the world-wide-web, a wondrous and powerful linguistic tool in its own right, I came across a website entitled “antihabashis.com.” This website, it turns out, is devoted to the repudiation of the Ahˢbāsh, a contemporary Sˢūfi affiliation whose base is in Lebanon and which sees itself as a new Sˢūfi brotherhood following an Ethiopian-born Sheikh, ʚAbdallāh al-Hˢ abashī.7 In one of the “pages” of this website, the following critique can be viewed: The Ahˢbāsh have spent years urging people to read al-Rifāʚī’s The Helpful Proof, 8 claiming that it represents the doctrine of Divine Unification (tawhˢīd). Look at the unification in this book: Among other things, it says the following: “God enables the awliyāʙ to operate on9 beings; He makes them say to a thing Be! And it is.”10

Aiming their rebuttal against the allegedly offensive connection of the Ahˢbāsh with Ahˢmad al-Rifāʚī, a twelfth-century Sˢūfi Sheikh after whom the Rifāʚīyya Brotherhood is named,11 the authors of this online rebuke go on to cite various other sources that portray al-Rifāʚī as making the same claim and basing it, misleadingly according to them, on

recipients of the power of kun; for the power of the Shīʚite imāms in general, see AmirMoezzi 1994, 91ff; see also Amir-Moezzi 2000, 251–86. 7 On the Ahˢbāsh, see Hamzeh and Dekmejian 1996, 217–229. See also Hamzeh 1997. 8 The reference is to Ahˢmad al-Rifāʚī’s al-Burhān al-muʙayyid, al-Rifāʚī 1987/88. 9 The verbal form for “operating on” is sˢarrafa (also tasˢarrafa); ordinarily it means “to behave, operate, employ” etc., but in Sˢūfi terminology, especially in the infinitive forms tasˢrīf and tasˢarruf, it often denotes the supernatural power by which the holy man ‘manipulates’, ‘operates upon’, ‘disposes of ’ beings; for an intriguing discussion concerning tasˢarruf by means of names and letters, see Ibn Khaldūn 1959, 53ff; F. Meier, in his “Introduction” to Najm al-Dīn Kubrā’s Fawāʙihˢ al-jamāl wa-fawātihˢ al-jalāl, translates tasˢarruf by “Verfügunskraft” = the power to dispose, Kubrā 1957, 233ff. Cf. Meier 1994, where Meier offers other translations for tasˢarruf: “Machtausübung” (50), “seelisch-geistige Wirkungskraft” (115); see also Meier 1999, 643; also Gramlich 1987, 180–5.

  !"# ($%&  '") ) +-. /"  0  23% 4%6 8:; <=>?  @” A B? C"E D » F  GH . . . +JK L'  $>-    B"M  .$>-  /$ ! N2% OL  +JK .“«   #   % PQRSB ? —see al-Rifāʚī 1987/88, 125 (for the full passage, 10

see Appendix, A). 11 On Shaykh Ahˢmad al-Rifāʚī (d. 1182) and the Rifāʚīyya Sˢūfi brotherhood, see Trimingham 1971, 37–40 passim.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 37 authoritative, even divine, dicta. They point out, for example, that ʚAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʚrānī, an influential Sˢūfi master in sixteenth-century Egypt, in his hagiographical Kitāb al-t ˢabaqāt al-kubrā (“The Book of the Great Generations”), ascribes to al-Rifāʚī a citation of a divine tradition (hˢadīth qudsī) in which God allegedly says: “O, sons of Adam, obey me and I shall obey you; observe me, and I shall observe you, and I shall make you say to a thing ‘Be!” and it will be.”12 In fact, on inspection of the source referred to, one finds a passage which is even more outspoken than the online excerpt. The passage in Kitāb al-t ˢabaqāt al-kubrā reads as follows: He [al-Rifāʚī] used to say: when the worshipper is established in the mystical states, he attains the place of God’s proximity, and then his [spiritual] intention (himma) pierces the seven heavens; as for the [seven] earths, they become like an anklet on his leg; he becomes an attribute of God’s attributes, and there is nothing that he cannot do. God is then pleased when he is pleased, and is displeased when he is displeased. He said: what we say is corroborated by what came down in one of the divine books: God has said: O sons of Adam! Obey me and I shall obey you, choose me and I shall choose you, be pleased with me and I shall be pleased with you, love me and I shall love you, observe me and I shall observe you, and I shall make you say to a thing Be! And it will be.13

Needless to say that to the pious author/s of the “Antihabashis” website such claims are absurd, scandalous, and blasphemous; in their opinion they should, therefore, be strongly refuted and fought.14

TPR6  RA6 UV @ W : F  4AQ Y ZJK [R@  \   "R  . . . P!]B” .“  #   ^ PRSB P=  =B See al-Shaʚrānī 1887/88, I:141 on Ahˢmad Abū al-Hˢ usayn al-Rifāʚī:  : % .B” 8EB 8;  _`:;# 4a -' 8EB 8 F H +"  N3H b@ >? H ^  $`R  c"d 8 e3  EB f ghR% i jB N\ e3  8kE H 4kE EB \"l mm . c? @ W :N\B g! F  % :4AQ Y ZJK [R@  B H   $%B : . no; po;qB c"

PRSB P=  =B P=>  =>B P! r ! cB P."sa  BJtB PR6  RA6 !UV “. . .   #   ^; note the similarity of this passage with a Rabbinic dictum 12

13

from Avot, 2, 4: “Make His will as your will so that He will make your will as His will; annul your will in front of His will, so that He may annul the will of others in front of your will,” see Garb 2004, 38ff; I wish to thank Dr. Garb for this reference as well as for our ongoing exchange concerning power and language in Judaism and Islam. 14 In the homepage of the “antihabashis” website, the al-Ahˢbāsh are described thus: “they are a lost group which associates itself with ʚAbdallāh al-Hˢ abashī. They have recently [!] appeared in Lebanon to exploit there the ignorance and poverty in the wake of the Lebanese civil wars. They propagate the call to revive the ways of the theologians, the Sˢūfis and the Shīʚites in order to destroy the faith and to break the unity of the Muslims, and in order to avert Muslims from their essential problems” Z;v^ wc 4kx6)

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Although the Ahˢbāsh do not necessarily claim that their Sheikh possesses the creative power of kun, the above refutation directed at them inadvertently exposes interesting material which indeed portray the holy man as a possessor of this extraordinary existence-bestowing power. It also shows that the claim for the power of kun is seen today as an abidingly abusive issue characteristic of Sˢūfism (and, one should add, of Shīʚism too) that should be forcefully counteracted. The follow-up to this contemporary polemic has been, therefore, unexpectedly fruitful in unraveling testimonies of claims of possessing the power to bring things into existence by means of kun.15 These testimonies appear to be mostly ascribed to eminent Sˢūfi figures of the twelfth century onwards. Their confident claim that the Sˢūfi Sheikh may hold the power of creation coincides, it would seem, with the emergence during this period of the Sˢūfi Brotherhoods (t ˢuruq, sg. t ˢarīqa).16 It may be suggested, therefore, that within Sˢūfism such claims reflect the attempt to build up the figure of the Sheikh of the t ˢarīqa to nearly divine proportions.17

" k B NQh  H 4A `# 4A'? +B"3  Jka H 4y-:;H `  2%$z 8"Q{ T)|  F $`!   };  /$zB ~k^B /$ R  ; C$Q@ 4A6` B 4 B UjK N' €'GH >   /!$ B .(4A:? P'W‚ ! PQ"EB

15 For testimonies based on the references mentioned in the “antihabashis” website, see the Appendix. 16 Note, however, the early anecdote related by Sufyān ibn ʚUyayna (d. 198/813), a renowned pietist from the town of Kufa; according to this anecdote, recorded in a 3rd/9th-century text by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894), an anonymous and wondrous figure delivers several divine messages during the Hˢ ajj. One of these messages is the following: “I am God the King; when I wish a thing, I say to it Be and it is; therefore come to Me, and I shall make you such that when you wish [a thing], you will say to it Be and it will be”—see Ibn Abī al-Dunyā 1993, 32 (for the full text, see Appendix G); a milder, “cleaned up” version of this anecdote appears in the 5th/11th-century compilation Hˢ ilyat al-awliyāʙ by Abū Nuʚaym al-Isˢfahānī (d. 430/1038–9), Abū Nuʚaym al-Isˢfahānī 1997, VII:354, no. 10831; the difference in the tenor of the two versions is significant: it indicates the restraint, typical of classical Sˢūfi literature, vis-à-vis the claim of kun for human beings; such restraint seems to have become more relaxed in later texts; as for the early text on hand, it seems to have somehow escaped, quite uniquely, possible censoring eyes; in any case, it obviously shows that in the early formative phases of Islamic mysticism such ideas were prevalent—can one detect here the echoes of Rabbinic ideas? Cf. above, n. 13. 17 For a general orientation concerning the Sˢūfi Brotherhoods, see Trimingham 1971; also Popovic and Veinstein 1996.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 39 II. Kun and Sˢūfi karāmāt That Sˢūfi sheikhs from early on have been endowed with the power to perform “miracles” is well known; their marvelous and miraculous deeds are known as karāmāt (literally: graces) or khawāriq al-ʚādāt (literally, events that are beyond the ordinary). These have been discussed and recorded in many chapters within classical Sˢūfi compilations18 and have been collected in a special literary genre known as karāmāt al-awliyāʙ19 as well as in hagiographical works in praise of a particular Sˢūfi master or group.20 Many miracles have been known to be performed by using “God’s greatest name” (ismullāh al-aʚzˢam),21 or by special invocations. The concept of the holy man as mujāb al-daʚwa, he whose call [to God] is answered, has been, from early on, part and parcel of Sˢūfi vocabulary and one of the appellations by which the holy man was known.22 Even the feat of reviving the dead is acknowledged with no apologetics and is amply recorded in Sˢūfi manuals and in relevant studies thereof.23 But the use of kun as a creative means employed by humans, albeit superior and holy ones, is rather more contentious; not only is the mere thought of it abhorred and vehemently refuted by the adversaries of Sˢūfism, but Sˢūfis themselves seem to shy away from broadcasting it openly as a holy man’s feat.24 Speculations as regards kun and anecdotes concerning the holy men who have used it tend to be phrased, it seems, with circumspection,

18 See, for example, al-Kalābādhī 1935, ch. 26 on “Their Doctrine of the Miracles of Saints,” pp. 57–66; also “Discourse on the Affirmation of Miracles” in al-Hujwīrī 1911, 218–35; cf. Radtke 2000, 286–99. 19 See, e.g., Abū Nuʚaym al-Isˢfahānī 1997; al-Yāfiʚī 1955; also the fairly late collection, al-Nabhānī 2001; the most comprehensive study to date concerning the miracles of the Islamic friends of God is Gramlich 1987; also Badrān 2001. 20 See, e.g., Al-Aflākī 1959–61 (in French: Al-Aflākī 1978; in English: Al-Aflākī 2002); also al-Rakhāwī. 21 The potency of the Great Name of God used by a walī is displayed, for example, in the hagiographical accounts on Ibrāhim ibn Adham (2nd/8th century), one of the earliest protagonists of the Sˢūfi tradition, see al-Sulamī 1960, 15; see also Gramlich 1987,164–6; for a comparative study on “the great name of God”, see Zoran 1996, 19–62; see also Sviri 2002, 207f. 22 See, e.g., al-Qushayrī n.d., 9, in the section on Maʚrūf al-Karkhī (d. ca 200/815): “He was one of the great masters, one whose call [to God] is answered and in whose tomb people look for healing”; see also Appendix, E. 23 See, e.g., Badrān 2001, 150–3; also Balivet 2000, 403; cf. also the literature mentioned in previous footnotes. 24 For Sˢūfī reservations concerning the use, or abuse, of kun, see Gramlich 1987, 184f.; also Sviri 2002, 216, n. 39.

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and their tenor is reserved and cautious. Even Ibn al-ʚArabī, the Andalusian thirteenth-century mystic-philosopher,25 one of the most outspoken Sˢūfi authors, writes that the power of kun, or the fact that inherently man is a creator (khallāq), should be approached with the reservation demanded of good manners (hˢusn al-adab, tazˢarruf ) towards God.26 Thus, in chapter Three Hundred Fifty Three of his Meccan Revelations, “On Knowing the Position of Three Talismanic Secrets,” he writes: Man inherently has the power of kun, but outwardly he has got only the passive faculty [of being the object of kun]; yet in the world-to-come man will possess the power of kun also outwardly. It may happen that some men are given it in this world, but this is not a universal [human] faculty. Among God’s men there are those who hold on to it and there are those who, being courteous towards God, [relinquish it] as they know that this is not its proper abode . . .27 When God’s men see that in this world this is not a universal law, they relegate the particular law to the universal law and leave all in its proper abode. This is the state of the courteous ones among God’s Knowers who are constantly present with Him. In this world, therefore, the courteous [among God’s men] is a creator by means of his [religious] deed; not by means of kun, but rather by means of bismillāh al-rahˢmān al-rahˢīm (= in the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate).28

25

See on him Addas 1993; also Chodkiewicz 1993. For his prudence, see also n. 55 below; cf. also n. 16 above. 27 An example for an exceptional man who, according to Ibn al-ʚArabī, had relinquished the power to operate on existents (tasˢarruf ), is Abū al-Suʚūd ibn al-Shibl, a disciple of ʚAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (Baghdad, 12th century); see, e.g., Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, I: 452; Ibn al-ʚArabī 1946, 128–9 (the Chapter on Lot). Ibn al-ʚArabī explains that he himself has relinquished the act of tasˢarruf not out of courtesy towards God, but rather out of his perfect mystical knowledge (kamāl al-maʚrifa), Ibn al-ʚArabī 1946, 129; through true knowledge one knows that such an act should be employed only when one is forced to do so by an unavoidable divine command (amr ilāhī wa-jabr), but by no means out of personal choice; cf. also Appendix E. 26

 P> d /"tƒ B TRk i i "'{  QGH HB “” / 6„  ;…Y ” HB TQ@ La H F \  TUR  ~# Q †} B A $   0  [R` nR% $B ."'M   GH P3  4H "}‡ F \ 'V  . . . Q 6@ †} L'  R Q F _H +ˆ^ H F \ „? 4 z L'B . 6H   <ŠK >NK Œ"s R^ H P>   PR^ i H P> RS $  L'  >"  F P;)@ N@ l i NR „ $  L'  ja Z%? TUB$   RH d"c|  „ R  “. . . P>" , Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, V: 459–60; cf. also Ibn al-ʚArabī’s answer to the hundred 28

and forty seventh question of al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī: “What is the interpretation of the formula bismillāh”: “For the worshipper, with regard to bringing something into existence, this [formula] is like kun for God; by its means certain men bring forth what they will into existence,” Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, III:222 (for al-Tirmidhī’s spiritual questionnaire, see Al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī 1992b, 28); cf. also Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, VI:5: “no divine scripture and no prophetic tradition has come down concerning a created being who has been given kun apart from man specifically; this happened in the time of the Prophet

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 41 Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, a twelfth-thirteenth century mystic from Central Asia, in his Breaths of Beauty and Revelations of Majesty, seems rather more forthright as regards the human kun. Kubrā’s book, essentially a personal account of mystical visions and experiences, is interlaced with insights and teachings that had emanated, according to his own statement, from direct mystical experiences. Describing the characteristics of holiness (or, as it is known in Sˢūfi vocabulary, “friendship with God”—walāya), we read the following: Know that the wayfarer will be designated as a “friend” only when he is given kun. Kun is God’s command in His saying: “Our command to a thing when We will it is to say to it kun! and it is” (Qurʙān 16:40). The walī, however, is given [the power of] kun only when his will is annihilated in the will of God. When his will is annihilated in the will of God and his will is the will of God, then any thing that God wills His servant wills, while the servant does not will anything unless God wills it. This is alluded to in God’s saying: “You will not wish unless God the Lord of all Worlds wishes” (Qurʙān 81:29, 76:30).29

Kubrā insists, it appears, that possessing the extraordinary creative power of kun is, by definition, a proviso of being a friend of God, a walī. He hastens, however, to clarify and qualify his statement: Pronouncing the kāf and the nūn [that make up kun] does not transgress the Creator’s privilege, Praise be to Him; it only relates to the speed of the coming into being [of a thing]. The kāf is the kāf of existence (= kawn) and the nūn is His light (= nūr); thus we find among the traditions: O You who make all things exist! O You who is hidden [in? by? from?] all things!30

Kubrā may not share Ibn al-ʚArabī’s preference for deferring the power of kun altogether to the world-to-come; both mystics, however, despite their cautiousness, agree that to make a thing exist by means of kun [Muhˢammad], peace be on him, in the battle of Tabūk (9/630): He said, “Be Abū Dharr” and there was Abū Dharr” (for this tradition, which is well attested to in early historical sources, see, e.g., al-Tˢabarī 1964, IV:1700; for a discussion on the parity of bismillāh and kun, see below 53ff.

  "H  ” :   e3  "H ““B T ^B  4%i „ ‘E%   A:;   PB” /  ^ ’AG “ e3  /  ^  ’AG      ^&%  B T“     A B Te3  $%"d i ”}f $`R  $%"d iB $`R  $%"d i ”}f e3  $%"d  e3  / ^ ’ .B e3  “.} R  +  q  i B• HB” :  @ /fY, Kubrā 1957, 86–7; cf. above, 37, n. 13. CK   Tp  –%Y 4" RH   T |`: —`  e>  g˜\  B CK„ ™k-  †} B” “!f N. GH W !f N. H W :š%z?  \ T  B K C., Kubrā 1957, 29

30

87.

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should be reckoned as a power that is within human reach. They also share the understanding that the secret of the walī’s power to use kun efficaciously lies in the alignment of his will with the divine will; when the human and divine will are fused, creation may be executed as a simultaneous human-divine act. III. Language, Creation and Hermeneutics in a Historical and Comparative Context Speech and words play an important role in Islamic thought and culture. Speech, kalām, and its cognate kalima, word, are laden with meanings and ideas analogous to the numerous connotations of logos in other religious and philosophical systems. Kalāmu Allāh, God’s speech, as we have seen, is an attribute of the divine creative power by which the world and its beings are created. Kalāmu Allāh also designates the Qurʙān, God’s ultimate, non-created and inimitable manifestation; God’s word, or words, being inexhaustible and unchangeable, kalāmu Allāh signifies also Divine omniscience and immutability.31 In humanity, a species created in the image of God, it is the power of speech and reason that singles out man of all other creatures; speech represents language as well as the rational soul; the two are intrinsically connected. The appellation mutakallimūn by which the polemicists and theologians of Islam are designated, refer both to their power of reasoning and to their verbal skills of putting forward argumentations and rejoinders in defense of creed and faith. It is, therefore, clear that traditions and speculations concerning speech and language are fundamental to Islamic discourse and are exhibited profusely in its various literary branches: Hˢ adīth collections, Qurʙān commentaries, grammar, literature (adab), poetics, theology, heresiography, philosophy, and mysticism. Moreover, the metaphysics of that compact cluster—God’s creative power, His speech, His book and His commanding language—underlie the extraordinary interest in the sacred text, as well as in language as such, in the quest for uncovering the blueprint of the Divine design and wisdom. Thus we find that, from a very early stage in Islamic intellectual history, Islamic mystics and

31 See, e.g., Qurʙān 6:115: “The word of thy Lord finds its fulfillment in truth and in justice: none can change His Words for He is the One Who hears and knows all” ’^B)

.(PAR  _A;  'B ^K $=H i i$B $E ~@ 4.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 43 thinkers have explored assiduously the nature, structure, and meaning of the cosmos by means of pondering the nexus of language, text, creation, and order.32 Such investigations constitute a vital component also of the esoteric and mystical trends in the religious and philosophical systems of Late Antiquity. The fundamental theme of the ancient Sefer Yetsira, for example, which views creation as bound up with the twentytwo letters of the Hebrew language as well as with the first ten numbers, is echoed throughout Islamic esoteric literature with its similar claims for the twenty-eight (or twenty-nine) letters of the Arabic language.33 Language speculations are, no doubt, among the clearest examples for the continuity and flow of these speculative currents from Late Antiquity into early Islam. A principal element that ties Islam with these pre-Islamic traditions is the notion that behind the exoteric words and letters of sacred texts lay deep secrets. These secrets, when deciphered, reveal the blueprint of creation and the design of its wise Creator. Knowledge of the techniques by which to decipher these secrets can, and should, be gained, but only by “specialists” who are endowed not only with a penetrating insight and divine inspiration, but also with exemplary moral qualities and sound beliefs. These specialists constitute an esoteric hierarchy of philosophers, ‘gnostics,’ mystics, saints, imāms, and holy men. By accessing, through the sacred texts, the foundations of the divine wisdom and design, they gain not only knowledge, but also power. Like scientists who learn how to decipher the fundamental codes of creation they can, ultimately, make use of their knowledge effectively. The study of language, therefore, can be described as the study of extraordinary human potencies, leading, no less, to that potency by which non-existents existentiate. In Islam, the esoteric study of creation, text, language, and power can be condensed into the study of one word: kun (Be!)34

32 The earliest examples seem to be associated with Shīʚite-Ismāʚīlī circles, see, e.g., Kraus 1942, II: 262ff.; Fahd 1960, 375–7; Lory 1996, 101–9. 33 For the ancient, enigmatic Sefer Yetsira (= “The Book of Formation”), see Liebes 2000; for late antique systems in which such theories were expressed, see the papers by J. Assman, B. Bitton-Ashkeloni, and Y. Garb in this volume. 34 Although Shīʚite-Ismāʚīli speculations are, in general, beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth mentioning here the significance of kun for early Ismāʚīli cosmology, to the point of aggrandizing kun to the rank of a “deified” entity, Kūnī, a (feminine?) divine power by which the world was created; for these early speculations, which are imbibed with Gnostic and Neoplatonic ideas, see Stern 1983, 3–29.

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Al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī, a ninth century Muslim ‘gnostic’ from the northeastern edges of the Islamic world, builds his mystical understanding of language, as has already been shown, on the notion of “God’s perfect word”—kalimatu allāh al-tāmma, or, in the plural form, kalimātu allāh al-tāmmāt. This expression occurs frequently in supplication formulae; for example: “by all the perfect words of God, I ask refuge from the evil that He has created” (aʚūdhu bi-kalimātillāh al-tāmma kullihā min sharri ma khalaqa). Although the expression “the perfect word” or, in the plural form, “the perfect words,” does not appear in the Qurʙān, its roots are Qurʙānic; thus Qurʙān 6:115: “your Lord’s word has become perfect (or fulfilled) in truth and in justice; no one can change His words”.35 AlTirmidhī ponders the fact that in the first part of the verse “God’s word” appears in the singular while in the second part it comes in the plural. Referring to this seeming discrepancy he writes: Whether one says ‘God’s perfect word’ or ‘God’s perfect words’ both forms stem from one single notion (maʚnan wāhˢid). The singular refers to the totality [of God’s words] (al-jumla), and the plural refers to the words into which this single ‘word,’ at different times, was dispersed and became many; all, however, go back to one single word.”36

The single word, according to al-Tirmidhī, is God’s existence-bestowing command kun, the creative logos; the multitude of things and beings into which kun is dispersed and which come into existence by its creative potency, they, too, are God’s words—hence the plural side by side with the singular.37 Ibn al-ʚArabī, who has been inspired by al-Tirmidhī and, in many senses, has picked up the thread from him several centuries later,38 sums up this powerful idea in the following statement (which paraphrases Qur. 18:109): “All existents are God’s words which will not be exhausted; they are from kun and kun is God’s word.”39

35

See above, n. 31; see also Qur. 7:137 and 11:119. See Al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī 1992a, 3, ll. 2–5. 37 Cf. [Pseudo-] al-Tustarī 1974, 368: “The Mother of the Book is the root: it contains all that was and that will be . . . [then] by means of His saying kun He dispersed them out of the Hidden” Q  R^  ' OL  K„B . . . dB . H _AS B NE? 'B +JK U ) (ZAy  H; see also below, 45–46. 38 Consider, for example, the answers that Ibn al-ʚArabī wrote to the “spiritual questions” laid down by al-Tirmidhī; see the insertion of Ibn al-ʚArabī’s answers (in two versions) into the fourth chapter of Khatm al-awliyāʙ, Al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī 1965, 142– 326; see also Chodkiewicz 1993, 26ff. 39 See Ibn al-ʚArabī, 1946, 142 (the chapter on Jesus): i -   8. Q. 8S   4. B  ! Q “ $k^; also Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV, 35 (On Knowing the Breath— †k  4"RH )”. 36

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 45 Kun is a keyword also in other speculations that can be traced back to the ninth century. In the Kitāb al-Zīna (“The Book of Loveliness”), for example, a treatise on language written by Abū Hˢ ātim al-Rāzī, an eminent Ismāʚīli missionary from Rayy who flourished in the third/ninthfourth/tenth century,40 in the chapter on the Divine command (amru -llāh), al-Rāzī makes a striking analogy between kun and the Gospel of John’s logos: His command is His word by which He has created things. Thus He says: “God’s command when He wishes a thing is to say to it Be and it is.” By this word God has created all of creation. In the Gospels, in the opening ( fātihˢa) of the beginning of the book41 [it is written]: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and by this Word God has created all things. This is what was before all things.” This is the beginning of the Gospels and it is in accord with what is in the Qurʙān, except that in the Qurʙān it is more condensed. The Word that is mentioned in the Gospels is kun, and this is God’s command.42

Here, once more, one can detect the clear reverberations that arise from the association with pre-Islamic traditions. Another intriguing example of speculation on kun, supposedly from the ninth century, is attributed, probably erroneously, to Sahl al-Tustarī, an early ninth century mystic, whose followers resided mainly in the town of Basra. In an epistle titled Risālat al-hˢurūf (“The Epistle on Letters”), Sahl, or, in my opinion, pseudo-Sahl, writes: When God says to a thing “be” such and such and it is, [what comes into being] is, in fact, the form of the thing; [the form is] spiritual; it is composed of forces and of a spirit that were dispersed from the “big kun” which God said to the All. This spiritual form is the word [that issued] 40 On al-Rāzī (d. 322/934), see Daftary 1998, 43 passim; for the similarities between al-Rāzī’s work and that of al-Tirmidhī’s and for al-Rāzī’s explicit reference to al-Tirmidhī, see Sviri 2002, 214, n. 31. 41 By “Gospel” Al-Razi refers to the Gospel of John, but without specifying, or knowing of, the authorship of John; or he could have culled his proof-text from the running Arabic translation (ca. 6th C.), which opens with John; thanks go to my colleague Dr. Serge Ruzer. 42 .(82: 36) “   %  ”}f   "H  ” :  A:f? Q@ D -  -. "HB

4KB T4K ’ . $`  ” : -3^B +JK B  NAh Y B . . em   ea 4K LQ= 'B TNAh Y B ' L'—“f N. N= . H L' .Q. A:f?  ea 4K„B T $! ’ . “” ' NAh Y  8" -  4KB TJt $f V"   OL   "}› TV"    eH N\B g!  "H 'B; the connection between God’s word and Jesus is borne out by Qur. 4:171: “The Messiah Jesus son of Maryam is God’s messenger and His word that He had thrown into Maryam”—(P%"H   '  -.B   P%"H l ;} œA:;   ).

46

sara sviri from God in order that a thing may come to be. It is the truth of that thing which comes into being; it is the [divine] Will that it should come to be, and this is founded on the [divine] encompassing knowledge. The philosophers name it the nature of the thing. Some of them name it soul (nafs). All these [names] are related [to one another in the sense] that it is a divine command which gives forms to the bodies, watches over them, and protects them from harm.43

On the level of ideas, the spiritual “big kun” of this excerpt, out of which all existents dispersed, is reminiscent of al-Tirmidhī’s distinction between the original divine creative “word” in the singular and the many existential “words” which issued from it. On the level of terminology, however, it is hard to tie the two pieces together. As regards alTustarī himself, this is even more problematic. Such terms as “the truth of the thing,” “the nature of the thing,” “spiritual form,” “the big kun,” “philosophers” do not tie in with al-Tustarī’s idiomatic and thought patterns as they transpire from the numerous sources in which his tradition has been preserved.44 The linguistic, typological and thematic characteristics of the short epistle from which this passage has been culled call for a review of its ascription to Sahl al-Tustarī. This, it is hoped, will be dealt with elsewhere. It is worth noting here, however, that such speculations as the Epistle on Letters displays, formulated in a comparable vocabulary, tie in much more feasibly with ideas and idioms that are found in the writings of “The Brethren of Purity,” Ikhwān al-sˢafāʙ. This group of theosophists from tenth century Basra (or earlier) was known for its Shīʚite-Ismāʚīlī affiliations and for its Neoplatonic, Pythagorean and Hermetic leanings.45 In their encyclopaedic “Epistles” (rasāʙil Ikhwān al-sˢafāʙ) numerous examples of speculations on language and on kun can be found. In the concluding and encompassing epistle (al-risāla al-jāmiʚa), for example,

$ BB — H 4k žJH 4A zB   /E '    H  L.B L. “” 8  B” 'B   K  H 4K ' 4A zB"  /  ~J TN#  OL  “PM!? K” H ’k  PQ‚R@B T  4RA`6 4kjk  QA;•B TpA3  PR   @ K /Y 'B T    4  > “8ƒ _AS H _ H Q ™z U;SŸ H 'i "H  B" H PQ.B ;k QA;q, [Pseudo-] 43

al-Tustarī 1974, 367. 44 For a thorough analysis of al-Tustarī’s tradition, see Böwering 1980, 7–42; as for the Risālat al-hˢurūf (based on Ms. Chester Beatty 3168/3), Böwering expresses some doubts whether this is an authentic work by al-Tustarī, but is not categorical, 18. 45 The Brethren’s association with Hermetic wisdom is borne out by numerous statements and references they make, see, e.g., the 52nd epistle on Magic, Talismans and the Eye, Ikhwān al-sˢafāʙ 1928, IV:461f.; references to Pythagoras, Hermes Trismegistos, Aristotle and other pre-Islamic philosophers are scattered throughout their epistles; for a general overview on the Brethren of Purity, whose provenance, identity and dating are still debated among scholars, see Nasr 1964, 25–95; Hamdani 1996, 145–52.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 47 an intriguing passage shows the Brethren’s attempt to knit together the Neoplatonic system of hypostatic emanations, a system they upheld, with the Qurʙānic notion of creation by the imperative kun. Thus, in a rather curious manner, the Brethren describe the process of creation as a relay of kun from one ‘hypostasis’ to another. In their description they also make an analogy between this creative process and the faculty of speech—of human speech in general and of the prophetic discourse in particular. They write: The Active Intellect is the face of God that does not change and does not cease . . . it is the first manifestation. Since this is so, it behooves that this should be the place of God’s word by which He created things as He wished. Its light spread and Its bounty emanated upon what was beneath it, and thus the Universal Soul became the face of the Active Intellect . . . Then [appeared] the Prima Materia to which the emanated light and the power of the word of the first manifestation became attached . . . Then the Universal Face appeared, and this is the highest sphere. It shone and took its appropriate position according to the order requisite by Divine Wisdom . . . and by the unceasing attachment of the . . . word to the first limit and its successive, ceaseless, timeless emanation upon it . . . Command and prohibition are in the same position as the heart with regard to what descends upon it from the spiritual senses, as God has said: “The trustworthy spirit has brought it down upon your heart that you may be one of the warners, in a clear Arabic tongue” (26:193–195). The spirit descends upon the heart, and then the power attaches itself to the tongue, whose place is the face, and from it, by speech (nut ˢq), commands and prohibitions issue. By command (i.e., by kun) existents come into being, and by speech sayings which report of what was and of what will be become articulated. The power which is attached to the heart is similar to the fire of the word that is united by the command (= the creative kun) with the Source of Life. When the spirit descended upon the heart by [or with?] the First Agent (= the active, or universal, intellect), it attached itself to its face; it then spoke out kun, and what the Creator wished was. Then the first face shone and executed the command and creation appeared. Then the second face took its position (i.e., its rank in the emanative order) and it, too, spoke out the command that was thrown upon it by the first [face], and what was below it came to be. Hence the word kun became constructed of two letters: the kāf is connected with the upper realm within the limit of the first face, and the nūn descends into the lower [realm of] entities, which issues from the first one: this is the kāf that brings to completion (as alluded to by kamāl = perfection, completion?) and which leads to the best of all states . . .46

ZSB ~# .  B TB?  $@YB . . . Bgd iB 3% i OL  N\B g!  \B ' Rk  N R  . . . ’ .B T B  S rB  —"; . . . f . A:f? ea Q@ -  8  4. _cH d  46

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The hermeneutic strategy used at the end of this passage, namely, the breaking down of kun into its consonantal components in order to draw out of each component the ‘meaning’ concealed within it, displays a technique that was widely used by Islamic mystics and exegetes. AlTirmidhī, as has been previously shown, used it prolifically alongside other techniques in developing the ‘science’ which he named ʚilm alawliyāʙ—the science, or knowledge, of the Friends of God. Islamic traditions in general, not necessarily mystical traditions, show that exegetes, from early on, used this technique, or referred to it, especially in their attempts to decipher the enigmatic letters that appear at the beginnings of certain Qurʙānic sūras.47 In Islam, this hermeneutical technique does not seem to have acquired a specific technical term; al-Tˢabarī, the most celebrated Qurʙān commentator of the ninth century, whose commentary adduces much of the exegetical material accumulated up to his time, mentions several attempts at reading these letters as acronyms and, consequently, of various attempt at deciphering the message encoded in the acronym. Al-Tˢabarī himself (d. 310/923) does not commit himself to accepting any one of these propositions, but refers to the letters under consideration as “lexical letters which, in distinction to ordinary speech where letters are combined, God left isolated (muqat ˢt ˢaʚa) in order to

P¡ . . . B?  $@Y„ 4K /B  [ Q@ N-   B?  AQ  P¡ . . . Rk  N R  \B 4AK †k  UBB . . . 4A'ii 43# ZS  @ exj  RcH  Z^"¢B "fˆ T? ~k  'B K \  $@ HB Z  4 gv@ £Q B "H? B . . . H] j@ UB$ B "¢- „ A -cB B? $| „ 4K $A%ˆ^ ^ dL  H - ~`  }H? B"  g¤» :N\B g!   . T4A zB"  03  H A  p3% £Q B "H? ! $%B \  HB ;#„ /  N-^ P¡ Z   gv^ B"  T“}=H £@"! ;@ Z „ 4-  / B TdB . H =tY _H 8i   P-^ en „B T8  -^ "H?= Ten „ 4AK †k „ N R  ¥V ^ N2. Q¦H :133 §> /A3   =v%   "H?„ /$|-  4K  N2. Q¦H enG QS@ ’^ Rk  B?„ Z   B"  ’ g¤ “ <  „ enG QS@ ’^ P¡ T4A B?  2  \  Z^"¢ P¡ TK $= "H?„ UB B? \  "fB |`: —`  f H    „ 4JH CK T}"> H 4A=H  4. 8 T~# B H  B? H A     "H?„ en B ! 4%„ Nk   4n3GH  B B? \  $|@ 'B T<R „ :133 §> UR „ Nk;    R  ! 42R`GH CK 'B :133 § > . . . >? N‚   b` B N  CK 'B TB? C"6B $-:;q C"6 T}"6 B  2   N ~#L B T 2  \  'B '"tV ' 4n @ 4RS <. . . $%, Ikhwān al-sˢafāʙ 1995, V: 357–9, cf., 132f. (note also the insertions of variant

readings, 133); for al-Tirmidhī’s breakdown of kun into its consonantal components (for him the kāf signifies kaynūna, existence, and the nūn—nūr, light), see Sviri 2002, 216; cf. also Kubrā’s deconstruction, above, 41. 47 See, e.g., Sahl al-Tustarī’s (d. 283/896) commentary to 2:1: “a-l-m—this is the name of God the most sublime; it contains meanings and attributes which those whose understanding is by Him know” (. . . @ PQk  N' Q"R% 8kEB RH  N\B g!  P—P ), alTustarī 1991, 8; for more details, see Sviri 2002, 213ff.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 49 demonstrate that each of them contains several meanings.”48 The hermeneutic technique based on deciphering obscure consonantal clusters, however, is much older than the Muslim third/ninth century commentators. In fact, it echoes a technique which was used for encoding, as well as for short-hand, in pre-Islamic systems. It is well-known from rabbinic literature, which itself has borrowed it from ancient Mesopotamian scribal and hermeneutical traditions. The technical term for it in Jewish sources is notariqon, and in rabbinic hermeneutic literature it is listed among the measures by which the Torah is interpreted.49 Other attempts to decipher the enigmatic letters in the Qurʙān relied on ‘numerology,’ the science of adding up the numerical value of letter combinations in order to infer from it encoded information. This science is known in the Islamic sources as hˢisāb al-jumal (or al-jummal) and in Jewish sources as gematria. In early Islam this technique was known to be mastered by Jews. According to early Islamic traditions, Jews were consulted as experts in order to decipher the meaning encoded in the enigmatic letters; or, in the context of the Jews of Medina’s polemics against nascent Islam, Jews were said to offer such encoding voluntarily and, in doing so, they predicted a short-lived reign for the followers of Muhˢammad.50 These observations show that the understanding of the esoteric aspects of language in Islam may benefit from viewing it within a comparative and historical framework. IV. The Breath of the Compassionate The most elaborate system of thought which brings God and man together in the context of the creative power inherent in language is offered by Ibn al-ʚArabī in the thirteenth century. Ibn al-ʚArabī’s bold, often daring, thoughts concerning language, letter mysticism and the creative power of speech are dispersed in many of his works; occasionally they seem to have been scattered haphazardly, as it were, without See al-Tˢabarī 1988, I:93: CB"> ' -  ;  œ^kH N%Bˆ^  O$!   H + B” N-  UjK "˜; QRh [R`@ Q‚R@ N% P B 4Rn H B"> QRS ©¡ N\   PhR  .“$zB RH  i /"}2. RH  GH C"> Nl 4 i$  Mk@  " g! ? CB"3  48

49 For the Mesopotamian antecedents of this rabbinic technique, see Liebermann1987, 157–225; my thanks go to Prof. Moshe Idel for this reference. 50 See, e.g., the traditions related by the early exegete Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (d.150/ 767) in his commentary to Qur. 2:1, Muqātil ibn Sulaymān 1979, I: 83–7 and especially 85; cf. also al-Tˢabarī 1988, 92–3; for the use of this technique by the early Shīʚites in order to predict the termination of the Umayyad rule, see Bar-Asher 1999, 212–3.

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any obvious context, almost as though their author wished to play them down, or even make them inconspicuous, especially when they could be understood as related to magical acts.51 Nevertheless, a comprehensive and systematic discussion on language and its creative power is offered in chapter One Hundred Ninety Eight of the Futūhˢāt al-makkiyya; it is entitled “Concerning the Knowledge of Breath.” The breath, nafas, is a seminal theme in Ibn al-ʚArabī’s system of thought. First and foremost, it is a divine act; as such, Ibn al-ʚArabī names it the Breath of the Compassionate, Nafas al-rahˢmān. God’s Breath is the releasing, merciful act through which existence burst forth out of the divine Hiddenness. For Ibn al-ʚArabī creation is seen not only as God’s word, or words, but also as the product of God’s exhalation: existents, which were held within God’s Hiddenness in stressful suspension and latency, are released into existence through his exhaling attribute of rahˢma, Compassion. Inherently, this creative breathing out is associated with the divine kun. Human speech, in which breath is the operating mechanism, reflects, or is reflected by, this divine act of breathing out. Thus, in human beings, too, before letters and words are articulated, they exist as latent essences within the vapor with which man’s entrails are filled before breath or language form. Speech, therefore, is the ultimate feature by which man bears likeness to God: inasmuch as man articulates separate sounds by breathing them out, and, when combined, these sounds become meaningful words and statements, so also God “breathes out” creation through the overflow of generosity and love; hence, as we have seen, the countless existents are all “God’s words”: Letters issue from the breath of the human breather, who is the most perfect of all created formations; all letters appear through him and by his breath. He is thus on the divine form, namely, [the form of] the breath of the Merciful. The emergence of the ‘letters of existents’ and [the emergence] of the ‘world of words’ is the same. He has assigned them to the human breath as twenty-eight letters which affirm what issued from the breath of the Merciful: the essences of the divine words are twenty eight; each word has faces.52 They have issued from the breath of the Merciful, which is the ʚamāʙ, the fog in which God was before He created creation.53 51

See, e.g., n. 59. The Arabic li-kulli kalima wujūh may, simply, mean “each word has aspects,” that is, “meanings”—it can thus be understood in the context of semantics; note, however, the use of “face,” wajh, in the cosmogonic context of the hypostatic series of emanations in the excerpt from the Brethren of Purity cited above, 47; wajh, face, would thus signify that each of the twenty-eight hypostatic manifestations “faces” the one above it and the one beneath it. 52

53

_AS ;k@B 8"Q{ @B 8žv  N. ' OL   ;…Y †k-  †kª ª H CB"3  ’S"o”

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 51 Ibn al-ʚArabī goes on to enumerate the ‘twenty-eight’ divine ‘words’ which were breathed out by God from the fog (ʚamāʙ) in which, primordially, He was.54 This for him is analogous to the humid vapor that precedes speech. The first four ‘words,’ in Neoplatonic fashion, are the Intellect (ʚaql which is also called “the Pen”, al-qalam), the Soul (nafs, also the Tablet, al-lawhˢ), Nature (t ˢabīʚa) and the Primordial Matter (habāʙ, literally, dust). From here follows a list of twenty-four other cosmic and earthly ‘hypostases,’ i.e., worlds, or words, although not necessarily in the order in which they came into existence.55 The list includes angels (in the twenty-fifth position), Jinns (in the twenty-sixth), humans (in the penultimate, twenty-seventh position) and, lastly, the martaba, the ‘degree,’ ‘level’ or ‘rank’. This curious idiom, which Ibn al-ʚArabī explains as “the end goal ( ghāya) of every existent,” seems to refer to the principle of purpose, of the telos, of each and every being, as well as to the principle of order and hierarchy upon which existence is built. In the parallel world of cosmic spheres and human sounds (or letters), the first divine “word,” the Intellect, is reflected in the sound ‘h,’ which is the first distinct sound that comes out of the breath when it flows out without being hindered by any articulation point; the last “word” in the existential order, the martaba, is reflected in the sound ‘w,’ which is labial, and therefore the farthest from the source of the breath. Between the two phonetic extremities lie the rest of the “letters”; their sounds are determined by the articulation points (makhārij, maqāt ˢiʚ) where the breath is blocked before it moves on. When the first and the last sounds are combined, they make out the word ', huwa, “he”—the third person singular. As the breath moves along the articulation passage, it

Q.B T 8K P B 8xK CB"> Q{B T >"  †kª ª „ 4AQ Y /    TCB"3  d"!B A ¡ 4A'ii 8K A!  >"  †k  H $E  4 3H "> d"!B 4A ¡,  ;…Y †k  “em  em%  N= @  . OL  R  'B >"  †k ! $, SB 4. NK, 4., Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:43. 54 For the tradition “God was in a fog” (kānallāhu fī ʚamāʙ), see Al-Tirmidhī 1934, XI: 273 (min tafsīr sūrat Hūd); also al-Tˢabarī 1964, I:34; for Ibn al-ʚArabī, the ʚamāʙ, literally fog, is analogous to the vapor, bukhār, which is formed from the moistness of the elements and which precedes human breath and the letters that it produces. 55 Ibn al-ʚArabī writes that, in the same way that one enumerates letters as a-b-g-d-hw-z etc., and not according to the order of their articulation points, so also his listing of the world’s constituents simply lists their names, and is not intended as an exposition of the order by which they came into being  $ . SB Z}^"¢ i P R   " 8$B) (¬m   'SB Z}^"¢ i CB"3  "> . . . n> ]' $–@, Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:44.

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carries with it from sound to sound the characteristics and powers of each previous sound. Ibn al-ʚArabī infers, therefore, that the word huwa (') = he, in which the first hāʙ () and the last wāw (B) are combined, possesses the cumulative power of all letters. This, to be sure, alludes to the huwiyya (4%'), the divine Ipseity; which, by means of this phonetic analogy, is shown to be both the most inclusive and the most powerful of all existents.56 By analogy, all this alludes to the power that man holds: since man, in Ibn al-ʚArabī’s cosmogony, is the last in the chain of breathed-out entities (apart from the martaba, or ghāya, the principle of telos that pertains to each and every level and entity), man, necessarily, contains the cumulative power of all other existents. He is thus the most perfect and most powerful of all entities on all levels of being; he is, in fact, the goal and aim of existence as such.57 The wāw, too, due to its being the most external and least subtle of all letters, is, paradoxically, the most perfect and most powerful of all letters.58 And here Ibn alʚArabī inserts, casually, fleetingly, one of his comments concerning the efficacy of words and says: “For he who knows how to execute a ‘deed’ by means of letters, it is the same with regard to the ‘deed’ ”—the deed, no doubt, is the magical, or talismanic, act; to the one who knows how to perform such an act by means of using the correct letters, the wāw, it would appear, carries a particular significance.59

“jR A:f? PM! 4%Q  ’ . LQ T8K P   CB"3  — _AS ’RS ' 4”; for the esoteric significance of huwa in earlier Sˢūfi lore, cf. al-Sarrāj 2001, 79: “It has been said that the Great Name of God is Allāh, for when the letter A is removed, LLH remains [which means “to God”]; and when the L is removed, LH remains [which means “to Him”], so the allusion [to God] does not fall off; and when the second L is removed, the H remains [which is the third person pronoun]—and all secrets are [contained] in the H, as it means He . . .” B   `% ‘ ? ! Z'  ? PM!?  P   ‚% N $B) 56

Q   "? _ASB '  ` "tƒ Uj  ! Z' B /fY Z'L^ P  `% Uj  ! Z' .(' RH i  SH N. / ;…Y k T0GS?  4AQ Y 8KB †k  4%› "tV ;…Y ~#L.B” “. . . Z^"  _AS  P R  “CB"3  N. B B 8S  N. ;…Y ”, Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:45; for 57

58

the significant invisibility of the wāw—the middle letter in the root k-w-n, the verb of existence—in the imperative form kun, see IV:57; cf. al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī’s notion of “deficient letters”, Sviri 2002, 217; cf. Ibn al-ʚArabī 1948, 5: “the wāw contains the characteristics and powers of all letters because, when the air reaches its articulation point, the wāw does not appear in its own essence only; rather, the air moves through all the [preceding] articulation points and [the wāw] therefore receives the power of all letters.” ~# % J> \"oH  Q   n  $! A! "QM% i ? 'B Q. CB"3  §t B  k) .(C"> N. / H  N3 Q. ¬m  _AS  Q  59 “CB"3 „ NR  C"R% H $! NR   ' L.B”, Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:45; concerning

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 53 V. Bismillāh Chapter Hundred Ninety Eight of the Meccan Revelations “On the Knowledge of the Breath” is a remarkable source from which to glean esoteric speculations concerning letter mysticism in Islam in general and in Ibn al-ʚArabī’s system in particular. The elaborate discussion on kun, its creative power, its connections with the Breath of the Merciful, the hierarchical order of breathed-out existents and, by analogy, of human breathed-out letters and words, is only a prelude to a long and elaborate study by Ibn al-ʚArabī of what is the culmination of speech: sacred formulae of praise of God as well as supplication to God and the divine names. Before offering a list of chapter-headings on the various topics that he is going to discuss, Ibn al-ʚArabī refers briefly to kun again and says: Since mentioning His names is the quintessence of praise, we have mentioned in this chapter what for us is the same as the word kun for Him, namely, the basmala (= the formula bismillāh, “in the name of God”). God’s people say: “For us, in bringing acts into existence, the bismillāh is in the same stance as kun is for Him.”60

Further on, in the fourth section of the ensuing exposition on sacred formulae and divine names, Ibn al-ʚArabī offers the following insight into the basmala: The basmala is your saying bismillāh (= in the name of God). For the worshipper this is the word of the Presence of existence61 and of bringing things into existence; its stance is equivalent to the word of the Presence62 when He says kun. When the worshipper acts truthfully by it, what becomes affected by kun becomes affected by the basmala. It is as though he is saying: In the name of God existence appears! This reveals the truth of the genuine beloved’s relationship [with God]: God is his ears and his tongue, and, hence, what comes about by kun, comes about by him (or by the basmala).63 the efficacy of the wāw, cf. the hint inserted in Risālat al-mīm wal-wāw wal-nūn, Ibn al-ʚArabī 1948, 10: “he who fathoms the secrets of wāw [knows that, or knows how to make] the supernal spiritual entities descend by it in a noble way” ("  ‘B  k%"f igv^ R  8A zB"  Q@ gv^ B ); in this interesting Epistle, Ibn al-ʚArabī explains why he is prudent when it comes to discussing the efficacious aspects of letters, 8. 60 “ GH  4 gv@ R? –%  GH  P;­ ”. Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:47; see also above, 40. 61 “Presence” translates the Arabic hˢadˢra, which, in Ibn al-ʚArabī’s terminology, refers to a “level,” “plane,” “domain” of being, see Chittick 1989, 5 passim. 62 When hˢadˢra is introduced on its own with no qualification it, usually, denotes the Presence par excellence, i.e., the Divine Presence. 63

T“”   /"‚3  4. 4 gv@ d-# K /"‚> 4. $`R# 'B  P;­ ~# 4;) ”

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The somewhat equivocal phrase “in bringing acts into existence” of the first passage is elucidated by the purport of the second passage: Ibn alʚArabī clearly refers in both passages to the extraordinary ability, displayed by certain people—to wit, prophets and the Friends of God—to bring things into existence through the power of the basmala. However, from further amplification of prophets’ and holy men’s acts, it becomes evident that all their activities, be they basic bodily functions, daily acts of worship, or supernatural feats such as reviving the dead and bringing inanimate objects to life—all are enacted in an extraordinary, indeed unique manner. When such men are considered, Ibn al-ʚArabī suggests, it is evident that all their activities are done through God’s agency. By the phrase “God is his ears and his tongue” Ibn al-ʚArabī alludes to an extraQurʙānic divine tradition (hˢadīth qudsī), ubiquitous in Sˢūfī writings and attested also in canonical literature. This tradition is known as hˢadīth al-nawāfil, the tradition concerning supererogatory acts, and it underscores Islamic theory of the Friends of God and their miraculous deeds; in fact, it offers the key to the extraordinary power displayed by prophets and holy men: since they are utterly devoted to God and absorbed in His worship, their relationship with God becomes one of reciprocal love; in this love relationship God, as it were, acts through them in every sense of the word, in their mundane as well as in their extraordinary activities.64 It is a mystical union that overrides mystical experiences. In one of its most authoritative versions, this tradition runs as follows: . . . My servant does not come close to Me by means of anything I like better than the prescribed commandments; yet he goes on coming closer to Me by means of supererogatory acts until I love him; and when I love him I become his ears by which he hears, his eyes by which he sees, his hand by which he hits, his leg by which he walks. If he asks Me for anything, I shall surely give it to him; if he asks refuge in Me, I shall surely give him My refuge. . . .65

Q TK Q{ d  P;­ : % ˆ T ! NRk% H Q@ e 3^  4;) „ $`R  ! NRk “ ! d H !  T ; B R e3  . +`3H $E Q@ "s 4  > ! =t, Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:54f. To this unique love, cf. Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, I:482–3. J> N „   +" -% O$`! gd HB T A ’c"s H   Z> ­ $`!   +" ^ HB . . .” % -  \B Q@ ®n`% -  $%B @ "`% OL  "@B @ _;q OL  R ’¯ -`=> “ T => “. . . L? £@ R-: ° B An!?  ˆ B TQ@, see al-Bukhārī 1908, IV:231. 64 65

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 55 Ibn al-ʚArabī now refers to one of the Qurʙānic passages that relate a miracle of revival: Jesus’ breathing into an inanimate figure of a bird and bringing it to life. Verse 110 of Sūra 5 lists, in fact, a series of miracles committed by Jesus: Then Allāh said: “O ʚĪsā son of Maryam! Tell of My favors to you and to your mother: I supported you with the Holy Spirit so that you spoke to the people in infancy and in manhood; I taught you the Book and the Wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel; and when you made out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My permission, and you breathed into it, and it became a bird, by My permission; and you healed the blind and the lepers, by My permission; and you brought forth the dead, by My permission; and when you showed the Children of Israel clear signs, I restrained them from [doing harm] to you, but the unbelievers among them said: It is clear magic.

These undisputed miracles provide Ibn al-ʚArabī with a platform from which to assert that the recurring Qurʙānic idiom “by My permission” (bi-idhnī) is, in fact, equivalent to the idiom “by My command” (bi-amrī) and, evidently, also to the formula “by the name of God (bismillāh), that is, by “My Name”; and since God’s command, as we have seen, is to say to a thing Be! (kun) and it is, then this command, when issued by a tongue which is activated by God—which, in fact, is God’s—has the same efficacy as when God speaks it directly: “By My permission” means “by My command”; since I was your tongue and your eyes, things came to be by you which are not within the power of the one through whose tongue I do not say [Be!]. In both cases (i.e., whether it is directly through My saying or yours), the bringing into existence belongs to Me. And bismi-llāh is the quintessence of kun.66

The resurrection of the dead and the other miraculous deeds of Jesus are pondered also in chapter fifteen of Ibn al-ʚArabī’s Fusˢūsˢ al-hˢikam (“The Gemstones of Wisdoms”), the chapter which is devoted to the prophetic wisdom of Jesus. The discourse on Jesus revolves around the Qurʙānic account of his miracles in general, but special place is given to the revival of the clay figure of the bird. Jesus’ birth is in itself a miraculous event. Naturally, it is associated with the fact that he is God’s Word

 i  /B$ @ ’;} -  A:f? ~! ’ ¢ Œ"@B ~ ; ’¯  TO"Hˆ@ O  “@” “. }  P;) T } |   d-  T ; , Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:55; it is worth 66

referring here to Appendix B, where Ahˢmad al-Rifāʚī is described as reviving fried fish commanding them to arise “by God’s permission.”

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and also with the fact that he was breathed into Mary; he is “His Word that He threw into Maryam and a spirit from Him” (4:171). The association of Jesus with “word” and “spirit” also connects him with God’s command. “ʚĪsā,” says Ibn al-ʚArabī, “came [out into the world] to revive the dead, for he was a divine spirit. The revival [however] was God’s and the breathing was Jesus’. ”67 And also: “The power to revive and heal that ʚĪsā possessed came from the fact that Gabriel breathed him [while] in the form of a man, therefore ʚĪsā [too] revived the dead in the form of a man. If Gabriel had not come in the form of a man but in a different form, then ʚĪsā would not have revived unless he were clothed in that form and came out with it.”68 The point that Ibn al-ʚArabī is making becomes apparent when we juxtapose the statement, “In both cases (i.e., whether it is directly through My saying or yours), the bringing into existence belongs to Me,” with the statement “The revival [however] was God’s and the breathing was Jesus’.” It also transpires from the statement, “When he revived the dead, it was said about him ‘he/not he’. ”69 The apophatic statement “he/not he” is characteristic of Ibn al-ʚArabī’s portrayal of the aporia that arises from the quandary who, in fact, is the actor in such miraculous deeds. Ibn al-ʚArabī ponders this aporia and poses the following question: When the creative kun, by which existents come into being, is performed by a prophet or by a holy man—should the creative act be ascribed to [the unknowable] God and, therefore, its quiddity would remain unknowable? Or is it the case that God descends upon the ‘form’ of him who says kun, in which case saying kun is the ‘truth’ of the human ‘form’ upon which God has descended and in which it has appeared?70 To put it in a simpler way: who is the one who ‘breathes out’ the existence-bestowing kun? Is it God in His essence—which is hidden and unknowable—or is it God in the ‘form’ of the human breather? Some mystics, says Ibn al-ʚArabī, uphold the first opinion; others uphold

“;}R ²k B  >Y .B T'i B ? ^  £A3% ;} ¬"o”, Ibn al-ʚArabī ^  £A3% ;} .B ")  /E  N%")\ ²k 4QS  "lYB >Y / H  . HB” J> i £A3% i ;} K . . . '"}› /E  ^B ")  /E  N%")\ 8ˆ% P  B T")  /@ “Q "QM%B /  ~-@ †)-%, ibid., 140. “' i ' ^  x> $!   % ”, ibid., 141. Z;3@ A  4K Z;v^ NQ . 4. B T ! Q “ T$k^ i -   8. Q. 8S ” /  ~- 4  >      % H /E    R^ ' gv% B TQ-A'H PR^ j A ' H “ŠQ "Q{B QA  g¤ -  , ibid., 142; note the echoes that one can detect here of the dicta 67

1946, 139. 68

69 70

attributed to Sahl al-Tustarī adduced earlier—cf. above, 45.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 57 the second, and still others remain perplexed and unknowing. In fact, he says, the truth of this question can only be known and determined by ‘taste’ (dhawq, i.e., by direct mystical experience). To amplify this point, he relates an anecdote concerning an act of “revival” performed by Abū Yazīd [al-Bistˢāmī], a celebrated ninth-century mystic. Abū Yazīd, the story goes, inadvertently killed an ant. Full of sorrow he breathed into the ant and it came back to life. “He immediately knew,” states Ibn alʚArabī, “who the breather was, so he breathed. Thus he was in the line of Jesus.”71 Ibn al-ʚArabī’s solution here, as elsewhere, is apophatic. It is both Abū Yazīd and not-Abū Yazīd who performed the miraculous revival. Abū Yazīd, indeed, performed the breathing into the dead creature and it was revived, but it was God’s breath which breathed through him. For Ibn al-ʚArabī, such an act exhibits the ultimate and most intimate relationship between man, as the perfect man (al-insān al-kāmil), and God as Creator. God is, indeed, the breather, and man is the vehicle through which the divine breath operates in the world; but this does not mean that the man who breathes is nothing more than a mechanical, instrumental vehicle. “He is,” as has been cited above, “on the divine form, namely, [the form of] the breath of the Merciful.”72 The perfect man is thus the accomplished human “form” that is “on the divine form.” His breathing and command, too, acted out in the plane of human existence, are creative and existentiating; without such “forms,” or, in other words, without accomplished human beings such as prophets and the friends of God, divine acts would not be made manifest. In the last resort, the “he/ not he,” according to Ibn al-ʚArabī’s formula, is the core of the science of the holy men; it is also the solution, hovering in perplexity between the “yes” and the “no,” to the quandary regarding these extraordinary deeds performed by extraordinary men via speech and breath. VI. Conclusion: Some Methodological Considerations The study of language as a creative power in Islam is exceedingly complex and offers many dimensions that have yet to be chartered. It

iB "H?  |% PQ‚R@B T"tƒ C"n    PQ‚R@ T$z  C"n    Z'L% }R  [R=” ~# $! PR ’}A3 QJ -  4   ²k }z $%gd £@. B i C"R^  % i 4 ˆ;H L'B .O$% “$Q  O;}  ²kG ²k% @—see, Ibn al-ʚArabī 1946, 142; Ibn al-ʚArabī considered 71

himself, too, to be a walī in the line of Jesus—on the friends of God who are in the line of Jesus, see Chodkiewicz 1993, 76ff. 72 See above, 50f., Ibn al-ʚArabī 1994, IV:43.

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brings to mind the Qurʙānic verse, 18:108, often quoted in association with the immeasurable dimension of the divine words: “Say: if the sea were ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the words of my Lord are exhausted—even if we bring another sea to its aid.” In the attempt to chart the impact of powerful language in Islam, especially in its esoteric context, the ink has not yet been exhausted. The range of speculations on the correlation of divine and human speech, and the creative power that such a correlation implies, is vast; the dialectical strategies employed in order to reconcile human creative power with the rejection of any trace of theosis—especially in a comparative context (e.g., versus the Christian saint, the Jewish Zaddik or, for that matter, the Shīʚite imām)—this, too, is a subject that requires further research. In this paper I have tried to pursue several key notions within the works of a few seminal figures who were engaged in pondering the nexus of language, creation and power, be it divine or human. The authors whose speculations I have cited in this paper—The Brethren of Purity, Abū Hˢ ātim al-Rāzī, Ibn al-ʚArabī, as well as al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī, [Pseudo-] Sahl al-Tustarī and Najm al-Dīn Kubrā—offer remarkable views on language and its mysteries; so much so that each of them would merit a separate in-depth study. The most exemplary, even heroic, study dedicated to one Islamic personality, or to the collective literary corpus that bears his name—a corpus that contributed immensely to linguistic esotericism in both Sˢūfism and Shīʚism—is, no doubt, Paul Kraus’s study of Jābir ibn Hˢ ayyān.73 For the pursuit of the multidimensional implications of language—scientific, magical, creative, theurgic; in particular, for its implications and use within almost all pre-Islamic religious and philosophical systems of the Near East in Late Antiquity; and, consequently, for assessing the abiding vitality of language speculations and practices in the esoteric scene in Islam—for all these aspects Kraus’s work, both as exemplum and data base, is indispensable. By focusing, for this paper, on kun and equivalent formulae of creative power, it has become evident to me that, for the study of esoteric language in Islam, two distinct perspectives should be employed in tandem, as has been masterfully done by Kraus; the one: the comparative-historical perspective on the flow of esoteric ideas and techniques from one culture to another and the developmental lines that these ideas then took in Islam; the other: the thematic and terminological study of the various components of these techniques and ideas. Both perspectives call for interdisciplinary and 73

See Kraus, 1942.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 59 interactive effort, built on sound philological grounds. As the material exhibited in the Appendix indicates, interactive effort is called for also for studying the phenomena of power, in particular the power of the friend of God, within the history of Islam itself. From a historical, developmental aspect, the material used here suggests to me that the notion of the human potential to use language as a tool for creation, a notion that reverberates with ideas prevalent in late-antiquity, can still be heard in early Islamic traditions (second/eighth—third/ninth centuries); then, during the phase that produced the classical Sˢūfi compilations (fourth/ tenth—fifth/eleventh centuries), such echoes become so dissonant with the concept of the oneness and totality of the divine power, that they are silenced out; they resurface, however, in the phase during which the Sˢūfi Brotherhoods emerge and with them also the growing power of the Sheikh of the t ˢarīqa (sixth/twelfth century onwards). The material collected for this paper has convinced me that in studying the emergence of the Sˢūfi Brotherhoods in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, to take this one historical example, the esoteric subtleties concerning practices, techniques, enigmatic dicta, speculation and terminology, which the texts reveal, should be assessed along with the relevant historical and sociological data culled from them. Questions concerning the growing power of the Sheikh and its impact on his followers, as well as on Islamic society at large, would thus benefit from a multifaceted platform of study and discussion—a platform that is wider-ranging than has been commonly envisaged or taken up so far. To sum up: questions concerning the creative power of the walī, to the point of assuming the divine act of creating by kun, open up for the researcher comparative avenues of historical, phenomenological, anthropological, philosophical, as well as literary and philological character. The material that has been culled here, limited by the constraints of the presentation as well as by the limitations of the presenter, has exposed the significance of such a wide-ranging research for a better understanding of the phenomena of spiritual power in mystical Islam and their development. As we have seen, these phenomena are not simply antiquated pieces of information; rather, in the landscape of contemporary polemics within Islam, they are part and parcel of a vital and public discourse concerning spiritual and religious power.

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Prooftexts concerning the power of the walī to existentiate by kun and by its equivalents. A. Al-Rifāʚī, Al-burhān al-muʙayyid, 1408h., pp. 124–26: Dear men! When you seek help by means of God’s servants and friends, do not regard this help and succor as coming from them, for this is idolatry; rather, ask God [to grant you] what you need by His love for them; [for the tradition says:]: “Many unkempt, dust-covered, tattered men, who are driven away at the doors—were they to adjure God, He would grant them [their request]” (this tradition is reported by Ahˢmad [ibn Hˢ anbal] in his musnad, by Muslim [in his sunan] and by others).74 God gives them power to operate on existents, makes essences transform for them, and, by His permission, makes them say to a thing Be and it is. ʚĪsā, peace be with him, created a bird out of clay by God’s permission, revived the dead by God’s permission. Our prophet and beloved, the master of all masters of prophets, Muhˢammad, may peace and the best of prayers be with him, a trunk of a tree inclined towards him and inanimate objects greeted him; in him God brought together all the miracles (muʚjizāt) that He had dispersed among the rest of the prophets and messengers. Then the secrets of his miracle (muʚjiza) were carried on in the friends [of God] of this people; for them they became graces (karāmāt) that are transient, while with him, may peace be with him, [there remains] the abiding miracle (i.e., the Qurʙān).75 O, my child! O, my brother! If you say, “God, I ask you by Your Compassion,” it is as though you say, “I ask you by the ‘friendship’ of your servant Sheikh Mansˢūr” or another one of the friends; for friendship (wilāya) is a special privilege (“by His compassion He privileges whom He wishes”—Qur. 2:105, 3:74); therefore, beware of ascribing the power of the Compassionate to the one for whom he has compassion: the deed and the power and the might are His, praise be to Him; yet the liaison (wasīla, literally: means, medium) is His compassion by which He has privileged His servant the walī. Therefore, when in need, approach him [the walī] by God’s compassion and the love and protection with which He has privileged the choicest from among His servants, but affirm God’s oneness in every deed, for He is [a] jealous [God].76

74

References to authoritative Hˢ adīth collections have been probably inserted by the editor/s or copyist/s. 75 The Qurʙān is considered the most extraordinary and inimitable of all miracles that were vouchsafed on prophets; this is why, with regard to Muhˢammad, al-Rifāʚī reverts to talking of a “miracle” (muʚjiza) in the singular; it is obviously the power of this unique miracle, the Qurʙān, God’s word, which runs through the awliyāʙ and allows them to commit marvelous deeds, karāmāt. 76 This double-edged theology of miracles and human power is reminiscent of Ibn al-ʚArabī’s discussion—see above, 53f.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 61

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77 This extraordinary revival story is associated, no doubt, with Qurʙān 5:110, where Jesus’ miracles are enumerated, and where the phrase “by God’s permission” recurs several times, see above, 55; clearly, it is also reminiscent of the miraculous revival of the fish in sūra 18: 61, 63; for al-Rifāʚī’s revival of a child, who was trampled to death by Sˢūfis dancing in ecstasy, by saying to him: “Arise, man, sit and pray,” see al-Nabhānī 2001, I:438–9.

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C. Ibid., p. 145: Sheikh Ahˢmad al-Rifāʚī said to Sheikh Shams al-Dīn Muhˢammad, may God sanctify his heart: O Muhˢammad, the seeker will not attain that which he seeks unless he withdraws from his lower-self, from the acquired habits of the senses, and from all desires, permitted or otherwise. Then God will give him the power to operate on the existence of His existents and worlds. When he gives him power to operate on the existence of His existents and worlds, He gives him power to operate on absolute existence; and when He gives him power to operate on absolute existence, then his command becomes God’s command, so that when he says to a thing Be, it is.

"H   $%"  N% i $3H O :" 0$ $3H d$  †f ²A:# !  c B    "%B '"}›B 8z`  8Q  _AS Œ"s%B ;> 8 ˆHB ;k ! ¬"o% J> K  "E B en  K  8 "E  !B SB   "E B  !B SB . . .  < !L'>  #    R^  "Hˆ@ "H E en  D. al-Shaʚrānī, ʚAbd al-Wahhāb, Kitāb al-Tˢabaqāt al-Kubrā, Cairo 1305, vol.1, p. 141: He [al-Rifāʚī] used to say: when the worshipper is established in the mystical states, he attains the place of God’s proximity, and then his [spiritual] intention (himma) pierces the seven heavens; as for the [seven] earths, they become like an anklet on his leg; he becomes an attribute of God’s attributes, and there is nothing that he cannot do. God then is pleased when he is pleased and is displeased when he is displeased. He said: what we say is corroborated by what came down in one of the divine books: God has said: O sons of Adam! Obey me and I shall obey you, choose me and I shall choose you, be pleased with me and I shall be pleased with you, love me and I shall love you, observe me and I shall observe you and I shall make you say to a thing Be! And it will be.

_`:;# 4a -' 8EB  R^  H +"  N3H b@ >? H ^  $`R   : % .B f ghR% i jB N\ e3  8kE H 4kE EB \"l mm . c? 8EB 8;  :4AQ Y ZJK [R@  B H   $%B : . no; po;qB c" c"d  R^ e3  EB  =>B P! r ! cB P."sa  BJtB PR6  RA6 !UV @ W :N\B g!   % . . .   #   ^ PRSB P=  =B P=> E. Ibid., p. 102 Among them (the Sˢūfī Sheikhs) was Mamshādh al-Dīnawarī.78 . . . He said: For the last twenty years I have lost my heart with God; and for twenty years, due to good manners towards God, I have relinquished saying to a thing “Be!” and it was. . . .

78

Mamshādh al-Dīnawarī (d. 299/911), a Persian Sˢūfi master of the 3rd/9th century; see on him al-Sulamī 1960, 318–20.

kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 63 One of them said: The meaning of “I have relinquished saying to a thing Be and it was” is this: Mamshādh was mujāb al-daʚwa (namely, one whose call to God is answered); whenever he appealed to God, his call was answered. Eventually he lifted all this to God and went along by God’s will not by his own will, and he stopped therefore appealing to God.79

: % !  c .B . . . O%$  H PQGHB @ 4: d"! LGH   #   ’"¢B  R^ # _H 4: d"! LGH £` 8$  . . . N\B g!  _H _k^ P¡ TZS  . T/!$  +–H .  “  #   ’"¢” RH :PQ‚R@  .$  Œ"s "@ i  "@   R^    ~# ! F. Ibn ʚAjība, Īqāzˢ al-himam fī sharhˢ al-hˢikam,80 pp. 488–89: It is written in the [books of] wisdom: “O, My servant! I have made existence and all that it includes bow down to you. . . . By My support to you, you are I, and by what I have conferred on you, I am you; therefore, live forever; none shall vie for your place. O, My servant! I have rent the veil for you and have opened the door for you; I have shown you the most amazing command; give, therefore, [the message] to your noble people, even if they name you “magician” or “impostor”; I have given you all created beings—let them say “This is nothing but fraud” (38:7). O, My servant! I have made you say to a thing Be! And it is. Why worry that they name you “magician” or “madman” when you drink from the nectar of Kawthar (= a river in Paradise) while they say, “this is nothing but magic of old” (74:24). . . . When, in His bounty and kindness, God chooses a servant from among His servants, He brings him near to Him and elects him to enter the Presence of His holiness. . . . There the servant becomes as one in God and for God, his command is by God’s command until no fleck [of attention] remains in him for another, and nothing veils him from God. He whom his Lord loves, whom He elects for the Presence of His holiness . . ., God becomes his ears and his eyes, his helper and protector in all his circumstances and abodes. . . .

79 Not surprisingly, the section on Mamshādh in al-Sulamī’s Tˢabaqāt al-sūfiyya does not record his kun feats; it does record, however, an anecdote according to which by saying “lā ilāha illāllāh” (“there is no god but God”) to a barking dog, Mamshādh brought about the dog’s death; curiously, this is an example for the destructive rather than the creative power of language; for the topic of relinquishing kun out of courtesy towards God, see above, 40; for the discrimination of classical Sufi literature, see above n. 16. 80 Ibn ʚAjība (d. 1809), an 18th-century Sˢūfī author who wrote a popular commentary on the Hˢ ikam (= aphorisms) of Ibn ʚAtˢāʙllāh al-Iskandarī, a 13th-century Sˢūfī of the Shādhiliyya brotherhood; the above passage is culled from the commentary to the 9th section of Ibn ʚAtˢāʙllāh’s communication with God (munājāt), which is appended to the end of the hˢikam.

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kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 65 References Abū Nuʚaym al-Isˢfahānī, 1997. Hˢ ilyat al-awliyāʙ wa-t ˢabaqāt al-asˢfiyāʙ. Ed. M.A. ʚAtˢāʙ. Beirut. Addas, C. 1993. Quest for the Red Sulphur. Tr. P. Kingsley. Islamic Texts Society: Cambridge. Aigle, D. (ed.) 2000. Miracle et Karāma. Hagiographies Médiévales Comparées. Brepols: Turnhout. Al-Aflākī, 1959–61. Manāqib al-ʚārifīn. Ankara. ———— 1978. Les saints des Derviches tourneurs. Tr. C. Huart. Paris. ———— 2002. The Feats of the Knowers of God. Tr. J. O’Kane. Brill: Leiden-Boston. Al-Bukhārī, Abū ʚAbdallāh Muhˢammad ibn Ismāʚil, 1908. al-Jāmiʚ al-Sˢahˢīhˢ. Ed. M.L. Krehl. Leiden: Brill. Al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī, Abū ʚAbdallāh Muhˢammad b. ʚAlī, 1965. Khatm al-awliyāʙ. Ed. Othmān Yahˢyā. Beirut. ———— 1992a. Nawādir al-usˢūl fī maʚrifat ahˢādīth al-rasūl. Beirut [= Istanbul 1878]. ———— 1992b. Sīrat al-awliyāʙ. Ed. B. Radtke. Beirut-Stuttgart. Al-Hujwīrī, ʚAlī b. Uthmān, 1911. Kashf al-mahˢjūb. Tr. R.A. Nicholson. London. Al-Kalābādhī, Abū Bakr, 1935. The Doctrine of the Sˢūfis. Tr. A.J. Arberry. The University Press: Cambridge. Al-Nabhānī, Yūsuf b. Ismāʚil, 2001. Jāmiʚ Karāmāt al-awliyāʙ. Ed. S.M. Rabāb. Beirut. Al-Qushayrī, Abū al-Qāsim n.d. al-Risāla fī ʚilm al-tasˢawwuf. Beirut. Al-Rakhāwī, Muhˢammad, 1925. al-Anwār al-qudsiyya min manāqib al-sāda al-naqshbandiyya. Cairo. Al-Rāzī, Abū Hˢ ātim, 1957. Kitāb al-zīna. Ed. Hˢ . al-Hamdānī. 2 vols. Cairo. Al-Rifāʚī, Ahˢmad, 1987/88. Al-Burhān al-muʙayyid. Ed. ʚAbd al-Ghanī Nikahme. Beirut. Al-Sarrāj, Abū Nasˢr, 2001. Kitāb al-lumaʚ fī al-tasˢawwuf. Beirut. Al-Sˢayyādī Muhˢammad, 1884. Qilādat al-jawāhir fi dhikr al-ghawth al-Rifāʚī wa-atbāʚihi al-akābir. Beirut. Al-Shaʚrānī, ʚAbd al-Wahhāb, 1887/8. al-Tˢabaqāt al-Kubrā. Cairo. Al-Sulamī, Abū ʚAbd al-Rahˢmān, 1960. Tˢabaqāt al-sˢūfiyya. Ed. J. Pedersen. Brill: Leiden. Al-Tˢabarī, Abū Jaʚfar, Muhˢammad ibn Jarīr, 1964. Taʙrīkh al-rusul wal-mulūk. Ed. M.J. de Goeje (rev. ed.). Leiden. ———— 1988. Jāmiʚ al-bayān ʚan taʙwīl al-qurʙān. Beirut. Al-Tirmidhī, Muhˢammad b. ʚĪsā, 1934. Sˢahˢīhˢ al-Tirmidhī. Cairo. Al-Tustarī, Sahl, 1911. Tafsīr al-Qurʙān al-ʚazˢīm. Cairo. [Pseudo-] al-Tustarī, Sahl, 1974. Risālat al-hˢurūf. Ed. M.K. Gaʚfar. In idem, Min al-turāth al-sˢūfī. Cairo 1974. Al-Yāfiʚī, ʚAfīf al-Dīn, 1955. Rawdˢ al-rayāhˢīn fī hˢikāyāt al-sˢālihˢīn. Cairo. Amir-Moezzi, M.A., 1994. The Divine Guide in Early Shiʚism. Tr. D. Streight. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———— 2000. “Savoir c’est Pouvoir: exégèses et implications du miracle dans l’Imâmisme ancien.” In Miracle et Karāma, ed. D. Aigle. Tournhout: Brepols, 251–86. Badrān, M. 2001. Adabiyyāt al-karāma al-sˢūfiyya. Al Ain, UAE. Balivet, M. 2000. “Miracles christiques et islamization en chrétienté seldjoukides et ottomane entre le XIe et le XVe siècle.” In Miracle et Karāma, ed. D. Aigle. Turnhout: Brepols. Bar-Asher, M. 1999. Scripture and Exegesis in Early Imāmī Shiism. Leiden and Jerusalem.

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kun—the existence-bestowing word in islamic mysticism 67 Trimingham, J.S. 1971. The Sˢūfi Orders in Islam. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Zoran, Y. 1996. “Magic, Theurgy and the Science of Letters in Islam and their parallels in Jewis Literature.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 18: 19–62 (in Hebrew).

ADAM’S NAMING OF THE ANIMALS: NAMING OR CREATION? Michael E. Stone The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between naming and creation, focusing particularly on Adam’s naming of the animals. After presenting the biblical background and a couple of examples from ancient Jewish thought, we shall proceed to consider some interesting texts in the Armenian tradition I. The Creative Word in Genesis Jewish thought has assigned a major role in creation to speech and language. This notion finds its scriptural underpinning in Genesis 1–2. There are numerous statements in later Jewish thought about how God creates through speech,1 and equally, since the Torah is divine speech, about how and why he created with the particular words and letters actually used in Genesis 1.2 Such statements issue from consideration of the first two chapters of Genesis so the history and development of this consideration are of great interest. In Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, the idea occurs of the active divine word that is fulfilled in being uttered.3 Things come into being because they are spoken by God and it is divine speech that created the world. Here, however, we shall strive to narrow our focus from speech in general or the active word to the idea of the name and naming. II. Creation by God’s Name: Biblical Underpinnings In language that evokes ancient Canaanite creation myths, Prayer of Manasseh 1.3 says, following an invocation that partly recalls the opening of the Amida prayer: 1 Stone 1990, 183–4 and Index, s.v. This paper is based on research on Adam and Eve in the Armenian tradition, funded by the Israel Science Foundation. 2 Theodor and Albeck 1965, §1.1 and 1.10. 3 Is. 11.4, Wisd. 12.9, 18.15–16, 1 Enoch 62.2, 2 Thes. 2.8 and Odes of Solomon 29.9– 10: cf. Ps. 46.6. See further Stone 1990, 273 and 385–7.

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michael e. stone O Lord Almighty, God of our ancestors, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous offspring; who shackled the sea by your word of command, who confined the deep and sealed it with your terrible and glorious name.

The actions described after the initial doxology refer to creation. The Deity shackles the sea, just as in the Ugaritic myth Baal shackles or kills Yamm.4 He does this by his word of command. In the parallel and, consequently, conceptually identical statement, he shackled the Abyss, the Tehom, sealing it in with his terrible and glorious name.5 The door of the sea’s prison cannot be opened, because of the Name’s power.6 This description of the act of creation draws on mythological sources, yet it also shows how the name speculation that became so central in later Jewish mystical thought might have developed.7 God’s word imprisons Chaos; his name is set on the prison door. This is not just a statement about the active word, but that the imprinting of the Name creates cosmic order. We will trace the rich heritage of this formulation in a more modest context and a later period. To this end, we have chosen to look carefully at the way Adam’s naming of the animals was understood, particularly by the Armenian tradition. We believe that such an examination will cast light on the ideas of word-action and of the effective divine name. III. Adam Naming the Animals: The Biblical Basis Adam was created in the image of God (“And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” Gen. 1:2) and so, Adam’s act of naming reflects, or perhaps exemplifies, God’s way of naming or creating, too.

4 Van der Toorn, et al. 1995, 255–63 and further references there; an English translation of the main text, with interesting notes and commentary, is to be found in Gaster 1961, 114–29 and 153–71. 5 ὁ πεδήσας τὴν θάλασσαν τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ προστάγματος σου‚ ὁ κλείσας τὴν ἄβυσσον καὶ σφραγισάμενος τῷ φοβεῷ καὶ ἐνδόξῳ ὀνόματί σου. 6 Adam’s tomb is sealed with a triangular seal (suggesting the Trinity), see Life of Adam and Eve 42 (48):1. Compare Mt. 27.66 and Gospel of Peter 28–34 where there are seven seals on Christ’s tomb. 7 Scholem 1954, 56; Schäfer 1992, 20–4, 56–8 and see further his Index, s.v.

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It all began in Genesis: where else? Before the “documentary hypothesis”, of course, Genesis chapters 1 and 2 were seen as parts of a single composition.8 In chapter 2 there is an interesting sequence of events. There was dry earth and no man to work the soil (Gen. 2.5). God was moved to create man after the ground was watered (i.e., so that vegetation would grow—Gen. 2.6). Then, God formed (the Greek says ἔπλασεν “modelled”) man from dust of the earth and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, so vivifying him (Gen. 2.7). Next, the Edenic Garden was planted and God put man there (Gen. 2.8). God made vegetation grow, especially fruit trees (we leave aside the tree of life and of knowledge of good and evil Gen. 2.9) and took care of irrigation with the four rivers on which there is a little excursus (Gen. 2.9–15). So far, it will be observed, there are no animals. Adam is put into the Garden to work it and keep it (note verse 5 above) and he is given the commandment about the fruit (Gen. 2.15–17). Then comes the relevant citation: Gen. 2.18 is God’s statement that it is not good for man to be alone, he needs a partner. So God creates all the animals and the birds and brings them to Adam to see what he will call them and “whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Gen. 2.19). Adam named all the birds and beasts, but no partner was found for him. As will readily be observed, this sequence of events differs in many ways from Gen. 1–2.4a. In Genesis 2, after the creation of Adam there ensues God’s statement that there was no partner found for him. Only then does the text narrate the creation of the other living creatures (Gen. 2.19) and it can readily be inferred that those creatures were created in order to find a partner for Adam. By naming, Adam checks them out for this purpose, and that naming is effective. He cannot recognize his partner without naming her; he names the animals that have been created and does not find his partner. IV. Armenian Understanding of this Sequence The chief move of Armenian exegesis of this passage, and not just of Armenian exegesis, is to connect this story with Genesis 1.26–30.9

8 The apparent “differences” or “contradictions” between the two creation stories were handled in various ways by traditional Jewish and Christian exegesis. For some examples, see Alexandre 1988, 43–5. 9 Alexandre 1988, 43.

72

michael e. stone 26 And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” 27 And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.” 29 God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. 30 And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, I give all the green plants for food.” And it was so. (JPS)

This passage introduces the ideas of the creation of Adam in the image and likeness of God, the creation of mankind both male and female, and the giving of dominion over all the creatures to mankind. This is the last act of the scenario of creation, on the sixth day. How did the ancient exegete fit the two passages, Genesis 1–2.4a and Genesis 2, together, despite the prima facie tensions between them? The oldest theological treatise in Armenian is entitled Teaching of St. Gregory, and it is embedded in a history of the conversion of Armenia attributed to Agathangelos.10 There seems no doubt that the work, which we shall call just “Agathangelos”, was written about the middle of the fifth century, within half a century of the invention of the Armenian alphabet.11 In the Teaching of St. Gregory §264, the “image of God” from Genesis 1.27 is understood to be the breath breathed into Adam according to Genesis 2.7. Thus Adam received the image with the following results. First, he had “discernment, rationality, intelligence, spiritual breath”; second, he had recognition of God; and finally, he had authority and prescient knowledge. Focusing on the last phrase first, Agathangelos says that his knowledge is prescient because he recognized each creature and knew its name.12 The “authority” that Adam had derived from the prototype of which he was the image, i.e., God, and was expressed in his authority

10

Thomson 2001 translates this text with introduction and annotation. Thomson 1976, “Introduction”. For further bibliography, see Thomson 1995, 90–5. 12 On a similar basis, Teaching §275 speaks of Adam’s recognition of Eve (Gen. 2.23– 24, cf. Mt. 19.56 and Mk. 10.78). 11

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over vegetation and animals. God made the animals obedient to man, and man, by his discernment, recognized the essential character of each beast and so gave its name. Thus, in Adam’s naming and in the qualities that make that naming possible, Adam is the image of God. V. Adam Names God In his next move Agathangelos moves back to the second fruit of the spirit that was breathed into Adam, that is recognition of God. He argues that, because Adam could name the animals, he must first have known and named—and so proclaimed—the Creator. Thus, and only thus, could he have known the names of the animals. For this reason, Scripture says that “God (i.e. the Creator) led all creatures of his creation to Adam to see what he would call them” (Gen. 2.19). Adam, it follows, “first named the Creator, because from whose face he received life, Him he saw before all others; for the creatures were established to make known to him the Creator” (§273).13 Because God led the animals to him, he must have recognized God before he recognized and named the animals. That recognition of God is naming. In other words, as it is put in §264: “For the Lord introduced knowledge and through his knowledge recognizing His creatures, he was called similar to Him.”14 So, the second of the gifts of the spirit also reflects Adam’s being in the image of God. Here two most interesting notions are introduced. First, that the divine breath or spirit breathed into Adam gave him discernment, rationality and knowledge and in this respect he was the image of God. It is this discernment that enabled him to recognize the animals—not just to make up their names, but to name them according to their essential being. This point was stressed repeatedly during the following centuries. David of Ganjak (1060?–1131), also known as David son of Alavik, says that “Adam gave names conformable to the nature of each animal and those were found to be their unchangeable names.”15 The name is an

13

Thomson 2001, 70. Thomson 2001, 66. 15 Abrahamyan 1952, 52. Similarly Gregory of Narek (945?–1003), David’s predecessor, in his Commentary on Song of Songs, stresses this point: “Even after eating the fruit, he did not totally lose the spirit”. This is shown, Gregory maintains, by the fact that “he arranged names for each of them (the animals) according to its disposition and 14

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expression of the essence or true being of that named, an idea found widely in human societies.16 Adam recognized and knew that name because he was created in the image and inspired by the spirit that God breathed into his nostrils. A commentary on Genesis is attributed to the fifth-century author Ełišē. It is likely, but not completely certain, that he was the actual author. In it, we find an additional confrontation of Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1.30 gives an inclusive list of creatures: “every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life”. In the naming pericope, in Genesis 2.19, only the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven are mentioned, the creeping things are passed over. Ełišē asks: And why did he add the additional ones (i.e., those added in Genesis 1 to the list in Genesis 2)? Because they were going to receive names and those who are without names are reckoned with the uncreated, as though the created come from the uncreated through that (i.e., through receiving names). “And he brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam named every living thing, that was its name.”17

Here the creative dimension of naming is made very explicit. Adam can name true names, which is an act of creation, only because he bore the image of God. The second intriguing idea present in the Teaching is that God could be visible to humans and audible to humans only if he took on “a visible likeness and a power of expression”. Otherwise they could not endure the sight of Him and the sound of His voice. Adam named Him because he saw His face before he saw any other creatures, “for the creatures indeed were established to make the Creator known to him” (Teaching §272). In the background of these statements is, of course, the idea of the Incarnation: in Creation man was made in the image of God; in the Incarnation God took on the form of a man.

nature” (Grigor Narekac‘i, 1840, 276–7). All translations of Armenian sources are our own, unless otherwise specified. Compare John Milton, Paradise Lost, 8:352–3. “I nam’d them, as they pass’d, and understood Thir Nature, with such knowledge God endu’d”. 16 On the importance of naming, see Abba 1962, 500–3, Denny, 1987, 300–1. 17 Gen. 2.19. Xač‘ikyan 1992, 241.

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VI. God’s Etymology At first glance, the assertion that Adam named God is strange. Of course, we may recall Exodus 3:13–16 and 6:1–5 where God makes his name known to Moses, and tells him to use His name in addressing the people of Israel. But this is not the same, though the idea of God’s proper name is present. In his Reflection on the Holy Liturgy, Nersēs of Lambron (1153–1198) remarks on the phrase from the Mass “Lord God of hosts and Creator of all beings”,18 First (is) God’s name which people found, (with which) it names him . . . Because having learned that He alone is Creator of beings, on account of this we called the Creator of the structures of things God (Armenian: Astuac) that is “he who brings here (‫[ ׫ױקך
׸׶ך‬ast acoł]), the non-existent things to existence and being, (both) the heavenly and earthly.19

So Nersēs too says that humans gave God His name. Now, in fact, the etymology of the Armenian word Astuac (֭‫)קך׻ױ׸׶‬ “God” is not completely certain (one plausible view would take it from Phrygian Σαβάζιος, etc). Nonetheless, the popular etymology (“He who brought here”, i.e., “Creator”) referred to by Agathangelos and Nersēs of Lambron was extremely ancient and widespread. So much so that it is given as the meaning of Astuac in the great nineteenth-century thesaurus of Classical Armenian.20 Agathangelos connects this popular etymology with the idea that when God brought Adam the animals to name, Adam recognized, i.e., named, Him as the Creator. Therefore the name of God used by Adam means “he who brings hither”, and thus “Creator”. An interesting footnote is that the Armenian translation of the Bible renders Exodus 3.16, ! 46 !, “I am who I am”, as « ֱ‫» ׯֳ
׹ױ
קך׻ױ׸׶֭
׭מ
׶‬, I am Astuac (The Creator) who IS”, though the Septuagint reads for this

18 The phrase is from the Liturgy, from the prayer before the Kiss of Peace: see Nerosyan, 1984, 68. 19 ‫׶׹ױ׻ך׹ר׹מן
؀
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׮ױל
פ
؀
ׯ׻פע׻ױנ׮
ׯ׶נ
ײױן‬: Nersēs’ remarks on this name “I do not mean the name of his nature which is glorious and incomprehensible but of his glory and action.” See Nersēs Lambronac‘i 1842, 81 for both quotations. 20 In NBH 1837, s.v. it is glossed thus: ‫ײפ׸ך׸׶ךש
׹כפ‬, ‫׫׾קך
׶פ׸׶ך׮
؀
ח׸׶ך
׭ךר‬, ‫ײפ׺׻ױ׺ך׮ױ׽
ׯ׽ׯפ׶׮ך‬, ‫ײפ׹ך׹ך‬, ‫פק׫מ׸׶‬, “like founder, or bringer here or hither, that is to say, bringer into being, maker, creator.” Ačar֛yan, in his etymological dictionary, in a long, detailed article gives an excellent overview of proposed etymologies of the word supports the Phrygian etymology given above (1971, 1.279–282).

