The voice of scripture as Veda and ‘Veda’
Until the time when Buddhism and Jainism became a significant combined challenge to traditional Brahminic precept and practice (that is, until a couple of centuries before the beginning of the Common Era), the religion of Vedic ritual prevailed in Indo-Aryan society. Though the most elaborate sacrifices, being expensive affairs, could be sponsored only by relatively well-to-do men, in theory, most people could participate actively in Vedic society – in Vedic ritual and/or rites of passage, and in the reception of Vedic instruction. Even those who were particularly marginalized in this respect, the Śūdras, i.e. those who were not granted the religious privileges of a ritual, ‘second birth’, acknowledged the authority of the Vedas. There was hardly a viable alternative within the penumbra of Vedic dharma or right order, unless one wished to become an ascetic or outcaste of some sort. But there is textual evidence to suggest that, in these times, religiously even the position of the Sudra was flexible. There is a story to this effect in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 4.1.1ff., which we can recount as follows.
There was once a man of princely estate, Janasruti, who was both generous and pious. One night some wild geese were flying by his residence when one said to another, ‘Hey, you shortsighted fellow, Jānaśruti's light has spread like day! Don't go near it or it'll burn you up!’ (an allusion, perhaps, to flaming torches that were lighting up Jānaśruti's living space). The second goose said to the first, ‘Who's Jānaśruti? You talk like he was Raikva-of-the-horsedrawn-cart!’
‘Who's he?’ replied the first goose.
His friend answered that this Raikva was a spiritual winner if ever there was one. Just as in a game of dice the player with the highest throw wins all, so to Raikva accrued the merits of the good deeds of lesser mortals. In other words, Raikva's religious knowledge gave him a spiritual power that would bring palpable benefits in some later state (there was a dimension to Upaniṣadic knowledge that had strong pragmatic overtones). Now Jānaśruti overheard this conversation, and resolved to be taught by Raikva. So he sent a servant to find Raikva-of-the-horsedrawn-cart. Eventually, the servant found Raikva, a Brahmin, sitting under his customary shelter, a cart. (‘Just as the ancient Greek thinker, Diogenes, is reputed to have lived in some kind of tub, so, we are to assume, Raikva the holy man lived under a cart.) Raikva was scratching away at some itches. He may have been a spiritual winner, but he scratched like the rest of us (the Upaniṣads are not without a sense of humour).
The servant returned and reported Raikva's whereabouts to his master. Jānaśruti turned up with 600 cows, a splendid gold ornament and a mule-drawn cart (Raikva liked carts). Jānaśruti hoped that these gifts would induce Raikva to instruct him in the knowledge of the deity (‘devata) he worshipped.1
But Raikva would have none of it. A Brahmin himself, he dismissed Jānaśruti summarily: ‘Hey, Sudra, be off with your necklace and cart, not to mention the cows!’ Note that Raikva called Jānaśruti a ‘Sudra’, a member of the lowest caste, and he did so in a way that was hardly complimentary. Jānaśruti did not repudiate this name; he returned with a more generous gift, this time offering the sage the necklace and cart as before, but in addition a thousand cows, the revenue of a village in perpetuity, and his daughter for a wife. This offer was acceptable. The upaniṣad says that tilting up the girl's face, the pleased sage granted Jānaśruti's request, remarking, ‘There was no need of these other things, Sudra. You'll get to know me by means of this face alone!’ ‘Then, says the text, ‘he discoursed with him ...’.
Perhaps the palpable benefits of Raikva's knowledge had already begun to accrue! In any case, the Vedantin theologians who commented on this text centuries later, desirous of preserving the orthodoxies of their day, were reluctant to admit that the Upaniṣad endorsed the idea of a Brahmin revealing its secrets to a lowly Sudra. So, as theologians sometimes do, they resorted to exegetical sophistry, and tried to interpret ‘sudra’ not literally but metaphorically. But there is no call to do this. It seems clear that Raikva, who addresses Jānaśruti as ‘Sudra’ twice, the second time to accede to his request, is speaking matter-of-factly. In India there have always been Sudra men of importance like Jānaśruti;history even attests to Sudra rulers and dynasties. The point is that in spite of many examples to the contrary, Hinduism has always been susceptible, in its various forms, to a large dose of pragmatism and accommodation, and not infrequently this flexibility can be discerned from the texts themselves. So it is not unlikely that Jānaśruti, grandee that he was, really was a Sudra who could nevertheless have the rules bent in his favour. Indeed, the Upaniṣad seems to go so far as to indicate, by its suggestion that Raikva was smitten by his wife-to-be, that it was up to the Brahmin to determine the limits of this observance. We shall see in a later chapter how this flexibility could extend to altering the status of women too, notwithstanding the disadvantages of their sex in a male-dominated society.
