Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices)

by Julius Lipner

  2.

  ‘Acceptance of the Veda as revealed scripture is certainly the most basic criterion for anyone to declare himself a Hindu (the preferred self-designation of Hinduism in Indian languages is Vaidik dharma, the religion of the Veda)’ (Klostermaier 1989:16).

  3.

  But the next description seems to repudiate this criterion before going on to other things. ‘Within Hinduism, one person's sacred scripture is by no means necessarily someone else's. This individual may assign a minor role to a god whom another individual worships with deep devotion as ... Lord of the world ... Even the doctrine of reincarnation ... is not a universally accepted part of Hindu teaching and faith ... As [Indian] government officials see it, every Indian is automatically a Hindu unless he or she specifically claims adherence to another religion ... [Hinduism is not a religion but] a collection of religions ... containing elements of shared traditions, and religions that have continually influenced each other down through the ages, and that have jointly contributed to forming the culture of India’ (von Stietencron in Küng et al. 1987:138–43).

  4.

  ‘The caste system, though closely integrated into the [Hindu] religion, is not essential to it ... Even the profession of belief in the authority of the Veda is not essential’ (Brockington 1981: 4–6). From the point of view of the authoritativeness of the Veda, this statement disagrees with no.2, but where caste is concerned the next description is at variance with this one.

  5.

  ‘Caste is the Hindu form of social organization. No man can be a Hindu who is not in caste ... Here, then, we have the Hindu world-theory in all its permanent essentials: God real, the world worthless; the one God unknowable, the other gods not to be despised; the Brahmans with their Vedas the sole religious authority; caste a divine institution, serving as the chief instrument of reward and punishment; man doomed to repeated birth and death, because all action leads to rebirth [inconsistent here with no.3];world-flight the only noble cause for the awakened man and the one hope of escape from the entanglements of sense and transmigration’ (Farquhar 1913:214–16).

  6.

  ‘Hinduism can be described as many religions ... and it also pervades Hindu life as lived in the world in every nook and cranny ... Despite its all-too-obvious inconsistencies, Hinduism is one whole. Even those features in it which seem to have no connection with religion, as understood today, stem from its basic character as natural offshoots ... Hinduism differs fundamentally from Christianity in this, that for its followers it is not an alternative to the world, but primarily the means of supporting and improving their existence in it ... Salvation is never the object of the religious observances and worship of the Hindus’ (Chaudhuri 1979:1–10); the tenor of this passage is at odds with the ‘world-flight the only noble cause for the awakened man’ etc. of the previous extract.

  7.

  ‘The three ... divisions of the Vedānta, the Upaniṣads, the Brahma Sūtra and the Bhagavadgītā ... form together the absolute standard for the Hindu religion ... Mokşa [salvation, final liberation] is spiritual realization. The Hindu Dharma [or teaching about the right way of life] says, Man ... lives or must live by his life of spirit. Mokşa is ... the fulfilment of the Spirit in us in the heart of the eternal. This is what gives ultimate satisfaction, and all other activities are directed to the realization of this end’ (Radhakrishnan 1980:18); this passage is in conflict with no.6.

  8.

  Note that, among other things, the next description insists on acceptance of reincarnation as the mark of the Hindu, in opposition to no. 3. ‘The Hindus certainly differ from us [Muslims] in every respect ... the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs ... As the word of confession, “There is no god but God, Muhammad is his prophet” is the shibboleth of Islam ... so metempsychosis [reincarnation] is the shibboleth of the Hindu religion. Therefore he who does not believe in it ... is not reckoned as one of them’ (Al-Biruni in the eleventh century C.E.; see Sachau 1888:17–50).

  9.

  ‘The Hindu's Hinduness does not depend on any particular religious belief ... Neither does the Hindu's Hinduness rest upon considerations of food and drink ... The basis of Hinduness, its essence, are the duties of caste and stage of life and the one-centredness directing them .... The tendency to one-centred thinking, the seeing into the thinghood of a thing, the experience of ultimate non-difference between Agent and effect, the knowledge of the deceptiveness of multiplicity, comprise the Hindu's Hinduness. We find its beginning in the Veda and its completion in the Vedanta’ (Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, 1861–1907;see Lipner & Gispert-Sauch 2002:116–25).

