Focusing on when and how “the Brahmins won”: The case of dakṣiṇā in reformed and non-reformed Vedic sources

Candotti, Maria Piera

;Pontillo, Tiziana

2025-01-01

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Abstract

For some years now some eminent Scholars such as Parpola (2015), Amano (2016), Witzel (2020) have been arguing that the officiant-patron distinction and the “orthodox” sacrificial arena might have been brought into being for the first time by the bearers of the Yajurveda culture. At the same time, since 2007 onwards, Bronkhorst has proved in many ways that not all ancient Indian institutions necessarily descended from the “Brahmanical” mainstream. In this paper, we show that even what has always been considered as an original and evergreen institution, i.e. the dakṣiṇā as priestly gift had actually been developed especially by the Yajurvedic texts in line with the Brahmins’ action of “re-inventing themselves”. In Candotti et al. (2020; 2021), we believe we demonstrated that the earliest occurrences of the term testify to a completely different ritual and social context. In the present article we will try to grasp the evolution of the concept in the Yajurveda through the analysis of every detail of the different versions of the same rite or prayer where the term is found, which will allow us to highlight the intriguing progressive editing process of the handed-down texts.