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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s2: § 2. The Nature of Vedic Magic

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s2

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§ 2. The Nature of Vedic Magic

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In the sphere of Vedic magic we have to do both with personal and with impersonal substances. The conception of all sorts of demons as threatening man is one which is supplemented by the more impersonal view of substances or potencies, which dwell in things, and which are often, therefore, of value in magic rites. It is possible that the earlier view is that which conceives these potencies either animatistically as actually alive, or animistically as spirits, but in the Vedic literature the two views, personal and impersonal, are both clearly found, and, like everything in the Veda, they are never clearly kept apart. Such powers⁴ are the power of error in the sacrifice which clings to the sacrificial post, and therefore may pass to the sacrificers,⁵ if care is not taken to render it harmless, the nature in woman, which causes her to slay her husband or to bear no children to him, and to bring death and disease among his cattle.⁶

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⁴ One term for these is *tanū*, body, e. g. used of hunger and thirst in TA. iv. 22; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 478. The instances given show that this is not by any means the same as *mana* as defined by Marett (*The Threshold of Religion*).

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⁵ Kauç. cii. 2; HGS. i. 16. 16.

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⁶ ÇGS. i. 18. 3.

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It is not vitally to be distinguished from the strength of the tiger, which is found in its hair and its skin, and which makes these things suited for use in many magic performances, by which man seeks to attain for himself strength and kingship over men, such as the tiger exercises over animals. The frog and the Avakā plants can be used for cooling, for they have in them the nature of the water, a fact which shows clearly how real the presence of the deity in a symbol was to the Vedic conception. The banished king uses a clod of earth from his home in his desire to regain his kingdom: the lightning¹ leaves its strength in the tree which it blasts, the boar in the earth which it kicks up :² the name, the image, the hair, the very footprints³ of man, are so connected with him as to be suitable modes of injury. Hence we can understand such legends as the theory that in laughing Makha⁴ allowed his brilliance to depart from him, that the gods placed it in the plants, and thus was millet produced. Or again the white Vālakhilyas⁵ practised asceticism : half of it with the resulting power Tārkṣya drank, and thus created the bird Garuḍa. The same idea displays itself in the constant fear of being affected by the mouth, which is one of the motives, no doubt, of the fasting recommended often by the Veda; of being affected by mere inhalation, whence often the holding of the breath is laid down; or of being affected by sight, whence often the eyes must be shut, or the sacrificer must at least not look round. The constant play of fancy between the real substance and the spirit is seen in the treatment of such ideas as Pāpman,⁶ impersonal evil, or the spirit of a thousand eyes, or of Takman, the actual fever disease,⁷ which seizes the patient, and makes him shiver, and the spirit which brings this about.

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¹ Kauç. xlviii. 37.

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² Kauç. xv. 2.

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³ Kauç. xlvii. 25.

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⁴ TA. v. 1. 3.

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⁵ Suparṇādhyāya, 2.

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⁶ AV. xi. 8. 19; vi. 26.

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⁷ Grohmann, *Ind. Stud.* ix. 383; cf. Jambha, ‘convulsions’, AV. vii. 10. Kaṇva, a disease demon (AV. ii. 25), may be a case of a soul of the dead as a demon.

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Of the means, which we may describe as magic in opposition to the rule of petition and offering which is religion, much of course is based on actual observation of fact, and much is based on mistaken fancies : magic, indeed, is doubtless in some sense and in fact the forerunner of science,⁸ and like science is slow in clearing away misconceptions of all kinds. At times it is desirable to attract substances or spirits, at times urgently necessary to drive away such things : another branch of the subject is divination, which rests on the same foundation of contiguity or similarity, upon which rest the other laws of magic. The means are various: the word is of great importance, and so again are figures or representations of things which may be used as substitutes for or in addition to articles connected with the things or persons, who form the subjects of the conjuration. The time again is of importance: many things should be done at night, but others at special times of the day or the year, and various places are specially favourable, such as cross-roads, or graveyards, where spirits do mostly congregate, and where are the evil birds of prey and the jackals. But in special circumstances almost any place is suited specially for the rite.

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⁸ Cf. Henry, *La magie dans l’Inde antique*, pp. 241–60; Frazer, *The Magic Art*. Both, however, have unsatisfactory views of the relation of magic and religion. See also L. Thorndike, *The History of Magic* (1923).

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It is natural, that, representing as it does a part of the primitive science of man, magic should be found in similar forms all the world over. There is little that is of special character in Indian magic, and the variety of its rites is enormous: fortunately or unfortunately for our opinion of the intelligence of the Vedic Indian not only has the Atharvaveda come down to us, but the Kauçika Sūtra contains (vii–lii) in the fullest detail, often however unintelligible to us, the nature of the rites which were used with the texts of that Veda. Other details occur in the Pariçiṣṭas of the Atharvaveda, in the Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa, in the Ṛgvidhāna and minor texts. The antiquity of these works is by no means very great: the age of most of the practices may be indefinitely remote. The only practices of which we can say definitely that they are innovations are those, not at all few in number, in which priestly ingenuity has used mythical ideas, in order to found on them a magic practice. Thus in one rite laid down in the Kauçika Sūtra¹ we find that as a means of driving away evil spirits the use of a food is prescribed, which has been cooked with wood of a tree in which birds nest: this is due merely to the fact that in accompanying verses Indra, the averter of evil spirits, is invited to come as a bird to a tree.

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¹ xxix. 27. Based on AV. vi. 2. 2; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 480, n. 3.

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