  10.

  ‘There are clearly some kinds of practices, texts and beliefs which are central to the concept of being a “Hindu”, and there are others which are on the edges of Hinduism ... [W]hile “Hinduism” is not a category in the classical sense of an essence defined by certain properties, there are nevertheless prototypical forms of Hindu practice and belief. The beliefs and practices of a high-caste devotee of the Hindu god Vişņu, living in Tamilnadu in south India, fall clearly within the category “Hindu” and are prototypical of that category. The beliefs and practices of a Radhasaomi devotee in the Punjab, who worships a God without attributes, who does not accept the Veda as revelation and even rejects many Hindu teachings, are not prototypically Hindu, yet are still within the sphere, and category, of Hinduism. The south Indian devotee of Vişņu is a more typical member of the category “Hindu” than the Radhasoami devotee’ (Flood 1996:7).

  The above list represents quite a mixed, and at times inconsistent, collection of assertions and emphases. We are told that Hinduism is a way of life, one whole, yet also a collection of religions; that Hindus are not in the least interested in salvation, that Hindus, in fact, direct all their activities to the realization of salvation! It is asserted that Hinduism begins in the Veda – acceptance of which is the mark of being a Hindu – and is consummated in the Vedanta, and then we hear that Hinduism is religiously undogmatic and that to be a Hindu one doesn't have to accept the Veda. We are informed that Hinduism is a highly organized social and religious system in which belonging to a caste is an essential if not the essential characteristic, then we are informed in equally certain terms that the caste system is not integral to Hinduism. Hinduism is a system to which belief in rebirth is essential; no, it is a system to which belief in rebirth is not essential! Hindus are supposed to be proud, believing themselves to be religiously and otherwise superior to others – but then they are undogmatic and tolerant, so one assumes they are not that arrogant ... Hinduism is primarily the means for Hindus to shape their multifaceted existence in the world – on the other hand, ‘world-flight [is] the only noble cause for the awakened man [and presumably, woman] and the one hope of escape from the entanglements of sense and transmigration’, and realization of the deceptiveness of the world's multiplicity is part of the essence of Hinduism. Is there, we may ask, as a Zaehner might allow, a ‘fine essence’ to ‘the changeless ground’ of Hinduism? How can Hinduism be ‘one’ yet a ‘proliferating jungle’ as he more confidently goes on to say? Finally, does ‘prototype theory’ work with regard to defining Hinduism? On what criteria can we say that the high-caste devotee of Vişņu living in Tamilnadu falls clearly within the category of ‘Hindu’ whereas the Rādhāsoamī devotee hovers at the edges because he ‘rejects many Hindu teachings’? How do we know that these rejected teachings are Hindu in the first place? Is not this argument circular?1 In any case, we are told that, according to the Indian government, every Indian is a Hindu unless he or she repudiates this label. So there is a role for self-definition in the matter. One has to contend with different kinds of description and their relative merits: self-definition, outsider-definition, official pronouncements, scholarly definitions ...

  Though most of the quotations given above fall more or less within the same, fairly recent, time-fra
me, they reflect, of course, perceptions of Hinduism current at the time, and their makers may well find cause to revise them if they were asked to provide a second opinion. But that is not the point. The point is to indicate the perceived plurality of the Hindu phenomenon, even if it is a changing one, and some of the defining features of this phenomenon that have attracted thoughtful attention.

