Search results for " Vedic"

L’occhio della mente. Un’eredità indoeuropea nei poemi omerici

2002

The kalivarjya concerning the prohibition of initiation during the celebration of the Vedic sattra rituals

2022

The subject of kalivarjyas, their origin, and their place within Brahmanical ideology has attracted keen interest from various scholars. Indeed, the kalivarjyas constitute ‘exceptions’ to the dharmic norm that seem to invalidate the authority of the dharma itself. However, they allow us to verify how the dharma has been constantly adapted to the new requirements that have emerged with the transformations that have taken place in India over time in the religious and socio-political spheres. Among the kalivarjyas, some refer to the field of śrauta rituals, and the one concerning the prohibition of the sattradīkṣā, i.e., the initiation on the celebration of Vedic rituals of the sattra type, ap…

The Homeric compound Ὑπερίων and the sun in the Indo-European culture

2017

This paper aims at reconstructing the semantic meaning of Homeric Ὑπερίων, the epithet of the sun, whose etymology is still not clear. After presenting the modern interpretations, which describe it as an adjective in the comparative form derived from the adverbial particle ὑπέρ ‘up, above’, the ancient grammarians’ hypothesis on Ὑπερίων as a compound is tested, taking into consideration the textual analysis of those discourse contexts in which the terms for sun are used in archaic Greek and Vedic Sanskrit in comparative perspective. In particular, the co-occurrence with the motion verb go, i.e. εἶμι and i from the same IE root *h1ey-, in the Homeric poems and in the Rigveda respectively, mi…

Alle origini della deissi indoeuropea. Un approccio linguistico cognitivo

Gli studi di indoeuropeistica non sempre dialogano con le teorie linguistiche contemporanee e, in particolare, con le scienze cognitive (cfr. Melchert 2016). Tuttavia, il contributo che le seconde possono dare alla ricostruzione di fenomeni linguistici e culturali indoeuropei non è trascurabile. Non è d’altra parte meno rilevante l’apporto che la prospettiva storica può dare allo studio dei processi cognitivi umani, dall’acquisizione del linguaggio da parte dei bambini fino all’individuazione degli universali linguistici. Scopo di questo studio è discutere i risultati di una recentissima ricerca (Bartolotta 2018), che mostra il ruolo dell’indoeuropeo nella spiegazione degli universali lingu…

Uomini e alberi. Tre indagini storico-religiose. Nota introduttiva

2021

In this introductory note I present three essays on the relationship between trees and rituals in ancient Mediterranean civilisations and in Vedic India.

Vr̥kṣa vivāha. Dendrogamie in India fra tradizioni antiche e pratiche devozionali contemporanee

2021

An inextricable tangle of branches and roots arises in many Indian villages in the place where two trees united in marriage (vr̥kṣa vivāha), grow intertwining with each other in an everlasting 'embrace'. This interweaving describes well the complex network of symbols and textual references that are revealed in the relationships that Indian culture has built around a pair of trees: the aśvattha and the śamī. In this paper, I will try to highlight some mythological and ritual aspects related to this pair. The two trees, in fact, although in today's context separately, are the object of rituals that turn out to be true tree marriages. In particular, concerning aśvattha, what is striking is tha…

Il culto dei gatti in India. Continuità ed evoluzione di credenze e pratiche religiose dall’India vedica all’India contemporanea

2019

Cat as an animal is a sporadic presence in Vedic mythology and Brahmanic works on rituals, while it appears in a few cult practices of contemporary popular religiosity in India. This article holds that in Indian devotional practices, the cat is conceived as an animal with an ambiguous nature. It also suggests that the cat cult is linked with the need to tame chaos, violence, and con$ict, and to place them in a controlled, orderly, and pacified cosmos. To understand these phenomena, this article studies, from a multidisciplinary perspective, contemporary religious practices in the light of the Indian tradition, and suggests that the cat cult was subject to substantial Brahmanization.

Una forma leggiadra. Simboli sessuali dell'altalena in India nel rito del mahavrata e in alcune pratiche contemporanee

2022

In the grammar of rituals described in Vedic texts, the swing was an object whose meanings referred to the propitiation of fertility and solar symbolism. Although its use remains in various contemporary festive contexts, its meaning has been differently defined. By analyzing the passages from works belonging to the ancient religious literature, this article examines the description of the swing’s construction and the rite performed on it by the officiant named hotr. Such an approach allows us to focus on the symbolic elements related to the swing in one of the focal points of the sequence of the mahavrata ceremony. Through a diachronic investigation and considering the data from the compara…

In the footsteps of the cows The ritual of gavāmayana between ancient and contemporary India

2022

Codified in classical Vedic times (8th-4th century BCE), the gavāmayana (‘the cow path’) was a year-long ritual session (sāmvatsarikasattra), which accompanied the succession of months of the Vedic religious calendar and ended with the celebration of mahāvrata (‘the great vow’) during the winter solstice. Marking the conclusion of the arduous ritual journey, it celebrated rebirth and consecrated the beginning of the new year. The book investigates gavāmayana based on a philological analysis of the texts and on a historical-religious and anthropological perspective, focusing on ancient India and some contemporary practices. The mahāvrata, in particular, seems to preserve the memory of very a…

Ragazze folli di miele, Il miele e la celebrazione della parola nel rito del mahāvrata

2021

In these pages, we will explore the rite of mahāvrata, a Vedic rite connected to the celebration of the new year, from a study perspective aimed at the performative dimension. Specifically, I will focus on the final scene of the rite, because it is only at this moment that the actors and the ritual dynamics compose a particular scenario, evocative of fertility, in which some maidens, the ritual fire, and honey are the protagonists. The maidens are called upon to dance around the mārjālīya hearth and to intone a chant in which they repeat the word madhu ("honey") in an increasingly frenzied manner. The words spoken, in some cases meaningless formulas, reveal a unitary sense and hint at the f…