Sacrificial Sūtras: Mahāyāna Literature and the South Asian Ritual Cosmos

Early Buddhist thought and practice were shaped in several important respects by the rejection of the sacrificial rituals that were so central to Brahmanical tradition. For instance, as scholars have recognized, the bodhisattva path inverts the logic of substitution that informs animal sacrifice: the bodhisattva perfects himself not through sacrificing another in his place, but by sacrificing himself for the sake of others. This paper argues that some Mahāyāna sūtras (specifically, the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsottama, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, and theVimalakīrtinirdeśa) invert this inversion by portraying themselves as aesthetic, dramatic forms of sacrifice, rituals of recitation that obviate the violence not only of animal sacrifice, but also of the bodhisattva’s self-sacrifice. These sūtras substitute themselves for both the fire and the food of sacrificial ritual, offering audiences a performative technology for transformation and a bloodless path to buddhahood. (And I will do my best to explain all this in terms that the uninitiated can understand.

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