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phrase: ἐγὼ εἴμι ὁ ὤν. The word Astuac is introduced into the Armenian form of the verse where it is not found in the Hebrew or Greek. This witnesses the antiquity and dissemination of this idea. The same concept was very much to the fore in the thirteenth century for, in his Book of Questions, Nersēs’ later contemporary, Vanakan vardapet (1181–1251), has the following. QUESTION: How did he (Adam) give the name? ANSWER: When He (God) breathed into his face, the eyes of his mind being opened, he saw God and the fiery hosts round about, and he said, “God!” (Astuac, i.e., bringer forth hither). Then He (God) brought the animals forward. He (Adam) gave the name. The animal, wondering, looked at him.21

Vanakan vardapet clearly states the relationship between Adam’s naming God and God, by or in accordance with the meaning of His name, bringing forth the animals so that Adam could give them, to their astonishment, their “true” names. Knowledge or recognition of names, therefore, is a creative act and the name of God that is known to humans is “Creator”. This name comes from Adam’s discernment that he is the image of God and the ability to discern this derives from the inbreathing of the spirit. VII. The Late Medieval Ages In the material we have discussed there, we have ranged from the inception of Armenian literature to its floruit in the High Middle Ages. It may, therefore, be appropriate to conclude with two passages from great figures of the late Armenian Middle Ages. Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i (1344?-1409), Armenia’s most eminent systematic theological writer, asks in his Book of Questions (part 53): “Why did Adam give names to all cattle and other (animals)?” He enumerates a number of answers to this question and we take up the discussion in the middle: Answer. . . . Third, because God had given Adam natural wisdom; He commands (him) to give names in order to demonstrate the best offspring of the Word (i.e., mankind). Fourth, in order to show man to be autonomous; wherefore he commands him to give whatever names he wishes. Fifth, he gave these animals as help to man, as servants to the(ir) lord; he had to

21

R. Ervine, personal correspondence.

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77

know them by name. Sixth, the beneficent God made Adam companion of His creation by giving names. Seventh, since he had breathed into him the breath of grace of various gifts, now he manifested the grace of priesthood in him. For it is the duty of a priest to give names after the birth in the font. Eighth, now he manifested in Adam the grace of prudence and speech and voice and lordship.22

Thus, Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i stresses a series of Adam’s aspects which relate to his role or status. The issue of Adam’s autonomy is an old one and his free will is related to his sin as early as The Teaching of Gregory.23 Lordship is also present, but so is the theme of creation. Adam gave names, which means he created and because he created, he was a companion or partner of God in creation. Consequently he was lord of the creatures he named and had authority over them. Moreover, Adam gave names just as a priest gives names in the baptismal font. Baptism is rebirth so here, again, the theme of creation and recreation recurs. In the Adam Book of Ar֛ak‘el of Siwnik‘ (ca. mid-fourteenth century to ca. 1421) we read: 16 Why did he create Adam later? And not before everything. For, if he was image and likeness, He should have made him first, with Himself. 17 Because, if he had not created the beings first, Where would the first man have lived? He formed the earth as a table for him, And then He summoned and honoured the First one. 18 Then He brought, He set before him, A thousand sorts of living beings, So that if he were pleased with them, He might take a companion, whom he wished. 19 He took no companion from irrational beasts, For they were not like him. But he gave names to the cattle, Thus one turned and looked at him. 20 When he gave them a name, The fitting one to each, Lowering their heads to the ground to him. They passed by obediently. (Recension 1, Chapter 1).24

22 23 24

Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993, 219–20. Teaching §§277, 279. The text may be found in Madoyan 1989, 15; cf. Stone 2007, 87–88.

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Ar֛ak‘el of Siwnik‘ wrote a long epic poem on Adam and Eve from which the preceding is an extract. He was both nephew and student of the great theologian, Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i and his uncle’s ideas about naming influenced him. What this passage from Ar֛ak‘el’s Adam Book omits is as intriguing as what it presents. Ideas about naming and creation, prominent and developing from Agathangelos to Nersēs Lambronac‘i, are completely absent. Ełišē’s idea that naming is required for existence, which has many resonances in other writings, is not taken up. From the beginning, in Agathangelos, Adam’s image had included an aspect of authority and mastership (so already Genesis 1:28–30). It is this which Ar֛ak‘el of Siwnik‘ discusses almost exclusively. He passes over notions such as Adam’s naming as the image of God’s creation, Adam’s naming the animals as the continuation of his naming of God, naming as bringing into being, and so forth. Instead, he stresses the issue of obedience: a lord or master names and so naming demands obedience. This is not a new idea, of course, and Agathangelos’ words about it bring to mind Isaiah’s doxological cry: Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. (Is. 40:26)

The biblical sources, however, are submerged in the background in Ar֛ak‘el’s poem as he highlights one characteristic of Adam as the image: his lordly authority. In the search narrative in the apocryphal Penitence of Adam (especially 37(10):1–38(12):3) the beasts’ obedience is the operative theme. Eve lost it when she sinned, but Seth retained it, because he was created in Adam’s image and likeness (Gen. 5.3) and so he could overcome the beast.25 The Penitence of Adam, the Armenian translation of the primary Adam book, is quite old, and might be of the sixth or seventh century.26 A final remark touches on Adam’s naming as a sacerdotal function. In the seventh reason cited by Grigor Tat‘ewc‘i above, he related Adam’s

25

Being in Adam’s image, Seth possessed a measure of the image of God. Anderson and Stone 1997 provide a synoptic edition and translation of the relevant texts. 26

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79

naming to his priestly role. This point was made earlier by Vanakan vardapet: Question: What did he give to Adam? Answer: Priesthood in the putting of names, for priests seal the believer at the font, by calling his name.

Priesthood relates on the one hand to the idea of the primordial high priesthood, passed on by Adam to the subsequent generations. On the other hand, it takes up themes related to Christ as priest and sacrifice that are already developed in the New Testament.27 Similar ideas are expressed by Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i who says that before sinning Adam had “three gifts: priesthood, royalty and prophecy.” The priesthood, Grigor says, was expressed by his naming the animals.28 The theme of naming is a rich one, both from the aspect of history of thought and from that of the investigation of social categories. More data could be assembled and further avenues of investigation could be broached. Yet, what has been said here suffices to indicate certain main lines of development. References Abba, R. 1962. “Name.” In Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 3.500–8. Abrahamyan, A. 1953. (ed.) “ְ‫( ”ס׹מׯׯױׯךר
׻ױם׹ױ
ךר׷ךץ֭
עפ׻ך‬Canons of David Son ֝ of Alvik). Ējmiacin March:51–63. Ačar֛yan, Hr. 1971. ּ‫( ׯך׹ך׵ך֮
ׯךרך׸ך׭׹֭
ׯמ׹מ׮ך‬Armenian Etymological Dictionary). Rpr. Erevan: Erevan University Press. Alexandre, M. 1988. Le commencement du livre: Genèse I-V. La version grecque de la Septante et sa réception. Paris: Beauchesne. Denny, F.M. 1987, “Names and Naming.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. M. Eliade, New York: Macmillan. Vol. X, 300–7. Ervine, R. 2000. “Antecedents and Parallels to Some Questions and Answers on Genesis in Vanakan Vardapet’s Book of Questions.” Le Muséon 113 (3–4):417–428. Gaster, T.H. 1961. Thespis: Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East. Garden City: Doubleday. Grigor Narekac‘i 1840. ֯‫( ׽ׯ׻פע׻ױ׹לךׯמ׸ך׀
פׯךרךׯך׊
׺פׯך׊
׮ךרמ׹ךׂ
׹ױלפ׹‬The Writings of Grigor, Monk of the Monastery of Narek). Venice: Mechitarist Press. Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993. ֯‫( ׺ׯך׭׺׹ךּ
׽׹פ‬Book of Questions). Jerusalem: St. James Press [repr. of Constantinople edition of 1729].

27

See, for example, Hebrews 2.17–18, 5.1–10. Sermon for the Saturday before the Fast, chap. 60 in Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1998, 275. The same exact formulation is found in Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i Corcorec‘i 1825, 316. Compare Vanakan vardapet cited in Ervine 2000, 435 n. 15. 28

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———— 1998. ֯‫( ׹ױ׸ךש
ׯך׹؃ֽ
פײױר
׹ױ
ׯךמע׻ױןױ׹ךא
׽׹פ‬Book of Preaching Called Winter Volume). Jerusalem: St. James Press [repr. of Constantinople edition of 1740]. Madoyan, A. 1989. ֭‫“( ׽׹פל׭ךם֭
פ׺מׯ׻פ׉
ץמ׽ך׵‬Adam Book” of Ar֛ak‘el of Siwnik‘). Yerevan: Yerevan University Press. Milton, J. 1935. Paradise Lost. Ed. M.Y. Hughes. New York: The Odessey Press, Inc. NBH 1837. Awetik‘ian, G., X. Siwrmēlian and M. Awgerian, ׂ‫
ׯךמןךר׮ךּ
׽׹פל׵ך֮
׹ױ‬ ָ‫( פ׻ױןמ‬New Dictionary of the Armenian Language). Venice: Mechitarist Press. Nersēs Lambronac‘i 1842. ֹ‫( פלך׹ך׸ך׳
ׯךןךכ׹׶
ׯ׻פע׻ױקךם׹ש׹ױ‬Initiation to the Holy Liturgy). Jerusalem: St. James Press. Nersoyan, T. 1984. The Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Apostolic Church. New York: Delphi Press. Schäfer, P. 1992. The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism. Albany: SUNY Press. Scholem, G.G. 1941. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken. Stone, M.E. 1990. Commentary on 4 Ezra. Minneapolis: Augsberg-Fortress. ———— 2007. Adamgirk‘. The Adam Book of Ar֛ak‘el of Siwnik‘. Oxford: OUP. Theodor, J. and Ch. Albeck (rev.) 1965. Bereschit Rabba mit kritischem Apparat und Kommentar. Jerusalem: Wahrmann (in Hebrew). Thomson, R.W. 2001. Teaching of St. Gregory (rev. ed.). New York: St Nersess Armenian Seminary. ———— 1995. A Bibliography of Classical Armenian Literature to 1500 AD. Turnhout: Brepols. ———— 1976. Agathangelos: History of the Armenians. Albany: SUNY Press. Toorn, K. van der, B. Becking and P. van der Horst 1995. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD). Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill. Xač‘ikyan, L. 1992. ֱ‫( ”סׯ׻פע׻ױׯר؃
׺ױקך׹ך׹֭“ פמװפ׫‬Ełišē’s Commentary on Genesis). Erevan,: Zvart‘noc‘. Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i Corcorec‘i 1825. ‫
׮ױ׻ץךש׹ױׯ׃
פ׶פ׶׹מׂ
חפ׶ױנע׸ך׀
ׯ׻פע׻ױׯרמ׀‬ ‫( ׮ױ׻׺ךרׯן׹ֱ
׻ױׯׯךש׷ױׁ
؀‬Commentary on Matthew of Nersēs Šnorhali and Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i). Constantinople.

GREEK DISTRUST OF LANGUAGE Margalit Finkelberg I Contrary to what Derrida and others have to say on logocentrism of the Greeks, one of the salient characteristics of ancient Greek tradition, both popular and philosophical, was its deep distrust of the ability of language to express the true order of things. To do justice to the characteristically Greek view of verbal communication or, to be more precise, the lack of verbal communication with the divine, we have to go as far back as the myth of creation. As distinct from the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Greeks saw the cosmogonic process as proceeding in accordance with the biological pattern or, as M.P. Nilsson put it, “automatically.”1 Rather than having been “created,” the world was conceived of as having been “born,” or “developed,” from a limited number of primary elements in what can be seen as a quasi-evolutionary process. None of the stages of this development, represented as a series of births issuing from perpetual interaction between the male and the female principles, was accompanied by the intervention of a transcendental force. The Greek gods, who did not create the universe but themselves were “born” in the process of its development, were conceived of as immanent to the universe and thus subject to its laws. This naturally rules out any idea of a creator who transcends the universe and therefore is free to dictate its laws. Furthermore, this also rules out the idea of a “divine word” that could precede the act of creation or be involved in it. Nothing even remotedly similar to “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light” of the Book of Genesis can be found in Greek sources. As distinct from language, which was conceived of as a social phenomenon, the laws of the universe were seen as pre-social and therefore beyond language. “Necessity,” anankê, and “Destiny,” moira, the supreme forces that ruled the universe and were responsible for its coming into being, were mute.

1

Nilsson 1949, 73; cf. Finkelberg 1998, 105–8.

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In so far as the order of things cannot be expressed in language, it cannot be communicated either. This is why, rather than leading to true knowledge, language can only represent aspects or segments of truth. Accordingly, there is no literary meaning available, and all statements issuing from man’s attempts at communication with the divine are metaphors. In view of this, it is only natural that divine messages delivered through the medium of language are open to misconstruction and that people’s attempts at literally following them as a rule end in disaster. Consider for example the oracles. On the surface of it, this characteristic Greek institution was precisely the means that made man’s communication with the divine possible. The oracles formed part of the art of divination (mantikê), this, as Plato termed it, “art of communion (koinônia) between gods and men,” through which “all the intercourse (homilia) and converse (dialektos) of God with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on.”2 It is characteristic, however, that Greek oracular practice did not privilege verbal communication over other ways of communication with the divine. Even more often than through language, the gods’ will was revealed by the casting of lots or by the observation of signs, such as the rustle of the leaves in Zeus’ sacred oak at the famous oracle at Dodona. The interpretation of verbal messages as delivered for example at Delphi was thus not substantially different from the interpretation of non-verbal ones, such as the rustle of leaves at Dodona.3 In other words, each reading of a divine message, whether verbal or not, would amount to its decoding. This attitude to verbal communication with the divine is epitomized in the following words of Heraclitus: “The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks out nor conceals, but gives a sign (sêmainei).”4 The worst possible thing that could happen in the process of decoding of verbal messages coming from gods was their literal interpretation. Let us consider Herodotus’ account of the oracular response received by the Athenians in the time of the Persian invasion. The response contained, among other things, the following phrase: “Safe shall the wooden wall continue for thee and thy children.” What happened in the Athenian

2

Pl. Symp. 188b6–c1; 202e3–203a4. Tr. B. Jowett – H. Pelliccia, with slight changes. Cf. Plato, Phaedrus 275b: “There was a tradition in the temple of Zeus at Dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, far less wise than you sophisticated young men, deemed in their simplicity that if they heard the truth even from ‘oak or rock,’ it was enough.” Tr. B. Jowett – H. Pelliccia. 4 Heraclitus B 93 DK. Tr. G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven, M. Schofield. 3

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assembly when the response was brought from Delphi is worth being adduced in full: When, however, upon their arrival, they [the envoys to Delphi] produced it before the people, and inquiry began to be made into its true meaning, many and various were the interpretations which men put on it; two, more especially, seemed to be directly opposed to one another. Certain of the old men were of opinion that the god meant to tell them the citadel would escape; for this was anciently defended by palisade; and they supposed that barrier to be the wooden wall of the oracle. Others maintained that the fleet was what the god pointed at; and their advice was that nothing should be thought of except the ships, which had best be at once got ready.

The outcome of the debate was decided by the intervention of Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians that the oracle could only address the ships, “since they were the wooden wall in which the god told them to trust.” As a result, the Athenians spent the annual produce of the silver mines at Laurion on building a fleet of 200 ships, which eventually defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis. Those few who persisted in literal interpretation of the oracle stayed on the acropolis after the evacuation of the city and perished. Herodotus comments on this: “They imagined themselves to have discovered the true meaning of the oracle uttered by the priestess, which promised ‘The wooden wall should never be taken.’ The wooden wall, they thought, did not mean the ships, but the place where they had taken refuge.”5 Now although the decoding of a divine message can in principle be either correct or not, it is highly symptomatic that rather often than not human attempts at understanding verbal messages coming from the gods are treated as fundamentally inadequate and therefore as doomed to failure. Sophocles’ Trachiniae, a tragedy whose action is focused on the characters’ misconstruing of an oracle, is especially illuminating in this respect. Let us throw a closer look at it. The oracle received by Hercules says that after the completion of his labours Hercules will either die at the siege of Oechalia or “live a happy life”. When it becomes clear that Hercules, although he has survived the siege, is nevertheless dying, the happy existence promised by the oracle is interpreted as equivalent to death by the chorus and by Hercules himself.6 In fact, however, this interpretation amounts to the logical 5 6

Hdt. 7.141–44; 8. 51–53. Tr. G. Rawlinson. Soph. Trach. 81, 168, 821–30, 1170–2.

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mistake of decoding the oracle’s alternative between “death” and “happy life” as the one between “death” and “death.” The correct alternative is, of course, between death and immortality, bestowed on Hercules immediately upon his death. The “happy life” should thus be interpreted as the life on Olympus. But the tragedy’s characters are totally ignorant of the magnificent future in store for Hercules and in their eyes he dies an ordinary death. Small wonder, therefore, that Hercules’ son Hyllus finds his father’s death to be in breach with the divine justice and even blames Zeus for Hercules’ misfortunes: “And grant me full forgiveness for this; but mark the great cruelty of the gods in the deeds that are being done. They beget children, they are hailed as fathers, and yet they can look upon such sufferings.”7 It goes without saying, however, that Hercules’ becoming one of the Olympians immediately upon his death was well known to Sophocles’ audience. In other words, the lesson that the audience was expected to learn from the tragedy, as well as from other similar adaptations of traditional stories dealing with oracular responses, was that it is virtually impossible for mortals adequately to understand the supreme divine design of which their lives also form a part, simply because the reflections of this design in verbal messages coming from the gods would always be of fragmentary nature. II Let us turn now to the philosophical tradition. In her recent book on nondiscursive thinking in Neoplatonism, Sara Rappe argues convincingly that “beyond any formal criterion shaping the tradition, Neoplatonists shared the belief that wisdom could not be expressed or transmitted by rational thought or language.” Thus, she writes about Plotinus: “Plotinus suggests that in this kind of thought, genuine self-knowledge, language arises afterward as an awkward translation of a truth whose essence is to break free of discursive structures. It is for this reason that the texts that seek to convey or even to inculcate self-knowledge at once fail to accomplish this purpose.”8

7 8

Ibid., 1264–9. Tr. R.C. Jebb. Rappe 2000, xiii.

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Rappe sees this attitude to language as peculiar to Neoplatonism. However, the belief that true communion with the divine can only be of a non-discursive nature had been an inseparable part of Platonic tradition long before the Neoplatonists. Thus, although a philosophical discourse was an integral part of what Pierre Hadot calls the “SocraticPlatonic model of philosophy”, “in the last analysis, however,” he writes, “this philosophical discourse seems incapable of expressing that which is essential.” The same would be true of Aristotle as well. To quote Hadot again, “No one was more conscious than Aristotle of the limits of philosophical discourse as an instrument of knowledge. . . . Language’s discursivity can express only what is composite and what is divisible successively into parts. . . . In the case of simple substances like the first Intellect—the principle of movement for all things—discourse cannot express its essence but merely describe its effects. . . . It is only in rare moments that the human intellect can rise to non-discursive, instantaneous intuition of this reality, insofar as it can imitate the divine Intellect in some way.”9 “Let us not believe,” Plutarch, himself a Platonist, wrote in De Pythiae oraculis, “that the god has composed them [the oracles], but that he supplies the origin of the incitement, and then the prophetic priestesses are moved each in accordance with her natural faculties. Certainly, if it were necessary to write the oracles, instead of delivering them orally, I do not think that we should believe the handwriting to be the god’s. . . . As a matter of fact, the voice is not that of a god, nor the utterance of it, nor the diction, nor the metre, but all these are the woman’s; he puts into her mind only the visions (phantasias), and creates a light in her soul in regard to the future; for inspiration is precisely this.”10 It would suffice to compare Plutarch’s “I do not think that we should believe the handwriting to be the god’s” with the biblical “And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him on mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God” (Ex. 31.18) to appreciate the degree to which Greek attitude to verbal utterances of God, spoken as well as written, differed from what was characteristic of both the Judeo-Christian tradition and of other traditions that made provision for a myth of creation.

9 10

Hadot 2002, 76, 88. Plut. Mor. 397 BC. Tr. F.C. Babbit.

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The Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter, the two works in the Platonic corpus that dwell at length on the shortcomings of language as a vehicle for expressing the highest knowledge, will allow us to take this discussion several steps further.11 Whereas the Phaedrus invective mainly addresses writing, the Seventh Letter, explicitly stating as it does that “no intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated,” equally dismisses both the written and the spoken word.12 Furthermore, as Kenneth M. Sayre has shown, the view that the ultimate philosophical understanding cannot be adequately expressed in language is not restricted to the Seventh Letter alone but is also found in Meno, Symposium, Republic, Theaetetus, Sophist, Philebus, and even in the Phaedrus itself. “Although these passages range chronologically from the relatively early to the very late dialogues, a point advanced by each is that the logos attending knowledge is in some fashion an intellectual grasp of being. Suppose the logos in question were a grasp of being, that enables judgment to distinguish correctly between what is and what is not. Such a logos is not discursive, being instead the ‘free man’s knowledge’ by which discourse is guided.”13 But it seems to me that it is the Cratylus with its passionate avowal that under no circumstances can language be regarded as an adequate means for expressing the true, the good, and the beautiful that is especially relevant here. “How being (ta onta) is to be studied or discovered,” Socrates says to Cratylus in the concluding part of the dialogue, “is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, it is not to be [discovered] from names. No, it must be studied and investigated in itself rather than by means of names.”14 For Plato, as well as for many others, rather than in language, the true grammar of the universe resided in the all-embracing harmony of music and number that represented the world order as it really is. This is for example how Plato describes the structure of the heavens in the concluding book of the Republic: For there are eight whorls in all, lying in one another with their rims showing as circles from above, while from the back they form one continuous whorl around the stem, which is driven right through the middle of the eighth. Now the circle formed by the lip of the first and outermost whorl

11 12 13 14

Cf. Finkelberg 1997, 255–61. Pl. Epist. vii 343a, cf. 344c1–8. Sayre 1988, 107. Crat. 439b, cf. 440bc. Tr. B. Jowett, with slight changes.

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is the broadest; that of the sixth, second; that of the fourth, third; that of the eighth, fourth; that of the seventh, fifth; that of the fifth, sixth; that of the third, seventh; and that of the second, eighth. . . . The whole spindle is turned in a circle with the same motion, but within the revolving whole the seven inner circles revolve gently in the opposite direction from the whole; of them, the eighth goes most quickly, second and together with one another are the seventh, sixth and fifth. Third in swiftness, as it looked to them, the fourth circles about; fourth, the third; and fifth, the second. And the spindle turned in the lap of Necessity. Above, on each of its circles, is perched a Siren, accompanying its revolution, uttering a single sound, one note; from all eight is produced the accord of a single harmony.15

This is of course none other than harmonia mundi, the Pythagorean music of the spheres produced by ratios of the four primal numbers, the Tetrad.16 Yet, although closely associated with the Pythagoreans, this visage of the underlying harmony of the world is not restricted to this school alone. In both popular and philosophical tradition, nature, gods, and men were generally envisaged as belonging to the same whole ruled by the same eternal laws, which were interpreted not only in terms of necessity and destiny but also in those of harmony and justice.17 The continuity between the macrocosm and the microcosm thus produced allowed the chosen few who made this quest the purpose of their lives to “know themselves,” that is, to know their human nature, which is the same as the nature of the universe, to become tuned to the inner harmony of the universe and thus to be made one with it. Accordingly, adequate communication with the divine could only be obtained through noetic contemplation that transcended language. This was achieved by abiding by a strict ascetic discipline, which amounted to reducing one’s own human nature when still alive. The institutional framework for all activities of this kind was supplied by religious trends and philosophical schools, each of which offered its own distinctive version of restoring the unity between the human and the divine.18 As Walter Burkert put it in his discussion of ancient Pythagoreanism: “. . . there is a kind of knowing which penetrates to the very core of the universe, which offers truth as something at once beatific and comfortable, and presents the human being as cradled in universal harmony.”19 I know

15 16 17 18 19

Rep. 616d–617c. Cf. Burkert 1972, 350–68. Cf. Finkelberg 2002, 173–82. Cf. Finkelberg 2002, 175–6. Burkert 1972, 482.

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of no better description of this state of mind than Plato’s picture of the culminating stage of “the greater mysteries of Love” in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium: Whoever has been initiated so far in the mysteries of Love and has viewed all these aspects of the beautiful in due succession, is at last drawing near the final revelation. And now, Socrates, there bursts upon him that wondrous vision which is the very soul of the beauty he has toiled so long for. It is an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers or fades, for such beauty is the same on every hand, the same then as now, here as there, this way as that way, the same to every worshiper as it is to every other. Nor will his vision of the beautiful take the form of face, or of hands, or of anything that is of the flesh. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is—but subsisting of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable whole.20

There are no words that can adequately express this state of man’s becoming, to put it in Plato’s words again, “the friend of god.” This is why the ultimate limit of man’s apprehension of true reality is silence. References Burkert, W. 1972. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Finkelberg, M. 1997. “Plato’s Language of Love and the Female.” Harvard Theological Review 90: 231–61. ———— 1998. The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———— 2002. “Religion and Biography in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.” In Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions, eds. D. Shulman and G. Stroumsa, 173–82. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. Hadot, P. 2002. What is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Nilsson, M.P. 1949. A History of Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rappe, S. 2000. Reading Neoplatonism. Non-discursive thinking in the texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sayre, K.M. 1988. “Plato’s Dialogues in the Light of the Seventh Letter.” In Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. C.L. Griswold, Jr., 93–109. New York/London: Routledge.

20

Pl. Symp. 210e–211b. Tr. M. Joyce.

PART TWO

CULTURAL ENCODING

THIS IS NO LOTUS, IT IS A FACE: POETICS AS GRAMMAR IN DANˢ Dˢ IN’S INVESTIGATION OF THE SIMILE Yigal Bronner I. Introduction The notion that Sanskrit poetics, alamˢ kāraśāstra, functions as a kind of grammar to the language of its accompanying literature, kāvya, should not come as a total surprise to the students of this tradition. As Sheldon Pollock has recently put it, the discipline’s premise is that “what makes kāvya different from everything else has essentially to do with language itself,” and that, hence, it focuses on exploring how “kāvya works as a specific language system.”1 Still, our understanding of the precise nature of this linguistic analysis and its internal logic is far from satisfactory, and many basic questions remain to be addressed.2 For instance, if Sanskrit poeticians are grammarians of sorts, what aspects of the poetic language do they set out to describe? The analysis of any language system may expand to include anything from phonology and morphology to syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It may also examine the way a specific culture interprets or makes reality. What of all these phenomena is the scope of alamˢ kāraśāstra? Moreover, the specific language system of poetry is defined by its ability to please the readers. How does the linguistic analysis of alamˢ kāraśāstra account for poetry’s aesthetic effect? Speaking of a grammatical analysis of poetry, one has to bear in mind that we are dealing with a culture where grammar is a dominant intellectual tradition, if not the most paradigmatic of all systems of knowledge. This gives rise to another subset of questions. What exactly is the relationship between alamˢ kāraśāstra and Pānˢini’s Grammar? Does it

1

Pollock 2003, 46–47. Thus while Arjunwadker (1996, 23) claims that “no serious student of Sanskrit poetics can deny that in the absence of the foundations the Vaiyakaranˢas and the Mimamsakas have laid, Sanskrit theory of poetry would not have scaled the heights it undoubtedly has, particularly since Anandavardhana,” he hardly addresses the question of the grammatical nature of the poetic analysis. 2

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form a mere extension of his project of fully describing his language to a more recent linguistic domain, namely poetry? Did poeticians consider Pānˢinian categories to be beautiful in and of themselves? What is the relationship between the tools they developed and those provided by the grammarians? It is these and similar questions that I intend to explore by closely examining a single passage from alamˢ kāraśāstra’s long history—Danˢdˢin’s investigation of the simile (upamā). The choice of this case study merits a brief explanation. Danˢdˢin, a scholar and a poet who worked in South India sometime around the year 700 ad, represents a crucial moment in the evolution of his discipline. He and his near-contemporary Bhāmaha composed the earliest extant works on Sanskrit poetics. Previous scholarship did exist, but the fact that it did not survive, and that after Danˢdˢin and Bhāmaha there is no reference to it, suggests that this lost corpus represented a relatively undeveloped stage of alamˢ kāraśāstra. Apparently, there was no need to look back to such prior works once the treatises of Bhāmaha and Danˢdˢin came to light, and the two, who may have been in conversation with one another, came to form a shared basis for thinkers to follow. It should thus be noted that despite the major shifts the tradition later underwent, many of the basic concepts of Bhāmaha and Danˢdˢin proved to be extremely resilient.3 Danˢdˢin’s treatise itself, despite its falling out of favor in Kashmir— which between the ninth and thirteenth centuries was the Mecca of Sanskrit poetics—was a highly influential work that had a great impact on the literary cultures of Sri Lanka, the Indonesian archipelago, Tibet, and also on the vernacular literatures of the South Asian peninsula itself, such as Kannada and Tamil. And indeed, as I show elsewhere, later alamˢ kāraśāstra recognized Danˢdˢin’s pivotal role, and there were those who tried to resurrect him as something of a founding father.4 II. The Simile and Danˢdiˢ n’s Discussion of It The choice of Danˢdˢin’s simile section is not random. There is a growing awareness among Sanskritic literary thinkers that the simile (upamā) is

3 On the temptation to assume direct correspondence between Danˢdˢin and Bhāmaha see Gerow 1977, 228. On the resiliency of the old poetic categories see Pollock 2003, 42–3. 4 See Bronner 2002.

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the paradigmatic poetic ornament, or alamˢ kāra—the major analytical category of the field which gave it its name.5 Thus Vāmana, about a century after Danˢdˢin, labeled the simile the root (mūla) of all alamˢ kāras, and selected for discussion only those ornaments which could be analyzed as offshoots of this root phenomenon (upamā-prapañcahˢ).6 The idea was further developed a few centuries later by Vidyācakravartin (c. 1300), who set out to show in detail how the proposition “your face is like the moon”—the stock example for similitude—stands at the basis of a vast host of poetic devices.7 Later, the great sixteenth century polymath Appayya Dīksˢita, elegantly expressed the very same notion:8 Simile is the sole actress on the stage of poetry, and yet she performs a vast variety of roles. When she dances she captivates the hearts of those who know her secret.

All types of poetic language are really the simile in disguise, and it is its capability of literary masquerading that accounts for poetic charm. We will return below to this observation and its possible implications to our question of poetics as grammar. For now let us note that the notion of the simile’s centrality to poetic charm is already suggested by the earliest extant works of Bhāmaha and Danˢdˢin. For one thing, both allot the simile far more attention than any other figure. Moreover, Danˢdˢin’s specific placement of this figure in his book is particularly revealing. His Mirror of Poetry (Kāvyādarśa) is dedicated primarily to the three traditional topics of Sanskrit poetics, namely poetic qualities (gunˢas), faults (dosˢas), and ornaments (alamˢ kāras). Of the three, the latter is the main focus, which is not too surprising given Danˢdˢin’s unequivocal statement, coming to discuss the alamˢ kāras, that these are the factors which make poetry pretty.9 Having said that, Danˢdˢin moves to inventorize and analyze the alamˢ kāras. The first figure he mentions is svabhāvokti, that

5

See also Gerow 1971, 35–7. Kāvyālamˢ kārasūtravrˢttirˢ of Vāmana, 4.2.1 (introductory note to the sūtra); 4.3.1. 7 Alamˢ kārasarvasva of Ruyyaka, p. 36. 8 Citramīmāmˢ sā of Appayya Dīksˢita, p. 33: upamâikā śailusˢī samˢˢ prāptā citrabhūmikā-bhedān | rañjayati kāvya-ran֛ ge nrˢtˢ yantī tad-vidāmˢ cetahˢ || (All translations in this paper are mine.) Appayya goes on to compare the relationship between the simile and the rest of the figures to that of the absolute (brahman) and the phenomenal reality (ibid. p. 35). For more on his discussion see Bronner 2002. 9 Kāvyādarśa of Danˢdˢin 2.1: kāvya-śobhā-kārān dharmān alamˢ kārān. 6

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is, speaking of things the way they are. Such detailed observations of the true nature of things are, as far as Sanskrit poetics is concerned, rather marginal to poetry. As Danˢdˢin concludes, “such factual descriptions of the nature of an entity—consisting of its genus, mode of action, characteristics, and particular appearance—have science as their kingdom, even though they may occur in poetry as well.”10 So, having mentioned svabhāvokti as part of his catalogue of poetic devices, but really setting it aside, Danˢdˢin now turns to the mainstay of poetic ornamentalism—the description of entities the way they are not. It is this counter-factual or “crooked” speech (vakrokti) that has poetry as its kingdom, and all the remaining alamˢ kāras are its instances. Danˢdˢin later points out that all manifestations of crooked speech are enhanced by punning, thereby adding another distinction between them and realistic observations.11 It is this special language—counterfactual, crooked, punned—that forms the primary focus of the Mirror. About two-thirds of it, to be precise. The possibilities of describing something other than the way it is are numerous, perhaps infinite.12 Of these, the tradition of Sanskrit poetics is particularly interested in descriptions of one entity as another, through similarity, identification, and the like. The most paradigmatic trope for such an expression of a thing not as itself but as another is, as we by now have come to expect, the simile. It is thus no wonder that having done away with the topic of naturalistic description, Danˢdˢin immediately turns to the simile, quite possibly the “seed” (bīja) of all figurative phenomena to which he has earlier referred,13 and his discussion of the upamā is by far longer than that of any other figure.14 All this suggests, then, the relevance of Danˢdˢin’s analysis of the simile to our question. To recapitulate: The things which make poetry beautiful are its ornamental elements, the alamˢ kāras. These have to do with a

10

Ibid., 2.13: jāti-kriyā-gunˢa-dravya-svabhāvâkhyānam īdrˢśam | śāstresˢv asyâiva sāmrājyamˢ kāvyesˢv apy etad īpsitam || 11 Ibid., 2.360: ślesˢaˢ hˢ sarvāsu pusˢnˢāti prāyo vakroktisˢu śriyam | bhinnamˢ dvidhā svabhāvoktir vakrotiś ceti vānˢ-mayam || 12 Ibid., 2.1: kas tān kārtsyena vaksˢyati? 13 Ibid., 2.3. This is the interpretation of all of the commentators, though other interpretations are, perhaps, possible. 14 51 verses are dedicated to the simile. The average for the remaining figures is about 10 verses each. The entire length of the Mirror is 657 verses.

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particular type of language, consisting almost exclusively of crooked or counter-factual statements, in particular those which connect between one entity and another. Danˢdˢin seems to single out the simile—perhaps for the first time in the history of his tradition—as the quintessential alamˢ kāra. Judging by both its placement and size, his treatment of this ornament is clearly meant to be exemplar. It is thus a perfectly suited case study to the question of the grammaticality of poetics. Danˢdˢin begins by defining the simile as: “a passage in which some palpable similitude is suggested in whatever manner.” This seems more like an introduction into an extended discussion rather than a conclusive definition, and indeed, in what appears to be a direct comment on the open-endedness of the initial formulation, Danˢdˢin immediately states his intention to “demonstrate the simile’s vast phenomenology.”15 We may identify three distinct parts in his discussion. First, he defines and illustrates thirty-two subtypes of the simile. Then he discusses possible defects, which hinder its aesthetic effect. Finally, there is an appendixlike list of language used for expressing similitude. Of the three sections, the first is the longest, and seems to be the most important, as it holds the key for what makes an expression of similitude pleasing. After all, the subtypes chosen must be those which Danˢdˢin considered to create a special charm. Given the importance of this section, we shall keep our analysis of it at bay, and follow Danˢdˢin’s discussion from the middle, leaving our investigation of its first portion to the end. III. The Defects of the Simile The middle portion of Danˢdˢin’s discussion of the simile deals with factors that may obstruct its aesthetic effect. Danˢdˢin is concerned here with comparisons between entities which disagree in gender, number, and hierarchical status. His main thrust is to show that such a dissonance need not necessarily hinder the aesthetic charm. The discussion is therefore framed by the question of what does not amount to a fault:16 15

16

Ibid., 2.14: yathā-kathamˢ -cit sādrˢśyamˢ yatrôdbhūtamˢ pratīyate | upamā nāma sā tasyāhˢ prapañco ’yamˢ pradarśyate || Ibid., 2.51: na lin֛ ga-vacane bhinne na hīnâdhikatâpi vā | upamā-dūsˢanˢāyâlamˢ yatrôdvego na dhīmatām ||

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yigal bronner Neither a disagreement of gender and number, nor a relationship of an inferior with a superior, suffice to flaw the simile, unless there is something [else] to disturb the wise.

There is nothing inherently wrong in comparing a male to a female, or between entities which belong to different natural and social hierarchies. On the contrary, sometimes such differences are the sole purpose of the analogy. One may wish to use the proposition of the simile precisely to say that a male behaves in a feminine manner, that a king follows a divine model, or that his bodily radiance resembles that of the sun. In such examples, asserts Danˢdˢin, the charm of the simile is not even slightly effected by the discrepancy in gender and status.17 These are perfectly pleasing similes. Nor is there any fault in a simile such as “you (singular) are dear to me like my life (plural).” Here, however, the underlying reason seems to be different, as the commentators explain. The word prānˢa, “breath,” is inherently plural when used in the sense of “life,” since a person is believed to have five life-breaths. So this is a plural noun which refers to a single, collective entity. This noun simply cannot appear in the singular when used in this sense. Likewise, the word dhanam, “wealth,” is a collective noun and hence has a singular form even when compared to a plural entity as in the example: “the acquisition of various knowledges is like that of wealth.” In this last example there is also a gender discrepancy, for all Sanskritic words for knowledge and intelligence are in the feminine while wealth is in the neuter. Here, unlike in the analogy between a man and a woman or king and god, the incongruity in number or gender seems quite incidental to the comparison. Still it is unavoidable, given the nature of the Sanskrit lexicon, and hence perfectly acceptable.18 There are, however, poetic passages where the wise would find incongruity in gender, number, and status to be troubling (udvega), and which are hence considered faulted. A poet is not supposed to say, for instance, “the moon (masculine) is like the (female) goose” or “heaven is similar to lakes”. One should also avoid comparing a devoted servant to a dog, or a firefly to the sun. Why are these formulations to be avoided?

17 18

Ibid., 2.54: saubhagyamˢ na jahāty eva jātucit. Ibid., 2.52 and the Hrˢdayan֛ gama commentary.

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Danˢdˢin explicitly declares his reluctance to address this question. “You have to figure out the reason for yourselves,” he tells his readers. “The wise should discern between faults and flaws on their own.”19 Despite Danˢdˢin’s indisposition to spell out his criteria, we can still make a few generalizations about them based on his positive and negative examples. One possible conclusion is that when gender and number are incidental to the poetic statement, the poet should avoid discrepancy whenever an alternative is easily available. Take the case of the moon and the female goose. We already know that there is nothing inherently wrong in comparing a male to a female. We should also note that it is perfectly normal, indeed conventional, to compare the moon to the goose, based on their whiteness, despite the otherwise recognizable differences between the winged creature and earth’s satellite. Poetry, after all, is the kingdom of crooked speech (vakrokti), not of naturalistic descriptions of the moon as it is (svabhāvokti). Yet the comparison of the moon to a female goose serves no poetic purpose. It is not the gender of the goose which gives rise to the similitude but its color. Nor does the language determine the use of the feminine. Geese come in both genders and the poet could have easily used a gander as his standard. Likewise, lakes have a perfectly common singular form in Sanskrit. In contrast to nouns such as prānˢāhˢ or dhanam, which may appear only in the plural or singular respectively, or those words for knowledge which are inherently feminine, there is nothing here to restrict the lexical and morphological choice. Nonetheless, the poet sloppily introduced an irrelevant distinction, thereby unnecessarily spoiling the pleasing effect of the simile. All things being equal, one would like number and gender to be equal as well. A second possible generalization is that when the distinction is not incidental but indeed purposeful, it is acceptable so long as it does not offend cultural concepts and codes. It is fine to compare a king to the gods, for both are related and take care of similar duties, whether on earth or in heaven. Juxtaposing a faithful servant with a dog, on the other hand, is too downgrading, and measuring up a firefly to the sun is simply over the top. Unlike the case of the moon and the goose, such

19

Ibid., 2.56: īdrˢśamˢ varjyate sadbhihˢ kāranˢamˢ tatra cintyatām | gunˢa-dosˢa-vicārāya svayam eva manīsˢibhihˢ ||

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comparisons are not normative. As one of the commentators points out, comparing the servant to a close friend and the firefly to a lamp would have better suited Sanskrit’s poetic sensibilities.20 All in all, Danˢdˢin’s examples of the simile’s faults suffice to suggest that his analysis of poetic tongue has its roots in grammar, and is based on a grammatically-trained attention to categories such as number and gender. We may also note that in his listing of simile-related faults, social hierarchy naturally follows the grammatical. It is as if the social and moral orders form a mere extension of the grammatical order, a potentially more basic principal of organization of the world. Moreover, we know from his discussion elsewhere that ungrammatical use immediately qualifies as a poetic fault.21 But even beyond the question of correctness, grammar continues to play a role in obstructing or allowing poetic charm. For one has to be careful not to sloppily create a grammatical disharmony while in the process of creating a poetic harmonization, as in “the moon is like a goose.” At the same time, it is precisely examples such as these which also allow us to realize that aesthetic judgment is not reducible to Pānˢinian grammar. After all, both the negative and the positive examples supplied by Danˢdˢin are perfectly correct from the grammatical point of view. Poetic sensitivity clearly amounts to more than a grammarian’s ear, even if such an ear seems to be a prerequisite for making aesthetic judgments in the Sanskrit world. There is thus continuity and even partial overlap between the grammarian’s analysis and that of the poetician, but there is also a difference between the two. Yet the discussion of simile’s defects does not allow us to say more about this nuanced relationship, partly because Danˢdˢin trusts his readers to be quite capable of making both grammatical and aesthetic judgments and sets out, it would seem, only to amend those fault-finding habits which he found too sweeping. IV. The Language of Similitude The last nine verses of Danˢdˢin’s discussion of the simile survey the ways in which Sanskrit expresses similarity. The close relationship with the grammatical tradition is at once apparent. The observations of grammarians that similitude can be denoted by a specific set of particles (iva, 20 21

Ibid., 2.56, cf. the Ratnaśrī commentary. Ibid., 3.148: śabda-hīnam anālaksˢya-laksˢya-laksˢanˢˢa-paddhatihˢ |

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etc.), suffixes (vat, etc.), words (tulya, etc.), and compounding techniques (e.g., bahuvrīhi, -kalpa, etc.), while using various syntactic structures (x is like y, x is on par with y, etc.), account for a significant portion of the list. It seems clear that such grammatical categories and insights are incorporated wholesale into the investigation of poetic tongue. Yet we may also recognize in this last section of Danˢdˢin’s discussion another layer of expressivity, one which is not a direct product of Pānˢinian analysis. Here there are words and structures which do not directly denote similitude but hint to it. Saying that one entity rivals, mocks, or steals the beauty of another, to give but a few examples, is to imply that it resembles it. Even the denial of a semblance between X and Y, argues Danˢdˢin, may serve to indirectly affirm its existence. What is worthy of note is that there is a division of labor between these two layers of expressivity, between expressions of similarity which are in the domain of grammar proper (particles, suffixes, compounding techniques, syntactical structures) and those which fall in the domain of pragmatics and suggestion (such as a negation suggesting affirmation, or rivalry hinting at similarity). For as we shall see, expressive means belonging in the first layer do not necessarily make for separate simile subtypes with distinct aesthetic flavors (as in the initial portion of Danˢdˢin’s simile discussion). One may say that a face is like the moon, or moon-like (using a nominal ending), or speak of the moon-face (using a compound), or describe the face as equivalent to the moon, comparable to it, parallel to it, on a par with it, reaching its status, and being of the same type, form, color, or kind as it (using a variety of lexical items and syntaxes). All of these possibilities require mention in Danˢdˢin’s appendix-like list of “words expressing similitude.” But none is worthy of mention as responsible for a unique kind of simile. The words in the appendix’s other layer, however, are treated differently. For instance, as soon as we say that the moon is the “rival”, “competitor” or even the “enemy” of the face, or that the face “outdoes”, “mocks” or “defeats” the moon, we immediately enter the domain of distinctive simile types, wherein similitude is conjured on the basis of the notion of rivalry or some kind of an evaluative comparison. Such vocabulary, when properly used, amounts to a unique kind of similemaking, with a unique aesthetic effect, and hence merits classification as an independent category of this poetic ornament. Thus, even in this innocent looking appendix to Danˢdˢin’s discussion, we find an analytical program which is at once continuous with and distinct from the grammatical analysis proper. We still need to understand

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how both layers of expressivity get combined in Danˢdˢin’s vision of the simile, if not in his analytical project at large. The key to these questions may be found in the first portion of his discussion, to which we shall now turn. V. Simile and the Intertextual Grammar of Poetry As mentioned above, Danˢdˢin lists thirty-two varieties of the simile, for each of which he offers a brief definition and an example. The illustrations are highly uniform in their use of poetic materials. With only a few exceptions all compare a small set of female body parts, the face in particular, to a very limited list of natural objects, primarily the lotus and the moon. Danˢdˢin says nothing about this choice—why the face is worthy of being the subject of comparison, and why the lotus and moon are chosen as its standards. The cultural and aesthetic value of such conventions is taken for granted. It is not the notion that face and moon may be seen as similar that is of interest to him, but rather the ways poets manipulate language to express it in a particularly charming manner. What, then, characterizes his analysis of the various simile subtypes and their distinctive aesthetic flavors? A central feature of Danˢdˢin’s analysis is its attention to the propositional structure of any given simile. Take the following categories as an example. Danˢdˢin’s first simile subtype is dharmôpamā, namely a simile in which the shared characteristic (dharma) is explicitly mentioned. The example is: “your palm is red-hued like the lotus.”22 This generic formulation is immediately followed by its mirroring category, vastûpamā. Here the entities (vastus) alone are explicitly mentioned whereas the shared characteristic is implied (pratīyamāna). For instance: “your face is like the lotus,” or “your eyes are like dark water lilies.”23 Here radiance is understood as shared by the face and the lotus, and a dark hue by the lily and the eye. These are followed by the “inverted” (viparyāsa) simile, where the order of the proposition is reversed (“The blooming lotus is like your face”), and the “mutual” (anyonya) simile, where the basic formulation is repeated both ways (“the lotus is like your face, your face

22

23

Kāvyādarśa of Danˢdˢin 2.15: ambho-ruham ivâtāmrāmˢ mugdhe kara-talamˢ tava | iti dharmôpamā sāksˢāt tulya-dharma-nidarśanāt || Ibid., 2.16.

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is like the lotus”).24 Then there is the “aggregate” (samuccaya) simile, where there is more than one shared characteristic (“Your face follows the moon not just in radiance, but also in its capability of delighting”), and the “plural” (bahu) simile, where a single tenor is compared to a whole list of standards (“Your touch is as soft as sandal-paste, moonlight, moonstone, and the like”).25 All these subtypes are summarized abstractly in Table 1, using X for tenor, Y for the standard of comparison, and Z for the shared characteristic. Table 1: Propositional Structure of Six Simile Subtypes Simile Subtype dharma (characteristic) vastu (entity) viparyāsa (inverted) anyonya (mutual) samuccaya (aggregate) bahu (plural)

Propositional Structure X is like Y in that both are Z X is like Y (Z implied) Y is like X X is like Y, Y is like X X is like Y in that both are Z1+Z2 X is like Y1, Y2, Y3, etc., in that all are Z

The six abstracted formulas in the right column of Table 1 should suffice to underscore Danˢdˢin’s charting of structural factors, such as the order of the proposition (standard, reversed, or both, repeated in rotation, as in anyonya simile) or the possible value of its variables (singular, plural, or nil, as in the case of Z in vastu simile). Here is a formal linguistic analysis of the poetic language of similitude, indeed a grammar. It is a descriptive grammar, for it is based, at least partly, on observation of the poetic practice, as the author himself elsewhere testifies.26 Yet it is also prescriptive, for as already mentioned, it lists and hence recommends only those formulations believed to carry a unique aesthetic flavor. Danˢdˢin rarely specifies the distinct charm of each subtype, but occasionally he does hint at it. Thus we are told that the “mutual” simile (X is like Y, Y is like X) highlights an outstanding mutuality of the entities, a reciprocal relationship which is particularly strong; later writers understood this to imply the exclusion of any additional entity.27 Similarly the 24

Ibid., 2.17–18. Ibid., 2.21; 2.40. 26 Ibid., 1.2: pūrva-śāstrānˢi samˢ hrˢtya prayogān upalaksˢya ca | 27 Ibid., 2.18: anyonyôtkarsˢa-śamˢ sinī. In later tradition this is often taken as an independent alamˢ kāra called upameyôpamā, the purpose of which is the exclusion of any third entity from the relationship of similarity. 25

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plurality of standards in the “plural” simile (X is like Y1, Y2, Y3, etc.) highlights the outstanding quality of the tenor, the softness of the lover’s touch in Danˢdˢin’s example.28 So here is one way of understanding Danˢdˢin’s poetics as grammar. Within the confines of literary convention, the author maps and formally analyzes the various propositional varieties of expressing similitude, for which, as we have seen, he later charts the necessary vocabulary (what we identified as the first layer of his appended list). All subtypes exemplified above are variations and permutations on the basic formula “your palm is red-hued like the lotus,” or X is like Y in that both are Z, and it is this variation that is being meticulously demonstrated. Danˢdˢin’s meditation on the simile is, however, by no means limited to purely structural factors. Many of his thirty-two subtypes convey similitude quite differently. Take, for instance, the following three illustrations:29 Is this a lotus inhabited by a pair of restless bees? Or is it your face, containing a pair of playful eyes? My mind constantly wavers. The luster of the lotus simply cannot shame the moon. For, after all, the moon has it defeated every evening.30 This therefore must be nothing but your face. This is no lotus; it is a face indeed. These two are not bees but eyes.

These expressions bear no formal similarity to those we have seen in Table 1 above. They do not contain any direct reference to similarity. X is not said to be like Y. As their names imply, these statements follow not the propositional structure of a simile but rather those of doubt (samˢ śaya), conclusion (or resolution of doubt, nirnˢaya), and factual communication (tattvâkhyāna). It is only through conjecture mediated by cultural and literary expectations that we realize that the speaker intends 28 29

30

Ibid., 2.40: atiśayamˢ prathayantī. Ibid., 2. 26–7, 36: kimˢ padmam antar-bhrāntâli kimˢ te lolêksˢanˢamˢ mukham | mama dolāyate cittam itîyamˢ samˢ śayôpamā || na padmasyêndu-nigrāhyasyêndu-lajjā-karī dyutihˢ | atas tvan-mukham evêdam ity asau nirnˢayôpamā || na padmamˢ mukham evêdamˢ na bhrˢn֛ gau caksˢusˢī ime | iti vispasˢt ˢa-sādrˢśyāt tattvâkhyānôpamâiva sā || The lotus closes as the moon rises.

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to express the familiar and basic formula of similitude. We recognize that it is the particularly conspicuous semblance (vispasˢt ˢa-sādrˢśyāt) of face and lotus, or eyes and bees, that leads the poet to experience doubt about the identity of the entity he is facing, reach a correct conclusion regarding its identity, or, in the final example, feel a need to spell it out. What allows for the charm here is not merely the structure of the proposition. There is nothing inherently pretty in an expression of an epistemological doubt, or in a plain syllogism, which is what the second example really consists of. Otherwise, the entire literature on logic too would be considered poetry, something nobody wishes to claim. Likewise, there is no particular aesthetic pleasure in describing reality as it is (tattvâkhyāna). In fact, we have seen Danˢdˢin argue that this kind of expressivity is quite incidental to the main project of poetry, which is the description of things not the way they are. The effect lies rather in the fact that these statements serve as various masks for the simile, each with its distinct camouflage and unique charm. What readers cherish in such statements is poetic language in disguise. It may be more useful, then, to think of Danˢdˢin’s vision of poetic language as richly intertextual, and of his linguistic analysis as a grammar of intertextual relationships.31 There is the basic, generic formula, for instance “your palm is red-hued like the lotus.” This statement forms the deep structure of the entire gamut of similitude. It is considered pretty in and of itself, but at the same time generic, worn out and, hence, perhaps, preferably relegated to an intertext from whence it could be activated. The vast majority of the possible expressions of similitude are not identical to it but refer to it. This is done either through structural permutations of the proposition itself, as we have seen above, or through a whole set of different propositions which resort to vocabulary of rivalry (X has Y defeated), relative evaluation (X is prettier than Y), doubt (is this X or is this Y?), certainty (this must be X), and so forth. Each of these colors the relationship of similitude in a slightly distinctive manner, but all activate the same basic formula: X is like Y. Indeed, it is typical of Danˢdˢin that the intertextual relations are intricate, and build one upon the other in growing orders. For instance, the assertion “This is no lotus; it is a face indeed,” possibly refers first to some logical reasoning in the intertext, such as the syllogism supplied by the nirnˢaya example (“The luster of the lotus simply cannot shame the

31

In my use of the term intertextuality I follow Culler 1981.

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moon . . .”). This conclusion, in turn, clearly necessitates an intertextual doubt, supplied by the previous samˢ śaya example (“My mind constantly wavers”). It is only the doubt that directly activates a deeper intertextual layer, namely “your face is like a lotus.” Take another set of three examples:32 The hundred-petaled lotus, the autumnal moon, and your face— are a triumvirate of mutual enemies. Never ever will the moon, dotted and frigid, be able to overcome your face. Your face is marked by the eyes of a doe; the moon has the whole deer as its mark. Even so, it only equals your face; by no means can it surpass it.

The first illustration asserts a relationship or rivalry between three entities: the lotus with its hundred petals, the moon in the autumn, when the sky is clear and the lunar view most glorious, and the face of one’s beloved. The example does not follow the proposition of similitude. Nonetheless, the assertion of competition clearly implies and hence activates the intertextual notion that the face is comparable to the moon and the lotus, at their best.33 The second example, which states the superiority of the face over the moon, already necessitates the previous statement of their being rivals, and through it, implies their similarity. Finally, the last example comes a full way around. Within the framework of rivalry, the outstanding flaw of the moon-competitor, a deer-shaped mark which spoils its otherwise splendid shape, is now disguised, tongue-in-cheek, as an “advantage.” The face, for its part, is in a seeming state of disadvantage, as it possesses a much smaller mark of the deer—its eyes. In essence, possessing eyes like that of a doe highly enhances the face’s beauty, while the big spot dotting the surface of the

Kāvyādarśa of Danˢdˢin 2. 33–35: śata-patramˢ śarac-candras tavânanam iti trayam | paraspara-virodhîti sā virodhôpamā matā || na jātu śaktir indos te mukhena pratigarjitum | kalan֛ kino jadˢasyêti pratisˢedhôpamâiva sā || mrˢgêksˢanˢân֛ kamˢ te vaktramˢ mrˢgenˢâivân֛ kitahˢ śaśī | tathâpi sama evâsau nôtkarsˢīti cat ˢûpamā || 33 In fact, it possibly activates this basic intertext indirectly, through the “plural” simile mentioned in Table 1. 32

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moon is clearly a liability. So while the lover concludes that the face and the moon are on par, he implies that the face is prettier. The statement is thus clever (cat ˢu) flattery, and also a complex act of poetic disguise. Similitude is concealed as a rivalry, in which the face clearly has the upper hand, which in turn is concealed as similitude, wherein the two entities are said to be level with one another. It is Danˢdˢin’s wording and ordering of his examples which allow us to appreciate the full richness and intertextual density of this last poetic expression.34 The principle object of Danˢdˢin’s analysis thus seems to be the process of masking and revealing the basic notion of similitude, which in its barest form rarely appears “on stage.” Each mask has its relationship with the basic form, be it propositional or notional, direct or indirect, and there seems to be a special favoring of complex series of disguises of the sort we have exemplified above. It is, perhaps, this very vision of poetic analysis that Appayya Dīksˢita, almost a thousand years later, extended to the role of simile in the entire “theater of poetic language,” as we saw in the beginning of this paper. VI. Concluding Remarks Above we sampled from the discussion on just one alamˢ kāra, albeit a particularly important one, which is analyzed at unusual length in what appears to be a formative moment for the discourse of poetics. Obviously, there are limits to what we can generalize from this study, yet it may throw some light on the project of the alamˢ kāra tradition, at least at this early stage. We have seen that alamˢ kāraśāstra is, in many ways, continuous with the grammatical tradition. First, it requires a mastery of Pānˢinian grammar as a prerequisite for the study of both poetics and poetry, and builds upon a great sensitivity to grammatical forms such as case, number, and gender endings, various compounding techniques, syntactic structures, and even different phonemes and their distinct qualities. More specifically, this is a sensitivity to possible harmony or disharmony among and between these various parts of speech. In short, alamˢ kāraśāstra necessitates not only a grammarian’s knowledge but also a grammarian’s ear, This rich intertextual structure of figuration is seen elsewhere in Danˢdˢin’s work. See, for example, his set of illustrations for vyatireka (Kāvyādarśa 2.178–183); cf. Bronner 1999, 280–1. 34

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trained to discern the elements of the human tongue and appreciate their combinations. Furthermore, there is some overlap between the concerns and practices of the two traditions. Like its older sibling, alamˢ kāraśāstra’s main focus is linguistic. It charts poetic language and studies the way it works. This analysis, of course, involves various evaluative judgments, such as the idea that comparing a face to the moon or to a lotus is pleasing. Yet the tradition, at least at this stage, rarely sets out to explore its own aesthetic assumptions. These are mostly taken for granted. The theorists tend rather to survey, in a manner closely reminiscent of Pānˢinian grammar, the poetic vocabulary of alamˢ kāras such as the simile, or the possible mismatch of genders, numbers, etc., between the compared entities. In doing so, the poeticians follow the dual trajectories of the grammarians, namely describing and prescribing the use of language.35 Yet alamˢ kāraśāstra developed an independent analysis of poetic expressivity, its own grammar. Within cultural values and rules of proper use of language, writers like Danˢdˢin charted the varieties of “crooked speech.” In our little sample of similitude we have seen this exploration operating on two seemingly separate levels. One is a highly formal analysis of the proposition of the simile (X is like Y) and its possible permutations; the other a survey of various propositions which may serve to suggest the same underlying formula. We saw that each has its own vocabulary in Danˢdˢin’s appendix-like section. So it is possible to see a tension between these two analytical levels. One could say, for instance, that the first is more directly influenced by grammar, while the latter is linked more closely to the tradition of logic (think, for instance, of the labels of some the figures in this category: samˢ śaya, nirnˢaya, hetu, etc.). Alternatively, one could maintain that within a linguistic approach, the former represents an orientation toward semantics and syntax, whereas the latter is more concerned with pragmatics. One clear indication of this tension in later tradition is the growing attention to the place of suggestion in the alamˢ kāra system and the distinction, insisted on by many later thinkers, between expressed figures and those which are suggested. But it may well be that in its earlier stages the theory was more holistic. What some may view as a tension between formal and notional varieties of the simile, or between explicit and suggestive subtypes, may have 35 On this dual trajectory in grammar see, for example, Houben 1997 and Pollock 1985.

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emanated from a unified analysis of poetic speech. Note that Danˢdˢin by no means distinguishes between “layers” of analysis, he presents them mixed together. Moreover, each sub-variety may necessitate both levels of analysis. For instance, we have seen that the “mutual” (an-yonya) simile, clearly defined as a propositional variation on the basic formula of similitude (rotation in revised order: X is like Y, Y is like X) also involves a suggestion of a uniquely close relationship between the two entities. At the same time, while a statement of “rivalry” (virodha) between the lotus, moon, and face clearly suggests a semblance, it too is fully susceptible to the formal analysis of the type we have seen in Table 1. X can be said to be the rival of Y, or of Y1 and Y2 (as in the case of Danˢdˢin’s example), while Z may or may not be mentioned. So what we are perhaps looking at is a unified vision of poetic language as involving various formal and suggestive operations, as well as others operations such as the bitextual (ślesˢa),36 which work hand in hand to mask and reveal a single basic notion such as the similarity of face and moon. For what is at the heart of this intertextual grammar of poetry is the idea that poetic charm lies in language’s repertoire of disguises, wherein each has its own specific charm though there is, perhaps, a special delight in complex disguises of growing orders (e.g.: A disguised as B disguised as C, or A disguised as B disguised as A). The role of a thinker like Danˢdˢin is to chart the various disguises (occasionally pointing to what is charming about them, and warning against sloppiness in their crafting), and in doing so to suggest the intertextual relations they imply. Note that the larger object of Danˢdˢin’s study is the richly interconnected field of vakrokti, for which we can now suggest an unusual interpretation. This speech is “crooked” not only in the sense of its truth value but also in its mode of reference. It is not of direct referentiality, as in the more scientific-oriented svabhāvokti. Rather it refers indirectly (vakra), or reflexively, to another speech found in an intertext, or even to a series of utterances. And it is this mode of expressivity, a whole web of indirection, that early ālamˢ kārikas like Danˢdˢin set out to chart. A lot changed in the study of the simile in the centuries following Danˢdˢin. Many of his simile subtypes were later seen as independent alamˢ kāras.37 And, as already noted, there developed a clear distinction

36 37

On the potential of ślesˢa in poetic disguise see Bronner 1999, 475–6. For instance samˢ śaya, or anyonya, later known as upameyopamā.

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in later literature between explicit similes and suggested ones. But these may be viewed as relatively minor changes. It is possible to argue that the basic analysis of crooked referentiality of the simile has not only remained intact, but has also been extended to chart larger webs of intertextuality, among the various alamˢ kāras. Indeed, this may be one way to characterize the theoretical thrust of thinkers like Ruyyaka, Appayya Dīksˢita, and others, though this remains to be proved by further research. References Primary Texts Alamˢ kārasarvasva of Ruyyaka with the Sañjīvanī of Vidyācakravartin. 1965. Eds. S.S. Janaki and V. Raghavan. Delhi: Meharchand Lachmandas. Citramīmāmˢ sā of Appayya Dīksˢita with the commentary of Dharānanda. 1971. Ed. J.C. Misra. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office. Kāvyādarśa of Danˢdˢin with the commentaries Ratnaśrī, Prabhā, Hrˢdayan֛ gamā, and Vivrˢti. 1999. Ed. Y. Sharma. 4 vols. Delhi: NAG Publications. Kāvyālamˢ kārasūtravrˢtti of Vāmana with the commentary of Gopendra Tripuraha Gopal. 1995. Ed. H. Shastri. 2nd ed. Varanasi: Chaukhamba Surbharati Prakashan. Secondary Texts Arjunwadker, Krishna S. 1996. Linguistic Foundations of Sanskrit Poetics. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay 71: 23–6. Bronner, Yigal 2002. What Is New and What Is Navya: Sanskrit Poetics on the Eve of Colonialism. Journal of Indian Philosophy 30: 441–62. ———— 1999. “Poetry at its Extreme: The Theory and Practice of Bitextuality (Ślesˢa) in South Asia.” Ph.D. diss. University of Chicago. Culler, Jonathan 1981. The Pursuit of Signs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gerow, Edwin 1977. Indian Poetics. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ———— 1971. A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech. The Hague: Mouton. Houben, Jan 1997. “Sūtra and Bhāsˢyasūtra in Bhartrˢhari’s Mahābhāsˢya Dīpikā: On the Theory and Practice of a Scientific and Philosophical Genre.” In India and Beyond: Aspects of Literature, Meaning, Ritual, and Thought: Essays in Honor of Frits Staal, ed. by D. van der Meij. London: Kegan Paul International. Pollock, Sheldon. 2003. “Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out.” In Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock, 39–130. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———— 1985. “The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory in Indian Intellectual History.” Journal of American Oriental Society. 105.3: 499–519.

THE PERFORMANCE OF WRITING IN WESTERN ZHOU CHINA Martin Kern* I. The Imperial Vision of Chinese Writing It is not difficult to find any number of utterances pointing to the superior cultural, social, and political status of writing in Chinese civilization. Toward the end of the first century bce, two centuries after the establishment of the Chinese imperial state, writing began to assume a supreme status of cultural expression on various levels: it was seen as the most reliable form to transmit and interpret the traditional canon;1 it became the medium to proclaim a normative version of the canon by carving it into large stone stelae that were then erected outside of the imperial academy or in other prominent locations;2 it served the needs of the imperial bureaucracy and its class of court-appointed scholars who formed and guarded the textual heritage in the newly established imperial library,3 and it became interpreted as a manifestation of patterns of cosmic order.4

* I am grateful to David Shulman and Sergio La Porta for inviting me to the truly enlightening Jerusalem workshop and for the opportunity to present my work in this inspiring cross-cultural context. I also wish to thank Wolfgang Behr, William G. Boltz, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Robert E. Harrist, Jr., David Schaberg, and Ken’ichi Takashima for their numerous excellent comments that helped much to improve the present essay. 1 Apparently, the first to have claimed the superiority of the “ancient script” (guwen 古文) classics over their more recent “modern script” ( jinwen 今文) counterparts was Liu Xin 劉歆 (d. 23). He considered the guwen texts more reliable than their jinwen counterparts because they had been received in writing and were not just recently transcribed from oral tradition; see Hanshu 1987, 36.1968–1971. 2 The traditional (“Confucian”) canon was first carved into stone (and erected outside the imperial academy) in the late second century ce and then repeatedly through later imperial dynasties; for a partial list of these occasions, see Nylan 2001, 48–49. 3 See Nylan 1999, 2000; Kern 2001. 4 In Eastern Han times (25–220), the key document expressing this idea is Xu Shen’s 許慎 (c. 55–c. 149) postface to his dictionary Shuowen jiezi 說文解字; see Shuowen jiezi 1988, chapter 15. For the development of the early mythology of the script as it culminated in Xu Shen’s text, see Boltz 1994, 129–155; Lewis 1999, 241–287. While building especially on the “Appended Phrases” (“Xici” 繫辭), a late Warring States text associated with the Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經) that derives the formation of the divinatory trigrams and hexagrams from cosmic patterns, the Shuowen postface adds decidedly to this mythology by extending it to the writing system.

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Moreover, ever since the Qin First Emperor’s (r. 221–210 bce) unification of the official script soon after founding the empire in 221 bce, the Chinese writing system has been viewed as the key technology to administer and culturally unify an empire that in its vast expansion contained numerous varieties of the spoken Chinese language.5 At the same time, by virtue of the historical stability of the Chinese graphs, which in general are not affected by phonetic change (although occasional exceptions are documented), the writing system has largely obscured the continuous linguistic developments in lexicon, grammar, and sound over time. As a whole, the corpus of written texts has thus created an illusion of linguistic stability that generated a formidable reality in its own right: a continuous literary tradition of two millennia where any newly written text could be enriched by expressions from various earlier written texts without necessarily giving the appearance of stylistic antiquarianism or phonetic incompatibility. In this vast imperial tradition of elite literary writing, the very concept of culture (wen 文) was collapsed into that of the written text (wen 文).6 This concept of wen gave continuous presence to the past. It generated a cultural history of the written text together with the institutions to sustain it—first and foremost the imperial bureaucracy and its civil examination system—that remained intact and in place throughout the rise and fall of succeeding imperial dynasties and contributed forcefully to the image (such as Hegel’s) of the Chinese empire as frozen in time and incapable of historical change.7

5 See, e.g., Gernet 1999, 32–34. Note that the Chinese writing system was also adopted to the languages of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese; on these historical developments, see Norman 1988, 74–82, and Ramsey 1987, 143–154. 6 See, e.g., Kern 2001. 7 One may note that the extreme graphocentrism of imperial China became a veritable impediment to Chinese interests in the Chinese language—not to mention interest in other languages. While in medieval times (ca. 200–900 ce), Buddhism enriched the Chinese dictionary by thousands of new words, discussion of this influence, or of that from other languages, remained marginal, compared to the discussion of the Chinese writing system. As Wolfgang Behr has pointed out to me, the best survey of the limited evidence of premodern Chinese interest in Sanskrit is still Gulik 1956. The first grammar of classical Chinese, that is, of the elite written koiné, appeared only in 1898 when Ma Jianzhong 馬建忠 (1845–1900) published his Ma shi wentong 馬氏文通 in an explicit response to the Indo-European grammatical tradition. By this time, European scholars had already produced grammars of classical Chinese for almost two centuries, culminating in Georg von der Gabelentz’s (1840–1893) magisterial Chinesische Grammatik mit Ausschluss des niederen Stiles und der heutigen Umgangssprache of 1881. For Western dictionaries and grammars of Chinese, and for traditional Chinese discussions

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The written tradition constituted its own sovereign realm, parallel and always superior to the reality of imperial rule;8 and ever since the first century ce, the literary text was explicitly imbued with the capacity to express not only human emotion and thought, but to reflect the nature and condition of social and cosmological order.9 In addition to the use of writing in these various contexts, the very art of writing Chinese graphs ruled supreme. Beginning in the second century ce, calligraphy is the first of the visual arts to have been discussed and evaluated systematically.10 Above and beyond painting, sculpture, or architecture, calligraphy has always retained its status as “the most venerated art form in China.”11 Public inscriptions by recent political leaders amply testify to the lingering cultural status and political authority of the hand-written word—one may only think of Mao Zedong’s calligraphy for the title of People’s Daily as well as for the name of Peking University, written on the university’s main gate, or of Deng Xiaoping’s

of language, see Harbsmeier 1998, 8–26, 46–107. For an excellent analysis of the (altogether limited) premodern Chinese reflections on language change, see Behr 2005a. 8 As Lewis 1999, 4, has noted: “[T]he culminating role of writing in the [Warring States] period, and the key to its importance in imperial China, was the creation of parallel realities within texts that claimed to depict the entire world. Such worlds created in writing provided models for the unprecedented enterprise of founding a world empire, and they underwrote the claims of authority of those who composed, sponsored, or interpreted them. One version of these texts ultimately became the first state canon of imperial China, and in this capacity it served to perpetuate the dream and the reality of the imperial system across the centuries . . . [T]he Chinese empire, including its artistic and religious versions, was based on an imaginary realm created within texts. These texts, couched in an artificial language above the local world of spoken dialects, created a model of society against which actual institutions were measured.” I agree with two qualifications: first, the fact that texts maintained the same form over large geographic distances and several millennia certainly set them in contrast to the synchronic plurality of dialects and diachronic multiplicity of language change—but this does not mean that classical Chinese is an artificial language. Second, Lewis’s emphasis on the written text is to some extent appropriate for imperial China from late Western Han times onward. However, for the earlier period—the actual focus of Lewis’s book—it exerts considerable scholastic pressure in order to force a wide and diverse range of cultural phenomena under the single paradigm of the written text. For extensive reviews of Lewis’s work, see Nylan 2000 and Kern 2000. A book that pursues a thesis similar to Lewis’s is Connery 1998. Unfortunately, it lacks basic sinological competence. 9 For a compilation of the relevant early texts, see Guo Shaoyu 1988; cf. Liu 1975, Owen 1992. 10 Remarks about calligraphy begin to surface with Cui Huan 崔瑗 (77–142), Zhao Yi 趙壹 (f. 178), and more substantially, with Cai Yong 蔡邕 (133–192); see Zheng Xiaohua 1999, 46–60; Wang Zhenyuan 1996, 9–24; Nylan 1999a, 46–53. 11 Bunnell and Fong 1999, 9.

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writing of the name of the National Library of China that was inscribed onto the library’s newly built home in 1987. In highly charged manifestations of writing like these, calligraphy has always been regarded as expressive of exemplary personality and virtuous rulership on the one hand, and as the public display of civilization and Chinese cultural identity on the other.12 In such contexts, writing transcends its two basic functions of storing and circulating knowledge. Or more precisely, the knowledge that is stored in the public inscription, and that is circulated to the community in the form of public display, refers not merely to the meaning of its words but also to the person who inscribed them and to the cultural status and political authority of public calligraphy itself. Such calligraphy is an emblem of both culture and sovereignty. The sovereignty extends beyond the social into the natural realm: beginning with the Qin First Emperor’s seven stone stelae that were erected on mountain tops during the first decade after the founding of the empire in 221 bce, texts have been literally inscribed into landscapes, either on stelae or into the natural stone itself. In these locations, public calligraphy transforms a natural site into a site of civilization and human history. Here, as in the political inscriptions in the capital, the calligraphic text constitutes the site as what it now is (and has not been before) and connects it forever to the person of the inscriber.13 In the present essay, I examine such representation in the context of the early development of Chinese writing, discussing the specific political, social, and religious circumstances in which its function of public display emerged. While inscriptions of ostentatious display are already documented among the Late Shang (ca. 1200–ca. 1045 bce) oracle bones,14 my particular focus is on the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou (ca. 1045–771 bce), and here especially on those from the Middle Western Zhou period (beginning with the reign of King Mu 穆 [r. 956– 918]) and after. These inscriptions not only show an increasingly accentuated use of calligraphy. They also, in a way the Shang oracle carvings and the very early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions do not, mention

12

“Public display” is Michael Nylan’s term; see Nylan 2005. For the stele inscriptions of the First Emperor, see Kern 2000a. The most important study of landscape inscription is going to be Harrist, forthcoming. See also Owen 1986, 22–32. 14 This display character manifests itself in some instances of unusually large graphs, in a sometimes careful pigmentation of the incised writing, and in the commonly observed approximate symmetry of the text; see Keightley 1978, 46, 54, 56, 76–77, 83–84, 89. 13

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certain officials in charge of formalized writing, and they give account of the presentation of written texts in contexts of social and political ritual. In a number of bronze inscriptions, furthermore, officials in charge of writing identify themselves with their titles and—implicitly or explicitly—display the exalted status of certain kinds of texts and their ritual presentation. However, when referring to early writing as “public display,” we need to keep in mind that oracle bone and bronze inscriptions were certainly not on display in the way modern inscriptions on monumental buildings are. For one, not only oracle bones but also bronze vessels are relatively small objects, and their inscriptions are visible only upon close and careful inspection. In fact, as has often been noted, they are cast on the inside of bronze vessels which means that during the sacrifices, they were covered with the sacrificial offerings and hence completely invisible.15 They cannot have been meant to be read during the sacrifices, and we do not have any records suggesting that they were displayed or read—as opposed to simply stored in the darkness of the ancestral temple—at other times. Furthermore, there was no “public” audience in early China as it existed, for example, in early Greece. All this, however, does not mean that objects and texts had no “public” representation or were devoid of any display function. The—however limited—“public” was the prominent lineage group of high status and its guests, in the case of the royal house also including high-ranking officials as well as diplomats from subordinate regions.16 This audience was an insider audience, but it comprised a cultural and political elite that did not need to inspect a bronze vessel and its inscription up close in order to know about and comprehend its representational nature. What counted, in general, was the sheer presence of the artifact. The same was probably still true even for the First Emperor’s stele inscriptions on mountains—texts that were certainly monumental but at the same time also removed. We do not assume that large numbers of people actually climbed the mountains

15 See, e.g., Kane 1982–83. In Western Zhou times, the major exception to this are inscriptions on bells, which are placed on the bells’ exterior. But even these inscriptions are too small to be visible from a distance, and their texts are often arranged in a rather irregular fashion—even running in different directions wherever there is space not occupied by ornament—across the body of the bell, including their backside. 16 I leave aside here the complex question of whether or not the bronze inscriptions were primarily directed not at the living humans (including their descendants) but at the ancestral spirits; cf. Falkenhausen 1993, 145–152 and Venture 2002.

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and read the inscriptions. It was enough to know about the inscriptions, and this knowledge certainly existed among the limited “public” of the elite. It is in this specific sense that I refer to early bronze writing as a form of “public display.” Yet in suggesting at all an early origin for the display aspect of Chinese writing, I also do not wish to contribute to the often-encountered sweeping claims that posit a general continuity in the nature, purposes and significance of the written text across three millennia. Quite to the contrary, I believe that in order to put the characteristic uses and specific prestige of early Chinese writing into focus, we need to first liberate ourselves from a cluster of later imperial concepts. In imperial times, the earlier ritual practice that accommodated the most exalted manifestation of the written text was but memory—indeed a memory scarcely invoked17—eclipsed by the expansive use and theorization of writing for a multiplicity of public purposes. Down to the present day, it has proven difficult to imagine the pre-imperial period as fundamentally different from later times in terms of the role and significance of writing.18 For example, the idea that the Zhou “were people who liked to write books,” first expressed almost seventy years ago, was only recently reiterated.19

17 The only passage explaining the rationale behind bronze inscriptions is a late passage—pre-imperial or from Han times—in the Liji 禮記 (Liji 1987, 49.378c–379a), retrospectively rationalizing a practice that by the time of the composition of the Liji had almost completely ceased to exist. According to this passage, “In an inscription (ming), one appreciates and expounds the virtue and excellence of one’s ancestors; one displays their achievements and brilliance, their efforts and toils, their honors and distinctions, and their fame and name (ming) to All under Heaven; and one deliberates all these in [inscribing] the sacrificial vessel. In doing so, one accomplishes one’s own name (ming) in order to sacrifice to one’s ancestors. One extols and glorifies the ancestors and by this venerates filial piety . . . Therefore, when a gentleman looks at an inscription (ming), he praises those who are commended there, and he praises the one who has made [the inscription].” (銘者, 論譔其先祖之有德善, 功烈勳勞慶賞聲名列於天下, 而酌之祭 器; 自成其名焉, 以祀其先祖者也。顯揚先祖, 所以崇孝也。。。是故君子之觀於銘 也, 既美其所稱, 又美其所為。 ) It is not possible to date this passage even by a particular century. Therefore, one might speculate that its discussion of ming 銘 (“inscription”) and ming 名 (“name”) was, perhaps, still a genuine reflection of an early etymological figure, and not yet a mere paronomastic pun. 18 A truly splendid example of how Chinese writing is viewed entirely from the imperial perspective has been given in the exhibition (and its catalogue) “L’empire du trait” at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, March 16–June 20, 2004. 19 See Creel 1937, 255, as approvingly quoted by Shaughnessy 1997, 6. Shaughnessy has repeatedly expressed his belief in the general prevalence of writing in Western Zhou culture; see Shaughnessy 1997, 1–12; 1999, 297–299; 2003. For critiques of this approach to Western Zhou history and its sources, see Falkenhausen 1993, 139–195 and Schaberg 2001, 477–481.

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However, the rhetoric about writing as the ultimate expression of culture, as we find it from the late first century bce onward, is decidedly an imperial phenomenon. Over the entire first millennium for which we have evidence of the Chinese script, beginning in ca. 1200 bce, such rhetoric is virtually absent. Across the actual abundance of pre-imperial texts, there are very few statements assigning particular significance to writing. The one text that most explicitly praises writing for its particular capacities to preserve and transmit knowledge is Mozi 墨子 (Master Mo), a diverse compendium of multiple layers that probably extend from the fourth through the second centuries bce and thus postdate the Western Zhou period by several centuries.20 Unsurprisingly, given the Mozi’s strong stand of antiritualism and frugality, the text never emphasizes what seem to have been among writing’s most prominent functions in Zhou times, namely, those of ritual display and representation of status.21 II. Who Were the Writers in the Early Period? There is no single word in the early Chinese language to denote the functionaries of writing, and none of the several terms available distinguishes officials in charge of writing clearly from other court appointees such as ritual officers or high-level royal aides. The most common term for functionaries of writing is shi 史, but its wide occurrence throughout Chinese history has proven resistant to any single understanding. It is variously translated as “scribe” or “clerk,” “historian,” “historiographer,” or “archivist,” “ritualist,” or “astrologer.” Each of these terms is appropriate if used according to specific historical circumstances, although rarely does any of them exhaust the functions of a shi at any time in history.

20 Mozi 1986, 2.62, 4.111, 5.119, 7.185–186, 7.196, 8.214–215, 9.250, 9.254, 12.407– 408, 13.431. 21 While the present paper is concerned with the Western Zhou period, one may also mention the display function of writing as it figures prominently in certain Eastern Zhou texts. One example is the Zhouli where numerous officers are in charge of reading out loud various kinds of written texts on specific occasions. Among the officials in the Ministry of War (“Xia guan” 夏官), the Manager of Rewards (si xun 司勳) inscribes the names of meritorious persons onto the king’s great standard (taichang 太常). Among the officials in the Ministry of Justice (“Qiu guan” 秋官), the Chief Judge (shi shi 士師) suspends tablets inscribed with prohibitions from public gates, and the Enforcer of Agreements (si yue 司約) inscribes legal contracts into bronze vessels for use in the ancestral temple.

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Archaeological and historical evidence shows that in late Warring States and early imperial times, large numbers of low-level clerks designated as shi were employed by local governments to keep legal, administrative, economic, and other records. Their activities match the definition of shi in the early character dictionary Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 of ca. 100 ce, where shi is glossed as “recorder of affairs” ( jishi zhe 記事者).22 In the late third and early second centuries bce, the position of the shi served as an entry-level appointment to the local administration. According to excavated documents from two separate tombs, such appointments were received at the age of sixteen and eighteen years, respectively.23 An analysis of the word shi based on historical phonology indeed shows the act of writing as rooted in administrative purposes, with shi—like shi 士, shi 事, shi 使, li 吏, etc.—being closely related to li 理, “to mark.”24 Such an interpretation of shi may tie the term to the actual practice of writing in its basic function (and to the late Warring States and early imperial evidence from excavated manuscripts). It further corresponds well to the considerable number of low-level clerks—a total of 1095—that are mentioned in the various sections of the Zhouli 周禮 (The ritual institutions of the Zhou), a work perhaps from the fourth or third century bce that presents an idealized, cosmologically charged royal bureaucracy of the Zhou.25 In the Zhouli, these clerks are unranked commoners and listed toward the bottom of the bureaucratic hierarchy, below the “storehouse keepers” ( fu 府) and above only the “aides” (xu 胥) and “runners” (tu 徒).26 However, despite circumstantial but incontrovertible evidence of archival and administrative writing at the Late Shang and Western Zhou royal courts,27 the low-level governmental clerks do not appear in

22

Shuowen jiezi 1988, 3B.20b. The major archaeological evidence comes from the excavated tombs Shuihudi 睡 虎地 (Yunmeng 雲夢, Hubei) tomb no. 11 (sealed 217 bce) and Zhangjiashan 張家山 (Jingzhou 荊州, Hubei 湖北) tomb no. 247 (sealed 186 bce); see Zhangjiashan 2001, 203; Brashier 2003; Xu Fuchang 1993, 8–14, 358–360, 378–382; Hulsewé 1985, 1, 39n4, 87. For detailed discussion, see Kern 2003. 24 See Behr 2005a, 15–18, also Kern 2003. 25 New scholarship on the cosmological nature of the Zhouli is long overdue; for some concise remarks on how this text provides a comprehensive vision of “the state as a replica or image of the cosmos,” see Lewis 1999, 42–48. 26 They are mentioned not in the actual descriptions of the various government offices but merely listed in the introductory summaries of the different ministries; see Kern 2003. 27 For a treatment of these functions of early Chinese writing, see Bagley 2004. 23

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Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. Equally absent are the “historians” or “archivists,” as the term shi was commonly used in imperial times. While there can be no doubt that the Western Zhou and their successors produced and kept historical records, no bronze inscription and no passage of the Odes (Shi 詩), Documents (Shu 書), or Changes (Yi 易)—our main sources of transmitted texts that presumably date in part from Western Zhou times—portrays a shi as “writing history” in any meaningful later sense of the word, or as a person responsible for “archiving” information.28 Instead, we see a class of officials in charge and in control of the written word who ranked among the highest dignitaries at the Zhou royal court. To distinguish these officers from the menial “clerks” just mentioned, I will refer to them as “Secretaries” (with the capital “S” denoting the title, not the function).29 In Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, the high-level Secretaries are involved in the ceremonial presenting of written texts during important court rituals. They are mentioned as shi but also repeatedly as neishi 內史 (Secretary of the Interior), neishi yin 內史尹 (Overseer of the Secretariate of the Interior), waishi 外史 (Secretary of the Exterior), yushi 御史 (Secretary in Royal Attendance), or taishi 大史 (Grand Secretary); in addition, a number of other epithets appear only once each before shi. Another designation for what appears to have been the same office is zuoce 作冊 (Maker of Records); there also are zuoce yin 作冊尹 (Overseer of the Makers of Records), or just yin 尹 (Overseer [of the shi and zuoce]).30 In some inscriptions, two of these terms are combined into a single designation, as in zuoce neishi 作冊內史. According to the evidence from the bronze inscriptions, the Maker of Records was as high a ritual officer as the Secretary and by no

28

Pace Shaughnessy 1991, 1, passim, and Cook 1995, 252–255, among others. The term was also proposed by Creel 1970, 110. Creel points out that in modern use, “secretary” refers not only to menial writing but is also used “to denote offices of great power and responsibility, as in Secretary of State,” and that the term “originally meant one entrusted with secrets and employed in confidential missions.” However, since Creel’s work, the term “secretary” seems to have been largely forgotten; the common English translation is now “scribe.” I consider this a regression, even though for the Western Zhou period, the relatively neutral “scribe” seems still better than “archivist,” “secretarial staff,” or “historiographer,” as one finds shi rendered in the other major English language outline of Western Zhou history and culture, that is, Hsu and Linduff 1988, 245–246, 254–255. 30 See the discussion in Zhang Yachu and Liu Yu 1986, 26–36; Chen Hanping 1986, 119–129; Wong Yin-wai 1978, 128–137; Lai Changyang and Liu Xiang 1985; Cook 1995, 250–255; and, most extensively, Xi Hanjing 1983. 29

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means confined to the clerical work that may be suggested by his designation; indeed, the two terms may have designated the same office.31 As will be discussed in greater detail below, the available Western Zhou bronze inscriptions show these functionaries of writing in two separate capacities: on the one hand as donors of their own sacrificial vessels, on the other hand as court officials that are mentioned in vessels of other donors.32 Among the many hundreds of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions documented and discussed in the monumental compilation prepared by Shirakawa Shizuka 白川靜,33 twenty-two show Secretaries or Makers of Records as donors.34 Fourteen of these inscriptions were cast with their vessels during the Early Western Zhou period ending with King Zhao 昭 (r. 977/75–957 bce);35 for ten of these, the donor is a Maker of Records;36 for one, it is a Grand Secretary,37 and for three, a Secretary.38 Eight inscriptions with Makers of Records or Secretaries as donors were cast during the Middle Western Zhou (956–858 bce) and Late Western Zhou (857–771 bce) periods. Of these, only one is a Maker of Records,39 while seven are Secretaries.40 Thus, two thirds of the vessels cast for functionaries of writing come from the Early Western Zhou period, mostly with a Maker of Records as donor. During the

31 Wang Guowei 1975, 6.5a–6a, identifies the Secretary of the Interior as a top-level government official (fully supported by the analyses of Zhang Yachu and Liu Yu 1986, Xi Hanjing 1983, and Chen Hanping 1986, all of them based on a much larger corpus of inscriptions). According to Wang, zuoce neishi is yet another designation of the office that is otherwise called either zuoce or neishi. On the origin and function of the zuoce, the most comprehensive study is Shirakawa 1974. 32 Xi Hanjing 1973, 41–112, lists a total of 129 early scribes by name, 54 of which occuring in inscriptions, the others in much later received texts. 33 Shirakawa 1962–84. In the following, I cite Shirakawa in the format “Volume.Pages (# Entry).” 34 In addition, Shirakawa’s collection includes three post-Western Zhou vessels with Secretaries as donors; see 37.244–253 (# 207), 39.471–473 (# 221), and 39.523–524 (# 226). 35 All dates of Zhou kings after Shaughnessy (1991). 36 Shirakawa 4.167–172 (# 15), 5.236–244 (# 22), 5.245–247 (# 22a), 6.255–275 (# 24), 6.276–309 (# 25), 6.319–326 (# 26), 8.440–449 (# 42), 10.589–596 (# 58), 11.628–646 (# 60c), 13.744–745 (# 64a). Note that sometimes, identical inscriptions are cast on two or more vessels (or are repeated on the lid of a vessel). In all these cases, I count the inscription only once. 37 Shirakawa 8.433–439 (# 41). 38 Shirakawa 2.77–83 (# 6), 7.366–372 (# 33), 9.514–518 (# 50). 39 Shirakawa 19.370–376 (# 105). 40 Shirakawa 20.383–390 (# 107), 21.474–478 (# 115e), 21.484–490 (# 117), 24.174– 186 (# 138), 24.186–187 (# 138a), 39.523–524 (# 226), 50.335–369 (hô-# 15).