  Nor have I have quoted the extracts given above to criticize them, though in due course we shall have occasion to question or even reject some of their criteria. The authors of some of the passages go on to make careful distinctions, mindful of the bewildering complexity of their subject matter. In fact, the phenomenon of Hinduism is both vast and confusing, and defining it is different in some respects from defining religions that proclaim a single founder. There is no single founder of Hinduism. One cannot write about it without being selective, without approaching it from one or more points of view at the expense of others, without on occasion committing oneself to this interpretation rather than to that. Hinduism is a way of life, a complex culture, one yet many. How to do justice to this phenomenon within the pages of a single book? The reader must bear with its interpreter. It is by piecing together facts and interpretations gleaned from a variety of sources that more and more of the jigsaw will become visible, that we shall see more of the wood rather than individual trees. So let me propose another image to help us understand this fascinating reality and the scope of this book.

  The pride and joy of the Calcutta (now Kolkata) botanical gardens is a vast, magnificent banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis or Ficus indica, to give it its technical names). The characteristic of the banyan is well known: from widespread branches it sends down aerial roots, many of which in time establish themselves in the earth to resemble individual tree-trunks, so that an ancient banyan looks like an interconnected collection of trees and branches in which the same life-sap flows: one yet many (see the cover of this book). Reputed to be well over 200 years old,2 with a growing canopy about 4 acres in extent and with many hundreds of aerial ‘trunks’, the Great Banyan of Kolkata continues to proliferate, organically if attenuatedly one, as vigorous as ever, new branches and roots forever developing as others wither away.

  The Great Banyan is not a bad symbol of Hinduism. Like the tree, Hinduism is an ancient collection of ‘roots’ and ‘branches’ representing varied symbols, beliefs and practices that make up individual sub-traditions, which are all interconnected in various ways. The manner and range of these interconnections we shall examine as the book progresses. The whole forms a web or grid, microcosmically ‘polycentric’, that is, having many centres, but macrocosmically one, with a canopy covering, in temporal terms, a span of millennia. There is no one founder-trunk, from which different branches proliferate. There is, rather, an expanding tracery of trunks and branches. But unlike the botanical model, the Hindu banyan is not uniform to look at. Rather, it is a network of variety, one distinctive sub-tradition shading more or less into another, the whole forming a marvellous unity-in-diversity. In this book we shall explore some of the more prominent roots and branches of the Ancient Banyan that is Hinduism mainly in its original soil, India, take account of some that are lesser known, and try to analyse important features of the sap that vitalizes the whole, so that we may catch some perspective of the vast phenomenon as it extends in space and time. We shall inquire into no more than a representative sample, leaving extensive tracts of this arboreal complex unexamined in the hope that the reader will be equipped to continue, in his or her own time, this explorative journey.

  What, then, is Hinduism? A provocative response would be to say that there is no such ‘thing’. The term itself is a Western abstraction of fairly recent coinage.3 This gives the impression that Hinduism is a block reality, a homogeneous system, easily defined, which all Hindus acknowledge more or less in the same way. But this is not the case. Whatever else it may be, Hinduism is not a seamless system of belief and practice in the way that many imagine or expect ‘isms’ to be. In fact, to use yet another image, ‘Hinduism’ is an acceptable abbreviation for a family of culturally related traditions. Just as in an extended family there are a number of distinctive features distributed among its members, not uniformly but in permutations such that any two or more members (even distant cousins) can be identified as belonging to the same family, so too in Hinduism there are many traditions some of whose characteristics overlap in such a way as to enable us to identify each of these traditions as belonging to the same cultural family.4 Some of these traditions may have more of these characteristics in common, making them more obviously Hindu. Others may share fewer traits, yet if these are dominant or characteristic ones they would still allow us to identify the traditions to which they belong as Hindu. One advantage of this image over the banyan one is that in a context of overall similarity it allows differences to be emphasized.

  The benefit of defining Hinduism in terms of such images is that they do away with the tendency to look for an ‘essentialist’ definition of Hinduism. Such a definition implies that whatever is being defined has a static essence or core which can be described through a number of necessary attributes. Discover the attributes and you've defined the phenomenon. Hinduism is not a reality that fits this conception. As we have indicated, it is a kind of unity-in-diversity, a process forever adapting to new circumstances. As some roots or branches wither away there is renewal and growth elsewhere. It would be inappropriate to look for a static essence of such a phenomenon.

