Heesterman and the 'pre-classical'sacrifice

Whereas J. C. Heesterman, from whom I have borrowed the term, seems to envisage a linear chronological evolution within a single tradition of Vedic sacrifice, I use the term ‘pre-classical’ primarily to underline the conceptual priority of the underlying transgressive paradigm over the classical schema that would have been superimposed thereon. I would even leave open the possibility that the brahmanical sacrifice, in its elaborated form, was developed through the influx of ideas and practices from a milieu of religious specialists who were originally outside the Aryan cultural universe. D.D. Kosambi, Myth and Reality (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1962), pp.42–81, argues for the pre-Aryan origin of the brahman, the ‘traditionalist’ A. K. Coomaraswamy goes so far as to affirm that the Rigveda itself is a relatively ‘late’ document and that much that we consider ‘Vedic’ was already Sumerian! What matters for our present purpose, however, is that even practices and institutions that may have originally been non-Aryan have been worked into a single — the sole surviving — Vedic tradition.