V - Power of Words: The Ascetic Appropriation and the Semantic Evolution of dharma

Summary

The closest Sanskrit equivalent to the modern concept of “asceticism” is probably tapas, associated both in etymology and theological discourse with fire and heat, and belonging to a group of terms and concepts, the most significant of which is tejas, that reveals an ancient Indian ontology of individualized power—a source of energy located within an individual, whether it is a god, a warrior, or an ascetic. It is this energy that makes the wrath of a tapasvin, the ascetic in possession of tapas, so potent and so feared. Ascetics as “powerful men” is an image so ingrained in Indian culture and discourse as to require little comment. Recall the story of the Buddha overpowering the fire of the snake with his own, thus dumbfounding and then converting his Brahmin hosts. At a more scholastic level, there is the list of siddhis, the superhuman powers such as levitation, multi-location, and the ability to kill, believed to result from the practice of Yoga.

My paper, however, is not directly concerned with these modes of ascetic power or with the ontologies that underlie them and the technologies that generate them. My concern here is with another type of power—power as a social reality, power that defines and is defined by social relationships.