Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices)
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Because of this dynamic, one can be said to ‘participate in’ the subtle principle of dharma through the manifest centres by which one is dharmically active;one cannot encapsulate or ‘control’ dharma from what is necessarily a limited perspective or hold on dharma. Salient Hindu texts speak about the subtle, hidden nature of dharma, which manifests in this relative and interactive way. In the first edition of this book, published in 1994, I devoted much of a chapter (Chapter 8) to analysing this feature in narrative context. We shall return to this discussion later in this book too. But here I wish to adduce important scholarly support for my analysis of dharma as polycentric, by referring to an article written by the well-known Sanskritist, Minoru Hara; this was published in 1997 and entitled, ‘A Note on Dharmasya Sūkṣmā Gatiṣ (which may be translated as, ‘The Subtle Unfolding of Dharma’). In this article, Hara analyses the ‘subtlety of dharma’ (dharma-sūkṣmatva) with reference to the Mahābhārata. The burden of Hara's thesis is to show through textual analysis that ‘the course, or unfolding process (gati) of dharma is too subtle (suksma) to be judged solely by human reason (Hara in Franco & Preisendanz (eds.) 1997:515). At the end of his essay, Hara quotes an extract from the Mbh. in which Karna, an important character in the story, makes a despairing comment (Mbh.8.66.43). Hara translates as follows:
Unable to endure all those calamities, [Karṇa] waved about his arms and began to rail [against dharma], saying, Those who are conversant with dharma always say that dharma protects those that are righteous. Yet, now it has declined [or perhaps, ‘waned’] even for me. It does not protect its devotees (bhaktān). It seems to me that dharma does not always protect’.
(ibid.:529)
Whether Karṇa's criticism can be justified is a separate issue. I wish to focus on the term bhaktān’, indicated as somewhat problematic for the translator in that it is the only Sanskrit word (other than ‘dharma’) that Hara places in brackets after his translation. Indeed, ‘bhakta is frequently translated as ‘devotee’, but the term derives from the verb bhaj, whose root-meaning has to do with ‘distributing’, ‘allotting’, ‘sharing with’, ‘taking part in’. So the sentence in which ‘bhaktan’ appears has the underlying sense of ‘[Dharma] does not protect those who share/participate in it’. This accords with our own analysis of dharma as polycentric, as a subtle, hidden defining force which manifests in particular but interactive centres of meaning and implementation.17 In both the prescriptive and descriptive senses, every manifestation of dharma is relative to every other, each deriving fuller significance only in so far as it is an active part of a larger (unmanifest) whole;in other words, by manifesting empirically, dharma demonstrates its polycentric nature.
We are now in a position to gain an insight into the use of an important modern expression, sometimes – but by no means always – adduced in right-of-centre Hindu political discourse. This is the expression, Sanātana dharma or ‘Eternal Dharma’. We find an early political, viz. anti-colonial rather than right-wing, usage of this expression in Bankim Chatterji's famous Bengali novel, Ānandamaṭh (1882), which played an important role in the early phases of India's nationalist movement. At the end of the story, the mysterious and visionary Healer speaks as follows to the ascetic Satyānanda, leader of the group of warrior-monks who have fought a great battle to oust the foreigner from their land:
To worship three hundred and thirty million gods is not Sanātana dharma. That's a worldly, inferior dharma. Through its influence the real Sanātana Dharma – what the foreigners call Hindu dharma – has been lost. The true Hindu dharma is based on knowledge, not on action. And this knowledge is of two kinds – outward and inward. The inward knowledge is the chief part of sanātana dharma, but unless the outward knowledge arises first, the inward cannot arise. Unless one knows the gross, one cannot know the subtle.
For a long time now, the outward knowledge has been lost in this land, and so the true Sanātana dharma has been lost too. If one wishes to reinstate sanātana dharma, one must make known the outward knowledge first ... [W]hen our people are well-instructed about external things, they'll be ready to understand the inner. Then no longer will there be any obstacles to spreading Sanātana dharma, and the true dharma will shine forth by itself again.
