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The chapter examines prāyaścitta material (priestly texts focused on correcting ritual error) in the Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra (BSS), a Vedic ritual text. The BSS presents ritual mistakes as a normal aspect of sacrifice, and it offers ritual correctives that make ongoing ritual practice and authority possible in the face of ritual performance mistakes. Vedic texts assume that ritual mistakes occur, and they incorporate that fact into their understanding of the very nature of ritual. Careful attention to the prāyaścitta material (and similar material in other sacrificial traditions) suggests that modern ritual theorists should embrace the fact that rituals frequently go wrong, rather than treating ritual mistakes as anomalies that are irrelevant for sacrificial theorizing. In sharp contrast to a popular approach to ritual that distinguishes between the ritual realm (what “ought to be”) and the mundane realm (what “is”), Vedic literature presents a spectrum of ritual activity that repeatedly defers the boundaries of ritual activity by providing corrective measures. Ritual errors, in fact, demonstrate the dynamic elasticity of the ritual system, because they offer an opening for ongoing negotiation of what constitutes a correct or valid ritual performance.

During the early phases of the classical Indian law literature (dharmaśāstra) all elements in the life of the brāhmin householder had been gradually ritualized. Now, the institution of penance (prāyaścitta) – rituals that had the power to negotiate the invisible karmic effects of wrong acts or undone duties – became increasingly important. This was a break with the normative doctrines of karma formulated in the early Upanishads. According to these doctrines karma and rebirth were the negative elements of a life in the world that the groups behind the Upanishads themselves rejected. But as this ascetic ideal was gradually modified and included in a more worldly householder ideology, attitudes to karma and rebirth changed. The stress was laid on a good birth rather than on liberation, and techniques to control the bad karma, which was now seen as an unavoidable part of life, were therefore developed. Behind these developments was a struggle for religious dominance, in particularly in relation to economic support. At the same time penance, which made hidden transgressions visible, was a strong means of social control. The article highlights penance as rituals that negotiate power at these different levels. In doing so, penance is compared to other karma-negotiating rites described in the law books, such as votive rites (vrata) and propitiatory rites (śānti).

This chapter examines the intimately connected conceptions of sin (pāpa) and penance (prāyaścitta) developed within the Dharmaśāstra tradition. Its primary aim is to demonstrate how numerous features of the Dharmaśāstra theory of sin and penance reflect a pervasive concern with two fundamentally different human activities: (a) the personal quest to avoid an undesirable life after death and (b) the process of excommunicating and readmitting members of a given social community. This chapter, therefore, highlights the rather stark distinction that Dharmaśāstra texts make in their treatment of ritual expiation between social and soteriological concerns. To this end, close attention is paid to the traditional distinction made between public and private sins and penances.

The Vedic śrauta sacrificial tradition includes extensive discussion of the ways that Vedic rituals can go wrong and the procedures established to correct those wrongs. This chapter reviews Vedic priestly texts discussing ritual errors and reparations/expiations. It concludes that ritual theorists can learn several general lessons about the nature of ritual from the Vedic ritual correction (prāyaścitta) tradition. First, it challenges widespread notions that ritual exists in sharp contrast to mundane activity; instead, ritual and ordinary activity are closely intertwined. Second, Vedic assumptions that rituals can go wrong imply that external standards exist beyond the ritual sphere, standards that establish ritual “right” and “wrong.” Third, discussions of ritual repair and expiation point to the elasticity and adaptability of ritual systems. Fourth, discussions of ritual correction act to safeguard against the routinization of ritual mistakes. Finally, robust discussions of ritual mistakes reflect a fundamentally optimistic attitude toward the vitality of ritual.