In premodern South Asia, the olfactory sense was undoubtedly culturally significant. But the significance of smell in the premodern world, and especially in those contexts like South Asia, in which it had great consequence, is perhaps obfuscated by a modern Western world in which, “[i]n spite of its importance to our emotional and sensory lives, smell is probably the most undervalued sense” (Classen, 1993, p. 3). Cultural historians have long argued that the sense of smell is devalued in the modern Western world, and that this has its roots in a particular genealogy of Enlightenment thought that prioritized sight as “the sense of science” (Classen, 1993, p. 6, emphasis in original) and classed smell as the sense of “madness and savagery” (Synnott et al., 1994). Yet even in the modern Western world, smell is only perceived as absent. As many scholars have shown, it has often played an integral role in naturalizing racist perceptions (Irons, 2022) (Reinarz, 2014) (Tullett, 2016) (Chiang, 2004) (Smith, 2006) (Kettler, 2022), class identities (Largey and Watson, 1972, p. 1028), and is deeply entwined with contemporary constructions of gender and the evaluation of women’s worth (Synnott et al., 1994, p. 162). Yet, due to our modern ocularcentricism, it is perhaps difficult for some of us to envision a context in which the olfactory sense was given a greater priority. As Alan Dundes wrote in his seminal article “Seeing is Believing,” our modern dismissal of the sense of smell runs “the risk of imposing our own rank-ordering of the senses upon data that may not perceived in the same way by the people whose cultures are being described. If we are truly interested in understanding how other people perceive reality, we must recognize their cognitive categories and try to escape the confines of our own" (Dundes, 1980, p. 91). This paper argues that in order to grasp the centrality of smell in early Mahāyāna Buddhist conceptions of caste, this reevaluation of our sensory categories is precisely what we must attempt.
As is evident from across a wide array of premodern South Asian texts, stench was generally associated with evil, and fragrance with goodness. That this association between smell and virtue also exists within Buddhist sūtras should come as no surprise for anyone familiar with the genre. If anything, the greater risk for any reader of Buddhist texts is likely desensitization; it can be easy to overlook the significance of smell when it is referred to as frequently as it is within sūtras—one can perhaps only countenance so many instances of “fragrant dharma” (Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa/大智度論, T. 1509.25:144a23), buddha fields perfumed with “heavenly scent” (The Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, Gómez trans., 1996, p. 88), showers “of heavenly flowers” (The Lion's Roar of Queen Śrīmālā, Wayman trans., 1974, 67), gifts of incense (The Splendid Vision, Cohen trans., 2012, p. 15), and fragrance exuding from pores (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, Harrison and Gómez trans., 2022, p. 110) before one begins to take them for granted. But the fact remains that Buddhist literature is infused with scent; it is used both literally and figuratively to signify miraculous events, heavenly realms, and virtuous beings.
And in many Indian Mahāyāna sūtras, there is a particular emphasis on smell as a marker of caste background. In particular, early Buddhist texts advocating vegetarianism argue that there is an inextricable connection between the smell of meat and lower caste members of society. I propose in this paper that the sociological concept of “odorphobia” can help illustrate exactly how smell signifies a lower caste within these texts. In Gale Largey and Rod Watson’s seminal article “The Sociology of Odors” (Largey and Watson, 1972), Largey and Watson argue that a fundamental role of smell in society is as a signifier of class and moral status—both for individuals and as a way of marking out group identity—a concept that resonates with understandings of smell in the premodern Indian subcontinent. As Largey and Watson point out, there are numerous instances of similar odor-based prejudices that have historically been used to single out and ostracize particular groups. To list just a few examples, Jews in the Middle Ages “were noted for emitting an unusually foul odor which was believed to miraculously disappear upon conversion and baptism to the Christian faith” (Largey and Watson 1972, p. 1022); in Plessy v. Ferguson, it was claimed in defense of segregation that “’the foul odors of blacks in close quarters’ made the law reasonable” (Irons, 2022, p. 108); Hitler, in Mein Kampf, stated that he often “grew sick to my stomach” from the smell of Jews (Reinarz, 2014, p. 95–96); proletariat classes are often deemed “foul smelling” (Largey and Watson, 1972, p. 1021); the Irish in 19th century Britian were described as “foetid” and “reeking” (Reinarz, 2014, p. 97); and modern class distinctions are often marked out by the use, overuse, or lack of particular perfumes or colognes (Largey and Watson, 1972, p. 1079).
From the very beginning, Buddhist tradition held a general disdain for lower caste members of society. While Buddhists openly rejected the Brahmanical caste system, lower caste members of society were still subject to discrimination in Buddhist texts (Silk 2020). We even see evidence of this within the early food rules of the Vinaya monastic code of conduct, in which the meat of a dog is expressly forbidden due to its association with lower caste members of society (Heirman and De Rauw, 2006, p. 61). And in the references made to caste within the earliest texts to argue for vegetarianism, it is almost certainly the case that these sūtras were drawing connections between the smell of meat, the smell of dead flesh more generally, and the lower caste individuals tasked with processing and coming into contact with corpses in premodern South Asian society. The fact that perceived odors are used to mark out distinctions between groups is likely not much of a surprise. However, as a common justification for prejudice, the fact that odors are “used as a basis for conferring a moral identity upon an individual or group” (Largey and Watson, 1972, p. 1024) needs to be taken into consideration, especially when dealing with normative premodern materials in which smell was an omnipresent and powerful cultural signifier. While any attempt to find a single impetus or origin for the earliest proscriptions against meat eating in Buddhist texts is misguided, this paper suggests that one possible motive was an increased fear of the social repercussions of being associated with lower castes through the smell of meat.
Because smell is often used in a metaphorical sense, one might be inclined to read instances of fragrant virtue as just that—a metaphor. However, olfaction, as it is described within the earliest Buddhist texts to argue for vegetarianism, breaks down our cleanly divided modern categories of literal and metaphorical. Smell is used within these sūtras, and within premodern South Asian texts more generally, as “a way of knowing things about the world. People can use smells in order to tell whether a particular source of smell is pure or impure…low caste or high caste” (McHugh, 2012, 90). In this way, what a smell implies about one’s identity is of paramount importance. This paper explores how smell is used within Mahāyāna sūtras as a marker of caste. In particular, the paper contends that the sociological concept of “odorphobia” can help illustrate how malodor signifies low-caste stature within these Buddhist texts.