shared identity as Hindus. The immediate significance of this development was
primarily political. It also highlighted a sense of cultural togetherness in terms
of the recognition of a common textual tradition of long duration, beginning
with the Vedic corpus and including the later Pura ̄n.as and Epics. The extent and
nature of the knowledge of this tradition was (and is) variable, being derived
from the texts themselves or their exegeses among the literate elites, or received
through verbal exposition by professional story tellers and family elders among
the nonliterate, largely rural populace.
It has been suggested that acknowledgment of the ultimate authority of the
Veda may well be the minimum definition of Hinduism and Hindu identity today
(Smith 1989: 13–14), irrespective of how much or how little is known about it.
But Hinduism is not identical with Vedism or Brahmanism (Flood 1996). In its
growth other sources too, notably the folk traditions – some of them predating
the Vedic period – have contributed significantly. In fact, a two-way flow has been
at work. Elements of the textual (“Great”) tradition have been restated and reen-
acted in the idiom of the folk (“Little”) traditions (the process has been called,
somewhat infelicitously, “parochialization”). Likewise local beliefs and practices
have been built into the textual tradition through “universalization” (Marriott
1955). Other process of communication or combination have also been at work,
such as the identification of critical resemblance between different traditions
(Hiltebeitel 1999).
In short, both existentially and historically one can speak and write of Hindu
society meaningfully. Its boundaries are flexible, however, and even at its center
“an inner conflict of tradition” (Heesterman 1985) has been manifest. One of the
most significant of such antagonisms is between householdership (ga ̄rhasthya,
firmly embedded in society, and renunciatory withdrawal from social obligations
(sam.nya ̄sa). And this dichotomy is as old as the Vedic tradition itself.
“Ga ̄rhasthya”: Way of Life or Stage of Life?
Domestic groups of one kind or another are a cultural universal. Even food-
gathering and nomadic tribes periodically settle down to rest and residence in
open camps or covered huts before they set out again in search of food for them-
selves and their domesticated animals. Relatively permanent households are
generally but not always associated with cultivation of the soil. They are char-
acterized by rites and symbols that, among other things, valorize domesticity.
Among the Vedic Aryans the domestic fire was more than a hearth for
cooking food: it was also the locus of rites of various kinds and thereby acquired
a symbolic character. The Aryan householder (s ́a ̄lı ̄na, from sa ̄la ̄, “hall”) did not,
however, immediately qualify for the performance of the prescribed s ́rautasacri-
fices that occupied a central place in his and his household’s life. For this purpose
he had to establish several fire altars. The first of these (agnya ̄dheya) was lit with
fire taken from the domestic hearth but, after some ceremonial cooking of grain,
290 t. n. madan