Restraining the Senses and Relations of Care

Abstract

This article puts late Vedic ritual and the renouncer and householder traditions of early South Asia into dialogue in a new way, by thinking about restraining the senses through the etic lens of regimes of care. Guiding questions in this study are: (1) How do regimes of care help us understand the conceptual interface of violence, restraint, purity and community? (2) How do shifting relations of care help us understand conceptual change over time? Finally, (3) how does conceptual change help us speculate productively about changes in relations of care? The clear thematic bifurcation in the texts will recapitulate what Nathan McGovern has termed a ‘broad, trans-sectarian tension between renunciate and householder lifestyles’.