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

by Julius Lipner

  Bhartṛhari was a major influence on important streams of thought in the multifarious Tantric tradition. In its non-technical sense tantra means a ‘loom’. In fact, Tantra focuses on rituals of worship of a deity (male or female) by a practitioner, involving disciplines of visualization of the deity, as well as progressive identification with and ‘possession’ – spiritually and bodily – by that deity. This process may include, in certain extreme forms, esoteric practices that might be regarded as polluting or morally unacceptable in orthodox, Vedic circles (such as imbibing alcohol, and practising ritual sexual intercourse with a woman who is not one's wife). In other words, the body is a ‘loom’ (tantra) whose ‘strings’ of mental and physical being become the basis for weaving a tapestry of liberative experience that creates union with the deity. But Tantric texts also seek to contextualize this practice by describing hierarchical cosmologies, and discursive explanations and justifications of the disciplines involved.15

  The Tantric heartland or zone, as it has been called, was a broad west-to-east swathe of the northern subcontinent, taking in the Kashmir valley, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan, and extending to Assam and upper Bengal. The Tantric texts were formulated from about the fifth to the twelfth centuries C.E., by which time much of their ideology and a fair amount of their practice (though often given symbolic re-interpretations to make them acceptable in orthodox, Vedic circles) had percolated into more obviously Veda-derived Hinduism over much of the subcontinent. Here we note another distinctive feature of Hinduism, which has sometimes been called ‘Brahminization’ or ‘Sanskritization’. This is the absorption of originally non-Vedic elements into the pale of Vedic, or allegedly Vedic, contexts of belief and practice. It involves a process of survival and/or propagation by means of accommodation, in terms of a legitimating inclusivity. By this technique, Tantra, which originally drew from indigenous precept and practice, and was more accommodating socially of women and those outside the pale of upper-caste Hindu orthodoxy, was in large measure Hinduized. We shall return to the relationship between Tantra and Vedic Hinduism in the next chapter. Here, in order to show how pervasive the belief in the creative power of the sacred Word is in Hinduism, we quote a relevant extract from a noted scholar.

  [The] original Word, identical to the primal divine Energy [śakti], is envisaged in [the] Tantric perspective as phonic energy (vakśakti), eternal, indestructible, and all-pervading, which however unfolds and evolves, bringing forth all the various aspects and stages of the cosmos. This word, this sound, is endowed with a creative force ... [T]he Word precedes the object, it brings it forth, it is the energy that upholds it, its innermost nature, that into which it will dissolve at the time of the cosmic resorption. The process of emanation, related to speech, is variously described depending upon texts and schools; however, it appears generally as unfolding from an initial luminous vibration or sound (nāda), which is an extremely subtle state of pure phonic energy, which through a series of transformations and condensations will become less subtle, forming a concentrate or a drop (bindu) of sound-energy, from which, when it divides itself, worlds, humans, and language will come forth.

  (Padoux 1990a:50–1)

  One can see how close this conception is in various respects to that of the Vedāntins. The outstanding thinker, Abhinavagupta (tenth–eleventh century), gave to Tantric ideas a philosophical formulation in terms of a non-dualist Kashmiri Śaivism. He develops a theory according to which the transcendent Word evolves through four stages, from the subtle to the gross. The highest level is Parāvāc which ‘appears as the primordial, uncreated Word, the very essence of the highest reality, ever-present and all-pervading. She is identical with ... luminous, pure consciousness’ (Padoux 1990a:172). The next stage is Pāśyanti which is ‘the initial, undifferentiated moment of consciousness which precedes dualistic cognitive awareness, a moment – when what expresses and what is expressed are not yet divided’ (ibid.:190). This is followed by Madhyama, the Intermediate stage. Here linguistic consciousness appears: ‘phonemes, words and sentences’ are present, and consequently also the division between ‘expressing’ and ‘expressed’ resulting from convention (saṃketa) that is proper to speech (ibid.:205). The last level is Vaikhari, the Corporeal: ‘that stage where differentiation is fully manifested, and which is linked with time since with it the process of language becomes fully manifest’ (ibid.:216).

