After explorations of the ethnography and linguistics of possession in (mostly) postclassical South Asia, we turn to the Sanskrit texts. First, we consider the extensive evidence for possession and models of thought based on possession in the vedic literature (Chapter 5). References to possession begin in the Ṛgveda itself, where we first encounter the word āveśa (and other forms derived from the root ā√viś) in the ninth maṇḍala, the book that includes most of the soma hymns. It is significant that āveśa is the most commonly attested word for “possession” in the Ṛgveda through Classical Sanskrit and Middle-Indic languages down to modern times, where it has found its way into most Modern Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. I argue that the vedic soma drinkers experienced (at least in part) a type of divine possession. The word āveśa occurs in nearly all vedic texts, with a preponderance in texts of the early and middle vedic periods. (4)
By the late vedic period, derivatives from another Sanskrit verbal root, √gṛh (to seize), especially the substantive grahaṇa, begin to appear, indicating a rather less divine form of possession.(4)
In attempting to address the vedic evidence, I highlight four features in particular: first, the production of soma and the sages’ experience of its consumption; second, āveśa as a paradigm for cosmic creation and personal and divine incarnation; third, a phenomenon called “transfer of essence” (medhas), found in many vedic texts beginning with the Brāhmaṇas; and, fourth, the relationship between women (mostly) and gandharvas, celestial musicians with a predilection for possession.(4) It is this latter notion that has perhaps the greatest impact on later classical literature and “folk possession.” In fact, it is in the vedic texts that the Indian notion of the “self” is first expressed as permeable and multivalent. Some readers may find this notion overly complex because it runs counter to the received Vedāntic idea of the self as an autonomous ātman identified with a universal brahman. However, the evidence here demonstrates that the Vedāntic notion of the self is primarily a normative, albeit a popular and attractive, idea that, because of the force and elegance of much of the Sanskrit philosophical literature, has overshadowed more complex and, I believe, more fundamental notions of self and personhood in classical India.(4)