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Middle and Late Western Zhou periods, such inscriptions are significantly less frequent (especially considering that the overall number of inscriptions increased substantially during these periods), and they are now mostly cast for a Secretary. Considering the accidental and fragmentary nature of the archaeological record, we do not know to which extent the inscriptions compiled by Shirakawa (or those of any other collection)41 may serve as a representative cross section of the original totality of Western Zhou bronze texts. If anything, they indicate general tendencies; they do not lend themselves to statistically valid conclusions. Only with this caveat in mind, it can be instructive to consider the available inscriptions for what they show, and then to see how mutually independent sets of data from both excavated and transmitted sources converge toward a more or less coherent picture. It is in this spirit that the following observations and suggestions are delivered. In Shirakawa’s corpus, inscriptions of other donors where shi, neishi, taishi, zuoce, or yin appear as actual functionaries of writing show the following distribution: in Early Western Zhou times, one finds one zuoce, one taishi, one neishi, and three shi. In inscriptions dating from the Middle and Late Western Zhou periods, there are one zuoce, three taishi, seventeen shi, twenty neishi, two zuoce neishi, eight zuoce yin, three neishi yin, and eight yin. Judging from the current archaeological record, inscriptions for other donors that mention functionaries of writing increase dramatically in Middle and Late Western Zhou times, the reason being a probably new type of ritual described on bronze vessels (see below). Furthermore, matching the survey of inscriptions with shi or zuoce as donors, it appears that from Middle Western Zhou times onward, occurrences of shi far outnumber those of zuoce. In particular, the title of the neishi appears in only one Early Western Zhou inscription42 but becomes the most prominent one in Middle and Late

41 After the publication of Shirakawa’s volumes, a significant number of inscribed vessels have been excavated and published in various venues. They do not, however, change the overall conclusions presented here. 42 Shirakawa 11.591–605 (# 59); for a translation of the inscription, see Dobson 1962, 194–195. The vessel, variously known as “Zhou gong-gui” 周公 , “Zhou gong-yi” 周公彝, “Xing hou-gui” 邢侯 , “Xing hou-yi” 邢侯彝, or “Rong zuo Zhou gong-gui” 作周公 , carries an inscription that is unique in one important point: it mentions the king addressing the vessel donor Rong together with the Secretary of the Interior. It closes with Rong saying that he has now “used the bamboo-written royal charge to make this sacrificial vessel in honor of the Duke of Zhou” (yong ce wang ling zuo Zhou gong yi 用冊王令作周公彝). I thus take it as a very early, not yet codified representation of the ceremony that inscriptions from the Middle Western Zhou period onward describe

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Western Zhou bronze texts, further suggesting a historical development in the use of these official titles.43 One reason for this might be that many of the Early Western Zhou Makers of Records seem to have been of Eastern, that is, Shang dynasty, descent.44 Both the Secretaries and the Makers of Records appear as officers of divination in the Late Shang; especially the latter seem to have been recruited to serve also under the Western Zhou, with their hereditary title perhaps maintained from generation to generation.45 Regardless of the specific designation, the high status of these royal officers of writing throughout Western Zhou times is evident from their impressive presence as donors of ritual vessels. Focusing on the evidence from the bronze inscriptions, the Odes, and the Documents, numerous palaeographic interpretations of the ancient graph 史 have been advanced to determine the meaning of the word shi.46 Building to some extent upon Wang Guowei’s 王國維 (1877–1927) influential analysis (which in turn is based on the work of several Qing dynasty [1644–1912] scholars),47 Shirakawa Shizuka has suggested that the early graph 史 seems to depict the offering of a basket of inscribed slips upward, namely, to the ancestral spirits. From this perspective, the function of the shi—if not the function of writing altogether—has often both frequently and in a highly standardized format (see below). In the present inscription, the Secretary of the Interior is probably not a donor but the functionary who has presented the written royal charge to Rong. 43 For this development, see also Zhang Yachu and Liu Yu 1986, 29–30, 34–36. 44 While this is now widely assumed, Lothar von Falkenhausen has rightly reminded me of both the beautiful pre-dynastic (that is, pre-Shang conquest) Zhou oracle bone inscriptions and the fact that from the beginning, Western Zhou inscriptions differed appreciably from their Shang dynasty predecessors. Evidently, the practice of Chinese writing, and also of Shang ritual, was more broadly disseminated among the Zhou (and perhaps other neighboring peoples?) already before the fall of the Shang, and its general reception by the Zhou did not entirely depend on the conquest and the subsequent inheritance of Shang functionaries. 45 See Shirakawa 1974; Xi Hanjing 1983, 20–29; Wong Yin-wai 1978, 100; Shaughnessy 1991, 166–168; Lau 1999, 59, 88. For the appearance of Secretaries and Makers of Records in Late Shang oracle bone inscriptions, see Chen Mengjia 1956, 517–521; Xi Hanjing 1983, 20–29. In Chen Mengjia’s survey of Late Shang governmental offices, he groups the diviners together with the functionaries of writing, making it clear that both groups were concerned with divination and sacrifice. It is noteworthy that even a full millennium later, in a Zhangjiashan bamboo manuscript dated 186 bce, the administrative clerk (shi) is discussed together with the invocator or priest (zhu 祝); see Zhangjiashan 2001, 203–204; Kern 2003. 46 For a recent example in this tradition, see Kominami Ichirô 1999. Altogether, the literature on shi is vast; see the bibliographic information in Behr 2005a, 15, Cook 1995, 250–254, Gentz 2001, 9. A good range of graphic interpretations is included in Matsumaru and Takashima 1994, # 0004, 0024, 3371, 3425, 5881. 47 For discussions preceding Wang Guowei’s, see Xi Hanjing 1983, 12–17, 137–140.

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been seen as having originated in a religious context.48 However, the fallacy of interpreting graphs to literally “decipher” the meaning of the words they are writing has been pointed out repeatedly.49 While the above-mentioned phonological analysis of the word shi puts into doubt (if not to rest) the speculations about the graph 史, it does not invalidate the conclusion by Wang Guowei, Shirakawa, and many others that the primary function of the Secretaries and Makers of Records that appear in Late Shang and Western Zhou inscriptions is religious, political, and ritualistic (and clerical only to the extent that writing is used to lend particular efficacy to ritual speech). In order to appreciate writing in this ritual context one does not need to suppose that it actually originated from this context, that it was largely confined to it, or that it in any way impeded the use of administrative writing.50 Whatever manifestations of menial clerical writing there were in Western Zhou China have long since perished and do not surface in the representation of writing in our available sources. This is mainly due to the fact that the bronze inscriptions as well as the ritual hymns and speeches from the Odes and Documents are without exception of ritualistic nature and purpose. As such, they are focused on the particular ceremonial performance of the high-level Secretary, Maker of Records, and Overseer, exalting writing as a display of strictly codified political and religious expresssion in the contexts of the court audience and the ancestral sacrifice. In other words, of all its manifestations of writing during the Western Zhou period, the Chinese tradition has chosen to preserve only a very limited body of strictly ritualistic texts. Moreover, for writing, the Western Zhou elites themselves restricted the use of the precious, non-perishable material of bronze to texts that were to be presented in ceremonial (mostly religious) contexts—a fact that speaks eloquently to the significance of writing as ritual display.

48 Wang Guowei 1975; Shirakawa 1974a; also the earlier Chinese discussion recapitulated by Xi Hanjing 1983. 49 Important studies debunking this approach include Boltz 1994 and Takashima 2000; see also DeFrancis 1984 and Unger 2004. 50 For the hypothesis that Chinese writing first developed in religious contexts and from there became extended to profane purposes, see also Lewis 1999, 28; for a brief critique, see Kern 2003; for an extensive discussion of early administrative writing, see Bagley 2004. I have changed my mind on this point, compared to Kern 1996 and 1997.

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A review of the representation of writing in Western Zhou texts may begin with the small number of pertinent passages in the received literature. The core layer of the Changes, originally a divination handbook, does not include any references to writing. In the Odes, an anthology of 305 songs, references to writing appear only in a few ritual hymns that were performed at court banquets. In Ode 193, “Shi yue zhi jiao” 十月 之交 (At the sun-moon conjunction in the tenth month), the Secretary of the Interior is mentioned among the highest dignitaries of the royal court.51 In Ode 220, “Bin zhi chu yan” 賓之初筵 (When the guests first sit down on their mats), an admonition against drunkenness, a shi serves as an assistant to an inspector who takes note of those who are drunk at a lavish court banquet.52 In Ode 168, “Chu ju” 出車 (We move the chariots out), soldiers express their fear of the “writing on bamboo slips” ( jianshu 簡書), that is, the royal military charge they are obliged to fulfill.53 It is impossible to historicize these poems precisely,54 but the

51

Legge 1985a, 322; Karlgren 1950a, 139. Legge 1985a, 399; Karlgren 1950a, 174. Here, shi might indicate a lower-level clerk. 53 Legge 1985a, 264; Karlgren 1950a, 112. 54 So far, efforts to do so have been impressionistic and methodologically deficient. For example, no song has to be contemporaneous with the historical situation it seems to speak about; any song—and any transmitted royal speech—can be a retrospective creation composed in part or completely of the imagined words of the original situation. Moreover, linguistic arguments may indicate general tendencies of development over the course of the Western Zhou period but have not been successful to determine specific dates of individual texts. Rhyme, for example, occurs already in the earliest bronze inscriptions (Behr 1996, 86, pace Shaughnessy 1983, 37), and so does—if still only to a limited extent nowhere near its frequency and regularity in the Odes (Behr 2005, 116)—the tetrasyllabic meter. Likewise, an attempt to establish the third-person possessive pronoun use of the word qi 其 as a linguistic phenomenon emerging only in mid-Western Zhou times—so that its occurence in individual received texts may be taken as a terminus post quem for their composition (Shaughnessy 1997, 165–195)—is problematic on at least three accounts: first, the sample of texts is both too small and too homogeneous to be statistically meaningful. Second, as recently excavated manuscripts of ancient texts—especially the Odes—with transmitted counterparts show, grammatical particles (xuci 虛辭) like qi were particularly prone to change during the early course of transmission (Kern 2005). Third, the distinction between an earlier pre-verbal “modal” use of qi (expressing hope or expectation) and a later pronominal use is linguistically dubious. As noted by Ken’ichi Takashima (personal communication August 1, 2004), the two grammatical functions are “in origin the same thing. That is, qi as third-person possessive pronoun is the earliest and original, and the modal function of it is only an offshoot of its function . . . We cannot possibly derive the possessive pronominal qi from the modal particle.” 52

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common division of the Western Zhou dynasty into Early, Middle, and Late periods remains useful. The three songs that mention the practice of writing are all in the “Minor elegantiae” (xiaoya 小雅) section of the Odes anthology and are hence commonly placed either toward the end of the Western Zhou or later. To phrase things the other way around: none of the sacrificial “Zhou eulogia” (Zhou song 周頌) that are believed to come from Early Western Zhou times and none of the “Major elegantiae” (daya 大雅) that may date from the Middle or Late period of the dynasty contain references to writing.55 In the royal speeches that comprise the early layers of the Documents, Secretaries and writings on bamboo are mentioned in a number of chapters.56 In “Jin teng” 金縢 (The metal-bound coffer), the Secretary initially presents the Duke of Zhou’s 周公 written prayer/invocation (ce zhu 冊祝); when the writing is later recovered, the Secretariate is consulted about its contents.57 In “Jiu gao” 酒誥 (The announcement about alcohol), both the Grand Secretary and the Secretary of the Interior are mentioned among the high dignitaries, as the Grand Secretary is mentioned in “Li zheng” 立政 (The establishment of government)

55 I do not include here the self-referential statements by which several Odes point to their own composition. There are altogether twelve instances of this: two in the “Airs of the states” (guofeng 國風), the section believed to be the latest of the anthology (Odes 107, 141; Legge 1985a, 164, 210; Karlgren 1950a, 69, 89); five in the “Minor elegantiae” (Odes 162, 191, 199, 200, 204; Legge 1985a, 249, 314, 346, 349, 359; Karlgren 1950a, 105, 134, 150, 152, 156); and five in the “Major elegantiae” (Odes 252, 253, 257, 259, 260; Legge 1985a, 495, 498, 527, 540, 545; Karlgren 1950a, 210, 212, 223, 228, 230). In no case does the self-referential statement refer to the writing of a song. The verb commonly used is zuo 作 (“to make”), and its object is “song” (ge 歌), “recitation” (song 誦), “ode” (shi 詩), “admonition” ( jian 諫), or “satire” (ci 刺). Of these twelve songs, four refer to their composer by name. Two of these composers (a Jiafu 家父 in Ode 191 and a Mengzi 孟子 in Ode 200) are otherwise unknown, while Odes 259 and 260 (both “Major elegantiae”) mention a certain Jifu 吉甫 whom some scholars identify with a military commander of this name who served under King Xuan 宣 (827–782 bce) and is mentioned both in Ode 177 and in several bronze inscriptions (Lau 1999, 130). As I will argue below, the production of written texts fits well into this Late Western Zhou reign, and it is entirely possible—but not at all certain—that the Jifu of Odes 259 and 260 is the commander mentioned elsewhere. It is worth noting, however, that in both Odes, Jifu “has made this recitation” (zuo song 作誦) which, if anything, points to the composition-qua-performance and not—at least not explicitly—to the writing of the song. 56 The Documents chapters discussed here all belong to the authentic “modern text” version of the text, and within that version, they come from the earlier chapters. 57 Legge 1985, 353, 359–360; Karlgren 1950, 35–36. Here and in the following, references to Legge and Karlgren are given for convenience; as will become clear below, I disagree with many of their translations.

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and “Gu ming” 顧命 (The testamentary charge).58 In “Shao gao” 召 誥 (The announcement of the Duke of Shao), the Duke uses a written text (shu 書) during the court audience to give out charges.59 In “Luo gao” 洛誥 (The announcement concerning Luo), the king first orders a Maker of Records to announce a written prayer/invocation and, later, a written charge.60 In “Duo shi” 多士 (The many officers), the king mentions the bamboo documents (ce 冊) and statutes (dian 典) of the former dynasty.61 In “Gu ming,” the late king’s testamentary charge is first recorded on bamboo slips; later, in an elaborate ceremony, the Grand Secretary presents the recorded charge to the new king.62 In “Lü xing” 呂刑 (The punishments of Lü), the king refers to a written penal code (xingshu 刑書).63 Most of these Documents chapters are assumed to date from Western Zhou times, with only “The metal-bound coffer” and “The punishments of Lü” being considered to postdate the period by some unspecifiable measure. Another text possibly of Western Zhou origin,64 the Yi Zhou Shu 逸周書 (Remnant Zhou Documents) chapter “Shi fu” 世俘 (The great capture) that relates the Zhou conquest of the Shang, notes that the victorious Zhou King Wu 武 asked the Secretary to recite a document (shu 書—announcing the King’s military success and establishment of the new dynasty?) to Heaven.65 The evidence for dating the written composition of any of these texts seems thin and dubious. So far, there is no serious methodology or compelling factual evidence to bolster the traditional belief in very early dates of composition. Virtually no effort has been made to identify the institutional framework for the early performance, recording, and preservation of the royal speeches, and little has been thought about the purpose of such recording and preservation. It is adventurous to think of these exalted utterances as efforts to provide historical information to be archived for future generations. The speeches were not talking facts; delivering shared communal ideas in formulaic diction, they were creating legitimacy both for the speakers and their successors. The speeches’ imposing and ritualistic rhetoric served to portray their royal 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Legge 1985, 410, 515, 557; Karlgren 1950, 45, 68, 71. Legge 1985, 424; Karlgren 1950, 48. Legge 1985, 451–452; Karlgren 1950, 55. Legge 1985, 460; Karlgren 1950, 56. Legge 1985, 549–551, 558; Karlgren 1950, 70–71. Legge 1985, 608; Karlgren 1950, 78. As argued by Shaughnessy 1980–81. Huang Huaixin et al. 1995, 464–465; Shaughnessy 1980–81, 59.

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speakers as exemplary sovereigns in their defining moments of rulership. In other words, what the speeches provided, and for what they were preserved, was the memory of the early Western Zhou model rulers speaking in their own voices. It is perhaps not necessary to call them, in their totality, later inventions, although such an assumption would not be any more bold and dubitable than the idea that their transmitted texts are the authentic records of original royal statements. Assuming that the early Zhou kings in fact delivered such statements that were then remembered by their successors—and not merely invented in the same fashion as so many other speeches in early China66—these words were almost certainly adjusted to the commemorative imagination of subsequent generations who will have perpetuated and performed them in the prime institution of such commemoration—where else?—that is, the ancestral sacrifice.67 Below, it will be important to consider this ritual context when thinking about how writing is represented both in the speeches and in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. In virtually all passages from the Odes, the Documents, and the Remnant Zhou Documents, writing appears in the context of royal court ritual. It is related to matters of morality and etiquette, to legal and royal statutes, to charges issued by the king, or to prayers/invocations offered upward to the ancestral spirits. Secretaries are repeatedly included in royal speeches that address, and briefly list, the highest dignitaries at court; in only one instance—at the banquet described in Ode 220—a shi

66 This is certainly true even for the larger number of Documents speeches that purport to be early but are clearly much later compositions (to say nothing of the imagined speeches in the inauthentic “ancient script” Documents). Moreover, the prominence of speech, and with it the practice of retrospectively inventing speech, is at the core of early Chinese historiography, as shown by Schaberg 2001 for the Zuo zhuan 左傳 (Zuo Tradition) and the Guoyu 國語 (Discourses of the States). Note that such invention included not just the speeches by political sovereigns but also the arguments submitted to them by their advisors as well as utterances by commoners, including ominous prophecies and songs. For the latter, see Schaberg 1999 and Kern 2004a. 67 Pace Creel 1970, 449–455, Shaughnessy 1999, 292, passim. As argued in Kern 2004, I hence see the performances of the royal speeches during the ancestral sacrifice in a dialogical setting with the sacrificial hymns and bronze inscriptions that were directed toward the former kings. This conclusion implies a relatively late (not before Middle to Late Western Zhou) date of the received speeches attributed to the Early Western Zhou rulers. The first to propose that the early Documents speeches were meant for performance was Henri Maspero who in 1927 suggested to understand the speeches as “libretti” that accompanied and guided the dances performed during the sacrifices; see Maspero 1978, 174–276. One may consider in this context the possible relation between the Documents chapter “The testamentary charge” and several of the early Odes; see Wang Guowei 1975a, 2.15b–19a; Fu 1980, 1:204–233; Shaughnessy 1997, 165–195.

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seems to be subordinate to an inspector who himself is of comparably low rank. A similar picture emerges from a survey of Warring States (476–221 bce) period texts. Here, the figure or office of the Secretary appears overwhelmingly in the ritual compendia Zhouli (17 passages with altogether 29 instances of the word),68 Yili 儀禮 (Ceremonial Rites; 10/23), and Liji 禮記 (Records of Ritual; 26/41), and in the vast historiographic narrative Zuo zhuan; 66/114).69 A parallel pattern can be determined for the use of the word shu 書 (to write/writing). In sum, while textual references to written texts and functionaries of writing multiply in later centuries, the received literature presents us with very few passages, all of them extremely brief, that might possibly date from Western Zhou times. This conclusion—concerning not the actual existence of writing but its representation and hence significance in terms of ritual display—is not at variance with the evidence from the bronze inscriptions. Compared to the received Odes, Documents, and Changes, all of which have reached us only through multiple layers of editorial activity, the thousands of Western Zhou inscriptions that are cast on the inside of bronze vessels (or, much less frequently, on the outside of bronze bells)70 are particularly valuable for three reasons: they have not undergone any later textual corruption; they contain by far the largest corpus of references to the act of writing; and they represent writing not merely 68 My count of “passages” follows their distinction in the Academia Sinica database. The numbers for the Zhouli refer to the mentioning of shi in specific offices and functions; they do not include the vast number of low-level clerks noted above. 69 For a large collection of passages involving Secretaries and other functionaries of writing in Warring States texts, and for an analysis of their offices and functions, see Xi Hanjing 1983. The case of the Zuo zhuan is explicable on account of the overall length of the text but also, more importantly, by its very nature of scribal self-representation. As Schaberg 2001a, 257, 267, has noted, the Zuo zhuan authors “could not have failed to recognize what they had in common with the men whose deeds they were commemorating,” namely, the ministers and advisors versed in ritual propriety and textual learning, and “history writing is a weapon of justice wielded not by the possessors of power but by the distinct stratum that includes the scribes and the historiographers themselves.” While the Zuo zhuan is a textual monument dedicated to ritual propriety, it also elevates writing—and first of all, its own writing—to be itself a superior manifestation of such propriety, ultimately balancing the repeated failure of ritual in history with the perfectly appropriate historiographic account of that failure. This is precisely the rationale that the early tradition attributed to Confucius’s efforts in compiling the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu 春秋) and that is then mirrored in the catechistic exegesis of this text in the Gongyang Tradition (Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan 春秋公羊傳); see Gentz 2001. 70 Computing on the basis of several Chinese sources, Shaughnessy 2003 speaks of more than 13,000 known Shang and Zhou bronze inscriptions, estimating that at least half of them date from the Western Zhou.

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through verbal reference but in its actual material manifestation. On the whole, they allow us to infer the implicit consciousness of the power of writing through an inspection of the unadulterated evidence of the original written artifacts themselves. IV. Shi 史 (“Secretaries”) and Zuoce 作冊 (“Makers of Records”) in Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions The functionaries of writing who appear in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions serve in the same ritual capacities as their counterparts in the early Documents chapters. We thus recognize a consistent picture of high-ranking officials across the different textual “genres” of early ritual culture. Arguably, these men were “the most powerful ritualist[s] and minister[s] in the king’s service.”71 As donors of inscribed bronze vessels, they often refer to themselves not only by their name but also —in another indication of their elevated position—by their title.72 None of the inscriptions of a Secretary or Maker of Records, however, contains any mention of his actual scribal service. In its simplest form, reference to a Secretary or Maker of Records as donor of a vessel is found in inscriptions that consist only of what Lothar von Falkenhausen has identified as the core of Western Zhou bronze texts, namely, a “statement of dedication.”73 Thus, the following Early Western Zhou inscription consists of only nine characters, cast into a yan 甗 food steamer [Ill. 1a–b]: [I,] the Grand Secretary You have made for [my] bright lord-ancestor [this] precious, honorable sacrificial vessel.74

In the following, more elaborate Early Western Zhou example, the donor of a you 卣 wine vessel is a Maker of Records [Ill. 2a–b]: 71

Cook 1995, 250. There is no question that in many other inscriptions, Secretaries or Makers of Records do not identify themselves by their title, but the actual number of these inscriptions is impossible to determine. 73 See Falkenhausen 1993, 152–161. Falkenhausen 2004 has further refined his structural analysis of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. 74 Shirakawa 8.433–439 (# 41), “Taishi You-yan” 大史 友甗. Another possible interpretation is to read you > 友 as 右 and thus as part of the title taishi you 大史 右, that is “Assistant to (or Associate of) the Grand Secretary.” For this interpretation of the title neishi you 內史友 in the Documents chapter “Announcement about alcohol,” see Sun Xingyan 1986, 382. What I have translated as “my bright lord-ancestor” has also been interpreted as denoting the historical Duke of Shao; see the discussion in Shirakawa. 72

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1a You-yan. After Rong Geng, Haiwai jijin tulu (Taipei: Tailian guofeng chubanshe, 1978), 39, plate 12.

1b You-yan, rubbing of inscription. After Luo Zhenyu, Sandai jijin wencun (N.p., 1936), 5.8b.

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2a Huan-you. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:605, plate 31B.

2b Huan-you, rubbing of inscription. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:605, plate 31A.

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martin kern It was the nineteenth year; the king was at Gan. Queen Jiang commanded [me,] the Maker of Records, Huan, to conciliate the Elders of Yi. The Elders of Yi visited [me,] Huan in audience, presenting [me] with cowries and cloth. [I, Huan] extol Queen Jiang’s blessings and on account of this make for [my] Accomplished Deceased Father [of the] gui [day this] precious, honorable sacrificial vessel.75

In addition to being cast into the wine vessel, the inscription is also repeated on the inside of its lid, in each location spreading the thirtyfive characters over four orderly lines. Furthermore, a slightly shorter inscription by the same donor commemorating the same event is cast inside a separate vessel, a zun 尊 wine container, arranging a total of twenty-seven characters in four lines. (Here and in the following counts, characters accompanied by the reduplicative marker “=” are counted as two.) This inscription is decidedly more personal in tone, containing two forms of the first-person pronoun [Ill. 3a–b]: At Gan, the Lady commanded me, the Maker of Records Huan, to conciliate the Elders of Yi. The Elders of Yi visited [me] in audience, using cowrie and cloth [as gifts]. On account of this, I make for my Accomplished Deceased Father of the gui day [this] distinguished, precious X.76

A third vessel, this one a gui (簋) food tureen inscribed with only eight characters, might be by the same donor [Ill. 4]: [I,] Huan made [this] precious tureen. May it forever be treasured and used.77

In addition to the “statement of dedication,” the third inscription contains a “statement of purpose” (Falkenhausen), another commonly found element in Western Zhou bronze texts. It expresses the donor’s

75 Shirakawa 5.236–244 (# 22), “Zuoce Huan-you” 作冊 卣. For an earlier translation, see Shaughnessy 1991, 174–175. Gui 癸 day is the day within the sixty-day cycle on which the father receives sacrifices; some scholars, including Shirakawa, believe that such a designation is characteristic of Shang descendants. My translation differs from that by others in that I believe that Huan, as the royal representative, receives the Elders of Yi in his audience, to which they bring gifts, and not that he goes to their (“Elder Yi’s”) audience. Note that the situation—and the syntax of the inscription—is parallel to that of the Shi Song-gui 史頌 inscription translated below. 76 Shirakawa 5.245–247 (# 22a), “Zuoce Huan-zun” 作冊 尊. According to Shirakawa, the last character is an undecipherable symbol for a sacrificial vessel known from a number of other inscriptions. Shaughnessy 1991, 175 takes it as a family emblem. 77 Shirakawa 5.247 (# 22b), “Huan-gui” . If indeed by the same donor, this inscription would be an example in which a Maker of Records does not identify himself by his title.

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3a Huan-zun. After Huang Jun, Zunguzhai suojian jijintu (Beiping: Zunguzhai, 1936), 1.36a.

3b Huan-zun, rubbing of inscription. After Huang Jun, Zunguzhai suojian jijintu (Beiping: Zunguzhai, 1936), 1.36b.

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4 Huan-gui, rubbing of inscription. After Wu Shifen, Jungulu jinwen (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1982?), 2A.27b.

wishes for the future, often in the form of a prayer.78 By contrast, the first two inscriptions close with the “statement of dedication” which is, however, in each case preceded by a historical account of the donor’s accomplishment. In this “statement of merit,” the Maker of Records presents himself not as a writer but as a royal diplomat. What the three different inscriptions share is the “statement of dedication,” that is, the self-referential formula including both the donor and his ritual object. By contrast, the “historical” part of the “statement of merit” is dispensable. This is clear from the great number of short inscriptions in the format of the Huan-gui and the Taishi You-yan that do not include information on the situation that led to the casting of the vessel. Even more compellingly, the numerous uninscribed bronze vessels suggest that the production and possession of a vessel itself was of primary significance. While writing almost certainly enhanced the prestige of these ritual objects, it did not constitute them in their meaning, purpose, and functionality.

78

See Xu Zhongshu 1936.

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The comparison between the Zuoce Huan-you and the Zuoce Huanzun further intimates that whatever historical information was related on a vessel could be put in different ways and significantly abbreviated. Thus, what seems to be the historical anchor of the Zuoce Huan-you inscription, namely, the initial statement “It was the nineteenth year; the king was at Gan” is left out in the Zuoce Huan-zun. At the same time, the zun inscription does not contribute any additional information; its purpose rests entirely with the existence of the inscribed vessel itself— even though Huan’s particular choices in casting the zun vessel might be somewhat enigmatic. Matsumaru Michio 松丸道雄 has argued that the you vessel reflects an underlying official text and was probably cast in the royal foundry (that is, under royal supervision) while the zun vessel, which is cruder in its execution and “manifestly inferior” (Shaughnessy) in its calligraphy, expresses a more personal view and was probably cast on Huan’s own authority at a regional foundry.79 Considering the diction of the inscription, this is plausible, although it does not explain why Huan chose to have a more “personal” but inferior zun cast in the first place (while also owning the you) and why he, despite of his exalted position as Maker of Records presumably responsible for royal writing, accepted inferior calligraphy for this purpose. Be this as it may, the calligraphic difference between the two vessels shows that Huan was not in charge of the calligraphy carved into the mold of the you vessel (otherwise, he would have been able to reproduce it on his “private” vessel); this task was apparently delegated to a subordinate specialist at the royal court. He may not even have been in control of the calligraphy for his own more “personal” zun vessel—or his own writing skills were rather undistinguished. In short, the comparison of the two vessels suggests that despite their official titles, we do not fully know to which extent, and in which specific contexts, the high-level Secretaries and Makers of Records were engaged in the actual clerical work. Another example of a set of vessels all belonging to the same Secretary shows how variable the expression of donorship was. The Late tureen by Secretary Song 頌 (“Shi Song-gui” Western Zhou gui 史頌 ) carries the longest inscription of the set—sixty-two characters neatly arranged in six vertical columns—which is also repeated on three more tureens (repeated in both the vessels and their lids) and two ding 鼎 tripods [Ill. 5a–b, 6a–b]: 79

Matsumaru 1980, 20–54; Shaughnessy 1991, 174–175. It should be noted, however, that the question of regional foundries is not sufficiently clear; see Rawson 1999, 365–366, 407, 417.

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5a Shi Song-gui. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 90, plate 74.

5b Shi Song-gui, rubbing of inscription in the lid. After Guo Moruo, Liang Zhou jinwenci daxi tulu kaoshi (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1957), 2:40a.

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6a Shi Song-ding. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:851, plate 206B.

6b Shi Song-ding, rubbing of inscription. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:851, plate 206A.

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martin kern It was [the king’s] third year, the fifth month, the day dingsi. The king was in [the western capital] Ancestral Zhou. He commanded [me,] Secretary Song to inspect [the area of] Su. [I] led the [local] officers of [royal] rule, the village eminences, and the noble families [from Su] to assemble and swear [allegiance] in [the eastern capital] Chengzhou.80 With [royal?] blessing, [I] accomplished the matter. [The representatives from] Su attended [my] audience [and presented me with] a jade tablet, four hourses, and auspicious metal. On account of this, [I] make [this] meat-offering vessel. May [I,] Song [enjoy] ten thousand years without limit, daily extolling the Son of Heaven’s illustrious mandate! [May] sons of sons, grandsons of grandsons, forever treasure and use [this vessel]!81

While this inscription tells about the Secretary’s successfully performed duty that finally led to the casting of a whole set of vessels, his yi 匜 water container is more laconically inscribed, containing merely fourteen characters (including two reduplicatives) in three lines [Ill. 7a–b]: [I,] Secretary Song have made [this] yi. May [I enjoy] ten thousand years! [May] sons of sons, grandsons of grandsons forever treasure and use [this vessel]!82

The same text, in the same arrangement, is then repeated on another pan 盤 water basin with only the vessel designation in the first phrase changed from yi to pan [Ill. 8].83 Even shorter is, finally, the Secretary’s inscription on a hu 瑚 food vessel, comprising just six characters [Ill. 9a–b]: [I,] Secretary Song have made [this] hu. [May it] forever be treasured!84

Without doubt, Secretary Song, serving as the royal representative in an important mission of inspection, was a man of great stature, and he was richly rewarded for his services. Yet when he, like other men of his position, had his accomplishments recognized by the king and was given permission to have them represented in a bronze vessel, nothing but his official title as Secretary suggested anything about him being a “scribe” or “archivist,” or in any way concerned with writing at the royal court. Indeed, whenever a Secretary or Maker of Records presented his merits cast in bronze, he never dwelled on his being a functionary of writing. 80 This line is dubious; my translation follows Shirakawa who also discusses alternatives proposed by other scholars. 81 Shirakawa 24.174–184 (# 138). 82 Shirakawa 24.186–187 (# 138b). 83 Shirakawa 24.188 (# 138d). 84 Shirakawa 24.187–188 (# 138c). Shirakawa and others denote the vessel as a fu 簠 food container, based on a confusion that goes back to Chinese antiquarians of the Song dynasty. For clarification, see Li Ling 1991, 85.

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7a Shi Song-yi. After Rong Geng, Yin Zhou qingtongqi tonglun (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1984), plate 260.

7b Shi Song-yi, rubbing of inscription. After Guo Moruo, Liang Zhou jinwenci daxi tulu kaoshi (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1957), 2:44b.

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8 Shi Song-pan, rubbing of inscription. After Guo Moruo, Liang Zhou jinwenci daxi tulu kaoshi (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1957), 2:44b.

9a Shi Song-hu. After Chen Baochen, Chengqiuguan jijin tu (Taipei: Tailian guofeng chubanshe, 1976), 41.

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9b Shi Song-hu, rubbing of inscription. After Chen Baochen, Chengqiuguan jijin tu (Taipei: Tailian guofeng chubanshe, 1976), 42.

In the sequence I have listed them here (not intending to suggest their original sequence of production), the Secretary Song inscriptions again show us a continuous focus toward the irreducible core, that is, the “statement of dedication.” In fact, the two possible further reductions would have been, first, to eliminate the final prayer (in the fu inscription already shrunk to the two characters yong bao 永寶 [“forever treasure”]), leaving the inscription as a pure statement of donorship; this could then, second, be limited to the mere name of the donor. However, in keeping the prayer, the three different inscriptions, cast into a set of at least six different vessels, adhere to a set of conventions that by Late Western Zhou times (but apparently not before) had become overwhelmingly dominant. Note that in the yi and pan inscriptions, this prayer takes up ten of the fourteen characters.85 While Secretary Song does not refer to his activities as a functionary of writing, his inscriptions remain strictly within the confines of the textual and ritual conventions that by Late

85 With these numbers, I follow the convention of counting as two characters those that are repeated in the inscription, but written out only once, followed by the marker “=” to indicate their repetition.

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Western Zhou times were almost uniformly followed, alongside a standardized calligraphy and vessel design.86 Unlike the earlier artifacts and inscriptions discussed so far, the Secretary Song vessels come from the Middle Western Zhou period, beginning in the mid-tenth century bce, when a series of social, political, and ritual reforms were institutionalized.87 Although our sources for Western Zhou history are both tightly limited and heavily biased, evidence from excavated bronze vessels and their inscriptions is indicative of a number of new developments following King Zhao’s disastrous military campaign southward that resulted in a “crushing defeat” and the death of the king.88 During the following reign of King Mu, power was no longer as concentrated in the royal family as it had been before; instead, large numbers of official appointments were given to members of the elite. Military reforms and land transactions were put into effect. Meanwhile, the eastern part of the realm appears to have slipped from royal control; “inscribed vessels from the middle and late Western Zhou have been found almost exclusively in the western Wei River capital region.”89 In this time of crisis, as the administrative reforms led to a more complex bureaucracy, they were at the same time represented in new, and elaborate, forms of court ritual. It is one of these rituals, the ceremony of royal appointment, that from now on was given prominent expression in numerous bronze inscriptions. V. The Appointment Ceremony and the Representation of Writing in Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions In the ceremonies of royal appointment, the king (or sometimes a highlevel aristocrat) issued a profoundly formulaic “charge” (ming 命, also written as ling 令, “order”) or “bestowal” (ci [易>]賜) with which he commanded the appointee to a certain position and bestowed on him the insignia and paraphernalia appropriate to the task. The charge or 86 Rawson 1990, vol. IIA, 93, 125; Rawson 1999, 438–439. As noted by Rawson, “a strong centralized control of ritual seems to have been in place”; for bronze design, a “static repertoire” came into being, “limited and reiterated,” and of “persistent sameness”—expressing an aesthetic ideology that embraced the bronze object as well as the wording and calligraphy of the inscription. 87 After Jessica Rawson’s pioneering work on the Middle Western Zhou ritual reform, the centrality of this period for the subsequent reception and perception of Western Zhou civilization is becoming increasingly visible. A notable recent addition to this important research is Falkenhausen 2004a. 88 Shaughnessy 1999, 322–323. 89 Shaughnessy, 1999, 323–328; see also Li Feng 2000.

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bestowal was pronounced orally and at the same time given out in writing on bamboo slips (ce ming 冊命/ce ling 冊令; ce ci 冊[易>]賜); the written charge was then used as the basis for the inscription of a bronze vessel or bell that was cast for the appointee.90 It is this kind of vessel, cast not for the king but for the appointee who henceforth used it in the sacrifices to his ancestors, that furnishes the most elaborate references to writing we now have for Western Zhou times. To be sure, royal appointments were also made during the early reigns of the dynasty, and sometimes their record was produced in bronze. Yet of eighty Western Zhou appointment inscriptions noted by Chen Hanping, only three date from the Early Western Zhou period; none of them gives account of the elaborate ritual that we see in Middle and Late Western Zhou inscriptions, and none of them involves reference to the written charge (ce).91 By contrast, beginning in Middle Western Zhou times, the representation of the appointment ceremony in bronze inscriptions—and most likely the ceremony itself—became thoroughly standardized, regardless of the position of the appointee or the particular circumstances of the charge.92 There are four Late Western Zhou inscriptions that so far provide the most comprehensive picture of the ceremony: those of the Song-ding 頌鼎 tripod (ca. 825 bce?; repeated on at least three ding tripods, five gui tureens and their lids, and two hu 壺 vases and their 鼎 (809 bce) [Ill. 13a–b], lids) [Ill. 10a–b, 11a–b, 12a–b], the X-ding the Huan-pan 盤 (800 bce; repeated on at least one ding tripod) [Ill. 14a–c], and the Shanfu Shan-ding 善夫山鼎 (789 bce) [Ill. 15a–b].93 The X-ding inscription comprises 97 characters: 90 Kane 1982–83; Chen Hanping 1986; Wong Yin-wai 1978; Falkenhausen 1993, 156– 167. As pointed out by Falkenhausen, the “statement of dedication” and the “statement of purpose” (prayer) were not part of the initial charge but later attached to the version of the charge that was then inscribed. 91 Chen Hanping 1986, 21–25. The three Early Western Zhou vessels are the “Yi hou (Shirakawa 10.529–554 [# 52], translated in Lau 1999, 97–104); the Ze-gui” 宜侯 above-mentioned “Zhou gong-gui” (Shirakawa 11.591–605 [# 59], translated in Dobson 1962, 194–195); and the “Da Yu-ding” 大盂鼎 (Shirakawa 12.647–675 [# 61], translated in Dobson 1962, 221–226, and Behr 1996, 155–159). 92 Chen Hanping 1986, 28–31. 93 The pronunciation of the character (“X”) is unclear; for the text of the X-ding inscription, see Chen Hanping 1986, 26, and Chen Peifen 1982:17. For the Song-ding inscription, see Shirakawa 24.165–168 (# 137), with the translation of the gui inscription in Shaughnessy 1999, 298–299; for the Shanfu Shan-ding inscription, see Shirakawa 26.357–361 (# 154), with the translation in Shaughnessy 1997a, 74–76. For the Huanpan inscription, see Shirakawa 29.590–595 (# 177). Shaughnessy 1999, 298, dates the Song-gui (and by implication the other Song vessels) tentatively to 825 bce. The remaining three inscriptions are fully dated (year, month, day). See also Shaughnessy 1991, 285, Table A16.

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10a Song-gui. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 87, plate 71.

10b Song-gui, rubbing of inscription. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 87, plate 71.

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11a Song-ding. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:831, plate 192B.

11b Song-ding, rubbing of inscription. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:831, plate 192A.

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12a Song-hu. After Rong Xibai (= Rong Geng), Shang Zhou yiqi tongkao tulu (Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1983), 383, plate 724.

12b Song-hu, rubbing of inscription. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 137, plate 17.

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13a X-ding. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 45, plate 76.

13b X-ding, rubbing of inscription. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 45, plate 76.

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14a Huan-pan. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 155, plate 10.

14b Huan-pan, rubbing of inscription. After Wang Shimin et al., Xi Zhou qingtongqi fenqi duandai yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1999), 155, plate 10.

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14c Huan-pan, rubbing of vessel and inscription. After Guo Moruo, Liang Zhou jinwenci daxi tulu kaoshi (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1957), 1:18b, plate 158.

15a Shanfu Shan-ding. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:837, plate 198B.

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15b Shanfu Shan-ding, rubbing of inscription. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:837, plate 198A. It was the nineteenth year, the fourth month, after the full moon, the day xinmao. The king was in the Zhao [Temple] of the Kang Palace. He arrived at the Great Chamber and assumed his position. Assisted to his right by Intendant Xun, [I,] X entered the gate. [I] assumed [my] position in the center of the court, facing north [toward the king]. Secretary Liu94 presented95 the king with the written order. The king called out to the Secretary of the Interior, Y,96 to announce the written bestowal to [me,] X: “[I bestow on you] a black jacket with embroidered hem, red kneepads, a scarlet demi-circlet, a chime pennant, and a bridle with bit and cheekpieces; use [these] to perform your service!”97 [I] bowed with my head

94 Chen Peifen 1982, 19, interprets liu 留 as zhou 籀, the name of the Secretary that only Eastern Han sources—900 years later!—like Ban Gu 班固 (32–92) in Hanshu 1987, 30.1719, or, around 100 ce, Xu Shen in Shuowen jiezi 1988, 15A.11b–12a, ascribe to the reign of King Xuan (r. 827–782 bce). While the reading of liu as zhou is entirely possible, and the inscription indeed dates from the King Xuan era, the understanding of liu as reference to Secretary Zhou (whom the later sources credit with the development of a new calligraphic style and the compilation of a character list) remains speculative. 95 Reading shou 受 as shou 授, as commonly suggested by Chinese and Japanese scholars; see, e.g., Chen Hanping 1986, 27, on the present inscription; Shirakawa (24.159) on the Song-hu; Wang Guowei 1975a, 1.18a, on the Song-ding and Huan-pan. 96 Again, the name of this Secretary of the Interior is unclear. 97 I provisionally follow Shaughnessy in the translation of the various paraphernalia.

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touching the ground. [May I] dare in response to extol the Son of Heaven’s greatly illustrious and abundant blessings and on account of this make for my August Deceased Father, the Elder Zheng(?), and his wife Zheng [this] precious tripod! May [I enjoy] extended longevity for ten thousand years! May sons of sons, grandsons of grandsons, forever treasure [this tripod]!98

This text is extremely similar, in large parts even verbatim identical, to the other three inscriptions. Regardless of the previous status of the appointee, and despite the different kinds of new appointments being given, the list of rewarded insignia, for example, is identical in three inscriptions and only slightly extended in the Huan-pan. This fact alone testifies to a written institutional memory at the Zhou royal court of King Xuan 宣 (827–782 bce), considering that the inscriptions date from 825(?), 809, 800, and 789 bce99 and that their bronze carriers were in the possession of different individuals. However, both the present text and the Huanpan are slightly shorter than their counterparts in the representation of the award ceremony. The Song and Shanfu Shan inscriptions contain an important additional component immediately before the “statement of purpose.” In the Song inscriptions, the text reads: [I,] Song, bowed with my head touching the ground; [I] received the bamboo slips with the [written] order and suspended them from my girdle before exiting. In return, [I] brought in a jade tablet.

In the Shanfu Shan-ding inscription, the corresponding passage goes: [I,] Shan bowed with my head touching the ground; [I] received the bamboo slips with the [written] order and suspended them from my girdle before exiting. In return, [I] brought in a jade tablet.

It is unclear what the jade tablet refers to. The first part of the passage, however, is unambiguous: the appointee receives the written charge and takes it with him (no doubt, a copy was kept in the royal archive). The

98

Chen Peifen 1982, 17–20; Chen Hanping 1986, 26. There might be a more immediate connection between the Huan-pan and the X-ding inscriptions, namely, that both vessels might have been dedicated to the same ancestors. In the X-ding inscription, the father’s name is written with a graph that Chen Peifen has transcribed as and Chen Hanping as . It is not impossible—though quite speculative—that the graph is a graphic variant of zheng 整, which might be understood as zheng 正 (“correct”), signifying not a lineage name but a posthumous temple name (“the Correct One”). This, in fact, is how the graph zheng [奠 >] 鄭 that appears in both inscriptions as the name of the mother has been interpreted in the case of the Huan-pan (where it also appears as the name of the father); see Shirakawa 29.594. 99

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vast majority of Middle and Late Western Zhou appointment inscriptions mention neither the initially written order (lingshu 令書) nor the appointee’s exiting with the inscribed charge appended to his body; they simply provide the text of the royal appointment charge, often introduced by “the king says” (wang yue 王曰).100 However, it is clear that the charge was always issued in an elaborate, strictly orchestrated and standardized court ritual, and that this ceremony—or, more precisely, that part of the ceremony that focused on the appointment proper—is represented most extensively in the Song and Shanfu Shan inscriptions. The textual performance that emerges from these standardized descriptions—note the uniformity not only of the performances but also of their inscribed records—is a complex interplay between the oral and the written performance of text, and it includes Secretaries or Makers of Records in both. First, prior to the appointment ceremony, a written order was prepared at court. After the ritual participants formally assumed their positions, a Secretary handed the order to the king. The king then called out to a second Secretary who read the written order to the appointee. Then, the document was given to the appointee who attached it to his girdle. After the ceremony, this written charge served as the basis for the bronze inscription that was cast in the appointee’s name, though probably still under royal supervision. Since the appointee, now vessel donor, henceforth used the inscribed vessel in the sacrifices to his ancestors, the “statement of dedication” and the “statement of purpose” (being the prayer to the ancestors) were attached to those parts of the original written charge that were to be represented on the vessel. Within the vessel donor’s own ceremonies, that is, the sacrifices to his ancestors, the written word was probably again transformed into a spoken announcement and prayer to the ancestors and integrated into another elaborate performance that included food and wine offerings, dance, music, song, and perhaps additional features.101 The original appointment ceremony was thus focused on the presentation and handover of a written document. In an illocutionary speech act on behalf of the king, the Secretary presented—by reading it out

100 For a detailed discussion of this phrase and its ceremonial implications, see Falkenhausen 2004. 101 Such interaction between the written and the oral is not unusual for complex civilizations where a highly developed ritual system of oral performances becomes combined with writing; for early Greece, see Thomas 1992, 61–65.

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loud—the document, thus bringing the appointment under the full ritual force and imposing dignity of the royal ceremony. In a number of inscriptions, such as in the one on the Shanfu Shan-ding, this force is further magnified by the king issuing a stern imperative in conjunction with the appointment: “Do not dare not to be good!” (wu gan bu shan 毋敢不善).102 The written document was important, but it was its ritual performance, with the king personally present, that sealed its authority. It is at this point where the function of the Secretary comes in. The king did not read to the appointee; all he did was to maintain his position. His chief ritualist and representative read: he led the functionaries of the written word, but he also was the master of its transformation back into what was perceived as the original royal speech act. The king, as far as we can tell from the inscriptions, controlled and approved the document—which represented his spoken voice—through his mere presence at the ceremony when the text was recited to the appointee. Here, we recognize the ceremony to be not only of ritual but also of legal significance. Just at the time when the appointment ceremony became a major part of Western Zhou administration and ritual, that is, in the Middle Western Zhou period, inscriptions on legal contracts also appeared in larger numbers.103 One characteristic feature of these inscriptions is that they meticulously list the names and titles of the officials that served as witnesses at the time of the legal agreement. I propose that in the bronze inscriptions representing appointment ceremonies, the same logic is in place: especially from the appointee’s perspective, it was important that his bronze vessel, which was sanctioned by the court, included the names and titles of the officials who delivered the appointment (and hence the right to have the vessel cast). This record, ceremonial as it was, thus forever related the very existence of the bronze vessel to the official, bureaucratically verified original event of the appointment ceremony. This might have been particularly important when in later generations, the personal memory of the ceremony and even of the appointee himself was no longer available, while the vessel was still being used in the family’s ancestral sacrifices. Inscriptions like those under discussion enlisted both the king and his chief officials as witnesses of the appointment.

102 103

See also Kane 1982–83, 16–17. Lau 1999; Schunk 1994; Skosey 1996.

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Before continuing the analysis, it is perhaps necessary to address, and then to put aside, a different reading of the inscriptions just discussed. In his prominent translations and discussions of the Song and Shanfu Shan inscriptions, Edward L. Shaughnessy has consistently interpreted ce ming not as “to read out loud the written charge” but as “to record” it, thus assuming not an oral performance but an act of writing.104 He translates the pertinent passage in the Song-gui as follows: “Yinshi (that is, the Overseer, a functionary of writing, MK) received the king’s command document. The king called out to Scribe Guo Sheng to record the command to Song.” Consider the sequence of action: the Overseer receives the writing, and then the king calls for a scribe to put it into writing. I find such a sequence awkward and unlikely. First, as many Chinese and Japanese commentators agree, the Overseer does not receive the writing from the king, but the king receives it from the Overseer (the respective graph in the original Chinese allows either choice). This is most logical; so far, we have only been told that the king “assumed his position”—after walking in with the written charge already in hand? Is this how kings behave in court ritual? The opposite is far more likely: the king assumes his position and only then is given the document, which he passes on to the Secretary. This sequence is important: surely, the king has not written the document, but it is nevertheless issued by him, and thus has to physically pass through his hands. Even more important than this point is the following one, that is, the interpretation of the technical terms ce ming and ce ci. The problem rests with ce 冊 which here I do not interpret as “recording” but as “announcing” or “reciting” the charge or bestowal105—despite the fact that it is normally understood as “bamboo document.” A strong force

104 Shaughnessy 1999, 298. Similarly, Shaughnessy 1997, 76, translates the corresponding passage of the Shanfu Shan-ding inscription as “The king called out to Scribe Hui to record the command to Shan.” The same reading can be found in Wong Yin-wai 1978, 95. 105 It should be noted that Chen Mengjia 1985, 149–160, offered the same understanding five decades ago. Likewise, Chen Hanping 1986, 12–20, 116–117, is perfectly clear. Unfortunately, Western translators of classical Chinese texts, including James Legge and Bernhard Karlgren, have mostly missed the point. As a result, the misunderstanding now even dominates the entry on ce in Schuessler’s widely used dictionary 1987, 55–56.

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in the common interpretation of the word ce has been the analysis of the graph which even in its modern form appears like a pictogram of bamboo slips held together by a chord (in the way bamboo slips were indeed bundled).106 Yet while graphic deciphering is as attractive as it is in most cases fallacious, there is indeed sufficient Western Zhou (and certainly later) textual evidence for ce as “bamboo document.” It does not follow, however, that this meaning is exclusive, that it is dominant in compounds like ce ming or ce ci, or that there exists a verbal meaning of “to record” (as in “to record the command”). Ce ming can be taken either as an adverb-verb phrase or as a verbobject phrase. The king may “command by means of ce,” or he might “ce the command.” There is support for both readings, as both ming and ce function both nominally and verbally in early texts. While the verb ming is followed by the direct object of the person who is being “commanded,” the verb ce takes as its direct object a certain matter like a “command” or a “bestowal.” One might feel more inclined to read the common appointment phrase “The king called out to Secretary X to command Person Y by using the bamboo document” but it remains worthwhile to consider the appearance of verbal ce in Late Shang oracle bone inscriptions. Here, the index compiled by Matsumaru Michio 松丸道雄 and Takashima Ken’ichi 高嶋謙—107 furnishes a wide array of cases where scholars have understood the word ce (in its various written forms including 冊, , and ) not just as “bamboo slips” but—perhaps altogether more often— in several other meanings, in particular including (a) “to announce” or “to announce through prayer,” (b) “to stab” or “to chop off,” and (c) “to enclose” or “to confine.”108 In most cases, Chinese and Japanese scholars of the past century have identified these acts as ritual procedures performed in conjunction with royal sacrifices (and even ce itself has occasionally been understood as the name of a royal sacrifice). Looking for the common etymological core in the various proposed meanings of ce, I am inclined toward the bi-directional notion of both “taking (the

106

For a faithful rehearsal of these interpretations, see Zhang Yuqiang 1994. Matsumara and Takashima 1994, # 31, 259–262, 585. 108 He Jinsong 1996, 200–205, has argued with particular force that the graph ce 冊 in early oracle bone and bronze inscriptions does not represent bundled bamboo slips but conjoined wooden palisades, and that ce 冊 is just written for zha 柵. One may not need to be persuaded by the graphic interpretation (although it seems stronger than in many other cases) in order to see how it matches the verbal meaning of “to enclose/to confine.” 107

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sacrificial victims) into possession” (including by stabbing them) and “giving (the ancestors) possession over (the victims)” (again including by killing them). In fact, as amply illustrated by Shirakawa, ce in oracle bone inscriptions frequently governs two objects: the direct object of the sacrificial victims and the indirect object of the ancestors to whom, or for whom, the victims are “ce-ed.”109 Writing may very well have been involved to produce a record of securing and presenting the sacrificial victims to the spirits—in the same way as the Shang kings greatly valued the production of their oracle records—but it was an act of secondary, auxiliary order, compared to the actual sacrifice. By contrast, one can easily imagine how—parallel to the appointment inscriptions on bronze vessels discussed above—the “announcing” of the sacrificial victims to the spirits was the central illocutionary speech act that transformed the procedure of merely slaughtering the victims into one of piously sacrificing them. “to comBy contrast, Creel’s proposal that ce 冊 means “book,” municate with the spirits by means of a book,” and “to tell by means of a book”110 is based entirely on speculation about the combination of the semantic classifiers shi 示 (“spirits”) and yue 曰 (“to speak”) with the graph ce. However, as is well documented in virtually every excavated text, semantic classifiers were not nearly as neatly employed as in much later (post-Han) periods. In early texts, the presence or absence of a particular classifier is in no case a definite indication of the implied word; were readily interchangeable. Xu Shen’s graphs like ce 冊, , and Shuowen jiezi is an energetic if at times forced attempt to respond to this problem, and excavated manuscripts with their numerous graphic variants allow us to finally comprehend the magnitude of his project.111 Xu Shen, who glossed ce 冊 as “documentary charge” ( fuming 符命),112 was a champion of the written word; but he glossed simply as gao 告 (“to announce”), leaving it to the late imperial commentator Duan Yucai 段 玉裁 (1735–1815) to imagine the meaning that was then later put into English by Creel.113

109

Shirakawa 1974, 109–112. Creel 1937a, 38. 111 See Kern 2005; Kern 2003a; Kern 2002. 112 Shuowen jiezi 1988, 2B.32b. Xu likely alludes to the use of bamboo slips as “tallies” ( fu 符) inscribed with an official order on two matching halves; on such tallies, see Falkenhausen 2005. 113 Shuowen jiezi 1988, 5A.28a. 110

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Considering the proximity between the bronze inscriptions and the early Documents speeches, it is imperative to examine also the latter in order to reach a conclusion on ce ming. As noted above, there are a number of chapters from the Documents and one chapter from the Remnant Zhou Documents that mention Secretaries, Makers of Records, or the use of documents. Four passages pertain to our discussion of ce:114 The passage in “The metal-bound coffer” reads as follows: shi nai ce zhu yue 史乃冊祝曰.115 Here, the phrase ce zhu 冊祝 is followed by yue 曰 (“saying”), which introduces the actual wording of the prayer given as a direct address to the spirits. Ce zhu is parallel to ce ming in the appointment inscriptions; as the ruler addresses his subordinates with a “charge” or “command” (ming), he speaks to his ancestral spirits with a “prayer/invocation” (zhu). In both cases he is represented by the Secretary. Sun Xingyan 孫星衍 (1753–1818), the authoritative late imperial commentator on the Documents, suspected that the (lost) early Han version of the text in ancient characters ( guwen 古文) might have written instead of 冊, thus meaning “to announce,” as the graph had been glossed in the Shuowen jiezi.116 For ce zhu, Sun thus suggests “to announce the prayer to the spirits.” This is not to doubt that the text indeed implies a written prayer; after all, it was stored in a coffer, and the slips (ce) were later taken out and consulted. But as Sun rightly points out, this does not mean that the two instances of ce need to be same word. Sun’s reading of ce zhu is hence fully compatible with both the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions and the verbal use of ce in Late Shang oracle bone passages (while neither set of data was available to him). The second relevant passage is in “The announcement concerning Luo.” Here, the text reads wang ming zuoce Yi zhu ce, wei gao Zhou Gong qi hou 王命作冊逸祝冊，惟告周公其後. Commentators and translaters differ about the meaning of the specific contents of the “announcement” ( gao 告)—whether the Duke of Zhou is said to stay behind, or whether his successor is named117—but this does not concern us here. Parallel to the bronze inscriptions, the first five characters read “The king commanded the Maker of Records, Yi”; this is then followed by the

114

For the sake of space, I will refrain from discussing how I differ from the earlier Documents translations by Legge and Karlgren. 115 Compare Legge 1985, 353; Karlgren 1950, 35. 116 Sun Xingyan 1986, 13.325. Note, however, that this again confuses graphic deciphering with the interpretation of the word. 117 Compare Legge 1985, 451; Karlgren 1950, 55; Dobson 1962, 162.

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command “[to present] the prayer document” (zhu ce 祝冊). The early commentator Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200) paraphrases the sentence as follows: “[The king] orders Secretary Yi to read out loud (du 讀) the written prayer and inform the spirits . . .”118 Sun Xingyan fully approves, explicating that Zheng Xuan refers to the speaking of the inscribed prayer (yan zhu ce 言祝冊).119 As in the previous passage, there is no reason to doubt that the prayer was indeed inscribed, and that the Maker of Records was called upon to perform the speech act of addressing it to the spirits. In the very next— the penultimate—paragraph of the same chapter, the text reads wang ming Zhou Gong hou, zuoce Yi gao 王命周公 後, 作冊逸誥.120 Again leaving considerations about the Duke of Zhou aside, we turn to the unproblematic phrase zuoce Yi gao 作冊逸誥, “the Maker of Records, Yi, made the announcement (gao 誥),” showing the Maker of Records in his usual role as speaking for the king. The third passage, “The testamentary charge,” reads dingmao, ming zuo ce du 丁卯, 命作冊度.121 In this sentence, which stands isolated, zuo ce may best be taken as a verb-object phrase, “to make a bamboo document.”122 Thus, two days after the king’s death, “an order was given to make a document [of the deceased king’s testamentary charge] and [lay out the ritual] regulations.”123 This charge is then mentioned again later in the text, when the court assembly gathers for the funeral: taishi bing shu, you bin jieji, yu wang ce ming yue 太史秉書, 由賓階隮, 御王 冊命曰,124 with the final verb yue (“saying”) being directly followed by the king’s charge. Having ascended the stairs, the Grand Secretary, holding the testamentary charge of the dead king, turns toward the new king and—in Zheng Xuan’s paraphrase—“reads out loud” (du 讀) to him the document of his late father.125 In other words, the Grand Secretary here

118

Sun Xingyan 1986, 19.419. Sun Xingyan 1986, 19.420. 120 Compare Legge 1985, 452; Karlgren 1950, 55. 121 Compare Legge 1985, 549–551; Karlgren 1950, 70. 122 Wang Guowei 1975a, 1.10b, however, takes zuoce as the usual title and du as the name of the Maker of Records. This would result in “On the day dingmao, one issued a command to the Maker of Records, Du.” 123 As suggested by Sun Xingyan 1986, 25.487, who surmises that du 度 (“regulations”)—which I take here as a verb “to lay out regulations”)—refers to the funerary and mourning rites. 124 Compare Legge 1985, 558; Karlgren 1950, 71. 125 Sun Xingyan 1986, 25.501–502; Wang Guowei 1975a, 1.18a. (Wang Guowei takes issue with Zheng Xuan only on the question where the reading takes place; see also 1.23b–25a.) 119

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still speaks as the representative of his king (now dead), announcing the charge to the new ruler. Here, we see precisely the formula used in the bronze inscriptions, that is, ce ming “to announce the written charge” (or “to command by means of the document”). No passage could be clearer about the function of the Grand Secretary in Western Zhou court ritual and about the specific meaning of the technical term of ritual language, ce ming. With the originator of the charge already dead, and the Secretary holding his written charge in hand, the idea of ce ming as “recording the charge” gives up the ghost. The last pertinent passage in any received text of possibly Western Zhou date is found in “The great capture” chapter from Remnant Zhou Documents: descending from his chariot, the victorious king lets “Secretary Yi read out loud (繇 > 籀 = du 讀) the written document to Heaven.”126 Again, the passage is unambiguous: the Secretary announces the king’s written message, addressing Heaven. This review of the available early evidence127 should suffice to rectify our understanding of an exceptionally important set of inscriptions together with some equally important passages from the Documents. Turning now back to the Western Zhou appointment inscriptions, we no longer wonder how the Secretary could have been formally “recording” the charge during the apparently quite brief ceremony. We also do not struggle to reconcile two contemporaneous but entirely different images of the Secretary: the one of Secretaries as vessel donors who never dwell on their accomplishments of writing, and the one of Secretaries in appointment inscriptions who do nothing but writing. Instead, both types of inscriptions consistently show the Secretary as the main representative of the king. He goes on diplomatic and military missions, he leads various kinds of rituals, and he announces the royal appointments. In the broader terms of cultural history, understanding the interplay of speech and writing in Western Zhou court ritual is imperative to a better grasp of this foundational period of the Chinese cultural tradition. Confusion about the single phrase ce ming easily lends itself to precariously inflated statements about the nature and use of writing.128

126

Huang Huaixin et al. 1995, 464–465; Shaughnessy 1980–81, 59. I have deliberately limited myself to the earliest sources. For a survey of pertinent passages in Eastern Zhou texts, see Chen Mengjia 1985, 160–164. 128 Cf. the sweeping conclusions advanced in Shaughnessy 1999, 298–299. 127

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Finally, in order to appreciate the actual representation of writing in Western Zhou texts and artifacts, two points regarding the issue of Western Zhou literacy need to be added. First, the large number of inscriptions does not constitute evidence for widespread, general literacy (regardless of however common administrative writing may have been).129 Here, we must keep in mind that the casting of vessels, inscribed or not, must have remained under some system of royal control. Especially from Middle Western Zhou times onward, this is evident from the uniformity not only of the wording of the inscriptions but also of their calligraphic execution as well as of the shape and design of the vessels themselves. Only some kind of centralized control over the casting of bronze vessels could have ensured this degree of standardization.130 Here, it is helpful to recall Matsumaru Michio’s suggestion about the Huan-zun and Huan-you vessels, namely, that the one is an official product (a wellcast vessel, an inscribed text of official diction, professional calligraphy) while the other is a private one (inferior casting, a more personal text, comparatively poor calligraphy). If this is correct, and if the “official” vessel matches the standards of its time, then it must have come from some centralized agency. At the same time, the various characteristics of the “private” vessel would be evidence that even with the existence of local foundries, the work of the central agency was not easily reproduced elsewhere, not even by one of the highest dignitaries of the state.131 The second, related point to observe is that we do not need to assume that the appointees (or vessel donors in general) were actually literate.

129 I believe it is important to separate these two functions of writing, and types of literacy, for the pre-imperial period. The fact that a particular clerk could create administrative records does not mean that he was able to reproduce the language employed in bronze inscriptions, nor do bronze inscriptions presuppose such clerks as their readers. 130 Rawson 1999, 438; 1990, vol. IIA, 93, 125. 131 Li Feng 1997, 40 has argued that in a number of cases where we have inscriptions of the same text appearing on multiple vessels, the different calligraphic styles are evidence of different scribal hands. From this, he concludes “that the person who composed the inscription was not the person who inscribed it.” This is certainly true. One may even go a step further and note that the person in whose name the vessel was cast (the donor) was not necessarily always the composer of the inscription—he may have instructed someone else to do this for him, perhaps in a particular diction, on the basis of the existing bamboo documents or earlier inscriptions. Or, as the uniformity even of the prayer sections suggest (not to mention the official appointment records), some centralized guidance was in place.

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According to the by now extensive archaeological record, the case of the Huan vessels is exceptional but not unique. Normally, a vessel donor did not commission his additional private casting in addition to the one that adhered to official standards. While some bronze donors—certainly the Secretaries and Makers of Records—may have been literate, this was not a prerequisite for them to have their vessels cast by able hands working under the supervision of the royal court. We may consider two other cases where the text of an earlier, “official” vessel was duplicated on a clearly lower, presumably local level. For the lids of the two Shi Yun gui tureens [Ill. 16a–d], Matsumaru has shown that the person 師 who copied the characters into the new mold was illiterate.132 Similarly, for the Ke-lei 克罍 and Ke-he 盉 vessels [Ill. 17a–d], Li Feng has concluded that “if, as is most likely, the Ke lei inscriptions were inscribed by a well educated and skillful scribe, the structural shortcomings and inferior artistic features of the inscriptions of the Ke he suggest that they must have been inscribed by a semi-literate man.”133 Remarkably, in either case this did not stop the high-ranking donor from having his vessel cast and from then keeping it no matter what—which suggests either that these donors did not think of the mistakes as impairing the integrity, functionality, and prestige of their inscriptions, or that they themselves could not tell the difference. Anyway, a donor’s literacy was not imperative to having a vessel cast, nor was it required for knowing the inscribed text. In the case of an appointment inscription, he knew the royal charge because it had been recited to him during the ceremony. If he ever forgot it, he did not have to flip through his bamboo slips or peek into the depth of his vessel. A cursory glance at his “black jacket with embroidered hem, red kneepads, scarlet demi-circlet, chime pennant, and bridle with bit and cheekpieces” (or anything else of that order) would have sufficed. VIII. Conclusion: The Representation of Writing in the Western Zhou Period When thinking about the nature and purpose of writing at the Western Zhou royal court (including its political extensions), the question to ask

132 Matsumaru 1980, 55–75. The vessels date from the end of the Western Zhou or somewhat thereafter. 133 Li Feng 1997, 12.

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16a Shi Yun-gui, lid of vessel 1, outside. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:713, plate 119B.

16b Shi Yun-gui, lid of vessel 1, inside. After Chen Mengjia, Xi Zhou tongqi duandai (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 2:713, plate 119B.

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16c Shi Yun-gui, rubbing of inscription in lid of vessel 1. After Matsumaru Michio, Seishû seidôki to sono kokka (Tokyo: Tôkyô daigaku shuppankai, 1980), 56, plate 9.

16d Shi Yun-gui, rubbing of inscription in lid of vessel 2. After Matsumaru Michio, Seishû seidôki to sono kokka (Tokyo: Tôkyô daigaku shuppankai, 1980), 57, plate 10.

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17a Ke-lei. After Kaogu 1990.1, color plate 3.2.

17b Ke-he. After Kaogu 1990.1, color plate 3.1.

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17c Ke-he, inscription in lid. After Kaogu 1990.1, color plate 3.3.

17d Ke-he and Ke-lei. Rubbings of inscriptions in Ke-lei (left) and Ke-he (right). After Kaogu 1990.1:25, plate 4.

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is not about the existence of written texts but about how written texts are part and parcel of the Western Zhou system of elaborate religious and political court ritual. There is an invisible but unmistakable textual basis for the highly ritualized manifestations and usages of bronze writing, furnished by clerks specializing in the production of administrative and archival documents. But this writing is not representational or selfreferential. It does not explicitly draw attention to its own existence. It becomes representational, however, as soon as it is transformed into an item of display, connected to a material artifact of ostentatious prestige, and integrated in the context of ritual performance. Here, the written text is more and less than what it says. It is less because it is only one version of a text that exists also in other, often even more complete versions, and because it unfolds its full relevance only in acts of ritualized presentation. On the other hand, it is more: transcending its contents, it renders visible the prestige of its donor, it assumes the force and authority that rested with both its precious material carrier and the performance in which the written text was presented, and it further contributes to the overall system of Western Zhou public display and cultural memory. For good reasons, bronze inscriptions recorded not merely the royal charge but also the original appointment ceremony. Through the use of the vessel in the donor’s ancestral sacrifices, this royal ceremony remained present for “ten thousand years” and with “sons of sons, grandsons of grandsons” who in later generations sacrificed to the original donor as their ancestor. That from Middle Western Zhou times onward, bronze vessels, their inscribed texts, and the calligraphy of these inscriptions became increasingly standardized may be seen as more than just a phenomenon of mass production (which it certainly also was). From the royal perspective, it was an expression of a mature political and ritual system (even while, or perhaps precisely because, actual political stability was deteriorating) that claimed pious adherence to the model established by the dynastic founders. From the perspective of the vessel donor, it integrated his achievements and status into the overall social and political system of the Western Zhou, representing his duties and merits as a tangible extension of the royal court itself. The received Western Zhou literature leaves no doubt about the display nature of writing in important court affairs. Royal prayers and charges like those mentioned in the Documents were prepared in writing and then recited. During the recitation, the written text did not just serve as an aide-mémoire but was presented and accepted in an expression of dignified demeanor, emphatically supporting and—attached to

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the girdle of the recipient—materially embodying the spoken word. It also must have been significant that the masters of ritual, who on so many different occasions spoke in the king’s voice, bore titles like “Secretary” and “Maker of Records” even though they may have been primarily readers and announcers—as opposed to writers—of the many documents that, perhaps, their lower-ranked clerks regularly produced for them. Moreover, what David N. Keightley has noted for Late Shang oracle bone inscriptions is true for Western Zhou bronze inscriptions as well: “I conceive of the inscriptions as a form of conspicuous cultural capital, in which the Shang elites invested considerable labor resources to produce artifacts whose overhwelming value was ritual.”134 Unlike the Late Shang bovine shoulder blades or turtle plastrons that were first used in oracle-taking and only thereafter incised with the divination record, inscriptions on bronze vessels were cast together with their material carriers. They were an intrinsic part of elaborate artifacts that displayed material value, technological mastership, and control over the cultural tradition. The inscribed text was but a secondary or tertiary version, to some extent adapted to the religious use of the vessel, of a preexisting record.135 In other words, the text proper did not depend on the bronze vessel for its existence. It transcended any particular material carrier not only because it also existed elsewhere in perishable but easily stored and readily reproducable form. Especially from Middle Western Zhou times onward, the same inscription was often also cast into a whole series of bronze artifacts. A single inscription could be spread across several material carriers or repeated as a whole on each artifact. 136 In one instance from ca. 811 bce, Li Feng has suggested that three sets of altogether twenty-seven ding tripods and gui tureens with identical inscriptions were cast.137 Especially for identical inscriptions repeated within a single set of bronze artifacts that was meant to be kept together (including inscriptions in both the body and the lid of a single vessel, as seen in 134 Keightley forthcoming. For a similar argument regarding certain types of tomb manuscripts of late Warring States and early imperial times, see Kern 2005. Historically, the case of Western Zhou inscriptions fits squarely with the earlier bone inscriptions and later tomb manuscripts. 135 Falkenhausen 1993, 163–164. 136 For example, the Qin gong 秦公 bells dating from the early seventh century bce show both ways. The same text of 135 characters was inscribed five times: three times in full on three bo 鎛 bells and two more times spread across one set of two and one set of four yongzhong 甬鐘 bells; see Kern 2000a, 65. 137 Li Feng 1997, 26.

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several instances above), the act of repeating the same text did not provide any additional information. In these series, the particular aesthetic format of textual multiplication contributed to the display of repetition of the prestigious bronze objects. It was this format—as opposed to the text proper—that depended on the prestigious material carrier. Here, writing transcended its principal functions of storing and circulating information; instead of conveying a specific account of historical detail (which was anyway stored on perishable material), it visually displayed cultural and social accomplishment. The literary form of bronze inscriptions was guided by historical thinking. This is evident from its concern with past achievements as well as from the donor’s expectation, imposed on his descendants, that these achievements will not be forgotten by “sons of sons, grandsons of grandsons.” But both the “writing of history” in these texts and the bronzes’ material promise of imperishable permanence were rhetorical gestures: as the existence of the text did not depend on its particular carrier, so did the memory of the past not depend on the textual format of the inscription. Archaeology has yielded evidence that inscribed bronze vessels were often kept for generations before being buried together in a tomb or a pit.138 While earlier inscriptions thus continuously retained the representation of earlier accomplishments, the actual knowledge of their underlying texts was archived and portable.139 What the archival versions of the inscribed text could never achieve, however, was to transform the singular, ephemeral occasion on which a vessel was granted into the conspicuous visual display of the donor’s prerogatives that resulted from that occasion. The prestige of the ritual vessel became the prestige of the person who had been granted permission to own it. Just through their material, shape, and decoration, the elaborate bronze vessels were, “quite probably, the most accomplished, expensive, labor-intensive, and beautiful human-made things their owners and handlers had ever seen.”140 Their decoration denoted their nature as ritual objects,141 and thus signaled the importance of both the object and its possessor.142 Where a vessel was inscribed, for example 138 Hoards of vessels were buried in pits especially at a moment of crisis, for example at the end of the Western Zhou, when the vessels had to be saved from invaders. 139 See, for example, the case of inscribed Qin gong bronzes discussed in Kern 2000a, 64–69. 140 Falkenhausen 1999, 146. 141 Rawson 1993, 92. 142 Bagley 1993, 44–45.

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with the record of the appointment ceremony, the inscription explicitly represented the royal speech act.143 One might well speculate that this speech act was repeatedly performed during the donor’s periodical ancestral sacrifices (or during the sacrifices that later generations performed for him) where it recaptured the original orality of the appointment ceremony. Unlike an uninscribed vessel, the one bearing a text was thus doubly representational. In numerous examples especially from the Middle Western Zhou period onward, one finds that the beautiful, regularly spaced calligraphy was itself ornamental. I shall conclude the present essay with an appreciation of a superior example of this phenomenon: a rather simple yet elegant bronze water basin of 47.3 cm in diameter that either shortly before 900 bce or a generation later was cast by the royal Secretary Qiang, the Shi Qiang-pan 史 盤 [Ill. 18a–c].144 When excavated from a pit in December 1975, it was accompanied by 102 other bronze vessels—74 of them bearing inscriptions—most of them coming from four generations of the Wei 微 family of royal Secretaries; the water basin is among the latest of these vessels. Its 16.2 cm high exterior base and wall bear a bird ornament in flat, continuous ribbons that is familiar from other bronze vessels of the Middle Western Zhou period. The inscription is cast, again typical of Zhou bronze vessels, on the vessel’s otherwise unadorned interior. In this inscription, Secretary Qiang presents himself as a member of the Western Zhou royal court, boasting a distinguished ancestral line of royal Secretaries. A master of the dynasty’s political and cultural memory, he outlines in panegyrical terms the genealogy of the Western Zhou kings and then pairs them in no less eulogistic fashion with the line of his ancestors who had, one after the other, served the succeeding Zhou rulers. This text is exceedingly interesting because it is the most powerful self-representation of an early Chinese functionary of writing we have seen so far.145

143 The four inscriptions discussed above are highly exceptional in giving a more or less comprehensive account of the ceremony. By constrast, the royal speech act, introduced by “the king said” (or a variation of that formula), was a standard element of these inscriptions. For a discussion of this speech act, see Falkenhausen 2004. 144 Shirakawa 50.335–368 (hô-# 15); translations in Shaughnessy 1991, 3–4, 183–192; Lau 1999, 184–204. The date of the vessel is not settled; see Luo Tai 1997. 145 To my mind, Qiang did not produce an historical account (which quite likely rested in the archives) but a display of his own achievements to be presented in the sacrifices to his ancestors.

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18a Shi Qiang-pan. After Shaanxi sheng kaogu yanjiusuo et al., Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1980), 2:43, plate 24.

18b Shi Qiang-pan. After Shaanxi sheng kaogu yanjiusuo et al., Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1980), 2:43, plate 24.

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18c Shi Qiang-pan, rubbing of inscription. After Kaogu xuebao 1978.2: 140, plate 1.

The 275 characters (including nine ligatures [hewen 合文]) are cast into two beautifully symmetric columns of nine vertical lines each. Each line comprises fifteen characters that are evenly spaced apart; only in the final line, the carver of the mold had to accommodate twenty characters. This slight mark of imperfection testifies to two conflicting goals: first, it suggests a pre-existing text that when inscribed could not been shortened by even a mere five characters. Second, while the carver had sufficient space available to let these characters run into another vertical line, he chose (or was instructed by Secretary Qiang) not to do so—clearly in order not to distort the overall balance of the two columns. Striking a remarkable compromise, he managed to respect both the integrity of the text and the symmetry of its display. Compared to most other vessel types that in their appearance are defined by shape and ornament while more or less hiding their inscriptions on the inside, the form of the water basin uniquely serves the form of the text. Its nearly flat, widely open shape, with the customary bird ornament confined to its rather unobtrusive outside, is entirely dominated by the display of the two

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columns of elegant characters, promoting, above anything else, an image of calligraphic beauty and order. This image is further reflected in how the text’s narrative structure matches the two columns. In the first half of his text, Secretary Qiang eulogizes the lineage and achievements of the Zhou royal house, presumably concluding with his own ruler. The second half of the text begins with the third character from the bottom of line nine, that is, almost precisely at the column break. Parallel to the royal geneaology, the royal functionary now lists and praises his own ancestors and their accomplishments, finally ending with his own person. The balance of the two columns thus corresponds with the balance of the eulogistic narrative. A third aesthetic choice concerns purely the literary form of the text. The inscription is composed mostly in tetrasyllabic verse, with the metric form further enhanced through frequent end-rhyme. In their regularity, both features betray an unusual sense of order and ornament for their time; in general, mid-Western Zhou inscriptions rhyme less frequently, and they unfold in a less strictly confined meter. But even more exceptional is the fact that rhyme and meter are carefully applied to the two long genealogies but not to the final prayer section, which is left in unbound prose.146 This is exactly the opposite of what one finds in most other inscriptions. No doubt, the royal Secretary Qiang was aware of this fact. He deliberately granted the weight of aesthetic emphasis not to the prayer but to the preceding narrative—a narrative that defined both himself and his ancestors in their intimate relation to the Zhou kings. In its visual appearance, its intrinsic literary aesthetics, and its contents, the Shi Qiang-pan is the epitome of order and regularity. It represents the ideal political order of the Zhou royal lineage, the ideal order of the Qiang family line, and, finally, the ideal order of the written artifact. Not with a single word of his long inscription does Secretary Qiang refer to himself or and his forebears as men of writing. He praises his ancestors for having “assisted” and “served” their rulers, for their correctly performed sacrifices and for their personal qualities. When finally coming to himself, he promises to further “serve” his lord. Yet at the same time, his combination of Zhou dynastic memory, perfected literary form, and superb visual display of text as ritual ornament reveals an extreme degree of authorial self-consciousness. In sacrificing to his ancestors—despite all its idiosyncrasies still the presumed use of the 146

For the reconstruction of the entire rhyme scheme, see Behr 1996, 199–204.

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vessel—Qiang presents himself as the keeper of Zhou memory and thus as his ancestors’ worthy successor. He is the hereditary royal Secretary because his ancestors were hereditary royal Secretaries. With his inscription, we finally see a Western Zhou Secretary as the master of the written word, performing the mastery of royal ritual display. References Bagley, Robert W. 1993. “Meaning and Explanation.” In The Problem of Meaning in Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes, ed. Roderick Whitfield, 34–55. London: University of London. ————. 2004. “Anyang Writing and the Origin of the Chinese Writing System.” In The First Writing, ed. Stephen D. Houston, chapter 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boltz, William G. 1994. The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Behr, Wolfgang 1996. “Reimende Bronzeinschriften und die Entstehung der chinesischen Endreimdichtung.” Ph.D. diss., J.W. Goethe Universität Frankfurt. ———— 2005. “The Extent of Tonal Irregularity in Pre-Qin Inscriptional Rhyming.” In Hanyu shi yanjiu: Jinian Li Fanggui xiansheng bainian danchen lunwenji 漢語史研 究: 紀念李方桂先生百年誕辰論文集, ed. Ting Pang-hsin 丁邦新 and He Dahan 何大安, 111–145. Taipei: Academia Sinica. ———— 2005a. “Language Change in Premodern China: Notes on Its Perception and Impact on the Idea of a ‘Constant Way’. ” In Historical Truth, Historical Criticism, and Ideology: Chinese Historiography and Historical Culture from a New Comparative Perspective, eds. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, Jörn Rüsen, and Achim Mittag, 13–51. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Brashier, K.E. 2003. “The Chants Encounter: Evaluating Recitation Skills in the Western Han Dynasty.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, New York, March 27–30, 2003. Bunnell, Peter C. and Wen Fong 1999. “Foreword.” In Character and Context in Chinese Calligraphy, ed. Cary Y. Liu, Dora C.Y. Ching, and Judith G. Smith, 9–12. Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University. Chen Hanping 陳漢平 1986. Xi Zhou ce ming zhidu yanjiu 西周冊命制度研究. Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe. Chen Mengjia 陳夢家 1956. Yin xu buci zongshu 殷虛卜辭綜述. Beijing: Kexue chubanshe. ———— 1985. Shangshu tonglun 尚書通論. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Chen Peifen 陳佩芬 1982. “Fan you, X ding ji Liang Qi zhong mingwen quanshi” 繁卣, 鼎及梁其鐘銘文詮釋. Shanghai bowuguan jikan 上海博物館集刊 2:15–25. Connery, Christopher Leigh 1998. The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Cook, Constance A. 1995. “Scribes, Cooks, and Artisans: Breaking Zhou Tradition.” Early China 20:241–277. Creel, Herlee G. 1937. The Birth of China. New York: Frederick Ungar. ———— 1937a. Studies in Chinese Culture, First Series. Baltimore: Waverly Press. ———— 1970. The Origins of Statecraft in China—Volume One: The Western Chou Empire. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. DeFrancis, John 1984. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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———— 2000a. The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation. New Haven: American Oriental Society. ———— 2001. “Ritual, Text, and the Formation of the Canon: Historical Transitions of wen in Early China.” T’oung Pao 87.1–3:43–91. ———— 2002. “Methodological Reflections on the Analysis of Textual Variants and the Modes of Manuscript Production in Early China.” Journal of East Asian Archaeology 4.1–4:143–181. ———— 2003. “Offices of Writing and Reading in the Zhouli.” Paper presented at the workshop “Zhouli and the Codification of Rites in Early China.” University of California at Los Angeles, November 8, 2003. ———— 2003a. “Early Chinese Poetics in the Light of Recently Excavated Manuscripts.” In Recarving the Dragon: Understanding Chinese Poetics, ed. Olga Lomová, 27–72. Prague: Charles University—The Karolinum Press. ———— 2004. “The Aesthetics of Memory: Words and Artifacts in Western Zhou Ancestral Sacrifice.” Paper presented at the conference “Religion, Poetry, and Memory in Ancient and Early Medieval China,” Princeton University, May 21–22, 2004. ———— 2004a. “The Poetry of Han Historiography.” Early Medieval China 10 (Festschrift for David R. Knechtges): 123–65. ———— 2005. “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts.” In Text and Ritual in Early China, ed. Martin Kern, 149–193. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kominami Ichirô 小南—郎 1999. “Shi no kigen to sono shokunô” 史の起源とそ の職能. Tôhôgaku 東方學 98:1–13. Lai Changyang 賴長揚 and Liu Xiang 劉翔 1985. “Liang Zhou shiguan kao” 兩周史官考, Zhongguo shi yanjiu 中國史研究 2:92–108. Lau, Ulrich 1999. Quellenstudien zur Landvergabe und Bodenübertragung in der westlichen Zhou-Dynastie (1045?–771 v.Chr.). Nettetal: Steyler Verlag. Legge, James 1985. The Chinese Classics, Vol. III: The Shoo King. Taipei: Southern Materials Center. ———— 1985a. The Chinese Classics, Vol. IV: The She King. Taipei: Southern Materials Center. Lewis, Mark Edward 1999. Writing and Authority in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press. Li Feng 1997. “Ancient Reproductions and Calligraphic Variations: Studies of Western Zhou Bronzes with ‘Identical’ Inscriptions.” Early China 22:1–41. ———— 2000. “The Decline and Fall of the Western Zhou Dynasty: A Historical, Archaeological, and Geographical Study of China from the Tenth to the Eighth Centuries bc.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Li Ling 1991. “On the Typology of Chu Bronzes,” trans. and ed. Lothar von Falkenhausen. Beiträge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Archäologie 11:57–113, Tafeln 1–11. Liji 1987. Liji zhengyi 禮記正義, ed. Ruan Yuan 阮元. Shisan jing zhushu fu jiaokan ji 十 三經注疏附校勘記 ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Liu, James J.Y. 1975. Chinese Theories of Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luo Tai 羅泰 (Lothar von Falkenhausen) 1997. “Youguan Xi Zhou wanqi lizhi gaige ji Zhuangbai Wei shi qingtongqi niandai de xin jiashe: cong shixi mingwen shuoqi” 有關西周晚期禮制改革及莊白微氏青銅器年代的新假設:從世系銘文說起. In Zhongguo kaoguxue yu lishixue zhi zhenghe yanjiu 中國考古學與歷史學之整合 研究, ed. Tsang Cheng-hwa 臧振華, 651–676. Taipei: Academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology. Maspero, Henri 1978. China in Antiquity, trans. Frank A. Kierman, Jr. N.p.: The University of Massachusetts Press. Matsumaru Michio 松丸道雄. 1980. “Seishû seidôki seisaku no haikei” 西周青銅器 製作の背景. In Seishû seidôki to sono kokka 西周青銅器とその國家, ed. Matsumaru Michio, 2–136. Tokyo: Tôkyô daigaku shuppansha.

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COUNSELING THROUGH ENIGMAS: MONASTIC LEADERSHIP AND LINGUISTIC TECHNIQUES IN SIXTH-CENTURY GAZA Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony Our guide spoke to us through letters And he gave it to us as symbols (Les mystères des lettres Grecques)1

Introduction One of the most surprising aspects of the monastic leadership in the sixth-century ascetic community of Gaza is the obvious absence of miracles and exorcism as means of channeling power and establishing and maintaining the role of the holy person in his society.2 Likewise, the late antique ordinary strategy of bishops, abbots, and holy men to ensure their local prominence and standing by patronizing relics and holy shrines was not embraced by Barsanuphius and John—the leading figures of this community.3 Nevertheless, they did not neglect the extraordinary dimension of their role: Barsanuphius and John reflect the self-consciousness of a spiritual elite; they belonged to an order of ascetics who had attained perfection and regarded themselves, metaphorically, as combatants in an elite military corps, wearing the “uniform of the unit” and envisaging their ascetic life as following the path of the tormented martyrs of past heroic generations.4 This consciousness of ascetic perfection indeed charged them with spiritual energy

1 The Coptic text with French translation known as The Mysteries of the Greek Letters was published and translated by A. Hebbelynck, Les mystères des lettres Grecques d’après un manuscript Copte-Arabe. Louvain, 1902, 69. The text was first published by A. Hebbelynck in Le Muséon 1, 1900: 16–36, 105–36, 269–300; 2, 1901: 5–33, 369–414. 2 See, for example, Flusin 1983, 155–214; Brown 1971, 80–101. 3 On the history of this community, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2000, 14–62; Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky (eds.) 2004; idem 2006, 6–46. 4 Kofsky 2004, 421–437.

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and charismatic authority as holy men, elevating them to the status of mediators between their followers and God. Much has been said in the last three decades concerning the function and portrayal of the holy man in late antique Christian societies. However, as Philip Rousseau has discerned, the holy man in late antiquity should be perceived as a new kind of teacher with a new kind of paideia, thus identifying the central expression of authority within ascetic society as the relationship between master and disciple.5 Undoubtedly, this was the case with Barsanuphius and John, who approached their role in clear pedagogical terms. In this paper I wish to discuss one extraordinary linguistic technique, termed in the sources “counseling through enigmas,” by which Barsanuphius— known also as the Great Old Man—exercised his authority. I shall argue here that though secluded in his cell-tomb and far from the public drama of the healing miracles that were animating all parts of the Christian empire and proving the power of the holy person, Barsanuphius’ quasi-divine standing and self-awareness became apparent through the linguistic technique of “counseling through enigmas.” The historical source for this investigation is the exciting corpus of Erotapokriseis, Questions and Answers, comprising over eight hundred letters, the correspondence between Barsanuphius and John and their clientele.6 This precious exchange of letters—a result of the conditions of extreme seclusion of the spiritual fathers—provides a rare opportunity to see from close up intimate moments of interaction between master and disciple.7 It is worth noting that the Questions and Answers did not follow any protocol of classical epistolography. Rather, their style is

5

Rousseau 1999, 45–59, esp. 54, 57. See also Rubenson 2000, 110–39. For a critical edition of the first 124 letters of Barsanuphius and John’s correspondence, with English translation, see D.J. Chitty, Barsanuphius and John, Questions and Answers, PO 31/3 (Paris, 1966). For a new critical edition with French translation, see F. Neyt, P. de Angelis-Noah and L. Regnault, Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza: Correspondance, Sources Chrétienes 426–27, 450–51, 468 (Paris, 1997–2002). For the complete Greek text, see the edition of Nicodemus Hagiorites (Venice, 1816 [2nd. rev. ed. corrected by S.N. Schoinas, Volos, 1960]). For a complete French translation of the Greek text with additions from the Georgian translation, see Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza, Correspondance: Recueil complet traduit du grec et du géorgien par les moins de Solesmes (Solesmes, 1993, 2nd edition). References are to the SC edition. 7 For the peculiar model of spiritual guidance in seclusion—maintaining contact with the outside world only through a disciple—in Gaza and in Egypt, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, p. 83. 6

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 179 simple and informal, revealing authentic relationships, in a sense, faceto-face conversations of the monks with their spiritual guide. This mode of communication is a valuable source for the psychological dimension of ascetic life, usually beyond the reach of the historian. Along with depictions of the monks’ tensions, ambivalence, and personal introspection, the Questions and Answers also provide a vivid portrayal of Barsanuphius’ self-perception and notion of spiritual leadership. His role as a pantokrator—one who exercises his authority in all domains and touches on the deepest and most perplexing concerns of the inner life—emerges with great clarity. The main concern of this article is a unique set of five questions and answers, described by the ancient redactor of the corpus as a way of consulting Barsanuphius “through enigmas.”8 Although the redactor classified this entire group of letters as counseling “through enigmas,” two sorts of writing are distinguishable here: speculation on the letters of the alphabet and cryptic language. The redactor may have arranged these letters consecutively, because the same spiritual father is mentioned in these letters and because both are associated with the letters of the alphabet. From the Questions and Answers it is not possible to determine the extent to which cryptic language was employed in the Gaza monastic milieu as a whole. Barsanuphius was not very enthusiastic about such language, a fact that might explain the scarcity of letters of this sort in the corpus. However, cryptic language was apparently a challenge that Barsanuphius did not want to evade; according to Jerome, the most prestigious leaders of Egyptian desert, Pachomius among them, were granted the grace of angelic language—that is, knowledge of a secret language, “so that they might write to each other and speak through a spiritual alphabet, wrapping hidden meanings in certain signs and symbols.”9 Barsanuphius was well acquaintanced with the ancient techniques of cryptic language and of speculation on the letters of the alphabet that prevailed in the Hellenized Mediterranean world,10 as well

8

Questions and Answers 132, 133, 136, 137, 137b. Jerome’s preface to The Rules of Saint Pachomius 9, Pachomian Koinonia II, 144. 10 The pioneering and still classic study on the mystical and magical dimensions of letters in ancient Greek thought, Gnosticism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is Dornseiff 1922. Dornseiff first published his inaugural lecture as a short essay (Dornseiff 1916) in which he outlined his main thesis. See also, Cox-Miller 1989, 481–505. 9

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as in late antique Jewish literature,11 Gnostic texts,12 in the Nag Hammadi corpus,13 and Egyptian and Palestinian monastic circles.14 I shall examine, first, Barsanuphius’ technique of speculation on the letter ἦτα (eta) as exemplified in Letter 137b and, second, his use of cryptic language as a mode of communication that enhanced the intimacy of the relationship between master and disciple. I seek to understand how by using these linguistic techniques Barsanuphius was constructing his quasi-divine authority and empowering his ascetic leadership. It is worth recalling in this context that the image of a teacher as one who masters linguistic techniques goes back to early Christianity; the author of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas presented Jesus as a pupil challenging his teacher about the meaning and power of the letters of the alphabet: “If you are indeed a teacher, and if you know the letters well, tell me the power of alpha, and I will tell you that of beta (εἰπέ μοι του ἄλφα τὴν δύναμιν, κἀγώ σοι ἐρω τὴν του βητα).”15 In Letter 137b we are not dealing with theoretical speculation on the letter of the alphabet, usually marked by a mystical leaning, nor with the power of the word in the magical sense. Indeed, the spiritual leaders in Gaza seem to have been somewhat antipathetic to the magical arts,16 and the Old Man strictly forbade the use of incantation (ἐπιλαλία) and consulting of sorcerers.17 Rather, I shall argue that through a hermeneutic process that focused

11

See, for instance, the treatise known as Otiot de Rabbi Akiva, 343–418; Sefer Yetsira (long version), 251–57 (in Hebrew). 12 For example, the Gnostic Marcus’ interpretation of the Greek alphabet as preserved in Irenaeus, Against Heresies I, 14,1–5; Hippolytus, The Refutation of all Heresies VI, 38–45. 13 Wisse 1979, 101–120. Wisse was inclined to see a relationship between the widespread monastic use of cryptograms in colophons and graffiti in late antique Egypt and the use of vowel series and nonsense syllables in Gnostic works. This, in his view, is a further link between Pachomian monasticism and the Nag Hammadi codices. See, Wisse 1978, 438. Yet all attempts to link these two movements have so far been convincingly rejected by Philip Rousseau in his preface to the paperback edition of Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, 1999 2nd), pp. XIX–XXV. 14 The Letters of Saint Pachomius, letters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9A, 9B, 11A, 11B, in Pachomian Koinonia III, 51–64, 67–69, 72–74; Les mystères des lettres Grecques. Jerome (Ep. 50.3) also refers to the use of a certain cryptic alphabet in his attack on Jovinian, criticizing the latter’s habit of circulating among the virgins’ cells and philosophizing on the “sacred letters” (sacris litteris). 15 The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas 14:3, 6:19, ed. R.F. Hock (Santa Rosa, Calif., 1995), pp. 132–33. On the roots of this legendary story, see, McNeil 1976, 126– 128. Irenaeus considered this story to be a “forgery.” See Against Heresies I: 20. 16 Questions and Answers 418. 17 Ibid., 753–755.