(see Lipner2005:229)18
The Eternal (Sanātana) Dharma in this passage is a mysterious, subtle principle, consisting of spiritual (‘inward’) knowledge that has been obscured by the ‘outward’ knowledge of empirical experience (note the description of this inward knowledge as'subtle’ at the end of the first paragraph). But expertise in the outward knowledge is the means to access the inward knowledge, so the two are connected. (How this connection is activated depends on living a particular kind of life of selfless action as taught in the Bhagavad Gītā, a form of life Bankim goes on to portray in his next novel, Debī Chaudhurāṇī.) I am not concerned here with whether this conception of Sanātana dharma is true;I am concerned rather with what Bankim understands it to be. And, as described by Bankim in this passage, Sanātana dharma is an unmanifest (‘lost to view’), subtle knowledge-principle that is expressed through the portals of individual empirical experience. In theory, this matches our own analysis of dharma as a hidden, subtle, principle manifesting through discrete but interactive centres of empirical implementation rather well. This polycentric conception of dharma, then, has stood the test of time in Hinduism.
This does not mean that all usage of the expression ‘sanātana dharma’ in modern times follows this traditional conception. As Klaus Klostermaier says, it is ‘the most common description which Hindus give to their religion’ (Klostermaier 1989:31), so one must expect a wide range of interpretations of it. Nevertheless, as’’ sanatana-dharma became increasingly important as a programmatic expression of traditionalist self-assertion ... this “eternalness” ... [was] simultaneously an all-encompassing universality and inclusivity which in itself essentially anticipates all innovations: the sanatana-dharma is at the same time an “all-encompassing”, “inclusive” (sarvavyapaka) dharma’ (Halbfass 1988:343). Any impression here of a ‘static essence’ to this dharma is deceptive. Whilst it may be unchanging as a principle, its universality and all-inclusive character is intended to manifest itself empirically in social, moral and religious innovation. Arising out of a longstanding conception of dharma, it is an ever-ready means to accommodate change in traditional terms. This is why it has become such a popular expression.
We shall keep returning to dharma in one context or other throughout this book, but for the time being let us leave the matter here. In the next chapter we shall continue our inquiry into caste, but this time as jāti.
7
The voice of tradition: caste and its realities
We have already considered the notion of caste as varṇa. Now it is time to examine the concept of caste as jāti or ‘actual birth-group’. Caste, as the hierarchy of varṇa, provides the historical and idealistic backdrop to caste as jāti. The varṇasrama system – and the dharma it inculcated – was an idealized construct, an expression of the Hindu passion for order. But in real life, things didn't quite follow the ideal. Real life was a little more chaotic, the ‘fit’ between the ideal and the actual often being far from exact, depending on circumstances. We have a number of clues in the dharma texts themselves, as also in other sources, that in real life the ideal was being challenged. Before we expatiate, then, on caste as jāti, which includes the way caste deviates from the ideal in everyday life today, we must look first at the textual backdrop.
One source of the challenge to the varṇa-construct was unapproved sexual union, or at least sexual union that was not recommended as ideal by the Law Codes. The ideal union recommended for wedlock was between heterosexual partners of the same varṇa status; the less ideal union was between (heterosexual) members of different varṇa status, when, as we shall see presently, ‘mixed castes’ occurred. The first kind of union was a fully dharmic one. However, when partners who were from different var
ṇas produced children, what was known technically as varṇa-saṃkara or ‘caste-mixing’ occurred. This could happen licitly, viz. in accordance with dharmic Codes, e.g. through marriage, or illicitly, e.g. through adultery (the expression varṇa-samkara was also used loosely to apply to disparate unions between mixed-castes themselves). In general, such unions and their offspring were not encouraged in the Codes, the extent of disapproval shown being proportionate to the degree of caste disparity perceived to exist between the partners. When a man cohabited with a woman of a lower caste, the union was described as anuloma, i.e. ‘with the sweep of the hair’; when the woman belonged to the higher caste, the union was pratiloma or ‘against the sweep of the hair’ (equivalent to the English expression, ‘against the grain’), and as such, was more reprehensible. In a permitted anuloma union, the offspring of a Brahmin man and a Kṣatriya woman, say, had higher caste (and purity) status than the child of a Brahmin man and a Vaiśya or Śūdra woman. In pratiloma unions, some of which seem to have been grudgingly allowed, the reverse occurred: the higher the caste-status of the woman, the more base-born the child. Thus the Caṇḍāla, the son of a Śīdra father and Brahmin mother, was a byword for degradation.
