Bovine Bodies and Foreign Kings: Immunity and Dharma in the Hindu Epics
This article explores a brief but rhetorically powerful interaction between Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra found in the two Sanskrit Hindu narratives Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. The story involves the emission of non-Āryan, non-Brahminical forest-dwelling and foreign groups from the Brahminically pure body o...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
History of religions
Year: 2025, Volume: 64, Issue: 4, Pages: 225-246 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Mahābhārata
/ Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa
/ Power structure
/ Brahmin caste
/ Group identity
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| IxTheo Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism KBM Asia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article explores a brief but rhetorically powerful interaction between Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra found in the two Sanskrit Hindu narratives Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. The story involves the emission of non-Āryan, non-Brahminical forest-dwelling and foreign groups from the Brahminically pure body of the wish-granting cow (kāmadhenu/surabhī) and explores one possible meaning for this rather perplexing narrative moment. I draw upon the metaphor of biopolitical immunity as explored by Roberto Esposito, particularly in his Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life, to help understand the narrative emission of non-Āryan bodies from the body of the wish-granting cow and her destruction of Viśvāmitra’s army. In short, the king Viśvāmitra trespasses into Brahminical space, at which point he is perceived as a threat and becomes, as it were, akin to a contagion. What I suggest in this article is that the wish-granting cow emits non-Āryan groups from her divine body as an immunitary response to the trespassing of Viśvāmitra and his violent army into the domain of the Brahmin. The armies that the wish-granting cow emits are a threat to the Brahminical body politic but are included within the domain of the political body in order to minimize and circumscribe their threat. |
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| ISSN: | 1545-6935 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: History of religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1086/734931 |