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 181 on the letter eta, and by severing the letter eta from its linguistic affinity, Barsanuphius was virtually creating a new religious symbol—eta—that embodied his teachings and built up his self-image. I use the term “symbol” in this context in its unsophisticated Jungian sense—that is, “a term, a name or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning.”18 More precisely, the eta under Barsanuphius’ pen serves as what Clifford Geertz has termed a “vehicle for a conception,” a tangible formulation of notions and concrete embodiments of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs.19 Through the eta symbol, Barsanuphius was in fact presenting, in miniature, his summa monastica, all the while laying bare a major puzzlement prevalent in monastic culture—namely, how a monk knows he has attained a certain stage of perfection. Letter 137b stands apart; it is not a typical answer of the Old Man, nor is it, in a strict sense, an instructive letter, as are the others; it stands in stark contrast to the intimate tone and direct speech of the rest of the Correspondence. Barsanuphius’ preoccupation with the inner life is generally marked by an unsophisticated mode of thought and a simple method of representation. But in Letter 137b we witness one of the rare instances in which the Great Old Man treated a topic in a theoretical and speculative manner, showing his knowledge and mastery of this traditional lore. It should be stressed that Letter 137b contains nothing new concerning Barsanuphius’ monastic teaching; major themes that he dealt with frequently in his correspondence with the monks are discussed here, and educative principles that infuse central aspects of monastic culture are expressed by the symbol eta as well. Thus what has to be explained in this article is the reason for Barsanuphius’ transmission of ascetic teaching through speculation on the letters of the alphabet and the use of cryptic language. Speculation on the Letter ἠτα In his preface to Letter 137b the ancient redactor of the Questions and Answers relates that Barsanuphius conveyed some advice and theological doctrines to the fathers in alphabetic order. He sequenced certain

18 19

Jung 1964, 21. Geertz 1966, 1–46, esp. 5.

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words beginning with the same letter (stoicheion), such as eta, and then developed a detailed exhortation by speculating on each word. Yet as we shall see, Barsanuphius himself did not strictly follow this method. The redactor explains that he chose Barsanuphius’ speculations (τω ν θεωριω ν) on the letter eta to exemplify Barsanuphius’ interpretation of the whole alphabet. One wonders why the redactor decided to introduce only part of Barsanuphius’ teachings on the alphabet rather than the whole treatise and, more importantly, why he chose this particular part of the composition. This seems to me to have been a deliberate choice. Letter 137b, which is written in the form of a prayer and in a spirit of pedagogy, contains five sections starting with the letter eta, each formulated in a similar pattern. In the first the writer states the subject; in the next he moves to exhortation on it; he then gives signs (σημει α) by which one can discern the specific spiritual stage he has achieved in his path toward perfection. By drawing a link between a set of signs and the symbol eta, Barsanuphius was not merely envisaging a didactic scheme and representing the harmony of his teaching; given that one of the most important characteristics of a symbol is the power inherent within it that distinguishes it from the mere sign, which is impotent in itself,20 it seems that the main concern of Barsanuphius’ speculation is the divine dimension of eta. The key to such an understanding is to be found in the redactor’s declaration that Barsanuphius speculated on the letters of the alphabet while applying and referring each letter to God (ἓν ἕκαστον στοιχει ον εἰϚ θεὸν ἐκλαμβάνων);21 By using this principle—a principle known also from Jewish texts dealing with speculation on the letters of the alphabet22—Barsanuphius imbued the symbol eta with divine power, a major step toward divinizing his own teaching and hence strengthening his image as a quasi-divine guide. It is not surprising, then, that Barsanuphius began his exposition by stressing the important role of the spiritual guide: “Eta is hegoumenos.  τά ἐστιν ἡγούμενοϚ. Ὁ δὲ ἡγούμενοϚ ὁ δηγόϚ Hegoumenos is a guide” (᾽Η ἐστι).23 A guide, according to him, leads one toward the light, not toward

20 As has been observed by Tillich 1960, 75–98, especially 76. On the distinction between signs and symbols, see Atinga 2004, 146. 21 Questions and Answers 137b, SC 427, 502. 22 See, for example, the late antique Jewish mystical treatise Sefer Yetsira . 23 The term hegoumenos can be translated here as designating specifically the monastic superior. See, ἡγούμενοϚ, in G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford, 1961. 601.

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 183 an inquiry into darkness; hence Barsanuphius provided the reader with a set of remedies against desires, an idea that dominates Letter 137b. Thus in a series of opposites—light and darkness, truth and illusion, peace and combat, spiritual joy and sadness, humility and pride, mortification and repose—he defines the role of the hegoumenos, the monastic superior, as well as the precise way in which he seeks to guide his adherents.24 This is epitomized in Barsanuphius own words alluding to Matt 25:33: “He leads you to the right; do not be among those who are on the left; he leads you toward the eternal life.”25 It is unlikely, then, that Barsanuphius used the verb hegoumai (ἡγουμαι) here solely “as a pretext for enumerating all the fundamental dispositions that the monk has to acquire.”26 Rather, Barsanuphius’ emphasis is on the guide, who is the starting point of ascetic life; all progress had to begin with finding a guide, the one who provides a code of behavior. Barsanuphius’ selfawareness is decisive here. He saw himself not only as a guide providing an orthopraxic—correct action—according to his cumulative experience, but rather as one inspired by the Holy Spirit and speaking “from God” (ἀπὸ θεου λαλει);27 the monk, in turn, entrusted his soul to the Old Man and through him to God.28 Barsanuphius’ deliberate choice to start his speculation on the letter eta with the idea of guidance is in harmony with his basic precept concerning spiritual direction—namely, that one should do nothing without advice, “A man without an adviser is an enemy to himself.”29 The beginning of wisdom (σοϕία), he said, is abstention from evil things; but one cannot abstain from them simply by not doing, without asking advice, without seeking counsel.30 In what follows Barsanuphius deviated from the promised method of speculation as introduced to the reader in the preface of Letter 137b— that is, the words that he interpreted did not start with the letter eta. Yet all the words are feminine and thus have eta as their definite article. Hence in the second section of the Letter Barsanuphius stated that eta

24 For a similar series of opposites, see Evagrius Ponticus, On the Vices Opposed to the Virtues, 60–65. 25 Questions and Answers 137b, SC 427, 504. 26 As has been argue by Angelis-Noah 1983, 497. 27 Questions and Answers 373, 462. 28 Ibid., 97. 29 Ibid., 693. See also Perrone 2004, 144–48. 30 Questions and Answers 234. Barsanuphius also drew a clear distinction between commandment (ἐντολή) and advice (γνώμη), thus in certain circumstances he permitted the monk to follow his own will. See, ibid., 56, 64.

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is the right side of the Father (τὸ ἠτ α ἡ δεξιά ἐστι του ΠατρόϚ), clearly alluding to the place of Christ on the right side of the Father (Heb 8:1–2).31 From his discussion of the role of the Father here one cannot but wonder who the Father is that Barsanuphius had in mind. Was he disclosing here his self-awareness and relating his interpretation to the monastic father, thereby further enhancing the status of the hegoumenos presented in the first section of the Letter? It is worth recalling here the saying of Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399)—one of the most influential of the desert philosophers who shaped the monastic culture of the fathers in Gaza—that the right is the side of divine knowledge, “the one who alone sits to the right of the Father is the only one who possesses the knowledge ( gnosis).”32 If one is to the right side of the Father, Barsanuphius declared, then he will not veer to the left and will not lose the power that surrounds him, since “The right hand of the Lord is exalted: the right hand of the Lord does valiantly” (Ps. 118:16). The power of the right side of God is expressed in this section in Evagrian terminology—namely, the generic thoughts (οἱ γενικώτατοι λογισμοί) that demons insinuate into the monk’s mind: Those who are vigilant, according to Barsanuphius, do not risk falling into gluttony (γαστριμαργία), fornication (πορνεία), avarice (φιλαργυρία), sadness (λύπη), despondency (ἀκηδία),33 anger (ὀργή), temper brought on by the irascible part of the soul (θυμόϚ), detraction (καταλαλία), hatred (μίσοϚ), vainglory (κενδοξία), or pride (ὑπερηφανία). Besides introducing the key elements threatening the monk’s integrity according to Evagrius’ classic catalogue of eight thoughts (logismoi), Barsanuphius was expanding it

31 On Christ’s place of honour at the right hand of God, see W. Grundmann, “δεξιός,” in G. Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Eng. trans. G.W. Bromily (Grand Rapids, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 37–40. For the background of symbolic associations of right and left in ancient Greek thought, see Lloyd 1973, 167–86. 32 Evagrius Ponticus, Kephalaia Gnostica II.89, 96–97. 33 Evagrius stated that “The demon of acedia is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all”, Praktikos 12, 520–27. He described in detail how the demon of acedia acts. According to him tears are a remedy against acedia (Praktikos 27,562–63). Evagrius also advised use of the antirrhetique method, which entails repeating Psalms to expel acedia. On the nature of the central theme of acedia and its origin, see Questions and Answers 562–64. A distinction is drawn here between two sorts of acedia: physical acedia ensuing from fatigue and acedia engendered by demons. The Old Men recommended invoking of the name of God to drive away evil thoughts (Questions and Answers 565). Along the lines of Evagrius, the Old Men instructed that during the struggle against acedia the monk should not leave his cell (Questions and Answers 563; Evagrius, Praktikos 28, 564).

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 185 by adding a further three:34 temper (θυμόϚ),35 detraction (καταλαλία), and hatred (μίσοϚ).36 With the aim of shaping the inner landscape of the monk on the basis of simple anthropology, Barsanuphius stated that God creates the soul and the body without passion (πάθη), but through disobedience the soul and the body fall into it;37 uprooting the passions is possible by denying one’s will.38 The sign that a man is saved, said Barsanuphius, is that his soul is purified from all these logismoi and is able to take part in the heavenly liturgy—that is, “to sing with the angels of God.”39 Though there is nothing mystical about the eradication of the passions in monastic culture, it is represented here as a prerequisite for the monk’s participation in the heavenly liturgy. Barsanuphius goes on to speculate on the letter eta as the incorrupt ible sacrifice ( Ἠτα ἡ ἄφθαρτοϚ θυσία ἐστίν)—namely, the divine Son that was offered for the life of the world. By consuming this sacrifice, Barsanuphius says, one truly sacrifices himself and is no more subject to spiritual corruption (τηϚ νοητηϚ φθοραϚ), since in Jesus Christ are destroyed all the deeds of the devil, his passions and his thoughts (logismoi). Beyond these basic claims, Barsanuphius concludes his interpretation with the promise of a mystical experience: if one has followed this way, examined one’s inner self and found nothing of this evil, then “it is clear that he has died with Jesus, lived and sat in glory with him.” Drawing on John 17:21 (“That they all may be one; as you Father are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us”), he asserts that believers who have purified their passions find themselves in the Son and in his Father in union (ἐν τῳ Υἱῳ καὶ ἐν τῳ αὐτῳ Πατρὶ εἰς ἕν).40 Certainly, this is one of the spiritual cravings and ambitions of Barsanuphius—

34 Evagrius, Praktikos; To Eulogius: On the Confession of Thoughts and Councel in their Regard, 310–33; On the Eight Thoughts, 73–90. For an analysis of Evagrius’ theory of eight thoughts, see Guillaumont 1971, 63–93; Hausherr 1933, 164–75. 35 On the nature of θυμόϚ, see Questions and Answers 245. For the centrality of θυμόϚ in Evagrius’ teaching, see Ad Monachos 30, 35, 36, 98, 100; Praktikos 11 and 15, 516, 536. 36 The Old Men regularly include hatred among the passions. See, for example, Questions and Answers 86, 97. See also, Evagrius, Praktikos 6–14, 504–35. Evagrius links anger and hatred (Praktikos 20 and 76, 548, 664), and he also associates hatred with wealth (Ad Monachos 16). 37 Questions and Answers 246. 38 Ibid., 462. 39 Ibid., 137b, 506. 40 Ibid., 508.

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not surprising for a spiritual guide who united his soul with that of his disciples,41 perceiving himself in terms of Jesus Christ and once, in the context of remitting the sins of his disciple, declared “I sacrifice myself for your soul” (Ph 2:17).42 In his next speculation on the letter eta Barsanuphius states that eta is  the joy of the Father ( Ἠτα ἡ χαρὰ του ΠατρόϚ ἐστιν), saying: “The joy of the Father is the Son” who delivered the world on the Cross.43 According to him, one should stay then in freedom [from sin]. The sign that one has reached this degree of perfection is that he adheres to his acquired freedom until his last breath, and then, says Barsanuphius: “We are saints, since He said ‘Be holy as I am holy’. ”44 This interpretation characterized the emotional state of the mystic as an acute sense of joy. Elsewhere Barsanuphius alludes to the spiritual life as “the way to joy.” The Holy Spirit first comes upon a man and teaches him everything: how one should think about things on high, which, Barsanuphius pointed out to the monk, to whom he was writing, he cannot now do. Guided by this flame, the inspired one ascends to the first heaven, then to the second; he progresses until he reaches the seventh heaven, and there he can contemplate ineffable and terrible things (Κἀκει  τὸ θεωρησαι ἄρρητα πράγματα καὶ φοβερά), things of which those who have not reached this stage of perfection cannot be aware. This stage is reached only by those who are perfect, those whom God has found worthy. Only those who have entirely died to the world by suffering many afflictions can attain this degree of perfection.45 In his final speculation on the letter eta Barsanuphius chooses to link  ἤλ ἐστι. Τὸ δὲ it to the Hebrew word el (): “eta is el; el is God” ( Ἠτα ἤλ ὁ ΘεόϚ ἐστι). He further explains the Hebrew name Emmanuel by means of Isa 7:14 and Matt 1:23: “God is with us,” and then he enquires whether God is with “us” or not.46 Here again Barsanuphius looks for “the sign that someone has reached this degree” of perfection, declaring

41 On this notion of the union of souls, see Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, 147–49. 42 Questions and Answers 111. 43 Ibid., 137b, 508. 44 Her he probably alludes to Leviticus 19:2 (You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy). 45 Questions and Answers 186. 46 It is interesting to mention here the interpretation of Les mystères des lettres Grecques, 144, on the name Emmanuel: In order to explain the Hebrew name Emmanuel the author proclaimed that Mathieu was written in Hebrew.

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 187 that to be far from sin and alien to its master, the diabolos, means to have God always with you.47 Among the above five interpretations Barsanuphius offers of the letter ἠτ α, only two discuss words whose initial letter is ἠτ α· ἡγούμενοϚ and ἤλ. In other words, in his speculation, the letter eta has to some extent lost its linguistic character yet accumulated latent meanings; he deals primarily with the essence of the letter, rather than its linguistic role.48 He rendered the eta autonomous, free of any grammatical connotations. From Barsanuphius’ technique of speculation it appears that he devoted no attention to the graphic form and sound of the letter eta; neither did he speculate about its numeric value (gematria),49 as elaborated in the Epistle of Barnabas (“the Ι is ten and the Η is eight, thus you have Jesus”);50 nor is there any hint that eta is endowed with a concrete and immediate efficacy; the letter, has no intrinsic power;51 Barsanuphius’ interpretation has no cosmogonic inclination such as is encountered, for instance, in the Coptic text known as The Mysteries of the Greek Letters; the supernatural and cosmological are not issues in Letter 137b. Nor has his interpretation of eta anything in common with the pursuit of this technique by Jerome, who concentrated on divulging the hidden spiritual sense of the biblical text and, by means of this scientia scripturarum, demonstrating its Christian meaning.52 Barsanuphius’ technique of interpretation might be termed symbolic rather then allegoric. While the basic assumption of allegory is that the verse, the original text, indicates another reality, the goal of the meditative process in Letter 137b aims to create a symbol, which in its essence

47

Questions and Answers 137b, 508–10. For a similar approach to letters of the alphabet in late antiquity, see Sefer Yetsira, 16–17 (in Hebrew). 49 The numeric value and graphic form of the Greek alphabet constitute an important portion of Les mystères des lettres Grecques. On the midrash concerning the graphic form in Otiot de Rabbi Akiva, 11–16. The description of the letters of the alphabet in this Midrash is drawn from Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot’s animals (Ezek. 1:13–14). See also, Midrash Rabbi Akiva: Otiot ktanot, Otiot Gdolot, 478–88. 50 Epistle of Barnabas 8. 51 Such as discussed by Frankfurter 1994, 189–221. 52 In a letter to Paula in 384, Jerome elucidated the etymological and mystical sense of the Hebrew alphabet. See also, Jerome, Ep. 30.7; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica X, 5 on the Greek alphabet’s origins in Hebrew. Eusebius interpreted the Greek letters according to the Hebrew alphabet and gave their meaning in Hebrew. Thus, e.g., eta is equivalent to the Hebrew letter  and stands for “the living” (ὁ ζω ν ), the Hebrew word for which begins with this letter. 48

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is a dynamic world, and thus to lead the reader toward the multifaceted meanings hidden in it. In this symbol the monastic paradigm appears as a harmony. Yet, more importantly, eta functions as an autonomous and dynamic symbol arousing Barsanuphius’ disciples to action, a sort of a call for a journey to the alphabet realm. An additional support for a functional perspective of speculation on the alphabet in monastic milieu is provided by the declaration of the anonymous author of The Mystery of Greek Letters: “Our guide spoke to us through letters and he gave it to us as symbols.”53 Barsanuphius’ creation of the eta symbol is essentially a social process; its creation is in relation to his monastic community, which could identify itself with its values (of this symbol). Furthermore, as the main function of a symbol in a social context is to involve an orientation toward action, to cause people to act,54 I perceived the eta symbol as a “bridging act,” a bridge between outer existence and the inner meaning of the ascetic life. There are probably several reasons why Barsanuphius decided to present his teaching in such mode. But my point is that Barsanuphius’ use of the symbol eta was not simply to embellish his didactic scheme. As mentioned above, the key to understanding Barsanuphius’ intention in representing his monastic teaching through speculation on the letter eta lies in the redactor’s statement that Barsanuphius wrote his composition while “applying and referring each letter (στοιχει ον) to God.”55 By applying each letter (στοιχει ον) to God, Barsanuphius was in effect divinizing his teachings. The term stoicheion has a long history in the literary genre of alphabetic speculation; it means a letter and a sound as well as an element of the universe, and since the world is composed of elements, the stoicheia create a meaningful universe. The letter-element idea goes back to Greek philosophy,56 Gnostic texts,57 the New Testament,58 and

53

Les mystères des lettres Grecques, 69. On this role of a symbol in psychoanalysis and psychology, see May 1960, 11–49, especially his conclusion: “In its full form the symbol rather presents an existential situation in which the patient is asking himself the question: ‘In which direction shall I move’” (ibid., p. 16). According to May this orientation toward movement obviously involves more than conscious levels of the self. See also, M. Idel’s statement that the Kabbalic symbol invites one to act rather than to think, in Idel 1993, 236. 55 Questions and Answers 137b, 502. 56 Dornseiff 1922, 14–16; G. Delling, “στοιχει ον,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 7 (Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 670–87; Cox-Miller 1989, 496–99. 57 See above note 12. 58 Galatians 4:3; Colossians 2:8, 20. 54

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 189 Jewish literature.59 Following this widespread tradition Barsanuphius explored the idea of letter-element in his speculation on eta, building on the ambiguity of the term stoicheion.60 He epitomized here the universe of monastic discipline and provided in clear language, devoid of any enigmatic configuration, a set of signs indicating that one has encountered the divine. Thus by relating all the letters-elements to God, he was presenting the divine dimension of his teaching. Barsanuphius brought to light here the ancient fundamental concept that the alphabet carries meaning in and of itself, and that each letter represents a comprehensive idea. The second or third-century Coptic Gnostic Gospel of Truth clearly illustrates this concept: “Each letter is a complete thought, like a complete book, since they are letters written by the Unity, the Father having written them for the aeons in order that by means of his letters they should know the Father.”61 The most illuminating example of the technique of alphabetic speculation that drew on the ambiguity of letter-element in early literature is Zosimos’ treatise On the Letter Omega. Zosimos, about whom we know very little, was an Egyptian alchemist from Panopolis (Akhmim, on the eastern bank of the Nile) active at the end of the third century or beginning of the fourth,62 “a man of little conventional scholarship, who moved in an eclectic milieu compounded of Platonism and Gnosticism together with Judaism.”63 In his treatise he speculates on the name Adam and reveals its symbolic meaning by breaking it up into its letters (stoicheia).64 Accordingly, these letters signify the elements that constitute the cosmos: So, then, the first man among us is named Thouth, and among them Adam, a name from the language of the angels. And not only that, but with respect to the body the name they refer to him by is symbolic (συμβολικω Ϛ),

59 The term “letters-elements” (  ) appears in Sefer Yetsira, 16–30. On the symbolic importance of the letters of the alphabet and their connection with the creation of the world in the preface of the Zohar (1:26–36), see Oron 1986, 97–109. See also, Wolfson 1989, 147–81; Scholem 1946, 75–78, 133–38; idem 1974, 21–30. 60 On the ambiguity of the term στοιχει ον, see, Lamberton 1989, 76–77. See also, Les mystères des letters grecques, 140, here the author plays on the ambiguity of the term stoicheion as element of creation and of the alphabet. 61 Nag Hammadi Codex I, 3 (= XII, 2). On this passage, see Frankfurter1998, 254. 62 On the biographical details on Zosimos, see Jackson 1978, 1–7; Fowden 1993, 120–126. 63 Fowden 1993, 120. 64 Zosimos, On the Letter Omega, 29. This example is quoted and discussed in CoxMiller 1989, 495–96.

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brouria bitton-ashkelony composed of four elements from the whole sphere. For the letter [stoicheion] A of his name signifies the ascendant east, and air; the letter D of his name signifies the descendant west, and earth, which sinks down because of its weight; . . . and the letter M of his name signifies the meridian south, and the ripening fire in the midst of these bodies, the fire belonging to the middle, fourth planetary zone. So, then, the Adam of flesh is called Thouth with respect to the visible outer mould, but the man within him, the man of spirit, has a proper name as well as a common one.65

As Patricia Cox-Miller has observed, “From this perspective, the alphabet is a kind of elemental grammar within which the entire cosmos presents itself in human, earthy terms, as the symbolic body of essential human being. By making these associations, Zosimos has not reduced the cosmos to the merely human but has rather divinized the human, since for him, as for Greek antiquity generally, the cosmos was divine, the visible body of the gods.”66 This identification of the letters of the alphabet with the elements of the cosmos, is a widespread phenomenon in the Mediterranean world of late antiquity and beyond.67 Barsanuphius was familiar with this way of thought, though it cannot be argued with certainty that he was directly influenced by the Egyptian alchemic corpus or by the philosophical Hermetica to which Zosimos belonged. However, he made his own configurations for this technique, applying it to his immediate social framework according to its need. Unlike Zosimos, Barsanuphius did not use the technique to divinize the human body; he used it to divinize his spiritual guidance. It seems that speculation on letters of the alphabet in the monastic milieu is a late antique reflection of much older modes of thinking.68 From a literary perspective, the creativity and systematization revealed in Letter 137b recalls, for instance, the famous Midrash Otiot de Rabbi Akiva—a late antique speculative treatise on the Hebrew letters—and

65

Zosimos, On the Letter Omega, 28–29. Cox-Miller 1989, 496. 67 See, e.g., Dornseiff 1922; idem, 1916. 68 This technique of speculation on letters of the Greek alphabet was a long-lived phenomenon in monastic circles. See for example, Les mystères des lettres Grecques. This text was probably composed in a Palestinian monastery no earlier than the seventh century. For this conclusion, see Amélineau 1890, 176–294, esp. 268–76. Despite the complexity of this text in which a mixture of techniques are used, the theological intent is clear: the author (or authors) desired to present the creation of the world and its salvation by Christ in Chalcedonian’s terms, stressing the two natures of Christ and the theotokos (θεοτὁκοϚ). See esp. 85, 147. 66

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 191 Sefer Yetsira (Book of Creation). Though these Jewish works and Letter 137b share an interest in relating every letter to God, the axis of the Jewish works is cosmology, a dimension totally absent from Barsanuphius’ speculation. His principle interest was to divinize major elements of his spiritual direction, all the while describing, with the aid of several signs, a different state of consciousness defined by various aspects of encountering the divine. Counseling through enigmas Barsanuphius’ quasi-divine spiritual guidance and self-awareness is further illuminated by his use of cryptic language, as recounted in the following story: A monk in the monastery of Seridus who had three thoughts (logismoi) wrote his question to Barsanuphius “not in a clear manner but through enigmas” (οὐ σαφω Ϛ, ἀλλὰ δι᾿ αἰνιγμάτων).69 Keeping in mind the three topics on which he was seeking counsel, the monk inscribed a few letters of the alphabet. For each thought, he imprinted in his mind (ἐν τῃ αὐτου διανοίᾳ ἐνετυπώσατο) the letter that seemed suitable. Here the redactor provided a valuable piece of information— namely, the monk’s alphabetic code. For formulating in his mind a question concerning the subject of hesychia and total withdrawal into silence (περί τε ἡσυχίαϚ ἀκριβουϚ καὶ παντελουϚ σιωπηϚ του μηδενὶ παντελω Ϛ συντυχει ), the monk used the letter iota;70 he used kappa for concerns about diet, asking through this sign whether one should eat dried food and abstain from drinking wine; and he used lambda for asking about audacity. The immediate incentive for using cryptic language in the monastery was to bypass Abbot Seridus—Barsanuphius and John’s secretary—whose identity is disclosed only in the later letters. Seridus—the person who wielded direct authority in the monastery—was apparently not highly esteemed by this monk; he may have doubted the abbot’s wisdom concerning matters of daily life and been seeking a higher authority and more sophisticated counseling, so he used a known code to circumvent him. In the next letter the same monk continued to address Barsanuphius, but this time asked his question neither clearly nor through enigma,

69 70

Questions and Answers 132. Ibid., 132.

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as previously, but only by pondering in his mind (ἀλλὰ μόνῳ τῳ νοῒ ἐνθυμηθείϚ). Using an “alphabet of the mind,” the monk posed questions about sleeping problems, weakness of the soul, obtaining salvation, and prayer.71 The next three letters of the Correspondence constitute Barsanuphius’ responses; yet his answers too were given in riddles (such as “the first brings loss, the second is beneficial” and “turn not to the right hand nor to the left, until the two will be in agreement”), which, according to the redactor, induced embarrassment and frustration in the monk.72 In the end, Barsanuphius wrote an explicit answer to dispel these confusions.73 Though it leaves many questions unresolved, this letter provides a glimpse into Barsanuphius’ fundamental attitude to this way of counseling. At first glance, his stance on the use of cryptic language in the monastery seems somewhat positive. He declares that it seems to him good to receive—via God—the monk’s thoughts through enigmas and to answer him in the same way, since it produces in the rational soul, especially among the wise, “a spiritual rumination” (μηρυκισμὸν πνευματικόν). By delving into the enigmas, he says, we find abundant advantage in them. Nonetheless, drawing on Romans 12:16 (“Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate”), he strictly forbade the monk to express his thoughts thenceforth in enigmas; instead, he should bare his thoughts clearly through the intermediacy of another brother or write them down. Even if the monk acknowledged that he received charisma from God, it was not profitable, Barsanuphius maintained, to write or speak always through enigma; one should do so only when it was a necessity. Yet he did not indicate what in this context should be deemed a necessity. By exercising lofty powers (διὰ ὑψηλω ν δυναμέων), said Barsanuphius, both he and the monk were putting their humility at risk. He thus commanded the monk to do so only rarely. Ultimately, Barsanuphius complied with the monk’s request and explained his earlier enigmatic answers: “The first letter (132) relates to you and to my son and servitor, Seridus, the two should be in agreement”;74 the second letter (133) referred to the body and soul, which should be in agreement. The monk responded that from then on he would write and speak only through the intermediacy of the “lord abbot”! In other words, having at

71 72 73 74

Ibid., 133. Ibid., 133, 134, 135. Ibid., 136. Ibid., 136, 498.

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 193 first used the code to circumvent his abbot, the monk ultimately became submissive and accepted Abba Seridus’ authority. What is important here is not so much that a cryptic language or code existed in monastic tradition in the sixth century, nor that such a technique was not known to everyone (in this case not even to the abbot), but rather the basic tenet underlying this method of approaching Barsanuphius—namely, the monk’s confidence that the Old Man would be able to decipher the code he had formulated in his mind (ἐν τῃ αὐτου διανοία). In fact, this exchange of letters between Barsanuphius and his disciple is one of the rare examples of communication through the alphabet of the mind. Barsanuphius emerges here as a spiritual leader, one who had mastered the lore of the alphabet of the mind and sought primarily to maintain authority and hierarchy in the monastery. His bolstering of Seridus’ status and his reluctance regarding consultation through enigma was perfectly in line with his philosophy of guidance grounded in obedience and humility. The next story discloses the same stance: John of Beersheba recounted to Barsanuphius that one of the monks had asked him about his own thoughts “not clearly but through enigmas” (οὐ σαφω Ϛ, ἀλλὰ δι᾿ αἰνιγμάτων). John, who was hesitant about this mode of counseling, asked Barsanuphius whether the monk had acted rightly.75 Barsanuphius rejected “interrogation through enigmas,” detecting in this case an individualism lacking discernment (ἰδιοσκοπία ἐστὶ μὴ ἔχουσα διάκρισιν) since, according to him, the signs (σημει α) are intended not for “believers but for non-believers” (1 Cor. 14:22).76 As one seeking to reduce ambiguity in all domains, Barsanuphius certainly could not permit himself to endorse the use of such an “alphabet of the mind,” which might create a mysterious atmosphere and bafflement concerning monastic discipline that could undermine authority within the monastery. The concept of an “alphabet of the mind” is to be found also in the collection of sayings of the desert fathers, the Apophthegmata patrum, One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own thoughts. Someone noticed this and said to him, “Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such a good Latin and Greek education ask this peasant about your thoughts?” He replied, “I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.”77 75 76 77

Ibid., 40. Ibid., 40. Apophthegmata, Arsenius 6, PG 65, 88d–89a.

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What is interesting here is that the peasant’s inner life is represented as his alphabet. As scholars have remarked, the story provides evidence of “a pneumatic alphabet,”78 “a new alphabet of the heart.”79 It is worth recalling in this context that Barsanuphius was well acquainted with Arsenius’ teachings.80 Cryptic language was not alien to late antique monastic culture. To take one example: Jerome pointed out that Pachomius corresponded with the fathers of other monasteries in such language and stressed the importance of knowing “all the elements of the spiritual alphabet.”81 Jerome, who translated the Pachomian letters from Greek into Latin in the early fifth century, characterized their medium as “a spiritual language,” “a spiritual alphabet,” “a language given by an angel to both correspondents, and sounds that others are not able to understand.”82 Unlike the Gaza letters, whose code is revealed by the redactor, these letters are written in an alphabetic cipher whose arcane method is not as yet satisfactorily explained.83 Henry Chadwick ventured to predict that the cipher in Pachomius’ letters “will never be broken because its intention is not actually to communicate in the ordinary sense of the word; it has the purpose of being obscure, and therefore of surrounding its author with an aura of mystery and authority.”84 However, in the letters from Gaza the enigmatic language does emerge as a vehicle of expression and mode of communication, though not for everyone. Hence the unequivocal nature of Chadwick’s prediction seems questionable. A few generations later, John Climacus (570–649) on Mount Sinai confirmed what every teacher knows: “Educators can distinguish between the programs of study suitable for beginners, for the intermediate, and for teachers. And we ought to ensure that we do not spend an unduly long time at the beginner’s stage, for it would be a disgrace to have an old man going to kindergarten.”85 Thus he introduced to the

78

Dornseiff 1922, 72. Brown 1988, 229; idem 1992, 73. 80 See, for example, Questions and Answers 45, 55, 119, 125, 126, 191, 256. 81 Pachomian Koinonia III, Letter 6, p. 67. 82 Pachomian Koinonia III, Letters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9A, 9B, 11A, 11B. 83 The difficulty of deciphering this method was pointed out, for example, by H. Chadwick 1981, 24; Rousseau 1999, 38; Goehring 1999, 222–23. 84 Chadwick 1981, 24. (emphasis added). For a new tentative to decipher the Pachomian’s letters, see Joest 2002, 241–60. 85 The Ladder of Divine Ascent 26, PG 88, 1017, Eng. trans., C. Luibheid and N. Russell (London, 1982), p. 232. 79

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 195 readers of his Ladder of Divine Ascent what he described as “an excellent alphabet” and set forth the basic monastic ideals.86 Each letter of the Greek alphabet corresponds to a central component of monastic life. But these terms do not begin with the corresponding letter of the alphabet. This code or set of signs, devised for beginners, epitomizes basic monastic discipline. For the advanced monk Climacus then proceeded to introduce the plan and signs of progress without the alphabetic code. The second alphabetic code, which he designated “a measure, rule and law,” is intended for those aiming at perfection in spirit and body; this set is characterized by its achievement of a higher monastic discipline.87 This code virtually represents the goal of monastic spiritual exercises, attained by those who are perfect. It depicts monastic life from the first steps of the beginner to his ascent to the dwelling place of mysteries (the letter Ο), becoming a custodian of holy secrets (the letter Π), and gaining control of the body and nature (letters Υ and Ψ). The use of cryptic language here is probably pedagogical, making it easier to memorize the monastic ideals represented by such an alphabetic code. But it is not simply a program for ascetic progress from the beginning to perfection; rather, it is a set of symbols designating a new state of self-consciousness, which can be defined as a mystical and spiritual reality. The same pedagogical approach had in fact already been emphatically outlined by Barsanuphius in his guidance to John of Beersheba: From Alpha to Omega, from the condition of a novice to perfection, from the beginning of the way to its end . . ., from becoming alien to the land perceived by the senses to becoming a citizen of heaven and an inheritor of the Land of the Promise perceived by the mind. Ruminate on the letters (τὰϚ ἐπιστολάϚ) and you will be saved. For you have in them, if you understand, the Old and the New Testaments: and understanding them, you have no need of any other book.88

Barsanuphius’ propensity to divinize his teaching is also epitomized in the way he perceived his spiritual authority and the status he bestowed on his own instructions; he strove to rank them with biblical injunctions

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Such as, Α—obedience (ὑπακοη); Β—fasting (νηστεία); Γ—sackcloth (σάκκοϚ). For instance, Ε—the indwelling of Christ, Η—the outpouring of divine illumination, Κ—flight from the body, Ν—becoming a fellow worshiper with the angels, John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent 26, PG 88, 1017. 88 Questions and Answers 49. 87

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and perceived them as no less significant than the Bible itself. To this end he used the spiritual exercise of meditation (μελέτη) not so much as a craft of thinking but rather as a dialogue with oneself, an ongoing endeavor to control the passions.89 Thus Barsanuphius constantly encouraged his supplicants to meditate on the letters he had written them,90 using the same verb (μελεταν) as that for reciting psalms and reflecting on the Scriptures.91 The things he wrote were sufficient, he maintained, to guide the monk from the beginning to the end. He advised meditating on them and memorizing them, since these things “contain the whole Bible.”92 Relying on Proverbs 4:4 (“He taught me also, and said unto me, let your heart retain my words, keep my commandments, and live”), for instance, Barsanuphius—in a letter to John of Beersheba—expressed the wish that his sayings be anchored in John’s heart and that John meditate unceasingly on the things he wrote to him. Sharpening his claim through biblical authority, he ordered the monk to follow his instruction “according to what God said to Moses: ‘And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes’ (Deut. 6:8).”93 In other words, Barsanuphius was here presenting his instructions as the new meditative phylacteries (tefillin), which the monk ought to bind to his heart. The persistent assurance that “if you meditate on my sayings without ceasing you will not fall” transforms Barsanuphius’ teaching into an icon, devoid of rhetorical flourishes.94 This does not imply any neglect of meditating on the Scriptures; rather, it testifies to the almost canonic status of the Letters and the exalted authority of the writer. The word of the Old Man was like the word of God. The Letters of Barsanuphius are the new Holy Scriptures of those who choose the new paideia. It is in this matter, more than in any other, that Barsanuphius reveals his perception of himself as a supreme guide, an intimate servant of God.95 He was, after all, speaking “from God,” deciphering the alphabet of the mind,

89

On the definition of monastic meditation, see Carruthers 1998, 4. Questions and Answers 53, 103. See also, ibid., 239: “meditate these things” (1 Tm 4:15). 91 In Questions and Answers 47 Barsanuphius wrote to John, who was struggling with his logismoi, to meditate unceasingly on Psalm 106. 92 Questions and Answers 32, “ὅλην γὰρ ἔχουσι τὴν βιβλιοθήκην.” For this expression as denoting the Bible, see SC 426, pp. 230–31, no. 1. 93 Questions and Answers 11, 19. 94 Ibid., 236. 95 As has been argued in Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006, chapter 4. 90

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 197 and equating his teaching with that given by God to Moses. It remains to ask how far he could go. Did he envision himself playing a role in the afterlife and on the Day of Judgment? In a series of letters to the monk Andrew, who asked Barsanuphius to commend him to the Holy Trinity, the Old man answered that he had already done just that and, alluding to the eschatological passage in Matt. 25:31–34, drew a comparison between himself and “the great mediator Jesus,” who forgives sins from birth to the present.96 Restraining himself, however, Barsanuphius dared only to say: “Each of the saints bringing to God the sons whom he has saved says in a clear voice with abundant and great boldness, while the holy angels and all the heavenly powers wonder, ‘Behold I and the children whom God has given me’ (Is. 8:18; Heb. 2:13), and commends to God not only them but himself also. And then ‘God becomes all in all’ (1 Cor. 15:28).”97 Although Barsanuphius emerges here as a quasi-divine guide who has creative mind, he was not attempting to develop a theoretical dimension of the technique of speculation on the alphabet. The novelty of Letter 137b lies in its new configuration of an ancient way of thought; he was applying an old method to create a symbol for his community and to represent his fundamental spiritual teaching in a new way. Barsanuphius’ total seclusion and invisibility to his acolytes were the most obvious mis-en-scène for a successful spiritual leader who perceived himself in such divine terms. References Amélineau, E. 1890. “Les traités Gnostiques d’Oxford: Étude critique.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 21:176–294. Atinga, S.A. 2004. “Symbols of the Last Things: A Reflection on the Christian Funeral Symbols.” Questions Liturgiques 85:145–157. Bitton-Ashkelony, B., and A. Kofsky 2000. “Gazan Monasticism in the Fourth-Sixth Centuries: From Anchoritic to Cenobitic.” Proche Orient Chrétien 50:14–62. ———— 2006. The Monastic School of Gaza. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 78. Leiden. Bitton-Ashkelony, B., and A. Kofsky (eds.) 2004. Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity. Leiden. Brown, P. 1971. “The Rise and the Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity.” JRS 61:80–101.

96 97

Questions and Answers 115, 117. Ibid., 117.

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———— 1988. The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York. ———— 1992. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire. London. Carruthers, M. 1998. The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200. Cambridge. Chadwick, H. 1981. “Pachomios and the Ideal of Sanctity.” In The Byzantine Saint, Studies Supplementary to Sobornost 5, ed. S. Hackel, 11–24. London. Chitty, J. 1966. Barsanuphius and John, Questions and Answers, PO 31/3. Paris. Cox-Miller, P. 1989. “In Praise of Nonsense.” In Classical Mediterranean Spirituality, ed. A.H. Armstrong, 481–505. New York. De Angelis-Noah P. 1983. “La méditation de Barsanuphe sur la lettre Hta,” Byzantion 53: 494–506. Dornseiff, F. 1916. Buchstabenmystik. Leipzig. ———— 1922. Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magi. Leipzig. Evagrius Ponticus. Ad Monachos, Greek text and Eng. trans. in The ‘Ad Monachos’ of Avagrius Ponticus, ed. J. Driscoll. Studia anselmiana 104, Rome, 1991. Kephalaia Gnostica, ed. and trans., A. Guillaumont, Patrologia Orientalis 28. Paris, 1958. On the Eight Thoughts. PG 79:1145–64. On the Vices Opposed to the Virtues. In Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, ed. R.E. Sinkewicz, 60–65. Oxford, 2003. Eng. trans. Praktikos, ed. and trans., A. Guillaumont and C. Guillaumont, Traité pratique ou le moine, SC 170–171. Paris, 1971. To Eulogius: On the Confession of Thoughts and Councel in their Regard. In Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, ed. R.E. Sinkewicz, 310–333. Oxford, 2003. Flusin, B. 1983. Miracle et histoire dans l’oeuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis. Paris. Fowden, G. 1993. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Princeton. Frankfurter, D. 1994. “The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic: The Power of the Word in Egyptian and Greek Traditions,” Helios 21:189–221. ———— 1998. Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance. Princeton. Geertz, C. 1966. “Religion as a Cultural System,” In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. M. Banton, 1–46. London. Goehring, J. E. 1999. “The Fourth Letter of Horsiesius,” In Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism. Harrisburg. Hausherr, I. 1933. “L’Origine de la théorie orientale des huit pechès capitaux.” Orientalia Christiana 30:164–75. Hebbelynck, A. 1902. Les mystères des lettres Grecques d’après un manuscript CopteArabe, trans. A. Hebbelynck. Louvain. Idel, M. 1993. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. Tel-Aviv. Jackson, H.M. 1978. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega. Missoula. Joest, C. 2002. “Das Buchstabenquadrat im Pachomianischen Briefcorpus.” Le Muséon 115:241–260. Jung, C. G. 1964. Man and his Symbols. New York. Kofsky, A. 2004. “The Byzantine Holy Person: The Case of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza.” In Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity, ed. M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz , 421–437. Leiden. Lamberton, R. 1989. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition. Berkeley. Lloyd, G. 1973. “Right and Left in Greek Philosophy.” In Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification, ed. R. Needham, 167–186. Chicago. May, R. 1960. “The Signification of Symbols.” In Symbolism in Religion and Literature, ed. R. May, 11–49. New York.

monastic leadership and linguistic techniques in 6th-c. 199 McNeil, B. 1976. “Jesus and the Alphabet.” Journal of Theological Studies 27:126–28. Neyt, F.P. de Angelis-Noah and L. Regnault. 1997–2002. Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza: Correspondance, SC 426–27, 450–51, 468. Paris. Oron, M. 1986. “The Narrative of the Letters and Its Source: A Study of a Zoharic Midrash on the Letters of the Alphabet.” In Studies in Jewish Mysticism Philosophy and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, 97–109. Jerusalem. Pachomius. Pachomian Koinonia II–III, ed. and trans. A. Veilleux. Kalamazoo, 1981. Perrone, L. 2004. “The Necessity of Advice: Spiritual Direction as a School of Christianity in the Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza.” In Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity, ed. B. Bitton-Ashkelony and A. Kofsky, 144–148. Leiden. Rousseau, P. 1999(a). “Ascetics as Mediators and as Teachers.” In The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. J. Howard-Johnson and P.A. Hayward, 45–59. Oxford. ———— 1999(b). Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt. Berkeley Ref. 2nd ed.. Rubenson, S. 2000. “Philosophy and Simplicity: The Problem of Classical Education in Early Christian Biography.” In Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. T. Hägg and P. Rousseau, 110–139. Berkeley. Scholem, G. 1946. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York. 1974. Sefer Yetsira (Long version). In Y. Liebes, Ars Poetica in Sefer Yetsira. Tel Aviv, 2000 (in Hebrew). Tillich, P. 1960. “The Religious Symbol.” In Symbolism in Religion and Literature, ed. R. May, 75–98. New York. Wisse, F. 1978. “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt.” In Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas, ed. U. Bianchi, M. Krause, J. Robinson, and G. Widengren, 431–440. Göttingen. ———— 1979. “Language Mysticism in the Nag Hammadi Texts and in Early Coptic Monasticism I: Cryptography.” In Enchoria: Zeitschrift für Demotistik und Koptologie, IX, ed. E. Lüddeckens, H.-J. Thissen, and K.-Th. Zauzich, 101–120. Wiesbaden. Wolfson, E.E. 1989. “The Anthropomorphic and Symbolic Image of the Letters in the Zohar.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8:147–181. Zosimos. On the Letter Omega, ed. Jackson, H.M. Zosimos of Panopolis on the Letter Omega. Missoula, 1978.

DEVOTIONAL, COVENANTAL AND YOGIC: THREE EPISODES IN THE RELIGIOUS USE OF ALPHABET AND LETTER FROM A MILLENNIUM OF GREAT VEHICLE BUDDHISM* Dan Martin That would be like teaching the alphabet to a Buddha! —Tibetan proverb.1

While it is true that teaching the alphabet to people who already know so much more would be frivolous if not laughable, in the pages ahead the alphabet as such will be taken very seriously, and not simply assumed. Far from being ‘simple,’ it was clear even before beginning the first word of this article that the topic is far too broad, and lined with intriguing side paths branching off in many directions. As a time span, a millennium naturally resists encapsulation and invites sketchiness and generalizations which we should do our best to resist, especially during the process of succumbing. The discussion will be divided into three parts, roughly dividing the millennium into thirds: [1] the first three centuries * Although the research lasted many years, this article was put in writing while I was a member of a research group devoted to Indian poetry, chaired by Yigal Bronner, at the Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In keeping with the academic—not specifically Indological, Tibetological or Buddhological—setting for which the original paper was intended, Sanskrit and Tibetan terms are kept to a minimum, and often bibliographical references are supplied with persons who do not know those particular languages in mind. An attempted synthesis of previous academic scholarship (I hope that I have not badly misrepresented anyone’s views), there is a correspondingly lessened emphasis on my own research into the texts in their original languages. For Tibetan-translated canonical texts, in order to avoid bibliographical complications, I generally make reference to numbers in the Tohoku (Toh.) catalogue of the Derge Canon (Hakuju Ui, et al. 1934). Derge Canon (Kanjur and Tanjur) texts are, in a number of cases, available to me in searchable digital format (thanks to the Asian Classics Input Project), although the readings were checked against the ‘original’ Derge canon (albeit in the form of microfiche supplied by the Institute for the Advanced Study of World Religions, Stony Brook). The entire Derge canon has recently been made available, too, in scanned format (in the form of compact disks from the Tibetan Buddhism Research Center, New York City). 1 This proverb (or in Tibetan, gtam-dpe, ‘pattern [for] speech’ or perhaps even ‘oral simile’) is, in one form or another, known to every Tibetan speaker. Several variants of it are recorded (with no translation provided) in Cüppers & Sørensen 1998, 226, nos. 10218–10222.

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of the common era, [2] the next three centuries, and [3] the following centuries ending in the vicinity of the eleventh century. Perhaps these time spans do somehow, or at least well enough for present purposes, correspond to the three themes of this paper: devotional, covenantal and yogic. For the many who in some degree or another appreciate Buddhism as a philosophy, and dislike what they know as ‘religion,’ no offense is intended. Of course, Buddhism has much philosophy in any sense of the term. But for now we will be looking at aspects of Buddhism that are very likely to be overlooked by the philosophers. Alphabet usages such as those considered here certainly interconnect in various interesting ways with Buddhist philosophy, psychology, ethics, language science and so forth, but for economy of time, space and ability, it will not be possible to say very much along these lines. We will look rather more at things that might be termed, in the broader and older (and most definitely not the recent socio-political or journalistic) sense of the word, ‘cultic.’ To emphasize the cultic just means to attempt to explore the areas surrounding religious practices, and especially practices intended to honor whatever is most highly regarded in a particular religion. In the beginning it should suffice to suggest that, as a general principle, the devotional and other religious usages of letters are in every case somehow and in some degree tied up with or inspired by the sacredness of scriptural texts (whether orally recited or written), as well as the sacredness of the figure of the Buddha Himself. At times, like full-blown religious symbols, or even like physical relics, the letters may place believers directly in contact with sacramental powers or blessings. But that being admitted, my own ideas about the general picture are constantly shifting, perhaps even shifting during the act of writing. Nothing is permanent, and least of all, structures. I. Devotional In December of 2002, I visited the ruins of Kapilavastu, which have never been properly excavated, even if some ruined buildings and gateways have been exposed. Well, it is at least the Kapilavastu on the Nepalese side of the border, since India also lays claims to the Buddha’s childhood home.2 The following story, told in the tenth chapter of His biography 2

There is a considerable literature on the identification of ancient Kapilavastu, much

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as found in the Lalitavistara Sūtra, takes place in Kapilavastu. One day the young prince, and future Buddha, Siddhārtha set out, at the head of a procession of ten thousand children, to visit an elementary school headed by Viśvāmitra (‘Everybody’s Friend’).3 The future Buddha really had no need to go to school, of course, and he immediately demonstrated to the schoolmaster Viśvāmitra that he already knew about sixtyfour different scripts (the names of the scripts are listed). The children together recited the Sanskrit alphabet, and after each syllable, through the blessings of the future Buddha, a phrase rang out as if from nowhere, one which began with that same syllable. In effect, this appears to be very much like the well-known English Abecedarium “A is for apple. B is for boy. C is for cat.” Only in this case the usual Sanskrit alphabet is used, and each letter comes at the beginning of a word or phrase expressing a basic Buddhist concept: When they pronounced the short A, the sound of this phrase emerged: “All compounded things are impermanent” (Anityah sarvasam skārah). When they pronounced the long Ā, the sound of this phrase emerged: “Nonself ” (Ātmaparahita, ‘beyond self ’ or ‘welfare of self and others’). When they pronounced the short I, the sound of the phrase emerged: “Sense faculties are vast” (Indriyavaipulya). When they pronounced the long Ī, the sound of this phrase emerged: “Beings have many contagious diseases” (Ītibahula, ‘hosts of calamities’) . . .4

The text continues similarly through the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. The list of sixty-four (there are actually sixty-eight in the Tibetan version) scripts is very interesting in itself, although we will not go deeply into it.5 It includes not only ordinary human scripts used in our world, of it published in India and Nepal. For the Nepalese side, identifying it with the extensive (and inadequately excavated) ruins of Tilaurakot, see for example, Rijal 1979. 3 A late fifteenth century Tibetan-authored biography of the Buddha (Sna-nam Btsun-pa 1994, 43) gives the schoolmaster Viśvāmitra the additional name Srin-bugo-cha (in Sanskrit, perhaps Krˢmivarman, or ‘Bug Armor’). This probably results from combination with the Abhiniskramana-sūtra (Toh. no. 301, fols. 17–18), where the Buddha’s school teacher is indeed given this other name. A charming green phylite relief, kept in the Swat Museum in Pakistan, depicts the young Buddha and a companion on their way to school riding on two rams, accompanied by two adult guardians, one of them holding an umbrella above the childrens’ heads, Khan 1993, 71. 4 Lalitavistara Sūtra (Toh. no. 95, fol. 108). English readers will have to content themselves with the translation (based on the French of E.P. Foucaux, which is not available to me, but making reference to the Tibetan text) found in Bayes 1983, I 187–195. 5 See Lévi 1905 for a notice of this list of scripts.

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but scripts used in other parts of the universe, and scripts of various non-human entities. It begins with Brāhmī and Kharost hī, two very early Indian scripts, but also mentions scripts of south India, what may be Greek script (Yavana), and so forth. The Sanskrit script as we know it today, called Devanāgarī, is not to be found among them, and it is essential to be aware that the Sanskrit letters did not exist in their current shapes until relatively recently, and Devanāgarī became the dominant script for writing Sanskrit only in around the 18th century. It is perhaps worth noting, too, that some very good scholars believe that the Kharosˢthˢ ī script descended from an eastern Aramaic script. Like Semitic scripts, Kharosˢthˢ ī was written from right to left. Brāhmī script is written from left to right.6 John Brough’s 1977 article clearly demonstrated that the earlier of the two Chinese translations of the Lalitavistara Sūtra, done by Dharmaraksˢa in the year 308 ce, employs an entirely different alphabet in this passage. It most certainly is not an ‘alphabet,’ in the sense that it represents all the letters used to write any particular language. Of the several learned articles written on what is now known as the Arapacana syllabary, only the earliest ones called it, inaccurately, the Arapacana alphabet.7 Incidentally, today every Tibetan knows the Arapacana primarily as part of a mantra invoking the Bodhisattva of wisdom and learning, Mañjuśrī.8 Several years ago, I spent a summer in Himachal Pradesh, at the town of Gangcan Kyishong just above Dharamsala and just below the residence of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I remember several times being awakened in the morning by the sound of a child shouting very loudly from the rooftop “Omˢ A-ra-pa-tsa-na Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ! Dhihˢ!” The syllable Dhihˢ, which was repeated in shrill and rapid machine-gun-like bursts until the child ran out of breath, is considered by the experts (not necessarily so by the child) as a 6 On Kharosˢthˢ ī script, see Upasak 2001. On the eastern Aramaic scripts, see Naveh 1997, 132–53. Naveh does not seem to be aware of the existence of Kharosˢthˢ ī as such, although he does briefly mention Aramaic script use in India (on p. 127). 7 For an excellent list of references on the Arapacana, including some that will not be mentioned here, see Gyatso 1993, 198. Note the more recent study by Verhagen 2002, 143–9, who quite interestingly tends to the conclusion that the Arapacana was a ‘real’ alphabet of Gāndhārī. 8 Mañjuśrī is a Bodhisattva, depicted with royal ornaments (and not monastic robes), with a sword lifted as if ready to strike in His right hand, and a book in His left (or balanced on a lotus held in His left hand). Khettry 2001 has traced images identified with Mañjuśrī holding the book (but without the sword) to the first centuries of the Common Era.

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‘seed-syllable’ for generating the visualized form of Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva of wisdom and learning, although it surely derives from the Sanskrit root dhī, which means ‘to think.’ A-ra-pa-tsa-na is just a Tibetan pronunciation for Arapacana. This mantra clearly means something— well, at least one should not really think of it as made up of nonsense syllables, or that it is verbalized without intentionality and purpose—and part of that meaning is surely to be found in the history of the Arapacana syllabary itself. That contemporary Tibetan schoolchildren, in the morning before going to school, might be heard reciting the first part of an ‘alphabet’ used in a two-millennia-old story of Buddha’s school visit is certainly in itself an impressive feat of cultural memory. We should add that this practice is not done only by children, but by monks as well.9 Of the other Buddhist scriptures in which the Arapacana syllabary appears,10 probably the most important of them, the 25,000 Perfection of Insight Sūtra, was translated by Dharmaraksˢa into Chinese in the year 286, so we may be quite sure that we are dealing with scriptures available somewhere in the Indian subcontinent in the earliest centuries of the Common Era. Here is the beginning of the 25,000 passage: The syllable [letter] A is access point of all dharmas, since they are from the beginning unproduced (Ādyanutpannatva). The syllable RA is access point of all dharmas, since they are free of impurity [‘dust’] (Rajo ‘pagatatva). The syllable PA is access point of all dharmas, because they point to the ultimate truth (Paramārthanirdeśa). The syllable CA is access point of all dharmas, because of the nonapplicability of death and rebirth (Cyavanopapatty-anupalabdhitva, or ‘there is apprehension neither of decease nor of rebirth’).11

But there are several indications that these sūtras, along with the Arapacana syllabaries they contain, originated (or at least were redacted) in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. Not least of the pieces of evidence we find among the famous stone-carved reliefs of Gandhāra depictions of the visit to Viśvāmitra’s school. In these friezes, which have

9

See Dreyfus 2003, 85, with a general discussion of Tibetan monastic memorization practices on pp. 85–97. 10 The best listing so far of the many sūtras that have the Arapacana in one form or another is the one located in Durt 1994. 11 Conze 1984, 160; Wayman 1975, 78–9. I used the Derge Kanjur version of the Pañcavim śatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā (Toh. no. 9, fol. 344).

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been studied by Richard Salomon, we see the young Siddhārtha seated with a stylus in His hand ready to make letters on a slate that has a handle extending out one side (shaped rather like a cricket bat). By the way, just a few years ago I saw writing slates that work in the same way, with the same basic shape, being used by young student monks in Lhasa, Tibet. At least they work in the same way. One does not write on them with sticks of chalk as we do on modern blackboards. Instead one must evenly coat the surface with powdered chalk, which is then scratched away with a stylus so that the dark background is exposed. It is an excellent way to practice calligraphy without wasting precious writing materials. To return to Gandhāra, when letters are depicted on these slates they are in Kharosˢthˢ ī script, showing letters from the beginning of the Arapacana syllabary in their proper sequence. Therefore, the schoolhouse narrative of the earliest Chinese translation of the Lalitavistara Sūtra, in its use of the Arapacana syllabary, finds outside verification in stone friezes from Gandhāra in roughly the same centuries, and these friezes contain some part of the Arapacana syllabary in the Kharosˢthˢ ī script, the script that was in wide use in Gandhāra in those times. Salomon makes a good argument that the local Gāndhārī dialect, written in Kharosˢthˢ ī script, is behind the Arapacana syllabary (but, beware; it is most definitely not the case that the Arapacana is an alphabet of Kharosˢthˢ ī). The replacement of the Arapacana by the regular Sanskrit alphabet in the story of Siddhārtha’s day in school would be just another example of the process of Sanskritization (making into more perfect Sanskrit) that many other Great Vehicle (Mahāyāna) scriptures underwent during their textual transmissions. Salomon also studies another inscription carved on the back side of a frieze with a different subject (perhaps the presentation of a bride to Siddhārtha). It has not only a part of the beginning of the Arapacana syllabary, but also an array of numbers off to one side. In this particular case, Salomon raises the possibility that the letters and numbers might have somehow been meant to serve the builders as a key to the arrangement of scenes on the wall. Salomon does not necessarily believe this is the correct explanation (after all it is not at all clear how this would have worked . . . Were other friezes actually marked with numbers and syllables? We are not told), and other possibilities remain to be explored. Khettry (2001) suggests that the inscription was placed on the stone for the sake of gaining merit, and for all we know, this explanation might supply sufficient motive. Today we will put aside the many philological complications and leave some of the larger questions in abeyance. Even

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if the specific mysteries cannot all be solved, I believe it is possible to bring more light to the general principles involved. Although the possibility had been raised in the 1950’s by Thomas and Lamotte, John Brough (in 1977) was perhaps the first to clearly articulate the idea, recently endorsed as the most likely explanation by Salomon, that the Arapacana syllabary originated in a list of significant words, or head-words, taken from some so-far unidentified Buddhist scripture. The head-syllables of these significant words (and phrases) were then abstracted to form a mnemonic key for remembering the scripture (or passage of scripture) as a whole. In other words, by memorizing the syllabary, the entire text can be brought to mind. There are certain key terms used in these early Great Vehicle scriptures that I believe need to be understood a little better. In the first place, however much we may insist on it, there is no necessary difference between an alphabet and a syllabary in Sanskrit. Both are called by the name mātrikā, a word which we might translate by ‘grandmother’ (the Tibetan uses two different translations in different contexts, both of which may also be translated as ‘grandmother’), but also when used figuratively, as ‘source’ or ‘origin’ (very much like the English cognate ‘matrix’).12 Secondly, in Sanskrit, unlike English, it is not usually necessary to distinguish between (written) letter and (spoken) phoneme. After all, unlike western Eurasian alphabets, the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are scientifically arranged according to their phonological values and unlike English they remain consistent in their pronunciation. The Sanskrit word aksara, which literally means ‘imperishable’ or ‘unalterable,’ may refer to both ‘letter’ and ‘syllable,’13 and the sense of ‘inalterability’ would seem to refer to both the consistency of pronunciation as well as the ‘irreducibility’ of the syllable as the smallest possible bearer of meaning, and for most practical purposes indeed identical to the letter. It is clear that in the Lalitavistara, the syllables were both written and sounded out, but in other contexts we may be left guessing whether the visible letter or the audible sound or both might be intended. Therefore, when the 25,000 Perfection of Insight, in introducing the Arapacana syllabary, describes the syllables as dhāranī-mukha, I believe

12 The word mātrikā (Pāli mātikā) is also used in Abhidharma texts to refer to lists of the main elements of Buddhist psychological (and other types of) analysis. These are lists of words, not of syllables. See especially Gethin 1993. 13 Just like the Tibetan word that was used to translate it, yi-ge. See the discussion of this point in Hopkins 1985, 76–7.

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that some other translations used in the past are inadequate. This word mukha may mean ‘head’ (but here ‘face’ would be more accurate) or ‘mouth,’ as others have translated it, but I follow the Tibetan in understanding it to mean ‘door’ or ‘gate,’ and a bit more abstractly ‘access point,’ all these translations being indeed possible for the Sanskrit mukha as well. Meaningful translation of the word dhāranī has proven especially difficult, so much so that it is generally left untranslated. It shares the same root {dhr} with the word Dharma. Dharma is the usual word for Buddhism as a whole, for scriptures [the Buddha’s Word], and for sets of factors that go together to sustain the vicious circle of everyday suffering called sam sāra, as well as sets of factors that go together to sustain the path to the cessation of suffering called nirvāna. In the 19th century it was usual to translate Dharma as ‘law.’ I think something like ‘sustaining factor’ could make good sense in many contexts (it also avoids prejudicing the very basic Buddhist principle of impermanence). Similarly dhāranī,14 with the same root, also refers to a kind of ‘holding,’ but in this case serves as a shorthand for ‘holding in memory.’ To make it simple, a dhāranī is a string of syllables which, either individually or as a whole, induce recollection of: 1. particular dharmas as just described, 2. groups of such dharmas as well as dharmas in their entirety, 3. a scriptural text or passage (also called Dharma), 4. a set of Buddhist concepts (which may also summarize a scriptural text or passage). One early Great Vehicle scripture, The Teachings by Aksayamati—its oldest existing Chinese translation made by Dharmaraksˢa in 308—defines dhāranī as inextricably bound up with memory: “Dhāranī means that, by virtue of recollecting the virtuous roots that have been accumulated in the past, one holds the 84,000-dharma heap, one retains all of it, one does not forget, and one holds it correctly in the memory. That’s what dhāranī means.”15 It continues by explicitly saying that the Word of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is what is entirely held in the memory (scriptures were already indicated, in fact, by the words ‘84,000-dharma heap’).

14 In my estimation, the most valuable modern discussion of dhāranˢīs to be found in Gyatso 1993. 15 My translation based on Braarvig’s careful edition (1993, I 148); compare Braarvig 1985, 18; 1993, II 556–7.

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The Suvarnaprabhāsa Sūtra (first translated into Chinese in the early fifth century), in its chapter on bathing rites, not only tells us what dharanīs do, but links them with the scripture reciters: The goddess Sarasvat[ī], covering one of her shoulders with her outer garment, and placing her right knee on the ground, with folded hands asked the Lord’s permission to wind up the net of illusions, spread round the chanter of the sutra (Dharmabhānaka), to grant him the Dhāranˢī, and to show him the light of true knowledge. “I shall,” said she, “restore the words or consonants that may have dropped from the great Sūtra. I shall grant him the Dhāranˢī that his memory may not fail. I shall teach him the mode of holy bathing which will enable the Sūtra to endure for a long time on earth, sowing the seeds of immense good, which will enable numberless creatures to cultivate their intellect, to learn various Śāstras, and to acquire immense merit.”16

Notice that the word dhāranī is often found paired with another word, pratibhāna. Jens Braarvig of Oslo has done a study persuasively showing how in its many contexts this pair corresponds quite nicely with western ideas from Greek and Roman times on, about two of the principle parts of rhetoric: memory and eloquence.17 The Tibetan (spobs-pa) and Sanskrit words which Braarvig translates as ‘eloquence’ are used in contexts that suggest a sense of outstanding ability, fluency, freeness, boldness, and in some contexts, more specifically, the ability to keep speaking without running out of things to say. The Teachings by Aksayamati itself associates ‘eloquence’ with continuity, rapidity, lack of confusion, happiness, sharpness and the like. In short, the word pratibhāna does contain all the elements we normally associate with our idea of eloquence. This close pairing of the two concepts appears in many other Great Vehicle scriptures, among them the 25,000 Perfection of Insight Sūtra.18 Of course, beyond and apparently quite apart from these usages of the word dhāranī, there is a particular class of Buddhist scriptures that emerged early on, and gradually gained autonomy from about the end of the 3rd century, called dhāranī-sūtras, on which we should spare a few words.

16

Translation by Mitra 1981, 244, which might be compared to the rather different translation by Emmerick 1996, 44–5. 17 Braarvig 1985. 18 Note that the Perfection of Insight sūtras come in many sizes, ranging from the 100,000 in twelve volumes (Toh. no. 8) down to the one on the letter ‘A’ in a few lines (English translation in Conze 1973, 201).

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Dhāranī-sūtra titles are the most numerous among the several classes of scriptures found in the Tibetan scriptural canon. Almost always extremely brief, they are very often, but not exclusively, devoted to worldly fears and other rather secular concerns. For example, there are dhāranīs against snakebite, against backbiting and slander, against highway robbers, and so forth. There is even one against hemorrhoids.19 In general, they take the form of a short story. For example, the Buddha’s disciple Ānanda has been traveling and is terrified of highway robbers. The Buddha tells him a story about how highway robbers were once stopped by saying a string of syllables, a dhāranī.20 What I believe is going on here is, above all, the sense that the Word of the Buddha has power and truth. The dhāranī recalls the original incident in the life of the Buddha, together with the Buddha’s promise that the repetition of the words will have the required effect. As far as the believer is concerned, the effectiveness is based on something we might almost call a contract which, once made, remains binding for all time. Well, at least it would remain binding for those who believe in the power and truth of the Buddha’s Word.

19 Arśapraśamani Sūtra (Toh. no. 621). A Chinese version also exists, its contents described by Ratna Handurukande in Malalasekera 1966, 96. We should avoid falling into the mistaken notion that these types of dhāranˢīs were a Great Vehicle invention. Although called raksā (‘protection’), rather than dhāranˢī, Elder School (Theravāda) texts that are very much like dhāranˢīs do exist, and it is remarkable that some of those texts have been preserved in the dhāranˢī sections of the Kanjur in Tibetan translations, as Skilling 1992 has demonstrated. Schmithausen 1997 studies several examples including some against snakebite, together with a good discussion of the protective as well as the ‘contractual’ (or pact of friendship) nature of these types of texts. See also Cousins 1997 for remarkable instances of letter and mantra usages in Southern Buddhism. In Tibet, dhāranˢī collections called Gzungs-’dus and Mdo-mang (see Taube 1968 and Meisezahl 1968; the Bon religion also has its own versions of these collections), in one or two volumes, were quite popular, perhaps the most likely book to be found laying on a home altar. While many of the texts in these collections are found in the canon, some others are not. It could be said that the dhāranˢī-sūtras have been relatively neglected by scholars, but it is also true that collecting the bits and pieces published here and there would result in a very large bibliography, which will not be attempted here. 20 See, for this example, Coravidhvam sana Dhāranī (Toh. no. 629). In the Tibetan form of the title, ’Phags-pa Mi-rgod Rnam-par ’Joms-pa zhes bya-ba’i Gzungs, we find the word mi-rgod. While it has the literal meaning ‘wild man,’ some people enthusiastically endorse the opinion that mi-rgod ought to be a name for the redoubtable Abominable Snowman. In this particular text, it is clear that mi-rgod are neither hairy humanoid beasts nor bestial humans, but something unfortunately much less arcane: highway robbers or bandits.

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Other dhāranīs are meant to be stamped in clay or inscribed on various materials, and then inserted into holy objects, into stūpa-monuments which may serve as tombs for holy persons, and into such things as images—even paintings and books. Very probably, the use of dhāranīs for such purpose began as a substitute for an older practice of inserting holy relics into the same objects, but particularly in Tibet both dhāranīs and relics are likely to be used together. The Tibetan term used for sacred deposits of all kinds means “dhāranī-insertion.”21 Besides the ‘dhāranī doors’ already mentioned, there are, interestingly enough, ‘door dhāranīs’ made on paper or cloth and placed above doorways, bearing a scriptural text which may say, “Just walking under this once can purify a thousand aeons of sins.” I suggest that all these usages of dhāranī-sūtras employ a kind of ‘covenantal’ Buddhology, forming part of a more general devotion toward the Buddha and His Word. The placement of door dhāranīs might be found reminiscent of the mezuzah, which contains a sacral deposit of the very words of scripture that justify the practice, using scripture as ‘empowerment’ for practice just as the door dhāranīs do. Similarly, in the Jerusalem temple, the ark which in the view of many scholars served as the footstool for the invisible throne of the divine presence in the Holy of Holies is often believed to have contained the original covenant.22 Tibetans in particular would more or less immediately recognize both this and the mezuzah as instances of dhāranī-insertion. However, in the Buddhist case, there is not just a single covenant, like the one made at Mt. Sinai, but as many different covenants as there are dhāranī-sūtras. By the sixth century or so, a discussion emerged about the effectiveness of dhāranīs. It may not be clear who brought up the argument (although they were surely Buddhists), but we do have the Buddhist philosopher Bhavya’s response. This passage has been studied and translated twice,23 but I have also located several later passages by various Indian authors that are rather similar, dating to the ninth through twelfth centuries. Most of these passages, but not the one by Bhavya, make use of a fourfold subclassification of dhāranīs which probably has its immediate origins in a fifth-century work by AsaΧga.24 The four types of dhāranī are:

21

In Tibetan, gzungs-gzhug, on which, see Bentor 1995. Haran 1985, 251, 255 understands this in terms of ancient Middle Eastern practices connected with sacral deposits in general. 23 Braarvig n.d. and Kapstein 2001, 233–55. 24 This is the Bodhisattvabhūmi (Toh. no. 4037; see Braarvig 1985, 19 for the full 22

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[1] dhāranī for recollecting dharma[s], [2] for recollecting meanings, [3] for use as mantras, and [4] for withstanding the experience of the ultimate Buddhist teachings like nonproduction and voidness. The passage by Bhavya starts with the argument, which basically says, ‘What place do these unintelligible words in barbaric language, or in the Vedas of the “other” religion, hold within the Great Vehicle? They do not lead to the cessation of sin, or to the ending of even the least fault.’ Bhavya responds by quoting several scriptural passages, and I will not go into it further, although it is interesting that at this early date he was quite aware of the woman Bodhisattva Tārā and Her mantra. It is evident that the use of mantras in religious practice was already in place in Buddhism by the 6th century. In the later similar passages, first the ninth century passage by Damˢ sˢtrˢ asena, it is the Arapacana syllabary that is explicitly singled out as being phonemes that provide access to the full knowledge of dharmas. The same connection appears in passages by Ratnākaraśānti in the tenth and Abhayākaragupta in the early twelfth centuries. It also seems to be implicit in a passage by Jaggadalavihāra, within a work dated to 998 ce, although he only mentions the first letter ‘A’. He says, “The letter ‘A’ is access point of all dharmas on account of nonproduction.”25 The passage on the four kinds of dhāranīs by Gro-lung-pa is certainly not the earliest, and differs somewhat from the others; still it is a little more intelligibly expressed and therefore translatable: 1. One who has the Dhāranˢī of Words obtains the strength of insight and the memory which can hold for a limitless time immeasurable letters/ phonemes which are composed and written, just by hearing—without practicing and without reciting—any particular teaching they have learned. 2. This one [the Dhāranˢī of Meaning] is like the first, but with the following difference: They can hold without limit the meanings of those teachings—without practicing and without mental cultivation—for an immeasurable period of time.

citation). For an especially valuable discussion of these categories see Gyatso 1993, 175–6. 25 Dam st rasena’s Śatasāhasrikā-pañcavim śatisāhasrikā-ast ādaśasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitābrhat t īkā (Toh. no. 3808, fols. 146–147); Ratnākaraśānti’s Ast asāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā-pañjikāsārottamā (Toh. no. 3803, fols. 39–40); two works of Abhayākaragupta, the Munimatālam kāra (Toh. no. 3903, fols. 230–232) and Ast asāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā-vrttimarmakaumudī (Toh. no. 3805, fol. 65); and Jaggadalavihāra’s Bhagavatyāmnāyānuśārinināma-vyākhyā (Toh. no. 3811, fols. 302–303).

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3. [Dhāranˢī of Secret Mantra] means to obtain the power over the samādhi which achieves the blessing power to pacify such things as epidemic diseases. 4. The fourth [Dhāranˢī for Obtaining Forbearance] has as its cause (or, its basis) that the one who has insight dwells in solitude and doesn’t say a word; encounters no one, eats appropriate food thinking little about it, and sleeps briefly during the night. That is what the Teacher [the Buddha] means by Mantra of Obtaining Forbearance.26

Before moving into the third and final phase under consideration here, the yogic phase, which I consider to be quite distinct even if in some ways interrelated (or at the very least conscious of precedent), I would like not only to summarize, but to add some more further elements and speculate about a more general picture. Even though the early Perfection of Insight sūtras speak so much about ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ that we have to think that they were written down from the very beginning, they still frequently mention the Dharmabhānaka,27 the reciter of the scriptures. The reciter was considered a special class within the Buddhist community, and we know from early inscriptions that women could and did serve in this role.28 It appears that a good memory was the primary job qualification. Anyone who has read the book or viewed the cinematic version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, could imagine that his portrayal of the post-print culture method of preserving literature was inspired somehow by the role of the reciter in early Buddhism before scriptures were commonly committed to writing. I’ll state my general speculative theory as simply as possible, in the meantime introducing a little more evidence that may help to support it. 26 The basis for this translation is an Asian Classics Input Project (www.asianclassics. org) digital text no. SL0070–1, since the work by Gro-lung-pa has not yet been published in any other form (only a very few woodblock prints survive, in Mongolia, St. Petersburg and Patna). Composed in around 1100 ce, the title is: Bde-bar-gshegs-pa’i Bstan-pa Rinpo-che-la ’Jug-pa’i Lam-gyi Rim-pa Rnam-par Bshad-pa, and the passage is located at folios 285–286. For a brief outline and discussion of this work, see Jackson 1996, 230–1. Gro-lung-pa’s explanation of the Dhāranˢī for Obtaining Forbearance is quite unique (all the other ninth- through twelfth-century passages we have mentioned make it first, not last in the list, and describe it as the ability to withstand Buddhist truths). ‘Obtaining forbearance’ in Gro-lung-pa’s passage has a technical meaning associated with Great Vehicle ideas about stages in the Path to Enlightenment. It belongs to a higher stage of what is known as the ‘Path of Application,’ almost immediately preceding the direct vision of the Truth. In the Path of Application, various moderately strict disciplines (such as those mentioned here) are recommended. 27 In Tibetan, Chos-kyi Smra-ba-po. I believe it is significant that the word bhānaka shares with the word for eloquence that we have already discussed the same Sanskrit root bhan. For a general treatment on the bhānaka, see Goonesekere 1968. 28 Hirakawa 1990, 30.

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My theory is that there was a code for aiding the memory of the scripture reciters, that the Arapacana syllabary is an example of it, although the passage it was meant to preserve has not been identified; also, that the earliest Great Vehicle scriptures not only preserve a memory of such codes, they most probably had their own system of memory using keysyllables. The memory system, whatever its exact details might have been, itself helps to explain the well-known formulaic and repetitive nature not only of the scriptures in the Pāli canon,29 but of the Perfection of Insight sūtras as well, particularly in the more lengthy versions. There is a small class of Tibetan literature, that has yet to be touched by scholarship of any kind, which explains to us how the larger Perfection of Insight sūtras can be generated through a process they call ’gres-rkang.30 The word ’gres is employed in the Tibetan translations of works by Damˢ sˢtrˢ asena and Jaggadalavihāra already mentioned, although I have not yet determined what the corresponding Sanskrit word would have been. ’Gres-rkang refers to a repeated piece of text, into which a long list of items are to be inserted. The items to be inserted are the two types of dharmas that were mentioned earlier, the samˢ sāric dharmas and the nirvānˢic dharmas. To give a simple example, instead of saying “All dharmas lack selfnature,” we would say, “The sense of seeing lacks self-nature. The sense of hearing lacks self-nature. The sense of smell lacks self-nature,” and so on and so on, slotting in perhaps over a hundred terms into the same repeated statement. The early pre-Great Vehicle school known as the Dharmaguptaka had its own version of the monastic code which has been preserved in Chinese. In this text we find exactly this type of repeated sentence formula, “The sense of seeing is impermanent, the sense of hearing is impermanent” etc. This occurs as part of a discussion of chanted recitations in which the chant leader or the monks in general may start the first syllable of the phrase, after which the community, or the laypeople in particular, will join in. Furthermore, it gives the Arapacana itself as an example of a group chanting event, in which monks and laypersons would chant together, whether in unison or in response.31 It may be surprising to learn that the earliest Tibetan ’gres-rkang texts, composed in the 11th century, belong to the Tibetan Bon religion. 29

See especially Allon 1997 and literature cited there. I have briefly discussed, and given bibliographical references to, several of these works in Martin 2000, 66. 31 Lévi 1915, 439–40; Lamotte 1988, 497–8. 30

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Since a discussion would lead us too far astray, I will just say that Bon is believed to be the original pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, and it is often accused (by others, not by me) of stealing its scriptures from the Buddhists by changing a word here and there. I recently edited an 800-page catalogue of the Bon scripture collections.32 Several years ago in Oslo, while working together with a committee on the catalogue, I noticed a very interesting thing about a ten-volume scripture that everyone agrees in some way or another corresponds to the Buddhist Perfection of Insight Sūtras. It exists not only in the ten-volume version, but in a one-volume version as well. Within the latter is a chapter on a dhāranī, in which each syllable of the dhāranī corresponds to a repeated textual passage—allowing us to expand the one-volume into the ten-volume version—but at the same time corresponding to one of the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of the Buddha,33 who in this case is Lord Shenrab, the founder of Bon. (Lord Shenrab is often called by the Tibetan word for Buddha.) In a rather startling way, this brings together devotion to the physical form of the Buddha with devotion to His Word. It reminds us of the Buddha’s own advice, “to see me in the corpus of my teachings.”34 It reminds us, too, of the episode in the Lalitavistara Sūtra, among other places, in which the sage Asita came to see the infant Siddhārtha and examined His bodily signs, finding the thirty-two and eighty major and minor marks, which indicated that He would be either a universal monarch or an Enlightened One. Asita exclaimed, “Truly a great wonder has appeared in the world.”35 Just as, or to the degree that, the future Buddhahood is predicted through the marks, later on the marks would allow us to recognize the wonder that was or is the Buddha or His image. Seeing this principle of text/image identification at work in the Bon scripture set off an alarm in my head. First of all, the chapter in the Bon text on the major and minor marks is located in about the same position as the chapter in the much better known Buddhist texts. In the 25,000 Perfection of Insight Sūtra, this chapter covers three subjects: major

32 See Martin et al. 2003. The catalogue of the Bdal-’bum volumes, which are the ones discussed here, may be found in the same volume, pages 253–65. 33 On this subject, see especially Wayman 1957. 34 Boucher 1991, 2, 17 n. 3, has noted a number of Pāli and Sanskrit versions of this statement. We might add, too, a similar statement in the Vajracchedikā Sūtra (Conze 1972, 63). 35 See de Jong 1954. For the account in the Lalitavistara, see Bayes 1983, I 150–63.

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marks, minor marks, and letters. It is quite mysterious what the letters have to do with the marks, and why they should make an appearance immediately after them.36 And the passage on letters is itself mysterious, recommending that one should be skilled in the forty-two letters, and meditate on the forty-two letters as contained in one letter, and on one letter as contained in forty-two letters.37 Since in the Sanskrit alphabet generally forty-nine or fifty letters are counted, the forty-two letters simply must mean the Arapacana syllabary. Perhaps the Arapacana is, after all, the secret reciters’ memory code for the Perfection of Insight Sūtras, but if so, it has not proven possible to know the specific way in which it would have been applied. It seems more likely that these sūtras are playing with a mnemonic system that was already well known— most likely one in use by the Dharmaguptakas for scriptures they were in the practice of reciting, something like the Arthavarga or the Udānavarga38—

36 One of the latest among the Tibetan Dunhuang documents, probably dating not much earlier than the early 11th century, somehow correlates the vowels and consonants (here referred to as a-li ka-li) with the marks and signs (see Verhagen 2001, 30–6 for a long discussion). It may be interesting to consider the following instance in which Buddha’s bodily marks are identified with letters. In consecration rituals intended specifically for scriptural books, we find a recent Tibetan manual suggesting that, after visualizing the physical book away, it is replaced by Buddha Amitābha in the form of a book. At the same time, the major and minor marks of the Buddha transform into vowels and consonants which are then imagined to dwell on each and every page of the scripture (Bentor 1996, 295). Among the preparatory rites that precede the consecration proper, we find letters being written on a mirror (which reflects the item that will be consecrated), then rinsed with water which falls on flowers to be used later on, imbuing them with the power of the letters; letters that have already been empowered by transferring holy words through a dhāranˢī-thread (Bentor 1996, 116–7). This ritual power-line is, by the way, used in Paritta ceremonies in Sri Lanka, as well as by Newar Vajrācāryas in Nepal. Different in the similarity of its consecratory function is the Abecedarium rite which often forms a part of Roman church dedications. In it, the Bishop writes the letters of the Greek and Latin alphabet on the floor of the church, using his crosier to draw the letters on small piles of ashes, creating the overall form of a [St. Andrew’s] cross (Repsher 1998, 50–2, 57, 82–4). To underline the obvious, the letters of Greek and Latin are the ones that form the holy scriptures, the Septuagint and Vulgate (as I see it, the rite employs the elements of sacred scripture to make something else sacred), while they also signify the “beginnings of faith,” just as the alphabet is the beginning of learning. In the Tibetan case, the primary source of the empowering is the repetition of the “Ye Dharmā,” which is believed to epitomize the scriptures in a different way (Bentor 1996, 114). 37 See Conze 1984, 587, for a complete translation of this passage. 38 Other possibilities that ought to be investigated: There was a list of 42 or 44 mental states and associated factors in the Dharmaskandha, an Abhidharma text that has been dated to the time of Aśoka. Perhaps this or another Abhidharma list of these or other such dharmas are behind the Arapacana. A Sūtra in Forty-two Sections survives in Chinese translation. One problem is that texts such as the Udānavarga have been rearranged, and there is no guarantee, either, that the forms of the texts as we have them would have been followed in the early recitation practices. The Sanskrit Dharmapāda

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while employing a different system of its own. That there was such a memory code or codes seems certain. III. Yogic Now we enter a seemingly alien world, the yogic world, in which the alphabet occupies a different position. To make a difficult history simple, elements that make up the Vajra Vehicle (Vajrayāna) emerged in around the 4th century and slowly coalesced in various ways until emerging in a fairly full form, with distinctive texts called ‘tantras’, in about the 8th century (although some would push this back to somewhere in the three preceding centuries). As such the Vajra Vehicle can only be defined as a complex of ideas and practices. It has no single defining characteristic. It employs powerful words called mantras, powerful gestures called mudrās, and special meditation practices that involve intricate visualization processes, and which always employ phonemes and visual syllables for a number of purposes.39 For present purposes we should try to

(itself a form of the Udānavarga) has its first chapter entitled Anitya (‘Impermanent’), anitya being the word for the first letter, the letter ‘A’, in the Sanskrit Abecedarium of the later Lalitavistara, as given above (see Bernhard 1965, 95). 39 There is a great deal of Vajra Vehicle letter usage that will not be considered here in any detail. The first word of every Buddhist scripture, Evam , literally meaning ‘thus’ or ‘just so’, is understood as combining the feminine ‘E’ (standing for the whole string of vowels), symbol of Insight (prajñā) with the masculine ‘VAM ’ (standing for the whole string of consonants), symbol of Method (upāya). Kölver 1992 believes this symbolism is based on the form of the letters as found in early inscriptions from Mathurā and elsewhere, in which the ‘E’ is shaped like a downward pointing triangle, and the ‘VAM ’ like an upward pointing triangle. I have dealt with some of this sort of letter symbolism, the evam in particular, in Martin 1987, 197–8. We might point out, well-known as it may be, that the first words of Buddhist scriptures (‘Just so was it heard by me at one time’) are not spoken by the Buddha, but probably represent a ritualistic phrase used by the Dharmabhānaka before beginning each recitation (which doesn’t contradict the idea shared by many that they are the words of Buddha’s disciple Ānanda). Seed-syllables (bīja) are used in visualizations to generate divine forms, and it is often the case that these are based on first letters (for example, the lotus [padma] on which the divine form is seated is often generated from the syllable ‘PAM ’, the divine form Tārā from the syllable ‘TAM ’ etc.). In tantras of the Yoga class, such as the Mahāvairocana, there is a great deal of speculation on the letter ‘A’, which is of cardinal importance for the Shingon Buddhists of Japan, but also for the Bon and Rnying-ma-pa schools of Tibet. Another interesting use of the alphabet is in the ‘Mantra Picking’ or ‘Mantra Extraction’ (Mantrodhāra) chapter that one finds in many tantras (see for example Miller 1966, 138–40; the Vowels and Consonants Tantra discussed below also has such a chapter). Here the alphabet is numerically encoded as part of a method for both concealing and preserving the letters of the mantras (I believe the intent was to prevent the corruptions that do all too commonly occur in the scribal reproduction of mantras).

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limit ourselves to underlining the new emphasis these yogic Buddhists placed on the human body, and on the bodily practices of breathing and posture which we normally associate with yoga, and the possibility of attaining Buddhist enlightenment in, as they say, ‘one body, one lifetime.’ In the Great Vehicle, accomplishing Buddhahood generally is said to take three incalculably long aeons (kalpa). The Vajra Vehicle sees itself as just a more effective way of bringing about the Great Vehicle’s aim of Complete Enlightenment. It was and remains, and this is a point on which Tibetans certainly insist, a part of the Great Vehicle. To demonstrate briefly the connection of yogic physiology with sound, phoneme, letter and alphabet, I would like to draw attention to a particular set of five couplets, of the type of song called dohā (‘couplet’). The story is told how the author, Vīnˢāpāda, born in a royal family, soon evinced a total disinterest in affairs of state. This disturbed his father the king, who was naturally yearning for an heir and successor. Vīnˢāpāda was, to use an ugly modern functionalist term, ‘dysfunctional.’40 All he wanted to do was play music. Then one day he happened to meet a spiritual teacher who assigned him the task of avoiding conceptualizations about the music, realizing the sameness of sounds he made with his vīnā and his experience of those same sounds. This might, and perhaps with slight reason, seem somehow similar to the Buddha’s Parable of the Lute (vīnā) contained in the Samyutta Nikāya. The Buddha said, suppose there was a king or a minister who had never heard the lute’s sound. One day he hears it for the first time and finds it quite entrancing. He orders his aides to locate the source of the sound, and they return with a lute. The king (or minister) insists that it is not the wooden instrument he wants, but only the sound. His helpers try to explain to him that there are a great number of parts (which they name), which must all go together when the player makes music with it. Then the king, in frantic search for the sound, splits the lute into splinters, burns the splinters in a fire, and releases the ashes to the wind or throws them in a swift river. Of course, he does not find the 40 This aspect of Vināpāda, as one of several of the eighty-four Great Siddhas who experienced one or another form of disability, has been drawn out in an article by a specialist in ‘Disability Services’ (Cohn 2002). For the Tibetan and Apabhramˢ śa texts of the song and Munidatta’s Sanskrit commentary on it, I have relied entirely on Kvaerne 1986, 145–50, with its very valuable philological discussions. This is a free and by no means a ‘final’ translation. It is based sometimes on the Tibetan and sometimes on the Apabhram śa version, and benefits from consultation with Herman Tieken, for the Apabhram śa vocabulary, and Tom Hunter, for musicological aspects.