  Both the images used hitherto also allow us to be realistic, for both trees and families have names. Some scholars (e.g. W.C. Smith 1978) argue that we should stop using such names as ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, etc. because they give the misleading impression that they refer to monolithic, uniform realities, whereas in fact what they refer to is replete with difference. Just think of all the denominations, sects, cults, etc. within the world religions. But this proposal is unrealistic. Try telling the authors of books on Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., or teachers who draw up syllabuses for their longsuffering students, or managers of bookshops who have to classify their wares, or the publishers and their marketing teams, that they must dispense with these handy labels! We have pointed out that such names are really shorthand for a family of traditions, and in the case of Hinduism, for a polycentric phenomenon as well. For practical reasons, then, the term ‘Hinduism’ is here to stay. Rather than trying to banish it, it would be more helpful to refine our use of the label and then apply it with discernment.

  Further, likening ‘Hinduism’ to a family-name gives flexibility. When does someone cease to belong to a family? When he or she is disowned by, or disowns, the family? When their relationship by blood becomes too distant? When they no longer have identifiable family resemblances? In short, the answer is when certain personal, social or juridical decisions are taken by the appropriate people. Our way of defining Hinduism allows for this flexibility of decision which, as we shall see, the complexity of the Hindu phenomenon requires. So much then for methodological considerations about defining Hinduism.

  Let us now inquire into what it means to be described as a Hindu. So far I have tried to avoid simply identifying Hinduism with a religious way of life. It is not necessary to be ‘religious’, that is, to believe in some world-transcending reality – a God or the equivalent – to be a Hindu. The great majority of Hindus have been and are religious, at least in this minimal sense, and the overwhelming proportion of human endeavour that has gone into the making of Hinduism has been religious in this sense. This is a very important fact about Hinduism, and this is why the major emphasis of this book will be religious. But it is important to note that one need not be religious in the minimal sense described to be accepted as a Hindu by Hindus, or to describe oneself perfectly validly as a Hindu. One may be polytheistic or monotheistic, monistic or pantheistic, even an agnostic, humanist or atheist, and still be considered a Hindu. This is why I have described Hinduism as fundamentally a cultural phenomenon. Let us
now consider how the word ‘Hindu’ originated.

  The term derives from what we know as the Indus river situated in the north-west of the subcontinent. For nearly 3000 kms, from its tributaries in the Himalayan foothills to its mouths in the Arabian Sea, this great river acts as a natural boundary to the bulk of the Indian mainland for those entering from the western mountain passes, e.g. the Hindu Kush. With respect to the origins of ‘Hindu’ and Hinduism, we must look to a vast body of sacred utterance called the Veda, composed perhaps well over 4000 years ago in an Indo-European language called ‘Sanskrit’, by a people who are popularly referred to as ‘Aryans’. (In modern scholarship, ‘Aryan’, which derives from the Sanskrit word ārya meaning ‘noble’ or ‘honourable’, is used in its precise sense to describe the kind of language these people spoke rather than their racial characteristics. However, over time, ‘Aryan’ has been used in an ethnic sense to refer to the people who first spoke Sanskrit in the subcontinent. It is worth noting that in their sacred texts these people referred to themselves as ‘ārya’ as a distinguishing term for their language and culture. After the Second World War, during which the word ‘Aryan’ became associated in horrific circumstances with claims of racial superiority, the application of the term has become a sensitive issue in the debate about the origins of Hinduism.)

  Where did these ‘Aryans’, then, these originators of Hinduism, come from? The received wisdom is that by about 1200 B.C.E. they had advanced into the subcontinent, either in a body or in steady trickles, from beyond the western passes – perhaps from as far away as the Caspian Sea or thereabouts – bringing the early forms of their language (‘Sanskrit’) and their religious view of the world with them. Then, by force of arms or other means of cultural domination, they displaced and/or intermarried with the native inhabitants of the Indus region, and gradually, over centuries, ‘Sanskritized’ the land.