\"How the Brahmins Invented Themselves 3306 Times\"

An attempt to reconstruct the means by which Brahmins formulated their own sacral authority and found ways to extend it into other realms of social and political life. Beginning with a couple of Vedic theological statements, including Yājñavalkya's enumeration of divine forms quoting a Vedic ritual invocation, \"[33,] 303, 3003\" (often wrongly understood to total 3306!), I suggest that the same rationale undergirded Brahmins' view of their own special status, which they demonstrated to themselves and to others through disciplinary practices. I argue that emergent \"brahminhood\" was not just an ideal or a set of claims but a physical condition created ritually and displayed theatrically so as to leave a durable imprint on society. The crucial initial invention was a function of the Vedic priesthood's institutionalization of system for preserving and transmitting their knowledge, through disciplinary regimens of study. Drawing on Vedic ritual principles of extension and modification (ūha, vikṛti), these regimens were multiplied horizontally to producer other forms of Brahminhood (jurist, astrologer, purohita, royal official, temple priest, professional and sectarian ascetics). By a corresponding vertical differentiation, Brahmanical norms were calibrated and diluted to provide a template for the rest of society according to varṇa-dharma. These variants retained common features that pointed back to a relatively stable ideal that provided a plausible fulcrum for a broader cultural ethos. I situate my model in relation to some of the ideas of Weber, Durkheim, Bourdieu, Geertz, and Milner, among others