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

by Julius Lipner

  Finally, a further example of smṛti belonging to the little tradition is the Magal narratives of Bengal. This is a type of religious epic narrative in Bengali verse based on reworked folklore. Magal narrative celebrates popular, local deities and/or their devotees, though not exclusively, and ‘were generally composed ... for semi-musical and semi-dramatic performance by professional singers called gāyak or magal gāyakk’ (W.L. Smith 1976:2). There are Mangals in honour of the goddesses Manasā (who is associated particularly with snakes), Caṇḍī (who is identified with the great Goddess Durgā), Sītālā (who is associated with smallpox and other diseases), the god Dakṣiṇ Rāy (who protects from tigers), and so on. We shall comment on the theology underlying worship of these deities in the final chapter of this book. For now we note that:

  While the [Magalstories] were – and still are – enjoyed by the common people, they were produced by (and to a certain extent for) those of the upper classes who could only accept these new deities once they and their myths had been reworked and brought into harmony with orthodoxy.

  (W.L. Smith 1976:1)

  Thus the Magals have been more or less Sanskritized or rendered Brahminically orthodox. It is generally impossible to identify source myths or stories, since in the way of the transmission of oral narrative, each Magal has come down to us with a number of variants, though common elements of a story can be discerned. As an example, we shall give an outline of some of the main elements of the Manasā Magal, the oldest of the magal poems ...[which] assumed the form we now have it in by the end of the fifteenth century’ (W.L. Smith 1976:17).

  Śiva's seed trickles to the underworld and gives birth to Manasā, who is made queen of the nāgas, serpentine beings and hence prototypes or representatives of snakes, though Manasā herself is always depicted in human form. She introduces her cult to cowherds and fisherfolk. But to make her cult universal,Śiva tells her, she must win the worship of Cāndo, a spice merchant. Sonakā, Cāndo's wife, is won over, but not Cāndo. In fact, most of the story tells of the running conflict between Cāndo and Manasā, she trying every device to make him worship her, he stead fastly refusing. Manasā, having destroyed Cāndo's fortunes, eventually kills Cāndo'ssix sons and threatens that she will kill Lakhāi, the seventh, on his wedding night. Lakhāi is to be married to the resourceful Behulā. Cāndo builds an iron chamber to protect the couple on their wedding night, but Manasā carries out her threat. One of her snakes more or less inadvertently kills Lakhāi.

  Next follows an account of how the faithful Behulā accompanies the corpse of her husband on a long journey to the dwelling of the gods to ask for his life to be restored. After many adventures, she reaches her destination and pleases Śiva by her dancing. He grants her a boon that results in the summoning of Manasā and the restoration not only of Cāndo's fortunes but also of all his sons to life. Thus Śiva is vindicated as a figure of the Brahminic pantheon. For his part, Cāndo acknowledges Manasā, and finally Manasā, Behulā and Lakhāi depart to the heavenly realm. It is noteworthy that ‘Brāhmaṇs play no role in the myth except as propagandist window dressing’ (W.L. Smith 1976:64). Nevertheless, the Manasā Magal seems to be at a more advanced stage of Sanskritization than the epic of Pābūjī, and consequently as a form of smṛti it is more integrated with the great tradition. For many worshippers of Manasā, she is a manifestation of one aspect of Devi, the source Goddess. Not only do these narratives provide explanations and insights into human relationships that obtain during the cycle of rural life against a backdrop of the sanction of heavenly powers, they also offer implicitly coping strategies in a religious context for the numerous travails of village existence. We shall return to such ‘pragmatic’ deities in the last chapter. For the time being, let us move on now to our concluding discussion about the nature of smṛti as sacred, guiding text.

  9

  The voice of tradition: folklore and the intellectual heritage

  Purāṇa

  The next category in our division of smṛti is ‘Purāṇa, which means ‘something old’ or ‘ancient’. Here the word refers to a textual, i.e. oral or written repository of myth, folklore and other knowledge. In fact, ‘Purāṇa’ refers primarily to members of a group of mainly Sanskrit texts, traditionally 18 in number, although as is often the case in Hinduism, the candidates contending for inclusion in the collection are more numerous than the number sanctioned by tradition. There are also supposed to be 18 ‘Upa-Purāṇas’ or sub-Purāṇas – no doubt, this is a way of accommodating the overflow – though the lists of the two collections can vary and it is not always clear on what grounds particular lists differ. There is a fluidity in such matters in Hindu tradition which is typical; preference for candidates in such lists is expressed according to the dictates of the religious tradition or region in which one finds oneself.

  Nevertheless, the drawing up of a Purāṇa list is not wholly arbitrary. Most of the names are fixed in most traditions. Wendy O'Flaherty (1988:5) gives the following list and dates, prefaced by a cautionary remark:

  [T]he unruly Purāṇas can be corralled into rough groups which can be ranged in chronological relationship to one another. All these dates are A.D.;and all of them are based upon the often misguided conjectures of scholars. I have arranged them alphabetically to augment the false semblance of scientific efficiency.