A number of the Law Codes, especially the Dharma Śastras, take great pains to describe and name the offspring of various combinations of inter-caste unions. In accordance with the pratiloma rule mentioned above, many of these mixed castes were regarded as so impure ritually that their presence or touch, or food taken from their hands or vessels, was supposed to pollute drastically a member of a twice-born varṇa, and as such were anathema. This is the background to the modern phenomenon of Untouchability. Why this condemnation? We get an insight from a passage in the Bhagavad Gītā, a text we have already singled out as of great importance for Hinduism in a number of ways in its 2000-year history. The context is a great battle that is about to take place – a likely occasion for social and religious disorder (adharma). The warrior, Arjuna, is reluctant to fight against his friends and relatives whom he sees arrayed against him, and cites varṇa-samkara as one of the reasons for the undesirability of war.
When a family is destroyed [through war, etc.], the eternal rules [governing its welfare: dharmāṣ sanātanāṣ] are destroyed. When this happens, lawlessness (adharma) rules the whole family, and by this, Krishna, the women of the family are corrupted. When the women are corrupted, the mixing of castes (varṇa-samkara) takes place. Such mixing leads to hell for the family and its destroyers. Their forefathers fall, deprived of their libations and food offerings.
(1.40–2)
The social order, the very stability of society, reaching into the invisible but ever-present world of the forefathers and (by implication) encompassing future generations as well, is threatened, for the family is the heart of society. Varṇa-samkara was bad because it wrecked lineal succession which in turn left one's forefathers, bereft of their post-mortem rites, uncared for. This was undesirable, for as unassuaged ghosts (or pretas) they might take revenge on their living descendants. Keep in mind too that today's earthling is tomorrow's ancestor; one didn't wish to be left hanging at a loose end, so to speak, when one's own turn came. Even today, in most Hindu minds, it remains important to perform traditional rites for one's dead. The reasons for this are religious, social and, not least, psychological. And since dharmic offspring are required for the performance of funeral and ancestral rites, even today there remains generally a bias against marriage outside certain caste boundaries.
But Arjuna's lament provides a clue to a deeper reason for the Law Codes’ condemnation of varṇa-samkara. It seems that such unions, by challenging the stability of the varṇa-ideal, with the Brahmins at the top, threatened the Vedic dharma that was based on this. Vedic dharma was supposed to bestow order, to define the world and its human actors, in such a way that everything had its proper place relative to everything else so that determinate interaction could occur under the supervisory control of the Brahmins; then the Vedic way of life would remain intact. It was calamitous to upset this scheme of things.
In the context of the Codes’ description of varṇa-samṃkara, it is important to note two things: first, the despised castes that resulted from this mixing were attributed with undesirable physical and moral characteristics simply by virtue of their ‘base’ birth (e.g. ‘From a Kṣatriya (who mates) with the daughter of a Śūdra is born a being called an “Ugra” (jantur ugro nama prajayate), who is like a Kṣatriya-Śūdra in nature and who delights in savage behaviour’, Manu 10.9). Particular occupations were also enjoined on or associated with them; thus, according to Manu (10.49), the Ugra was to live by catching and killing creatures that lived in holes. The naturalistic character of caste comes to the fore in all this. Caste thus had both prescriptive and congenital attributes, and this was ingrained in the Hindu mentality from ancient times. It is essential to grasp this in order to appreciate what it could mean for someone to try to reform, repudiate or abolish caste either in their personal life or in general, and how much courage may have been required in certain circumstances to do this. Second, ‘casteing’ a child was largely a patrilineal affair; it was the father's caste status that mattered more. In the texts the woman is often referred to as ‘the field’ (kṣetra) in which the man sows the seed. This idea is contained in the quotation from the Gītā given above. Behind the political field of battle lurks the socio-biological field that is the woman; as a passive victim of potential male violation, she is ‘corrupted’ when she is the recipient of wayward seed. No doubt the condition of the field deserved consideration, but the value of the crop depended mainly on the status of the seed (‘The seed is to be preferred’: bījaṃ praśasyate, Manu 10.72). This patriarchal determinant of caste status is given widespread credence up to the present day.
