1.      This article will appear in a longer version, with full sections on "The Perverse Humour of the Infantile Vidûshaka: Psychoanalysis, Criminal Law and Sacrificial Dharma" (discussing at length the Sanskrit drama, Mrcchakatikâ) and "The Infanticide Ankâlamman: The Termite-Mound of the Untouchable Cempatavars and the Royal Obstetrics in the Cremation-ground," in Sunthar and Elizabeth Visuvalingam, Transgressive Sacrality in the Hindu Tradition, (= TSHT) TS Series vol.1 (Cambridge: Rudra Press, 1989). Materials on the Vidûshaka and the cult of Ankâlamman have been condensed for this volume due to lack of space.

2.       For an elementary introduction to the subject, see my "Transgressive Sacrality in the Hindu Tradition: As a basis of inter-religious dialogue, the ethical problem it poses, and its symbolic communication through the buffoon of the Sanskrit drama," originally presented to the Assembly of the World's Religions, 15-21 November 1985 (New York), before serving as the prospectus for the pilot-conference on this problematic within the 15th Annual Conference on South-Asia, Univ. of Wisconsin, 8 November 1986 (Madison). It is appearing in TSHT (see n.1) and also in Serbo-Croat in Kulture Istoka, 5, No.17 (Belgrade: July-September, 1988). I am indebted to Alf Hiltebeitel not only for having presided but also for resituating the proceedings of his own "Criminal gods and Demon devotees" conference within what I regard to be the more fundamental, global and immediate problem of Transgressive Sacrality.

3.       Abhinavagupta, citing his relative Vâmanagupta, on the semblance of humor and of sorrow in Abhinavabhâratî.

4.       For the continuity between Pâshupata and Kâpâlika praxis, see E. Visuvalingam's section in this volume on "The Transgressive Fifth Head of Brahmâ and the Pâshupata Ultimate Weapon" (esp. nn.16 and 60-62).

5.       See M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp.xi, 15, 20, 23-32, 365n.

6.       S. Kramrisch, The Presence of Shiva (Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1981), pp.159; see n.22 of E. Visuvalingam's rendering of "The Origin-Myth of Bhairava" in this volume.

7.       For the distinction between ‘sacred’ and the repressed ‘profane’ laughter in Amerindian religion, see Lévi-Strauss, "Suppressed Laughter," in The Raw and the Cooked, Introduction to a Science of Mythology: vol.1 (1970; Penguin, 1986), pp.109, 120-132, which also provides evidence, overlooked by Lévi-Strauss himself, of not only comic behavior but also tickling serving as symbolic substitutes for transgression in mythology. Otherwise devalorized, (sacred) laughter is nevertheless credited, in myth 45, with the origin of language itself (p.123, cf. p.132).

8.      L. Renou, Religions of Ancient India (London: Univ. of London Athlone Press, 1953), p.10, 18; also L'Inde fondamentale, ed. C. Malamoud (Paris: Hermann, 1978), pp.11-80.

9.       See G. Dumézil, Mitra-Varuna, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard,1948), and especially my treatment of the Gândharva musical symbolism in the Vidûshaka Maitreya and the criminal Shakâra in the Mrcchakatikâ (see n.1).

10.   See L. Makarius, "Ritual Clowns and Symbolic Behavior," Diogenes no.69 (Spring 1970).

11.   See M. Detienne, "Dionysos orphique et le bouilli rôti," in Dionysos mis à mort (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), pp.163-217; also W. Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), pp.89 n.29, 105, 119, 122-5, 177-8. Cf. J.C. Heesterman's key-note paper on "The Vedic origin of Vegetarianism," delivered to the 15th South-Asia Conference (see n.1) along with his contribution there to the Transgressive Sacrality seminar on "The Notion of Anthropophagy in Vedic Ritual" centered on the consumption of the Dionysian dîkshita reduced (nowadays) to a he-goat.

12.   See D. Lorenzen in this volume and especially E. Visuvalingam's section in this volume on "The Kâpâlika-Bhairava: The Supreme Penance of the Criminal Dîkshita."

13.   See A. Sanderson, "Purity and Power among the Brahmans of Kashmir" in M. Carrithers et al eds., The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), pp.190-216; and "Mandala and Agamic Identity in the Trika of Kashmir," Mantras et Diagrammes Rituels dans l'Hindouisme (Paris: CNRS,1986) pp.169-214.

14.   This is also the gist of J.-P. Vernant's treatment of "The Pure and the Impure," in Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (Sussex: Harvester Press, and New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980), pp.110-29.

15.   See J. Parry, "Ghosts, Greed and Sin: The Occupational Identity of the Benares Funeral Priests," in Man (NS) 15 (1980), pp.88-111; "Sacrificial death and the necrophagous ascetic," in M. Bloch and J.P. Parry eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,1982), and esp. E. Visuvalingam's section in this volume on "The Sin-Eating Bhairava: Death and Embryogony in Kâsî" (also n.116).

16.  See J. Gonda, Notes on Brahman (Utrecht: J.L.Beyers,1950), pp.16-18, 57-61; and especially L. Renou (and L. Silburn), "Sur la notion bráhman" in L'Inde fondamentale, pp.83-116 (see n.8).

17.   See L. Makarius, Le Sacré et la Violation des Interdits (Paris: Payot,1974), p.311; C. Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie Structurale, vol.2 (Paris: Plon,1973), pp.32-34, and Le Regard Eloigné (Paris: Plon,1983), pp.301-18; with the criticisms of Makarius, Structuralisme ou Ethnologie: Pour une critique radicale de l'anthropologie de Lévi-Strauss (Paris: Anthropos,1973), pp.16-19. See esp. E. Visuvalingam, n.4 above.

18.   See my Ph.D. thesis (1983) on Abhinavagupta's Bisociative Conception of Humor: Its Resonances in Indian Aesthetics, Transgressive Sacrality and Contemporary Indology (1988).