  The list of Purāṇas (well above 18) is then given in alphabetical order, with putative dates C.E. for the bulk of the material in each Purāṇa: Agni: 850, Bhāgavata: 950, Bhaviṣya:500–1200, Brahmā: 900–1350, Brāhmaṇḍa: 350–950, Brahmāvaivarta:750–1550, Bṛhaddharma: 1250, Bṛhannāradīya:750–900,Devī:550–650,Devībhāgavata:850–1350, Garuḍa:900, Harivaṃīa: 450, Kālikā: 1350, Kalki: 1500–1700, Kūrma: 550–850, Liga:600–1000, Mahābhāgavata: 1100, Mārkaṇḍeya: 250, Matsya: 250–500, Narasiṃha: 400–500, Padma: 750, Sāmba: 500–800, Saura: 950–1150, Śiva: 750–1350, Skanda:700–1150, Vāmana: 450–900, Varāha: 750, Vāyu: 350, and Viṣṇu: 450.1 From this list we see that the traditional Sanskrit Purāṇas range from those compiled in about the third to fourth centuries C.E. (among which the Mārkaṇḍeya, Matsya and Vāyu seem to have the oldest material) to those edited a few centuries ago, namely the Brahmāvaivarta and Kalki.

  The Purāṇas are compilations of different kinds of material which has usually been several centuries in the making. The versions that have come down to us are not necessarily the original forms of this material, most of which had oral beginnings. The Purāṇas are almost entirely in verse, the standard metre being the same as that of the epics: the śloka. The term ‘Purāṇa’ itself is ancient. The Atharva Veda Saṃhitā mentions Purāṇa as part of a list of oral texts (11.7.24). There are references also in the classical Upaniṣads. For example, in Chāndogya Up. 7.1.2, when recounting his learning, Nārada says that he is conversant with ‘epic and Purāṇa’ among other things (so he differentiates between the two). In Bṛhadāraṇyaka Up. 2.4.10, epic and Purāṇa are included with the four Vedas and the Upaniṣads in a list of different kinds of knowledge (see also 4.5.11). I think we can have a good idea of what ‘Purāṇa means in these references. First, the term seems to signify a distinctive kind of composition (though we cannot be sure of its content);second, from the term's regular linkage with ‘itihāsa (‘epic’), we may conclude that itihāsa and Purāṇa refer to two genres of composition which had at least literary similarity, e.g. both kinds had to do with narrative composed in verse. This linkage may well be grounds for assuming that like the epics, the Purāṇas originally reflected mainly Kṣatriya concerns, though, no doubt, again like the epics, they were edited by Brahmins. Certainly the Purāṇas as we have them today contain much material which may be regarded as stemming from Kṣatriya interests, though there is little doubt that Brahmins had the last word in their redaction (see Brockington 1987).

  As a genre of composition, Purāṇas are characteristically supposed to treat of five topics (the so-called pañca-lakṣaṇa or five defining mark
s of Purāṇic subject matter). These are (i) the production of being or ‘creation’ (sarga); (ii) the latter's dissolution (pralaya) and re-formation (prati-sarga); (iii) genealogies of the celestials or ‘gods’, sages, and other ancestral beings (vaṃīa); (iv) the ages of the different human ancestors (manvantaras); and (v) the history of the lunar and solar dynasties of kings (vaṃīānucarita).2 The problem is not so much that most of present Purāṇic material does not fit neatly into this five-mark criterion as that it contains so much else besides, although one reason for dating the Brāhmāṇḍa, Matsya, Vāyu and Viṣṇu Purāṇas among the oldest is that their contents can be seen to conform most to the five-mark test.

  But in general the Purāṇas are highly accommodating texts, striving for a certain kind of capaciousness. Let us give an example of a Purāṇa situated close to the comprehensive end of this spectrum. The Agni Purāṇa gives the impression that there is very little it is not interested in. It treats of avatāras of Viṣṇu;summarizes the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata; recounts incidents from the divine childhood of Kṛṣṇa; describes innumerable vows, rites, rituals and forms of worship directed at various deities including the Goddess; discusses different aspects of dharma and how merit is to be gained; lists different kinds of images for worship and their chief characteristics (not to mention details about their pedestals), and describes their modes of installation and consecration; advises on how a city is to be established; comments on the sanctity of certain cities and rivers (e.g. Benares and the Ganges);makes remarks on the topography of India, indeed on the topography of the world; gives instruction on how to cast spells (e.g. to bring about an enemy's death), on how to atone for wrong done, and on the various forms of marriage; describes the characteristics of different kinds of women, gems, diseases, snakes; holds forth on the art of warfare on horseback, on healing (including the cure for dysentery in infants, and the diseases to which elephants and horses are prone), dancing, rhetoric, diplomacy, and the divination of dreams ... It also treats of the five topics supposed to distinguish Purāṇic texts as well as numerous matters not mentioned above.