This flexibility diminished, however, in some circles once the Buddhist challenge began to bite (ca. fourth century B.C.E.). Vedic religion, repudiated by the Buddhists, was put on the defensive. On the one hand, the citadel of Vedic orthodoxy, ruled now by the Brahmins as its undisputed champions, hardened its defences. The process of creating caste rules and regulations discriminating between various groups with reference to participation in Vedic ritual, which may have begun a century or two earlier, now became more legalistic, and resulted in the production of such uncompromising texts as the Manu Smṛti (ca. 200 B.C.E.). When ethnographers and social anthropologists today assert simplistically that caste did not exist till the British ruled India’, they tend to forget caste's longstanding and tenacious history in Hindu society. Modern caste cannot be fully understood without reference to these hoary roots. The ancient voice of authority relevant here, called the Dharma Sūtras and Dharma Śāstras, will be discussed in the next chapter.
On the other hand, since Hindu religion tolerates accommodation as we have seen, back doors to salvific wellbeing began to appear in the citadel of orthodoxy. The reader will have occasion to note on more than one occasion how religious Hinduism is unabashedly a religion of the back door; in fact, its vast, multi-storeyed edifice is peppered with back doors. Some of these accesses are tiny, opening esoterically in the course of history to allow a thin trickle of humanity through. Others are grander, busier affairs;the vagaries of circumstance have made some of these far more popular thoroughfares than the formal entrances of ancient orthodoxy. Indeed, regular use has, for all practical purposes, sometimes converted a back door into a front entrance. And repeatedly, though not always, presiding over each doorway as its guardian, has been the Brahmin. So it was with some of the back doors in the citadel of Hindu orthodoxy after the Buddha. These appeared in the guise of popular, Brahminized devotional, i.e. bhakti, cults which offered salvific passage, if not social equality, irrespective of one's eligibility to participate in Vedic ritual. As such, they gradually began to supplant the traditional yajña-oriented access to salvation on a popular basis.
This is not to say that the ritual use of the Vedas died out. Vedic rites of passage remain popular to the present day. Even the yajña-oriented religion, championed by the pūrva Mīmāṃsakas, remained in force, at least as a normative symbol, for many centuries, and was practised by a still religiously powerful upper-caste minority. Then there were the classical Vedantins, whose influence increased from the early centuries of the Common Era. For these thinkers the solemn ritual was not to be abandoned. Rather, it was to be practised in the light of the Vedantic insight, that is, as a means to the enlightening knowledge granted by the Upaniṣads. For both camps, the Veda was still the active, normative source of ultimate wellbeing.
But, as we shall discuss more fully later, there were still large sections of the population, e.g. women and Śūdras and other non-twice-born, viz. ritually impure, castes, who were generally denied direct access to the purifying, enlightening truths and practices of the Vedas, or who belonged t
o religious ways of life in which spiritual sustenance was de facto derived from scriptures other than the Vedas. For a great many of these people too, the Vedas played a crucial religious role. Let me explain how, and in doing so, we shall encounter another salient example of that distinctive modus operandi of Hinduism that I have called ‘polycentrism’.
It wasn't long before the practice developed whereby a text that was not the Veda was claimed to be the repository of saving or liberating knowledge in so far as it performed the function of substituting for the Veda or ‘re-collecting’ in some way essential Vedic content. This process seems to have begun when the canonical Veda was nearing completion. Thus the Mahābhārata (abbr. Mbh., ca. 400 B.C.E.–400 C.E.), one of Hinduism's two great epic compositions in Sanskrit, goes so far as to make itself equal to the Vedas. It is important to note that the wisdom of the Mbh., based as it was on sacred lore (smṛti) rather than on the esoteric ‘ hearing’ (śruti) that comprised the original Veda, was meant to be accessible to all, to men and to women, to high and low caste alike. We shall return to the content of the Mbh. later. But in 1.56.15 of the so-called critical edition, it says serenely of itself, ‘This work is on a par with the Vedas and is a supremely purifying means. This ancient lore, praised by the seers, is the best of tales worth listening to’. Here we are not being treated simply to hyperbole. Note the Vedic allusions in the declaration: the text is equal to the Vedas (vedaiṣ samitaṃ purāṇam); it is a purifying means (pavitra) when listened to (as in the case of the Veda);it was praised by the ṇṣis or Sages themselves (ṣisaṃstutam), who, in fact, had ‘heard’ the original Vedas. Indeed, on occasion, the Mbh. refers to itself as the ‘Fifth Veda’ (see, e.g., 1.57.74: ‘[Vyasa] taught the Vedas and the Mahābhārata as the fifth [Veda] to Sumantu’ and others).
