Poetic Justice: Rhetoric in Hindu Ordeals and Legal Formulas

The Divyatattva, a Hindu treatise on ordeals, uses folk etymologies and other rhetorical devices to structure its rituals. This paper suggests that such forms of repetition, and particularly ‘exhaustion,’ or the enumeration of an entire paradigm class, may naturalise or, in Saussure's term, ‘relatively motivate’ rituals and diminish the appearance of their arbitrariness. Ordeals and other rituals may respond to situations of uncertainty by using rhetorical devices to promote confidence in their outcomes. This contribution of poetic form to the pragmatic function of ritual is neglected in J. L. Austin's influential theory of ‘performative utterances.’