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sound at any of these levels of destruction. The irony of the parable is surely intended. The deconstructive foolishness of the king is like the wisdom of the Buddhist meditator when engaged in analytical meditation, searching for the ‘I’ and not finding it in one place after another.41 The two different stories of Vīnˢāpāda and the foolish king are at the very least similar in connecting the music of the plucked string instrument with some kind of meditation practice. I do not think we have to take the Vīnˢāpāda story too seriously as history, since as often happens in India, it may well have been a reading of the song that inspired the biographical account. It, also, may be a parable, like that of the foolish king, only one parading as biography. But I would especially like to draw attention to the ‘unstruck sound’ as a well-known phenomenon in yogic meditation practice. It is a kind of roaring—I would like to think of it as a sort of phonemic soup—somehow prior to phonemes and inherent in the body. It is heard only after withdrawing the senses from their sense objects. I think it’s entirely possible to hear it without doing yoga, through sensory deprivation or simply by sitting quietly in a snow storm when all other sounds are stopped or absorbed by the snow. It is a sonic experience of the internal body, just as the channels described in yoga literature represent an internal meditative experience (whether sensed through some kind of internal sense of touch or through vision) of the body’s energetic currents, which may then be influenced or altered by various physical, verbal and mental exercises. At least I think that sums up part of the main message that ought to be heard in Vīnˢāpāda’s song, which is both densely phrased, so much so that it demands interpretation, and richly suggestive, even without plunging into the thicket of footnotes that nearly every word would seem to require from philological, musicological, Buddhological and yogic perspectives. Vīnāpāda’s Dohā Song The solar gourd is joined to the lunar strings, while the unstruck sound is the [vīnā’s] neck, the avadhūti* the bridge. \1/ *The central vein/channel in yogic physiology is called the avadhūti (‘the shaker’). The solar and lunar in the first line would then be the two side 41 For the Parable of the Lute, see Bodhi 2000, II:1253–4. For the parts of the lute, see Coomaraswamy 1930, 1931a, 1931b, 1937. Unfortunately, Coomaraswamy’s discussions about the Sanskrit and Pāli vocabulary for parts of the vīnā were not of much help for understanding those used in the Apabhram śa song which follows.

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Oh friend, the vīnā of Heruka* sounds. The sounds of the strings play themselves [wail] in sympathy [in play]. \2/ *The Tibetan for Heruka (Khrag-’thung) is interpreted most literally as ‘Blood-drinker,’ a wrathful manifestation of Buddha, including such ‘divine forms of high aspiration’ as Cakrasamvara and Hevajra.

The continuous sequence [of notes] equals the vowels and consonants. The ‘best of elephants’* first calculates the precise intervals [that create] an even tone [equal flavor]. \3/ *The superior musician, perhaps, or the yogin who has overcome duality as suggested in Munidatta’s commentary. Dasgupta (1976, 98) translates this verse very differently: “On hearing the tune of the Āli Kāli, the mighty elephant has entered Samarasa [‘equal flavor’].”

and then, when [the musician/yogin] presses the thirty-two strings* down on the wood and frets,** that’s when their sounds pervade the whole [instrument]. \4/ *Munidatta explicitly identifies the strings as the thirty-two principle channels in the yogic body, and the divine forms integrated in the body-manˢdˢala (compare the Hevajra Tantra; Snellgrove 1980, I 49, 73–74). **The early vīnā may have been unfretted, and the word translated as ‘fret’ literally means ‘small piece of wood’ (it could conceivably refer to the tuning pegs, or even the plectrum, which could be made of wood).

The king* does his dance, the goddess[es?] sings her song. This Buddha dance is particularly difficult to do. \5/ *There are two possible readings of the Apabhramśa original, one meaning ‘king’ (adopted in the Tibetan translation) and the other meaning ‘the one who has the Vajra.’ In either case Munidatta believes it refers to the author Vīnˢāpāda, who is celebrating his enlightenment through dance. It is true that the last lines of other dohā songs usually have an explicit reference to the author.

There is one major scriptural text (even if not included in the Tibetan canon) called the Vowels & Consonants Tantra,42 which is the one with 42 Phadampa 1979, I:6–114. This work was undoubtedly rare in the past, and this, rather than any doubts about its authenticity (and I know of hardly any such doubt ever being expressed in Tibetan literature; one 15th-century scholar named Bo-dong-pa had brief doubts, but soon realized his error . . .), would sufficiently explain why it was never included in the canonical Tanjur collection. Another copy has, however, been preserved within the collected works of Bo-dong-pa Phyogs-las-rnam-rgyal (1375–1451), and selections from it were published in the late nineteenth century (in the collection known

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which we will concern ourselves here, and another smaller scripture especially interesting for alphabet usage.43 Both were preserved in two distinct esoteric lineages from the South Indian teacher Phadampa, who died in Tibet in 1117 ce. They, like three other brief texts composed by obscure authors preserved in translation in the Tibetan Tanjur,44 take the Sanskrit alphabet as the primary locus in which complex microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondences take place. It ought to be emphasized that, while it is true that the alphabet plays a role in nearly every Buddhist tantra, while spiritual or meditational and magical uses of letters inevitably show up in every single one of them, the particular texts just mentioned grant it an exceptional centrality. I believe that these texts belong to a general hāt ha-yoga atmosphere, such as that which was associated with the Nāth Yogis of Hinduism as well as the Great Siddhas of the Buddhists’ Vajra Vehicle. It has long been known that the lists of their human teachers overlap.45 The Vowels & Consonants Tantra starts out like most Buddhist scriptures with long scene-setting chapters describing the Teacher and the audience, but it very soon betrays its phonemic approach which is sustained through its twenty-two chapters.

as the Gdams-ngag Mdzod). It was not entirely unavailable, just difficult to obtain. The words in the title for vowels and consonants, āli and kāli, are discussed in Miller 1966. They appear in the first verse of the main Tibetan grammatical treatise believed to have been written by Thon-mi Sambhot a in the first half of the seventh century. Since the same words are used by Vīnāpāda and a few other Dohā songs, it would appear that they are simply Apabhram śa equivalents of Sanskrit ādi and kādi, which mean ‘A-series’ and ‘KA-series’ (so it is not the case that āli and kāli are “not known so far from Indian sources”—Scharfe 2003, 157). As yet I know of no Indian instances of āli and kāli that would beyond all doubt predate the tenth century or so (although they do occur in the Hevajra Tantra, which some date to the eighth century), making their use in a seventhcentury Tibetan work rather puzzling (see Miller 1966, 138 & 146). 43 The Samatāvastupradīpa (Toh. no. 2319). The title could be translated ‘Lamp of the Expanse of Sameness.’ It is one among nine texts known collectively as the ‘Nine Lamps’ which were transmitted to Tibetans by Phadampa in one of his earlier visits to Tibet. They were translated by an obscure Kashmiri named Jñānaguhya, who is believed to have been a pupil who accompanied Phadampa on the same visit. 44 The following three brief texts are located together in the Derge Tanjur: Gandha’s Ālikālimantrajñāna [or Ālikālimantrakrama?] (Toh. no. 2404), Dhamadhuma’s Kālimārgabhāvanā (Toh. no. 2405), and Sāgara’s Samvaracakrālikālimahāyogabhāvanā (Toh. no. 2406). It seems probable, given the names of the authors, that these texts are connected to Caryā yogis who belonged to the immediate circle or later followers of the Great Siddha Kānha, based in, but not limited to, northeastern India (Dhama and Dhuma were two immediate disciples of his; see Templeman 1989, 53). 45 Tucci 1930, 138 ff.

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The point of departure is the sacred Volume. The Teacher, the Buddha, says, “Whoever sees the Volume, their faults are purified, their qualities completed.” The audience asks, “What is this Volume?” Part of His answer: “It is the Volume of mind inscribed with the drawn [letters] of memory,” and later on the Teacher declares, “All dharmas are vowels and consonants,” and then, “Their substance is transcendent insight (its dawning door being the letter ‘A’), their nature is unimpeded (the dawning door being the ‘OMˢ ’), and their identifying mark is nonduality (the dawning door being the dhāranī).” Then the Teacher announces the five aspects of the phoneme and/or letter: 1. “That of shape that is drawn.” (Both visible letters and the visible shapes in the world.) 2. “That of material that is amazing.” (Both the writing media and the elements of the world). 3. “That of meaning that is understood/realized.” (Ordinary communication as well as the teachings on the Path to Liberation.) 4. “That of words that are illustrative/indicative.” (Mantras, primarily, are at issue here.) 5. “That of figures of speech (or similes) that are appropriate.” After saying this, the Teacher smiled and did not say a word. Chapter Six opens with the Teacher simply pronouncing, fully amplified “with a lion’s roar,” the fifty letters of the alphabet. The Buddhas in the ten directions of space respond, each echoing back a different string of letters. Just to give an example, the Buddhas in the eastern direction pronounce the letters ka, ca, t a, ta, pa, ya, śa, i, ī, and r. Later on, the ten blue letters of the air-element are correlated with, among bodily organs, the intestines and lungs; in the external world, the birds and Asuras; deities of the Vajra Family; the ritual goal of accomplishing peaceful results. Still later, the air phonemes that came from the east are qualified as being fine and stopped up . . .46

46

It was a paper once delivered by David Shulman (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) that first made me aware that some rather late South Indian theorists of poetics also had ideas about the meanings of particular phonemes, ideas that may presume prior discussions on the use of mantras (see, for example, Sarasvati 1963). Although once widespread in many cultures, theories about the meaningfulness of isolated phonemes have largely fallen into disrepute. Still, arguments occasionally surface in modern discussions about

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In general, to simplify a large and complex pictures the points of articulation are conceived as being spatially distributed in the mouth and throat cavities in a kind of manda la pattern which, in fact, if we think about it, might well be the case. Just like the positions of the eyes in various yogic gazes, which have a role secondary only to the phonemes in this text, the pronunciation of phonemes by the yogin or yoginī has direct effect on the flows and configurations of winds in the yogic body. (To put it in a poetic and perhaps justifiably convoluted way, the flow of the internal motions—thinking, feeling, emotion, motivation and the like—outward into facial or verbal expression can be made to flow back in the opposite direction and reconfigure the yogin’s body in the form of psychosomatic responses.47 Conscious control of what would under ordinary non-yogic circumstances be externalizing expression, including elements of sound such as tone, musicality, repetitions of phonemes, etc., can effect transformations, stoppages or proliferations of those internal motions in the yogin. [Audience response] theory and theater are both enacted on the single stage of the body, and the actor has fully assumed the role, is completely ‘in character.’) Later, in Chapter 16, each phoneme is correlated with a specific yogic gaze. After all, to point out something so simple and obvious that few people have ever consciously considered it, the eyes and vocal organs are the two semi-autonomous areas of the head that move and express things through their movement . . . (expression through hand movement is not prominent in this particular text, although nearly universal to Buddhist tantra, tantric text and ritual alike, in the form of gestures called mudrās).48 Semi-explicit

the meanings of language (for example, in English language, how many adjectives used to qualify snakes begin with, or otherwise contain, sibilants?). Their relevance in realms of poetics and religion could remain regardless of what the linguists and grammarians, with their different aims, might have to say (compare Padoux’s comments in Alper 1991, 305). One might with reason be reminded of the wondrous ideas of the Irish poet who went by the name of AE (i.e., George William Russell, in his 1918 book entitled Candle of Vision, not presently available to me), although it is quite conceivable he was inspired or influenced by Indian sources. 47 In fact, the lunar vein, the rasanā, is explicitly associated with forward or outward flowing movements, while the solar lalanā is described as ‘taking in’ (or even ‘eating’). See Bagchi 1975, 65. The classic work on Indian dramatic sciences, the Nāt yaśāstra, chapter 8, verses 38–125, has a detailed analysis of dramatic gazes and eye expressions, enumerating thirty-six types. Bharata’s interest, as a dramatist, is in eye expressions that convey the actor’s emotional states to the audience, while in yogic contexts the same or similar gazes are used to control the yogin’s own mental states and subtle physiological movements associated with them. 48 To my knowledge, the only work which explicitly underlines the continuities

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in the text is a theory of why the pronunciation of mantras by the yogin ought to be effective both in the body and in the world outside. We should end with a few historically structured reflections, since the very word ‘conclusion’ has a frightening ring. My own thoughts keep going back and forth on this and that detail, simply refusing to settle down on any pat conclusion. The early Great Vehicle scriptures had a basically two-pronged approach to the letters of the alphabet. One of these makes use of that most rudimentary pedagogical device, the Abecedarium, still used for teaching children the alphabet in many cultures.49 The beginning of learning, and particularly of the education of an, in some sense, all-knowing Buddha, is after all a very weighty matter that was not, and so should not be, taken lightly. The other connects the letters with the scriptures using a conscious mnemonic technique, which furthermore surely was already in early times conceived of as supplying mysterious meditative access points to Buddhist truths. In these approaches we can see strong connections with the sacred biography of the Buddha and with the preservation of Buddha’s Word for the purposes of oral transmission, ritual recitation, and, finally, the sacred Volume which formed a cult object from the very beginnings of the Great Vehicle.50 Already at this stage we may note connections made between the letters or syllables and the elements of the Buddhist universe called dharmas, and at the same time a less explicit connection of letters with the physical form of the Buddha, specifically the sculpted image of the Buddha as focus of cult that was emerging during the same period in both Gandhāra and Mathurā.51 This basically devotional use of letters,

between the classic work of Indian drama (also including dance, music and aesthetic theory) by Bharata with the expressive elements of gesture, posture and facial expression as found in the Buddhist Vajra Vehicle is Bhattacharyya 1987, although there are some very significant observations, too, in Onians 2002. In my opinion much more thinking ought to be done along these lines. 49 Mukherjee 1999, 303, gives an example from contemporary Bengal, in which children are taught the letters by means of an Abecedarium that consists of complete sentences (not just words) beginning in turn with each of the letters in alphabetic order. 50 On this point it would be worthwhile to recall the story of Sadāprarudita’s quest for the Volume of the Perfecton of Insight Sūtra, which after great hardship he finds enshrined and sealed with seven seals (Conze 1975, 277–99). The text in which this story is told is the very same text that is found in the story, sealed with the seals. 51 This ought to lead us into a consideration of the age old Buddhist practice of ‘calling the Buddha to mind’ or ‘recollecting the Buddha’ (Buddhānusmrti), on which see particularly Harrison 1993. This practice may involve everything from contemplating the Buddha’s abstract qualities to actual techniques leading to the visualization of the

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I believe, led very directly and swiftly into the more contractual form of the dhāranī-sūtras where strings of syllables perform their work mainly because of a promise of their effectiveness made by the Buddha in these same scriptures. The step from the covenantal to the yogic may seem a simple one to take, since practically every Buddhologist believes in a rough and general way that the dhāranī was necessary precursor to the Buddhist use of mantras.52 However, I believe the crude historical picture might be finessed and developed in interesting new ways in the future. I do not want to imply that Buddhists were living in a vacuum, although for simplicity’s sake we have at times been speaking as if they were. Surely they received from, as well as contributed to, a broader yogic movement taking place in India in the last centuries of the first millennium and the first centuries of the second. The letter-based yogic speculations of the Vowels & Consonants Tantra are clearly similar in kind to those found in the Śaivite Hindu tantra called the Mālinīvijayottara, for example.53 Still, chronological uncertainties prevent us from simple conclusions about priority. I would say that in the yogic phase of our historical picture, we may notice some aspects of earlier alphabet usage newly encased in a yogic context. To give examples, in the Vowels & Consonants Tantra when the Teacher recites the Sanskrit alphabet, it probably is with good reason that we are taken back for a moment to the story of the young Siddhārtha’s visit to school. And when the Tantra speaks of the dawning of dhāranī access points, or states that “All dharmas are vowels and consonants,” these seem to be conscious re-articulations of ideas from the Perfection of Insight sūtras.54 What is freshly expressed is a quite Buddha’s physical form (including the marks and signs mentioned earlier), as well as complexes of various such practices. 52 Tucci 1999, 224, for example. 53 This tantra figures very largely in Padoux 1990, a work (originally published in French in 1964 as a doctoral dissertation) highly recommended for those interested in investigating or comparing Hindu tantra use of letters and phonemes, as is MullerOrtega 1992. 54 And there are a number of excellent reasons for locating Phadampa firmly within the orbit of the Perfection of Insight sūtras. The Vowels and Consonants Tantra is immediately preceded by the Heart Sūtra (translated in Conze 1972; perhaps one the most popular among the shorter Perfection of Insight sūtras, it is the very first text in the five [originally four] volume collection in which this Tantra was preserved). The Tantra is sealed with seven seals, just as is the Volume in the story of Sādaprarudita’s quest. Phadampa, although apparently born in the coastal part of present-day Andhra Pradesh in southern India, did his early monastic studies at Vikramaśīla in Bihar, which had a curriculum emphasizing the Perfection of Insight sūtras and their commentaries by Haribhadra (late ninth century).

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sophisticated linkage of the letters with elements of the external world and of the letters with the internal, yogically experienced body. And all in the service of transforming our instruments of engagement with the world, not just the body, but also speech and mind. References Allon, Mark 1997. “The Oral Composition and Transmission of Early Buddhist Texts.” In Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti, eds. P. Connolly & S. Hamilton, 39–61. London: Luzac Oriental. Alper, Harvey P. 1991. Understanding Mantras. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra 1975. “Some Technical Terms of the Tantras: Candra-Sūrya.” In Studies in the Tantras, Part 1, ed. P.C. Bagchi, 61–73. Calcutta: University of Calcutta. Bayes, Gwendolyn 1983. The Voice of the Buddha: The Beauty of Compassion. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing. Bentor, Yael 1995. “On the Indian Origin of the Tibetan Practice of Depositing Relics and Dhāranīs in Stūpas and Images.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2:248–61. ———— 1996. Consecration of Images and Stūpas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Bernhard, Franz 1965. Udānavarga [Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden 10]. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Bhattacharyya, D.C. 1987. “Dramatic Content of Tantric Buddhist Art and Rituals.” In Indological Studies: Essays in Memory of Shri S.P. Singhal, ed. Devendra Handa, 93–104. Delhi: Caxton Publications. Bodhi, Bhikkhu 2000. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Sam yutta Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Boucher, Daniel 1991. “The Pratītyasamutpādagāthā and Its Role in the Medieval Cult of the Relics.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14.1:1–27. Braarvig, Jens n.d. “Bhavya on Mantras: Apologetic Endeavours on Behalf of the Mahāyāna.” Pre-published draft courtesy of the author; the published version, with identical title, is not presently available to me: 1997. Aspects of Buddhism [Studia Indologiczne no. 4], Oriental Institute (Warsaw), ed. Agata Bareja-Starzynska & Marek Mejor, 31–40. ———— 1985. “Dhāranˢī and Pratibhāna: Memory and Eloquence of the Bodhisattvas.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 8.1:17–29. ———— 1993. Aksayamatinirdeśasūtra: Edition of Extant Manuscripts with an Index. Oslo: Solum Forlag. Brough, John 1977. “The Arapacana Syllabary in the Old Lalita-vistara.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 40:85–95. Cohn, Jim 2002. “Mahamudra Disability: Ancient India-Tibetan Social Theory.” Disability Studies Quarterly 22.2:175–81. Conze, Edward 1972. Buddhist Wisdom Books: Containing The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra. New York: Harper Torchbooks. ———— 1973. Perfect Wisdom: The Short Prajñāpāramitā Texts. London: Luzac & Co. ———— 1975. The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and Its Verse Summary. Bolinas, California: Four Seasons Foundation. ———— 1984. The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, with the Divisions of the Abhisamayālakāra. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

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Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1930. “The Parts of a Vīnˢā.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 50:244–53. ———— 1931a. “The Old Indian Vīnˢā.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 51.1:47–50. ———— 1931b. “Upavīnˢa.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 51.3:284–5. ———— 1937. “The Parts of a Vīnˢā.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 57.1:101–3. Cousins, L. S. 1997. “Aspects of Esoteric Southern Buddhism.” In Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti, eds. P. Connolly & S. Hamilton, 185–207. London: Luzac Oriental. Cüppers, Christoph and Per K. Sørensen 1998. A Collection of Tibetan Proverbs and Sayings: Gems of Tibetan Wisdom and Wit [Tibetan and Indo-Tibetan Studies series no. 7]. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Dasgupta, Shashibhusan 1976. Obscure Religious Cults. Calcutta: Firma KLM Private Ltd. Dreyfus, Georges B.J. 2003. The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk. Berkeley: University of California Press. Durt, Hubert 1994. “DA.” In Hôbôgirin: Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Bouddhisme d’après les sources chinoises et japanaises 6:565–72. Tokyo: Maison Franco-Japanaise. Emmerick, R.E. 1996. The Sūtra of Golden Light: Being a Translation of the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasūtra. Oxford: The Pali Text Society. Gethin, Rupert 1993. “The Mātikās: Memorization, Mindfulness, and the List.” In In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, ed. J. Gyatso, 149–72. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Goonesekere, Lakshmi R. 1968. “Bhānaka.” In Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, ed. G.P. Malalasekera, 2.4:688–90. Ceylon: Government Press. Gyatso, Janet 1993. “Letter Magic: A Peircean Perspective on the Semiotics of Rdo Grubchen’s Dhāranˢī Memory.” In In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, ed. J. Gyatso, 173–213. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Haran, Menahem 1985. Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Harrison, Paul 1993. “Commemoration and Identification in Buddhānusmrˢti.” In In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, ed. J. Gyatso, 215–238. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Hirakawa Akira 1990. A History of Indian Buddhism from Śākyamuni to Early Mahāyāna. Tr. Paul Groner. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hopkins, Jeffrey 1985. “Reply to Alex Wayman’s Review of The Yoga of Tibet.” The Tibet Society Journal 5:73–95. Jackson, David 1996. “The bstan rim (‘Stages of the Doctrine’) and Similar Graded Expositions of the Bodhisattva’s Path.” In Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, eds. J. Cabezón & R. Jackson, 229–43. Ithaca: Snow Lion. de Jong, Jan W. 1954. “L’épisode d’Asita dans le Lalitavistara.” In Asiatica: Festschrift Friedrich Weller, 312–25. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz. Kapstein, Matthew 2001. Reason’s Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Khan, Muhammad Ashraf Khan 1993. Gandhara Sculptures in the Swat Museum. Saidu Sharif, Afghanistan: Archaeological Museum. Khettry, Sarita 2001. “Origin of the Image of Mañjuśrī.” Journal of the Asiatic Society [Calcutta] 43.4:22–42. Kölver, Bernhard 1992. “Das Symbol evam .” Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 16:101–7. Konow, Sten 1933. “The Arapacana Alphabet and the Sakas.” Acta Orientalia 12.1:13–24. Kvaerne, Per 1986. An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs. Bangkok: White Orchid Press.

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Lamotte, Étienne 1988. History of Indian Buddhism from the Origins to the Śaka Era. Tr. S. Webb-Boin. Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste. Lévi, Sylvain 1905. “La liste des écritures dans le Lalitavistara, comparée aux textes paralléles en chinois.” Bulletin de l’École Français d’Extrême Orient 4:289–90. ———— 1915. “Sur la récitation primitive des textes bouddhiques.” Journal Asiatique, 11th series 5:401–47. Malalasekera, G.P. 1966. Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, Ceylon: Government Press. Martin, Dan 1987. “Illusion Web: Locating the Guhyagarbha Tantra in Buddhist Intellectual History.” In Silver on Lapis: Tibetan Literary Culture and History, ed. C.I. Beckwith, 175–220. Bloomington, Indiana: The Tibet Society. ———— 2000. “Comparing Treasuries: Mental States and Other Mdzod-phug Lists and Passages with Parallels in Abhidharma Works by Vasubandhu and Asanˆga, or in Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, a Progress Report.” In New Horizons in Bon Studies [Senri Ethnological Reports, no. 15], eds. S.G. Karmay & Y. Nagano, 21–88. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. Martin, Dan, Tseyang Changngoba, Namgyal Nyima Dagkar, Per Kvaerne, Dondrup Lhagyal, Donatella Rossi, Tsering Thar 2003. A Catalogue of the Bon Kanjur [Bon Studies series no. 8], ed. D. Martin; project coordinator, Per Kvaerne; series editor, Yasuhiko Nagano. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. Meisezahl, R.O. 1968. “Über zwei Mdo-ma‫ ר‬Redaktionen und ihre Editionen in Tibet und China.” Zentralasiatische Studien 2:67–139. Miller, Roy Andrew 1966. “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Āli Kāli as Grammatical Terms in Tibet.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 26:125–47. Mitra, Rajendralala 1981. The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal. New Delhi: Cosmo Publications. Reprint of 1882 edition. Mukherjee, B.N. 1999. “Arapacana: A Mystic Buddhist Script.” In Tantric Buddhism: Centennial Tribute to Dr. Benoytosh Bhattacharyya, eds. N.N. Bhattacharyya & A. Ghosh, 303–17. New Delhi: Manohar. Muller-Ortega, Paul E. 1992. “Tantric Meditation: Vocalic Beginnings.” In Ritual and Speculation in Early Tantrism: Studies in Honor of André Padoux, ed. T. Goudriaan, 227–45. Albany: State University of New York Press. Naveh, Joseph 1997. Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Paleography. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Onians, Isabelle 2002. “Tantric Buddhism and Aesthetics: Art and Morality.” In Impressions of Bhutan and Tibetan Art: Tibetan Studies III, eds. J. Ardussi and H. Blezer, 113–23. Leiden: Brill. Padoux, André 1990. Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras. Tr. Jacques Gontier. Albany: State University of New York Press. Phadampa [Pha-dam-pa Sangs-rgyas] 1979. A-li Ka-li Gsang-ba Bsam-gyis-mi-khyabpa Chu-klung Chen-po’i Rgyud (The Tantra of the Inconceivable Secret Great Flood of Vowels and Consonants). In The Tradition of Pha Dampa Sangyas: A Treasured Collection of his Teachings Transmitted by T[h]ug[s]-sras Kun-dga’, ed. B.N. Aziz, 1:6–114. Thimphu, Bhutan: Kunsang Tobgey. Repsher, Brian 1998. The Rite of Church Dedication in the Early Medieval Era. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Rijal, Babu Krishna 1979. Archaeological Remains of Kapilavastu, Lumbini and Devadaha. Kathmandu, Nepal: Educational Enterprises. Salomon, Richard 1990. “New Evidence for a Gāndhārī Origin of the Arapacana Syllabary.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.2:255–73. ———— 1993. “An Additional Note on Arapacana.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.2:275–6. Sarasvati, D. C. 1963. “The Mystic Significance of Letters: Their Application to the Art of Poetic Composition.” The Adyar Library Bulletin 27:89–115. Scharfe, Hartmut 2003. “Review of Pieter C. Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, Volume Two.” Indo-Iranian Journal 46:156–60.

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Schmithausen, Lambert 1997. Maitrī and Magic: Aspects of the Buddhist Attitude toward the Dangerous in Nature. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Skilling, Peter 1992. “The Raksˢā Literature of the Śrāvakayāna.” Journal of the Pali Text Society 16:109–82. ———— 1996. “An Arapacana Syllabary in the Bhadrakalpika-sūtra.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116.3:522–3. Sna-nam Btsun-pa Skal-bzang-chos-kyi-rgya-mtsho 1994. Sangs-rgyas Bcom-ldan-’daskyi Rnam-par Thar-pa Rmad-du Byung-ba Mdzad-pa ’Khrul-ba Med-par Brjodpa Bde-bar Gshegs-pa’i Spyod-pa Mchog-gi Gter (Treasure of the Supreme Life of the Sugata: Unerring Account of the Deeds in His Wondrous Biography), Xining, Amdo: Mtsho-sngon Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang. Snellgrove, David L. 1980. The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study. London: Oxford University Press. Taube, Manfred 1968. “Zur Textgeschichte einiger Gzunˆs-bsdus-Ausgaben.” Zentralasiatische Studien 2:55–66. Templeman, David 1989. Tāranātha’s Life of Krs nācārya/Kānha. Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. Tucci, Giuseppe 1930. “Animadversiones Indicae.” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, new series 26:125–160. ———— 1999: Tibetan Painted Scrolls. Bangkok: SDI Publications [repr. of 1949 edition]. Ui, Hakuju, et al. 1934. A Complete Catalogue of the Tibetan Buddhist Canons. Tokyo: Tohoku University. Upasak, C. S. 2001. History and Paleography of Kharostī Script. Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. Verhagen, Pieter Cornelis 2001. A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, Volume Two: Assimilation into Indigenous Scholarship. Leiden: Brill. ———— 2002. “Studies in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Hermeneutics (3): Grammatical Models in Buddhist Formulas.” In Religion & Secular Culture in Tibet, ed. H. Blezer, 143–61. Leiden: Brill. Wayman, Alex 1957. “Contributions Regarding the Thirty-two Characteristics of the Great Person.” Sino-Indian Studies 4.3–4:243–60. ———— 1975. “The Significance of Mantras, from the Veda down to Buddhist Tantric Practice.” The Adyar Library Bulletin 39:65–89 [repr., and perhaps more accessible, in 1984. Buddhist Insight: Essays by Alex Wayman, ed. G. Elder, 413–30. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass].

PART THREE

SELFTRANSFORMATION

POWERS OF LANGUAGE IN KABBALAH: COMPARATIVE REFLECTIONS Jonathan Garb To say more than human things with human voice, That cannot be; to say human things with more Than human voice, that also, cannot be; To speak humanly from the height or from the depth Of human things, that is acutest speech —Wallace Stevens, “Chocorua to its Neighbor”, Collected Poems1

I. Introduction This article shall describe two kinds of power 2 of language—sound and breath—which are discussed in Kabbalistic writing. The assumption that language, and especially sacral language such as Hebrew (which is often described in Jewish literature as Lashon Hakodesh—the holy tongue), is replete with power can be found in numerous Kabbalistic texts, as well as in many works belonging to other genres of Jewish writing.3 The latter include Talmudic/Midrashic literature,4 Halachah (Law),5 Philosophy,6 Biblical exegesis,7 Mussar (Ethics)8 and Magic.9 At the risk of generalization, one can postulate that the belief in the power of language is a core 1

Stevens 1967, 300. For the methodology of “kinds of power”, which treats power as a varied phenomenon, instead of attempting a single definition of this concept, see Hillman 1995. For “kinds of power” in Kabbalah, see Garb 2001, 45–71. 3 One of the earliest sources of the idea of the power of language is Sefer Yezˢira; on this book, see Liebes 2001. 4 See Urbach 1975, II:733–40; Scholem 1972, 69–77; Holdredge 1996, 198–201, 317–21. 5 See, e.g., the commentary of Rabbenu Nissim on BT Nedarim 2A, on the conventional nature of languages besides Hebrew. [All translations from the standard Vilna edition of the Talmud are my own]. Statements such as these underlie numerous legal discussions relating to the laws of vows, oaths and other “speech acts”. 6 See, e.g., the references to the views of Maimonidies and R. Yehudah ha-Levi (author of the Kuzari) below. 7 See, e.g., the opinion of Nahmanidies, discussed below. 8 For the modern (19th–20th centuries) Mussar movement, see, e.g., the interesting discussions found in Bloch 1953, I:41–2. 9 See, e.g., Janowitz 1989; Lesses 1998; Harari 1997/98. 2

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component of numerous forms10 of Jewish religiosity and culture. Furthermore, the belief in the power of language, and its associated forms of discourse and practice, is in no way endemic to Jewish culture. Not only can similar ideas be found in relation to Arabic or Sanskrit, but it can be easily shown that much of Jewish discourse on this issue was formulated in response to, and in polemic against,11 parallel beliefs found in other religions.12 These comparative issues will concern us in the later section of the article, and at this point I wish to demarcate the kinds of power which shall be explored subsequently, and distinguish them from those which cannot be addressed here. Firstly, I will focus on belief in the power of non-semantic aspects of language furthest removed from the communicative and conventional linguistic modes. We shall not deal with the power of text, narrative, or even with the power attributed to chosen units of language, be they phrases or names. These issues have been examined at some length in modern research on Jewish mysticism,13 though of course this topic is far from exhausted. Secondly, even within the broad area of the power of non-semantic language, I will not take up the powers supposedly created by the atomization—or in contemporary parlance, deconstruction—of language into its constitutive elements—such as phonemes, syllables or letters.14 In my view, when a Kabbalist claims that the full power of language is accessed by the re-combination of the letters of a divine name or some other word, this practice still retains a certain semantic valence. Practices such as recitation of letters, as opposed to entire words, or manipulations of the letters, such as

10 However this assumption is not shared by some philosophical writers, most notably Maimonidies, who held that even the Hebrew language is conventional, and has no powers beyond the human facility of communication, see Maimonidies 2002, Part 3, Chapter 8. Cf. the response of thirteenth-century Kabbalist Moses Nahmanidies (1959, I:492 [Exodus 30, 13]). 11 See Alony 1980. 12 Of course, Jewish discourse on the power of Hebrew cannot be reduced to the polemic with Muslim ideas of the holiness of Arabic. The roots of the Judaic view of language can be traced to early strata of the Bible, such as the account of creation by divine fiat. These Biblical roots also influenced Christian ideas, as evidenced by the notion of the Logos in John. However, the idea of the holiness of a particular language did not tally with later ecumenical trends, so that (as a whole) the idea of a chosen tongue developed in Islam and Judaism more than in Christianity. On Judeo-Christian views of the power of language, see Stroumsa 2003. 13 See Scholem 1972; Idel 1992; Pedaya 2001, 73–6, 92–6. 14 These kinds of power have been addressed at length by Moshe Idel (Idel 1992; Idel 1989).

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numerology, can be seen as alternative forms of semantic meaning, or even as attempts to recapture the semantic fullness of divine language as opposed to ordinary human language.15 Rather, I shall discuss two kinds of power attributed to radically nonsemantic dimensions of language, dimensions not to be found within most modern understandings of the nature of signification. The first is the power created by the voice, and by the sound produced within speech acts. The second is the power of breath, which naturally accompanies the production of this sound. These dimensions of the power of language have been addressed to a relatively lesser extent in existing research on Kabbalah. It is important to stress that the issue of breath and language has not yet been made the focus of any research. From a comparative point of view, and especially in terms of possible resonance with Tantric ideas and practices, as suggested below, this lacuna is especially significant. In the course of the discussion, we shall find that the commonality between these two forms of power often lies in the underlying assumption of isomorphism between the human and the divine. In other words, human voice is seen as an isomorphic extension16 of the divine voice and human breath stands in a similar relationship to divine breath. One should differentiate the notion of isomorphism from the similar idea of a continuum, as in the idea of the ‘great chain of being’.17 Two entities can be isomorphic, and thus in a reciprocal relationship, even if there is no spatial or structural continuity between them. The idea that an entity can affect an isomorphic entity,18 or even extend it and manifest it, can be likened to the physical idea of action at a distance, without necessarily traversing a continuum. As a final introductory caveat before describing the kinds of power themselves, I wish to stress that we are not dealing here with the historical narrative of the development of these two themes in Kabbalistic writing, its roots and offshoots. Rather, this is a phenomenological exploration of certain cultural forms, containing both discourse and practice, which pertain to the nature and efficacy of language. This form

15

See Idel 2002, 13, 423–7. See Lorberbaum 2004. 17 See Lovejoy 1960. For the Jewish context, see Blumenthal 1987; Mopsik 1993, 402, 435; Idel 2005. 18 See Idel 1988, 173–91, as well Garb 2004, 122–41. 16

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of exploration can better facilitate comparison with other cultural contexts than a detailed examination of the internal history of Kabbalistic ideas of language, without in any way detracting from the importance of historical studies. This being said, I shall not refrain from observations on questions of influence and context where it serves the thrust of the discussion. At this point, it suffices to observe that the themes presented here, like much of Kabbalistic discourse on the power of language, are mostly the products of relatively later developments in Jewish mystical thought, most markedly Hasidism.19 These can be opposed to earlier (more Shamanic as it were) forms of Jewish mysticism,20 which tended towards visual, rather than linguistic and auditory, kinds of power.21 II. Sound There is nothing in the world which does not have a sound (Zohar 1, 92A).

Our first kind of power is that of Kol—a Hebrew word with two closely related meanings: sound and voice. In the texts to be examined here, and others like them, it is important to question which (or possibly both) meaning is being employed in any given case. A second problem related to the power of the voice concerns various ideologies crystallized around the supposedly Jewish approach to the relationship between sound and power. One such ideology is that of silence: I cannot here trace the history of the notion (which is not representative in any way of Jewish writing) that silence is in some way superior to sound.22 Suffice it here to cite a representative modern formulation, that of Edmond Jabes, who wrote that: “The divine utterance is silenced as soon as it is pronounced. But we cling to its resonant ring, our inspired words.”23

19 I hope to develop this suggestion at greater length in a future study of power in modern Kabbalah. 20 See Pedaya 2002, 49–69, 77–8, 86–9, 94–5; Pedaya 2003, 130. 21 See Garb 2001, 67–8. For a detailed discussion of the salience of the visual dimension in Jewish Mysticism, see Wolfson 1994. 22 Notable representatives of this approach are Maimonidies (see Maimonidies 2002, Part 1, Chapter 59) and the famous twentieth-century mystic, Rabbi A.I. Kook, in his commentary on the letters and vowels (Kook 2003, 181. See also Schwartz 2001, 190). See also the Talmudic statement (BT Hagigah 14A) that the Torah was “given in a whisper”. This text seems to go against the general sense that the revelation of the Torah was a “sound event”, as we shall see below. 23 Jabes 1991, 85.

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Here, words are an attempt to recapture what some modern poets have described as “the sound of silence”.24 However, again, this claim, which subordinates sound to silence, is not by any means representative of Kabbalistic writing, nor indeed of the main body of Jewish writing, in so far as we can make any general statement with regard to the latter. A second ideology is that which opposes the voice, or discourse in general, to power. As opposed to these ideologies, numerous texts echo the following claim—powerfully expressed by Paul Valery: The power of poetic language (as opposed to abstract thought) is not in its sens (sense) but in its son (sound).25 This idea is often connected to the Biblical verse: “Kol Hashem BeKoach”26—the voice of God is powerful, or literally in power. Here, God reveals himself as voice or sound and as power. It is worth tracing the subsequent unfolding of this idea through its roots in the Talmudic/Midrashic literature. An oft-cited Midrash,27 discussing the voice of God heard at Sinai, uses this verse in order to expound on the plural nature of revelation: “The voice28 of God in power,29 it does not say ‘its power’ [i.e. the power of the divine voice] but ‘in power’—the power of each and every one [. . .] each and every one according to their power”. The claim here is that revelation is differentiated according to subjective capacity.30 The divine voice is not an impersonal power, which overwhelms the subject 31—as in Otto’s understanding of the

24

The Biblical source is: I Kgs. 19.12. See Greene 1997, 256–7. 26 Ps. 29.4. 27 Exodus Rabbah, 5, 9. See Holdredge 1996, 282–4, 309–10; Heschel 1965, 269. 28 According to the continuation of the Midrash (on three sounds heard throughout the world: the sea [or sun, depending on how one reads the text], rain, and the soul when leaving the body at the hour of death. A parallel text [BT Yomah 20B] substitutes the sound of the masses of Rome (vox populi) as one of the three sounds) kol is understood here more as pure sound than as a voice, which explains the need to modulate it so as to protect the recipient of this sound. 29 According to various Midrashic texts (e.g. Mechilta De Rabbi Shimeon 19, 16) these voices described in Psalms were the very voices heard at Sinai. 30 A very similar idea is expressed in visual terms: see Pesikta de Rav Kahana 12, 25, and Holdredge 1996, 283, 310, as well as Idel 2002, pp. 19–53. Cf. also the images of light in a parallel in BT Sanhedrin 34A. 31 Cf., however, the reading offered by Gotlieb-Zorenberg 2001, p. 269. Her reading is somewhat supported by Exodus Rabbah 29, 8, where the divine voice is described as depleting the power of Israel. This notion may in turn be compared to the idea that the study of Torah weakens one’s (physical) power, as found for example in a passage BT Sanhedrin 26B (part of which shall be discussed below). 25

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tremendum32—but is rather adapted to the power of each individual. As the Midrash goes on to say: even to the limited ability of pregnant women to absorb force. Or as the Midrash puts it, Moses according to his power, and others according to their power. A beautiful elaboration in the Midrash further develops the intimate nature of the experience of the voice according to the personal power of the subject. The Midrash describes the taste of the Manna, which was modulated according to the capacity of each individual: While young men indeed experienced it as bread, suckling babes tasted it as their mothers milk, and the ill as porridge. By means of this tactile example,33 the Midrash then argues: if the Manna could transform itself in this manner, than all the more so that the voice of God, which was full of power (shehaya bekoach), could change for each individual. In other words, divine power is of necessity polyphonic. Power is manifested by its versatile capacity for modulation34 and accommodation rather than by its impersonal nature. This idea is echoed in another Midrash: “What is ‘the voice of God in power’? how can one say this, for even the power of one angel cannot be withstood by any creature [. . .] and of God of whom it is written: ‘I fill heaven and earth’,35 all the more so! So how then does He need to speak powerfully? But rather this was a voice that Moses could bear.”36 In Talmudic/Midrashic literature, the moment of sonorous individual revelation is not regarded as a unique and transient experience. Rather, it can be continuously recaptured in the practice of the community. For example, in a section replete with mystical and theurgical material, the Talmud37 states that: Whoever enjoys the meal of a bridegroom and does not make him joyful transgresses against five voices38 as it is said:39 “The voice of joy and the voice of happiness, the voice of a bridegroom and the voice of a bride, the voice of those who call: praise the Lord.” And if he does make him joyful, what is his reward? Rabbi Joshua Son of Levi said: He gains the Torah

32 See Otto 1958, 19–23, 190–3. In many ways, Otto’s account does not reflect the approaches found in numerous Jewish texts. 33 Cf. Song of Songs Rabbah 5, 16, on God “sweetening” his word so that it could be withstood by the people. 34 Cf. Exodus Rabbah, 4, 1. 35 Jer. 23.24. 36 Midrash Tanhuma, Yitro 11. 37 BT Berakhot 6B. 38 6) 7%3 4-. This can also be rendered as: “neglects five voices”. 39 Jer. 33.11.

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which was given with five voices, as it is written:40 “And on the third day [. . .] there were voices [. . .] and the voice of the Shofar 41 grew stronger Moses spoke, and God answered him with his voice [bekol].”

In this text, revelation of Torah, as a plurality of voices, is re-attained by the individual who adds his voice to a communal celebration. As the revelation at Sinai is itself described in Talmudic/Midrashic literature as a wedding celebration,42 the wedding feast is seen as an opportunity to recapture the moment of individual access to the voices of the Torah. However, whilst in texts such as these the power of the divine voice adapts itself smoothly to the capacity of the recipient, this is not always the case. In what I term the “passive model”43 of the power of voice, the divine voice powerfully takes over the human voice, creating a possession-like experience of automatic speech. This model can also be traced back to Talmudic/Midrashic literature,44 and was subsequently developed and gradually altered in Kabbalah and Hasidism. A classical45 statement belonging to the passive model is: “The Shekhinah spoke from the throat of Moses.” Here Moses, as an exemplar of the selected individual, is a passive medium for the divine voice. The emphasis here is on the transparency of Moses, rather than on his personal power.46 The divine voice does not adapt itself to the power of Moses, or to the power of others for that matter, but rather overwhelms and possesses him. This passive model of the power of the voice was especially prevalent in the Safedian Kabbalah of the sixteenth century. Within texts produced by the school of the famous Isaac Luria one can find a rather sophisticated development of this model. According to one statement by R. Hayim Vital, the production of voice during study produces

40

Ex. 19.16–19. In this context, I cannot address the numerous discussions of the power of the voice of the Shofar (see, however, Garb 2004, 140). 42 See, e.g., BT Ta’anit 26B; Exodus Rabbah 52, 5. 43 For the passive model of power, see Garb 2004, 66–71. Cf. the extensive material discussed in Goldish 2003. In many of the cases discussed in the various articles in this collection, possession was manifested by a voice—divine or demonic—overpowering the possessed individual. 44 See Naeh 1993. 45 Though often attributed to the Sages of the Talmud (as in a text by Shneur Zalman of Liady cited anon), this statement is not found in the Rabbinic texts known to us, and is in fact found in the “Rayah Mehemnah” section of the Zohar (3, 232A). 46 Cf. Epstein 1993, 51a (another text from this work will be discussed anon), where there is a description of the Shekhinah speaking from the throat of certain individuals without their conscious knowledge. 41

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Maggidim, or possessing angelic forces.47 Furthermore, Vital’s theory is founded on the “enclothing” of the divine voice within the human voice.48 However, this should not be understood as a simple case of possession, but rather as a cyclical relationship of “mutual empowerment” between human and divine vocal power. Here the passive model is subtly altered from an experience of possession to a more mutual relationship. According to another text by Vital,49 when the human voice is raised in woe, it rises to the divine eyes and produces tears, and then descends to the divine mouth and produces a sound containing consolation and hope. This divine voice then descends into the human voice. In other words, the envelopment of the human voice by the divine voice can be the result of a prior activation of the divine by human vocal production. This model establishes a more complex interaction of passive and active modes of power. Whilst these texts describe a charged mystical moment, numerous Hasidic texts extend the prevalence of the experience of the Shekhinah speaking out of one’s throat. This extension transformed this state from an intense ecstatic moment to a characteristic of sacral language as such. For example, R. Zeev Wolf of Zhitomir (18th c.), writes in his Or haMeir:50 “Whoever has in him the knowledge of his maker and expresses words in a perfect manner, is called Moses51 and as his power was then so is his power now as well, and the Shekhinah speaks from his throat.” Here, the power of Moses, which includes automatic speech, is accessible to “whoever has knowledge of his maker”. Any such person, when he “expresses words in a perfect manner”, is regarded as if the Shekhinah speaks from his throat. Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apta (18th–19th c.), takes this extension a step further and writes in his “Ohev Yisrael”,52 that “the Shekhinah speaks from the throats of all of Israel.”

47 See the texts and discussion in Meroz 1980, 43, 45 (I believe and hope that an expanded version of this important study will be published as a book in the future). 48 See Fine 2003, 293, 295; Idel 2005. Cf. a statement by a contemporary and interesting Hasidic writer, in the anonymous Sheva Enayim 1998, II:102, on the “enclothing” of paradisical souls of the righteous in the breath of the righteous individual. 49 See the text and discussion in Meroz 1980, 46–7. 50 Zeev Wolf of Zhitomir 1954, 141b. For a similar Hasidic move with regard to Messianism—which is relocated from a unique figure or historical moment to the everyday religious experience—see Idel 1998, 286–7. 51 This idea of the extension of Moses is a classic topos: see Heschel 1995, 37. 52 Abraham Yehoshua Heschel 1863, 36.

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Until now, we have discussed the descent of the divine voice into human vessels—which can be experienced either as possession or as part of a process of mutual empowerment. Now, I wish to turn to the opposite direction: the ascending effect of the human voice or sound on the divine realm. This direction—which entails the production of power as a result of human activity—appears already in the Talmudic text on the wedding sound cited above. This distinction deals less with the nature of the experience, and more with the direction of the vector of sonorous power. The Talmud53 states that whoever recites the liturgical phrase (which is part of the famous Kaddish prayer) “Amen, may his great name be blessed for ever and ever” with “all his power” (bekol kocho), merits that a negative judgment that has accumulated for 70 years will be annulled. What is important here is that there is a move from the magical or theurgical power54 of a chosen unit of language55 to the power of the sound created by its utterance. This plain interpretation of the text—all (kol) his power as a loud sound (qol)—is found amongst certain Ashkenazi medieval commentaries, which reinforce it with a Midrashic parallel.56 Other commentators, most notably Rashi,57 render “all his power” as “the power of his intent”.58 This move seeks to translate the vocal into the mental. However, the opposite move is far more prevalent: For example, an oft-cited dictum is “hakol meorer hakavvanah”—the sound awakens

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BT Shabbat 119B. See Zohar 2, 128B; 3, 220A, where the recital of this phrase in a loud voice is described as breaking the powers of evil as well as awakening divine power (cf. 105A). On the Zoharic model of “awakening” power, see Garb 2004, 123–32. For more examples of agonistic conceptions of sacral sound as destroying or weakening the power of the forces of evil, see below. 55 The mystical powers attributed to this particular phrase are evidenced by the law that even one who is engaged in studying the structure of the divine chariot must pause when he hears this prayer recited (BT Berakhot 21B). 56 See Tosfot, Kol haʙoneh, ad loc. Cf. Devarim Rabbah, 11,1, where Moses (again) is described as increasing the sound of prayer upwards. Moses is like the saliach tzibuur, or cantor representing the praying community, who directs and enhances the communal sound. Cf. a Gnostic parallel (cited by Idel 1988, 371, n. 147) on the powers sounding the glory and sending it upwards. 57 Ad loc. See also the commentary of the Meiri, in his Beit Habechirah, ad loc, who combines the two interpretations. It is interesting that the Lurianic Sʙaar Maamarei Hazal (Vital 1898, 1B) rejects both the magical possibility that mere sound can annul decrees without repentance and the possibility that mere intention can annul a decree! 58 This interpretation is also adopted by some Kabbalists, see R. Jacob Ben Sheset, Meshiv Devarim Nechochim (Vajda 1969, 137). 54

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the intention.59 This phrase60 clearly subordinates the mental to the vocal, or the sens to the son.61 Furthermore, the practice discussed here, which can be observed today in synagogues, is the communal production of sound, briefly mentioned above (in the context of the wedding festivity). This is in turn part of a larger belief in the magical efficacy of collective prayer.62 Collective worship is effective precisely because it is vocal rather than mental. As Moshe Idel has put it in a study devoted to this theme, communal sound creates “sonorous communities”.63 In other words, the ritual community is constructed partly through its joint production of sound. However, it is important to bear in mind that as a communal practice, the production of sound at various points in prayer was the subject of extensive debate in Halakhic (legal), as well as mystical, sources.64 At this point I am concerned less with the sociological dimension of beliefs pertaining to sound (which I shall return to anon) and more with the place of these beliefs within a larger set of ideas and practices concerning the power of voice and sound. As we shall see, in many texts, prayer and study are subsumed under the unifying category of sound/ voice, as in the expression ‘the sound of Torah and prayer’.65 In other words, the particular ritual forms are less cardinal than the effect of the ritual—the production of sound. Although study obviously includes mental operations, its efficacy is mediated through vocal production. An example of this highly common view relates to the power of vocal study,66 which is believed to activate latent divine power. In his highly 59 See, however, the opinion of the anonymous eighteenth-century Kabbalistic ethical treatise Hemdat Yamim (2003, I, 143), that this dictum refers only to the possibility of avoiding losing one’s place in the sequence of prayer, and that loud prayer is actually a distraction from deeper intention. This is part of the anonymous author’s polemic against loud prayer, which is part of a wider dispute in Jewish literature (see below). 60 It is often cited in Halakhic literature as reinforcing the need to recite blessings with a loud voice (See, e.g., the discussion in Magen Avraham on Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 101, 2, which utilizes theurgical argumentation). 61 Cf. the statement by the sixteenth-century Kabbalist Meir Ibn Gabbai in his highly influential Avodat Hakodesh [1954, part 2, chapter 4 to the effect that it is sound—not intent—which is isomorphic to the divine, and can thus have theurgical impact. 62 See, e.g., BT Berakhot 7B–8A. 63 See Idel 2002b. 64 See, e.g., Zohar 1, 210A. See also the interesting comment of the thirtenth-century Rabbenu Bahye (1972, III:281 [Dt. 6.7]) that the Torah should be studied loudly as it was given in sound, but prayer should be whispered. For the debate between the Hasidim and their opponents on this issue, see Idel 1995, 168. 65 As opposed to the differentiation proposed by Rabbunu Bahye (previous footnote). 66 See Idel 1995, 180–4.

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influential Shnei Luhot Habrith, Yeshiah Horowitz of Prague (16th– 17th c.),67 establishes a close connection between human creativity and the power of the divine voice. Horowitz offers the following interpretation to the Talmudic saying 68 to the effect that God repeats the Torah mouthed by the sages: The divine voice heard at Sinai is described in the Bible itself as “ceaseless”.69 This voice, according to Horowitz, was the aspect of koach—both in the sense of power, as well as potentiality.70 The Sages innovate “through the power” (bekoach) of the voice, and activate the potential contained in the voice through their study. We have here an interesting variation on the “hermeneutical model” of power. Study requires creative power—given by the voice, as Horowitz clearly states throughout the text—but it also activates the power latent in revelation. Here, as in the Midrashic and Talmudic texts cited earlier, revelation is embodied not so much by the written text, as by the oral voice.71 The cyclical relationship between human and divine voice resembles the cycle of “mutual empowerment” 72 found in the Lurianic texts adduced above. The latter example should suffice to demonstrate that there is a definite continuity between various Kabbalistic speculations, and that these in turn seek to embellish classic Rabbinic statements. Until now we have surveyed a selection of texts dealing with the power of sound per se—whether active and passive, ascending and descending. In the following section, which will naturally be slightly longer, we shall examine the combination of this power with the breathing that accompanies the production of sound. 67 Shenei Luhot ha-Berith, cited and discussed in Ben Sasson 1959, 19–20; Silman 1999, 100. Cf. the recently published “Writings of R. Menachem Mendel of Shklov” (a direct student of the nineteenth-century Kabbalist Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna), 2001, II:218. On the need to employ power in an apotropaic manner so as to combat the powers of evil, see Garb 2004, 56–7. 68 See, e.g., BT Gittin 6B. 69 Dt. 5.19. On this theme see Silman 1999, 31–3, 99–100, 126 ; Heschel 1995, 36, as well as Zohar 2, 81A (on the power of this ceaseless voice). 70 On this dual sense of power, see Hillman 1995, 97. For Kabbalistic discussions, see Garb 2004, 55–6. Cf. Elimelekh of Lisansk N.A, 203 [Likutei Soshanah], where the verse “the voice of God in power (bekoach)” is interpreted as follows: the voice of God is potential and is activated by the speech of the righteous. 71 For revelatory experiences facilitated through the union of human and divine voice, according to an important Hassidic text, see Idel 1995, 181. It is also important to note that Horowitz’s discussion contains an apotropaic aspect: the “filth of the snake” or evil power increases every generation, and thus there is a need to activate the stringency latent in the Law. 72 For this term, see Yamasaki 1988, 105–6, 156, 170; Wolfson 1997, 302; Garb 2004, 34, 266.

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jonathan garb III. Breath Nothing is lost, even the vapor of the mouth has a place and location, and God makes of it what he does, and even the word spoken by a person and even a sound is not dispersed in emptiness and all have place and location (Zohar 2, 100B).

The Talmud73 refers to the Torah as “matters of Tohu (which one should translate as emptiness, not chaos) that the world is founded on.” This is a surprising version of the theurgical claim found in Rabbinic literature, to the effect that the existence of the world is founded on the Torah.74 Rashi’s comment on ‘matters of emptiness’ is “mere speech and reading, and all speech has no real substance, just like this Tohu, and even so the world is founded on them.” This commentary expands the Talmudic saying, which refers to the Torah, into a profound reflection on language as such: speech is empty of substance, a matter of vapor, and yet it is the foundation of our human world. One of these vaporous aspects of language is the breath. According to another Talmudic saying,75 the world is sustained through the breath created by children’s study. Here again, the world is sustained by the Torah, but not by its mental or semantic aspect, but rather through the breathing process involved in study. The breath of young children (tinokot) sustains the world not only because it is empty of sin76 (as the Talmud goes on to say) but also because it is less dependent on meaning and cognition. The world is animated by pure breath. According to many Kabbalistic texts, the power of speech lies in the hevel peh, the immaterial substance created by the act of speech as a modulation of breath.77 A classical statement on the interrelationship between breath and sound may be found in the Zohar,78 which proclaims that every deed produces a vapor (hevel) and every vapor produces a

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BT Sanhedrin 26B. See BT Nedarim 32A, as well as Idel 1988, 171. 75 BT Shabbat 119B. 76 The theme of the effect of sin on breath recurs in some of the texts discussed below. 77 This is not the place to attempt to cover the extremely extensive Kabbalistic exegesis on the term hevel as it appears in Ecclesiastes. Similarly, I do not propose here to discuss the history of the relationship between God and air as conceived in Kabbalah, its sources and parallels. Finally, I do not propose to examine the role of breath in mystical techniques. 78 Zohar 2, 59A. 74

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sound, which ascends above and has theurgical impact. A general classificatory statement on this topic may be found in a statement by the Safedian Kabbalist, R. Hayim Vital (16th c.), the main student of the famous R. Isaac Luria. According to Vital,79 there are “three levels”— breath, speech and sound. That is to say, the act of speech is associated with two further components, one being sound and the other breath or hevel. An extremely influential text, found in Pardes Rimonim—the encyclopedic opus of the Safedian Kabbalist, R. Moses Cordovero (16th c.)— explains the power of breath as follows: The letters of the Torah are not conventional but are spiritual, and their form relates to the internal dimension of their soul. This is why the sages were careful and exact with the shape80 of the letters [. . .] as they hint at a given spirituality [ruchaniut]81 of the supernal Sefirot [divine emanations], and each letter has a spiritual form and an exalted light which emanates from the essence of the Sefirah and descends from level to level in the path of the descent of the Sefirot. And the letter is a chamber and dwelling place for this spirituality. And when a person recites and moves one of the letters, this necessarily awakens82 the spirituality [ruchaniut] and sacred forms are formed from the vapor of the mouth which go up and connect to their root.

Shortly after, Cordovero adds: “Also from it [the pronunciation of the letter] will form from his breath a spirituality and reality, which is like an angel which ascends and connects to his root to hurry and act in a speedy and rapid way.”83 In these texts, the non-conventional nature of language is explained in the following manner: Speech and breath create a tangible reality, which—through a “chain of being”84—ascends and connects to its

79 See the texts and discussion in Meroz 1980, 45–6. A possible earlier source is Sefer Yezˢira 1, 8. 80 Cordovero clearly establishes a relationship between the breath and the form of the letters as two non-semantic dimensions of language. On the latter issue, see the beginning of the next section. 81 For the history of this term, see Idel 1995, 66–7, 156–7, and the sources cited there. 82 For the “model of awakening” see above, n. 54. 83 Cordovero 1962, Gate 27, Chapter 2. On these texts, see Idel 1995, 165. 84 On this concept in the writing of Cordovero in the context of sound, see Idel 1995, 161 (The text cited there is not a direct quote from Cordovero but rather a citation by his student Elijah Da Vidas, which most likely represents the opinion of Cordovero. See Idel, 1995, 346, n. 9).

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divine source. This enables semi-magical efficacy. The latter aspect of the process is described more clearly in another text at the climax of Cordovero’s work: To explain the main aspect of intent [kavannah]: The person intending should draw spirituality down from the higher levels to the letters that he pronounces in order to be able to give flight to these letters [so that they may ascend] to the highest level to hasten his request. And the meaning is that the vapor of the person’s mouth is not an empty thing [. . .] but is spirituality which forms from the breath and this spirituality requires power in order to give flight to his request and lift the letters to the level he requires. And this is the main aspect of intent to draw down power in order for this power to raise the letters above and they will take on being in the “top of the world”85 and hasten his request.86

The magical effect of speech and breath is far more apparent in this text as is the emphasis on the concept of ‘power’. However, I wish to focus here not so much on the semi-magical idea of drawing down power (which has already been addressed at length in Idel’s work on Hasidism,87 and subsequently in my own work on power)88 but rather on the role of the breath in enabling ascent and in establishing continuity between the human and the divine realm. These dimensions of Cordovero’s model were significantly developed in the subsequent three centuries of Kabbalistic writing, as we shall now see. The seventeenth-century Kabbalist Abraham Azulai of Hevron, who was markedly influenced by Cordovero, wrote as follows in his Hesed Le Avraham:89 Explaining the matter of the words of Torah, the point is that man is the totality of the world, that man is the world and the world is man [. . .] in this case one can learn the hidden from the obvious that just as man’s existence is through this breath (hevel) that enters and goes out, in a similar manner the world contains the secret of a subtle spiritual vapor (hevel) which resides in it and provides its vitality and existence.90 And this is the extension of the Shekhinah below, and the divinity found amongst the lower worlds. And just as in man breath enters and goes out so with the world

85 86 87 88 89 90

166.

Cordovero utilizes the Rabbinic expression, '%- %6 )4. Pardes Rimonim, Gate 32, Chapter 3. See also Idel 1995, 160. Idel 1995, 92–93, 158–168. Cf. Idel, 2005. Garb 2004, 105–12, 205–19. Azulai 1989, 60 [part 2, Chapter 23]. On vitality and vapor, see the later (Hassidic) texts adduced by Idel 1995, 163,

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in respect of the secret of its vitality—vapor enters, that is the supernal spirituality (ruchaniut)91 and vapor goes out [. . .] and the matter is that through the spark of the soul92 which is attached to the cords (chevlei)93 of the 4 worlds, reality joins with reality [. . .] and through the cord of this shining spark the voice of Torah ascends and breaks open the firmaments strongly,94 because the words form letters and sounds and then there is no power in the opposing forces to delay and divert it, however if one stammers when studying the letters do not take form in air for they are weak.

Like Cordovero, Azulai emphasizes the connective power of the breath, as well as the formation of ‘spirituality’ through sound. However, the emphasis here is less on the magical operation of fulfilling one’s ‘request’, and more on the confrontation between the power of sound and breath and the forces of evil (which will concern us more anon). Azulai’s idea of the human breath as a model for the immanent and animating power of cosmic breath is slightly more developed in a later text, composed by the nineteenth-century Lithuanian Kabbalist Itzhak Haver (a third generation follower of the anti-Hasidic Kabbalist Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna): The main vitality of man is by means of the air that he draws in and exhales through his mouth. In this manner, his vitality is renewed every moment, by each and every breath. This is also so in the supernal mouth of the primal anthropos (Adam Kadmon) and in all the higher worlds which are renewed every moment by the work of the lower ones. The work of Man is a “returning light” from below upwards, and he causes the air of breath to ascend from the lower mouth to the higher mouth, from which it redescends from above downwards, and renews creation through this work, for the purpose of creation is Man’s work from below upwards.95

One should not think that these texts merely reflect a cosmological belief in a kind of anima mundi. Rather, the isomorphism between human and cosmic structure is but the prelude for a structure based on the idea of a “chain of being”. However, this structure is not theoretical, but rather centered on practice—‘the voice of Torah’ for Azulai and ‘the work of Man’ for Haver. It is my sense that Haver’s approach (here, but not in

91 For the role played by this term in Cordoverian and post-Cordoverian thought, see Idel 1995, 178–80. 92 For the Cordoverian and post-Cordoverian doctrine of the “divine spark” indwelling in the soul, see Sack 2002, 39, 59, 179–80. 93 There is clearly a pun on vapor/breath (%) and cord (%). 94 The source for this mythic description is found in the Zohar: see, e.g., 3, 61A. Cf. Elimelech of Lizansk N.A., 75 [Slach], on loud voice as overcoming cosmic obstacles. 95 Haver 1995, 56.

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another text to be discussed anon) may be closer to an ‘isomorphic model’ of action at a distance while Azulai’s development places more stress on continuum.96 Again, these more structural issues are less cardinal for our present purposes than is the role assigned to practice, and in the case of Azulai’s text, sonorous practice. While Haver in this text (but not in another that we shall pursue shortly) writes in general terms of ‘Man’s work’, Azulai emphasizes the tangible power produced by the production of sacral sound, which is the sustaining power of the universe, and is thus able, in its full potency, to break through the obstacles surmounted by the cosmic evil forces. The latter point deserves some elaboration. As I will shortly demonstrate with parallel texts, the idea of breaking through the obstacles posed by evil powers through the power of sound is not theoretical. In other words, it is not so much part of the ‘doctrine of evil’, as a guiding principle of hermeneutical practice. In a discussion found shortly after 97 in the same voluminous work, Azulai writes: When a person enters in a holy manner into the wonderful adhering to God through the study of the Torah, he should think that his sins cause him (God forbid) some obstacles through difficult questions [raised by the study], and he should strengthen himself to oppose them and nullify them, so that they do not separate him from his creator [. . .] and when one revises an issue and repeats it, and examines it many times, this is the cause of breaking the husks [kellipot] because the Torah is literally the secret of the breath [hevel peh] of man, the letters that are set in the mouth of man take on form in the air and they ascend [. . .] from reality to reality, and through this ascent to the root, there is no doubt that those letters ascend and break through the air and open an opening above, and connect the person studying to divinity, and influence him with understanding and subtlety of intellect which was not previously within his intellectual power.

Azulai’s text predated (and influenced) the Hassidic understanding of study as a devotional activity, which affects adherence or connection to the divine. The assumption is that intellectual obstacles encountered

96 For a Hasidic development of these ideas, cf. Shneur Zalman of Liady’s famous Tanya (1985, part 4, chapter 5) on the chain of being and the immanence of the divine breath of God in man as well as in language as a cosmic force. Cf. Da Vidas 1875, 48 [Gate of Awe Chapter Ten], on God’s breath, animated by the letters of God’s name, as the source of life, which creates the ethical imperative to re-dedicate each of one’s breath to God. 97 Azulai 1989, 64 (part 2, chapter 28).

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during the process of study are emblematic of the interference posed by sin, and especially by its reinforcement of the forces of evil, or husks, which pose themselves between the devotee and the divine. The power of repetition lies not so much in its cognitive benefit, but rather in the creation of tangible linguistic substance through the action of breathing associated with speaking words of Torah. Following Cordovero, Azulai describes the ascent of this substance, and adds the notion that this ascent facilitates the dismantling of the barriers between the student of the Torah and the divine. Through the “opening” to the divine, which reestablishes the connection disrupted by sin, a flow of intellectual power descends back on the individual. The idea of the breath and sound in religious practice as combating the barriers posed by the powers of evil recurs in a text by the seventeenthcentury writer, Naftali Bachrach (in his Emek ha-Melekh).98 However, as we shall now see, Bachrach gives this idea a more collective bent: For Adam [through his sin] gave authority to the seventy masters [angelic or demonic powers] of the nations of the world and gave them lands above and below and made the external air impure, is it not just that it should be amended by his sons, that is us the holy people of Israel [. . .] and we need to amend it through the vapor of Torah and Mitzvot in our exile, in every place to give place to his throne of glory so that the Shekhinah may reside everywhere [. . .] and through this the external air will be amended [. . .] as in the time of the Messiah the external air will be totally purified.

I will address the national dimensions of this text in the conclusion, but here I wish to emphasize the idea of the impurity of the air of the lands outside the Land of Israel. This impurity—occasioned by the primal sin of Adam—will be rectified completely only in the Messianic era. However, the exile itself has meaning and purpose: the partial amendment of the sin of Adam by the purification of the air by the breath created by ritual activity (in this case, study and prayer which are also mentioned in a portion not adduced here being examples of a more general procedure). Though again the text relates to the national, rather than individual dimension, the general framework is similar to what we have seen in the case of Azulai: sin empowers the forces of evil, and this state can be rectified by the energy created by breathing during ritual activity.99

98

Bacrach 1648, 1. For a discussion of this text, see also Liebes 1993, 105. See Bachrach 1648, 1B, on weakening the powers of impurity by the breath of prayer, which ‘conquers’ the air. 99

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A later and extremely important station in the intellectual history of this theme is found in a popular and oft-printed treatise, the Derech Etz Hahayim by the eighteenth-century Italian Kabbalist, R. Moses Hayim Luzatto (Ramhal). Luzatto’s text is more complex than those cited up till now, and must be quoted at some length:100 And this is the word of the sage: “and Torah is light”—literally101 light, and not wisdom alone, and not an imaginary simile of light, but literal light, for this is the reality of the Torah above, and when the Torah enters the soul it fills it with light, like the sun entering a house. And furthermore, the image of fire was carefully and exactly chosen, for you will observe the coal which has not been lit, and its flame remains hidden and contained, and yet when it is blown on then the flame rises up and spreads and grows. And in the flame are apparent several colors that were not seen at first in the coal, yet all come out of the coal itself. So is it with the Torah which is before us, for all its letters and words are like coals, which left to themselves do not manifest but as dull coals, but when one makes an effort to study it, then from each letter rises a great flame, full of several colors—these being the forms of knowledge contained in that letter. And this is no metaphor, but the matter itself, simply and literally. For all the letters that we see in the Torah designate 22 lights found above [. . .] and from this extends the holiness of the scroll of the Torah [. . .] and thus a scroll which has one ritual flaw is totally disqualified for use, for the light does not stand upon it properly, in a manner which would enable the holiness to be drawn down to the people through reading from the scroll [. . .]. But the soul of he who gazes at the letters does not attain anything but one obscure light, like the coal, but when one makes an effort to understand and reads and re-reads, and strengthens himself to contemplate the text, then these lights take flame, and come out like the flame from the coal within the soul [. . .] and there is another matter, that the Torah has several faces, and the earlier ones have received102 that all the roots of the souls of Israel are in the Torah, so that they are 600,000 interpretations of the Torah which are apportioned to the 600,000 souls of Israel. And this is what is meant by the Torah exploding into several sparks [. . .] and the intellect of man is constructed correspondingly, that it has great power of apprehension, but when only it lights up through the power of contemplation. 100 Cf. the discussion of a shorter quote from this text in Idel 2002, 96–98. However, the reading suggested here does not necessarily support Idel’s assumption that the model presented in this text is one of a talismanic drawing down of power. 101 The recurrence of the phrase “literally” (mamash) in this and previous texts precludes reading them as metaphorical. Rather, the stress is on the substantive and concrete nature of the entities and processes created by study. 102 See Scholem 1969, 64–5; Idel 1997/98.

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And on this it is said:103 “God gives wisdom from his mouth knowledge and insight”. For all beings were made from the speech of God [. . .] we find, that this mouth is the root of all created things, and this itself sustains them. And the vapor [hevel] which comes out of this mouth, the influence which extends to all things from the source [. . .] and the wisdom is already given from God in the hearts of all men, but in order to become powerful the mouth sustaining it needs to blow with force, and then it also becomes like the fire, which takes fire when blown on, thus when this influence descends from the mouth like the breath of blowing, the wisdom takes fire and the knowledge and insight that are already contained in it will be seen [. . .] and all these will not act except by means of the power of the blowing of the supernal mouth [. . .] and this is what Elihu said:104 “indeed it is a spirit in man, and the soul of the Lord of Hosts will give them understanding”. The term “soul” is [. . .] in the sense of breath [neshima] and not in the sense of soul, that is the breath of the mouth, for it is this which gives understanding not days or years.

The structure and phraseology of this text clearly point to the influence of Azulai. Like the earlier writer, Luzatto stresses the role of repeated study in drawing down intellectual power. He also discusses at length the theme of vapor and breath in this process. However, there are several profound differences between Azulai and Luzatto in this matter: Whilst the earlier Kabbalist emphasizes the ascent of human breath, which then draws down divine influence, Luzatto chose to elaborate on the role of the divine breath, which descends and gives not only existence, but also understanding. This is more than a difference in the directions taken by the powers involved in the process: While Azulai, following Cordovero,105 emphasizes the active role of human breath, Luzatto begins by stressing human intellectual effort, but when he reaches the issue of breath he only mentions the divine breath, and not the human act of breathing. It is possible that this is due to a more intellectualistic approach on Luzatto’s part: Azulai’s text is more mythical, and includes the agonistic theme of breaking the obstacle of the husks—which are not mentioned at all by Luzatto. For all of the latter’s repeated assurances as to the literal nature of the process he describes, when it comes to human action, he only refers to intellectual effort, but not to the quasi-magical effect of breath

103 104 105

Prov. 2.6. Jb. 32.8. On Cordovero and Luzatto on language, see Idel 2002, 361.

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itself. It is possible to relate this difference to the divergence between the historical and cultural contexts of seventeenth-century Palestine and eighteenth-century Italy. However, it is also possible that the differences are due to the concerns of each author. While Azulai writes in a more devotional mode, Luzatto is essentially concerned with hermeneutical issues, as evidenced by the discussion (which I only quoted in part) on the relationship between the root 106 of the soul (only briefly mentioned by Azulai) and the variant interpretations of the Torah.107 This contextual (as opposed to cultural/historical) explanation is reinforced by a parallel discussion found in a text by the above-mentioned Isaac Haver,108 who was in all senses closer to Luzatto and was greatly influenced by him. Despite this, Haver shows a greater affinity to Azulai: He writes that all vitality depends on the connection to God, but it is blocked in “the air of the land of nations”.109 However, the vapor created by the study of scholars and Tzadikkim [righteous ones] breaks those barriers110 and recreates the connection to God. In terms of the classification proposed above, Haver’s text belongs—as do Azulai’s statements—to the model of continuum, rather than action at a distance (which we found in a different text by Haver, cited above). If the distinction proposed here is correct, Azulai and also Haver, who places scholars and saints on the same level, stress the personal dimension of the production of ‘sacred breath’, whilst Luzatto emphasizes the textual dimension. Another way of phrasing this distinction is that Azulai’s text belongs to ‘the personal model of power’ and Luzatto’s discourse to the ‘hermeneutical model of power’. The usefulness of these categories can be exemplified by applying them to one further text, written by the Hasidic author R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Gur (late 19th c.), in his Sefat Emmet.111 R. Yehudah explains the Talmudic dictum that “even the mundane speech of scholars requires study”112 as follows: Even after the scholars conclude their study, the breath produced by their

106 The term ‘root’ also appears—in a more cosmological sense—in Cordovero’s text cited at the beginning of this section. 107 Cf. the comments of Horowitz on the activation of the latent power of the text (discussed in the previous section). 108 Haver 2000, 427. 109 Ibid., 332. 110 At the same time it also creates a protective wall against negative forces, see ibid., p. 331. 111 Yehudah Aryeh Leib 2000, 13 [Devarim]. 112 BT Avodah Zarah 19B.

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“Torah” remains in their mouths, and thus permeates even their mundane discourse. This text represents a move from scholastic dimensions of study to a far more concrete notion of a form of energy produced by the effort of study, which then extends into the mundane. The focus here is not so much on the text and its explication but rather on the personal power of the scholar. I would like to conclude this section with an analysis of a powerful text, by the early nineteenth-century Hasidic writer R. Qalonimus Qalman Epstein, in his Maor Vashemesh.113 This text pulls together several of the themes discussed in this section, as well as the previous one: When a person adheres his thought in the love of his creator and he is filled with longing and desire to worship God in Torah or prayer, then from the power of that passion he produces a simple voice from the walls of his heart,114 and in the vapor that emits from that voice is inscribed above all the aspect of his thought and any request that is in his heart to ask according to the aspect of his thought, all is included in that vapor that arises from his mouth, for the vapor includes the 32 paths of wisdom and the 5 books of the Torah according to the level of his thought because the letter he [= 5] of hevel [vapor] hints at the 5 books of the Torah and the bet [= 2] and lamed [= 30] hint at the 32 paths of wisdom. And when many of the people of Israel assemble to worship God in communal prayer or study, then through the vapor which ascends from their mouths the supernal worlds are unified. And through this action they draw down influx of all good things on the community of Israel. And this is the meaning of the Talmudic saying that the world exists by virtue of the vapor of the mouths of the young children of the schools.

Rabbi Qalonimus recognizes the import of the Talmudic saying on the breath of schoolchildren.115 In this text, study and prayer are again

113

Epstein 1993, 31 [Genesis]. See below, n. 138. 115 Cf. the following passage from the Eretz Tov (late 18th–early 19th c.): “This is the secret of the saying of the sages that the world is sustained by the breath of schoolchildren, for when the voice is the voice of Jacob when they study Torah then their breath sustains the world, for the breath derives from the vitality of the spirit of the mouth of God [. . .] all creatures and the world were made and formed and created and emanated by the power of the spirit of the mouth of God, when he pronounced the 22 letters, and through the power of the 22 letters all was created, and this is the secret of the spirit of God’s mouth and all depends on the spirit, and through the spirit the power of life was extended to all creatures,” Yishayahu Jacob Halevi 2002, 20. One should note the connection between spirit, breath and power in this text (in general this Kabbalist accorded an extremely central place to the concept of power). On the relationship between spirit and power as part of the ‘phenomenology of the spirit’ in Kabbalah, see Garb 2004, 67–8, and cf. Pedaya 2002, 74, 80, 139, 161, 201, 203. 114

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subsumed under the category of vocal power in which the mental aspect—thought—and the emotive aspect—longing and desire—of worship combine in a ‘single voice’. However, voice itself is but a means to form the power of the breath. It is true, nevertheless, that the scope of this power is re-determined (inscribed) by the quality of the thought and the desire of the heart.116 R. Nahum then stresses again that the Torah and wisdom itself are included in the power of the vapor/breath. Up to this point, the text focused on the individual, and the different degrees of spiritual power created by the transition from an internal and devotional process to more tangible manifestations such as sound and breath. The result of the process—fulfillment of the desire or request117 of the heart—is also individual. However, R. Nahum’s next move is to extend this principle to the theurgical power of collective worship: The communal breath and sound has a theurgic impact on the supernal worlds, and the end result of this impact is in turn collective—the descent of influx on the community. The basic model here, as in numerous Hasidic discussions of language,118 is Cordovereian. Language mediated through breath emits a tangible power which ascends and impacts the supernal worlds, which in turn emit influx which is drawn downwards. However, what is striking here is the focus on the community, as well as the explicit focus on non-semantic aspects of language, as evidenced by the interpretation given to the Talmudic saying on the study of children discussed above. IV. Comparative Reflections Our perusal of Kabbalistic texts and their Talmudic/Midrashic origins revealed two closely related cultural structures. In my opinion, both the presence of these kinds of power in Rabbinic texts, as well as the intensive use of these Rabbinic sayings in later texts argue for the need to consider Rabbinic and Kabbalistic understandings of the power of language within a common cultural framework.119 While in the Rabbinic texts the ideas discussed here are far from representative (though 116

On the heart, see below, n. 138. Cf. the text cited from Cordovero at the beginning of this section, as well as the Hasidic text by R. Jacob Joseph of Polony, cited in Idel 1995, 74. 118 See Idel 1995, 180–1. 119 For the methodological questions surrounding this move, see Idel 1991; Garb 2004, 44–9, and the sources concentrated there. 117

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also far from marginal) in Kabbalistic writing these preliminary notions were extensively developed. However, one should not err in supposing that the directions of thought and exegesis surveyed here in any way represent the opinion of Kabbalists as such—they are totally absent in many Kabbalistic texts. Therefore, they should be seen as part of a vast and varied literature. The comparison between Rabbinic and later Kabbalistic and Hasidic approaches can be described as a ‘vertical’, intra-cultural axis. From here, I wish to move to an exploration of the ‘horizontal’ or intercultural axis by looking at possible comparisons with similar structures in other cultural contexts. In the following section, we shall examine several constraints on the possibility of comparing the themes discussed here to other cultural contexts. These remarks will serve to balance and modulate the comparativist approach that will seemingly be adopted here.120 One may find various points of contact between the Kabbalistic views of sound and breath surveyed here, and similar ideas in Sufi writing (to mention but one instance of a spiritual system which had rather close contact with the world of Kabbalah).121 Of course, one can also range further afield, and consider comparing the non-semantic ideas of language discussed here to those prevalent in other spiritual systems which were in contact with the Jewish world—such as the Hellenistic culture of Late Antiquity.122 However, for reasons which will soon become apparent, I wish to focus on the comparison between views on the power of non-semantic dimension of language in Indian and Jewish culture. The historical contact between the Jewish world and the Indian culture was less extensive than the extensive ties between Judaism and Islam or Christianity.123 However, on the phenomenological level, there are

120 The possibility of comparison between mystical traditions belonging to diverse cultural contexts is of course the subject of an extensive theoretical polemic. For a fairly recent and comprehensive summary, see Hollenback 1996, 5–17. 121 On breath as the “vehicle” of speech, human and divine, see the views of the thirteenth-century master, Ibn al-ʚArabi, as discussed by Chittick 1989, 127. On the power of words in Sufism, see Sviri 2003. 122 See, e.g., Miller 1989. When examining parallels between Hellenistic non-semantic ideas of language and the Indian ideas discussed below, it is worth recalling the studies of Dumezil (for all their known problems). See, e.g., Dumezil 1987, 51–9. 123 Though more prevalent than one might at first surmise. On the possibility of Indian influences in Sefer Yezˢira, see the discussion in Shulman 2002.

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fascinating parallels well deserving closer examination. One reason why I have chosen to focus on these comparisons is that similarities with Western mystical systems may be assigned to historical contact, while the resemblance between Jewish and Indian ideas is more supportive of a comparativist approach—all the while bearing in mind the methodological problems attendant on such an approach. Striking similarities between Vedic (as well as post-Vedic) and Rabbinic/Kabbalistic views of language have already been discussed at some length by Barbara Holdredge.124 However, here I wish to compare Kabbalistic texts on the power of breath and sound to the rich material on these topics collected by André Padoux. As Padoux himself notes, even the later formulation of his conclusions requires further elaboration,125 and I might be permitted to add that this is especially true in terms of the need for a theoretical analysis of his findings.126 This need is most evident in terms of a sociological contextualization of the more theological or cosmological texts that Padoux amasses (such as I shall essay in my concluding remarks).127 It is my hope that a comparison

124 Holdredge 1996, 213–23, as well as the discussions cited below. Holdredge focuses on relatively earlier sources belonging to the mainstream theosophical-theurgical school of Kabbalah, and different results are obtained from consulting a different selection of texts, as suggested here. For an earlier attempt, see Fluegel 1902, 248–50. For an interesting literary treatment of the resonance between Indian and Jewish mystical practices related to language, see Goldman 2000. 125 See his preface to Padoux 1990. 126 This is also the case with regard to Holdredge’s book for all of its remarkable scope. I must add that the findings presented here lead me to take issue with some of Holdredge’s more general summaries. Two examples should suffice: Holdredge claims that “the brahamanical tradition gives priority to the phonic dimension and the rabbinical and kabbalistic traditions to the cognitive dimension” (Holdredge 1996, 18). The texts surveyed here show that in the latter traditions, the phonic is at par with the cognitive; but cf. Holdredge 1996, 218–223, where auditory and visual are added as parallel distinctions to phonic and cognitive. At the same time, Holdredge (ibid., 214) compares the composition of the body of Brahaman by 48 sounds to the composition of the body of God by the Hebrew letters. However, as we shall see in the next section, the latter idea is visual rather than sonic! (The same reservation applies to the comparison suggested on p. 215). Here it seems that Holdredge has opted for a ‘structural affinity’ which not only contradicts her own distinction (which is in itself problematic), but also hardly tallies with the two structures that she compares. 127 See Padoux 1990, 147, n. 169, where he explicitly states that religious and mystical practice is not the main concern of his book (see, however, pp. 396, 399). A discussion of similar (Kashmiri Shaivite Tantric) material which emphasizes questions of practice to a greater extent may be found in Dyczkowski 1987, 195–204. Dealing with earlier material, Holdredge has gone much farther in her discussions (Holdredge 1996, 343–93; cf. pp. 397–403) of “Veda in Practice” and “Torah in Practice”. However, here too I might add that Holdredge falls into the same pitfall mentioned just now when she claims (ibid.,

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between the extensive material organized by Padoux and the Jewish sources discussed here will contribute towards more general theoretical formulations of the power of non-semantic aspects of language. 128 A striking example of the need for further theoretical reflection on Padoux’s discussion relates to the role of isomorphism. Padoux often refers to the correspondences between the human and divine or cosmic in both Tantrism and its Vedic and Upanishadic sources.129 Thus, Padoux notes that in these sources, breath and sound are both human and cosmic energies.130 However, Padoux does not address the precise nature of these correspondences: are we dealing with resonance, isomorphism, extension and continuity?131 Furthermore, he mentions the “constant ambivalence, a continuous shift in the descriptions from the human to the cosmic and vice-versa, which is a distinctive feature not only of the Tantric mind, but more generally of the Indian mind.”132 At least with regard to the texts discussed here, the notions of isomorphism, resonance, etc. indicate complementary descriptions rather than ambivalence. These texts point towards rather precise models, which capture the interrelationship between human and divine power. In some models, divine power descends into human vessels and empowers them, in others, human power ascends and impacts divine power. In some cases, the relationship between human and divine power is mutual and cyclical. In all of these models, the process of influence can be ascribed to isomorphism or to a spatial continuum. Furthermore, the experience of the human recipient of power can be overwhelming, as in possession, 387–8) that the public recitation of the Torah is primarily aimed at “communication of content” whilst the parallel Vedic recitation is cosmic maintenance through “reproducing the primordial sounds of the mantras”. Though Holdredge advances an interesting proof for her claim from Halakhic literature (I cannot here go into the rebuttal of this proof), one cannot but note that her description of the purpose of Vedic recitation could easily fit the discussions of Bachrach and Qalonimus (as well as other texts cited above). See also Alper 1989. 128 For a comparison between the Indian material on language cited in Padoux’s writings and Kabbalistic texts on language (those of Abraham Abulafia), see Idel 1989, 148, n. 80. 129 For extremely interesting remarks on the relationship between Tantra and earlier sources, both Vedic and post-Vedic, see Padoux 1990, 29–38. This issue resembles the question of continuity between Rabbinic and Kabbalistic discussions that is raised here. 130 See, e.g., Padoux 1990, 24, 78, n. 122, 125–7, 405. 131 On p. 37, Padoux discusses “correlation”, “interplay”, “reenactment”, “interconnection” “identification” and “two movements of the same energy”, however these terms do not assist in a conceptual analysis of the relationship of the human and the divine. 132 Ibid., xi. Cf. the term “ambiguity” on p. 133.

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or modulated. I am fairly confident that similar subtle distinctions, or different ones, exist within the Indian texts, however these need to be extracted by finer analytical tools. These reservations aside, Padoux’s discussion provides ample support for the possibility of comparing Kabbalistic and Tantric theories of the power of breath and sound. One such similarity is evident in the stress on the very unity of breath and speech,133 and on the power produced by this union.134 Another point of comparison lies in the remarkable emphasis on the concept of power itself.135 In addition, there are several more particular themes—all discussed above in the context of Kabbalah—where a comparative effort might be fruitful (though again there is need for more detailed analysis). These include ascending and descending powers of sound,136 the ‘awakening’ of latent power (as in the doctrine of Kundalini)137 as well as other issues, such as engendered conceptions, which shall be briefly addressed in the conclusion of this article.138 At the same time, Padoux’s discussion also points towards striking dissimilarities between Kabbalistic and Tantric views of language. I am of course not qualified to determine whether Padoux is correct in concluding that for the cultural belief system that he surveys “the movement of the Word starts from—and returns to—a point where every word, every sound, fades out into silence,” so that “a study devoted to the powers of the Word finally leads to accept the preeminence of silence.”139 However, if he is correct in his conclusion, then it marks a major point of divergence from most Jewish systems, as we have seen, ideas of the superiority of silence are by far outweighed by the stress on the importance of production of sound.140

133

For the specific term “vapor”, see ibid., 301. See Padoux 1990, 26, 382; cf. especially the text by R. Qalonimus discussed at the end of the last section. 135 See, e.g., Padoux 1990, 37–41. On possession, or what I might term the ‘passive model’ of power, see ibid., p. 41. On power in speech, see ibid., p. 49. For an interesting discussion of mantra in the context of the relationship between human power and divine power, see Findly 1989. 136 Padoux 1990, 125–6, 139, 413–5. 137 Ibid., 124–5. 138 One might also mention the idea of the heart as the source of sound, both in several of the texts discussed here (see, e.g., above n. 114) as well as in those analyzed by Padoux (see, e.g., 1990, 128, n. 117, 388, 418). 139 Padoux 1990, 427–8; cf. 78–9, 375. 140 See also Hallamish 1981. 134

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This difference is closely related to the sociological question mentioned above. In the texts we have surveyed, the activation of the power of language is not the provenance of ritual specialists engaged in solitary or silent contemplation. Rather, it is accessible in the everyday life of the community, as in the study of children or the wedding celebration. In fact, we have proposed that the emphasis on non-semantic aspects of language facilitates more communal access to its power, rather than relegating this power to the realm of mystery. This is a further reason for the emphasis on sound over silence. In other words, ‘human power’, which stands in constant relationship to ‘divine power’, is that of the community (or the nation, as we shall see in the next section), rather than the personal power of a select individual. It is questionable if the same could be said for Tantric practice, although one should suspend judgment until we have more intensive studies of the sociology of the Tantric world.141 In any case, as for Kabbalah, it is probably advisable to avoid generalized descriptions of Tantra as such, and rather address the existence of various streams and schools of thought.142 Of course there is also the problem of differing time frames as our Jewish examples range from late antiquity to modernity. At the same time, the flourishing of the Tantric movement roughly parallels the rise of Kabbalistic writing in the Middle Ages. A similar stipulation holds for the role of the sacred text. Although we have seen that the study of the Torah is usually subsumed under more general categories of ritual, there is definitely a ‘hermeneutical model’ of power, which focuses on activation of powers latent in the text through sound or breath. As opposed to special initiations, textual study is accessible, at least in principle, to all members of the community. Again, it is doubtful whether a similar model is elaborated on within the Tantric world. V. Concluding Remarks Though the preceding discussion considered sound and breath as two separate issues, each with it’s own history and context, these themes can be seen as part of a wider cultural stance. This can be characterized as

141 See, however, the recent discussion in White 2000. White emphasizes the role of ritual and even royal specialists in Tantric practice. See also above, n. 127. 142 This question is touched upon in the discussion by White 2000.

