The Power of Hate Speech in Ancient India: Beasts, Demons, and Scorched-Earth Poetry

This book argues that early Vedic poet-priests deployed various forms of hate speech to negotiate interpersonal conflict and social status. Jarrod L. Whitaker illuminates a lived reality in which ancient Indian ritualists had to contend with serious threats to the staging of their ritual performances from rival ritualists, members of the wider community, cultural outsiders, and even wild animals. Consequently, this book offers an in-depth study of how ancient Indian poet-priests construct and reproduce their identities and sociopolitical expectations in ritual performances through the ubiquitous use of ritualized hate speech. Whitaker provides hitherto unnoticed insights into the complex discursive practices, ethical values, and interpersonal relationships that ritual practitioners had to negotiate some three thousand years ago in north India.