The elaborate effort that the Codes made first to classify and then to disapprove of varṇa-samkara indicates not only that the varṇa ideal was under fire, but also that caste intermingling was happening all the time. The Codes’ treatment of varṇa-samṃkara can be regarded as an exercise in damage limitation. It offered a pattern for perceiving and evaluating varṇa-samkara; the extent of the ‘match’ between this pattern and what was happening on the ground can only be a matter for speculation.
In upper-caste, not least Brahmin, circles, there was another challenge to the varṇa ideal as a determinant of one's status at birth. This was the view, internal to authoritative smṛti texts, that it was the quality of one's behaviour that determined one's true standing in the community, not congenital caste-status. It may well have gained strength in orthodox circles as a response to the Buddhist challenge to caste, for the early Buddhists tended to interpret varṇa on behavioural rather than on naturalistic or hereditary grounds.
There is early and classic evidence of this behavioural view in a story of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (4.4.1–5). The youth, Satyakama (‘Truth-lover’), wished to study the Veda as a brahmacarin. He asked his mother, Jabālā, for details of his lineage so that a teacher could duly accept him. Jabālā makes a confession: ‘I don't know your clan (gotra), my dear. When I was young I moved about a great deal as a maidservant, and so had you. So I don't know your clan. But my name's Jabālā, and your name is Satyakama, so say that you are Satyakama Jabālā’.
So Satyakama goes to the teacher Gautama and asks to be received as his pupil. Gautama questions him about his lineage (Vedic lore must not be imparted to the unworthy). Satyakama says that he does not know, repeating his mother's words in full. Then Gautama replies, ‘A non-Brahmin couldn't speak like this. Bring the fuel, my son, I'll take you on; you have not departed from the truth’. For Gautama, Satyakama's truth-telling behaviour was criterion enough for his worthiness. Thus has religious Hinduism been able to rise above a sterile orthodoxy.
This view that one's worth as a person and/or one's caste standing is, or ought to be, a consequence of one's character rather than of birth runs as an undercurrent throughout the history of Hinduis
m. Even Manu, apparently so uncompromisingly in favour of the hereditary principle, allows a glimpse or two of it. In 2.157 it declares that a Brahmin unschooled in the Veda (anadhiyana) is a Brahmin in name only, just as an elephant made of wood or a leather-deer are not the real thing. Similarly, the Law Code of Baudhāyana declares: ‘The offence of insulting a Brahmin cannot be incurred against the [Brahmin] fool ignorant of the Veda. One does not pass by a blazing fire [a real Brahmin] to make an offering in ashes [a sham one]!’ (see 1.5.10.27 in the SBE edition). Other authoritative works of smṛti make the same point. Killingley quotes two verses from the Mbh. ‘Truth, generosity, patience, good conduct, harmlessness, tapas [austerity], compassion: where this is found, that man is said to be a brahmin’ (3.180.21);‘Not birth, not initiation, not Veda-knowledge, not even lineage cause a person to be twice-born; the only cause is behaviour’ (13.143.50; 1991:12). In other words, one's hereditary status as a Brahmin is of value only if it is backed up by one's attempt to attain the appropriate virtues, otherwise it is worthless: this aspect of dharma is explored particularly in places in the Mahabharata. The Mbh. is a sort of consequential laboratory for discussion about caste-dharma and the fluidity of its boundaries.1 The increasingly popular bhakti traditions, beginning with the concession of the Gītā in 9.32 to grant even the ‘base-born’ (pāpa-yonayaṣ) who take refuge in Kṛṣṇa, access to the highest way (parāṃ gatim), lent support to the view that status conferred by caste at birth should not be determinative of one's salvific prospects.