A similar, appropriative move is made both implicitly and explicitly by the other great Sanskrit epic, the Rāmāyaṇa (ca. 300 B.C.E.–300 C.E.). Its central figure, king Rama, who in later strata of the work is regarded as a descent of God Visnu, is characterized as the champion of Vedic dharma and of the authority of the Vedas throughout. Indeed, he is the kingly symbol ofVedic authority, so that his life becomes a salient pattern of Vedic teaching. In a way, he is the Veda, its dharma, personified. But in explicit fashion, the Rāmāyaṇa claims, like the Mbh., to be equivalent to the Vedas. In 1.1.77, we have: ‘Whoever would recite this Life of Rama, which is a means of purification and destroys sin, and which is holy and equal to the Vedas, is freed from all sins’. Thus we have here two Sanskrit texts – popularly accessible through recitation, explanation and re-telling (about which more later) in a manner that the canonical Vedas were not – which claimed in some way to reprise the canonical Vedas.2
These texts were not meant to perform their Vedic function metaphorically, as, say, when we speak analogously of some culinary work being the ‘Bible’ of cooking, or some publication being a ‘Bible’ for those who wish to learn a particular skill or expertise. ‘Bible’ here is being used figuratively to indicate an authoritative source of knowledge for the acquisition of that expertise. In the case of the alternative Veda, however, it is being claimed that this source really does embody the saving teaching of the original, but in a different form, and in a manner that is authoritative and efficacious in so far as it recognizes and in some way appropriates or borrows the salvific role of the original Vedas. This is why it may claim to be the ‘fifth Veda’, or ‘equal to the Veda’, or something similar. In this way, the scriptural authority of the Vedas is shared by these texts, making it possible for them to legitimize as Vedic a religious experience or way of life that does not obviously spring from the former. We can exemplify this tendency of ‘Vedification’ further.
For this we turn to the still vigorous tradition of Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta. In his Love of God according to Śaiva Siddhānta (1971), Mariasusai Dhavamony writes: ‘The Śaiva Siddhānta recognises four categories of writings as belonging to its sacred canon: the Vedas, comprising both the Saṃhitās and the Upanishads, the twenty-eight Śaiva Āgamas, the twelve Tirumuai, and the fourteen Meykaṇṭa Śāstras’(1971:4). As for (a), the Vedas, we know something about them already; (b) the 28 Śaiva Āgamas are Tamil and Sanskrit texts, and for the most part give information about what is required for the Śaiva Siddhānta way of life (‘These writings are at present scattered all over south India in manuscript form’, Dhavamony 1971:117). Thus they instruct about the different modes of liberation in relation to Śiva as God, and the means to attain these; about the nature of Śiva as the divine reality and as the origin and end of all things; about one's relationship with Śiva in this life; about the rituals, etc. for his worship; and about the construction of temples and images. The oldest of the Āgamas can be dated to around the sixth century C.E.
(c) The 12 Tirumuai are devotional compositions in Tamil by a number of Śaiva poet-saints. They were compiled in the tenth century, although they contain material going back to a century or two B.C.E. They are sometimes referred to by their followers as the ‘Tamil Veda’, a clear attempt to legitimize their contents as orthodox (cf. the epics) as a kind of alternative to or extension of the traditional Veda. Finally, (d) the 14 Meykaṇṭa Śāstras are Tamil theological works (ranging in date from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries) by six teachers from within the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition.
