The meaning of mantra in Vedic prose

Abstract

Vedic scholarship has often viewed mantras simply as “bits and pieces of the Vedas put to ritual use” (Staal 1989), assigning the term to formulaic utterances of various lengths and forms, from verbatim, lengthy quotations from the R̥gveda to short exclamations such as svāhā. The word mantra itself is, however, used sporadically in the Vedic prose, India’s oldest interpretative literature. Expanding on Gonda’s (1963) short remarks on mantra in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, this paper will investigate the semantic evolution of the word from its Indo-Iranian roots to the Vedic prose. In particular, the paper will focus on the di fering usage of the word in the various Vedic śākhās and compare it with complementary terms for ritual linguistic utterances such as sāman. Conducted as a part of the ERC-funded MANTRAMS project, this paper will seek to reframe the ways in which we de ne mantra in Vedic, providing preliminary material for comparison with later South Asian religious traditions.