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a belief in the potency of radically non-semantic aspects of the speech act. This potency derives from the resonance (a term especially apt for the context of sound) between the human and the divine, whether it is described merely in terms of isomorphism, or in terms of an actual continuum. However, this resonance should be seen as a process rather than a mere structural given. The focus of many of the texts discussed here is on manifestation, revelation and actualization. The concept of divinity that can be extrapolated from these views of language, human and divine, is far from static. Rather, the emphasis is on dynamic processes within the divine realm. It is my view that the focus on power is closely related to this dynamic theology. This emphasis on God’s becoming, or doing, rather than on his being is an expression of what one can regard (at some risk of generalization) as a core element of much of Jewish religiosity—the centrality of practice. Several of the themes raised in the article—such as the importance of the concept of power itself—can be associated with the role of practice as the ‘spine’ of Jewish spirituality.143 The centrality of language, discussed at the beginning of the article, did not in any way mitigate this stress on practice. Rather, language and practice merged in what one might term ‘linguistic practice’.144 In a similar vein, Idel145 has emphasized that the Hasidic world did not expound an ‘immanentist theology’, but rather a practice geared towards drawing down divine power through procedures related to language. Indeed, even when dealing with seemingly theological issues such as revelation, most of the texts discussed here are primarily concerned with practice. It is this practical bent which also leads into the communal nature of the understandings of language found in these texts. Linguistic practice usually tends to be communal in nature.146 However, despite this reservation, one should not occlude the centrality of the idea of immanence in many of the texts surveyed here: Breath

143

For a more extensive elaboration on these arguments, see Garb 2004, 270–2. Cf. Foucault’s concept of “discursive practices” (see Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, 63, 77–8, 82). Cf. also Padoux 1990, 106–9, 269 on the “power of activity”. For a general statement on the role of ritual in Tantric systems relating to language, see ibid., p. 47. 145 Idel 1995, 166–7. 146 In this sense it is interesting that less communally oriented writers, such as the anonymous author of Hemdat Yamim (who was probably a secetarian Sabbatean), combined statements such as “the beginning and foundation of all tikkun [repair] is solitude [. . .] for the company of people is the cause of all iniquity and sin” (Hemdat Yamim 2003, 268) with opposition to loud prayer, as discussed above (n. 59). 144

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and sound are regarded as two paths for the extension of divine power and presence into the human world.147 The co-habitation of breath and sound as two modes of immanence is especially evidenced in much of Hassidic discourse, as in the text cited above. The possession-like experiences contained within the “passive model” discussed above can be seen as an extreme case of the descent of the divine through language. In this context, it is worth noting a text by the founder of the Habad school, Shneur Zalman of Liady (18th c.):148 The word of God animates and gives being to the great souls [. . .] like the soul of Adam, about whom it is written: “and God breathed into him a living soul” [Gen. 2.7] and like the souls of the forefathers and prophets and so on that were literally chariots for God and literally nullified in their being in relation to God, as the Sages said: “The Shekhinah spoke from the throat of Moses”, and likewise for all the prophets and possessors of the holy spirit, that the supernal voice and speech was literally enclothed in their voice and speech as the Ari wrote.

Shneur Zalman utilizes the texts belonging to the passive model (discussed in the first section of the article), such as the description of the Shekhinah speaking from the throat of Moses, and the Lurianic idea of the divine voice as ‘enclothed’ in human voice in an interesting manner. Shneur Zalman’s acosmic mystical theology, which stresses the need for self-nullification vis-à-vis the immanence of the divine is here framed within a ‘personal model’, which foregrounds selected individuals and their souls.149 The select individual here is marked by his passive stance towards the presence of the divine voice. However, at this point one must introduce several constraints on the explanatory move suggested here: Firstly, one should not regard the idea of divine immanence through sound and breath as necessarily implying a sense of the full presence of the divine through language. For all of their belief in the potency and plentitude of language, many Kabbalists were aware that language also limits and restricts. There are several statements which re-frame actual human language as a limited and condensed mode of pure sound. Already the twelfth-century Provencal Kabbalist, Isaac the Blind, described the letters as being ‘carved out’ (hakukot), which denotes limitation, and as an extension of the 147

Cf. Padoux 1990, 131. Shneur Zalman of Liady 1985, Part 4, Chapter 25. 149 The close link between breath and soul surfaced in several of the texts we examined, and will also appear in some sources cited below. 148

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(unlimited) ‘pleasantness of sound’.150 Hasidic authors such as R. Levi Iasac of Berdichev (late 18th c.) described the letters as the ‘restriction’ (zˢimzˢum) of sound.151 A similar statement, by R. Tzaddok Hacohen of Lublin (19th c.) posits that the individual souls of Israel are the letters of the Torah, while the unity of the souls, prior to their individuation, was equivalent to the ‘great voice’ heard at Sinai.152 The latter text brings us to a second stipulation: Despite the emphasis on ‘personal power’ and individual experience in many of the texts we have pursued, we also encountered a strong national focus. In this vein, following a Midrashic move,153 the same writer (R. Tzaddok) wrote that “all of the power of Jacob [here as an archetype of the Jewish nation] is in the voice.”154 We have seen the text by Bachrach, which sees the holy people of Israel as the only true descendants of Adam, charged with purifying the air of the lands of the nations. This is by no means a singular instance. One later Hasidic writer goes so far as to suggest that the sins of the Jews result entirely from breathing the air ruined by the impure breath of the non-Jews!155 These statements form pat of what one might term the “national mysticism” of the Kabbalah.156 Like the national issue, the question of gender was not addressed here, but is nonetheless present in several discussions of sound, and actually deserves a separate study.157 In some texts, the voice is described as masculine, and speech itself as feminine.158 This is the interpretation often given to the Talmudic term for semi-prophetic revelation through sound, bat kol, or echo of the divine voice.159 According to this Kabbalistic interpretation, speech is the daughter of voice. A similar notion is

150

Commentary on Sefer Yezˢira, printed as the appendix to Scholem 1986, 6. Isaac of Berdichev 1958, 2 [Genesis]. Cf. Yishayahu Jacob Halevi 2002, 22–3, who writes that letters are in fact just breath, and that the differentiation between letters is the result of the restrictions imposed by the structure of the mouth during the process of voice production. 152 Tzaddok Hacohen 1973, 29 [Section 7]. Cf. Padoux 1990, 99, 142–3. 153 Cf. the Midrashic statement in Mechilta DeRabbi Yishmael, 92 [Besalach 2]. 154 Tzaddok Hacohen 1967, 62 [Section 36]. 155 Borenstein 1987, 304 [Toldot]. 156 See also Wolfson 2000. 157 For now see the remarks on voice, gender and power in Idel 2005, 26–30, 205–12. 158 In light of this it is somewhat anomalous that in the revelation experienced by R. Joseph Karo, the speaker (Karo) was male, and the voice revealed to him—the Shekhinah or mishnah—was female. At the same time, the Shekhinah used the verse ‘the voice of my beloved presses”, which refers to the male lover in the Song of Songs. On the gender relations and reversals in Karo’s experience, see Werblowsky 1977, 267–8, 280–1. 159 See, e.g., Ibn Gabbai 1954, part 4, chapter 24. 151

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found in the Zohar,160 which explains the sin of Eve, who separated the fruit from the tree of knowledge, as separating sound from speech.161 The Zohar goes on to say that the exilic state is that of silence, which disconnects speech and voice.162 The Zohar then ascribes the verse, “To you silence is praise,”163 to this exilic state.164 This appears to be a polemic against Maimonidies, who used this verse as a proof of the virtue of silent contemplation.165 To return to the gender issue, it is striking that the Zohar describes the rite of circumcision as re-connecting speech and voice and amending the primal sin.166 From a comparative point of view, it is worth recalling mythic Indian descriptions of the word as a feminine divine figure—Vac—as well as the descriptions of this figure as expressing the potency of male deities.167 (On a more sociological level, one can compare these views of sound and gender to the silencing role played by the Halakhic prohibition on hearing a woman’s voice, which has been extensively discussed in contemporary literature on women in Jewish life).168 A final reservation is that here we have focused on the oral aspect of non-semanticized language but there are of course non-semantic dimensions of written language which are visual in nature.169 One example is that of the graphic shape of the letters (mentioned in one text by Cordovero discussed above). Here, too, the operating principle is isomorphism: the shape of the letters is seen as isomorphic to the divine form.170 The possibility of human influence on the divine, which

160 Zohar 1, 36A. On this text, see the important study of the late Charles Mopsik (1996, 409–410). For the dependence of female speech on male voice, see Zohar 1, 145 A–B. 161 See the graphic description of the snake’s voice conjoining with the female voice “like a dog mating with a bitch” in Zohar 2, 111A. 162 Cf. Zohar 2, 25B. 163 Ps. 65.2. 164 On exile and language, see the text by Bachrach 1648, discussed above in Section III. 165 See above, n. 22. Cf. Maimonidies 2002, Part 3, Chapter 32. 166 Zohar 1, 98A. On this text, see Mopsik 1996, 405–6. On circumcision and language, see Wolfson 1987. 167 See Padoux 1990, 9–11; cf. 106, 151–2. 168 See BT Berakhot 24A, as well as Hauptman 1998, 24. 169 Cf. Padoux 1990, xiv; see also 86, 110, 113. 170 See Idel 2002, 51–2, 54, 70–4. The most sustained discussion of the power of the form of the letters is found in the fourteenth-century Byzantine text, Sefer Hatemunah, as well as associated works composed in the circle of the anonymous author. The texts composed in this circle often refer to the power of the graphic form (tziur) of the

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extends from this isomorphism, can be found in a Talmudic narrative (most likely influenced by the mystical Heikhalot literature), which describes the ascent of Moses from Sinai to the divine realm: “When Moses ascended above, he encountered God tying crowns to the letters. God said: ‘Moses is there no greeting where you come from’? Moses responded: ‘Is there a slave who greets his master.’ God answered: ‘You should have assisted me.’ Immediately he responded: ‘May the power of God increase’[Num. 14.17].”171 It is striking that God requests Moses to empower him whilst he is engaged in completing the crowns of the letters rather than the letters themselves. It is possible that this text suggests that the theurgical power of language is contained in their formal, non-semantic aspect.172 This is certainly the interpretation given by some Kabbalistic writers, who identified the crowns with the power latent in language.173 However, it must again be noted that written language is often seen as a limited expression of the potentials and potencies of sound: For example, R. Itzhak Haver, whom we encountered above, writes that in the time of Moses there was an experience of the direct presence of the divine, as the Shekhinah spoke from his throat.174 However, after his death, we are left merely with the written text, without the presence of the spoken word. Haver adds that whilst the letters denote this limited state, the vowels denote the ‘spirit and vitality’ of direct presence. This description

letters (See, e.g., the texts found in manuscript and adduced by Garb 2004, 154). Sefer Hatemunah itself (1998, 16) clearly states that the tziur or graphic form of the letters is isomorphic to the tziur adam or the human form. This structure in turn draws on earlier Kabbalistic traditions—see e.g. the claim of Rabbi Isaac the Blind that man is “built in the letters”, Commentary on Sefer Yezˢira adduced by Pedaya 2001, 105. See also throughout the Badei Haaron by R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon (14th c.). 171 BT Shabbat 89A. 172 This is also the opinion of Joseph Dan, Dan 1998, 113–4. 173 See, e.g., the often quoted passage found in the introduction to Ibn Gabbai 1954, which describes the crowns as the theurgical power of language. Note also the interesting commentary of R. Tzaddok Hacohen of Lublin (1999, 144 [Selach 13]) who writes that the crowns designate the Oral Torah. This creative misreading leads away from a text dealing with the power of written language to the theme of the power of voice discussed above. 174 Haver 1995, 142–3. This understanding of voice as presence and writing as absence is similar to a central tendency in Western culture, as critiqued by Jacques Derrida (1978). See especially his discussion of Judaism—in dialogue with E. Jabes—ibid., 68–70). However see Pedaya 2003, 130, who claims that the opposite tendency prevails in the Kabbalah of Nahmanidies. See also Handelman 1982, 175–6, and Idel 2002, 123– 8, 200.

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of the vowels rests on the classical idea that the vowels are the animating spirit of the letters,175 sometimes compared to breath.176 The possibility of comparison between Kabbalistic views of linguistic power and similar ideas found in other mystical traditions was suggested in the previous section. However, as suggested there, this option is significantly constrained by several of the cultural tendencies discussed here—the national character of numerous Kabbalistic statements, the focus on ritual practice, the emphasis on textual hermeneutics related to a given literary heritage, as well as a certain construction of gender relations. Nonetheless, this does not in any way detract from the import and significance of the findings presented above. Rather these reflections should be taken as cautions against sweeping universalizing moves à la Eliade or Jung. I would like to conclude our discussion with a Midrash on the Tablets of the Law, according to which one third of the tablets were held by Moses, and one third were held by God.177 The “two hands’ breadth” in between, also one third of the span of the tablets, remained in the middle between God and Moses. One can see this image as a representation of the nature of language as conceived of in Kabbalah. It does not belong completely to the realm of divine presence, nor to that of human practice, but rather to the ‘liminal’178 or ‘transitional’179 space in between. References Primary Sources Abraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apta 1863. Ohev Yisrael. Zhitomir. Azulai, Abraham 1989. Hesed Le Avraham. Jerusalem.

175 See Shem Tov Ibn Gaon 2001, 75: “one cannot apprehend the power of the letters except by means of the vowels because the letters are [. . .] hidden [. . .] silent and mute, and they are moved through the spirit of the vowels.” Cf. also p. 137, on the vowels as the “subtlety of the power” of the Sefirot. Rabbi Kook (2003, 42) writes of the vowels as the ‘life power’ of the letters. For a different view on animating spirit and static body in language, see the texts of R. Isaac the Blind, as discussed in Pedaya 2001, 95. See also Padoux 1990, 137–8 on breath as the ‘soul’ of language (on breath and the vowels see p. 234), and pp. 154–7, 230–1, 293–5, on conceptions of the superiority of the vowels to the consonants. 176 See, e.g., Nahman of Braslav 1985, Part 1, Chapter 31. 177 Exodus Rabbah 28, 1. 178 See Turner 1985. 179 See Winnicot 1958, 229–42.

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Bacrach, Naftali 1648. Emek Hamelech. Amsterdam. Bayhe, Rabbenu 1972. Commentary on the Torah. Jerusaelm: Mossad ha-Rav Kook. Bloch, Yehudah Lieb 1953. Shiurei Daat. Bnei Brak: Nezach. Borenstein Shmuel 1987. Shem Mishmuel. Jerusalem. Cordovero, Moses 1962. Pardes Rimonim. Jerusalem. Da Vidas, Elijah 1875. Reshit Hokhmah. Warsaw. Devarim Rabbah 1987. Devarim Rabbah. Tel Aviv. Elimelech of Lizansk Noam Elimelech. N.A. Epstein, Qalonimus Qalman 1993. Maor Vashemesh. Jerusalem. Exodus Rabbah 1992. Exodus Rabbah. Tel Aviv. Haver Isaac 1995. Pithei S’aarim. Tel Aviv. ———— 2000. Siach Yitzhak. Jerusalem. Hemdat Yamim 2003. Hemdat Yamim (Anonymous). Jerusalem. Ibn Gabbai, Meir 1954. Avodat Hakodesh. Jerusalem. Kook, Abraham Issac 2003. Reish Millin, Jerusalem. Levi Issac of Berdichev 1958. Qedushat Levi. Jerusalem. Maimonidies, Moses 2002. Guide to the Preplexed. Tr. M. Schwartz. Tel Aviv University: Tel Aviv. Mechilta De Rabbi Shimeon 1979. Mechilta De Rabbi Shimeon. Eds. J. Epstein and E. Melamed. Jerusalem. Mechilta De Rabbi Yishmael 1998. Mechilta De Rabbi Yishmael. Eds. S. Horowitz and I. Rabin. Jerusalem. Menachem Mendel of Shklov 2001. Writings. Jerusalem. Midrash Tanhuma 1964. Midrash Tanhuma. Jerusalem. Nahman of Braslav 1985. Liqqutei Moharan. Jerusalem. Nahmanidies, Moses 1959. Commentary on the Torah. Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook. Pesikta de Rav Kahana 1962. Pesikta de Rav Kahana. Ed. B. Mandelbaum. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary. Sefer Hatemunah 1998. Sefer Hatemunah (Anonymous). Jerusalem. Shem Tov ibn Gaon 2001. Baddei Haaron. Jerusalem. Sheva Enayim 1998. Sheva Enayim (Anonymous). Jerusalem. Shneur Zalman of Liady 1985. Tanya. New York. Song of Songs Rabbah 1984. Song of Songs Rabbah. Jerusalem. Tzaddok Hacohen of Lublin 1967. Resisei Lailah. Bnei Brak. ———— 1973. Mahsavot Haruz. Bnei Brak. ———— 1999. Pri Tzaddik. Jerusalem. Vajda, Georges (ed.) 1969. Meshiv Devarim Nechochim. Jerusalem: Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities. Vital, Chaim 1898. S’aar Maamarei Hazal. Jerusalem. Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Gur 2000. Sfat Emet. Shapira Center, Israel. Yishayahu Jacob Halevi of Brody 2002. Eretz Tov. Jerusalem. Zeev Wolf of Zhitomir 1954. Or ha-Meir. New York. Studies Aloni, Nehemyah 1980. “The Kuzari—An anti-arabiyyeh Polemic.” Eshel Beer Sheva 2: 119–44. Alper, Harvey 1989. “The Cosmos as Śiva’s Language-Game: ‘Mantra’ according to Ksemaraja’s Śivasūtravimarśi.” In Understanding Mantras, ed. H. Alper, 258–67. Albany: SUNY Press. Ben Sasson, Hachim Hillel 1959. Hagut Ve Hanhaga [The Social Thought of the Jews of Poland in the Middle Ages]. Jerusalem: Bialik. Blumenthal, David 1987. “Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being and the Medieval Jewish Tradition.” In Jacob’s Ladder and The Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being, ed. M. Kuntz and P.G. Kuntz, 179–90. New York: Peter Lang.

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Chittick, William 1989. The Sufi Path of Knowledge. Albany: SUNY Press. Dan, Joseph 1998. On Sanctity: Religion, Ethics, Mysticism in Judaism and other Religions. Jerusalem: Magnes. Derrida Jacques 1978. Writing and Difference. Tr. A. Bass. London: Routledge. Dreyfus, Hubert and Rabinow, Paul 1982. Michel Foucault—Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dumezil, Georges 1987. Appolon Sonore et autres essais: Esquisses de mythologie. Paris: Gallimard. Dyczkowski, Mark 1987. The Doctrine of Vibration: An Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices of Kashmir Shaivism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Findly, Ellison Banks 1989. “Mántra kavisástá: Speech as Performance in the Rˢ gveda.” In Understanding Mantras, ed. H. Alper, 15–47. Albany: SUNY Press. Fine, Lawrence 2003. Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Issac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fluegel, Maurice 1902. Philosophy, Qabbala and Vedanta, Baltimore: Sun. Garb, Jonathan 2001. “Kinds of Power: Rabbinic Texts and the Kabbalah.” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 6: 45–71. ———— 2004. Manifestations of Power in Jewish Mysticism From Rabbinic Literature to Safedian Kabbalah. Jerusalem: Magnes. Goldish, Matt (ed.) 2003. Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Goldman, Myla 2000. Bee Season. New York: Random House. Gotlieb-Zorenberg, Avivah 2001. The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. New York: Doubleday. Greene, Thomas 1997. “Language, Signs and Magic.” In Envisioning Magic, ed. P. Schäfer and H. Krippenberg, 255–72. Leiden: Brill. Hallamish, Moshe 1981. “On Silence in Kabbalah.” In Religion and Language: Studies in Jewish and General Philosophy, ed. M. Hallamish and A. Kasher, 79–84. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. Handelman, Susan 1982. The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press. Harari, Yuval 1997/98. “How to do Things with Words: Philosophical Theory and Magical Deeds.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 19–20: 365–92. Hauptman, Judith 1998. ReReading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice, Boulder: Westview. Heschel, Abraham, Joshua 1965. Theology of Ancient Judaism II. London and New York: Soncino. ———— 1995. Theology of Ancient Judaism III. London and New York: Soncino. Hillman, James 1995. Kinds of Power: A Guide to its Intelligent Uses. New York: Doubleday. Holdredge, Barbara 1996. Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, New York: SUNY Press. Hollenback, Jesse Byron 1996. Mysticism: Experience, Response and Empowerment. Pennsylvania: Pensylvania State University Press. Idel, Moshe 1988. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———— 1989. Language, Torah and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia. Tr. M. Kallus. Albany: SUNY Press. ———— 1991. “Rabbinism versus Kabbalism: On G. Scholem’s Phenomenolgy of Judaism.” Modern Judaism 11: 281–96. ———— 1992. “Reification of Language in Jewish Mysticism.” In Mysticism and Language, ed. S. Katz, 42–79. New York: Oxford University Press. ———— 1995. Hassidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, Albany: SUNY Press. ———— 1997/98. “Non-Linguistic Infinities and Interpretation in Later Jewish Mysticism.” The Jerusalem Review 2: 209–31. ———— 1998. Messianic Mystics, New Haven: Yale University Press. ———— 2002. Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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———— 2002b. “Die laut gelesene Torah—Stimmengemeinschaft in der Judischen Mystik.” Zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung: Zur Kultur und Mediengeschichte der Stimme, ed. F. Kittler, T. Macho and S. Weigel, 19–53. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. ———— 2005. Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism. Los Angeles: Cherub Press. Jabes, Edmund 1991. The Book of Questions. Tr. R. Waldrop. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. Janowitz, Naomi 1989. The Poetics of Ascent: Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text. Albany: SUNY Press. Lesses, Rebbeca 1998. Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Trinity: Harrisburg. Liebes, Yehudah 1993. “Towards a Study of the author of Emek Ha-Melekh, his Personality, Writings and Kabbalah.” Studies in Jewish Thought 11: 101–137. ———— 2001. Ars Poetica in Sefer Yezˢira. Schocken: Tel Aviv. Lorberbaum, Yair 2004. Image of God: Halakhah and Aggadah. Tel Aviv: Schocken. Lovejoy, Arthur 1960. The Great Chain of Being. New York: Harper and Row. Meroz, Ronit 1980. “Aspects of the Lurianic Doctrine of Prophecy.” M.A. thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Miller, Patricia Cox 1989. “In Praise of Nonsense.” In Classical Mediterranean Spirituality, ed. A. Hilary Armstrong, 489–505. New York: Crossroad. Mopsik, Charles 1993. Les grands textes de la cabale: les rites qui font Dieu. Paris: Verdier. ———— 1996. “Pensée, Voix et Parole dans le Zohar”. Reuve de l’Historie des Religions 213: 385–414. Naeh, Shlomo 1993. “Creates the Fruit of Lips: A Phenomenological Study of Prayer According to Mishnah Berakhot 4:3; 5:5.” Tarbitz 63: 185–218. Otto, Rudolf 1958. The Idea of the Holy. Tr. J. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Padoux, André 1990. Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras. Tr. J. Gontier. Albany: State University of New York Press. Pedaya, Haviva 2001. Name and Sanctuary in the Teaching of R. Isaac the Blind: A Comparative Study in the Writings of the Earliest Kabbalists. Jerusalem: Magnes. ———— 2002. Vision and Speech: Models of Revelatory Experience in Jewish Mysticism, Los Angeles: Cherub Press. ———— 2003. Nahmanidies: Cyclical Time and Holy Text. Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Sack, Bracah 2002. Shomer Ha-Pardes: The Kabbalist Rabbi Shabbetai Shftel Horowitz of Prague. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University. Scholem, Gershom 1969. On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism. New York: Schocken. ———— 1972. “The Name of God and the Linguistic of the Kabbala.” Diogenes 79: 59–79. ———— 1986. The Kabbalah in Provence. Jerusalem: Akademon. Schwartz, Dov 2001. Challenge and Crisis in Rabbi Kook’s Circle. Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Shulman, David 2002. “Is There an Indian Connection to Sefer Yesirah.” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 2: 191–9. Silman, Yohanan 1999. The Voice Heard at Sinai: Once or Ongoing?. Jerusalem: Magnes. Stevens, Wallace 1967. Collected Poems. New York: A.A Knopf. Stroumsa, Guy 2003. “A nameless God: Judeo-Christian and Gnostic ‘theologies of the Name’.” In The Image of Judeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature, ed. P. Tomson and D. Lambers-Petry, 230–43. Thübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Sviri, Sara 2003. “Words of Power and the Power of Words: Mystical Linguistics in the Works of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27: 204–244. Turner, Victor 1985. “Liminality, Kabbalah and the Media.” Religion 15: 205–218. Urbach, Ephraim Elimelech 1975. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Tr. F. Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes.

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Werblowsky, R.J. Zwi 1977. Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic, Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia. White, David Gordon 2000. “Tantra in Practice: Mapping a Tradition.” In Tantra in Practice, ed. D.G. White, 4–38. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press. Winnicot, Donald W. 1958, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.” In Collected Papers, ed. D.W. Winnicot, 229–42. London: Tavistock. Wolfson, Elliot R. 1987. “Circumcision and the Divine Name: A Study in the Transmission of Esoteric Doctrine.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 78: 77–112. ———— 1994. Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———— 1997. “Coronation of the Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and the Ritual of Androgynisation.” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6: 301–43. ———— 2000. “Ontology, Alterity and Ethics in Kabbalistic Anthropology.” Exemplaria 12: 139–53. Yamasaki, Taiko 1988. Shingon—Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. Tr. R. and C. Petterson. Boston and London: Shambala.

THE POETICS OF GRAMMAR IN THE JAVANOBALINESE TRADITION Thomas M. Hunter I. Introduction Let us begin—perhaps unusually for a work on language—with an illustration [Fig 1]. This is a rĕrajahan, a magical diagram from the Balinese tradition, one among thousands, each designed with a specific purpose in mind. Perhaps the most common are ulapan, diagrams written on white cloth and placed above the entryway to a dwelling place or shrine as a sign to the multitudinous beings that inhabit the Balinese “invisible world” (niskala) that the site has been given the rituals that allow it to be claimed for human use. Others are used as amulets to ward off sickness, theft or the attacks of sorcerers, to guarantee success in love, or to strengthen a practitioner for achieving the “mystical power” (sakti) that is a central goal of spiritual practices as framed within the Balinese tradition.1 From the written material found with the rĕrajahan we know that it is a pĕkakas, a charm in written or pictorial form that is usually worn hidden in a sash around the waist as a means of protection against disease, misfortune or the attacks of sorcerers. But it is not my purpose here to discuss the use of the rĕrajahan, or even what its meaning may have been for its creator. In the first place these are matters hedged round with an ethos of prohibition, so that even were I privy to the lore that lies behind the making and ‘activation’ of such diagrams, I would be taking serious risks to reveal their meaning outside a strictly controlled ritual context.2 My intention here is rather to invite contemplation on several elements in this rĕrajahan that suggest a particular understanding of “the sonic energy active in the syllable” that has deep historical roots in the pre-modern culture of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago.3 This has led 1 Anthropologist Hildred Geertz (1994, 1995, 2004) has opened up a new understanding of the particular meanings that the term sakti takes in the Balinese sociocultural context in a series of insightful and carefully detailed works. 2 This matter is highly contested in contemporary Bali, with some factions claiming that the entire magical lore of Bali should be opened up for examination and publication, while others claim that this would violate the very essence of Balinese religious identity. 3 The phrase “the sonic energy active in the syllable” is cited from the call for papers of the conference leading to this volume.

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in Bali to what might be termed a system of “orthographic mysticism”, a raising of the status of the written character as a medium of metaphysical energies to a level of prestige that in the South Asian tradition has generally been reserved for the enunciation of mantra.4 Taking this image from the Balinese cultural imagination of the early twentieth century as a starting point I hope to trace some of the figural elements that have developed in Javano-Balinese literary and theological traditions for a period of over a millennium.5 These in turn should help to account for a unique economy of “sonorous” and “orthographic” modes of expressing metaphysical concerns in the Javano-Balinese tradition.

Figure 1: A rĕrajahan from the Balinese tradition6

4 The term “alphabet mysticism” has been previously introduced by Rubenstein 2000, 29–65, to describe the types of phenomena for which I use the term “orthographic mysticism”. Rubenstein’s work represents an important contribution to the study of Balinese literary praxis in general, and to the development of a detailed understanding of the deeply significant role played by orthography and related disciplines in Balinese theological and literary traditions. With the work of Zurbuchen 1987, Rubenstein’s work also sets a high standard in what might be termed a field of “comparative noetics”. 5 The rĕrajahan illustrated in Figure 1 was originally collected in the first quarter of the twentieth century by the Dutch bureaucrat and researcher, V.E. Korn, it became part of the Korn Collection of the Library of Leiden University. C. Hooykaas 1980, fig. 40 later published both the Korn collection and the Quindort collection of rĕrajahan in the collections of the University of Leiden Libraries. 6 After Hooykaas 1980, fig. 40.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 273 II. Exploring a Rĕrajahan: On Orthographic Mysticism If we focus on the pictorial elements of the rĕrajahan, we are immediately confronted with a number of striking visual images that seem to suggest both sonorous and grammatological aspects of the experience of language, at the same time that they present disembodied aspects of the human form in a “reassemblage” that must surely have deep symbolic resonances with other Balinese semiotic systems.7 First let us observe the configuration that frames the rĕrajahan, a series of four legs linking together four identical heads, each turned slightly to the right, each with its ear forced forward into an attitude of “hyper-acoustic sensitivity” by one of the feet that bind the frame into a tight enclosure. The outward turning of the ears invites speculation on possible connections with the importance of verbal formulae (mantra) in South Asian mystical and ritual praxis, and indeed this is strengthened by the ulu candra symbol, which converts ordinary syllables into mantra, worn as a crown by each of the figures in the rĕrajahan. However, while mantra (Balinese swalita) do play a significant role in the practice of Balinese priests, a reliable informant tells me that what a trained Balinese eye might see here is a reference to the practice of ‘strengthening’ senses; just as one gains the power termed “tingal” through an intensification of the power of vision, so can one gain a supra-normal form of the sense of hearing. This raising of the power of the senses is one aspect of the general quest for sakti, and the desire to gain control over niskala forces.8

7 As we shall see all but one of the elements of the collocation of graphemes in the rĕrajahan represents a dependent grapheme. This suggests comparison with the “reassemblages” of human body parts that in many cases are central to the pictorial aspect of rĕrajahan. To pictorially reassemble parts of the human anatomy in a rĕrajahan may parallel the redeployment of the constituent elements of writing in the production of “sacred characters” (sastra, swalita), especially modre, whose special form makes them essentially unpronounceable, and open to analysis only to those who have been properly prepared and initiated The converse of this positive form of “reassembly” is illustrated in the use of disembodied body-parts, often equipped with wings or eyes, as prominent among the demons who attack heroes who are described in various Balinese works of art as meditating in graveyards or cremation grounds in order to acquire the power that will ensure their ability to master their destiny. For one illustration of this kind of attack by disembodied body-parts see the “wayang-style” paintings of the “Tale of Father Brayut” (Gĕguritan Pan Brayut) in the “Floating Pavillion” (Bale Kambang) in Klungkung, Bali. 8 For purposes of this article I have chosen not to retain South Asian spelling for words like śakti and nisˢkala. In Balinese phonology there is no distinction between sets like ś-sˢ-s or ñ-nˢ-n, but these distinctions are preserved in Balinese orthography, for

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The fact that the four heads of the rĕrajahan are at the compass points, and connected by a series of legs suggests circumambulation, and thus comparison with Balinese beliefs around the idea of a circuit of spiritual power. This circuit of power has macrocosmic coordinates in the idea of pilgrimage to a series of major temples (sad kahyangan) stretched across the physical landscape of Bali, while its microcosmic coordinates take the form of a nyāsa-like assignment of a series of “sacred syllables” (sastra, aksara) to the major organs of the human body.9 The consequent ‘strengthening’ of the body enables the practitioner to absorb the powers of a series of deities and other elements of Balinese cosmogony and become the locus of an inner “circulation of the world” (pangidĕr-idĕr ing jagat), isomorphic with the act of pilgrimage in the exoteric world, but presumed to be still more powerful in its effects upon the practitioner. Our diagram might thus be said at this point to present a series of potent signifiers that have to do with a “rotational” gathering of esoteric power and its confinement within a magically charged space bound on all sides and impenetrable except by the initiated. When we turn to the set of written signs framed by this “circuit of power,” we encounter a series of written characters, something not uncommon within the practice of rĕrajahan. However, contrary to common practice, these characters represent neither pronounceable “sacred syllables” (swalita) that are closely related to the mantra systems of India, nor the uniquely Balinese “reassemblages” of orthographic elements to produce unpronounceable “sacred letter combinations” (modre) that are believed to have special powers “beyond the realm of the senses”. Instead we find a series of written signs that in large part represent dependent graphemes, orthographic formants that alter a ‘consonantal’ base to reasons reviewed in this study. For words like śakti and nisˢkala retention of the Indic spelling would not present a problem (although the understanding of śakti is certainly quite different for India and Bali), but for words like sastra, used as a word for “sacred syllable” the Indian spelling would (falsely) suggest another concept altogether (normative technical text pertaining to a sacred or mundane science). I have chosen, therefore, to use commonly found Balinese words with an Indian origin with a spelling that reflects their contemporary pronunciation, and is also found commonly in Balinese or Indonesian works written in romanized form. 9 There are clear resonances here with the technique of nyāsa known from Indian sources, and indeed the history of these techniques suggests a grounding in nyāsa as conceived in the traditions of Yoga and early Tantrism. See Goudriaan & Hooykaas 1971, 59–70, for a Balinese example of the placement of a series of deities in the body facilitated by the use of specific mantra. See Gosh 1989, 238–9, for an explanation of the “universal tantric rite of nyāsa” in the context of the Pañcaratra school of Vaisˢnˢava Tantrism.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 275 produce pronounceable, independent syllables.10 In this set of characters we find the following elements of orthographic convention (listed in roughly clockwise order, beginning from center, left):

e

=

) º

=

i Á Ù

=

=

= =

taling, written prior to a consonantal character to indicate the vowel /e/, or in combination with the character tĕdong (written after the consonantal character) to form the vowel /o/ pĕpĕt, written above a consonantal character to indicate the central vowel /ǘ/ ulu candra, written above any character forming a syllable (either vowel or consonant plus vowel) to add the nasal feature (Skt anusvāra) that defines the production of mantra in Indian and Balinese convention11 ulu (“head”), written above a consonantal character to indicate the vowel /i/ a-kāra, the character for writing the vowel /a/ in word-initial position; this special character is used only for writing words in the Kawi (Old Javanese) language12 suku kembung, written below a consonantal character to represent the vowel /u/ when it follows a consonant and precedes a vowel (u/C_V). Balinese convention, based ultimately on Sanskrit practices, prohibits hiatus except in a few highly constrained phonological environments; this has led to unique developments in Balinese orthography 13

10 It is to some degree a misnomer to refer to any Balinese character as ‘consonantal’ as the inherent vowel -a- is assumed unless the character is altered by the addition of one of the characters indicating another vowel. This means that in their unaltered form all Balinese written characters represent syllables. A system of altered, or partial, graphemes is then used to allow the representation of consonant clusters or combinations of vowel and semi-vowel. Technically speaking, the Balinese system of writing is thus a semi-syllabary, in common with other descendants of the Brahmi script of the Ashokan period. 11 In Balinese texts like the Tutur Aji Saraswati the ulu candra is understood as composed of three smaller formants (arddha-candra, windu and nāda) which respond to familiar elements of South Asian attribution of the work of creation to the role of primordial sound (nāda) in the expansion of the cosmos from an origin-point (bindu) of pure potentiality. In Bali the arddha-candra (“half-moon”) element is identified with consciousness, thus corresponding closely to South Asian associations of the moon with soma, the essence of consciousness and the psycho-physical “fluid” that results from the practice of yoga, especially in Tantric contexts. 12 Since the velar affricate [h] is not found in word-initial position in Balinese phonology, while the character for h is presumed to ‘contain’ the inherent vowel /a/, the grapheme for ha- is commonly used in Balinese to represent an initial a-. 13 Many Balinese words do have medial vowel clusters, based on the historical reduction of intervocalic [r] and [h], and this can lead to sequences like -aa-, -uu, -ui- or -ii-. In order to avoid the appearance of hiatus these sequences may be written with an epenthetic -h-, -w- or -y-.

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thomas m. hunter =

Î

î

= =

;

=

o

=

(

=

suku (“foot”), written below a consonantal character to represent the vowel /u/ guwung-r (or r-repha), written below a consonantal character to indicate the semi-vowel /r/ when it directly follows another consonant and precedes a vowel (r/C_V)14 na-niya + suku ilut, a combination of two characters; the first (na-niya) is used to write the semi-vowel /y/ when it follows a consonant and precedes a vowel; the adjoining sign (suku ilut) is used for the vowel /u/ when it follows an occurrence of the semivowel /y/ in na-niya form. wisah, written after an “open syllable” (CV) to indicate the consonant /h/ in word-final position; closely related to the grapheme called wignyan in the Javanese tradition, this character ultimately originates from visargahˢ of the South Asian tradition.15 tĕdong, used singularly to form “long” or “heavy” (guru) syllables in copying metrical works of the Kawi/Old Javanese tradition, or in combination with taleng (see above) to form the vowel /o/ surang, used to form the semi-vowel /r/ when it occurs after a vowel and before a following consonant, or a sentence boundary (r/V_C or r/V_ # #)

There are several remarkable points that come out when we look closely at this set of characters. The first is that 11 of the characters constitute the full set of pĕngaŋge sastra, or pĕsandaŋan sastra. Both terms refer to the “clothing” of written characters, the orthographic formants that combine with consonantal characters to represent the vowels and semivowels. This suggests that a particular importance is attached to the dependent vowel and semi-vowel signs in the Balinese system of orthographic mysticism. We will return to this point. The second is that we find a special prominence given to the mantraforming character ulu candra. Considering the origins of Balinese mystical practices in South Asia, and the close resemblance of the Balinese ulu candra with the Indian cakra-bindu (which has the identical function of converting ordinary syllables to their sacred, sonorous counterparts) this is the least surprising element in the configuration of the rĕrajahan. The prominence of the ulu candra attests to the remarkable degree to

14 The term guwung refers to the conical shape of baskets (guwung) used as cages for fighting cocks, while r-repha preservers the terminology of Sanskrit texts on phonetics. 15 Many of the pre-modern writing systems of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago can be traced back to the Pallava script of South India. De Casparis (1975) used the term “Kawi” to refer to these scripts, while Kozok (2004) has more recently suggested the more accurate term “Pallavo-Nusantaric”.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 277 which the Balinese have maintained Indian beliefs around the creative role of sound in the genesis and regeneration of the cosmos. Perhaps most remarkable is the occurrence of only one character representing a non-dependent phoneme, that is the character used to write initial a-. We will return shortly to a closer consideration of the character for initial a-. First, in order to better elucidate a number of elements of the graphemes central to the rĕrajahan, I would like to take a moment to briefly review the more general context of Balinese orthography and its relation to mysticism as these subjects have been outlined in recent work by Rubenstein on what she has termed “the magic of letters and rituals of literacy” (2000:39–65). It is to Rubenstein’s credit that she has shifted the ground of the philological project from an earlier preoccupation with minor details of analysis—and an often condescending attitude towards local knowledge—to the study of the important role played by orthographic rules in the practice of the poets of the Javano-Balinese tradition of writing kakawin, roughly comparable to the kāvya, or “court epics” of South Asia. In part she has based her elucidation of what she terms “alphabet mysticism” as exemplified in works like the Tutur Aji Saraswati (TAS) and Swarawyañjana Tutur (ST). However, she has also enriched her exposition of these texts by incorporating the comments of her teacher and informant, the late Ida Pĕdanda Made Sideman of Sanur, who was without a doubt among the foremost masters of Balinese literature in the twentieth century. In a telling description of Ida Pĕdanda Made Sidĕmen’s reverence for proper diction and spelling, she notes the imagery of battle he often invoked in describing the fate of misused characters, and the links this has with Balinese beliefs around the supernatural qualities of written characters: His most common declaration . . . is: “many [of the letters] are dead, in great numbers they have been defeated” . . . The association of spelling with life and death through the use of metaphors is more than mere convention. It signifies a belief . . . that letters have a divine origin, are invested with supernatural life force, and are a powerful weapon that can be employed to influence the course of events. (Rubinstein 2000, 194)

Beyond a few short comments I will not attempt to rehearse Rubenstein’s informative discussion of the prominent role played by adherence to orthographic, euphonic and metrical conventions among the Balinese literati—not coincidentally a world dominated by “high priests” (pĕdanda) who hold the highest ritual rank in the Balinese system of

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social precedence. One can detect in these conventions a concerted attempt to maintain the analytical practices and terminology of South Asia. At times the Balinese rules closely reflect Indian conventions, for example in the discussion of syllable length under the usual Sanskritic terms hrasva, dīrgha and pluta. In other cases it appears that the Balinese analysts have focused on orthographic forms of investigation to an astonishing degree, suggesting a massive shifting of the ground of analytical concerns from the phonological and grammatical (South Asia) to the orthographic (Bali). For example in the ST the “yanˢ-sandhi” rule (Pānˢini 6.1.77) that allows /i/ to convert to /y/ when prior to a dissimilar vowel, is given a novel interpretation in a “back-analysis” of the Balinese word ayam (“chicken”):16 The vowel i becomes its semivowel ya when followed by a dissimilar vowel, for example . . . a-i-am becomes . . . ayam. (Rubenstein 2000, 205)17

There are two areas of analysis in the TAS and ST that have a particular relevance for the interpretation of our rĕrajahan. One is the question of the special qualities attributed to the a-kāra, the character used to form word-initial a-, and its “fate” when encountering consonantal characters. As Rubenstein (2000, 211) tells us, according to the ST: The initial vowel a . . . becomes the a innate in consonants when it adheres to consonants. The text describes the a as “ruling over consonants” (wyapakeng sastreka).18

Conversely, the other vowel signs do not enjoy so positive a result when encountering consonantal characters, being “overpowered” (kawaśa dadya) by the consonants. So for example:

16 The yanˢ-sandhi rule is given in Asˢt ˢādhyāyi 6.1.77: iko yanˢ aci, where ikahˢ represents the set i-u-r-l, yan represents the set y-v-r-l, and ac the set a-i-u-r-l-e-o-ai-au. The genitival ending -ahˢ of ik tells us that this is the element to be changed, while the locative ending -i of aci tells us that the process of change of the set ik to the set yan occurs in the “left context”, that is prior to the set ac. 17 It is unfortunate that Rubenstein (2000) has not provided more information on the precise ways that Balinese orthographic conventions mirror the conventions of Sanskrit. The novel ways that rules of Sanskrit origin are used to reanalyze Balinese words are one example of the many practices that demonstrate the remarkable degree of Balinese priestly commitment to preserving literary and linguistic practices of the “Sanskrit ecumene” long after actual contact between the two countries had been cut off by changes in the politico-economic circumstances of the archipelago. 18 This is slightly incorrect: wyāpaka does not mean “rule over”, but rather “pervade”. As we shall see this is a more apt description of the role played by a in the many writing systems of South and Southeast Asian that ultimately trace their ancestry to Brahmi.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 279 The (initial) i is overpowered so that it becomes the hulu talinga [when it adheres to a consonant] (i . . . kawaśa dadya hulu talinga . . . kunang).

This special treatment of the character for a in the ST brings to mind a passage in the Mahāvairocana-sūtra (MVS). This is one of two seminal texts of Shingon and Vajrayana Buddhism that de Jong (1974) has shown were likely known in Java from as early as the ninth century ce, and which influenced the composition of the Buddhist handbooks Sang Hyang Kamahāyanan Mantranāya (SHM) and Sang Hyang Kamahāyanikan (SHKM). The discussion in the MVS of the nature of the syllable a is especially telling, in that it reminds us of the remarkable degree of continuity that appears to exist between such ancient formulations and the presuppositions of the Balinese school of orthographic mysticism: The syllable a is the base of all the doctrines. As soon as somebody opens his mouth, all the sounds bear the vowel a. Without the a there would be no language. That is why it is called “mother of all the sounds”. The speeches of the three worlds all depend on the name, but the name depends on the syllable. That is why the virtue (. . . siddham) of the syllable a is the mother of all the syllables. . . . How is it that there is no dharma which is not the effect of a cause? Things arising from a cause all have a beginning, an origin. . . . Just as when listening to some speeches we hear the sound a, so also when we consider the production of the dharmas we see their original non-production.

While a discussion of this type may not ring familiar to Balinese ears, it would have been perfectly conceivable in Buddhist circles of fourteenthcentury Java that produced works like the kakawin Sutasoma. And there can be little doubt that both the Balinese treatment of an orthographic principle around a-, and the Buddhist thematizing of a similar principle in philosophical discourse, hark back to an ancient attitude towards language that has cast a long shadow over the cultural history of South and Southeast Asia. I propose that this principle is the phonetic principle articulated as early as the Taittīyaprātiśākhya that tells us that there is no such thing in nature as a consonant that can be enunciated except through combination with a vowel. By convention (since a is the first vowel of the ordered sets of the Sanskrit syllabary) and by analysis (that a was presumed the simplest vowel in articulatory terms), a is then assumed to be the inherent vowel, assumed to be present in any syllable unless a further modification is introduced that will produce another vowel. While the point seems to be rarely made in studies of the development of Brahmi script, it would seem remarkable if the analytical conventions

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of the prātiśākhya were not the deciding factor in the transformation of writing from an alphabetical system to a semi-syllabic system once some form of Western or Southern Semitic crossed the Indus and was adopted for Indian use. With this movement we see the transformation of a system of separate characters for vowels and consonants (alphabet) to a system of consonants whose default form “contains” the inherent vowel a, and which can be modified with a special set of dependent vowel signs (semi-syllabary). While the exposition of the MVS can be said to be based on a “phonological figuration” of the inherent vowel a in the service of a philosophical discourse, the Balinese case clearly demonstrates that the ground has shifted considerably in the intervening centuries between the MVS and texts like the Swarawyañjana. With the Balinese insistence on the precedence of the vowel a in the phonological hierarchy—its ability to “pervade” (wyapaka) the consonants, rather than to be “overcome” (kawaśa)—we move from a “phonological figure” to a “grammatological” figure. Rubenstein (2000:40) has suggested that the reasons for this substantial shift of the ground of philosophical and religious speculation from the phonological to the orthographic may be related to the ability of writing to “materialize speech and enable its transmission and preservation over time” (pace Goody 1968:206) or to the ‘legitimizing’ role that religion played in “societies where writing had been associated with the priesthood.” But there are other, more cogent, reasons why such a shift would have taken place in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. It would surely be worthwhile to sketch out at length the historical pressures that have impelled the shift from a sonorous and phonological orientation in religious speculation (South Asia) toward the sonorous and orthographic (Java and Bali), but this is not the place for such a study. For the moment let us simply bear in mind the enormous internal pressures that must have been exerted on Javano-Balinese priestly institutions to preserve an accurate representation of the Indian phonological system that was fundamental to the most sacrosanct elements of the ritual liturgy. This had to be accomplished in the context of a Western Austronesian phonological system that lacked several of the most crucial contrasts of the Old Indo-Aryan sound system that had been preserved in classical Sanskrit.19 I believe that this was one of the major factors in

19 Generally speaking AN sound systems show no contrast of unaspirated vs. aspirated (or “breathy voice”) consonants, no contrast of retroflex and alveolar-dental stops,

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 281 the shift from a phonological to an orthographic orientation in the shared presupposition of a “sonic energy active in the syllable.”20 A second aspect of works like the TAS and ST that can help us understand our rĕrajahan is the complex system of correlations that is developed between elements of the physical world (buana agung) and the psycho-physiological world of the human being (buana alit). In the ST, for example, the vowel a is said to embody the deity Iśwara, while its “heavy” (guru) variant ā is said to embody his consort, Bhagawatī. These two vowels are then said to “procreate” (manak), giving birth to the “five elements” (pañcamāhabhūta), which are embodied in the series ka—kha—ga—gha—nga, the first category (warga) of the Balinese syllabary. The set u—ū is then said to embody Brahma and Wedawatī, and to give birth to the five organs of perception (pañcakarmendriya). The debt to Tantric formulations here is evident; but so too are ancient roots in works like the Sang Hyang Kamahāyanikan, mentioned earlier as likely influenced by the Mahāvairocana-sūtra. In the SHKM the Sanskrit syllabary is described as a unity that is “internally the body” (ikang śarīra i jro) and “externally a stūpa [and] stepped, temple platform” (i yawa stūpa prāsāda). The various elements of the syllabary are then assigned to powers and substances of the body and/or the natural world. The vowels r—rö, for example, are assigned to “the eyes and what is seen” (mata tinon) and e—ai to “the nose and smelling.” As Rubenstein (2000:58–59), Zurbuchen (1987:96) and Lovric (1987:71–2) have shown, the ancient association of written characters and their sonorous equivalents with

and only a single sibilant (where Sanskrit has three). Furthermore vowel length is not marked for quantity as it is in OIA languages, and for that matter the majority of all South Asian tongues, at least those of the Indo-European and Dravidian families. 20 For a succinct statement of the essentials of the huge field of belief and practice around mantra in South Asia, see Padoux 1989. His comments on the overwhelmingly “oral” nature of mantra are particularly revealing in terms of the contrast with Balinese practice (Padoux 1989, 296–7): . . . mantras as they exist in actual fact . . . can be properly explained and understood only within the Indian tradition, with its metaphysical and mythical notions about speech . . . In this context, it is worth noting that, from the outset, the sort of speech or word considered all-powerful was not written: All speculations and practices always concerned, and still concern, the oral field only. Mantra is sound (śabda) or word (vāc); it is never, at least in its nature, written. The degree to which this orientation of mantra as speech permeates the Indian tradition may help to explain why Staal—who has produced articles as perceptive as his (1989) contribution to the volume from which Padoux’s comments are drawn—is able to analyze Balinese ritual practice around mantra in terms of speech alone, despite all evidence to the contrary, in his Rituals on Fire and Water (1987).

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particular aspects of the physical and human worlds has meant that they play a special role in mediating energies that can be harnessed for healing or magical purposes. The roots of this tradition clearly go back as far as the SHKM and are reflected in contemporary Bali, for example, in healing rituals concerning the Kanda Mpat, or “four spiritual siblings”. In fact, a very similar configuration of pĕngaŋge sastra, in this case composed of 14 graphemes, is fairly widely known in Bali under the term caturdasaksara. This set differs from that of our rĕrajahan only in that the ulu candra is replaced by the cĕcĕk, a simple slash written above a character that represents the velar nasal [ŋ], and the addition of the ulu tĕlinga (or ulu ricĕm) sign used for writing ī. According to a small but popular booklet published by Nyoka (1994) this set of characters should be recited on the full moon and dark moon in order to “purify the inner self ” (bathin, niskala). Furthermore, according to the author, “each of the letters and its use is given life by a god or goddess, who purifies the important parts of our body.”21 For the moment let us return to our rĕrajahan. I believe I have shown that there are special reasons why the character for a- is alone among the Balinese independent phonemes that have found a place, indeed a central place at the heart of the rĕrajahan. But what of the dependent

21

The correlations of graphemes, deities and parts of the body purified by the recitation of the graphemes according to Nyota (1994:20–1) is as follows. It is clear that there is some confusion in the list, possibly reflecting either defects in the written sources used by Nyota, or an incomplete knowledge of some nyasa-like system that is ordinarily not shared except with students who have undertaken appropriate study and initiation: grapheme

deity

place in the body purified

taling a-kara suku kembung guwung wisah na-niya tedung suku ilut suku ulu ricem pĕpĕt ulu cecek surang

Indra Warna Ananta Bhoga Taksaka Durga Sang Hyang Widhi Shiwa Basuki Sang Hyang Wisesa Wisnu Sambu Sang HyangBanaspati Sang Banaspati Uma

stomach crown of the head — feet throat the deepest recess of the crown of the head thoughts, the mind the anus the mouth the chest the hair the sironcala ? the neck the blinking of the eyes

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 283 vowel-signs, that have been described as being “overcome” (kawaśa) by the consonantal characters? The TAS and ST are strangely silent on this point, though delving deeply into correlation of the consonantal series with various elements of the physical and human worlds. It may be that our knowledge of the corpus of texts like TAS and ST may simply be insufficient, and that a full exposition in those works of the “powers” of the dependent vocalic graphemes may await some enterprising researcher. On the other hand, we may be dealing with a set of presuppositions that is rarely committed to writing, either because of prohibition (aywa wĕra), or simply because they represent schemata well-known among practitioners of some branch of the “practical arts” of Bali that are most often reproduced in oral form. I have in mind here the term urip (“life”) that is found as an essential principle in the Balinese systems of traditional architecture, as well as in calendrical reckoning, in a slightly different form. One of the most important aspects of the traditional building methods of Bali is the use of a system of measurement called sikut. In this system all measurement is based on measuring the physical proportions of the person who will make use of the building. For example, the measurement dĕpa is based on the distance between the tips of the fingers of the outstretched arms of the person from whom the set of sikut measurements is to be drawn. The determination and application of the sikut system is complex in itself, but it is rendered more complex by the mandatory addition of an “increment” called the pang-urip to every measurement in the system. The purpose of this increment is to add “life” (urip) to each measurement. If the pang-urip is not added, or is applied incorrectly, the building is said to become ĕmbĕt, (“obstructed, unable to breath”), with potentially dire consequences for those who will eventually inhabit the building.22 A similar term is to be found in the reckoning of certain types of weeks in the complex ritual calendar (pawukon) of Bali that is used to determine auspicious days (dewasa ayu) for carrying out various kinds of activities, including rituals, initiating the planting of rice, and the like. There are many types of week in the pawukon system, including the five-day Javanese market week, the three-day Balinese market week and the Greco-Roman seven-day week. But there are also a variety of other

22 For an insightful study of the practice of Balinese traditional architects (undagi), see Howe 1981.

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forms of calendrical cycle that can be described as “weeks” ranging in length from one to eleven days. In this system every day has associated with it a number called its urip dina, “life of the day”. These numbers are particularly important for determining the occurrence of weeks of shorter duration, like the one-day and two-day weeks. The two-day week is composed of two days, pĕpĕt and mĕnga, which mean respectively “closed” and “open”. As their names imply, the determination of the occurrence of these two days has much to do with whether one should initiate an activity on such-and-such a day, it being potentially dangerous, for example, to initiate a journey on the day pĕpĕt (since it is by nature “closed”).23 But the two-day week is not a cyclical week. Instead its occurrence or non-occurrence is determined by means of a simple mathematical formula based on the urip numbers for days of two other types of weeks. If the number arrived at through this calculation is even, the result is considered ĕmbĕt (exactly as in the case of an architectural measurement devoid of its pang-urip) and the day-name Pĕpĕt is assigned, the obverse being the case if the calculation results in an odd number. In my view the system of graphemes for marking vowels (and semivowels) in Balinese orthography represents yet another case of a special, “life-giving” element to a system that would otherwise be inert. In the Balinese system the vowel a- has a special importance, since it represents the inherent vowel that ‘gives life’ to any ‘inert’ consonantal character. The pĕsandaŋan sastra play a similar role, the graphemes for vowels adding a particular aspect of the life-force, depending on their phonetic shape and related metaphysical implications, the graphemes for the semi-vowels facilitating the maintenance of the rule disallowing hiatus. Let us recall that according to the Swarawyañjana Tutur every set of vowels is likened to a pair of deities who are said to “give birth” to one of the phonologically-determined categories of the Sanskrit-Balinese syllabary. This strengthens the supposition that pĕsandaŋan sastra for rĕrajahan can be understood as playing a ‘life-giving’ role parallel to the pang-urip of Balinese traditional architecture, or the uirp dina of the calendrical system.

23 A careful reader may note that the word pĕpĕt as a day-name is identical to the word used to describe a the central, mid-high vowel, which is perhaps perceived as having a ‘closed’ sound.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 285 This leaves us with only element in the rĕrajahan unexplored. This is the ulu-candra symbol that I have described earlier as parallel with the cakra-bindu of South Asia, whose special purpose is to convert ordinary syllables into mantra (South Asia), or swalita (Bali). The prominent place of this symbol in the rĕrajahan suggests that its role is to raise each of the vowel-signs to its higher metaphysical octave, thus completing the transformation from ‘inert’ consonantal formants, to ‘living’ (urip) syllables through addition of the living element of the vowels, then made ‘supra-mundane’ through the addition of the ulucandra. Our rĕrajahan is thus a potent reminder of the degree to which the basic building blocks of Balinese orthographic convention are signifiers for energies that in South Asian traditions are normally reserved for the fully-formed syllable in its sonorous aspect. III. Writing and Literature in the Era of the “Sanskrit Ecumene” It may be fairly said that we are still at the beginnings of an understanding of the historical processes that led to the development of orthographic mysticism in the Balinese tradition. This is no doubt also true of our understanding of diverse ritual, magical and healing practices that all to some degree depend on sonic and graphemic mediation of the ground between “visible” (sakala) and “unseen” (niskala) forces. I have suggested that the need to preserve intact South Asian liturgical forms in the face of a wide disparity between the phonological systems of OIA and AN languages led in the archipelago to an incremental increase in the attention paid to correct orthography. The pressures this exerted on analysis of the grapheme may be fruitfully compared to those that stimulated powerful schools of phonological and grammatical analysis in South Asia around the need to preserve proper enunciation of the “seed-syllables” (bīja-mantra) and “metrical phrase-units” (chandas) of the Vedic liturgy. But these were not the only historical forces that acted on the world of Javano-Balinese religious literature to produce a redistribution of the economy of writing and speech. During the period when the polities of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago participated in what Pollock (1996) has termed a “Sanskrit ecumene” (c. 600–1500 ce) there was a particularly intense cultural transfer between India and Java. For our study two of the most important results of the South-Southeast Asian cultural interface were the spread of Indic forms of writing, and

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the stimulation of new forms of language and literature. The revolutionary role that the introduction of Indic forms of writing had on the shaping of socio-political formations in the archipelago cannot be overestimated. It is apparent from the earliest inscriptions that writing provided a new means for recording matters of crucial socio-economic concern. These included the precise recording of the boundaries of rice fields, the recording of the nature and amount of various forms of (royal) taxation, and the details of release from taxation when rice field lands were donated for the use of religious establishments. As Schoenfelder (1998) has suggested for the case of ancient Bali, the connections between these socio-economic and socio-cultural institutions were crucial for the development of the state, the agricultural economy that enabled it, and the religious institutions that bound state and society together through a network of meanings that merged secular and metaphysical claims to power. The seismic implications of this noetic revolution in Javano-Balinese history are recorded not only in the inscriptional record, but in the enduring presence of shrines like the Pĕnyarikan (“Shrine of the Inscriber”) in ‘mainstream’ Balinese villages, and the Pura Pĕnulisan (“Temple of Writing”) of Balinese highland villages, whose culture appears to preserve important elements of an earlier historical level of Balinese society. A second major impact of transculturation in the contact states of the archipelago was the stimulation of prestige languages like Old Malay (OM) and Old Javanese (OJ). These languages played a decisive role in the mediation of cultural and literary products of South Asia, serving as the instrument of what Braginsky (1994) has termed a “connecting literature” that linked local religious institutions of the archipelago to the “zone-shaping” religious literatures or South Asia. Within a few centuries of its emergence OJ developed into a language uniquely suited to the efflorescence of an indigenous literature in which pride of place was reserved for the creation of kakawin, metrical ‘court romances’ in Indic meters whose development owed much to the kāvya. The writing of these literary works was an important element of the prestige of the courts and the religious establishments patronized by the courts. As Helen Creese (p.c. 2002) has suggested; the new “literary zone” that developed around the practice of writing kakawin created what might be termed a “Javanese ecumene” in the archipelago. During the period of ascendancy of the East Javanese states (c. 1016–1526), the writing of kakawin was central to the “aestheticization of politics” that was a defining

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 287 feature of pre-modern states of the archipelago and continued to have powerful effects on the literary (and political) history of the archipelago long after royal patronage for OJ had ceased.24 With our study of the Balinese rĕrajahan we were able to observe a cultural formation that envisions spiritual energies as achieving immanence through sonorous and graphemic aspects of a heightened form of language, with all that implies for the power—and peril—that accrues to those who are adept in control of these forces. In the kakawin we can observe a similar attention to the latent power of the sign, but here in the service of a figural transcendence that has been described by Zoetmulder (1974) under the term “religio poetae” or “poetic yoga”. While this literature lies further in the past than the system of symbolic magic developed in Bali around rĕrajahan, it has had a lasting affect on the semiotics of later literary systems of the archipelago. It thus offers a second perspective on the embodiment of spiritual principles in language that is uniquely associated with the aesthetics of pre-modern Java and Bali (c. 900–1500 ce). IV. Figures of Writing in Old Javanese Literature We might wish in a study devoted to the “poetics of grammar” to seek within the rich literary traditions of Java and Bali in to order reveal the ways that grammar has been understood as playing a role in the mediation of spiritual forces. However, we are immediately confronted with the fact that the archipelago has produced no indigenous school of grammatical analysis, despite being grounded in South Asian traditions that have customarily placed a great emphasis on this field of endeavor. The reasons for this state of affairs are too complex to allow even a

24 The development of OJ as a literary language brought with it an understandable interest in the tools of the poet’s trade as known from Indian sources. A sizable dictionary of Sanskrit and Old Javanese known as the Amarakośa was produced as early as the eighth century CE, while continuing interest in South Asian handbooks on metrics, phonetics and poetics is clear from later works like the Wrˢttasañcaya, Chandahˢ-karanˢa, and Bhāsˢāprānˢa. See Lokesh 1997 for a study of the OJ Chandahˢ-karanˢa and Amarakosa, Rubenstein 2000 for further studies of the Chandahˢ-karanˢa and related texts, Hunter 2001 for a study of the relationship of the Javano-Balinese and South Asian traditions of metrical analysis and Radichi 1996 for a study showing that a Javanese treatment of the Kātantra of Katyāyana that has come down to us in fragmentary form reveals an active interest in the Sanskrit grammatical tradition.

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cursory discussion here; for the moment let us say that the typical linguistic form of Western AN languages presents syntactic and semantic information in a form that lends itself to an intuitive grasp of derivational and structural principles, and that this may to some extent mitigate against the development of grammatical analysis as a formal branch of scientific analysis. In modern Malay-Indonesian, for example, once we have internalized the relationship of a number of clearly defined nominal and verb-forming affixes to various semantically defined classes of lexemes, we begin to build up a network of meanings that not only tell us much about the paradigmatic aspects of words, but also enable us to understand the role words play in the context of structuregiving syntactic patterns. For example, the (precategorial) word main (play) gives us words like pemain (player), permainan (plaything) and memainkan (play something), each of which play predictable roles in sentence structure: pemain biola itu memainkan biolanya dengan begitu pandai seakan-akan bagi dia hanya permainan saja, “that violin player plays his instrument so well it’s almost as if for him it’s just a plaything”. While it may be that there has been a relative lack of attention to grammatical analysis in the Javano-Balinese tradition, the same cannot be said of the development of figural resources, especially those that depend on a most un-Saussurean insistence on the non-arbitrariness of the linkages between sonorous and semantic aspects of language. The roots of this figural tradition lie clearly in the insistence within alamˢ kāraśāstra and kāvya on the unity of “sound” (śabda) and “sense” (artha), a formulation that has informed all the traditions that were influenced by Sanskrit poetry and poetics, no matter that the exact nature and extent of the relationship gave rise in South Asia to a lively tradition of discussion and debate. It is not possible here to attempt even a brief exploration of the figural resources of OJ that might do justice to its complexities, but it may be possible to bring out a number of examples that illustrate the general trajectory of the poetics of OJ. The natural place to begin such a study is with the “auspicious verses” (maŋgala) that became a requirement of all well-formed kakawin from the time of composition of the Arjuna Wiwāha (c. 1036 ce). Zoetmulder (1974) based much of his initial analysis of kakawin poetics on the study of the maŋgala, frequently emphasizing the relationship of the poet’s attitude to a particular understanding of the ways that the Absolute manifests itself—always temporarily—in the everyday world:

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 289 Although its immanence is all-encompassing, the divine Absolute may nevertheless choose certain objects for its special manifestation, descending into and inhabiting them in a special way, either continuously or for a certain limited time . . . Religious writings of ancient Java . . . are not so much theoretical expositions as practical manuals for those who wish to attain mystical union . . . treatises on the practice of mysticism or yoga . . . (p. 178) Although the goal is the same for all those who set out on the quest for mystical unity, the roads leading to it are different. The poet hopes to attain it along the path of beauty . . . In order to prepare for union, the yogi requires the presence of the god in visible form (sakala), so that he can make the god the sole object of all his concentration before becoming absorbed in him . . . Thus the form of religious worship expressed in the maŋgalas is of a particular kind. It is the religio poetae, the poet’s religion, and its practice takes the form of tantric yoga, that is, a kind of yoga which seeks to find the deity through media in which the god is present or into which he descends. (p. 179)

The notion that the deity must be persuaded to make an appearance has been a part of the Indian understanding of the nature of divinity since at least the time of the Rˢ g Veda, with its many examples of the invocation of Agni as a deity who must be coaxed out of hiding in the firewood of the Vedic ritual. By the time of the kakawin, ancient Java had come under the influence of Yoga and Tantra to such a great extent that the locus of the search for the deity shifted from external ritual to the body and experience of the practitioner. As we shall see, it is a special feature of the kakawin that this internalized search is assimilated to a particular form of the experience of aesthetic rapture, which in turn is aligned with an exterior search for the beauties of nature and a fine-tuned exploration of the nuances of emotional development. A fine OJ example of the basic thematics of the religio poetae is to be found in the maŋgala of the Smāradahana (Immolation of the Love God), a work on the same theme as the Kumārasamˢ bhava of Kālidāsa.25 In the first verse of the maŋgala the poet figures the poetic process in

25

See Zoetmulder 1974, 295–98, for a summary of the differences between the SD and the Kumārasamˢ bhava of Kālidāsa that have led past commentators to assume a strongly ‘indigenous’ factor in the composition of the SD. This is especially noticeable in the fact that it is the birth of Ganˢeśa, not Skanda/Kārtikkeya, that is the basis for the gods’ conspiracy aimed at drawing the ascetic god Śiva out of his eternal meditation and implicating him in the process of procreation.

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terms of the basic elements of priestly ritual, many of them recognizable today in the Sūrya-sewana ritual of the “high priests” (pĕdanda, pĕranda) of Bali: The ritual worship of a poet is the collocation of all beautiful things that bring about the long-life and health of the king, The place of the ritual is a blossoming lotus, sanctuary of the deity, bathed in the mists of the fourth month, The sacred syllables are a beautiful poem inscribed on the writing-boards of a poet’s pavilion, While spreading mists are the incense, the sound of bees upon blossoms the ringing of the priest’s bell. (SD 1.1)

In another verse from the maŋgala of the Smāradahana (SD), the poet Dharmagunˢa describes some of the places the deity of the poetic arts may be found. In the process Dharmagunˢa catalogues a number of the central preoccupations of the kakawin, including careful attention to human and natural beauty, their blending in emotional and erotic experience and a striking attentiveness to the media of writing themselves. Note especially in the (c) line the rūpaka-like overlay of the writing surface as object of comparison (upameya) and a sunlit expanse of mist as subject of comparison (upamāna): Your places of being are not single: in the fatigue of the bedchamber, the swelling mounds of the breasts, In the ‘ravines’ of the writing board, the incisions on a writing-beam, the point of the writing stylus, In the glory of the layout of the writing surface, an expanse of mist illuminated by rays of the sun, In a flood of tears that wipes away the powder of a beautiful woman’s face, and the stems of new shoots of the gadˢung lily. (SD 1.3)

Both the second and third verses of the maŋgala of the SD open up the possibility of what might be termed “grammatological figures” or “figures of writing”. These occur in the kakawin with a frequency unknown elsewhere in the literatures affected by South Asian models. It may be that this insistence on the figural possibilities of writing and the media of writing can be related to the revolutionary role played by imported means of inscription into socio-economic and socio-cultural modes of organization in the archipelago. But it may also be possible that we see here the merging of a restricted literacy largely controlled by priestly and noble houses with a “domestic literacy” widespread throughout the premodern archipelago that was concerned with matters like the exchange

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 291 of love letters, the documentation of magical lore, and the recording of household and business transactions (see especially Reid 1990). In many cases exchanges of amorous verses represent a unifying structural component of kakawin narrative, while the development of character is often worked out in terms of “embedded lyrics” (bhāsˢā-wilāpa, bhāsˢā-kakawin) that give expression to amorous and erotic longing. For our purposes one of the most striking examples of an “embedded lyric” that highlights what might be called “figures of writing” in the kakawin is a verse from the kakawin Krˢs ˢnˢāyana (KY) that figures the stellar qualities of the missing paramour in a series of images that contain two overt references to the shape of graphemes, thus prefiguring the development of the orthographic mysticism of Bali: Surely the upside-down character is the place of your Soul on the writing-slate, And when you incarnate on the writing-board you must be the character ahaving no body, but your head clearly distinct, On the smooth surface of ivory-coconut you reign continually while in the art of makeup you are divine illusion, When you reside in the heart you become its invisible essence transforming into tears that veil the eyes.26 (KY 37.3)

The interpretation of line (b) must await more detailed paleographic research that might clarify why the character for initial a in scripts of the Kadˢiri period is head-like in appearance; but there seems little doubt that the “upside-down character” referred to line (a) may represent the special character called oŋ-kāra suŋsaŋ in Bali. This character is said to

26

KY37.3a I have based my assumption that the phrase hañja-hañja refers to the idea of something being “upside-down” on OJED [588] v. (h)añja-(h)añja: “a kind of ghost. In Bali it is a ghost that walks upside-down . . . KY 37.3.” KY37.3c The reference to “an ivory-coconut” here may have to do with a custom still prevalent in Bali in which the remains of the tooth-filing ceremony are buried in a coconut of the ivory-coconut palm which has been inscribed with a magically-powerful character (sastra), usually Om. With this understanding I have read maŋ-adĕg as “to stand up, to reign’. However, there is more than a little chance that the phrase maŋ-adĕg “stand up, arise, reign” may also be meant to suggest the oŋ-kāra ŋadĕg, the “standing up” form of the character for Om, that represents the “out-flowing breath”.

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represent the inflowing breath (am), and is often paired with the oŋkāra ŋadĕg (“standing-up character”) that represents the out-flowing breath (ah). The unity of the energies represented by these two characters (especially as attained at the moment of mortal demise) is said to lead to the state of “spiritual release” (kalĕpasan). The preparatory process can be represented graphemically, allowing that kalĕpasan is said to take place only when the nāda and bindu elements of the two oŋkāra are fully merged:

¹ (oŋkāra suŋsaŋ) + ý (oŋkāra adiri) = ¹ (kalĕpasan) ý An image that identifies the missing paramour as a special grapheme representing the “inflowing breath” is certainly striking, and clear evidence of an orientation towards writing that is a unique consequence of the more general valorization of the sonic principle that marks “cultures of the mantra”. However, this figure represents only a small percentage of figures of this type found in the kakawin. A much larger set that plays on the consequences of writing, or the very media of writing, reveals a subtle development of the “play of presence and absence” that is often noted as symptomatic of writing in post-structural studies. An especially subtle figure of this type is to be found in KY 37.1, from the same series of verses composed by Rukminˢī that features the overtly “grammatological” figure cited above (KY 37.3): Oh you who vanished from my dreams at the moment I was awakened by soft rumbling thunder, Now will I search out the way to every place you may have gone whether in blossoms of young saplings, Or disappearing into dark, distant rain clouds where kalangkyang hawks call one to the other, While if you disappear into the grooves of the writing board I will ask for you there then seek you by following the dictates of the writing stylus. (KY 37.1)

In the maŋgala of the SD we saw several cases of the figuring of the descent of the “god of the poets” into the very media of the act of writing.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 293 Here, in KY 37.1c the incisions made by the writing stylus on the soft stone surface of the writing board are figured as a pathway in the search for the absent beloved, for which the writing stylus itself will act as the guide. Note the prominence of “absence” in this verse, of an unfulfilled gap between longing and consummation that is strongly reminiscent of the tradition of South Asian writing around viraha. But in the case of the kakawin there is an element of transformation into various aspects of nature—or into the means of writing—that suggests that we may be looking at a conception of self and other, or self and deity, that is unique to the ancient Javanese tradition. V. Traces I propose here to begin to develop one means of access for elucidating the development of the figural resources of the kakawin that depends on a model of the “economy of speech and writing”. In a sense this effort must invoke the work of Derrida, for in no other body of critical theory do we find so much attention paid to the genesis of objectivity in the spatial and temporalizing possibilities of writing, a constant process of differing and deferring (différance) that denies final objectivity to any particular ideal object, and instead constitutes history in terms of the play of the signifier, a restless movement between ends and origins that must forever pose anew the question of being. At the same time it would be unwise to take the Derridean deconstruction of Western metaphysics as the starting point of an examination of a cultural manifestation so entirely non-Western as the aesthetics of the OJ kakawin, least of all to attempt a reanalysis of Javano-Balinese metaphysics in search of evidence for the suppression of writing in defense of a “transcendental signifier”. Perhaps the essential difference is the lack in the Javano-Balinese tradition of a negative assessment of the metaphysical implications of a conception of the speaking self as the location of pure self-consciousness, a notion that Derrida identifies with the suppression of writing and the valorization of speech as selfpresence. While I will claim that “writing” in the OJ economy of speech and writing displays some of the classical symptoms studied under the terms of post-structuralism, its contrary is not “speech as self-presence” but rather mantra, or related states of consciousness that can be identified externally through non-semantic resources like mantra, or mudra, the closely related mode of gestural signification. At certain crucial moments

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in the narrative structure of the kakawin a heroic concentration on the production of supra-normal states of consciousness ‘produces’ powers capable of subduing even the most formidable opponents. These might be said to represent the “sonorous” pole in the economy of speech and writing characteristic of the kakawin, but in terms of poetic practice this formulation begs the question of “the beyond of silence”. For as often as mantra is invoked at crucial moments of struggle in the narrative structures of the kakawin, an even more profound form of power is characterized as originating in a complete stilling of mental activity and the production of silence. This comes out at several points in the Buddhist kakawin Sutasoma (Sut), where the hero overcomes his mortal enemy by producing a particular mental state associated with the bodhyagri gesture (mudra). One example is in a passage describing Sutasoma’s victory over the elephant-headed demon Gajawaktra: Now the entire company of gods earnestly entreated Sutasoma, “You should recollect that sacred knowledge that destroys violence,” so said Indra, Lord of the Gods, That was why Sutasoma focused his mind, bringing it to silence and holding his hands firmly in the bodhyagri gesture, The fruit of clarified being, the bhidura weapon, emerged from the marvelous state of his consciousness. (Sut 32.10)

Perhaps this is the point at which the traditions of the ancient archipelago are at most variance with the claims of deconstruction; for it is not self-presence that is brought out in the use of mantra, but rather a centering on sonority—or with even more profound consequences—on silence as the cessation of all mental states, that facilitates the emergence of latent powers of the psyche associated with specific gestures and/or sacred formulae, and capable of mastery over the entire field of phenomenal existence. When we turn to “figures of writing” in the kakawin we find that in many cases they are associated with the poignancy that we expect from the play of presence and absence. A wondering poet, for example, may come across a “poet’s pavilion” in a remote area of the mountainous countryside and read there a lament inscribed on one of the “writing boards” lodged in the overhanging eaves of the pavilion. Invariably this will tell of some poet resigned to a lonely search for nature’s beauties, perhaps to assuage the loss of a beloved denied by fate or social convention, perhaps to gather materials for a kakawin that might win royal patronage, or the heart of a paramour. In every case a gap is implied,

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 295 a separation of self and other that is played out in the poetics of the search for beauty. A similar element of kakawin poetics that is reminiscent of the terminology of deconstruction is the frequent use of the word wĕkas in its meaning of “traces”, and the derivations of this word that play a prominent role in figures that seem to ascribe an inscriptional role to nature, or human emotion. Here is an example from the Sumanasāntaka (Sum) that ascribes the “leaving of traces” to the rain through the use of the verbal derivative amĕkasakĕn, “to leave as traces”: Rain-bearing clouds dark as night are enchanting at the beginning of the fourth month, The fall of rain leaves as its traces veiling mists in just-blossoming forests, Kalangkyang hawks have ceased their crying drift lazily in the sky, Happily expectant, they are forsaken lovers now at the point of a joyful reunion. (Sum 28.18)

These descriptions of transformations in nature in terms suggestive of inscription in written or pictorial modes are closely paralleled by figures that describe emotional modifications in terms of emergence, transformation and the development of “emotional traces”. A good example can be found in one of the verses composed by Prince Aja at the “bride’s choice contest” (swayambara) of Indumatī: Here, good lady, be seated on my lap, I have been pining so long for you, who come to me like a rain cloud, You are cool mists to my burning longing, rumbling thunder to my desire, lightning that illuminates the darkness of my heart, A veiling cloud of love-sickness that concedes defeat before the power of love, and ends in restless heat that leaves as its traces my heart’s dejection, You are the fine showers of my poetic rapture, that disappear when regarded too closely, but turn into gentle rainfall when you allow me to take you on my lap. (Sum 103.2)

For our purposes verses like Pārthayajña (Pyn) 11.7 provide especially telling examples. In this case the “traces” left in the form of writing on a writing-slate are figured as evoking the play of presence and absence so potently that they conjure up the specter of death. In this scene the women of the court are pining for Prince Arjuna, who has left for the mountains to seek the power of victory over his enemies:

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The poignancy of the (b) line is perhaps intentionally overstated, meant to act as a partial foil to the more subdued reactions of the other women of the court. At the same time it represents a fine illustration of the sensitivity of poets of the kakawin to the enigmatic effect of writing, simultaneously representing the presence of an idealized object, and the immediate erasure of the signified object in terms of its ‘real’ presence. VI. A Poetics of Transformation It seems to me that the sensitivity of the kakawin poets to the play of presence and absence is perfectly consonant with—or even prefigures— a figuring of the divine (or the absent beloved) in semiotic terms, a constant shifting of the position of the elusive and subtle godhead that might be compared within language to the play of the signifier. Nowhere does this come out more clearly than in figures based on the term tĕmah-an, “transformation” and its derivatives. In these figures it is almost as if an acute sensitivity to the play of presence of absence has facilitated a blurring of the boundaries of self, other and nature. Take for example a verse from the Bhāsˢā Tanakuŋ, a work attributed to the fifteenth century poet, Tanakuŋ, which demonstrates how an acknowledged master of the bhāsˢā-wilāpa form has blended natural, emotional and figural elements by developing two derivations of tĕmahan, the first referring to a transformation within nature, the second superimposing a human trait (weeping) onto the natural base: As you wander along the seashore and among the beauties of distant mountains, Through dark, shrouding clouds that change into delicate misting rain, You may hear a sweet, rumbling thunder, its sound faint and restless, That will be the transformation of my weeping when I have died, exhausted from the pain of longing. (BT 7.1)

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 297 In a verse form the kakawin Hariwaŋśa we find an even more complex example of the development of figuration that is heavily laden with the elements of trace and transformation. Here phrasing in terms of “transformation” (tĕmahan) and “traces” (sa-wĕkas-a) is combined with a specific figure of writing (wacana rasa wilāpa ring tatur, “poetic words inscribed on gold foil”) to produce a complex figure that captures the emotional reactions of the heroine to a written message in almost visceral terms. A bit of context is necessary here. Keśarī, faithful maidservant of the princess Rukminˢī, has agreed to carry a message in kakawin form written by Lord Krishna on gold foil. Seeking a way to secretly convey it to the princess she slips it into the cloth bag of her mirror-case (HW 10.15). When the hidden message falls out of her mirror-case (HW 10.17), Rukminˢī realizes what it must be and reads it in the secrecy of her bedchamber (HW 10.18). Krishna’s verses in kakawin form (HW 11.1–3) have a powerful affect on the princess (HW 12.1). Keśarī secretly observes her from a distance in order to judge her reaction (HW 12.2). The setting sun, too, is observing Rukminˢī, and out of pity for “the one he will shortly leave behind”, he illuminates her briefly with his rays that seem like “swift glances meant to awaken her” (HW 12.3). The ensuing darkness has a powerful effect on Rukminˢī, triggering the appearance of a potent image of the prince in her heart (HW 12.4): Suddenly darkness enveloped all, but the image of the prince emerged distinctly, She was shattered, flooded by an increase of longing; emotion filled her heart to overflowing Had it not been so, it would seem his transformation into poetic words inscribed on gold foil, Would result only in her imagining the traces of all things that mock one suffering from pangs of longing. (HW 12.4)

Once again it is the power of writing to simultaneously invoke the presence and absence of the beloved that form the kernel of the figure. There are many examples where “traces” refer to visual signs found in nature or the human environment, quite often evoking a sense of absence and separation. In other cases it is the ability of these “traces” to register in memory and to trigger intense emotional states that is the focus of the poet’s attention. In the case of Rukminˢī’s emotional reaction to Krishna’s message in HW 12.4, writing is once again the vehicle through which experience is first objectified, then registers on the memory and triggers powerful emotional effects.27 27

Of special note here is the contrast of the expected emotional response to Krishna’s

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The frequent association of acts of writing with traces, transformation and the play of presence and absence may on the one hand suggest something like a poetics based on the play of the signifier. But it would be unwise to push the relationship to post-structuralism too far. We could as well turn the focus of attention in the other direction, saying that a certain affinity of the kakawin material to the sense of play that is developed in post-structural literary theory need not imply the possible universal consequences of “writing before the letter”. It may be that a history of encounters in South and Southeast Asia with the question of duality, and numerous attempts to overcome duality through an encompassing of philosophical antipodes (like the Balinese rwa-bhinneda) may prefigure the movement towards a sense of play that begins in the West with the fröhliche Wissenschaft of Nietzsche. It may also be useful to draw comparisons with Indian poetics and poetic praxis. If we think of the “poetics of transformation” as a literary analog of the quest for an illusive deity whose immanence is presupposed, but must be constantly reestablished, we might think of the many figures analyzed by the Indian alamˢ kāra-śāstra tradition in terms of superimposition. These include upamā (“simile”), rūpāka (“metaphor”), and utpreksˢā (“conceit”). However, in not a few cases—especially among the “East Javanese kakawin” (c. 1016–1478 ce)—we find that the figures of superimposition are no longer treated as isolated tropes, as they tend to be in the poetics of Danˢdˢin and the Old Javanese kakawin Rāmāyanˢa. Instead they are linked together in a series of steps leading from the human to the natural (or vice-versa) and ultimately merging one with the other in a style reminiscent of the “school of suggestion” (dhvani) that came to prominence in India following Ānandavardhana (ninth century ce). A good example of the delight taken by the ancient Javanese poets in figures that involve a series of steps that draw natural and human attributes into an ever-tightening

lament (lines a–b, the flooding of the princess’ heart with emotion), with the negative result (line d, mockery) that might occur had the phrasing of Krishna’s words—or the response of the princess—failed to conform to expected standards. In the case of Krishna’s lament a “horizon of expectation” is formed around the question of aesthetic judgment, whether his lament meets courtly standards of poetic achievement; in the case of the princess’ response, the question turns around the more complex issue of a state of inner receptivity presupposed of lovers who should “recall” having been lovers in a series of past lives through the process of jātismāra, “true recollection”.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 299 configuration can be found in the maŋgala of the KY. Here we find a carefully worked out metapoetic statement concealed in natural imagery that suggests a progressive identification of subject and object of comparison (upamāna, upameya): Now what I set my attention on, what I hope for, is that I might send forth fresh shoots of beauty (lung langö) in developing the tale, We know the figure (upamā) of tendrils of the gadˢung lily: they wait, longing fervently for the mists that promise rain, Then the season turns—instantly they regain consciousness and send forth fresh sprouts at the sound of thunder, Reaching maturity they send forth new leaves and flowers that arouse longing and joy among all who behold them.28 (KY 1.2) There should be no rush for those who abandon themselves to beauty (langö), the result of ever wandering entranced by beauty, Clearly they are bees wandering restlessly among blossoms of the asana, darting excitedly between stamen and pistil, Never minding the cold, though blown about by wind and fog, or oppressed by the heat of the sun, With the essence of a single drop of pollen their aim, they are at their most attentive when there is honey among the blossoms. (KY 1.3)

Let us first consider how these verses might be analyzed in the conventions of the ālamˢ kārika tradition of South Asia. KY 1.2 is clearly a case of aprastutapraśamˢ sā. Gerow (1971:111) defines the basic figure thus: aprastutapraśamˢ sā . . . a figure in which the real but implicit subject matter is obliquely referred to by means of an explicit, but apparently irrelevant, subject which, however, stands in a specific relationship to the former

In (1.2) it is the tendrils of the gadˢung lily that are “presented” to the perception of the reader, while the actual subject matter—the organic development of poetic figures in the hand of a master poet—is aprastuta, “nonpresented”. 29

28 KY 1.2b The gadˢung lily, a creeper noted for its fragrant ivory-colored blossoms, its large, attractively shaped leaves and its habit of twining around trees and shrubs, is among the most favored subjects for comparison in the kakawin, second only to asana in frequency of appearance. KY 1.2c Vegetative growth is said in the kakawin tradition to be stimulated by the rumble of thunder, a sound that is also closely linked to the arousal of erotic feelings, or—in cases of love-in-separation—intense longing. 29 I am endebted to David Shulman and H.V. Nagaraja Rao for identifying the figure in KY 1.2 as a case of aprastuta-praśamˢ sā, and for their enlightening discussions of this term.

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Were it not for the presence of an overt reference to the object of comparison in the (a) line of KY 1.3 we might think of this verse too as representing a case of aprastutapraśamˢ sā. In this case we would think of the bees circling restlessly among blossoms of the asana seeking “a single drop of nectar” as “presented”, while the “unpresented” (but intended) referent is the poetic enterprise itself, seen from the point of view of the poets and connoisseurs who most fervently seek the innermost essence of the aesthetic experience. That those who seek aesthetic rapture are overtly mentioned in (a), however, suggests that this verse might better be classed under the more general form of superimposition that is described in Sanskrit poetics as rūpaka, a figure with some similarity to metaphor. KY1.2–3 provide us with a fine illustration of the synesthetic effects summed up in the OJ term langö: a temporary erasure of the boundaries between natural, human and poetic beauty that can be accomplished in the poetic arts through figuration, control of the sonorous resources of the language, and the creative use of polyvalent terms like langö, that stands both for beauty as an object of perception, and as the internal state of rapture that is called forth by an experience of the beautiful. VII. Recapitulation At first glance it may seem that the rĕrajahan we took as the starting point of this discussion and the poetics of the kakawin are worlds apart. In the first case we found that a general South-Southeast Asian orientation towards the “sonic energy active in the syllable” has been realized orthographically, and in instrumental form. Here the emphasis is clearly on the control of supra-mundane forces in the quest for a particular form of spiritual power, called sakti in the Balinese tradition (but clearly differing markedly with the tradition of śakti in the Indian tradition). Put somewhat differently, orthographic mysticism is about gaining the ability to gain control of “metaphysical” (niskala) forces, most often with specific, instrumental purposes in mind. In the case of the poetics of the kakawin we began with an example that illustrates the early emergence of beliefs around orthographic mysticism. However, to a much greater extent, the elaboration of figures in the kakawin exemplifies continuing efforts to momentarily capture the traces of an immanent, but elusive, deity in poetic form. I have suggested a number of formulations for elucidating the particular form taken by

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 301 the kakawin poetics. It may be, for example, that an acute sensitivity to the play of presence and absence implicit in the act of inscription has led to a poetics that is naturally inclined towards the elaboration of elements of play and transformation. The frequent occurrence of figures based on the elusive presence of objects figured in writing, and on the elements of “traces” (wĕkas) and “transformations” (tĕmahan) seems to support this view. Turning to models developed in the alamˢ kāra tradition of South Asia, I have suggested that an understanding of the thematics that merged nature, the human emotions, and the experience of beauty, or of techniques of superimposition may be appropriate tools for arriving at a more complete assessment of the poetics of the kakawin. Whatever else it may have been, the kakawin aesthetic was a locus for transformative praxis, a medium for poetic endeavor that was selfconsciously formulated in terms of the “translation of metaphysical perceptions into the accessible realm of human reference”.30 At times this translation of metaphysical energies was figured in terms of the search for an ineffable natural beauty certain to induce a state of aesthetic rapture in the sensitive observer, at times through the subtle development of character made visible through the exchange of lyrics saturated with romantic and erotic longing, at times through the pathos of the play of presence and absence signed in the act of writing itself. What each of these cases had in common was the presupposition that aesthetic experience, either in itself, or as transmuted into poetic language, is charged with transformative power. In this sense the poet—Sang Kawi—was simply the Creator—Sang Parama-Kawi—writ small, performing a function within the courtly and priestly orders that mirrored a higher order mastery of the “power of sound and sign at the heart of the metaphysical world”. In the world that produced the kakawin, metaphysical energies are thus not constituted in terms of a grammatical matrix, but of a figural matrix. As history has shown, the socio-cultural formula that produced the unique aesthetic of the East Javanese kakawin was never fully recoverable after the decline of imperial Javanese power in the early sixteenth century ce, though to be sure the Balinese tradition of kakawin composition remained productive well into the nineteenth century. Nor did the fall of the Majapahit dynasty (c. 1516 ce) spell the end of a certain view 30 The phrase is cited from the call for papers of the conference leading to this volume.