  The different theories mentioned here about the creative power of Sanskritic sound have had long histories and are by no means defunct today. They are worth mentioning not only because they still have currency in some form, but also because they illustrate the rich history of articulate reflection about the sacred Word in Sanskritic Hinduism as well as some distinctive trends of Hindu tradition: the accommodative inclusivism of Sanskritization, and the tendency to see the production of being as a form of hierarchical manifestation from the subtle to the gross state, and its dissolution as a reverse of the process.

  In more general terms, the idea of sacred speech or the holy word as creative, or as inherently capable of revealing the transcendent Source of being (sometimes personified as the deity), is evident too at more popular levels of thought. It occurs, for example, in the religion of the Sants, poet-saints who popularized their views in vernacular compositions from the fifteenth century onwards in the northern half of the subcontinent. According to Sant teachings, the divine exists in the form of an eternal sound, śabd, śabad, or nād (from Sanskrit śabda, ‘sound, word’, and nāda ‘sound’), that has an intrinsic saving power which can be heard by advanced initiates; it also manifests through the poems of the Sants. This doctrine underlies the Hindi poems of Kabīr (whom we have met in Chapter 1), Surdas (ca. sixteenth century), and others.16

  Here is an extract from a poem attributed to Ravidās (fifteenth–sixteenth century), who came from an ‘Untouchable’ caste, but whose devotional piety was deeply revered by caste-Hindus (including Brahmins) and so-called Untouchables alike (we shall consider this latter group in Chapter 7). The poem celebrates the ‘Name’ (nām) of God as a symbol of the deity itself, and though it appears to be linked to the Vaiṣṇava tradition by reference to Hari or Kṛṣṇna, this link is really only a contingent one. The ‘Name’ here is meant to transcend sectarian connotations, and to refer to the intrinsic and pervasive saving power of this ‘sound-embodiment’ of the deity. The poem is not in Sanskrit, but in the vernacular Hindi of the time, which had strong historical links with Sanskrit. It allegorizes features of the act of worship to the temple-image of a deity performed by Hindus; but the message of the song is that the Name itself encapsulates all these elements, substituting for and hence displacing them in a salvific way.

  Your Name: the act of worship

  with the lifted lamp, Murari;

  without the Name of Hari all the universe is a lie.

  Your Name: the throne on which

  the deity sits, your Name the grinding stone,

  the saffron that is ground and daubed upon the gods.

  Your Name: the holy water,

  your Name the sandal for sandalwood paste.

  Grinding, chanting, I take that Name and offer it to you ...

  Your Name: the garland;

  your Name the string, the flowers.

  Beside them wither all the blossoms of the wilds.

  Your handiwork: the world!

  What could I offer more?

  I can only wave your Name like the whisk before the gods . . .

  But your Name, says Ravidās,

  is the lifting of the lamp.

  Your true Name, O Hari, your food.

  (Hawley & Juergensmeyer 1988:27)17

  So the Name is the embodiment and essence of true worship;it is reciting the Name that brings salvation, not the ritual per se.

  In the nineteenth century, in the context of foreign rule by both British and Muslim regimes in various parts of the subcontinent, the appropriation of Sanskrit by Hindus was meant to act as an effective maŖker of Hi
ndu identity in the nationalist build-up to self-rule.18 Thus when Bankim Chatterji (1838–94), who pioneered the writing of the Bengali novel, wished to fire the imagination of his compatriots in terms of an iconized ‘Motherland’ that had nationalist connotations, he composed a hymn largely in Sanskrit but mixed with Bengali, which he inserted into his famous novel, Ánandamaṭh.19 Because of the hymn's present and historical importance – the first two stanzas officially comprise India's National Song (though India also has a National Anthem) – I give it here in full in an English translation, indicating its Sanskrit and Bengali segments:

  1.

