way to maintain the renunciate life even within one’s household or in an
urban setting. It was a technique preserved for the disciplined few.
Summary
Certain consistent themes recurred throughout the various attempts by
brahmanical pandits and writers to reinterpret the vaidikatradition and
accommodate it to the pluralism of the urban complex. These themes
included sacrifice, dharma, and ritual. Worshiping the deity in the temple
was ritual; it was also dharmaand sacrifice. Following certain prescribed
laws and behaviors was dharma; it was also sacrifice and ritual. Living the life
of the householder and maintaining the sacrality of the home was dharma
and sacrifice and was perpetuated by ritual. It was in enactment, gesture,
and performance that vaidikatradition was purveyed and one’s identity
was expressed. Texts, for the most part, described these enactments and were
post factoto them. It is difficult to overstate the significance in this period of
ritual enactment as perhaps the quintessential way of being religious and
of expressing who one was. This appears to be true as well for much of the
rest of Hinduism’s religious history.
The epics
We have referred to many of the texts that were produced during this era
and suggested that many may have been descriptions (probably more than
prescriptions) of ritual enactments of various kinds. The two most famous
“texts” to emerge in this period were the major epics, the Ra ̄ma ̄yan.aand the
Maha ̄bha ̄rata. When one speaks of them as “texts,” however, one cannot
forget the oral and performative dimensions of both. The Ra ̄ma ̄yan.awas, to
be sure, produced in written form, some of its earliest snippets perhaps as
early as the fifth to fourth century BCE.^29 This written material is said to have
been edited in its Sanskrit form by Va ̄lmı ̄ki. Yet the morality tale is based
largely on oral stories and poems and, more importantly, was reproduced
in oral and dramatic form in villages all over South Asia. The story, in short,
was fluid; in each telling or dramatization different nuances would be
highlighted, depending on context and dramatic troupe. As a result, there
were many variations to the Ra ̄ma ̄yan.a, and it is enacted to this day even in
Thailand and Indonesia where the story has changed. Each retelling had its
own “local flavor”; so, in some Jain enactments, for example, Ra ̄van.a was the
hero insofar as he represented the non-vaidikaprotagonist.^30 TheRa ̄ma ̄yan.a
was a morality tale based on the story of Ra ̄ma, a folk hero and his wife Sı ̄t a ̄.
Among other things, the enacted stories stressed the importance of the role
The Urban Period 69