Videos by Caley Charles Smith
a talk given at the 2021 Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions
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Articles by Caley Charles Smith
A Cultural History of Hinduism in Antiquity, edited by Jarrod Whitaker, 2024
In his discussion of “Sources of Authority: The Invention of Vedic Authority” (Chapter 1), Caley ... more In his discussion of “Sources of Authority: The Invention of Vedic Authority” (Chapter 1), Caley Charles Smith examines the various strategies that Vedic priests use to make their liturgical knowledge and textual traditions authoritative. In particular, he is concerned with how the Vedas came to be seen by later traditions as true, relevant, and independent. Smith demonstrates that R̥gvedic poets are concerned with legitimizing the temporary authority of local clan-lords, who could potentially rise to the position of tribal chieftains or kings. In order to justify their ability to empower such leaders, R̥gvedic poet-priests employ key mythological and ideological tropes. For example, they underscore their truth claims and ritual efficacy by claiming to follow in the footsteps of primordial sages, who discovered the correct procedures for ritual, and the cosmogonic deeds of Indra. In this sense, the truth of early R̥gvedic rituals comes from the first ancestors and acts of creation. By the end of the R̥gvedic period, the ideology of ritual efficacy and origins shifts and authority for ritual performances is derived from the sacrifice of a cosmic giant, as seen in the famous Puruṣasūkta hymn. This new origin for the mantras disrupts their old ritual associations, making them relevant to new ritual applications. Finally, in the late Vedic period, the Vedas are seen as eternal and revelatory, so much so that the gods and ritual emanate from them. In this shift, they finally achieve ontological independence and become authoritative. Smith situates these ideological changes in shifting political contexts in which priests cater to wealthy and powerful elites by adapting their liturgical poetry and ritual activity to serve ever-changing ceremonial needs.
Religions of South Asia, 2023
This article puts late Vedic ritual and the renouncer and householder traditions of early South A... more This article puts late Vedic ritual and the renouncer and householder traditions of early South Asia into dialogue in a new way, by thinking about restraining the senses through the etic lens of regimes of care. Guiding questions in this study are: (1) How do regimes of care help us understand the conceptual interface of violence, restraint, purity and community? (2) How do shifting relations of care help us understand conceptual change over time? Finally, (3) how does conceptual change help us speculate productively about changes in relations of care? The clear thematic bifurcation in the texts will recapitulate what Nathan McGovern has termed a 'broad, trans-sectarian tension between renunciate and householder lifestyles'.
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature, 2019
The Rigveda is one of the most influential religious texts in the history of the world, but is it... more The Rigveda is one of the most influential religious texts in the history of the world, but is it world literature? This chapter examines what is really at stake when we translate the Rigveda, and how much we miss when we force the text to conform to our aesthetic world rather than its own. This chapter examines how the poets of the Rigveda conceive of literature, of the world, and of the relationship between the two, in an attempt to better understand what the creators of the Rigveda would consider a graceful translation.
Religions, 2019
Recent scholarship has challenged the anachronistic projection of the modern category of the poem... more Recent scholarship has challenged the anachronistic projection of the modern category of the poem onto premodern texts. This article attempts to theorize how one might construct an alternative to modern conceptualizations of “the poem” that more closely appropriates the conceptualization of textuality in the Rigveda, an anthology of 1028 sūktas “well-spoken (texts)” that represents the oldest religious literature in South Asia. In order to understand what these texts are and what they were expected to do, this article examines the techniques by which the Rigveda refers to itself, to its performer, to its audience, and to the occasion of its performance. In so doing, this article theorizes a “performance grammar” comprising three axes of textual self-reference (spatial, temporal, and personal); these axes of reference constitute a scene of performance populated by rhetorically constructed speakers and listeners. This performance narrative, called here the adhiyajña level, frames the mythological narratives of the text. By examining the relationship between mythological narrative and performance narrative, we can better understand the purpose of performing a text and thus what kind of an entity Rigvedic “texts” really are. While this article proposes a rubric specifically for the Rigvedic context, its principles can be adapted to other premodern texts in order to better understand the performance context they presuppose.
Self, Sacrifice, and Cosmos: Vedic Thought, Ritual, and Philosophy, edited by Lauren Bausch, 2019
This essay examines an ancient whodunit, reconsidering a cold case of vehicular homicide from the... more This essay examines an ancient whodunit, reconsidering a cold case of vehicular homicide from the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa (JB). I will argue that this tale, about a chariot, an accident, and a death, does not concern an historical chariot but a metaphorical one. The narrative is a metaphysical account of the sacrifice conceived of in terms of a chariot collision. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate that the text is using narrative to make an argument, tacitly presenting the patron of the sacrifice, and not the priests, as ultimately responsible for the death of the sacrificial animal.
Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics, edited by Jared Klein, Brian Joseph, and Matthias Fritz, 2017
A thorough linguistic history of each of the dialects of Indic is challenging in a single book an... more A thorough linguistic history of each of the dialects of Indic is challenging in a single book and impossible in a single chapter. Rather than providing such a treatment, this chapter aims to outfit the internal history of Indic provided by Oberlies (this handbook) with an external history, furnishing each language with details relevant to its regional history. This chapter is best used in consultation with an atlas. We shall proceed chronologically through Old Indic, Middle Indic, and New Indo-Aryan, concluding with a brief discussion of the status of Nuristani.
Veda and Vedic Literature: Proceedings from the 16th World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, June 28th-July 2nd, 2015, 2016
The anukramaṇīs are post-Vedic paratexts that list information about the Vedas. One of the items ... more The anukramaṇīs are post-Vedic paratexts that list information about the Vedas. One of the items the paratexts list is the hymn's ṛṣi 'seer, poet' typically understood to mean the historical composer. This paper examines the representation of speakership and performance in ṚV 1.165 and argues that the anukramaṇīs are interested in preserving the identity of the speech actor for whom the poem is a speech act.
Tavet Tat Satyam: Studies in Honor of. Jared S. Klein on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Andrew Miles Byrd, Jessica DeLisi, and Mark Wenthe, 2016
The first chapter of Kaṭhopaniṣad reformulates an older Brāhmaṇical narrative of a meeting betwee... more The first chapter of Kaṭhopaniṣad reformulates an older Brāhmaṇical narrative of a meeting between the boy Naciketas and Death and the proper piling of the nāciketa fire altar. In this article, I argue that the Kaṭhopaniṣad deploys this narrative as part of a discursive strategy to theorize the metaphysics by which fire-altars operate. Death teaches Naciketas the secrets of the fire-altar by piling the altar in reverse order, thereby rhetorically deconstructing it to a connection between the fire-altar in the heart of the patron of the sacrifice, of the Sun as the fire-altar of heaven, and the nāciketa fire-altar which mediates the two.
The similarity of the chariot imagery in Parmenides and Kaṭha Upaniṣad has tempted some scholars ... more The similarity of the chariot imagery in Parmenides and Kaṭha Upaniṣad has tempted some scholars into hypothesizing a contact scenario between early Greek and Indic philosophy. Our research, however, demonstrates that the genealogy of this imagery is best explained through local intertext: the Iliad and the Vedas respectively. The concentration of similarities between Iliad 23 and the text of Parmenides suggests that the philosopher is engaging specifically with the chariot race during Patroclus' funeral games, which also serves as a source of philosophical material for Empedocles and includes the locus classicus for Socratic ἐπαγωγή. The chariot in Kaṭha Upaniṣad is a metaphor for the sacrifice, specifically the fire altar; its imagery is a redeployment of the chariot imagery and narrative setting used in the earlier Kaṭha Brāhmaṇa. We argue that understanding the metaphysics of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad is only possible when contextualized as a component of a hieratic canon. Once these commitments are recognized, it becomes apparent that Parmenides’ poem and the Kaṭha Upaniṣad have distinct antecedents and discursive agendas.
Proceedings of the 25th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2014
eds. Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, Brent Harmon Vine, and Angelo Mercado. Bremen: Hemp... more eds. Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, Brent Harmon Vine, and Angelo Mercado. Bremen: Hempen Verlag
Presentations by Caley Charles Smith
Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences historiques et philologiques, 2021
La série de quatre conférences se rapporte à une période peu comprise d’un grand changement relig... more La série de quatre conférences se rapporte à une période peu comprise d’un grand changement religieux et social dans l’Inde ancienne. La période « mantra » est ainsi nommée parce que c’est la période de composition des mantras, « énoncés sacrés », du Yajurveda. C’est aussi la période où le Rigveda a plus ou moins trouvé la forme sous laquelle nous le connaissons. Cette période est postérieure à la composition des poèmes individuels du Rigveda, mais antérieure à la fixation du Yajur-, Sāma- et Atharvaveda.
Book Reviews by Caley Charles Smith
Religious Studies Review, 2019
Reading Religion, 2019
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Religions of South Asia, 2018
Reading Religion, 2018
Dr. Smith's review of my first book.
International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2017
International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2017
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Videos by Caley Charles Smith
Articles by Caley Charles Smith
Presentations by Caley Charles Smith
Book Reviews by Caley Charles Smith