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of the latent energy of the syllable that has lived on in diverse manifestations among the “contact cultures” of the archipelago, those that were most profoundly affected by South Asian models of the metaphysical dimensions of sound, symbol and letter. While the kakawin aesthetic developed this orientation in terms of a rich field of figuration, Balinese orthographic mysticism has been inclined towards the instrumental efficacy of written and sonorous symbols of metaphysical energies. From both these perspectives creation does not proceed from an act of naming, but is continuous with sonic energies that do not cease playing a role in cosmogenesis once the original impulse of creation has been played out. It is for this reason that in the Javano-Balinese tradition the composer of a kakawin, or designer of rĕrajahan, can hope to gain access to the realm of metaphysical energies—and thereby to gain the power to heal, to hurt, or simply to enchant. References Braginsky, V.I. 1993. The System of Classical Malay Literature. [KITLV Working Papers, No. 11], Leiden: KITLV. de Casparis, J.G. 1975. Indonesian Palaeography, a History of Writing in Indonesia from the Beginnings to c. ad 1500. [Handbuch der Orientalistik, Vol. II.5.1], Leiden. Creese, Helen 1996. “Pieces in the Puzzle: The Dating of Several Kakawin from Bali and Lombok.” Archipel 52, Paris, pp. 143–171. ———— 1998. The Journeying of Partha: an eighteenth-century Balinese kakawin. [Bibliotheca Indonesica 27.] Leiden: Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Press. ———— 2004. Women of the Kakawin World: Marriage and Sexuality in the Indic Courts of Java and Bali. New York and London: ME Sharpe. Geertz, Hildred 1994. Images of Power: Balinese Paintings Made for Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ———— 1995. “Sorcery and Social Change in Bali: The Sakti Conjecture.” Paper presented at the Conference “Bali in the Late Twentieth Century.” Sydney, July. ———— 2004. The Life of a Balinese Temple, Artistry, Imagination, and History in a Peasant Village. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Gerow, Edwin 1971. A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech. The Hague, Paris: Mouton. Goody, Jack (ed.) 1968. Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gosh, Sanjukta 1989. “The Pañcaratra Attitude to Mantra.” In Mantra, ed. Harvey P. Alper. 224–248. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Goudriaan, Teun and Hooykaas, C. 1971. Stuti and Stava (Bauddha, Śaiva and Vaisˢnˢava) of Balinese Brahman Priests. Amsterdam, London: North-Holland Publishing Company. Hooykaas, C. 1980. Tovenarij op Bali. Magische tekeningen uit twee Leidse collecties. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. Howe, L.E.A. 1981. “An Introduction to the Study of Traditional Balinese Architecture.” Archipel 24: 137–158.

poetics of grammar in the javano-balinese tradition 303 Hunter, Thomas M. 2001. “Wrˢttasañcaya Reconsidered.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde, Vol. 157–1: 65–96. de Jong, J.W. 1974. “Notes on the Sources and the text of the Sang Hyang Kamahāyanan Mantranāya.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. 136–4: 619–636. Kozok, Ulrich 2004. The Tanjung Tanah Code of Law, the Oldest Extant Malay Manuscript. Cambridge: St Catharine’s College and the University Press. Lokesh, Chandra 1997. “Chanda-karana: the Art of Writing Poetry”. In Cultural Horizons of India, Vol. 6: Studies in Tantra and Buddhism, Art and Archaeology, language and literature, ed. Lokesh Chandra, PP. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan. Lovric, Barbara 1987. “Rhetoric and reality: the hidden nightmare, myth and magic as representations of morbid realities. Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney. Nyota 1994. Krakah Modre II. Denpasar: Ria Bookstore and Publishers. Padoux, André 1989. “Mantras—What Are They?” In Mantra, ed. Alper, Harvey P., 295– 318. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Pollock, Sheldon 1996. “The Sanskrit cosmopolis, 300–1300 ce; Transculturation, vernacularization, and the question of ideology.” In Ideology and status of Sanskrit; Contributions to the history of the Sanskrit language, ed. Houben, Jan E.M., 197– 248. Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill. Radicchi, Anna 1996. “More on the Kārakasamˢ graha, a Sanskrit grammatical text from Bali.” In Ideology and status of Sanskrit; Contributions to the history of the Sanskrit language, ed. Houben, Jan E.M., 289–306. Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill. Reid, Anthony 1990. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, Vol. 1 The Lands Beneath the Wind. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rubenstein, R. 2000. Beyond the realm of the senses: the Balinese ritual of kekawin composition. [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde No. 181] Leiden: KITLV Press. Schoenfelder, John W. 1998. “The co-evolution of agricultural and sociopolitical systems in Bali.” Paper presented at the 16th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, Melaka. Staal, Fritz 1989. “Vedic Mantras.” In Mantra, ed. Alper, Harvey P., 48–97. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ———— 1987. Mantras between fire and water. Reflections on a Balinese Rite. with an appendix by Dick van der Meij. Amsterdam, North Holland Press. Wayman, Alex and Tajima, R. 1992. The Enlightenment of Vairocana. (Book I: Study of the Vairocanābhisamˢ bodhitantra; Book II: Study of the Mahāvairocana-sūtra (Dainichikyi). Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass. Zoetmulder, P.J. 1974. Kalangwan: a Survey of Old Javanese Literature. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff: Martinus Nijhoff. Zoetmulder, P.J. with S.O. Robson 1972. Old Javanese-English Dictionary. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Zurbuchen, Mary S. 1987. The Language of the Balinese Shadow Theater. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

HOW TO BRING A GODDESS INTO BEING THROUGH VISIBLE SOUND David Shulman That language may have more important tasks than “meaning” was axiomatic for Sanskrit grammarians and poeticians. A simple, widely cited tripartite typology of texts corresponds to three distinct formalizations of linguistic potential. First, there are texts, like the Veda, that are śabdapradhāna, that is, their sonar and acoustic properties are primary; such texts, properly pronounced or performed, work change on the world. Enormous care must be taken in articulating and preserving śabdapradhāna texts; to mispronounce a single syllable, even to make a mistake in accentuation, can have fatal consequences, as the tragic example of the demon Triśiras makes clear.1 Śabda-pradhāna texts may also have “meaning” of one kind or another—a classic discussion in the Mīmāmˢ sā decides in favor of the meaningfulness of the Vedic mantras2—but semantics matters much less, in this category, than the automatic effectual and creative powers inherent in pure sound. Mammatˢa, the twelthcentury Kashmiri poetician who offers one version of this typology in the introduction to his Kāvya-prakāśa, says that texts in this category simply command, speaking as a master would to his servants.3 What, however, is the content of such commands? Then there are texts that are artha-pradhāna, where meaning (artha) predominates. Erudite śāstras may exemplify this type; or, for Mammatˢa, this is the domain of history and ancient lore (purānˢâdîtihāsa). Information matters, form much less so, if at all. There are many ways to state facts or tell a traditional story. Such texts, says Mammataˢ , are like friends who persuade, argue, explain. Finally we have poetry, kāvya, in which sound and meaning are equally dominant (śabdârtha-pradhāna). In poetry you cannot separate meaning from its uniquely suited forms of expression. This Sassurean perception may, however, give way to another, somewhat surprising one: both

1 2 3

Thus Patañjali, Paśpasâhnika. See Śabara on MīmāΥsā-sūtra 1.2.4.31–58. MammaϏa, Kåvya-prakāśa 1.1.

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“sound” and “meaning” may turn out to be subordinate to other goals (śabdârthayor gunˢa-bhāvena)—for example the business (vyāpāra) of experiencing cognitive and emotional liquefaction, rasa.4 In any case, Mammatˢa assures us, poetry works on us like a beloved (kāntā) and, as such, is capable of transporting us beyond ourselves, beyond the everyday world (lokottara-varnˢanā-nipunˢa-kavi-karma). Poetry, then, has its own inherently effective mechanisms and purposes. How precisely to understand them is a deep and recurrent problem which could be said to structure the entire history of Indian poetics. A certain metaphysical drift is noticeable from very early on. Poetry does something to its listeners. If you hear a poem and nothing happens, the poet has failed. In this sense, categories one and three have a certain affinity, as the tradition itself clearly recognized. Moreover, it is definitely possible to write a grammar of non-semanticized linguistic operations.5 Grammars of poetry, which always assume that poetic utterances are at least superficially meaningful, are also capable of addressing what could be call trans-semantic experiments with poetic language. Here poetry shades off into mantra, in distinct patterns and modes. I want to examine several cases of such trans-semantic operations and to attempt to draw a few tentative connections, which may show us something about the development of poetry, and of poetic science, in medieval India. Chāndogya Upanisˢad 1.13.1–4 Consider the following short text, which concludes the famous udgītha section of the Chāndogya Upanisˢad: 1. ayamˢ vāva loka hau-karahˢ. vāyur hai-kāraś. candramā atha-kārahˢ. ātmeha-kāro. ‘gnir ī-kārahˢ. 2. āditya ū-kāro. nihava e-kāro. viśvedevā au-hoyi-kārahˢ. prajāpatir himˢ -kārahˢ. prānˢahˢ svaro ‘nnam yā vāg virāt ˢ. 3. aniruktas trayodaśahˢ stobhahˢ samˢ cāro humˢ -kārahˢ. 4. dugdhe ‘smai vāg doham. yo vāco doho ‘nnavān annâdo bhavati ya etām evamˢ sāmnām upanisadamˢ vedopanisˢadamˢ veda.

4

Ibid. Conversely, Bhartνhari devotes much attention to the question of how “language”— the primordial, divine hum or buzz of creation—evolves into a semanticized force. See Vākya-padīya 1.44–58, with vrˢtti. For a grammar of mantra, see Patton 1996. 5

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 307 1. The sound hau is this world. The sound hai is the wind. The word atha is the moon. The word iha [“here”] is the self. The sound ī is fire. 2. The sound ū is the sun. The sound e is the invocation. Au-ho-i is the All-Gods. The sound him is Prajāpati. Sound itself is breath. Ya is food. Language is Virāj. 3. Then there is the thirteenth sound hum, an interjection that varies, that is what cannot be said. 4. Language milks itself of milk, the milk of language, for him who has food, who eats food, for him who knows in this way the Upanisˢad of the Sāman chants, who knows the connection.

Vedic ritual, as is well known, loves mysterious connections (bandhu; also upanisˢad, brahman).6 The Vedic cosmos is woven together by relating elements from seemingly distinct levels or domains, and this strong interweaving—the perception of one thing as another 7—allows the ritualist to generate actual existential transitions and transformations. He can, for instance, go to heaven, achieve a divine body, and also return home for a safe landing. Much depends on how much he knows, just as in the text cited above it is the one who knows—in a certain way, evam—who has food. And not just any food: language milks itself (actually herself, since vāc is feminine) as a direct, perhaps automatic result of the ritualist’s esoteric knowledge. It is as if what he knows is the inner mechanism of language, or the true, delicious meaning of sounds and words. For such a person, language operates in a manner utterly remote from ordinary reference and denotation. What we hear as phonic matter— syllables like hau, hai, him, or the string au-ho-yi—has distinct, and secret, meaning. A whole cosmos is reassembled through these sounds, whose context is ritual performance with the udgītha recitation at its center. We can assume that udgītha language is heightened, intensified, denaturalized, and effectual. It has properties that operate upon the cosmos through the play of subtle phonic patterns, unintelligible to our ears but perhaps all the more effective because of this. They do not, however, appear to work wholly automatically; the epistemic intention of the singer or speaker makes all the difference between his eating or going hungry. Language has a hidden core or essence—glossed as milk—which can be produced by ritual knowledge and its associated praxis. It also has an internal hierarchy. Some sounds are more useful 6

See Renou 1978. E.g. dawn is the head of the sacrificial horse, the sun its eye, the year its body, and so on: Bνhad-āraΩyaka Upaniυad 1.1.1. “Seeing (X) as (Y)” is, Yigal Bronner suggests, a possible translation for the classical trope of utprekυå. 7

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than others—especially, it would seem, those that do not “mean” in the usual way. There are also elements that repeat or that embed themselves, in whole or part, in larger segments (thus au-ho-yi, the All-Gods, contains [h]au and i). Above all there is the interjection, the thirteenth element which must comprise a totality—all of time, always 12 + 1, the year as sequence and the year as a holistic unity—and, not too surprisingly, this element is at the edge of silence. There is a need in this system for the anirukta, the unuttered, that which cannot be said. Elsewhere in the Veda we are told that only one quarter of language is available to us; the rest is hidden in another world, perhaps in silence.8 It is nonetheless important to note that this obscure Upanisˢadic passage also includes what may be called semantic residues in its identifications. At least three of the sound-signs are familiar words: atha (“now”, “from this point on”), iha (“here”) and vāc (“speech,” “language” seen in relation to the divine transitional being, Virāj). The temporal marker, atha, is lunar in character; whereas the very “self ” of the reciter is present, or made to be present, somehow actualized, in the word-token meaning “here.” This usage is instructive. Actual words can transcend their normal semantic burdens and yet refer to a second-order, perhaps deeper meaning. Such a meaning, encrypted in everyday speech, is what really works. We are heedless of the potential that lurks in the sounds and syllables we utter out of habit; but there are moments when their true force rings out and can, perhaps, be heard by an ear attuned to a fuller listening. A dimension of ultimacy inheres in sound qua sound, for svara, phonic or musical utterance, is prānˢa, breath; throughout this first section of the Upanisˢad, prānˢa competes with ākāśa, space, for the privilege of ontic primacy, of being the final source of the udgītha and, indeed, of reality itself. There is always a temptation to allegorize these bandhu-type identifications. Śanˆkarâcārya succumbs to it (thus him “means” Prajāpati because Prajāpati, the Vedic creator, is “unsayable” or “indistinct” like the syllable him, and so on),9 and modern commentators often follow in his wake. Analogy or resemblance is, however, a weak basis for understanding the kind of system in evidence here. Does hau resemble the world? Is ī an analogue of fire? Sounds seemingly have an autonomous,

μgVeda 1.164.45. aniruktyād dhi‫ר‬kārasya câvyaktatvåt: Śa‫ר‬kara on Chāndogya Upaniυad (p. 386). Cf. his gloss on 3: anirukto ‘vyaktatvād idaΥ cedaΥ ceti nirvaktuΥ na śakyata iti. 8 9

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 309 non-adventitious career. As such, they may also generate meanings and, through these meanings, specific, designated changes in the world. At least one aspect of this autonomy native to articulate sound and underlying its efficacy may turn up in section 12, immediately preceding our text—the famous passage where a white dog joins with several others in performing the udgītha chant (śauva udgīthahˢ). They complete the ritual by singing him (= Prajāpati?) followed by Om and requests for food and drink. Generations of Indologists have interpreted this section as a parody of Vedic ritual and its performers, but its strategic placement toward the climax of the first prapāt ˢhaka of the Chāndogya, and immediately before our short text and its explicit phonic decoding, suggests that parody is not the proper genre.10 A barking dog, under optimal conditions, may well set the cosmos back on course. To sum up so far: Sounds relate to meaning in very distinct patterns. Sometimes they mean what they are (the wind, the moon). Sometimes they mean through indirection, an ordinary semantics concealing an extraordinary one. Sometimes what is not audible or, for that matter, sayable is what counts most. Sounds functioning on this level, in specialized ritual contexts, also set up internal relations on a musical level, and it is this level which allows for the rebuilding or rearranging of a world. If you know what to do with such phonic materials, what or how they really mean, and how they are inter-connected (the upanisˢad), you can generate states of enduring fullness. Unlike later texts, however, the Chāndogya does not tell you what to do with the tantalizing identifications it reveals. Citra Poetry: Making Language Visible Upanisˢadic-style correspondences between sound and psycho-cosmic entities become routine in much later Yogic and Tantric texts, although, as we shall see, the ritual uses of such correspondences are radically reconceived. Moreover, the mere utterance of esoteric sounds by an initiate is not really sufficient to produce the kind of far-reaching results that the texts promise. Mantras, or mantra-like poems pronounced by poets gifted with the ability to bless or to curse (śāpânugraha-sāmarthya), are, no doubt, highly effective transformers of reality. But when one wants,

10

See the recent discussion of this passage by Arbatov 2003.

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for example, to bring a goddess into being, or to wake her up from her slumbers in the depths of one’s own body, something more may be required. A graphic, visual dimension becomes integral to the intralinguistic, sonar process. The complex arrangement of encoded sound patterns in multi-sequential, modular constructs has visible consequences. In this context, properly poetic considerations also come into play. Thus historically the way to the phonic activation or actualization of Tantric deities goes through certain prevalent features of poetic praxis in Sanskrit (also later in the regional languages). The most salient of these features emerge in what is known as citra-kāvya, “picture poetry.”11 Citra-kāvya is first fully grammaticalized by Danˢdˢin in his Kāvyâdarśa, a text which inspired spin-offs in Tamil, Tibetan, and other regional languages. Danˢdˢin defines several types of citra verses based on complex forms of phonetic-syllabic repetition, including regular alternation between repeating and non-repeating syllables, palindromes, double palindromes, rotating sequences, and other geometric patterns.12 He acknowledges that even the simpler types of such verses are difficult to produce (dusˢkara, 78). Danˢdˢin’s discussion very naturally moves from citra poetry to riddles (prahelikā, 3.96), which he classes as “amusements” in learned assemblies (krīdˢā-gosˢt ˢhī-vinoda). No one who has tried to decipher citra verses will deny this playful aspect. On the other hand, here, as in other south Asian domains, playfulness is perhaps an index of the truly serious. Later poeticians such as Mammatˢa and Vidyānātha expand the discussion of citra to include well-known diagrams (citra-bandha) formed by plotting the syllables of the verse onto spatial grids so that visual images (a sword, a lotus, a drum, a wheel, the track of a cart, and so on) emerge—once again, through various patterns of syllabic repetition.13 Such a verse, that is, both unfolds its (often rather secondary) verbal-semantic burden and, graphically enacted on palmleaf or paper or, perhaps, in the mind’s eye, describes a concrete object composed of patterned combinations of recurring and non-repeating phonemes. In this latter function, the verse—both in its phonematic progression and its tangible “meaning”—can actually be seen; very often, it is visualized in movement, as if the phonetic materials one hears

11 Other possible translations include “flashy” or “special effects” or “virtuoso” poetry—see Tubb forthcoming, and cf. Latin carmina figurata. 12 Kāvyadarśa of DaΩͯin 3.78–83. 13 See examples in MammaϏa 9.85 (pp. 529–34); Pratāpa-rudrīya of Vidyānātha, 5.11–13 (pp. 249–52); also Ingalls 1989.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 311 were literally sculpting or weaving a newly emergent object in threedimensional space. I want to look briefly at one relatively straightforward example, which I take from the Tamil text modelled after Danˢdˢin and known as Tanˢt ˢiyalanˆkāram (composed sometime between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in the far south).14 The first example of a citra verse cited by this text is the following: paruvam ākav ito kan˰a-mālaiye pŏruv’ilāv ul ˰ai mevan˰a kān˰ame maruvum ācai vit ˢā kan˰a-mālaiye vĕruval āyil ˰ai pūv’ anˢi kālame15

We could translate, making several rather difficult choices consequent upon intentional ambiguity and word-play en route, as follows: The time has come: Depth of evening. Dark clouds line the sky. Deer, graceful beyond compare, live in this forest, where as evening turns black, desire fails to relent. Don’t be afraid, delightful woman. He’s coming now, at any moment, to flood you with flowers.

The speaker is apparently the girlfriend and companion of the heroine in a classical, akam-style lovers’ drama.16 The heroine has grown impatient: her lover promised her he would come now, at the beginning of the rainy season, to a rendezvous in the mullai region of forested hills; but he is inexplicably delayed. The pain of separation is always most intense—so the Tamil poets tell us—at this moment when evening falls; and evening, drawing on toward night with no sign of the beloved, is particularly excruciating during the monsoon.17 The girlfriend is doing her best 14 The text is mentioned by the commentator AϏiyārkkunallār (13th century). On the dating, see Zvelebil 1975, 192–93. 15 TaΩϏiyala‫ר‬kāram, 3.2.1. 16 In “Ca‫ר‬kam” poetry, akam poems, the so-called “inner” category, focus on love relationships. 17 Compare such well-known examples of evening love-sickness in the mullai region as Kuρuntŏkai 66 and 234, and NammāΝvār’s reworking of this theme in Tiruviruttam 68; also discussion in Ramanujan 1981, 158–59.

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to prop up the drooping heroine (who is, we may assume, as innocent and vulnerable as the wide-eyed deer in the forest): surely the lover will arrive at any moment and fulfil his promise. A sense of urgency informs the entire verse and also brackets it explicitly: the opening word, paruvam, means “season,” “time,” and the final word is an emphatic kālame, once again “time.” Within this straitjacket of remorseless temporality— the neutral, inexorable progression of the seasons—we can easily feel, with the heroine, the unbearable, constantly intensifying strain of waiting. Yet she has clearly not given up hope: perhaps after all he will come, tonight, to cover her with flowers. This vacillating emotional state, very economically and delicately articulated, has an iconic correlate on the level of purely aural effects, as we shall see in a moment. It is a strong poem, precisely because of its relative simplicity. The whole sadness of time is somehow contained in four short lines. One could even leave it at that—had our text not brought it as an example of citra-kāvya (Tam. cittira-kavi). Indeed, the citra aspect is clearly felt by our author to dominate the poem, even to supply its true raison d’être. Let us then turn to this domain of musicality and phono-visual patterning. If we recite or record the poem in the standard mode of reproducing Tamil verses, in which metrical units appear rather than lexemes, we have: paruva mākavi tokan˰a mālaiye pŏruvi lāvul ˰ai mevan˰a kān˰ame maruvu mācaivi t ˢakan˰a mālaiye vĕruva lāyil ˰ai pūvanˢi kālame

Or, in standard representation of the lines (quarters): =–/–=/–=/–=/ Notice the strong double beat at the transition between feet 1 and 2, the rhythmic fulcrum of the line.18 Already this metrico-graphic arrangement takes us some distance from the simple semantic level in the direction of strongly musical or rhythmic effects. The sentences, along with the verbal units that inhere in them, begin to decompose, even to disappear, as is usually the case when Tamil poetry is orally recited. At the same time, the conspicuous metrical arrangement has the advantage of opening up possibilities for ślesˢa-paronomasia—since defamiliarization

18

As John Marr 1985 has shown, Tamil metrics are classically based on ictus.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 313 of the linear, normative semantic unfolding of the sentences highlights the resonant lexical potential of isolated phonic units. All such citra verses operate through what is called yamaka, literally “twinning,”19 i.e. the foregrounded repetition of sound sequences (often across word boundaries), as Gary Tubb has noted. Ślesˢa itself is, in one sense, a superimposed or simultaneous yamaka (or yamaka is a sequentially strung-out ślesˢa)—though this formulation does not do justice to the range of techniques and effects connected to these two terms. In the present instance, we thus have kan˰a mālaiye in quarters a and c (also kan˰a alone in a, b, and c); while mācai in c lends itself, at first hearing, to several possible decodings (< mācu, “darkness,” but also “fault,” “flaw”; [m]ācai, “desire,” etc.). Mālai, at the end of a and c, is the common word for “evening”—and also the “line” or “garland” of rainclouds hovering over the forest; even more powerfully, it could be read as an accusative of māl, “passion,” “love-madness,”20 so that the girl’s friend would actually be telling her, quite literally, “Don’t be afraid (veruval) of the passion you are feeling.” In addition, *mākavi in the second foot of a [<(m) ākav i(tu)] hides the homophonous mā-kavi, “great poet”—a boast actually built into the opening statement, with its promise of technical virtuosity. We could go on in this vein, but the general process of playing with repeated strings of identical phonemes should by now be clear. But this is only the beginning. The verse in question is meant to be graphically displayed in such a way that quarters a and b are placed above c and d, which allows one to “read” the verse either in its natural linear sequence—horizontally—or by “zigzagging” from one line to the next (the first syllable in the top line is followed by the second syllable in the bottom line, and so on; from the halfway point, one starts with the first syllable in the second line and zigzags upwards to the second syllable in the top line, etc.). Thus we obtain pa ru va mā ka vi to ka n˰a mā lai ye pŏ ru vi lā vu l ˰ai me va n˰a kā n˰a me ma ru vu mā cai vi tˢā ka n˰a mā lai ye vĕ ru va lā yi l ˰ai pū va nˢi kā la me

The zigzag pattern is aptly named go-mūtrikā, “cow’s piss,” for reasons perfectly obvious to anyone who has ever walked behind a urinating cow in India. The underlying principle is very simple, as Gerow has noted:21 19 20 21

See Tubb 2003, 8. See discussion of this term in Handelman and Shulman 2004, 178–79. Gerow 1971, 181.

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every other syllable in corresponding quarters (a to c and b to d) must be identical. Slightly more complicated go-mūtrikā-bandhas, such as the example given by Danˢdˢin in Kāvyâdarśa 3.79,22 allow the reader to start the verse from quarter c (bottom line) and to zigzag upwards to a, then back to c, and so on—in effect weaving the poem together by an overlay of two alternative, equally “correct” or precise zigzags, so that visually the same phonematic sequence is unfolding twice, simultaneously (though to manifest the zigzag audibly requires the standard temporal sequence of recitation and thus a particularly sensitized listener). The two readings, or two directions of movement, actually intersect in the transition between every two syllables, creating a kind of purely visual ślesˢa. This sense of complex, often multi-directional movement through the bandha diagram is critical. More complicated figures such as the devilishly ingenious magic square, sarvatobhadra, allow simultaneous readings forwards and backwards as well as vertically and horizontally, for example. For that matter, even the more or less clear-cut go-mūtrikā can be doubled or quadrupled, as Ingalls has shown for a verse in Ānandavardhana’s Devī-śataka; the result is, according to his calculation, 256 ways of reading each quarter, thus exactly 4,260,312,864 (i.e., 256 to the fourth power) ways of putting together the complete verse— and this is only one short poem.23 Plotting this kind of go-mūtrikā geometrically produces a dense net of criss-crossing lines; hence another name for this figure, jāla-bandha, “lattice.”24 The range of possibilities is undeniably impressive, and for the more advanced figures the services of a topologist may be necessary. For lack of space and geometric skill, I resist the temptation to explore further examples. We have not yet exhausted even the short Tanˢt ˢiyalanˆkāram verse. After the excursus into mathematical (i.e. strictly sonar) perspectives, we can now allow ourselves another glimpse of the overt semantics ot this poem. Anyone can attune his or her ear to the music of the articulated sounds,25 but what is most striking to someone who knows Tamil is the way each of the lines—which can be heard, with some effort, across the metrical divisions—has its own autonomy. Moreover, these lines are

22

madano madirākυīΩām apâ‫ר‬gâstro jayed ayam/ mad-eno yadi tat-kυīΩam ana‫ר‬gāyâñjaliΥ dade// 23 Ingalls 1989, 571–72. 24 Gerow, loc. cit. 25 One should pay particular attention to the cumulative and contrasting effects of the liquids and nasals—l, Ν, Ϋ, m.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 315 more or less interchangeable. Even in English translation, one could reproduce something of this effect, for instance by transposing a and b: Deer, graceful beyond compare, live in this forest, where dark clouds line the sky. Depth of evening. The time has come.

And so on: readers can work out the possible permutations. Contrary to Ingalls’ rather dismissive comment on this aspect of such verses (“Any four-line stanza in Sanskrit where the clausal boundaries coincide with the pāda boundaries may be read in 24 ways”),26 the relative, and consistent, autonomization of individual lines or quarters is no trivial matter. It reveals on the semantic level a strong parallel to what is happening on the level of sound patterns. Put starkly, the “normal” linear sequence that is intrinsic to all audible language is disrupted so severely that the poem, or the sentence, reorganizes itself around individual, semiindependent units that are capable of combining or resonating with other such units in new, only minimally semanticized ways. A dimension of simultaneity is restored to such heightened language, which begins to look or sound both somewhat surreal and, at the same time, compacted and dense with an expressive fullness of an entirely different order. Bhartrˢhari, who believed that audible sequence in language was, in a certain sense, illusory, would have approved. “Look or sound:” the visual aspect of all this is crucial. Like the Israelites in the desert, we can “see the sounds.”27 We need only know where to look or how to listen. The mere existence of two (or more) crisscrossing audible sequences, simultaneously intersecting and repeating in the visual dimension, imparts a certain volume or depth to such a verse. Informing this experimentation with depth is the unstated principle that in the highly charged domain of poetic utterance, homophonous repetition is always significant, expressive, non-random, and subject to an expansive tangibility and plasticity. Homophony, we could say, induces a perception of homology in the sense of condensed, self-replicating, also subtly varied, musical patterns or themes. Each such repetition presents us with its own semantic range, enriched by reference to earlier and later

26 27

Ingalls 1989, 570. Exodus 20:14.

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occurrences of similar phonic sequence. The poem also has integrity as a whole organized vertically as well as horizontally, these vectors crisscrossing very much in the manner of the go-mūtrikā quarters. Let me repeat: the meaning-bearing segment of this multi-level poetic experience is not rendered irrelevant by the sheer musicality and complex rhythmic effects that the verse projects. Quite the contrary: “meaning” is, if anything, enhanced, though not perhaps along the lines of our classical interpretative habits. Moreover, a pervasive iconicity is present on all levels. As hinted earlier, the heroine’s emotional and sensory configuration—the official “subject” of the poem—is reconfigured both in the linear, normative semantic mode and in its mathematical or visual correlates as conveyed by the phonemes through their combinations and repetitions. In a way, this is the whole point. To fully internalize the consequences of such play with language, one has to recognize that the phonemes, once liberated from the burdens of standard semantic sequence, take on a life of their own, setting up complex sets of relations organized musically rather than by any overt linear semantics. This, in fact, is what we see when we study the geometric diagrams that such verses trace on paper or in our minds. Citra-bandha verses always focus attention on selected, yamaka-driven syllables, which “repeat” themselves in patterns that are not isomorphic with a standard, sequential, naturally meaningful recitation. These syllables—usually at the very center of the lotus, or the hilt of the sword, or the innermost spoke of the wheel, or at certain neuralgic points in the coils of a serpent—re-order or re-imagine the verse in these same, visualizable forms. An adequate description of any such verse requires a language waiting to be invented, operating with a grammar waiting to be inductively defined. We can, perhaps, approximate such a language by thinking of citra poetry as architectonic, in a sonar or musical sense—that is, as creating three-dimensional, spatial constructs alive with inner movement, charged with expressive potential of an unexpectedly “symphonic” character. The superimposition of autonomized sounds, split or multiple verbal meanings, visual depth, and self-driven metrical or rhythmic patterns creates this three-dimensionality, probably the most basic feature of citra-kāvya. Underlying this poetic praxis is a new belief that a syllable (aksˢara) or phoneme (varnˢa) has visual form. We will see how far this belief takes the Tantrika poets. But the fact that citra verses, once decoded, so often produce visible objects (or at the least visible geometric patterns) should also suggest to us another important element of such poetry, one that could be said to hypertrophy in Tantra. These

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 317 poems are anything but descriptive. They tend, rather, to the effectual or efficacious and may, indeed, have originated in precisely such practical (“magical,”28 “religious,”29 personally useful)30 contexts. Encoded Citra: What Sounds Really Mean Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that Tantric poetry is, indeed, poetry, worthy of attention on the aesthetic no less than the ritual or metaphysical level. As implied in the last paragraph, all such domains may turn out to be eminently pragmatic in usage, and poetry even more so than the others. Perhaps our discussion of citra-kāvya has prepared us to take another look at the poetics of sound in one universally acknowledged masterpiece, the Saundarya-laharī (SL) or “Wave of Beauty” that is incorrectly attributed to Śanˆkarâcārya. We will, however, be concerned less with the text of the SL itself than with Laksˢmī-dhara’s sixteenth-century commentary on two fundamentally important verses. The materials themselves are fairly well known, and I make no claim to innovation or special insight; but there are more general principles, worthy of restatement, involved in these verses and their commentary and germane to the issues raised above. The SL celebrates—perhaps we would do better to say “activates”—the goddess Tripura-sundarī, “the most beautiful in the tripartite cosmos,” who is the main deity of the Kaula system known as Śrī-vidyā.31 This form of Kaulism, which became widespread in south India after the end of the first millenium, amalgamated radical Śākta cultic practices with the householder’s ethos, on the one hand, and with a well-developed Yogic physiology based on the six cakras or subtle energy-centers, on

28

Gerow, 178. Ibid., 177. 30 Smith 1985, 135: “The origin of this fashion was almost certainly the writing of verses on weapons.” Smith also notes the strong relation between citra-bandha verses and the battle sections of mahā-kāvya—where geometric military formations are de rigueur. But if we extend the range of our observations backward into the late-Vedic and early-epic layers of the tradition, we will discover complex geometric patterns governing the narrative structure of major texts. Citra-kāvya makes such effects conscious and explicit and packs them into the frame of the individual verse. See Brereton 1997. 31 More precisely, verses 1–41 of this text, the so-called Ānanda-laharī (see below), derive from this Kaula system in relation to Kubjikā (of the “Western Tradition”, paścimâmnāya): see Sanderson 2002, 1–3, especially n. 24. I am grateful to Professor Sanderson for discussions of dating and lineage in these texts. See also Michael 1986. 29

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the other. It also integrated into a Smārta, orthoprax domain strong elements of what Sanderson calls “erotic magic.”32 The SL, a relatively late text—perhaps twelfth or thirteenth century33—is without doubt one of the most beloved and popular of all Śrī-vidyā literary works. Its verses, composed in a highly distinctive Sanskrit style, are, indeed, “magical.” Many worshippers of the goddess recite the entire set of one hundred verses every day upon waking. The tradition itself, however, correctly sees this book as combining two distinct parts—verses 1–41, the so-called Ānanda-laharī (“Wave of Joy”) and verses 42–100, the Saundarya-laharī proper.34 The first segment in fact builds an image of the goddess as a cosmos in her own right and as the creator of the cosmos we inhabit, whose inner workings are explained in terms of the well-known series of six subtle psychophysiological cakras or bodily centers. This part of the text is clearly aimed at practices of visualization and mantric exercises, as we will see; eventually, if properly put to use, it allows the female and male elements within this goddess-informed cosmos to recombine, thereby reversing the standard direction of cosmogonic deterioration (see verse 9). From verse 42 onward we have an exquisite, lyrical description of Tripurasundarī, limb by limb, no doubt also aimed at visualization but lacking the mantric, pragmatic aspect of the first part of the poem. This division is emphasized and explained in popular stories about the composition of the text. Some, says Rāma-kavi, the author of the Dˢ inˢdiˢ ma commentary on SL, attribute the book to Śiva himself; others claim the author was Śanˆkara, an avatar of Śiva; still others assert that it emerged from the radiant teeth of the goddess Lalitā, the Ādi-śakti or primeval goddess.35 But even those who think Śanˆkara was the author or direct recipient of the text describe a somewhat traumatic and truncated process of composition and transmission. Śanˆkara, dressed in his ascetic robe, was visiting Śiva’s home on Kailāsa; there he noticed the book of the mantra-śāstra, which the goddess had left lying on Śiva’s throne. All too

32

Sanderson 1990, 156. Almost certainly composed in south India. 34 W. Norman Brown, who edited and translated the text, somewhat unconvincingly takes the final nine verses as a separate segment, the poet’s prayer to the goddess: Śankarācārya 1958, 1. These truly astonishing verses—filled with metapoetical statements— seem to me to emerge very naturally out of the preceding description. 35 ͮiΩͯima-bhāυya, opening verses 3–4. All references to the SL and its commentaries refer to the edition by Kuppuswami 1991. 33

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 319 aware of the text’s importance, Śanˆkara picked it up and hurried toward the exit; but he was intercepted by Śiva’s doorkeeper, Nandikeśvara. The two fought over the secret treasure, and Śanˆkara managed to tear off the pages containing verses 1–41, which he brought down to earth. He added 59 stanzas of his own to complete the work.36 Note that in this account, the first (practical, theogonic) segment is unequivocably divine in origin, a treasured possession of the goddess Pārvatī, and that it exists as a written text. Writing plays an important role in other versions of the story as well. Thus the somewhat mysterious “Tamil boy” (dravidˢaśiśu) mentioned in verse 75—probably a reference to the Tevāram poet Tiruñān˰acampantar—is said to have composed the entire poem and to have inscribed it on Mount Kailāsa. Śanˆkara saw the verses there and started to memorize them even as the goddess moved the author to erase them. Fortunately, Śanˆkara’s superb memory allowed him to retain the first 41.37 This somewhat poignant account of rapid memorization against the clock insists on the notion of oral transmission—“oral” in the sense that the transmitter inscribes the text verbatim on or in his brain.38 The SL is clearly important enough to merit such insistence. Even so, this is a text that tends to disappear before our eyes; thus there is the tragic loss of the other original 59 verses, initially graphically recorded but then erased. So the written form of the text does have its own necessity and integrity, in the eyes of the tradition, although it is the oral, memorized version that endures. Writing is crucial, though not for transmission. This conclusion recalls what we discovered in the domain of citra-kavya and has somewhat similar implications, as we shall see. By the time the Tamil poet Kavi-rāja Panˢtiˢ tar produced a Tamil version of the SL, in the sixteenth century, the written text was thought to have gone through several permutations. Once Sarasvatī, the goddess of wisdom and arts, boasted to Śiva that she had composed the SL, the book that offers a distilled version of all four Vedas by expressing the greatness of the goddess Yamalā (yamal ˢai). Śiva laughed and pointed at the slopes of the mountain, Kailāsa, where the whole text was already inscribed. (Had Sarasvatī then re-composed or re-invented verbatim an already existing work, like Pierre Menard?) Moreover, this book imprinted on the mountain was copied and inscribed on another

36 37 38

Ibid., v; Subrahmanya Sastri and Srinivasa Ayyangar 1948, x. Kuppuswami, vi. I thank Jan Assmann for remarks in this vein.

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mountain—Meru—by the “great ascetic” Pusˢpadanta; and Gaudˢa-pāda read it there, learned it by heart (ul ˢam pat ˢittu), and thus transmitted it to his pupil, Śanˆkarâcārya.39 With some pathos the poet includes his own “mean composition” (pun˰ kavi) in the line of further textual productions. But even here, where the SL exists in several written versions, there is still room for learning it by heart and passing it on in this fashion; and our text is not, apparently, a piece of pure artisty inspired by Sarasvatī but rather antedates this poetic stage. God himself created it and recorded it on stone. We will be focusing on Laksˢmī-dhara’s commentary on verse 32—in many ways the climax of the Ānanda-laharī, the first segment of SL. This stanza is universally recognized as articulating the secret sixteensyllable mantra of Tripura-sundarī, thus as constituting the very heart of the esoteric system the book reveals. Before we attempt to understand it, we may benefit from a preview of the author’s technique and the commentators’ modes of applying or revising it. Verse 19 of SL explicitly speaks of visualization: mukhamˢ bindumˢ krˢtvā kuca-yugam adhas tasya tad-adho harârdhamˢ dhyāyed yo hara-mahisˢi te manmatha-kalām/ sa sadyahˢ sanˆksˢobhamˢ nayati vanitā ity ati-laghu trilokīm apy āśu bhramayati ravîndu-stana-yugām// A man who meditates on that part of you, Hara’s40 Queen, that rouses desire—making the dot into your face, with a pair of breasts below it and, below that, that half of Hara that is half of the sound-signs ha-ra— will agitate women with passion in a moment. What is more, he will drive all three worlds, that is, the Woman with sun and moon for her breasts, to distraction.

There are those who regard this verse as a statement of essence, the ultimate revelation of the Śrī-vidyā cult mentioned above. The goddess is to be visualized, and thus fully materialized and made present, in her form as Kāma-kalā, desire itself in all its generative and active potential. As such, she is not only infinitely desirable, a true subject for “erotic 39 Ānanta-lahari, sauntarya-lahari of Vīrai Kavi-rāja PaΩϏitar, verses 3–4. yāmaΙai taΫ pĕrum pukaΝaiy āti maρai nālin vaϏitt’ ĕϏutta nūlai/ nāmakal ˢ taΫ pāϏal it’ ĕΫρ’ araΫarkku navila avar nakai cĕyt’ aΫρe/pāmakaΙaiy aruk’ aΝaittup paruppatattiρ pŏρitt’irunta paricu kāϏϏuñ/cema-niti pāϏalaiy ĕΫ puΫ kaviyāρ kŏΙvat’ avaΙ tiρamaiy aΫρe// 40 Hara = Śiva.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 321 magic,” but she also embodies the icchā-śakti or “potential for wanting” inherent in the godhead. On the other hand, visualization of this sort can have very immediate uses (prayoga). As the verse literally states, a man who accomplishes the ritual meditation can make women fall in love with him without delay. He can even make the goddess herself, the object of his worship, who is none other than the total reality of the cosmos, dizzy with passion for him. Modern commentators find such promises embarrassing: A. Kuppaswamy, the learned and careful editor of SL, assures us that “this verse could at best be deemed as having reference to the taming of a shrewish wife.”41 Very much in keeping with what we saw in the case of citra-kāvya, this verse expands the overt, explicit level of denotation in far-reaching ways. Its straightforward promise, while providing an essential foundation for what is being said, requires decoding from the opening phrases of the text. Words mean much more than they seem to say. The bindudot that becomes the face of a goddess is the central, focal point, a statement of infinity, of the Śrī-cakra yantra, the geometric model that serves the Śrī-vidyā. A series of nine triangles, four with apex pointing upward and five pointing downward, surround the bindu and are themselves encompassed by a series of lotus flowers, circles, and an outer square. Beneath the bindu we are meant to find a pair of breasts—apparently the two horizontal points of the first upward-pointing triangle; but we learn later in the verse that the breasts of the goddess are the sun and the moon, which inhabit the Śrī-cakra, as they inhabit the cosmos, the cosmicized body of the goddess, and the mantric sequence of sounds, in ways that can easily be specified (see below). Still further down, there is the “half of Hara/ha-ra”: Laksmī-dhara, who will be our guide on this tour, tells us that this means trikonˢa, “triangle,” and that this triangle is the triangular yoni, the genital organ of the goddess we are busy imagining and thus creating. One triangle subsumes the ramified series of triads and superimposed triangles so characteristic of the Śrī-vidyā. We are thus meant to visualize the goddess from face (or mouth, mukham) down to genitals. According to Laksˢmī-dhara, the exercise activates the Māra-bīja or “death-seed” (also “seed of desire,” since Māra can refer to both these forces, which are anyway one), and the result is that the practitioner achieves a state of total identity with this beautiful goddess

41

Kuppaswamy 1991, translation and notes, 41.

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(tayā kāntayâtmanas tādātmyam sampādayet). Not only is the goddess manifest before our eyes as a result of our meditation and proper use of the mantra; if we have done our work well, we are now entirely equated with her, and thus fully intact feminized cosmoi in our own right. We have to remember at this point that we are reading the verse through the eyes of Laksˢmī-dhara (1497–1539), who, we think, came from Orissa (he was a devotee of Ekâmra-Śiva) and thus may give voice to the rather unusual regional tradition of Tantric Yoga that crystallized there, and further south along the coast, in medieval times.42 All of this is hardly more than the surface meaning of this one verse. There are, incidentally, two further readily available surface patterns to be noted. First, one could just as correctly translate the opening phrase (mukhamˢ bindumˢ krˢtvā) in the reverse order from our attempt above: “ [A man who meditates . . .] making your face into the dot.” There is no particular reason to prefer the fully anthromorphized visual image to the geometric one of the yantra (or, for that matter, to the implicit one enacted by the phonemes). Secondly, in either reading, what the meditator does is, literally, to “make this goddess revolve” (bhramayati). We can take it as a general rule that such verses produce a goddess who is by no means fixed in place or static but who rather turns, twists, evolves, devolves, revolves. Mantras are highly dynamic devices (hence the danger connected to their use). What about the somewhat mysterious “half of Hara/ha-ra?” Again, the surface denotation is simple enough: Śiva or Hara is androgynous, and the worshiper of the goddess naturally visualizes the female half of him, as the commentators’ gloss—the triangular yoni down below— confirms. But the two phonemes, ha and ra, or their graphic form as a ligature (hra), provide several further, rather startling possibilities. Another popular south Indian commentator on the SL, Kaivalyâśrama, spells them out in his Saubhāgya-vardhanī. First, if you do away with the upper half of the grapheme ha (٦), you get an image of the yoni. This, says Kaivalyâśrama, is the plain or obvious meaning (prakat ˢârtha). Or take ha, which is half of ha + ra: this ha actually “means,” if that is the right word, ravi[hˢ], the sun. Of course, when we normally pronounce

42 Brown insists (Śankarācārya 1958, 20–21) that the SL itself knows nothing of the identification of the subtle psycho-physiology of the goddess—the six cakras—with the practitioner’s own body along the standard lines of macro-microcosmic analogy. In Lakυmī-dhara, such correspondences are axiomatic. For Lakυmī-dhara’s dates see Goudriaan and Gupta 1981, 147–48.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 323 the phoneme ha, we tend to forget that ravi—this one specific term for the sun among many—is its actual denotation. The adept, fortunately, is guided by the SL to the contextually appropriate meaning. But this is only the first step. Ravi has 4 elements—r, a, v, and i, two consonants and two vowels. But the verse wants us to use only half of them (the principle of “halving” is seen as generalized at this crucial point), so naturally we erase the consonants (consonants are anyway embedded pieces of death in this esoteric phono-metaphysics, as we see already in Chāndogya Upanisˢad 2.22.3).43 This leaves us with a + i. As Pānˢini tells us, these two simple vowels coalesce into the diphthong e—which happens to be identical in its graphic shape to what we got earlier when we shaved off the upper half of the grapheme ha, i.e., the yoni. Notice how operations on the aural level correspond precisely, in this world, with operations on the level of writing. There is more. Kaivalyâśrama offers us yet another reading that, not surprisingly, leads to virtually the same result. Ha also “means” hamˢ sahˢ, “goose” (in the nominative singular). Removing half of hamˢ sahˢ by deleting the two death-dealing consonants, we are left with amˢ + ahˢ [in Devanagari script: ٦‫ ذ‬+ ٥‫]ر‬. I hope you have already noticed the three bindu dots (one nasalizing a[m], the other providing visarga aspiration to a[hˢ]). Now the verse really makes sense. One dot becomes the goddess’s face; two others, placed beneath it, are her breasts. Beneath these three we are instructed to find that half of ha + ra which makes e, i.e. the yoni—and we already know how to do this. There is no rule in this “grammar” that limits operations to a single application. So, as the commentor remarks, the ha phoneme is thrice useful, each time through cutting it in half—first as Śivā, the goddess herself (that is, the phoneme e); then as ravihˢ; finally as hamˢ sahˢ. You will be relieved to learn that none of these phonetic identifications is particularly mysterious; all of them, says Kaivalyâśrama, in conclusion, are prakat ˢa, “obvious.” The deeper meaning of the phoneme ha is, however, a secret that can only be learned from the mouth of one’s teacher; it should definitely not be publicly unveiled, which is why he, Kaivalyâśrama, stops at this level of explication (vastuto hakārârtho gupto guru-mukhād avagamyahˢ. tat-prakāśane mahad an-isˢt ˢam iti na prakāśitahˢ). Still, there is one more way to unpack the verse: the first bindu-dot is the sun, i.e. the face of the goddess; moon and fire are the two lower dots, i.e. her breasts,

43

See Padoux 1990, 17.

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beneath which we, once again, find the yoni in the form of the syllable ha.44 In short, however we read this small piece of the verse, we end up with a lucid cosmogram in the visible image of the delectable goddess. Moreover, this visual image is what the various sounds actually mean, although they have to be decoded if one is to know this consciously. “Half of Hara/ha-ra” does mean “goddess.” In fact, it expresses this meaning in a remarkably overdetermined way, since the goddess is iconographically half of Śiva, as we know, and since the phonemes pronounce her into existence through the automatic operation of their internal forces, combined according to the mechanical laws of this new science of astrophonetics. To understand the verse is thus not to piece together its overt semantics, although without their existence nothing may happen. Understanding is the actual materialization of this divine presence, its activation as a revolving or “dancing” being 45 and, as Laksˢmī-dhara has told us, the complete transformation of the mantra-chanter or practitioner into this goddess. That, we can conclude, is what language is for. We have lingered over this single poem in order to attune our ears to its way of speaking, to encounter its peculiar lexicon in a relatively unambiguous context, and to observe inductively the primary principles of the grammar that serves its medieval commentators. Each verse like this one becomes, in fact, a grammatical essay in its own right. I want to stress again that such a grammar entails very powerful graphic and visual components; we cannot begin to describe morphology and syntax without addressing the projected images of the divinities who are brought into being by every sentence. As for poetic effect—and the SL is definitely experienced by connoisseurs as great poetry—think what it means for a poem to be able to turn its listener into a goddess and, at the same time, to put this newly emergent goddess-self into rapid movement. Unwinding the Kunˢdaˢ linī We can now turn to verse 32, where the principles outlined above come most fully into play. This verse, as explicated by Laksˢmī-dhara, assumes awareness of the subtle physiology outlined in SL 9: the body of the 44 45

Saubhāgya-vardhanī, 194. Cf. SL 41.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 325 goddess, who is the universe, contains six cakra energy-sites, each linked to one of the elements.46 Beginning at the bottom, at the base of the spine, we have the mūlâdhāra, connected to earth; above it is the water-bound manˢi-pūra; then the fiery svâdisˢt ˢhāna;47 then the heart cakra, elsewhere referred to as anāhata (the “unstruck” sound at the edge of silence), where there is air or wind; then viśuddhi, in the area of the throat, the site of ākāśa, “space;” and finally, between the eyebrows, ājñā, where the mind, manas, dwells. Above this vertical column is a thousand-petalled lotus, sahasrâra-padma, the place of the goddess in her holistic, luminous form, united with her consort, Sadā-śiva; here she is the ultimate part (kalā) of herself, that complete part that is defined as awareness per se, cit, and that is reflected downward onto the lower cakras when the cosmos begins to evolve.48 However, the very bottom of the column is no less her home (bhūmi): here she makes her own “self ” into a serpent (bhujaga-nibham adhyusˢt ˢa-valayamˢ svam ātmānamˢ krˢtvā)—called the Kunˢdˢalinī, “coiled”—and here she sleeps in a hollow cavity (kula-kunˢdeˢ kuharinˢi, 10). In a sense, the life of this goddess is lived between these two ends of the vertical pole that gives shape to her body—between the upper limit of playfulness and integral awareness and the lower end of sleep, unactivated potentiality, and dream. This picture of her ongoing inner life also inheres in the Śrī-cakra diagram and in the mantric sequence we are about to study, and it definitely allows, indeed demands, a highly active role for each person who comes to her via our text. Such a person is called upon to decide whether to wake the goddess or to let her sleep—or to put her back to sleep. Verse 32 reads as follows: śivahˢ śaktihˢ kāmahˢ ksˢitir atha ravihˢ śīta-kiranˢahˢ smaro hamˢ sahˢ śakras tadanu ca parā-māra-harayahˢ/ amī hrˢl-lekhābhis tisrˢbhir avasānesˢu ghat ˢitāhˢ bhajante varnˢās te tava janani nāmâvayavatām//

We will need two translations to begin with:

46

Brown, Śankarācārya 1958, 13–16, reads the cakras as successive stages in the cosmogonic process. 47 The order of these last two is reversed in SL compared to “standard” Tantric Yoga physiology. See discussion by Brown, Śankarācārya 1958, 14. 48 For this reflection, chāyā, see Lakυmī-dhara on SL 32, 277 (and see discussion below).

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david shulman (A) Śiva, Śakti, the Love-God, the earth, then sun, moon, Memory,49 goose, Indra and then the Supreme Goddess, Death,50 and Hari51— these phonemes, combined with the three heart-syllables at the ends52 form the elements, Mother, of your name. (B) [The words] śiva, śakti, kāma, ksˢiti, then ravi, śītakiranˢa, smara, hamˢ sa, śakra, followed by parā, māra, and hari— these phonemes, combined with the three heart-syllables at the ends form the elements, Mother, of your name.

Version A gives us a strangely beautiful, somewhat surreal concatenation— a universe, apparently linguistic in nature (since all its elements are classed as phonemes), in which various deities, heavenly bodies, desire, and one lonely goose seem scattered randomly in perceptual space. The last two quarters of the verse explain that this set of elements actually makes up the parts, avayava, of the goddess herself, or of her name (nāma). By gathering them together, we must be gathering her together, perhaps in the classical manner of Vedic ritual, whose major goal was to reassemble the diffuse, disarticulated parts of the creator, Prajāpati. Clearly, the name is critical to this enterprise. It is, however, also possible to read nāma as an independent exclamation or indeclinable,53 so that the final statement could mean simply, “these phonemes . . . constitute [or, alternatively, become] your parts.” In any case, on the level of primary denotation, we have a statement about the phonematic formation of the goddess as a recognizable, present entity. In short, a mantra is being evoked, as is also suggested by the previous verse (31): PaśupatiŚiva brought down the tantra-teaching of the goddess at her insistence (tvan-nirbandhād). To know more about this teaching, encapsulated in verse 32, or about the mantra that embodies it, we will need the help of Laksˢmī-dhara. In version B, the usual referents of the various lexical items listed— śiva, śakti, and so on—are of little interest. These are to be replaced 49 50 51 52 53

Another name for Kāma, the god of love. Or, again, a name of Kāma. = ViυΩu. Of each respective group. Thus Subrahmanya Sastri and Srinivasa Ayyangar 1948, 125.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 327 with an encoded meaning, which in every case is a phoneme/syllable (a vowel or consonant + vowel) needed to build the mantra. Thus, following Laksˢm ˢ ī-dhara, the word siva54 actually indicates the syllable ka. Śakti means e, kāma = i, and ksˢiti = la. (We could also say that each of these words “means” in a process that has two stages: the phonic sequence ksˢi-ti means “earth,” and “earth,” in this system, means the syllable la.) The particle atha separates these first four items from the next set, and we learn from the second half of the verse that at the end of each such series we have to add the “heart-grapheme” (hrˢl-lekhā) which, says Laksˢmī-dhara, is hrīmˢ (note final nasal). Thus we have as the first segment of the mantra: ka-e-i-la-hrīmˢ

Continuing the decoding: ravi (sun)= ha [as we learned above in v. 19] śītakiranˢa (moon) = sa smara = ka hamˢ sa = ha [as in 19] śakra = Indra = la

Another break, marked by the particle tadanu, allows us to conclude the second segment of the mantra: ha-sa-ka-ha-la-hrīmˢ

And the final segment: parā = sa māra = ka hari = la

So the whole mantra, so far, reads: ka-e-i-la-hrīmˢ ha-sa-ka-ha-la hrīmˢ sa-ka-la hrīmˢ

This arcane series of sounds, says Laksˢmī-dhara, presents us with a nearly complete image (pratīkatva) of the goddess or of her name. Yet there is still something missing—indeed the most important element of all. There are 15 syllables in the mantra we have “translated” from the verbal tokens in the verse, but the goddess Tripura-sundarī has

54 Or any of its synonyms—although this rule does not apply evenly throughout. Note kāma = i but smara, normally a synonym of kāma = ka.

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a 16-syllable mantra (sˢodˢaśâksarī).55 Only a guru is allowed to reveal the last, secret syllable. It must not be imparted to anyone who is not a student (śisˢya) of such a guru. Here Laksˢmī-dhara seems to be struggling with himself; he acknowledges that he should not disclose the syllable to those who have not gone through the ritual of accepting his authority as teacher, with their hands folded above their heads, after touching his feet. He finally opts for a lenient ruling: “Those who see my book and learn the final kalā (syllable or part) are my students.” He sees this as an act of compassion on his part to those who are hungry for true knowledge (jijñāsu). Now he tells us (and I, with some trepidation, allow myself to repeat the information): the ultimate kalā is ś + r + ī + bindu (nasalization), or śrīmˢ . Say these syllables correctly and precisely in this order and something will happen. Laksˢmī-dhara explains it some detail, although it is left to us to try to piece together the underlying logic and mechanics. We will return to the more properly linguistic and poetic aspects of this process in the concluding section; for the moment let me try to summarize what happens on the astro-temporal plane, following the order of Laksˢmī-dhara’s presentation. Now that we know what the name-tokens explicitly given in the verse actually “mean,” we can proceed to put them together as building-blocks of the cosmos that is the goddess. Very much as in verse 19, with its pyro-solar-lunar constellation, the three main segments of the mantra, separated from each other by hrīmˢ , fall into place as the domains of fire (āgneya-khanˢdaˢ ), sun (saura-khanˢdaˢ ), and Soma (saumya-khanˢdaˢ ) [i.e. the nectar of immortality that is stored in the moon], respectively. Between each of the domains, where the syllable hrīmˢ operates, we find one of the cosmic “knots” or “nodes” ( granthi), at once connecting the otherwise disparate parts of the cosmos and blocking movement among them: the so-called Rudra-knot between segments 1 and 2, the Visˢnˢu-knot between 2 and 3, and the final, ultimate block—the Brahma-knot adjacent to the mūlâdhāra at the base of the cakra column—between 3 and 4.56 Where, you may ask, is segment 4? It is the almost inaudible, most secret, mono-syllabic sixteenth element of the mantra mentioned above, the one that turns the mantra into an effective theurgic instrument. This last segment is the

55 The 15-syllable mantra has its own uses, however. As Śoͯaśâksarī (“the 16syllabled”), the goddess is also pictured as a perpetually 16-year-old girl. 56 On the granthis, see Gupta, Hoens and Goudriaan 1979, 175.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 329 moon-part domain (candra-kalā-khanˢdaˢ ), that dimension of divine existence in which the part, kalā, is truly the whole and, as such, drenched in the lunar stuff of Soma or of complete awareness (cit or, more precisely, parā kalā cid ekarasā). All this may seem rather a lot to load onto a short syllabic sequence, but in fact we have only begun the task of putting the mantric cosmos together. Each of the first three domains we have just defined has other specific aspects relating to states of consciousness (waking, dreaming, and deep sleep), to certain intra-divine potentialities (the goddess’s ability, śakti, to know, to want, and to act), and to the various strands (gunˢa) and modes (vrˢtti) that together weave the universe into existence. In effect, as one recites the mantra, the goddess—who is literally emerging into being through this linguistic act—moves from wakefulness (in the domain of fire) to dreaming (in the solar domain) to dreamless sleep (in the Soma state). As we know from the Upanisˢads, there is also a fourth, still deeper state (turīya); and it is not hard to guess that this ultimate state, an awakening far beyond, indeed opposed to, our everyday waking, is triggered by the recitation of the final kalā-syllable. Working on the goddess in this manner, the practitioner also recapitulates each stage in the corresponding sphere of his own innerness. The climax, for him or Her, is reached when the slumbering Kunˢdˢalinī begins to stir. Even on the most direct, corporeal level, the goddess inhabits the sounds of the mantra. Her head is present in the first segment, her trunk (neck to waist) in the second, and the third segment manifests her lower parts (she is thus mūla-kūt ˢa-traya-kalevarā).57 Notice the direction of movement, exactly corresponding to what we saw in verse 19.58 The unfolding of the mantra actualizes Tripura-sundarī from the head down. This initial direction is reversed only when the final, sixteenth syllable is pronounced. We will return to this point. But the above description, which is fairly standard and familiar to anyone interested in Tantra,59 still fails to tell us how the system works— why, that is, the Kunˢdˢalinī should stir. The true power of Laksˢmī-dhara’s commentary is evident at this point. For what follows is an unusually detailed, lucid, indeed scientific statement of the actual mechanisms

57

See Ānanda-laharī-Ϗīkā, 294; Kuppuswamy, 57. And note that this direction runs against Mallinātha’s well-known prescription (ad Kumāra-sambhava 1.33)—that deities are to be described from the feet up. 59 Or, for that matter, in terms of technique, to anyone who has studied the bandhucorrespondences in Vedic ritual, as in the Chāndogya passage cited earlier. 58

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involved, one that goes far beyond mere statements of esoteric equations and correlates. The mantric unfolding of Tripura-sundarī requires a highly dynamic, systemic vision. The mantra works not through the intentionality of its reciter, not by “knowing thus,” in the Upanisˢadic mode, and not by a principle of sympathetic (magical) analogy, as is often thought to be the case.60 There is nothing symbolic about this process at any point. Similarity is not its organizing concept. Rather, in a world composed of language, in the deepest sense—a vibrating or humming arena of musical, rhythmic energies that can be seen no less than heard—the patterned repetition of carefully selected, scientifically compressed, modular sound-sequences activates powerfully transformative forces. These sound-sequences resonate with one another, augmenting, enhancing, catalyzing or contrasting with one another in regularly repeating ways, whether they are released in the mantra, by the interplay of celestial bodies or, if we could but hear them, by the subtle buzzing and throbbing of our own arteries and veins. Still, “resonance”61 alone cannot explain the system. Here is a much reduced restatement, after Laksˢmī-dhara, of the mechanisms involved. The moon waxes and wanes, either gaining or losing one digit (kalā) every day. More precisely, the first kalā emerges from the sun on the day after new-moon day (śukla-pratipad) and rejoins the sun on the first day of the dark half of the month (that is, the day following full moon). Similarly for each of the other kalās. There are 16 such kalās (15 lunar days, tithis, in each half-month, plus the 16th which remains always on Śiva’s head62 or which resides, as the cit-form of the goddess, on the thousand-petalled lotus at the top of her [and our] subtle body). Each kalā is also a goddess in her own right, one of a set of 16 Nityās.63 You will recall that our mantra has 16 syllables. On full-moon day (paurnamāsī) the sun and the moon are most distant from one another (and the moon has absorbed the maximum of solar energy it can hold); on new-moon day (amāvāsya), the sun and moon are closest, actually conjoined (atyanta-samˢ yoga). Exactly the same process is going on continuously in the subtle body: the moon

60

On the conceptual and logical structure of verbal magic, see the classic discussion by Tambiah 1968. 61 anuraΩana, a term more at home in Abhinavagupta’s poetics than in his Tantric metaphysics. 62 My thanks to H.V. Nagaraja Rao. 63 On the Nityā series, see Gupta 1:13.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 331 and the sun are active in the invisible channels called Idˢā (on the left) and Pinˆgal ˢā (on the right), respectively.64 The moon is constantly sprinkling the amrˢta-elixir (liquified by the absorption of solar energy) into the 72,000 subtle channels (nādˢī) that course through this subtle physiology, and this soothing intravenous drip ultimately reaches the pit (kunˢdaˢ ) in the mūlâdhāra-cakra at the base of the spine, where the Kunˢdˢalinī is sleeping. The sun, on the other hand, soaks up and takes away the amrˢta.65 These processes, though unceasing, are asymmetrical and dynamic, as anyone can see by looking at the changing phases of the moon. Moreover, just as the sun and moon come into close conjunction in the heavens on new-moon day, so they are conjoined on this same day in their physiological trajectories. Thus, as Laksˢmī-dhara very eloquently states, When the moon and the sun come together (samāveśa) in the mūlâdhāra, the amāvāsya (new-moon) day is born. Similarly, the days of the dark half of the month are born.66 At that point, through contact with the sun’s rays,67 the Kunˢdˢalinī is sleeping in the pit of the mūlâdhāra, which is filled with elixir dripping from the waning moon. Her sleeping state is what is called “the dark half of the month.” When the Yogi who has concentrated his awareness (samāhita-citta) is able to block up the moon in the moon channel (Idˢā) and the sun in the sun channel (Pinˆgal ˢā) by means of his breath (literally wind, vāyu), the moon and the sun, thus trapped, are unable to sprinkle the elixir or to suck it up, respectively. At that moment, when the inner wind fans the flames of fire burning in the svâdhisˢt ˢhāna-cakra, the pit of elixir dries up and the Kunˢdˢalinī, starved (of elixir), wakes and, hissing like a serpent, breaks through the three knots and bites the orb of the moon moving in the middle of the thousand-petalled lotus (above the set of cakras). As a result, streams of elixir are set free and flood the moon-sphere above the ājñā-cakra—and then they flood the entire body.”68

This exquisite experience, in the lunar mode, is one of full self-awareness (tat-kalā cin-mayī ānanda-rūpā ātmeti gīyate). Indeed, it defines the self, ātman, as such. It is also defined as the goddess, Tripura-sundarī (saiva tripura-sundarī), present, active, and now entirely awake. 64 These channels also divide up their activity between night and day and, on another level of the cycle, between the 6-month southern and northern courses of the sun (pitνyāna and deva-yāna). 65 The description fits a pervasive conceptual pattern built around giving forth and taking away: see Handelman and Shulman 2004, 216. 66 On this puzzling statement, seemingly out of sequence, see below. 67 Which, as mentioned above, apparently melt the cool or even frozen amνta. 68 Lakυmī-dhara on SL 32, 278–79.

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Laksˢmī-dhara’s conclusion, which he classes as yet another profound secret (rahasya), is that Yogic masters can only wake the Kunˢdˢalinī during the bright half of the month, as the moon is waxing. In fact, however, he has already informed us that the Kaulas can and do perform this exercise for Nityā, who subsumes all the other Nityās/kalās, every day.69 Time collapses into embedded re-encapsulations of its natural rhythm, identical in terms of their internal composition with the larger, more extended temporal units. Thus all the days of the dark half of the month are contained (antar-bhavanti) within the new-moon day, as all the days of the light half can be called “full moon.” By the same token, any single day, including the night, repeats the unrolling sequence of the year with its northern and southern solar paths. Such cycles within cycles consistently reproduce, on each level, the same brief window of opportunity when Amāvāsya—the “day” of the new moon—arrives or is generated by the Yogi’s holding of his breath (kumbhaka), as described above. This is the moment when ongoing solar and lunar operations are held in suspension, when the pit empties out completely and the famished Kunˢdˢalinī wakes and rises up through the entire organism of cosmos/goddess/adept, of yantra overlapping mantra. Only total metabolic failure—no more amrˢta-drip and re-absorption—concomitant with the coincidence of sun and moon in the lowest cakra, as in the sky, can create this precious, fleeting space for potential change. Or, stated positively: time itself, in all its cycles, regularly conduces to that recurrent but evanescent point at which the goddess emerges, timeless (nityā), in her entirety, unwinding or unravelling herself from the coiled, soporific state that has kept her hidden deep within us—or within the depths of her own being. Incidentally, although Laksˢmī-dhara does not say so in this context, this same recurrent moment is that split second when, for every one of us, a latent, largely unconscious urge to speak (vivaksˢā) is fanned into flame and, rising from within us, bursts forth as audible speech.70 The miracle of language, which we take for granted, is this repeated, always unexpected, literally breath-taking, unwinding ascent of an emergent goddess. But a critical distinction has to be made here. Time has the dynamic structure just described built into its flow, even if we generally fail to 69

See also ibid., 282. See Padoux 1990, 126. For the process of articulation as vivakυā fanned into flame by the internal breath or wind, see PāΩinīya-śikυā 4–7; also Sa‫ר‬gīta-ratnâkara of Śār‫ר‬gadeva, 3.4. 70

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 333 give it our attention (and thus waste the moment). Language, in normal use, does not. Everyday speech (vaikharī, as Bhartrˢhari, and following him the Śākta Tantrikas, call it) is diffuse and dispersed. It also tends to be overburdened with those distracting residues of reality that we call “meaning,” in the more trivial sense of the word (as in our translation A of SL 32). To stick with this level of language is to condemn ourselves, and the Kunˢdˢalinī, to continuous coma. For this very reason we need the mantra, which translates a low-level semantics into the rhythms and cadences of the cosmos. Thus the 15 + 1 lunar days (tithi), which embody the 15 + 1 parts (kalā) of the goddess (as 15 + 1 Nityās),71 thereby unrolling her before our eyes, unroll on our tongues as 15 syllables moving precisely toward the Amāvāsya moment of awakening (syllable 16). This temporal rhythm is built into the mantra and enables its efficacy. The primary logic is one of systemic compression and expansion, or of miniaturization and inflation, an accordian effect that preserves the vital configuration of active forces at every level of expansion, from the most condensed to the most extended. It is of some interest that this sequence runs its course, if read forward in its own terms, during the dark half of the month, as the moon wanes while amrˢta-elixir is still dripping into the pit at the base of the spine. One strives toward Amāvāsya, from which point on—and only from that dark point—can the Kunˢdˢalinī be awakened. The mantra itself takes us in this direction, syllable by syllable, tithi by tithi. This means that, recited backwards, as time moves toward the full moon, the same mantra will put the goddess back to sleep. You have your choice. The forward recitation must thus run contrary to the actual flow of time during the preferred period of recitation (as the moon waxes). Indeed, as we know, Tantric praxis is classically meant to reverse the course of time. Perhaps this explains the otherwise somewhat out-of-place statement by Laksˢmī-dhara that “the days of the dark half of the month are born” after the new moon. They are indeed born—through the Yogi’s reversed recitation which brings the goddess (or the cosmos) into visible being as a sequential descent through the cakras, from her head to the base of her spine, from full moon to new moon, this being the necessary prelude to waking her.

71 Also, elsewhere, as 16 tuϏis, “breath-moments”: Tantrâloka of Abhinavagaupta 6.63; Padoux 1990, 234.

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Either way, the mantra works not merely as a cosmogram—an aural map of an unfolding cosmos, in every way identical with the Śrī-cakra yantra, each phoneme materializing another visible, defined part of the goddess—but also, and especially, as a chronophone, an audible repetition or reenactment of temporal process. In this sense, a work like the SL, at least in its early, practical segment, and in contrast to the citra poems we studied earlier, is fully four-dimensional. It has, that is, restored the dimension of linear temporal sequence to the poem, though only after first shattering any superficial linearity or natural semanticity, just as the citra poets seek to do. Conclusion: Trans-semantic Poetics I have drawn a line from a very ancient passage (Chāndogya Upanisˢad 1.13) through mature kāvya praxis in Sanskrit and other languages, to the stotra- or mantra-oriented poetry of medieval Tantra.72 Certain features are common to all three instances. Phonemes and syllables have a life of their own and, often, automatic effects. Poets harness these properties to their own purposes. In the cases mentioned, these vary—the pure musicality of the Tamil citra poem is not, after all, as heavily pragmatic as SL 33—but “natural” sequence precludes any of them. The poem’s normal progression from beginning to end is deliberately undermined from within—and with the disruption of this progression, the semantics of the surface are also profoundly disrupted. A new complex of relatively autonomous sonar elements, strongly resonant with one another, is produced. These elements invariably turn out to have graphic expressions, so that one can actually see the sounds (or hear the forms). Such combined phonic graphemes never represent or symbolize spatially real objects. They generate them. This process is at its most dramatically explicit in the verses we examined from the SL, which could be said to take the methodology of citra composition to a new limit. To understand the innovation, we need to take one more look at the text of SL 32, now that we have decoded it with Laksˢmī-dhara’s help. The linguistic procedures at work in this one verse require further analytic restatement. First, it is worth asking ourselves if the mantra, before or after decoding, might not actually mean something apart from 72 There is, however, no implication that SL is in any way paradigmatic for stotra literature, which clearly ramifies into many distinct types.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 335 “goddess” or “unfolding cosmos” or the upward zoom of the Kunˢdˢalinī— something more akin to everyday semantic operations. Look back at segments 2 and 3 of the mantra in their primary, i.e. straight or phonic translation: ha-sa-ka-ha-la hrīmˢ sa-ka-la hrīmˢ . Remember, too, that these syllables are capable of metrical arrangements and that, in their quadrapartite arrangement, they could be recited and heard as a verse with four quarters (including, of course, the hidden, near-silent final segment). If we align the two segments vertically, like in a verse, we get: ha-sa-ka-ha-la hrīmˢ sa-ka-la hrīmˢ

Even if one ignores the end-rhyme, it is hard to miss the yamaka effect. Specifically, sa, ka, and la repeat. As it happens, sakala means something or, rather, “everything.” It is that entity that is “with all its parts” and thus “complete” or “whole.” So our mantra can, in fact, revert to a semantic level where the word sakala, at least, means what it usually means, although no sooner does this word stand out than it is also dissected, stretched or expanded to include two other (ha) syllables in segment 2. In any case, a new relationship can be detected between the two segments, with both semantic and phonic facets combining somewhat unexpectedly. One could say that, as in many citra verses, the horizontal (semantic) and vertical (acoustic) tracks suddenly converge. I suppose this is the moment to mention that an alternative decoding of the mantra exists— we find it in Kaivalyâśrama’s commentary, the Saubhāgya-vardhanī, which we cited earlier on verse 19—in which the entire first segment (which Laksˢmī-dhara reads as ka-e-i-la) translates as ha-sa-ka-la.73 Were we to prefer this way of reading, the yamaka repetition of sakala would be overwhelming, to the point of constituting or reconstituting both the mantra as a whole and the esoteric meaning of the verse. Even if we stick with Laksˢmī-dhara, sakala is hardly an innocent term. The “parts” referred to are surely the kalās of the goddess Tripura-sundarī herself—she who is, as you may recall, the ultimate, all-containing kalā situated at the top of the Tantric psycho-cosmos. Now look at the mantra again:

73 This reading of verse 32, beginning with the syllable with ha, is seen as embodying the hâdi-vidyā and contrasting with the kâdi-vidyā, which is then produced by one decoding of verse 33. This is not the place to go into this distinction in detail, but Kaivalyâśrama relates the kâdi-vidyā to pleasure- or power-oriented effects in the cosmos ruled by saΥsāra. The hâdi-vidyā, by implication, leads to release.

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david shulman ka-e-i-la-hrīmˢ ha-sa-ka-ha-la hrīmˢ sa-ka-la hrīmˢ

Take the first syllable, ka, and combine it with the final syllable of segment 3, la—i.e. the entire overt mantric sequence—and you get a Pānˢinistyle abbreviation (pratyāhāra), which is none other than this same kalâ. In Pānˢinian grammar, such an abbreviation includes within it, indeed properly denotes, all the phonemes in the middle (starting with the first); and here, too, as Laksˢmī-dhara tells us, the entire unwinding of the goddess as cosmos is compressed into this sequence.74 Just as the temporal rhythms of the cosmos can be miniaturized and precisely reproduced at any level—year, month, day, or a single second—so language can be made to condense into its smallest units the structural processes working in larger ones, even subsuming in this manner the most exoteric and devolved level of all, that of referential meaning. And if this is still not enough, Laksˢmī-dhara goes on to explain how the four nasals in the complete mantra quiver and hum as the faint, nearly inaudible nāda that generates all perceptible sounds;75 and how the three stages of nāda, bindu, and kalā move through the mantra in its three parts, which are also the three cosmic levels (fire, sun, Soma + moon) present in the Śrīcakra; and how eventually all the fifty phonemes of the Sanskrit language, from a to ksˢ, are manifest in their creative or potential forms (as mātrˢkas) in these three cosmogonic segments, in exact mathematical distribution. Moreover, moving downward, the 16 Nityā goddesses are compressed into the 16 phonemes, and these 16 phonemes are rolled into the audible and visible 15, and these 15 are the stuff of sun, moon, and fire, as we know. All such series can be either expanded or collapsed, like the goddess herself, into thinner or more condensed—but always structurally and dynamically equivalent—forms. Within this range of existential, utterly non-symbolic processes, every syllable that breaks through to audible surface is truly aflame. But perhaps it is time for us, at any rate, to stop this endless proliferation and to ask ourselves, one last time, what it all means. Let me say again that packing the syllables with ever more dense and ramified correlations or identifications is not the point. What matters is the tremendous internal movement that is felt to inhere in the sounds in their specified vectors, movement triggered by aural experience and its visual equivalent. All this is possible only because language does move 74 75

See Lakυmī-dhara’s rich discussion at the bottom of p. 279. See Padoux 1990, 96–105.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 337 in such patterned and repetitive ways. Precise phonic sequence, scientifically arranged, acts systemically on all levels. Such repetition inevitably sets up resonances, or sets of musical relations, that cut across the linear progression of normally semanticized speech. A poem like the SL is conceived, among other things, to reveal and highlight such relations, very much in the manner of citra-kāvya. Sa-ka-la thus reverberates both horizontally and vertically in the mantra. But much more than in citra poetry, such reverberations in mantric poetry are felt to produce immediate and far-reaching effects. In doing so, this four-dimensional poetry goes through two strikingly complementary processes. First, there is a complex series of translations. One has to translate the overt meaning of words like śiva, śakti, earth, sun, desire, memory, and so on, into the sounds that they point to or indicate. The terminology has its own importance. Laksˢmī-dhara rightly says that his entire decoding of the verse rests on the technique of transferred meaning, laksˢanˢā, or, more precisely (in some cases), that variety of the latter that is called laksˢita-laksˢanˢā—that is, an indirect transfer or secondary extension of meaning, as when the word dvi-repha (“having two r-sounds”) is used instead of the common word bhramara, “bee.”76 In other words, one verbal token denotes or points to another. But behind the second such meaning in several of our mantric units lies not a conventional object but a pure sound. This sound, in turn, means something more, indeed a great deal more, as we have seen. More to the point, each such sound also does something. This action or movement is its meaning (although the first, overt semantic level is never wholly lost and may, as we have seen, reappear at another stage). In effect, the mantra, after completely denaturalizing any superficial semantics, resemanticizes the verse as a series of events triggered by phonic or musical means. That an action is the primary meaning of an utterance is nothing new for the Pānˢinians.77 Nonetheless, the implicit analysis of meaningfulness in this Tantric linguistics takes matters in a startling direction. Generally, for the grammarians, the phonic sign (vācaka) precedes its object or meaning (vācya)—indeed, for Bhartrˢhari, the latter derives directly from the former. Here, however, the vācya produced from the conventional

76

See discussion in Kunjunni Raja 1977, 254; Lakυmī-dhara, 277. As the grammarians say, bhāva-pradhānaΥ ākhyātam: see Kāśikā ad PāΩini 1.3.1, following Patañjali’s discussion in Mahābhāυya on this sūtra. 77

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vācaka (“śiva,” “ksˢiti”) is used to generate a further vācaka-phoneme that both triggers effects in the cosmos and thereby reconstitutes or reembodies the ultimate “object,” that vācya that is the goddess who is also the speaker’s true self. Such a semantics gives new meaning to the otherwise exotic notion of self-expression78—for the result is no less a matter of meta-psychology than of ontology. Better still, we might call it an existential phonology. Here meaning is not something described or reported—not a referent—but something immediately and literally effected, in the somewhat indirect procedure just described, by articulate speech. Secondly, as stated earlier, and again in the wake of the initial disruption in linear progression, the mantra, once decoded, surprisingly restores sequence as intrinsic to its action. In stark contrast to a Bhartrˢharian metaphysic, the SL insists on the sequentiality built into language at its most real. Without it, nothing will happen. The four-dimensionality of such poetry depends on it entirely. Nonetheless, we have to remember that the mantra may well work in several possible directions (forward, backward, criss-crossing, zig-zagging) and that, for all its explosive potential, there are strong elements holding it together (for example, the pratyāhāra “kalā” that holds its two ends in suspension). A verse like SL 32 is its own grammar, working through a set of implicit meta-rules. One of these might be: “A word indicates not itself, not its audible sound-sequence, not its usual meaning, not any of its synonyms, but a certain phonic pattern.”79 “Any effective phonic pattern can be visually mapped and quantified” might be another. More abstractly, we could say that in such poems a musical semantics runs through, or beyond, most forms of verbal denotation. Quite often, though by no means always, these two currents turn out to be at odds. In such cases, the musical vector has a tendency to overpower the other. There is a historical dimension to this claim. I would argue that this problem, if it is a problem, lies at the very heart of Sanskrit poetry, from its beginning right through to the present day.80 Hence the practical and effectual aspect of the Sanskrit poet, which keeps breaking through the high courtly image of the poet as professional artist.81 As I remarked at

78

See Malamoud 2002. After the model of PāΩini 1.1.68: svaΥ rūpaΥ śabdasyâśabda-saΥjñå. 80 For a modern expansion of citra-style poetry, see the remarkable work by the nineteenth-century Sanskrit poet, U. Ve. Sundapalayam Tirumalai Rāmabhadrâcāri 2000. 81 See Granoff. 79

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 339 the outset, there is a point where the Vedic rˢs ˢi, hearing and recording mantras, and the classical kavi, producing kāvyas or stotras, may meet. There is also, I think, a movement through the centuries toward ever greater or deeper musicality, in the practical sense just implied. Were we to extend the continuum as far as the complex Sanskrit songs (krˢti or kīrtana), many of them Tantric in import and method, by Muttusvāmi Dīksˢitar (from late 18th-century and early 19th-century Tiruvārūr in the Tamil country), we would see, as Harold Powers cogently says, that “grammatical and syntactic continuity, semantic content, and melodicrhythmic continuity are carefully coordinated.”82 On the other hand, we would also certainly notice that however much one’s attention may focus on the outward meaning of the songs, thence on to their esoteric allusions, soon enough the semantics begins to be overshadowed by the pure sound of the words, which take on independent life as carriers of musical rhythms and shapes. Then one’s concrete perceptions of the specific rhythms of a particular song begin to fade too, to merge into an abstracted awareness of the general melodic shapes that those rhythms enliven, until finally one is absorbed in contemplation of the ideal and unmanifested configuration, the soundless sound. . . .83

Strangely, in the case of the SL, such soundless sounds have a clearly visible, even tangible (mostly triangular) shape. Moreover, this soundlessness turns out to be rather noisy. In any case, for texts such as those we have been studying, we might want to posit a pragmatic poetics in which to wake the Kunˢdˢalinī requires a semantics of an altogether different order—mathematical, geometric, musical, and at the same time wholly and necessarily concrete. References Abhinavagupta 1987. Tantrâloka. Ed. R.C. Dwivedi and N. Rastogi. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Arbatov, S. 2003. “Vedic Sacrifice in the Upanisˢads.” M.A. thesis, Hebrew University. Bhartrˢhari 1971. Vākya-padīya. Ed. K. Raghavan Pillai. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Brereton, J.P. 1997. “ ‘Why is a Sleeping Dog Like the Vedic Sacrifice?’ The Structure of a Vedic Brahmodya.” In Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts, ed. M. Witzel. Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, 1–14. Brˢhad-āranˢyaka Upanisˢad (with commentary of Śanˆkara) 1983. Madras: Samata.

82 83

Powers 322. Ibid., 336.

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Chāndogya Upanisˢad 1983. Madras: Samata. Danˢdˢin 1890. Kāvyâdarśa. Ed. O. Böhtlingk. Leipzig: H. Haessel. Goudriaan, T. and S. Gupta 1981. Hindu Tantric and Śākta Literature, in J. Gonda (ed.), History of Indian Literature, II.2 Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 147–48. Gerow, E. 1971. A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Granoff, Phyllis. “Sarasvatī’s Sons: Biographies of Poets in Medieval India,” Asiatische Studien 49 (1995), 351–76. Gupta, S. “Diksitar’s Cycle of Hymns to the Goddess Kamala.” In E. te Nijenhuis and S. Gupta, Sacred Songs of India. Diksitar’s Cycle of Hymns to the Goddess Kamala. Forum Ethnomusicologium 3. Gupta, S., D.J. Hoens, and T. Goudriaan 1979. Hindu Tantrism [Handbuch der Orientalistik 2:4:2] Leiden: E.J. Brill. Handelman, D. and D. Shulman 2004. Śiva in the Forest of Pines: An Essay on Sorcery and Self-Knowledge. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ingalls, D.H.H. 1989. “Ānandavardhana’s Devīśataka,” JAOS 109. 4:565–75. Kunjunni Raja, K. 1977. Indian Theories of Meaning. 2nd edition, Madras: Adyar Library and Research Center. Kur˰untŏkai 1947. Ed. U. Ve. Cāmināt’aiyar. Madras: Kabir Press. Malamoud, Ch. 2002. “A Body Made of Words and Poetic Meters.” In Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions, eds. D. Shulman and G. Stroumsa. New York: Oxford University Press, 19–28. Mammatˢa 1983. Kāvya-prakāśa. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Marr, J. 1985. The Eight Tamil Anthologies. Tiruvanmiyur: Institute of Asian Studies. Michael, T. 1986. “Le Śrī-cakra dans la Saundarya-laharī.” In Mantras et diagrammes rituels dans l’hindouisme. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 127–39. Nammāl ˰vār. 1971. Tiruviruttam. Madras: The Visisthadvaita Pracharini Sabha. Pānˢīniya-śiksˢā 1991. Ed. M. Ghosh. Delhi: V.K. Publishing House. Patañjali 1987. Mahābhāsˢya. Ed. G.P. Shastri and B. Shastri. Varanasi: Vani Vilas Prakashan. Padoux, A. 1990. Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras. Albany: SUNY Press. Patton, L. 1996. Myth as Argument: The Br.haddevatā as Canonical Commentary. Berlin: Degruyter. Powers, H. 1984. “Musical Art and Esoteric Theism: Muttusvāmi Dīksˢitar’s Ānandabhairavi Kīrtanams on Śiva and Śakti at Tiruvarur.” In Discourses on Śiva: Proceedings of a Symposium on the Nature of Religious Imagery, ed. M. Meister. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ramanujan, A.K. 1981. Hymns for the Drowning. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Renou, L. 1978. “Sur la notion de brahman.” In L’Inde fondamentale, ed. Ch. Malamoud. Paris: Hermann, 84–116. Rˢ gveda. 1957. Bombay: Svadhyaya Mandal. Sanderson, A. 1990. “Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions.” In The Religions of Asia, ed. F. Hardy. London: Routledge, 128–72. ———— 2002. “Remarks on the Text of the Kubjikāmatatantra.” Indo-Iranian Journal 45:1–24. Śārnˆgadeva 1943. Sanˆgīta-ratnâkara (with Kalānidhi of Kallinātha and Sudhâkara of Simˢ habhūpāla). Ed. S. Sastri. 2 vols. Madras: Adyar Library. Saundarya-laharī 1991. Ed. A. Kuppuswami. Delhi: Nag Publishers. Saundarya-laharī 1948. Ed. S. Sastri and T.R. Srinivasa Ayyangar. Madras: Theosophical Publishing House. Śankarācārya 1958. The Saundaryalaharī or Flood of Beauty traditionally ascribed to Śankarācārya. Ed. W. Norman Brown. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

how to bring a goddess into being through visible sound 341 Smith, D. 1985. Ratnākara’s Haravijaya: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Court Epic. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sundapalayam Tirumalai Rāmabhadrâcāri, U. Ve. 2000. Citra-kāvya. Madras: Professor K. Sampath. Tambiah, S. 1968. “The Magical Power of Words,” Man, n.s. 3:200–216??. Ta·έiyalanˆkāram. 1938. Madras: Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society. Tubb, G. Forthcoming. “Kāvya with Bells On: Yamaka in the Śiśupālavadha.” In Innovations and Turning Points in the History of Sanskrit Poetry, eds. Y. Bronner, D. Shulman, and G. Tubb. Vidyānātha. 1979. Pratāpa-rudrīya. Ed. V. Raghavan. Madras: Samskrit Education Society. Zvelebil, K. 1975. Tamil Literature [Handbuch der Orientalistik]. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSFORMATION: ARMENIAN MEDITATIONS ON THE METAMORPHIC POWER OF LANGUAGE Sergio La Porta The Christianization of the Eastern Mediterranean not only resulted in a shift in the religious affiliation of the region but also in an alteration of its cultural map. As opposed to the Greek cultural hegemony of the classical world, the Christian world of late antiquity displayed a much more variegated and diverse cultural topography shaped by the birth of several new alphabets and literatures. Although Greco-Roman language and literature remained the dominant force in the center of the Christian world, towards the periphery there now existed Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, and Syriac literatures. The literary emergence of local tongues changed the fundamental relationship between culture and language in those areas. No longer relegated to the gossip mongering of the tavern or the chattering of the market-place, these languages emerged as the co-bearers of the new international Christian culture expressed in their own poetic idiom. Indeed, the tavern and the marketplace suddenly appear alongside the schools of rhetoric as the definers of linguistic style and meaning. The soliloquy of Hellenism was coming to an end. The polite conversation between Greek and Iranian, too, was interrupted. The world of Late Antiquity was a noisy, atonal, polyphony of Semitic, Indo-European, and Caucasian tongues jostling to be heard; a cacophony of emerging cultures. I. The Invention of the Armenian Alphabet and the Translation of the Bible Armenia had for quite some time existed in between the cultural spheres of the Greek and Iranian worlds, but had always leaned more towards the latter.1 The conversion from Zoroastrianism to Christianity was as much

1

See, for example, Garsoïan 1976, Garsoïan 1982, Russell 1987.