Though we note the Vedic aspirations of the Tirumuai above, let us turn more specifically to the relationship posited between the Vedas and the Agamas in the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition. On the one hand, the Āgamas contain a number of remarks which indicate that the religion of the Vedas is either to be rejected in favour of or to be supplanted by whole-hearted devotion to Śiva as prescribed in the Śaiva Siddhānta. On the other hand, this repudiation is balanced by the claim that the recommended devotion sums up the import of the Vedas and brings out their true meaning. A detailed analysis of how this is achieved is not given us, yet Śaiva Siddhantins have always found it important to make this claim. Thus Dhavamony quotes Tirumūlar, one of the contributors to the Tirumuai, as saying:
The Vedas and the Āgamas are both true and both are the word of God. The first is a general treatise and the second a special one. When examined, and where difference is perceived by some between the Vedānta and the Siddhānta, the wise will perceive no such difference.
(1971:4)
Here the Āgamas are seen as a form of special ‘revelation’, elucidating the meaning of the Vedas. They are an alternative Veda, if not a substitutive one. Once more, another ‘Veda’ has been identified by virtue of its esoteric yet continuing relationship with the original Veda. A similar strategy was followed in another Hindu tradition, that of the Śri Vaiṣṇavas of the south. F. Hardy has shown, in his essay ’The Tamil Veda of a Sudra Saint’ (in Krishna 1979), how devotional Tamil songs of Caṭakōpa, better known as Nammāvār (seventh to eighth century C.E.), one of the founding figures of the southern Vaishnava bhakti or devotional movement of the time, were adopted by Śri Vaiṣṇavas as the ‘Tamil Veda’. Nammāvār is said to have been a Sudra. From beginnings in which these works were regarded as elucidating and then summarizing for all, high and low caste alike, the teaching of the otherwise forbidding and obscure śruti or canonical Veda, Hardy traces how the'Tamil Veda'was regarded as consummating, and for some even supplanting, the original Veda.
The Tantric tradition too, generally regarded as originating outside the Vedic pale, could employ the same device to authenticate’ itself as it fell increasingly under Brahmin sway. This time we turn to Kunal Chakrabarti's Religious Process:The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (2001). Here he considers early and medieval Sanskrit Purāṇas of the Bengal area and their attempts to draw non-Aryan Tantric practices into the Vedic fold during the process of the region's ‘Brāhmiṇization’. Though he says that ‘There is no direct continuity from the Vedas to the Tantras’ (p.188), he points out how in the Mahābhāgavata Purāna, no doubt by dint of tendentious Brahmin editing
, the Goddess declares, ‘The Agama [here the Tantras] and the Veda are my two arms with which I sustain the whole universe ... If, out of ignorance, one violates either of these two, he is sure to slip away from my hands ... Both the Vedas and the Āgamas lead to welfare ... Wise people should practise dharma by accepting these two as identical’ (p.189). He gives other examples where relations of equivalence are posited between Veda and Tantra. ‘The Kulārṇavatantra claims that the Tantras are the essence of the Vedas which were churned out from the Vedic ocean byŚiva with the stick of his intuitive wisdom ... In the Niruttaratantra, the Tantras have simply been described as the fifth Veda (p.188), while in the Bṛhaddharma Purāṇa, ‘The goddess tells Śiva that he is the presiding deity of the Āgamas and [that] Hari [= Viṣṇu] is the presiding deity of the Vedas. But Śiva was appointed first and Hari later’(p.189).
Chakrabarti argues that these are transparent attempts to muffle sectarian rivalries between traditions that started out without a clear associative history, to strengthen the affiliation between these traditions, and to ‘smother the boundaries of their individual identities’ (p.190). This may be so, but we are interested in the strategy employed to accomplish these goals. And the strategy employed is to ‘convert’ the Tantras into alternative or substitutive Vedas in some way. We need not give further examples. Enough has been done, I think, to show that this modus operandi was widespread, both as to time and place, within the parameters of the Ancient Banyan, and it demonstrates yet another expression of what I have called ‘polycentrism’. For by its terms of reference a nexus or grid of centres of (alleged) Vedic authority, incorporating the original Veda, has been set up in such a manner that the new centre(s) exercise(s) the function of scriptural efficacy only in so far as it/they co-exist(s) in interactive relationship with the original Veda. The salvific potency represented by the canonical Veda is dispersed by replication. Elsewhere (Lipner in Mittal & Thursby 2004:27), I have described the dynamics of this relationship as follows:
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