Cosmos and classification in Vedic India

The study aims to explore the system of categorization in the religious literature of Vedic India (ca 1200 – 500 BCE).

This system will be studied as an example of a correlative worldview, a term used by comparative scholars for cosmologies centered on notions of macro-microcosmic correspondences. The study will be based on a survey of the Vedic textual corpus, conducted during a three-year period.

It will trace the early development of the Vedic correlative worldview from its inception in Early Vedic times to the emergence of a complex “high-correlative” system in the Middle Vedic period.

It will also try to shed new light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the correlations, using theories from cognitive linguistics (especially metaphor theory) and from the cognitive study of religion, where the hidden connections or correlations at the basis of magic and ritual have lately begun to attract the attention of researchers.

Special attention will be paid to the human body and experiences of the body as a source of many of the metaphors by which the external world is conceptualized and categorized.

The theories employed have hitherto been largely ignored in Vedic studies, though they have the potential to facilitate a greater understanding of the nature and functions of the Vedic correlations.

Another novelty will be the application of cognitive perspectives from the study of magic and ritual to the relatively little-studied field of correlative worldviews.