  I revere the Mother!

  The Mother

  Rich in waters, rich in fruit,

  Cooled by the southern airs,

  Verdant with the harvest fair. (Sanskrit)

  2.

  The Mother – with nights that thrill

  in the light of the moon,

  Radiant with foliage and flowers in bloom,

  Smiling sweetly, speaking gently,

  Giving joy and gifts in plenty. (Sanskrit)

  3.

  Powerless? How so, Mother,

  With the strength of voices fell, (Bengali)

  Seventy millions in their swell!

  And with sharpened swords

  By twice as many hands upheld! (Sanskrit)

  4.

  To the Mother I bow low,

  To her who wields so great a force,

  To her who saves,

  And drives away the hostile hordes! (Sanskrit)

  5.

  You our wisdom, you our law,

  You our heart, you our core, (Bengali)

  In our bodies the living force is thine! (Sanskrit)

  6.

  Mother, you're our strength of arm,

  And in our hearts the loving balm,

  Yours the form we shape in every shrine! (Bengali)

  7.

  For you are Durga, bearer of the ten-fold power,

  And wealth's Goddess, dallying on the lotus-flower,

  You are Speech, to you I bow,

  To us wisdom you endow. (Sanskrit)

  8.

  I bow to the Goddess Fair, Rich in waters, rich in fruit, To the Mother,

  Spotless – and beyond compare! (Sanskrit)

  9.

  I revere the Mother! the Mother

  DaŖkly green and also true,

  Richly dressed, of joyous face,

  This ever-plenteous land of grace. (Sanskrit)

  (Lipner 2005:145–6)20

  In fact, the opening words of the hymn, Vande mātaram, ‘I revere the Mother’, functioned as a mantra for Hindus in India's freedom movement in the first half of the twentieth century. It has not always been clear what was meant by ‘Mother’ (mātā) in this context. Some used the term in a non-religious sense to mean the Motherland that is India; others gave it geo-religious connotations, where ‘Mother’ referred either to the land as icon or to some kind of embodiment of the Goddess Durgā. ‘Mother’ here is understood even today in this ambiguous way. But the Sanskritic expression as a whole – Vande mātaram – has been used as a political rallying-cry, a religious watchword, an emotive key to unlock an untapped energy that results in the disciplined action of a patriot seeking the freedom and welfare of the ‘Mother and her ‘children’.

  In general, these are precisely some of the functions that a mantra is meant to exercise. It is a characteristic belief of religious Hindus that the power of the Sanskritic word is encapsulated in the mantra. This term has a disputed etymology, with a complex history, meaning and application (see Alper 1989). But in Hindu religion it is pervasive and of prime importance. ‘Mantra’ is often explained as deriving from a word meaning ‘to save’, e.g. tṛ, to pass over, and trai, to protect, rescue. Man has to do with the mind, so tersely the man-tra is a rescuing or protective mental device of some kind. To be effective it should have a Sanskritic sound (if not a Sanskritic meaning – many mantras are nonsense syllables) and be transmitted by the acts of uttering and hearing.

  In the time of the Vedic Samṃhitās, the verses and formulas of these Samṃhitās were called mantras. We have seen what effect they were believed to have through the enactment of the sacrificial ritual. When performed in the appropriate way, they were thought to release their inner power to produce the fruits of the ritual. As noted before, their elaborate articulation in the enactment of the solemn ritual, interspersed as they were with nonsense syllables, could make them virtually unintelligible to a bystander, but that did not deprive them of their power; making ready sense was not quite their point.