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a change in self and cultural identity as it was of faith. Many Iranian aspects of Armenian society and belief were preserved long after the adoption of Christianity, and the transformation to a Christian people, despite native tradition, was neither rapid nor without resistance.2 Language played an important role in this process and its significance was recognized by the early Armenian Church Fathers. The role of language in the conversion also left its imprint on later speculations on the power of the written word. The task of converting Armenians to Christianity began immediately after the conversion of King Trdat at the beginning of the fourth century.3 Violent coercion was implemented as Armenian historians themselves admit when they praise the persecution of Zoroastrian holdouts and the destruction of fire altars.4 The lack of an Armenian translation of scripture, however, remained an obstacle in the Christianization of the Armenian people.5 The liturgy and the lessons were read in Greek or Syriac while someone standing at the altar provided a simultaneous translation into Armenian.6 This practice endured during the century which elapsed between the conversion of Armenia and the invention of the Armenian alphabet. It was to remedy this situation that Mesrop Maštoc‘ was commissioned to fashion an alphabet to render the scriptures into Armenian.7 According to the tradition preserved in Koriwn’s biography of Maštoc‘, after trying to adapt different (likely Semitic) alphabets to suit the Armenian language, Mesrop, frustrated, entered a state of intensive lamentation and prayer, during which God wrote the letters of alphabet with His right hand.8 Subsequent to the creation of the alphabet, the work of translation commenced. Scholars were sent to both Edessa and Constantinople to find good copies of the Bible in order to make the translation, which was then executed.9

2

Thomson 1988/89; Russell 1987. Ananean 1961; Thomson 1988/89. 4 Thomson 1988/89, 35–36. 5 Koriwn 1985, 40; Movsēs Xorenac‘i 1991, III:47. 6 Thomson 1988/89, 37. 7 Peeters 1929, Koriwn 1985, xxix–xxxi; Thomson 1988/89, 37, n. 36; Russell 1994, Stone et al. 2001. 8 Koriwn 1985, 48; cf. Movsēs Xorenac‘i 1991, II:53. For a treatment of the mystical elements in this effort, see Russell 1994, 322–25, 327. 9 There is a large literature on the history of the (two) Armenian translations of the Bible; in general see Lyonnet 1935, Leloir 1960, Cox 1982, Tēr-Petrosyan 1984, Mahé 1988, Cowe 1990/91. 3

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This account reveals significant features about Armenian attitudes to the role of language. First, the Armenians themselves were aware of the import of both letters and the role of language in defining a culture. This is evident from the fact that they considered the invention of the alphabet and the translation of scripture significant enough events to write about them immediately after having accomplished these tasks. Koriwn’s biography of Maštoc‘ is likely the first native text written in Armenian, and it is the work of a translator transformed into an author.10 The desire to record the invention of an alphabet and of the translation of the Bible may appear to be obvious, but it is the only instance in Oriental Christianity where we possess such a cogent and detailed account of the invention of an alphabet and the translation of scripture. Second, the Armenian Fathers were conscious of the intimate relationship between translation and interpretation.11 When the bands of Armenians went to Edessa and Constantinople, they did not just return with copies of the Bible, but also with writings of the Greek and Syriac Fathers and the canons of the Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus.12 These writings helped provide an interpretative framework for the Armenian translators. Third, at least the author of the Life of Mesrop Maštoc‘, Koriwn, attributed a certain metamorphic power to letters and language. According to Koriwn, Mesrop, a former secretary in an Armenian/Parthian court, was transformed into a Mosaic figure through his invention of the alphabet and delivery of the scriptures to Armenia.13 This transformation of the figure of Maštoc‘ from functionary of an Iranian type into a biblical prophet symbolizes the full metamorphosis of Armenian culture from Zoroastrianism to Christianity through the revelation of the letters. Naturally, the Armenian language, too, was transformed by the process of inscription and translation, becoming one of the holy languages. Koriwn revels in the joy of the Armenians when suddenly the words of Moses and of the Apostle Paul were found to be ‘Armenian in speech’ (‫[ ׽׵ךכ׹ךכך׮ךש‬hayabarbarˆk‘]) and ‘Armenian speaking’ (‫[ ׽׶׻ךצךׯנ׹מ׮ךש‬hayerēnaxawsk‘]).14 Through the rendering of the Bible into Armenian, the prophets and people of Israel as well as the

10 11 12 13 14

Thomson 1988/89, 37. Mahé 1988, Weitenberg 1997. Koriwn 1985, 74–6. Koriwn 1985, 52; Thomson 1982, 140; Maksoudian 1998, 27. Koriwn 1985, 56.

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Apostles suddenly emerged as Armenian speakers! Armenian, like Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac, was a biblical tongue. II. The Grammatical Tradition and Vital Language After the translation of the Bible, there began a translation movement of Greek and Syriac texts into Armenian.15 Among those included was the text of Dionysius Thrax’s Ars Grammatica.16 The Ars Grammatica became the basis of grammatical speculation and instruction in Armenian between the sixth and fifteenth centuries. Approximately ten commentaries on this work have survived in Armenian from this span of time.17 I do not intend to discuss the entirety of the Armenian grammatical tradition, but I do wish to highlight some important developments that occurred within the tradition as it developed.18 For the most part the Armenians considered grammar at least theoretically universal. The differences between languages are attributed to various errors on the part of humanity. It is the goal and task of etymology to discover the original word having a direct relationship with its object. The universality of language and grammar provides one explanation for the continued reliance upon a Greek grammar to elucidate the Armenian language. While the two languages are Indo-European, marked differences exist which presented problems for the Armenian exegetes. For example, Armenian does not possess a dual form, nor grammatical gender. Upon reaching these points in Dionysius’ grammar, the Armenian commentators take various approaches ranging from ignoring them to inventing dual forms for Armenian and finding grammatical gender in Armenian words. Needless to say, these innovations in the Armenian language remained confined to the grammatical tradition. To the medieval mind, however, both languages share a common origin as declinations from the original language, whose meta-grammar was an integral part of the structure of the created universe. The aim of the study of grammar was two-fold. One was to teach the student how to read and write correctly. The second, more esoteric function of 15

Manandian 1928; Mercier 1978/79; Terian 1982; Mahé 1988; Zuckermann 1996; Weitenberg 1997. 16 Adontz 1970. 17 Ervine 1988, 53–4. 18 Many of the points discussed below have been explored in greater detail by Ervine 1995.

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grammatical study was to discover the correspondences between the structure of human language and that of the creations in order to reveal the meta-grammar of Language. If we chart the introduction of certain themes into the commentaries, we notice the gradual composition of a vital concept of grammar and language. Language comes to be conceived of as a creative and generative act. The writing of a letter is understood as the embodiment of sound and the commentators see in this composite construction a microcosm of both humanity and the universe. The authors attribute power to the shapes, names, and numerical value of the letters. Finally, the art of grammar is likened to that of medicine, emphasizing the curative powers of the grammarian. Although it is not explicitly stated in the commentarial tradition, human written language adopts divine characteristics, especially those of God the Logos.19 CREATION/GENERATION Dawit‘ Anyałt‘ (6th c.)

Grammar is art. Art is a composite instructed by tradition concerning things useful in this life—a composite because it is made up of many things, by analogy with weaving. Nouns derive from nouns like plants from the earth, light from sun, smell from flowers.

Movsēs K‘ertoł (7th c.)

Nouns derive from nouns as intelligence from man or sensation from object.

Grigor Magistros (11th c.)

Sounds are unembodied because they are offspring of the spirit, and it is necessary that the offspring of that which is incorporeal be incorporeal as well.

EMBODIMENT Dawit‘ Anyałt‘ (6th c.)

Sound and letter correspond to body and soul.

Step‘anos Siwnec‘i (8th c.)

Writing a means of embodying unembodied sounds.

19 In the subsequent chart, I have listed only the first time a notion appears. The tradition as it evolved in the middle ages was cumulative. Each notion is usually continued and sometimes adapted in the later commentaries.

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sergio la porta MICROCOSM

Dawit‘ Anyałt‘ (6th c.)

Consonants correspond to parts of the body.

Movsēs K‘ertoł (7th c.)

Sound incorporeal and superior to physical letter. Vowels correspond to parts of the body. Consonants correspond to parts of the world: earth, animals, plants, etc.

POWER TO THE LETTERS Movsēs K‘ertoł (7th c.)

Attributes meaning to number, name, and shape of letters. Special mention is made of letter ‘‫( ’ך‬a) and ‘‫( ’נ‬ē), the former because of its being first; the latter because of its being able to stand alone (‫=נ‬he is, which is the I AM of Ex. 6.3); also its numerical value is seven which surpasses all movement: up, down, forward, backward, left, and right; and is thus, uncircumscribable.

CURATIVE Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i (13th c.) According to an unknown source: Grammar is to be compared to medicine. The task of the grammarian is to preserve in health the power of the writings of the poets and prose writers; or to cure, by paring and discrimination and judicious examination, the errant and those enervated as though through illness.

III. Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i: Salvation to the Letter Towards the end of the grammatical tradition, the great monastic theologian, Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i (1344–1409), included the observations of the commentators within his magnum opus, the Book of Questions (֯‫׽׹פ‬ ּ‫)׺ׯך׭׺׹ך‬.20 The work, completed in 1397, is composed of ten volumes or books and was a handbook of Armenian Orthodox theology, but it

20 Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993; on Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s life and the composition of the Book of Questions, see La Porta 2001, chs. 1 and 2.

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served a greater purpose than merely a reference guide. In the Book of Questions, Grigor endeavours to present the universe as proceeding and operating in an orderly fashion according to a divine design. He achieves this revelation of order through piecing together vast amounts of prior scholarship and opinions from Armenian and non-Armenian traditions in profound juxtapositions that reveal a cosmic harmony. Tat‘ewac‘i lived during the Timurid invasions of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It was a trying time for Armenia, a period of chaos and instability.21 As I have argued elsewhere, Grigor’s encyclopedic work was intended to provide comfort for his fellow monks who were struggling to see the divine plan resting hidden beneath all the surface confusion.22 Language, both spoken and written, forms as much an integral part of the created universe for Tat‘ewac‘i as it did for the grammatical commentators. This is clear from Grigor’s discussion of writing and language in volume four of the Book of Questions, “Concerning the Work and Creation of God”.23 The volume provides an explanation of the structure and meaning of the created universe based upon the biblical text of the six days of creation. Before jumping into the Genesis narrative, however, Grigor devotes a chapter to the question of why God chose to speak to man through writing. The placement of this discussion, immediately following questions on the nature of divine fashioning and preceding the inquiries into the nature of the created universe, reveals the importance Tat‘ewac‘i attributes to writing as the medium between the Creator and the creations. Within the chapter, what commences with the contemplation of an academic question develops into a meditation on the salvific role of language and the seven gates of language one must traverse in order to understand the hidden meaning of scripture. This meditation on language then concludes with a long explanation on the ‘praise’ of the letter ‘a’ (Arm. ‫[ כ׮ך‬ayb]).24

21

La Porta 2001, pp. 5–6; Spuler 1955, pp. 107–15. La Porta 2006a. 23 Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993, 154–226. 24 This transition from contemplation to meditation to praise or prayer resembles Bonaventura’s treatment of the birth of Christ in his The Tree of Life, see Cousins 2000, 127. While there is no evidence of a special exercise equivalent to the lectio divina in Armenian monasticism, it is clear from medieval monastic writing that such prayerful reading of the scriptures was practiced by Armenian monks; see also La Porta 2006a. On the lectio divina, see Leclerq 1988, 72–3, Cousins 2000, 124–7. 22

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a) Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i, Book of Questions, Vol. IV, ch. 13.125 ‫
םׯס
פ׶׻ךצ
׷ױ׹ל
קך׻ױ׸׶֭
׹טנ
ׯ׶ך׊‬ ‫
؁ׯ׺ױץ׮ך
؀
פ׶נ׶׷ױ׀
׶נ׳׹ױ
ן؃‬ ‫
ׯמ
׹ױ׷ױ׶
؀
׶׮ךֲ
؁פׯךצ׶ך׸ך׆‬ ‫
؀
׶׹ױ׻ךת׹؃
׵ך
׽רפם׹ך׭
ץמׯ׵ך‬ ‫םׯסׯך
׶פץמ׹פ׶‬؄‫
ׯפ׶׻ךצ
׹ךכך״‬ ‫
׷ױ׹ל
׶פץמ׸ך
׭ךר
׶׹ױ׻ך׵מש
׵ך
؀‬ ‫
׭ךר‬؄‫
קך׻ױ׸׶֭
؀
׶נ׳ׯ׮ױׂ
؁׷ױם׹ױׯ״‬ ‫
ׯך׭פםׯך׮
׭נם
ׯ׶פׯךף׹ך
םׯס‬ ‫
׵ך
؀
׭ךם֭
׵ך
׶נ׳׹ױ
׻ך׺מ׶׻ךצ‬ ׂ‫
؁׶נ׶׷ױ׀
׵ך
؀
׭ךשך׹כ֭
׵ך
؀
׮ױ‬ ַ‫
׻ֱ
؁פ׶׻ךצ
׷ױ׹ל
ׯ׶׹ױ׻ך׺ׯך׮
׵ך
ר׶‬ ‫פ׵ך׬׸ך׳
׭׻ױןךכ
ׯ׶ך׷
׶׮ך‬

Q. Why does God speak with us in writing as [He did] to Moses and others? A: Men are accustomed to doing this; they speak unmediatedly to those who are close to them and their beloved, and with those who are distant or despised in writing or through mediation. Likewise also God spoke face to face with those who were worthy, as to Adam, and to Noah, and to Abraham, and to Moses. Whereas he speaks in writing to those who transgressed. And this is on account of many reasons.

ׂ‫
׹ױ
ׯׯךמע׻ױ׹ױ׻ך׵מש
ׯ׶ך׷
חצך‬ ‫؁׮ױק׻ױ׸׶֭׮
׽ך׺ך׵מש
׽׻ך׫؃‬

First on account of the distance [by] which we distanced ourselves from God through sin.

ֱ‫
פן
ׯךמע׻ױץמ׸ך
ׯ׶ך׷
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬ ‫؁ׯ׹נ׶ן
׽ךת׹ךכ‬

Second, on account of hatred, since we removed His love.

ֱ‫
؀
ׯךמע׻ױ׹ךר׸
ׯ׶ך׷
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ‫؁׮ױ׹؃
ׯךמע׻ױ׺ך׵ױ׭‬

Third, on account of our weakness and forgetfulness.

‫ױ׹ל
פן
חם׹ױ׹׹ױׅ‬؅
‫׹ך׭
נ
׹ױ‬؄‫
חׯ‬ ‫׹ך׭ׯך׮
׽׭פׯך׶ךש‬؄‫؁ׯׯךכ
ׯ‬

Fourth, since through writing which is corporeal we may reach the incorporeal Logos.

ּ‫
׹נ
ׯ׺ױץמׯפץ
׮ױ׸מ׮
פן
חם׹ױ׹מלׯפ‬ ‫׹ך׭
׮ױק׻ױ׸׶֭
ׯׯךכ‬؄‫
ׯ׹פל
׶נ׳׹ױ
ׯ‬ ‫
םׯס
פ׶׻ךצ
؀
ׯׯךכן
ׯךמ׽ׯפ׮
פׯ׻ױ‬ ‫؁ן؃‬

Fifth, since afterwards the Logos of God would become corporeal, as the letter has the logos in itself, and speaks with us.

According to Tat‘ewac‘i, God speaks directly only with those free from sin; with everyone else He uses an intermediary, the written word. Ever since the Fall, man has moved further and further away from God and has developed an ever increasing need for the assistance of writing in order to receive God’s words. Certain sinless ones such as Noah, Abraham, and Moses, have been able to regain the experience of direct communication. The rest of humanity lives in a state of ontological and linguistic exile from God. Just as Tat‘ewac‘i brings his reader to the point

25

Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993, 177.

armenian meditations on the metamorphic power

351

of despair, however, he holds forth hope. In his fourth and fifth points, Grigor notes that it is through the written word that we can reach the divine word. Through the Incarnation of the Word, God has reversed our lengthening distance. Writing, originally a symbol of man’s transgression and perdition, is transformed into the means of his salvation. b) Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i, Book of Questions, Vol. IV, ch. 13.226 Tat‘ewac‘i proceeds to illustrate how to unlock the hidden meaning of scriptural language through a linguistic analysis of the text. Grigor presents seven doors involved in the written word. As the reader progresses through the doors, he approaches closer to the hidden or inner meaning of words. The understanding of this meaning is achieved in an awakening of the reader’s spiritual sense of sight. This sight, which is both ‘completely deep’ and ‘the highest’, ‘brings out’ or ‘externalizes’ the ‘inner meanings’ of the text. ֯‫
נ
ץךמרך׼
כ׭ך׹ם
ע׻ךמ
פן
נ
פץמ׸פ‬It is to be known that the hidden ‫׺ױ׹ל
؂׻ױ׺ך׭פ
ר׻ױקךק‬: meaning of writing has been locked with seven doors. ֭‫ׯץךמקל
נ
׹ױ
ׯ׹פל
נ
חׯפ״ך׵‬:

First is the written letter [‫ ]׹פל‬that is lineated.27

ֱ‫
ׯ׮ױ׹ל
؂׻ױײױר
נ
׹ױ
ׯ׵ך׸
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬ ‫כ׮ך
׽׭מ׶ך
׶נ׳׹ױ‬:

Second, the letter-name [‫ ]׵ך׸‬that is the appellation of the letter, just as we say ‘ayb’.

ֱ‫
פ
؀
נ׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
פ
ׯלמש
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ‫؁נׯ׮ךתך׫ךכ‬

Third is the open syllable [‫ ]ׯלמש‬which is from vowel and consonant.

‫ ؁ׯׯ׻פע׻ױ׵ך׫ך׼
׭ךר
ׯרׯך׷
חם׹ױ׹׹ױׅ‬Fourth, the syllable [‫ ]ׯרׯך׷‬or closed syllable. ּ‫؁ׯ׵ךכ
חם׹ױ׹מלׯפ‬

Fifth, word.

‫
פׯ׸׮ך׮
ץךמ׺מ׶׻ךצ
ׯׯךכ
חם׹ױ׹מ׺מ׊‬Sixth, the sense of the word revealed ‫؁כ׭ךמע׻ױׯר؃‬ through interpretation.

26

Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993, 177. That is, ‫ ( ׹פל‬gir) is the actual shaped letter, as opposed to ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ), which is the name of the letter. In his commentary, Dawit‘ Anyałt‘ already established the link between writing and scratching or drawing through a Volksetymologie from the similarity between the three words: “And it is called writing (‫[ ׹פל‬gir]) because it is formed by scratching (‫[ ץמ׹מ׽‬k‘erel]); that is the letter comes from scratching and drawing (‫ץמקל‬ [gcel]).” Hamam preferred the Volksetymologie from drawing to scratching, “because scratching means to erase or efface, while drawing is to inscribe or sculpt,” Ervine 1988, 267. 27

352

sergio la porta

ֱ‫
ׯ׽׸׶ך׭פ
ׯפ׽׹מׯ
חם׹ױ׹מׯע׻ך‬ ‫
ׯ׮ױלך׹ת׹ךכ
؀
׹ױצ
ׯפ؀ׯ؃ך‬ ‫
ׯךמ׽ׯפ
׸׶ס
׹ױן
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׶מ׸‬ ؄‫
׶׹׻ױם
פ
؀
נׯך׶מ׸
؂׻ױ׺ך׭פ
ׯ׮ך‬ ‫؁נ׹מכך׸׹ך‬

Seventh, the inner meanings, the completely deep and highest vision that intellection alone sees in itself and brings out.

ַ‫
׺פ׸נכך׼ץך
׶ם׹ך׭
׹טנ
ׯ׶ך׷
נע
ר׶‬Whereas, why mankind is in need ‫
׺ךרך׸װמ׹ש
פ
נ
ץךמ׹ל
׻ך׺ך׸׻ך׹ךר‬of alphabets, it is written in chapter ֱֶ
‫؁ׯ׹ך׭ךש‬ fifteen on the angels.28

The formulation of the final door is particularly significant. Two movements are described. One is the in-out movement of penetrating the inner meaning and extracting it. The second is the vertical movement conjured by the depth and height of the vision which is that of the hierarchical connections between the heavenly and mundane worlds as revealed through the symbols of scripture. In this phrasing, in which the in-out movement literally brackets the vertical, Grigor outlines a method for meditating and expounding upon a text. The reader penetrates into the text and sees the vertical, hierarchical connections—the inner meanings that are concealed and revealed there—and then one brings them out of the text. c) Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i, Book of Questions, Vol. IV, ch. 13.329 Tat‘ewac‘i concludes chapter thirteen with a long commentary on the ‘praises’ of the letter ‘a’ (‫[ כ׮ך‬ayb]). The sub-title of this section is remarkable in itself: “Commentary of the praise of Ayb which is the first letter of the creations.” It is evident that Tat‘ewac‘i pictures the letters to be an integral part of creation; in fact they precede the fashioning of the universe and are thus a constituent part of the fabric of creation. Second, the word ‘praise’ emphasizes the sacred character attributed to the letter. Grigor discusses another set of such ‘praises’ dedicated to Jerusalem in one of his sermons which may be classified as an exhortation to pilgrimage. As I have noted elsewhere, the word ‘praise’ (‫ׯ׻פע׻ױ׷ױל‬ [govut‘iwn]) is evocative of the divine liturgy, for it is God who is praised through ecclesiastical worship.30 Third, Tat‘ewac‘i specifically labels this passage a commentary (‫[ ׯ׻פע׻ױׯר؃‬meknut‘iwn]) on the letter ayb, a term usually employed to denote biblical exegesis. 28 Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993, 143; La Porta 2001, 200. Tat‘ewac‘i notes that mankind is in need of writing because he possesses sense whereas the angels are free from such intermediaries. 29 Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993, 177–8. 30 La Porta 2006a, La Porta forthcoming (a).

armenian meditations on the metamorphic power

353

From these three observations, we may posit that Grigor perceived the universe as a written text, one to be explicated and commented upon as one would the biblical text, and that one must learn how to read both the bible and the physical universe in order to unravel their mysteries. Finally, it is the Armenian letter ‫( כ׮ך‬ayb) that is the first letter of the creations, although Tat‘ewac‘i was well aware that the Armenian alphabet was created at the beginning of the fifth century. Rather than limit the universe to one sacred language, Grigor opens the investigation to a multifaceted approach in which the divinity expresses itself in a variety of languages and symbols. In his discussion, Grigor portrays language as a bridge which links the divine realm and the created universe. It is the connective tissue tying together God, the cosmos, and man. In their visual and phonal qualities the letters bear a real relationship with the divine and the mundane worlds. ‫
נ
׹ױ
ׯפכ׮ך
ׯךמע׻ױ׷ױל
ׯ׻פע׻ױׯרמ׀‬ ‫؁׺ױקך׹ך׹ך
׹פל
ׯפ״ך׵ך‬

Commentary of the praise of Ayb which is the first letter of the creations.

ׂ‫
؁׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
חם׹ױ׹ר׹ֱ
؁׹פל
נ
פן
חצך‬ ֱ‫
؁ץךמ׺ך׻מת
חם׹ױ׹׹ױׅ
؁ׯפ״ך׵ך
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ּ‫
׮ױ׹ױֲ
؁כ׮ך
נ
׹ױ
ץךמ׺מײױר
חם׹ױ׹מלׯפ‬ ‫
׶נ׳׶׮ך
ך׹ױ׶
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׸׮ך׮ך׺ךכן‬ ‫؁׽׻ױ׺׶ך׭פ‬

First, that it is a letter; second, it is a vowel, third, [it is] first; fourth, [it has] shape; fifth it is named, that is, ‘ayb’; whose explanation let us understand thus.

ֱ‫
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׷ױל
פׯ׻ױ
ח׹פל
נ
פןחצךׯ
׻‬ ‫
׹פל
ׯ׮ךׯ؃ך
פן
חׯפ״ך׵֭
؁ׯפר׽מ׹מ‬ ‫
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
פׯ׻ױ
؀
פׯךכ
נ
׽פק׹ױל‬ ‫؁ׯךמ׽ׯפ׮
ץךמרקךק
ׯךכ
؀‬

I. And first, since it is a letter, it has three-fold praise. a. First, since every letter is an instrument of reason, and possesses meaning and reason hidden in itself.

ֱ‫
פ
נׯך׸׭
פײ׹ל
כ׭ך׵מת
פן
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬ ‫
פ׵ךכ׹ךכ
׮ױׯך׹מכ
׺ׯך׵ך
؀
׵ךכ‬ ‫
؀
׺ך״ׯךרך
פ׶ץ
؀
׺ךײך
פׯך׶מ׸
؀‬ ‫ן
נׯך׺׻ױ׶׻ױ‬؄‫؁׶׸‬

b. Second, since through the hand of a scribe it enters a word and is uttered without a mouth, is seen [without] eyes, is heard [without] ears, and instructs the mind.

ֱ‫׮ךׯךעׯס
׺פ׸ױ
׺ׯך׵ך
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ‫׺ׯך׵ך
פײ׵ע
׺ױ؀ע
׺ׯך׵ך‬ ‫׺ך׵מת
׺ׯך׵ך
פ׶׻ךצ
פ׻ױןמץ‬

c. Third, it runs without feet, flies without wings, speaks without tongue, works without hands.31 It

31 Cf. the Syriac ascetical writer, Isaac of Nineveh (7th c.), who describes the angels as “the uncompounded spirits which are luminous and incorporeal, which speak without (needing) a mouth, which see without (needing) any eyes, which hear without (needing) any ears, which fly, without (needing) any wings, which perform without needing hands

354

sergio la porta

‫
נׯר؃
؀
פׯפץ
רךמׯךכ׹֭
؁נק׹ױל‬ ‫
׵֭
؁׺ך׹ױ׻ךלךע
׶ם׹׻ױש׹ױצן‬ ‫
׭ׯ׮ך
׸׶ס
ׯכ׮ך
פׯ׻ױ
ך׶ױ׶ן
רך׹ך׶ךש‬ ‫؁׹פל
נ
׹ױ‬

becomes a subject and explains the mysteries to kings.32 Ayb has these commonly in accordance with its being a letter.

ַ‫
פן
חצךׂ
؁׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
נ
פן
ׯם׹ױ׹ר׹מ
ר׶‬II. And the second [praise is] that it is ‫
؁ׯ׮ךת
נײׯש‬ a vowel.33 a. First since it echoes a sound. ֱ‫؁ׯׯךכן
פׯךׯק
פן
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬

b. Second since it engenders the word.

ֱ‫
ׯ׽ׯפ׶׮ך
נרך׼׹ך׳
פן
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ‫؁ׯׯךכן
נװױ׹ױ
؀
נ׷ױ׫ױף‬

c. Third since it surrounds, that is, it collects and distinguishes the word.

֭‫
ׯךמ׽ׯפ
׸׶ס
ׯׯ׮ךתן
נײׯש
חם׹‬ ؄‫
ץךמ׹םך׹ךװ
ׯׯךכן
פׯךׯק
؀
ׯ׮ך‬ ‫
׮ױע׻פׯ
פ
׶נ׳׹ׄ
؁׶ׯ׮ךתך׫ךכ
םׯס‬ ‫׹ך׭
נרך׶מ׸
פ
؀‬؄‫
פ
؀
׮ױ׻לױש
פ
؀
ׯ‬ ‫
נלפ
؀
נ׻ױ׹ך׮
׻מ
ׯפׯךםׯמר
׮ױ؂׹ך׭‬ ‫
؀
נ׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
פ
׶נ׳ׯ׮ױׂ
؁ׯץךמׯק‬ ‫
؂מ׹׻ױ
ך׳֭
؁פׯךׯק
ׯׯךכ
נׯ׮ךתׯך׮‬ ‫
؀
רך׶מ׸
נ
؀
ׯ׮ךת
נ
ׯ׹פל
׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת‬ ‫
ׯׯךכן
נ׷ױ׫ױף
؀
ץ׮֭
؁׻ױ׹ך
؀
פלױש‬ ‫
ׯךכן
׵ךכן
למשן
ׯ׽ׯפ׶׮ך
נװױ׹ױ
؀‬ ‫
פׯ׻ױ
׶׮ךן
׻ֱ
؁ׯ׻פע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פן
؀‬ ‫
ע׻ךמ
ץ׮ך
םׯס
׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
נ
פן
ׯכ׮ך‬ ‫؁׺ך׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת‬

Now it echoes a sound by itself alone, and it engenders speech having been joined with consonants; as a body [is engendered] from matter and form, and a living creature from spirit and body, and that which is begotten from male and female; likewise speech is engendered from the vowel and non-vowel. Therefore, the vocalic letter is sound, and is form and spirit, and male. But it also collects and distinguishes speech, that is, the syllable, the word, speech, and meaning. And ayb possesses this [quality] since it is a vowel with the other seven vowels.

ַ‫
פן
חצךׂ
؁ׯפ״ך׵ך
נ
פן
ׯם׹ױ׹׹מ
ר׶‬ ‫
ׯ׮ךׯ؃ך
׫׻ךׯק
؀
׹׮ךש
؀
נ
ׯפ״ך׵ך‬ ‫؁׺פׯ׮ךתך׫ךכ
؀
׺ך׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
׺ױ׹ל‬

III. And third, that it is first. a. First since it is first and father and begetter of all the letters, vowels, and consonants.

ֱ‫נ
ׯכןפר׶
؀
ׯפ״ך׵ך
פן
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬ ‫
׶נ׳׹ױ
׺ױ׻ױע‬؄‫׮ךׯך׭ןךכ
׻פע
ׯרך‬

b. Second, since it is the first and beginning of numbers, since as the

all the activities of the (various) limbs—without having any limbs,” Isaac the Syrian 1995, 46. It is tempting to suggest that Tat‘ewac‘i has adapted Isaac’s portrayal of the angels and applied it to the letter ayb. As both the angels and the letter are revealers of secrets, the transposition is fitting and powerful, once again underlining the celestial provenance of the letters. Exactly how Grigor may have been acquainted with Isaac’s works, however, is not known as no Armenian translation of the Syriac monk’s work has come to light. It is uncertain, and rather unlikely, that Tat‘ewac‘i read Isaac in the original Syriac. 32 Cf. Daniel. 33 According to a tradition recorded by the historian, Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i Asołik (11th c.), seven letters of the Armenian alphabet, presumably the vowels, were divine in nature, while the twenty-nine consonants were adapted by Mesrop from an earlier script, Russell 1994, 326 citing Nersoyan 1985/6.

armenian meditations on the metamorphic power

355

‫
׬
פ
ף
פ
חׯ׽ׯפ׶׮ך
׶ץ׮ך׮
פׯ׵ךצ
؀‬ ‫
פ
؀
ׯ׹׻פכ
פ
؀
׵
פ‬؄‫
נ׭׹׻פ
ׯנׯמע׻ױ‬ ‫؁פװױ׹ױ
ײױ‬

monad multiplies and is mixed in others, that is, in 10, in 100, in 1000, and in a myriad, and is not separated from its own unity.

ׂ‫
פ
؀
׻ךע
פ
פׯ׵ךצ
ׯכ׮ך
؀
׶נ׳ׯ׮ױ‬ ‫
؀
׹ךר׹מ׮
؀
׫׻ױ׶
פ
ר׹מץ‬؄‫
םׯס
פׯךכך‬ ‫
פ
؀
ך׶ױׯ‬؄
‫
פװױ׹ױ
ײױ
נׯ׹׻פ
נׯמע׻ױׯכ‬ ‫؁פץ׮ך׮ך
׭ךר‬

c. Likewise also, ayb is mixed in [the] grave accent, in [the] soft, in [the] short, and in [the] long, and is in harmony with them and is neither divided nor varied from its own single nature. d. And also with respect to accounting, it verifies matters for kings, and does not allow servants to steal, and reveals that which has been stolen, and reproaches [the thief].

֭‫
׶ײׯפן
נ׽ׯר
חׯ׮ױ׹ך׭ךש
׸׶ס
؀
ץ׮‬ ‫
ץךׯך׫ױל
׮ך׸ײ
؀
׺ך׹ױ׻ךלךע‬ ‫
؀
נׯ׸׮ך׮
ׯץךמ׺ך׫ױלן
؀
׺פ׮ך׵ךק‬ ‫
؁נׯך׭פםׯך׮‬ ַ‫
ׯ׫מ׸׶
׽מ׹מ
؀ת
פׯ׻ױ
פן
ׯם׹ױ׹׹ױײ
ר׶‬ ‫
פ‬؄
‫
נרךׯךװׯ
חצךׂ
؁ץךמׯ׵ךצ‬ ‫
פ
׽ׯפתׯך
׽מ׹מ
ׯׯ׻פע׻ױקך׻ױ׸׶֭ן‬ ؄‫؁ׯךמע׻ױׯכ
׭׻ױ‬

IV. And fourth, that it has shape: three branches are mixed in one. a. First it symbolizes the godhead: three persons in one nature.

ֱ‫
ײױ
׹׮ךש
נ
ׯ׫מ׸׶
ׯפ״ך׵ך
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬ ‫
נ׽؃׻ױ׮‬؄‫
נ׹׻ךש
פ
םׯ׻ױׯק
פם׹ױ
ׯׯפ״‬ ‫
؀
נ׹׻ךש
פ
؂׻ױצ׫כ
פלױש
ׯׯפ״׹מ׷‬ ‫ױ׻ם׹ױ
פן
׮ױ׻ם׹ױ׮
؂׻ױץמ‬؅
‫
؀
פ؀׹מ‬ ‫
؀
כ׭ךמע׻ױקך׻ױ׸׶֭
׹ך׶ך׻ךש
ע׹ךש‬ ‫؁כ׭ךמע׻ױײ׹ך׹ך‬

b. Second, the first branch is the Father, not from anyone; and the middle branch is the Son who is begotten from the Father; and the final is the Spirit—emanation from the Father and procession from the Son since it manifests itself through the Son, and [is] on an equal level with respect to divinity and creatorship.

ֱ‫
ׯ؀׹מ׷
؀
׺פר
ׯ؀׹ױ׸׶
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ‫
כ׭ךמע׻ױ׭ךׯצךצךׯ
פֲ
؁׸ך׺ךכ‬ ‫
؀
׶קך׹ך׹ך׮
ׯמ
ץךמם׹ױ׫ךש‬ ‫
؀
ץךמׯר؃
ׯכ׭ךמע׻ױׯכ
ׯךרךר׶פ‬ ‫؁ץךמת׹ךכ׭ך׹מל
׶׶ךשׯך׮
؀
ץךמװױ׹ױ‬

c. Third, the lower part [is] joined and the upper part open, since through providence they have participated in the creations; yet truly with respect to their nature [they are] separated and distinguished and raised above to the unreachable.

ַ‫
׹ױ
כ׮ך
פײױר
פן
ם׹ױ׹מלׯפש
ר׶‬ ‫
נ
פן
חצךׂ
؁׹׮ךש
פׯך׭ל׹ךע‬ ‫
׮ױ׹ל
ׯ׮ךׯ؃ך
ׯכןפר׶
؀
׫׻ךׯק‬ ‫
׹׮ךש
׶נ׳׹ױ
ׯךמע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
؀‬ ֭‫؁׺פ׹ױץױכ
קך׻ױ׸׶‬

V. And fifth, that it is called ‘ayb’, which is translated father.34 a. First, since it is begetter and beginning of all letters and meanings like God the Father [is] of everything.

34

This is a Volksetymologie of ayb < Heb. abba, ‘father’.

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ֱ‫
׮ךׯךר׫ךכ
׺פקל
׺פ׹מ׮
חם׹ױ׹ר׹‬ ‫
؀
׮ױ؂׹ך׭
פ
؀
׮ױ׻לױש
פ
ם׹ך׭
׶נ׳׹ױ‬ ‫؁׺ך׸׭
פ‬

b. Second it is composed of three lines, like man [is composed] of soul, and of body, and of mind.

ֱ‫
ׯ׮ךתך׶פר
נ׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
פ
חם׹ױ׹׹‬ ‫
ׯךרךׯךכ
׶נ׳׹ױ
נ
ׯ׮ךתך׫ךכ
؀
נ‬ ‫
ׯךכ
׭ךר
׻ֱ
؁ׯךרךרׯ׸
؀
ׯךרך׮ךלן‬ ‫؁ׯ׻פע׻ױרׯך׺
؀
؂׻ױ׶ך׺‬

c. Third, [it is comprised] of vowel, semivowel and consonant, like [man is of a] rational, sensate, and vegetative [soul], or reason, anger, and desire.

֭‫
פן
חם׹ױ׹מ׺מ׊
؁רפ׺ױ׶׮ך
׮ך׹מ׷
פ
؀
ץ׮‬ ‫
ׯך׽
פ׹ל
؀
נׯך׸׭
׶ׯךכ
׭׻ױןךכ
פ‬ ‫
׭׻ױןךכ
פן
נ
׸׮ך׮
؀
׶׹ױ׻ךׯ׮ךת
ץ׮ךן‬ ‫
׻ך׷ױׯ
׻ֱ
؁פׯךׯק
׶ׯ׻פע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ‬ ‫
׽׭ך׶׻ױ׮
؀
קך׻ױ׸׶֭ן
׽׭מײךׯך׬‬ ‫
פ
׽׭פײׯר׹מ
؀
ׯׯךמע׻ױ׮ך׽׹ך‬ ‫؁נׯך׸׶ך׸ךם‬

VI. But also above these: Sixth, that it enters into many words and is written more than any other vowel and it is clear that it engenders much wisdom, and through it we recognize God, and we hope for the kingdom, and are afraid of judgment.

ְ‫
ׯכ׭ךמע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
חץךמת׹ך‬ ‫
׭׻ױןךכ
؀
פ׽ך׭ך׺
؀
׻ױ׷ױק
׽׭מ׹פ׸‬ ‫
פ
׮ױ؂׹ך׭
؀
׮ױ׻לױש
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׹ךכ‬ ‫؁פׯךׯק
נׯך׭ׯ‬

VII. a. Again, through wisdom we rule the sea and dry land, and much beneficence for the soul and the body is engendered by that same.

ְ‫
ח׽ׯ׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
ׯמ׶ך
׶נ׳׹ױ
חץךמת׹ך‬ ‫
ׯ׮ױלך׹מל
׽؀ל׹ך׳
ׯ׮ךׯ؃ךן
ׯך׽
נע‬ ‫
׵ך
׮ױק׻ױ׸׶֭׮
ׯׯ׻פע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
נ‬ ‫
׶ׯךמרן
ׯך׽
ׯ׽ׯפ׶׮ך
ץךמ״פ
רפם׹ך׭‬ ‫
ׯ׻פע׻ױק؃ן
ׯך׽
؀
ׯ׻פע׻ױ״׫ױ׵ךן
؀‬ ‫؁ׯ׶ץ׮ךן
؀‬

b. Again, as the sages say, the wisdom descended from God to man is the most supreme gift; that is, more than life, and health, and more than riches, etc.

ׂ‫
ך׶ױׯן
ׯכ׭ךמע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
פן
חצך‬ ‫
׽׻ך׽ױׯ
؀
ץמׯך׸ל
׽׭מ׹ךר‬ ‫؁ײױ
ׯׯ׻פע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פן‬

c. First, since we are able to discover them through wisdom, but not wisdom through them.

ֱ‫
ׯ׻ױ׺מׯ؃ך
ך׺ױׯ
פן
ץךמת׹ךם
׻‬ ‫
ׯךמע׻ױק؃
׶נ׳׹ױ
׮ױל
רךש׹מׯ‬ ‫
ׯךמע׻ױ״׫ױ׵ך
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׸ך׽׫ך‬ ‫
ר׶ַ
؁שך׭
׺ךׯמר
ׯ׻פע׻ױםׯך׻פש‬ ‫
؁רךש׹מׯ
נ
ײׯפ
ײױ
ׯךמע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ‬ ֲ‫
נ׸פל
׮ךׯךק؃
נע
ׯׯ׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ
פ‬ ‫
׮ךׯךשױל
נ
״׫ױ׵ך
נֵ
؁ץמ׹ױ׻ךל׹ךר‬ ‫
׮ךׯךםׯך׻פש
נֵ
؁׮ױק׻ױ׸׶֭ן‬ ‫
נֵ
؁כױׁ
׶נ׳׹ױ
קך׻ױ׸׶֭ן
נ׹ױ׻ך׵ך׼‬ ‫
נע
׻ֱ
؁ׯׯ׻פע׻ױ׹ךם׹ך
׻ױץמ׻ך׮
׮ךמר‬ ‫؁׶נש׹ךצװך׮
׮ךׯל
׬׫פצׯך
פׯך׵؃‬

d. Furthermore, because there exists a contrary to all of them: as [for] riches, poverty; [for] health, infirmity; [for] life, death; but there is nothing contrary to wisdom. Since the wise one, if he becomes rich, he knows how to dispense it; if he is healthy, he thanks God; if he is sick, he glorifies God, like Job; if he lives, he increases righteousness; if he dies, he departs from this world without anguish.

ֱ‫
ׯכןפר׶
؀
׹׮ך׭
נ
ׯכ׮ך
׻‬ ‫؁׶׮ך
׶ׯךמע׻ױ׸׶ך׭פ‬

e. And ayb is the mother and beginning of this wisdom.

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The letter ‘a’ (‫‘[ כ׮ך‬ayb’]) possesses characteristics both of the Creator and of the created. Ayb reflects the mystery of Triune divinity as well as each of the persons. Its relationship to the Trinity is explicitly made in IV in which the letter’s shape, ‫ך‬, is indicative of the God’s Trinitarian nature. Grigor elicits sympathies between the letter ayb and the person of the Father in particular. This is clearly expressed in V through a Volksetymologie of ayb (<  ‘abba, Heb. ‘father’) and in theological language normally reserved for the Father. So, in II, the letter ‘a’ is said to ‘engender the word’ (‫[ ׯׯךכן פׯךׯק‬cnani zbann]), a phrase, if taken independently, is evocative of the Father’s generation of the Logos. In III, the letter ayb’s quality as a ‘begetter’ again clearly draws the parallel to God the Father. In this instance, Tat‘ewac‘i avails himself of the Neoplatonic language of emanation found in the works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. These texts formed part of Grigor’s schooling and he was well-versed in them. Tat‘ewac‘i dedicates volume III of the Book of Questions to an explanation of the theology of Dionysius and provides the exact same example of the monad culled from the Divine Names (II,11 and XIII,2) in chapter six to clarify how the divinity is both one and multiple.35 The analogy to ayb is apposite as the letter ‘a’ in Armenian was also used to express the number one. Grigor also employs Dionsyian terminology in II when noting that the letter ‘a’ ‘echoes a sound’ (‫ [ נײׯש ׯ׮ךת‬jayn hnč‘ē]). In volume III of the Book of Questions, Tat‘ewac‘i cited Dionysius to explain that the grace of God is delivered differently to many people “according to the sound of an echo” (‫[ פׯ׮ךת ׯך׭ײׯש ׸׶ס‬ĕst hnč‘man jayni]). In the way that the sound emitted from a speaker is one, but people hear it differently according to whether they are near or far; likewise, people receive the gift of God differently according to their ability to hear. The letter ‘a’, then, symbolizes the procession and remaining of the divinity; its unity and transcendence as Creator and its simultaneous multiplication and participation in the creation. This creates a powerful connection between the Creator and the created, further strengthened by the ayb’s mirroring not only the divine but also the human. The ayb through conjunction gives birth to words as human couples do; and words in being formed from a consonant and vowel possess a similar body-spirit or matter-form dichotomy as the other creations [II]. The

35

La Porta 2001, 140, cf. also 132.

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tri-linear shape of the ayb itself conveys the division of man into body, soul, mind as elaborated by Nemesius of Emesa; while the three letters comprising the name ayb—a vowel, semi-vowel, and consonant— resemble the tripartite composition of the human soul as described by Gregory of Nyssa [V]. This connection grants letters the power to communicate divine mysteries to humanity as in the incident of the handwriting on the wall in Daniel alluded to by Grigor. Likewise, the numeric quality of the letters is useful for accounting purposes [IIId]. On the one hand, Tat‘ewac‘i is referring to actual royal accounts; but more immediate to Tat‘ewac‘i’s monastic audience would be the register or book of life in which God keeps His accounts of men’s conduct. The reckoning of one’s conduct written in the book of life does not allow the thief to escape unpunished. In their divine and human existence, the letters reflect the Incarnation itself, the Word enfleshed and are thus the means, the wisdom, through which humanity can be redeemed, as Grigor makes clear in VI and VII. It is through the written word that man is restored to his prelapsarian existence. It is through the written word, the Logos incarnate, that “we recognize God, and we hope for the kingdom, and are afraid of judgment.” It is with that wisdom that “we rule the sea and dry land,” thereby recapturing man’s pre-lapsarian authority. It is this wisdom that is man’s greatest gift, for it, like the Incarnation itself, “descended from God to man”. Tat‘ewac‘i concludes with the simple declaration that “ayb is the mother and beginning of this wisdom.” In the Christian tradition of the conceptio per aurem, Mary conceived Jesus at the Annunciation through her ear, undoing Satan’s suggestion planted in Eve’s.36 Grigor here elaborates upon this tradition. The ‘ayb’ functions as Mary, the Mother of God, who reverses the sin of Eve, the Mother of all living (Gen. 3.20), and defeats Satan, to whom Tat‘ewac‘i refers elsewhere as the inventor, sower, and mother of evils.37 It is Mary’s conception of the Logos incarnate, the written word, that reverses the serpent’s unwritten whispering. The letters, as the begetters of wisdom, recreate that salvific birth and, similar to the Eucharistic offering, provide a constant reminder of God’s love and sacrifice for humanity.

36 37

On the tradition, see Urbaniak-Walczak 1992, Anderson 2001, 92–3. La Porta 2001, 209.

armenian meditations on the metamorphic power

359

Many of the individual remarks and attitudes towards language Grigor evinces in this chapter were already present, as we have seen, in the grammatical tradition. Tat‘ewac‘i’s innovations rest in three domains: 1) Although the phonal qualities of the letters play a role in Tat‘ewac‘i’s system, it is the written form which predominates.38 As Grigor commented earlier, barring a few notable exceptions, pure spoken speech is no longer possible for humanity since the Fall. Non-embodied speech is no longer comprehensible to us, so even human spoken language is in reality a recitation of a written text. This is especially clear from his adaptation of the soul/body dichotomy expressed by the grammarians. For the grammatical tradition, it was the phonal aspect of a letter that symbolized the soul, and the physical writing, the body. Grigor, instead, comments that it is the vowel which is the soul and the consonant which is the body and through their linguistic intercourse speech is born. Although it is the vowel’s phonal quality that leads Tat’ewac’i to consider it as form, soul, and male as opposed to the consonant which is matter, body, and female; it is important to realize that Grigor still conceives of the vowel in its written form. The sound and the shape of the letter are inseparable for him. 2) Tat‘ewac‘i completely divorces the observations of the commentators from the grammatical tradition. While the grammarians based their comments on Dionysius’ Ars Grammatica, Grigor engages the biblical text. Although he, too, is teaching his students how to read and write, it is not the same type of reading and writing implied by the grammarians. Grigor is solely concerned with the spiritual attitude with which his monastic pupils approach reading and writing the Bible. In fact, we may note a lack of concern on his part for the details of the

38 We may note the same focus on the written or incarnated form of a sound as opposed to its disembodied sonal quality in Grigor’s treatment in the Book of Questions [vol. IV, ch. 13.2] of ‫( ׹פל‬gir) and ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ) cited above in b). Tat‘ewac‘i establishes the ‫( ׹פל‬gir) or written form of the letter as the basis of all speech, addressing it before the ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ), which he denotes as merely the name of the letter. By contrast, the Armenian version of Dionysius Thrax’s Ars Grammatica treats ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ), which it understands as the immaterial sound of a letter, prior to ‫( ׹פל‬gir), its written form. According to the commentary of Dawit‘ Anyałt‘, Dionysius addresses ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ) before ‫( ׹פל‬gir) “as an example according to honor, as the unembodied spirit is better than the physical body.” And according to an unknown source cited by Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i, “the ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ) is immaterial, like the meaning of the word, for by letters one sets up the word— like ayb is by a. As when you see the name of a in three letters a-y-b, you pronounce it as ayb.” Tat‘ewac‘i has diminished the importance of the ‫( ׵ך׸‬tarˆ), reducing it from the immaterial meaning and essence of a letter to its name.

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grammatical tradition. For example, he confuses the names of the types of syllables. Grigor employs the word ‫( ׯלמש‬hegn) to denote an open syllable, while equating the words ‫( רׯך׷‬vank) and ‫ׯ׻פע׻ױ׵ך׫ך׼‬ (p‘ałarˆut‘iwn) as referring to closed syllables. According to Dionysius Thrax and the Armenian grammatical tradition, ‫( רׯך׷‬vank) is the general word for syllable and open syllable, while ‫( ׯלמש‬hegn) is associated with ‫( ׯ׻פע׻ױ׵ך׫ך׼‬p‘ałarˆut‘iwn), the closed syllable. Related to this is, 3) Tat‘ewac‘i stresses that the true meaning of language lies in the redemptive power hidden within it. For the commentators of the Ars Grammatica, language, as a constituent and vital part of the created universe, reveals and reflects its harmony. They do not, however, explore how those correspondences effect the writer and reader. Grigor, on the other hand, concludes that the act of writing and reading mimics the salvific activity of the divine word. The true reading and writing of scripture is mindful not only of the meaning of the words but of each letter. Through such mindfulness the individual acquires the wisdom necessary to restore the authority and power of human language lost at the transgression of Adam and Eve. To the medieval monk, Tat‘ewac‘i stretched forth a great hope that by copying and reading the Bible, he was copying and reading himself into salvation. Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i concentrated his exposition on the first letter of the alphabet, the letter ‫( כ׮ך‬ayb). I would now like to look at a passage from an earlier author, Grigor Narekac‘i, who unlocks the secrets of the last letter of the Armenian alphabet, the k‘, Arm. ‫א‬. IV. Grigor Narekac‘i and the True Letter Grigor Narekac‘i lived in the second half of the tenth century and died in 1003. He was dedicated to the church as a child and was a monk at the monastery of Narek near Lake Van. Towards the end of his life, at the insistence of his monastic brethren, he composed his most famous work, the Book of Lamentation (‫)ׯךמע׻ױל׹מכ׫ׄ ׯךמ׸ך׀‬, more familiarly known as the Narek.39 The work is a composition of 95 penitential chapters or prayers. 39 The significance of this work in Armenian literary and popular culture cannot be stressed too much. Down to the modern period the Narek was believed to possess magical powers, and chapters were recited or placed under one’s pillow, or eaten in order to protect one’s home or cure one from a illness. The fact that the book is composed in a difficult classical Armenian and was largely unintelligible to the vast majority of these people likely only heightened its status.

armenian meditations on the metamorphic power

361

The entire composition may be divided into three parts which reflect the tripartite horizontal structure of a church (narthex-nave-altar) as well as the three vertical parts of the ecclesiastical incense burner (traycoal-lid); and Narekac‘i plays upon both images throughout the work.40 As the reader physically moves through the book, one’s soul travels through these images, from the narthex through the nave to the altar, from the incense pan through the censer out of the domed lid. Spiritually, one is transferred from damnation through expiation to redemption. We may once again detect the influence of the works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite in this tripartite structure as it replicates the Areopagite’s triad of purification, illumination, and perfection effected through the rites of baptism, eucharist, and anointment. The culmination of the Book of Lamentation in a hymn to the myron, the holy oil or chrism used at anointment, provides fitting testimony to the Dionysian paradigm for the work. The architecture of the poetic compilation mirrors the process of return to the Godhead and the perfection of the individual outlined in the Dionysian corpus. It is a particular passage in the hymn to the holy oil or myron that I wish to focus upon here. In Christianity, the myron is used to anoint the candidate at the time of baptism and seals the new Christian in the name of Christ. The oil’s mundane uses, such as fuel for light and heat and as a physic, combined with its ritual function in the anointment of kings and priests, made it an object of profound speculation. Furthermore, the holy oil’s composite nature of spices and fragrances was likened to the composition of the Incarnated Christ. This vision of the oil found support in verse 1:2 of the Song of Songs: “the oil poured forth is your name.” Thus, true anointment was a form of divinization or theosis, a real process of Christianization, for Christ is joined to the initiate. Through the rite, the candidate is transformed into a Christlike being, his anointment reenacting the Incarnation of Christ and the redemption of humanity. According to Narekac‘i, this experience of union and redemption through anointment is constantly available to the Christian through repentance. In section twenty-two of the hymn,41 Grigor explains how the oil works, how this process of transformation takes place, and the central role of language in that transformation:

40 See, Russell 1990/1, 135; J.-P. and A. Mahé 2000, 174–6; La Porta forthcoming (b), La Porta 2006b. 41 Grigor Narekac‘i 1985, 654.

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ְ‫
ׯ׺ךקך׹ל
׸׶ס
ץךמת׹ך‬ ‫
ׯ׺פ׹ױײ
؀
ׯך׶׽
ׯךמע׻ױ׹ך׭׻ױל‬ ‫
׺ך׸מכך׼׮ך׮
׹ױ
ׯךמע׻ױ׹םך׹ךװ‬ ‫
פ׻ױעך׹מ׷
פ׸ׯך‬؄‫
ם׹ױ׹מׯך׶׽
פ
؀ײׯ‬ ‫פל׹ךר
ׯם׹ױ׹ר׹מ‬

Again, according to the summation of the letters of the alphabet of twenty four, which is counted up from the alpha-beta until the twenty-second number;

‫
ׯךמע׻ױ׹ױצ
ם׹׻ױש׹ױצ
׶׮ךן
׭׻ױ׹ױ׮‬ ‫חץךמׯך׭ל׹ךע
׸׶׻ױםׯך‬

in which having translated this profound mystery thence

ֿ‫
ׯפם׹ױ׫ךש
׺ױ׹ױ
פץך׸װמש
רךװך‬ we prepare to nourish with a most ‫
׭ןךרךׯ؃ך
׽כ׭מ׸׶ך׹׸ך׳
ץמכ׭ך״‬fitting adaptation a delectable savour ‫
؁כ׭ךמע׻ױ׹ך׭׹ך׮‬ for they who participate. ‫
פ
׮ױ׹ל
פ׸ׯך
נם׹ױ׹מׯ׶ע׻ױ׮
פןׯךא‬ ‫חץךמ׹מכךצױ׼
ׯ׹׻פ׹ךש׽מ׹ױײ‬

Because from the letter eighty having been changed into four hundred

‫
םׯס
כ׭ךמע׻ױׯׯ׽
ׯנ׹׻ךׯךכךל׻ױ׸׉‬ ‫
פ׹לך׸׹ך׭װ׬
ע׻פׯ
ׯך׻ױׯך
ׯ׮ױעפת‬ ‫
׮ױ׹ױ׭צ
ׯךמם׹ך
ׯך׹ך׳׹מר
נ
׹ױ‬ ‫
ׯקך׻ױלׯךןן
פ׫ױ׹מכ
ׯ׽ׯפ׮‬ ‫
ׯנ׻ױץױ׮
פ
ׯ׻ךרך׶
ײױ
׹ױ
׶נ׳ך׫מ׹׻ךן‬ ‫
ׯ׹פ
ׯ׮ױׯ
פ
נע
ׯך׽
פ׮ךלך׹ך׳‬ ‫
ׯךרךׯך׹ך׸מ׻ך
׸׶ס
ץךמ׺׻ױת׹ךם‬ ‫
ׯ׽ׯפ
׵ך
ׯ׮ךׯ؃ךן
ׯפרך׵ך‬ ‫؁נׯ׵ך
ׯ׻ױ׺מ׬ך
ץךמ׹מכך׹מ׷‬

through etymological examination according to the name of oil [‫]ע׻פת‬, the ‘substance’ [‫ ]ע׻פׯ‬of the true letter, which is the image of new leavening in itself, raises the dough efficaciously; it is not that the smaller is encompassed by the larger, rather than, having turned into that same thing according to the evangelic parable, it increases and elevates everything to itself.

In this passage, Narekac‘i’s uses the technique of gematria in which each letter of the alphabet possesses a numerical equivalent. This system had been known to Armenians from antiquity especially through the works of Philo.42 In order to achieve his goal, Grigor avails himself not only of the Armenian alphabet, but also the Greek, again demonstrating the non-exclusive nature of Armenian considerations of language. The Armenian letter equivalent of eighty is the letter ‫ ( ךת‬ja). The Armenian letter equivalent of four hundred is ‫( ׻ױׯ‬nu), which is also the twenty-second letter of the Armenian alphabet. When Narekac’i proclaims that eighty becomes four hundred, he is expressing that ‫ךת‬ >‫( ׻ױׯ‬j>n); that is, the oil ‫( ע׻פת‬jiwt‘), becomes the substance ‫ע׻פׯ‬ (niwt‘) of the true letter, which is the leavening.43 For the meaning of the ‘true letter’, however, we must return to the beginning and redo the

42

On the symbolism of numbers in Armenian see, Thomson 1976. This is also noted by Awetik‘ean 1859, 534, n. 136; by P. Xač‘atryan and A. Łazinyan, Grigor Narekac‘i 1985, 1121, n. 87; and by J.-P. and A. Mahé 2000 in their translation of this passage. 43

armenian meditations on the metamorphic power

363

calculations according to a different mode. The alphabet of twenty-four letters mentioned by Narekac‘i is the Greek alphabet and so the numerical equivalents should also be worked out according to the ordering of the Greek letters.44 The twenty-second letter of the Greek alphabet is χ (chi), which, like Armenian ‫ ׻ױׯ‬has a numerical value of four hundred. The Greek letter equivalent of eighty is the letter ρ (rho). We thus attain χρ, the Greek abbreviation for Χριστός, Christ. In Armenian, the last letter of the alphabet is ‫( א‬k‘), which is the first letter in the Armenian name for Christ, ‫׶ױ׸׶פ׹א‬. The letter itself was formed by a combination of the Greeks letters χ and ρ.45 The true letter is thus Armenian ‫א‬ (k‘), symbolic of Christ, who is the leavening that raises the candidate to Himself. We recall the previously cited verse of the Song of Songs: “the oil poured forth is your name” (1:2). Through his etymology Narekac‘i demonstrates how the oil, ‫ע׻פת‬, is literally Christ’s name. In the seventh line above, Narekac‘i employs the verb ‘to translate’ (‫[ ץמׯך׭ל׹ךע‬t‘argmanel]); the verb also means ‘to interpret’. Grigor is playing on both meanings here for to interpret the mystery is to translate the Armenian numbers into their Greek equivalents and then back again into the true Armenian letter. In the subheading to the hymn itself, Narekac‘i also mentions that this chapter is composed of prayers “in translation” (‫[ ׹ךכךׯך׭ל׹ךע‬t‘argmanabar]). It has been suggested that this be taken literally and the chapter be regarded as a translation of a work by Cyril of Jerusalem,46 but this is not the case. Grigor, again, intends both ‘translation’ and ‘interpretation’, but here not a linguistic motion from Greek to Armenian. Rather, it is a translation of the divine mysteries into the interpretative language of mystical symbolism intended for the initiated.

44 Grigor’s reference to twenty-four letters clarifies that he is referring to the Greek alphabet employed for writing and not the twenty-seven letters of the Greek alphabet reserved for numerical purposes. The three extra letters are the digamma, the qoppa, and the sampi. Either Narekac‘i was unaware of the Greek numerical alphabet or he purposely avoided using it because it would not produce the equivalents he was seeking. 45 As the first letter of the Armenian alphabet, ֭/‫ך‬, is also the first letter in the Armenian word for God, ֭‫קך׻ױ׸׶‬, the Armenian alphabet fulfills the declaration of Christ Himself that, “I am the alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22.13). 46 Awetik‘ean 1859, p. 509, n. 2, thinks this to be a translation of Cyril’s third Mystagogical Catechesis, though he notes that the latter work was intended as an instruction and not as an offering. See also Russell 1997, 96–7, n. 12.

364

sergio la porta V. Conclusion

In the above presentation I have tried to sketch a very broad development in Armenian attitudes toward language. At the very outset of the Armenian literary tradition, the Armenian language was intimately associated with the process of Christianization and was instrumental in the success of the conversion through the translation of the holy scriptures and patristic writings. This translation enterprise in turn endowed the Armenian language with a certain sanctity, especially with regards to the divinely bestowed alphabet. Interestingly enough, as the tradition evolved, the Armenians did not develop any exclusive attitude towards their language. The Armenians do not claim any particular holiness for their language; they do not posit it as the language of Eden, or the language spoken before the tower of Babel. This contrasts, for example, with the Old Irish commentators who did attribute precisely such status to Gaelic.47 The grammatical tradition enhanced the vitality of the Armenian attitude to language. Consistently faced with formal grammatical differences between Greek and Armenian, the early grammarians searched for meta-grammatical correspondences in the physical cosmos to represent the universality of grammar. The later generations of commentators continued and expanded these speculations even once the Greek base text had long been out of their reach. Grigor Narekac‘i and Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i—two very different authors, writing in distinct genres—share a common vision of the written word as a vehicle for redemptive transformation. Their insights rest squarely on the shoulders of the linguistic positions of the early Armenian Fathers and the grammatical tradition; but they have both filtered the observations of their predecessors through the lens of the liturgy which informs their approaches to the world as well as the word. It is a viewpoint which seeks to find the physical presence of God in every corner of the cosmos. Within this paradigm, there can be no ‘holy language’ exclusive of others, as all languages are translations of the true holy text—God’s love and compassion for his creation. It is that language of love in which God spoke to man at the beginning that we have garbled time and time again. All languages, then, including those of the natural universe and liturgical symbols, are but codes that invite translation in order to regain that original language in which there is no separation between thought

47

See Eco 1998, 28–9.

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and word, subject and object, and signifier and signified, but only the unity and harmony of love. It is a translation achieved through laborious meditation and penitence, ceaseless prayer and worship. It involves the death and regeneration of the individual through a spiritual conversion and transformation—a true metanoia—resulting in the full restoration of man’s glory. References Adontz, N. 1970. Denys de Thrace et les Commentateurs arméniens. Tr. R. Hotterbeex. Louvain: Impr. Orientaliste. Ananean, P. 1961. “La data e le circostanze della consecrazione di S. Gregorio Illuminatore.” Le Muséon 84: 43–73, 319–60. Anderson, G. 2001. The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination. Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press. Awetik‘ean, G. 1859. ׂ‫( ק׻ױץרמ׹ך‬Narek-explanation). Venice: Mxit‘arist Press. Cousins, E. 2000. “The Fourfold Sense of Scripture in Christian Mysticism.” In Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, ed. S. Katz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118–37. Cowe, P. 1990/91. “The two Armenian Versions of Chronicles. Their Origin and Translation Technique.” Revue des Études Arméniennes 22: 53–96. Cox, C. 1982. “Biblical Studies and the Armenian Bible, 1955–1980.” Revue Biblique 89: 99–113. Eco, U. 1998. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. Tr. W. Weaver. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace. Ervine, R. 1988. “Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i Pluz’s Compilation of Commentary on Grammar.” Ph.D. diss. Columbia University. ———— 1995. “Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i Pluz’s Compilation of Commentary on Grammar as a starting point for the study of Medieval Grammars.” In New Approaches to Medieval Armenian Language and Literature, ed. J.J.S. Weitenberg. Dutch Studies in Armenian Language and Literature 3. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 149–66. Garsoïan, N. 1976. “Prolegomena to a study of the Iranian Elements in Arsacid Armenia.” Handes Amsorya 90: 177–234. ———— 1982. “The Iranian Substratum of the ‘Agat‘angełos’ Cycle.” In East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period. Ed. N. Garsoïan, T. Mathews, and R. Thomson. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 151–74. Grigor Narekac‘i 1985. ‫( ׯךמע׻ױל׹מכ׫ׄ
ׯךמ׸ך׀‬Book of Lamentation). Ed. P. Xač‘atryan and A. Łazinyan. Erevan. Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i 1993. ֯‫( ׺ׯך׭׺׹ךּ
׽׹פ‬Book of Questions), Jerusalem: St. James Press [repr. of Constantinople edition of 1729]. Isaac of Nineveh 1995. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian): “the second part,” chapters IV–XLI. Tr. S. Brock. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 555 [scrip. syr. 225]. Louvain: Peeters. Koriwn 1985. ‫( פ׺ױ׸װך׀
׽׹ך׊‬Life of Maštoc‘). Intr. K. Maksoudian. Delmar, NY: Caravan [repr. of edition of M. Abełean, Erevan 1941]. La Porta, S. 2001. “ ‘The Theology of the Holy Dionysius,’ Volume III of Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s Book of Questions: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary,” Ph.D. diss. Harvard University. ———— 2006a. “The Liturgical Imagination of Medieval Armenian Monasticism.” In Worship Traditions in Armenia and the Neighboring Christian East. Ed. R.R. Ervire, AVANT 3. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press/St. Nersess Theological Seminary, 197–221.

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———— 2006b. “A Theology of Mysticism: The Vision of God and the Trinity in the Thought of Grigor Narekac‘i.” In Saint Grégoire de Narek: Théologien et Mystique. Ed. J.-P. Mahé and B.L. Zekiyan, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 275, Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 83–97. ———— Forthcoming (a). “To walk in the footsteps of Christ: Grigor Tat’ewac’i’s exhortation to pilgrimage.” In Two Millennia of Christianity in Jerusalem: Proceedings of The Third International Conference on Christian Heritage, Jerusalem, June 28–30, 2000. ———— Forthcoming (b). “The Image of the Beloved in Grigor Narekac’i’s Book of Lamentations.” In Proceedings of the International symposium on the Millennium of St. Grigor Narekac‘i, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 10–11 October, 2003. Ed. J. Russell. Leclerq, J. 1988. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. Tr. C. Mizrahi. New York: Fordham University Press. Leloir, L. 1960. “Versions arméniennes.” Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément. Paris, VI: 810–18. Lyonnet, S. 1935. “Aux origines de l’église arménienne, la traduction de la Bible et la témoignage des historiens arméniens.” Revue des sciences religieuses 25: 170–87. Mahé, J.-P. 1988. “Traduction et Exégèse: Réflexions sur l’Exemple Arménien.” In Mélanges Antoines Guillaumont. Cahiers d’Orientalisme XX. Geneva: Patrick Cramer. Mahé, J.-P. and A. Mahé 2000. Grégoire de Narek: Tragédie, Matean ołbergut‘ean. Le Livre de Lamentation. Louvain: Peeters. Maksoudian, K. 1998. “Chapter II: The Religion of Armenia.” In Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Art, Religion, and Society. Ed. T. Mathews and R. Wieck. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 24–37. Manandian, H. 1928. ׁ‫( ס׹מׯׯך״׹׃
ׯך׭׺ךל׹ךֲ
ך׹ׯ
؀
ס׺ױ׹׳ם
ׯךכךׯ׻ױ‬The Hellenizing School and the Stages of its Development). Vienna: Mxit‘arist Press. Mercier, Ch. 1978/79. “L’école hellénistique dans la littérature arméniennes,” Revue des Études Arméniens. I: 59–75. Movsēs Xorenac‘i 1991. ‫( ׺ױ׮ךּ
ׯ׻פע׻ױ׭׸ך׆‬History of the Armenians). Erevan [facs. ed. by A. Sargsean of the edition of M. Abełean and S. Yarut‘iwnean, Tiflis, 1913]. Nersoyan, H.J. 1985/86. “The Why and When of the Armenian Alphabet.” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 2: 51–71. Peeters, P. 1929. “Pour l’histoire des origines de l’alphabet arménien.” Revue des Études Arméniennes, o.s., 9: 203–37. Russell, J. 1987. Zoroastrianism in Armenia. Harvard Iranian Series V. Cambridge, MA: Dept. NELC, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research. ———— 1990/1. “Two Notes on Biblical Tradition and Native Epic in the ‘Book of Lamentation’ of St. Grigor Narekac‘i.” Revue des Études Arméniennes 22: 135–45. ———— 1994. “On the Origin and Invention of the Armenian Script.” Le Muséon 107.3– 4: 317–33. ———— 1997. “Scythians and Avesta in an Armenian Vernacular Paternoster, and a Zok Paternoster.” Le Muséon 110.1–2: 91–114. Spuler, B. 1955. Die Mongolen in Iran: Politik, Verwaltung und Kultur der Ilchanzeit 1220–1350. 2nd ed. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Stone, M., D. Kouymjian, H. Lehmann 2001. Album of Armenian Paleography. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press. Tēr-Petrosyan, L. 1984. “La plus ancienne traduction arménienne des Chroniques. Étude préliminaire.” Revue des Études Arméniennes 18: 215–25. Terian. A. 1982. “The Hellenizing School: Its Time, Place, and Scope of Activities Reconsidered.” In East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period. Ed. N. Garsoïan, T. Mathews, and R. Thomson. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 175–86.

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Thomson, R. 1976. “Number Symbolism and patristic exegesis in some early Armenian writers.” Handes Amsorya 90: 117–38. ———— 1982. “The Formation of the Armenian Literary Tradition.” East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period. Ed. N. Garsoïan, T. Mathews, and R. Thomson. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 135–50. ———— 1988/89. “Mission, conversion, Christianization: the Armenian example.” Harvard Ukranian Studies 12/13: 28–45. Urbaniak-Walczak, K. 1992. Die “Conceptio per aurem”: Untersuchungen zum Marienbild in Ägypten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Malereien in El-Bagawat. Altenberge: Oros. Weitenberg, J.J.S. 1997. “Eusebius of Emesa and Armenian Translations.” In The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Christian Interpretation. Ed. J. Frishman and L. van Rompay. Louvain: Peeters, 163–70. Zuckerman, C. 1996. A Repertory of Published Armenian Translation of Classical Texts. Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

INDEX OF NAMES ʚAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʚrāni 37, 62 ʚAbdallāh al-Hˢ abashī 36, 37 Abhayākaragupta 212 Abhidharma 207, 216 Abhinavagupta 330, 333 Abhinisˢkramanˢa-sūtra 203 Abraham 350 Abraham Azulai of Hevron 246–49, 251, 252 Abraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apta (Rabbi) 240 Abū Hˢ ātim al-Rāzī 45, 58 Abū Nuʚaym al-Isˢfahānī 38, 39 Abū Yazīd al-Bistˢāmī 57 Abulafia 9 Adam 11, 28, 69, 70, 72–79, 189, 350, 360 Adam Book (Adamgirkʚ) 77 Against Heresies (Irenaeus) 180 Agastya 3 Agatʚangełos (Agathangelos) 72, 73, 75, 78 Ahˢbāsh 36, 38 Ahˢmad al-Rifāʚī 36, 37, 60–62 Al-burhān al-muʙayyid 60 Al-Hˢ akīm al-Tirmidhī 35, 40, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 58 Al-Hujwīrī 39 Al-Kalābādhī 39 Al-Sˢayyādī Muhˢammad 61 Al-Tˢabarī 48, 49, 51 Alamˢ kārasarvasva 93 Ālikālimantrajñāna (or Ālikālimantrakrama) 221 Amarakośa 287 Amun-Re 19, 20, 23 Ānanda 210, 217 Ānanda-laharī 317, 318, 320 Ānanda-laharī-t ˢīkā 329 Ānandavardhana 298, 314 Apophthegmata patrum 193 Appayya Dīksˢita 93, 105 Arˆakʚel Siwnecʚi (of Siwnikʚ) 77, 78 Arapacana 204–06, 212, 214, 216 Aristotle 46, 85 Arjuna 296 Arjuna Wiwāha 288 Ars Grammatica 346, 359, 360

Arśapraśamani Sūtra 210 Arthavarga 216 Asanˆga 211 Asita 215 Aśoka 216, 275 Asˢt ˢasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitāpañjikāsārottamā 212 Asˢt ˢasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā-vrˢttimarmakaumudī 212 Atˢiyārkkunallār 311 Atum 17, 23, 25, 26 Baal 70 Badei Haaron 264 Bahye (Rabbi) 241 Barsanuphius 12, 177–79, 181–97 Bde-bar-gshegs-pa’i Bstan-pa Rin-po-che-la ’Jug-pa’i Lam-gyi Rim-pa Rnam-par Bshad-pa 213 Beit Habechirah 241 Bhagavatyāmnāyānuśārinˢi-nāmavyākhyā 212 Bharata 223, 224 Bhartrˢhari 7, 9, 306, 315, 333, 337, 338 Bhāsˢā Tanakuŋ 296, 297 Bhāsˢāprānˢa 287 Bereshit rabbah 29 Bhāmaha 92, 93 Bhavya 211, 212 Bible 4, 18, 21, 27, 69, 81 Gen 1 69, 71, 72 Gen 1.2 70 Gen 1.26–30 71–2 Gen 1.27 72 Gen 1.28–30 78 Gen 2 71, 72 Gen 2.1–19 71 Gen 2.7 72, 261 Gen 2.19 73 Gen 2.20 28 Gen 3.20 358 Gen 5.3 78 Ex 3.13–16 75 Ex 3.16, 75 76 Ex 6.1–5 75 Ex 19.16–19 239 Ex 31.18 85

370

index of names

Lev 19.2 186 Num 14.17 264 Dt 4.15–18 31 Dt 5.19 243 Dt 6.8 196 1Kgs 19.12 237 Job 32.8 251 Ps 29.4 237 Ps 65.2 263 Ps 118.16 184 Prov 4.4 196 Prov 2.5 251 PrMan 1.3 69–70 Song 1.2 361, 363 Isa 7.14 186 Isa 8.18 197 Jer 23.24 238 Jer 31.11 238 Ezek 1.13–14 187 Mt 1.23 186 Mt 25.31–34 197 Mt 25.33 183 Jn 45 Jn 17.21 185 Rom 12.16 192 1Cor 14.22 193 1Cor 15.28 197 Gal 4.3 188 Col 2.8 188 Col 2.20 188 Heb 2.13 197 Rev 22.13 363 Bo-dong-pa Phyogs-las-rnam-rgyal 220 Bodhisattvabhūmi 211 Bohn, W. 9 Bonaventura 349 Book of Lamentation (Matean Ołbergutʚean) 360, 361 Book of Questions (Girkʚ Harcʚmancʚ, Grigor Tatʚewacʚi) 76, 348–52, 357, 359 Book of Questions (Girkʚ Harcʚmancʚ, Vanakan vardapet) 76 Brahma 281 Breaths of Beauty and Revelations of Majesty 41 Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-sˢafā’) 46, 47, 58 Buddha 202, 203, 205, 208, 210, 211, 217, 218, 222, 224, 225 Cai Yong 111 Chandahˢ-karanˢa

287

Changes (Yi), see Yi Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), 126 Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan (Gongyang tradition) 126 Commentary on Song of Songs (Grigor Narekacʚi) 73 Coravidhvamˢ sana Dhāranˢī (’Phags-pa Mi-rgod Rnam-par ’Joms-pa zhes byaba’i Gzungs) 210 Corpus Hermeticum 32 Cratylus 7, 86 Cudworth, R. 31 Cui Huan 111 Cyril of Jerusalem 363 Dada 9 Dalai Lama 204 Damˢ sˢtrˢ asena 212, 214 Danˢdˢin 92–103, 105–7, 298, 310, 311, 314 Daniel 358 David of Ganjak 73 Dawitʚ Anyałtʚ (David the Invincible Philosopher) 347, 348, 351, 359 De clericum institutione 4 De Mysteriis 28 Deng Xiaoping, 111 Derekh Etz Hahayim 250 Derge Canon (Derge Tanjur) 201, 221 Derrida, J. 81, 293 Devarim Rabbah 241 Devī-śataka 314 Dhamadhuma 221 Dhāranˢī-sūtras 209–11, 225 Dharmagunˢa 290 Dharmapāda 216 Dharmaraksˢa 204, 205, 208 Dharmaskandha 216 Dˢ inˢdiˢ ma 318 Dionysius the Areopagite 357, 360 Dionysius Thrax 5, 346, 359 Diotima 88 Divine Names 357 Documents (Shu), see Shu Duan Yucai 154 Elijah (Gaon of Vilna) 247 Ełišē 74, 78 Emek ha-Melekh 249 Epistle of Barnabas 187 Eretz Tov 253 Eusebius of Caesarea 187

index of names Evagrius Ponticus 183–85 Eve 358, 360 Exodus Rabbah 237, 239, 265 Freud, S. 17 Fusˢūsˢ al-hˢikam (The Gemstones of Wisdom) 55 Futūhˢāt al-makkiyya 50 Gandha 221 Gaudˢa-pāda 320 Gdams-ngag Mdzod 221 Geb 17, 18, 19 Giordano Bruno 30, 31 Gongyang Tradition (Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan), see Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan Gospel of Truth 188 Gregory of Nyssa 358 Grigor Magistros 347 Grigor Narekacʚi 14, 73, 360–64 Grigor Tatʚewacʚi 14, 76–79, 348–54, 357–60, 364 Gri-lung-pa 213 Guoyu (Discourses of the States) 125 Haribhadra 225 Hariwaŋśa (HW) 297, 298 Hatshepsut (Queen of Egypt) 19 Hayim Vital (Rabbi) 239, 240, 245 Hemdat Yamim 260 Heraclitus 82 Hercules 83 Hermes Trismegistos 46 Hermogenes 7, 8 Herodotus 83, 84 Hesed Le Avraham 246 Hevajra Tantra 221 Hˢ ilyat al-awliyā 38 Hippolytus 180 Horus 18, 25, 28 Huan 141, 149 Huan (Zuoce, ʚMaker of Records’) 127, 130, 132, 133, 158, 159 Hyllus 84 Iamblichus 28, 31, 32 Ibn ʚAjība 63 Ibn al-ʚArabī 9, 10, 40, 41, 44, 49–58, 60 Ibn al-Dunyā 38, 64 Ibn ʚAtˢāllāh al-Iskandarī 63 Ibrāhim ibn Adham 39 Indra 326 Infancy Gospel of Thomas 180

371

Irenaeus 180 Isaac the Blind 261, 264, 265 Isaac Luria (Rabbi) 239, 245, 261 Isaac of Nineveh 353, 354 Isis 18 Īqāzˢ al-himam fī sharhˢ al-hˢikam 63 Itzhak Haver (Rabbi) 247, 248, 252, 264 Jābir ibn Hˢ ayyān 58 Jacob Ben Sheset (Rabbi) 241 Jacob Joseph of Polony (Rabbi) 254 Jaggadalavihāra 212 Jerome 179, 187, 194 Jesus Christ 45, 55–57, 61, 79, 184–86, 190, 358, 360 John of Beersheba 177, 178, 193, 195 John Climacus 194, 195 John Milton 74 Joseph Karo (Rabbi) 262 Kaivalyâśrama 322, 323, 335 Kakawin 13, 279, 286, 288, 290, 293, 294, 297–99, 301, 302 Kālidāsa 289 Kālimārgabhāvanā 221 Kāma 326 Kātantra 287 Katyāyana 287 Kavi-rāja Panˢtiˢ tar 319, 320 Kāvyādarśa (Mirror of Poetry) 93, 94, 100, 105, 106, 310, 314 Kāvyālamˢ kārasūtravrˢtti 93 Kāvya-prakāśa 305 Kephalai Gnostica 184 Keśarī 297 Khepri 23 Khnum 21 Kitāb al-hawātif 64 Kitāb al-t ˢabaqāt al-kubrā 37, 62 Kitāb al-Zīna 45 Kol ha’oneh 241 Kook, A.I. (Rabbi) 236, 265 Koriwn 344, 345 Krishna 297 Krˢs ˢnˢāyana (KY) 290–93, 299, 300 Kumārasamˢ bhava 289 Kunˢdˢalinī 324, 325, 329, 331–33, 335, 339 The Ladder of Divine Ascent 194, 195 Laksˢmī-dhara 317, 320–22, 324–37 Lalitā 318 Lalitavistara Sūtra 203, 204, 206, 207, 215, 217

372

index of names

Levi Isaac of Berdichev (Rabbi) 262 Life of Maštocʚ 344, 345 Liji 114, 126 Liu Xin 109 Ma Jianzhong 110 Mahābhāsˢya 3, 337 Mahavairocana-sūtra (MVS) 279–81 Maimonidies 233, 234, 236, 263 Majapahit (dynasty) 302 Mālinīvijayottara tantra 225 Malinowski, B. 5 Mallinātha 329 Mammatˢa 305, 306, 310 Mamshādh al-Dīnawarī 62, 63 Mañjuśrī 204, 205 Mao Zedong 111 Maor Vashemesh 253 Mary 358 Maurus Rabanus 4 Meccan Revelations 40, 53 Memphite Theology 25, 28, 29 Mechilta De Rabbi Shimeon 237 Mechilta De Rabbi Yishmael 262 Meir Ibn Gabbai 242, 262, 264 Meno 86 Mesrop Maštocʚ 344, 345 Midrash Rabbi Akiva 187 Midrash Tanhuma 238 Mīmāmˢ sā-sūtra 305 Mirror of Poetry (Kāvyādarśa), see Kāvyādarśa The Mysteries of the Greek Letters 186–90 Moses 85, 196, 350 Moses Cordovero (Rabbi) 245–47, 249, 251, 254, 263 Moses Hayim Luzatto (Rabbi) 250–52 Movsēs Kʚertoł 347, 348 Mozi 115 Mu (Middle Western Zhou King) 112, 140 Muhˢammad 49, 60 Munidatta 218, 219 Munˢimatālamˢ kāra 212 Muttusvāmi Dīksˢitar 339 Mystagogical Catechesis 363 Naftali Bachrach 249, 262 Nag Hammadi 9, 180 Nahmanidies 233, 234, 264 Nahum (Rabbi) 255 Najm al-Dīn Kubrā 41, 58 Nammālvār 311

Nandikeśvara 319 Narsai of Nisibis 1, 2, 10 Nātˢyaśāstra 223 Nebwenenef 24 Nemesius of Emesa 358 Nephthys 18 Nersēs of Lambron 75, 78 Noah 350 Nut (Egyptian god of heaven) 17 Odes (Shi), see Shi On the Vices Opposed to the Virtues (Evagrius Ponticus) 183 On the Eight Thoughts (Evagrius Ponticus) 185 Or ha-Meir 240 Origen 4 Osiris 18, 19 Otiot de Rabbi Akiva 180, 187, 190 Pachomius 179, 194 Pānˢini 3, 91, 105, 278, 323, 332, 336–38 Pardes Rimonim 246 Pārthayajña (Pyn) 295, 296 Paśpasâhnika 305 Paśupati-Śiva 326 Patañjali 3, 305, 337 Penitence of Adam 78 Perfection of Insight Sūtras 205, 207, 209, 213–16, 225 Pesikta de Rav Kahana 237 Phadampa 221, 225 Phaedrus 86 Philebus 86 Philo 362 Plato 7, 27, 82, 86, 88 Plotinus 84 Plutarch 3, 85 Praeparatio Evangelica 187 Prajāpati 308, 326 Praktikos 184, 185 Pratāpa-rudrīya 310 Ptah 21, 25–28 Pusˢpadanta 320 Pythagoras 46 Qalonimus Qalman Epstein (Rabbi) 253, 258 Qiang (Shi, ʚSecretary’) 167, 169–71 Qilādat al-jawāhir fi dhikr al-ghwath al-Rifāʚī wa-atbāʚihi al-akābir 61 Qin dynasty 165, 166 Qin First Emperor 110, 112, 113

index of names Qing dynasty 120 Questions and Answers (Eratopokriseis), 178–88, 191–97 Qur’ān 2:1 48, 49 2:105 60 2:117 35 2:260 35 3:47 35 3:49 35 3:59 35 3:74 60 4:171 56 5:110 35, 55, 61 6:73 35 6:115 42, 44 7:137 44 11:119 44 16:40 35, 41 18:109 44 19:35 35 36:82 35 38:7 63, 64 40:68 35 74:24 63, 64 76:30 41 81:29 41 Rāma-kavi 318 Rāmāyanˢa 298 Rasā’il Ikhwān al-sˢafā’ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) 46 Rashi 241 Ratnākaraśānti 212 Reflection on the Holy Liturgy (Nersēs of Lambron) 75 The Refutation of all Heresies (Hippolytus) 180 Remnant Zhou Documents (Yi Zhou Shu), see Yi Zhou Shu Republic, 86 Rĕrajahan 271, 273, 274, 277, 278, 281, 282, 285, 287, 288, 300, 302 Risālat al-hˢūrūf (The Epistle on Letters), 45, 46 Risālat al-mī wal-wāw wal nūn 53 Rukminˢī 292, 297 Ruyyaka 93 Śabara 305 Sadāprarudita 224, 25 Sāgara 221 Sahl al-Tustarī 45, 46, 48, 58 Śakti 326

373

Samatāvastupradīpa 221 Samvaracakrālikālimahāyogabhāvanā, 221 Samyutta Nikāya 218 Sang Hyang Kamahāyanan Mantranāya (SHM) 279, 281 Sang Hyang Kamahāyanikan (SHKM), 279, 281, 282 Sanˆgīta-ratnâkara 332 Śanˆkara (Śanˆkarâcārya) 308, 317, 319, 320 Sarasvatī 319, 320 Śārnˆgadeva 332 Satan 358 Śatasāhasrikā-pañcavimˢ śatisāhasrikāasˢt ˢādaśasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitābrˢhat ˢt ˢīkā 212 Saubhāgya-vardhanī 322, 335 Saundarya-laharī (SL) 317–25, 331, 334, 337–39 Sefat Emmet 252 Sefer Hatemunah 263, 264 Sefer Yesˢira 9, 43, 180, 187, 189, 191, 233, 245, 255, 262 Seridus (Abbot) 191–93 Seth (Egyptian god) 18 Shanfu Shan 141, 149–52 Shang dynasty 112, 116, 120, 121, 124, 153–55, 165 Shem Tov ibn Gaon (Rabbi) 264, 265 Shenrab (Lord) 215 Shi (Odes) 117, 120–26 Shneur Zalman of Liady 239, 248, 261 Shnei Luhot Habrith 243 Shu (Documents) 117, 120–27, 155, 157, 164 Shu (Egyptian god of air) 17, 18, 25 Shuowen jiezi 109, 116, 154, 155 Siddhārtha 203, 206, 215, 225 Śiva 318–20, 322, 323, 326, 330 Śivā 323 Smāradahana (SD) 289, 290, 292 Socrates 7, 8, 86, 88 Song (Shi, ʚSecretary’) 133, 136, 139–41, 149, 150, 152 Song of Songs Rabbah 238 Sophist 86 Sophocles 83, 84 Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu), see Chunqiu Śrīvidyā 13 Stepʚanos Siwnecʚi 347 Stepʚanos Tarōnacʚi Asołik 354 Sufyān ign ʚUyayna 38, 64

374

index of names

Sumanasāntaka (Sum) 295 Sun Xingyan 155, 156 Sutasoma (Sut) 279, 294 Suvarnˢaprabhāsa Sūtra 209 Swarawyañjana Tutur (ST) 277, 278, 280, 281, 283, 284 Symposium 86, 88 Taittīyaprātiśākhya 279 Talmud BT Berakhot 6B 238 BT Berakhot 7B–8A 242 BT Berakhot 21B 241 BT Berakhot 24A 263 BT Shabbat 89A 264 BT Shabbat 119B 241, 244 BT Yomah 20B 237 BT Ta’anit 26B 239 BT Hagigah 14a 236 BT Nedarim 2A 233 BT Nedarim 32A 244 BT Gittin 6B 243 BT Sanhedrin 26B 237 BT Sanhedrin 4A 237 BT Avodah Zara 19B 252 Tambiah, S. 5 Tanakuŋ 296 Tanˢt ˢiyalanˆkāram 311, 314 Tantra 13, 235, 256–59, 281, 289, 309, 310, 316, 317, 322, 326, 329, 333–35, 337, 339 Tantrâloka 333 Tanya 248 Tārā (Bodhisattva) 212 Teaching of St. Gregory 72, 74, 76 The Teachings by Aksˢayamati 208, 209 Tefnut 17, 18, 25 Tevāram 319 Theaetetus 86 Themistocles 83 Thon-mi Sambhotaˢ 221 Thoth 25, 27, 28 Tiruñānacampantar 319 Tiruviruttam 311 Trachiniae 83 Trdat (King of Armenia) 344 The Tree of Life 349 Tripura-sundarī 317, 318, 320, 327, 329–31, 335 Tutur Aji Saraswati (TAS) 275, 277, 278, 281, 283 Tzaddok Hacohen of Lublin (Rabbi) 262, 264

Udānavarga 216, 217 Upanisˢads 257, 329, 330 Chāndogya Upanisˢad 306, 308, 309, 323, 329, 334 Brˢhad-āranˢyaka Upanisˢad 307 Vāc 10 Vajracchedikā Sūtra 215 Valery, P. 237 Vāmana 93 Vanakan vardapet, see Yovhannēs Tawušecʚi Veda 3, 212, 256, 257, 289, 305, 307–9, 317, 319, 326, 329, 339 Vidyācakravartin 93 Vidyānātha 310 Vīnˢāpāda 218, 219, 221 Visˢnˢu 326, 328 Viśvāmitra 203, 205 Vowels and Consonants Tantra 217, 220, 221, 225 Wang Guowei 120 Warburton, W. 31 Wedawatī 281 Wrˢttasañcaya 287 Wu (Zhou King) 124 Xu Shen 109, 154 Xuan (Zhou King) 149 Yamalā 319 Yamm 70 Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Gur (Rabbi) 252 Yehudah ha-Levi (Rabbi) 233 Yeshiah Horowitz of Prague 243 Yi (Changes) 117, 122, 126 Yi Zhou Shu (Remnant Zhou Documents), 124, 125, 155, 157 Yili (Ceremonial Rites) 126 Yishayahu Jacob Halevi 253, 262 You (Taishi, ʚGrand Secretary’) 127, 132 Yovhannēs Erznkacʚi 348, 359 Yovhannēs Vanakan vardapet Tawušecʚi, 76, 79 Yun (Shi, ʚSecretary’) 159 Zeev Wolf of Zhitomir (Rabbi) 240 Zeus 82, 84 Zhao (Early Western Zhou King) 118, 140 Zhao Yi 111 Zheng Xuan 156

index of names Zhou dyansty 12, 112, 114–27, 130, 133, 136, 139–41, 149–51, 153, 155, 157–59, 164, 165, 167, 170, 171 Zhouli 115, 116, 126

375

Zohar 189, 236, 239, 242–44, 247, 263 Zosimos 189, 190 Zuo zhuan (Zuo Tradition) 125, 126

JERUSALEM STUDIES IN RELIGION AND CULTURE The JSRC book series aims to publish the best of scholarship on religion, on the highest international level. Jerusalem is a major center for the study of monotheistic religions, or “religions of the book”. The creation of a Center for the Study of Christianity has added a significant emphasis on Christianity. Other religions, like Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religion, are studied here, too, as well as anthropological studies of religious phenomena. This book series will publish dissertations, re-written and translated into English, various monographs and books emerging from conferences. Volume 1 The NußayrÊ-#AlawÊ Religion. An Enquiry into its Theology and Liturgy. Meir M. Bar-Asher & Aryeh Kofsky. 2002. ISBN 9004 12552 3 Volume 2 Homer, the Bible, and Beyond. Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World. Edited by Margalit Finkelberg & Guy G. Stroumsa. 2003. ISBN 9004 12665 1 Volume 3 Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity. Edited by Brouria BittonAshkelony & Aryeh Kofsky. 2004. ISBN 9004 13868 4 Volume 4 Axial Civilizations and World History. Edited by Johann P. Arnason, S.N. Eisenstadt & Björn Wittrock. 2004. ISBN 9004 13955 9 Volume 5 Rational Theology in Interfaith Communication. Abu l-\usayn al-BaßrÊ’s Mu#tazilÊ Theology among the Karaites in the F§ãimid Age. Edited by Wilferd Madelung and Sabine Schmidtke. 2006. ISBN 978 90 04 15177 2 Volume 6 The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign. Edited by S. La Porta and D. Shulman. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15810 8 Volume 7 Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria. Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids and Ayyåbids (1146-1260). Daniella Talmon-Heller. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15809 2