  A mantra often encountered throughout the Vedic Hindu tradition going back to ancient times, is the syllable Om (pronounced ‘Ohm’).21 It frequently occurs at the beginning and/or end of invocations and prayers. A whole, if short, upaniṣad, the Manāṇḍukya, is dedicated to its esoteric understanding. Here its constituent phonemes, a, u, and m – which combine in Sanskrit to produce the sound ‘O(h)m’ – are distinguished and valorized in relation to different levels of being and experience, as is the whole syllable's trans-aural, silent dimension. The Manāṇḍukya concludes by declaring, Doing the OM (i.e. interiorizing it by recitation and reflection) is (to be one with) the (underlying) Spirit itself. He who knows thus (i.e. the full import of Om) becomes one with the Spirit’. In short, if you experience Om in depth, you attain ultimate fulfillment; it has this innate capacity.22 A much longer mantra, also old and famous in Vedic Hinduism, is the Gāyatrī (also called Sāvitrī). It is a very auspicious mantra and is usually chanted, though it has been put to music for purposes of private or public devotion23:

  Om. Bhūr bhuvaṣ svaṣ.

  Tat savitur varenṇyam

  Bhargo devasya dhmahī

  Dhiyo yo naṣ pracodayāt.

  Om. Earth, atmosphere, heaven.

  Let us think on that desirable splendour

  of Savitṛ (the Inspirer). May he stimulate

  us to insightful thoughts.

  As the words indicate, this is used as a prayer for wisdom, and is often chanted or played at the beginning of cultural and other functions. The ancient ruling that it could be uttered only by upper-caste Hindus is now defunct. Indeed, one can buy colourful posters of Gāyatrī Devi, ‘the Goddess Gāyatrī’, depicted as a gorgeously dressed, beautiful young woman with five heads and ten hands bearing various objects, and seated on a full-blown lotus (which symbolizes wisdom/enlightenment) with her mantra inscribed below – an example of the modern democratization of the sacred Sanskritic word.

  The practice of transmitting Sanskritic utterance in the form of mantras as a kind of ‘time-bomb’ which releases its inner potency either gradually through a disciplined course of action or explosively by some sort of ecstatic liberative experience, spread throughout the Ancient Banyan, irrespective of whether the transmitting context was Vedic or not (Tantra has a flourishing culture of mantras).24 In general, it is believed that the teacher or guru ‘reveals’ to the disciple, usually by directly and secretly uttering it, a particular (Sanskritic) sound or string of sounds – the mantra – which unlocks power(s) in the recipient to live a particular form of life. As such the mantra, which is generally supposed to resonate with the being of its recipient, becomes, if its conditions are respected, a protective and enabling device.

  To show how pervasive the mystique of Sanskrit is among Hindus even today, let me conclude this topic with an anecdote about a friend of mine (‘L’) who had knowledge of Sanskrit and lived in an English city. He had befriended a middle-class, elderly Bengali couple. In time the husband died and his widow requested L to conduct her husband's funeral rites. L pointed out that he was not a Hindu priest. But this did not deter the widow and her family. ‘You will use Sanskrit during the ceremony, won't you?’ she asked. So as not to exacerbate the distress of the widow, my friend (somewhat reluctantly) conducted the ceremony, quoting various extracts from a Sanskrit text. This proved satisfactory to all concerned. The very use
of Sanskrit was deemed religiously effective to the bereaved.

  But there is more to the tale. About a week later L received a telephone call from a Hindu gentleman who was a complete stranger. The caller had heard what had happened, and made a similar request for L's services on behalf of another Hindu family who had recently been bereaved. Taken aback, L mentioned his formal lack of priestly credentials. He was assured that this would not be an objection, provided that there was a reading in Sanskrit during the ceremony. In this case, L felt obliged to decline the invitation. Reverence for the religious efficacy of Sanskritic sound has remained embedded in the psyche of very many Hindus from ancient times to the present day, a continuing maŖker, in our worlds of increasingly scribal aspirations, of Hinduism's oral/aural origins. In the next chapter, we shall continue our inquiry into the influence of the Veda as a symbol of religious authority.

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