  The Purāṇas often have this encompassing quality, though perhaps not always with the panache of the Agni Purāṇa. Collectively, they are a veritable repository of the accumulated wisdom of the past, not least of a great many myths and stories. The Purāṇas are‘knowledge stored up’ – smṛta – so that the past may be gathered up and pondered upon. Although much of this knowledge, especially its technological features (e.g. the making and use of weapons and medicines) may be regarded today as outmoded or just misguided, it provides an interesting historical record, and there are aspects of Purāṇic content that still give guidelines for life and thought, not least in religion. Olson notes:

  The mythical themes depicted on temples, expressed in music and song, and depicted in divine images, as well as devotional practices that reflect deep sensual and emotional feelings are all reflected in a type of literature [the Purāṇas] that became paramount for devotional Hinduism.

  (2007:140–1)

  We can now appreciate more fully why so many Purāṇas were crammed with such wide-ranging data. They became convenient repositories for information that their compilers, the Brahmins, deemed useful for the welfare of society and their own guiding role in it. Whilst it is the case that by means of Brahmin redaction, the Purāṇas propagate Brahmin norms and values – they generally uphold the varṇa hierarchy and Brahmin codes of dharma, for instance – they were also useful for introducing into the ‘Hindu’ body politic material that did not stem directly from traditional Vedic beliefs and practices; they were a ‘back door’ in the bastion of accredited Hinduism, or – to change the metaphor – new trunks under the proliferating canopy of the Ancient Banyan for broadening the concepts of orthodoxy and authoritativeness. As in the case of the epics, the Purāṇas, either collectively or in some cases individually, were also known as the ‘fifth Veda’, in so far as they claimed to contain knowledge that mediated and disseminated in more accessible manner the soteriology of the four canonical Vedas.

  We get numerous clues about the way various accommodations of traditional norms were made, how material extraneous to early Vedic belief and practice was incorporated, and how, in some cases, exceptions could prove the rule, from the Purāṇas and the epics. Here are some examples. We would expect the archery teacher of the five Pāṇḍava boys and their Kaurava cousins to be a Kṣatriya; surely such expertise was the preserve of the warrior caste. The Mahābhārata assures us, however, without apology, that it was Droṇa the Brahmin who was the youths’ guru in this skill. This may have been an exception to the rule but it indicates that exceptions could be made and sometimes didn't raise too many eyebrows. Further, we can assume that what the Purāṇas say about the healing of diseases, the making of sacred images, the use of arms on horseback and so on, refers originally to activities which in general were the domain of groups or castes outside the Brahmin community. The Purāṇas also say a great deal about religious ways of life that were not part of the traditional Vedic sacrificial cult and which, as we have noted, were becoming increasingly popular from about the beginning of the Common Era. These religious beliefs and practices incorporated pilgrimages and visits to holy sites and rivers, temples and shrines, the enacting of vows of various kinds, and the worship of images.

  The worship of the Goddess was an important feature of this kind of religion, and some Purāṇas not only record it in considerable detail but allow us to trace how these particular religious modes of life, originally extraneous to Vedic religion, were ‘Brahminized’ and brought into the Vedic pale. We can follow how this occurred from Kunal Chakrabarti's work, Religious Process: The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (2001) (referred to in Chapter 4), with reference to the region of greater Bengal (eastern India). In his comprehensive analysis, Chakrabarti shows how from about the sixth century C.E. local, largely non-Vedic traditions of the region, incorporating Goddess-worship and the enactment of vows, which had come heavily under the influence of Buddhist Tantra, underwent a process of Brahmin hegemony. The process started after a gradual dispersal of Brahmins, themselves a heterogeneous group, into the area. These Brahmins received state patronage in the various kingdoms of the region to disseminate their codes of conduct under the banner of varṇa-dharma, irrespective of the religious complexion of the rulers concerned. The prime indicators for the deployment of the Brahmins’ assimilative technique were the so-called Bengal Purāṇas (they were called ‘Purāṇas because they mimicked the style and approach, if not always the content, of the ‘standard’ Purāṇas). These included a number of Purāṇas on our list, of which the Devī, Mahābhāgavata, Bṛhaddharma, Kālikā, and Brahmāvaivarta Purāṇas may be mentioned as salient examples of our remarks.

  But these texts did not come pre-prepared, ready to cast a Brahminic mantle on the non-and un-‘Aryan’ activities of the Bengal region. They arose (no doubt as the other Purāṇas did to some extent) as a result of religio-cultural engagement with widespread beliefs and practices of the people encountered. On the one hand, they had to counter if not dissolve rival claimants for influence (primarily Buddhist), and on the other, they had to negotiate with already defining, deep-set cultural biases, viz. mainly the Goddess-cult and the performance of vratas, or the observance of vows for specific purposes. As I said, paraphrasing Chakrabarti, in my review of his book:

  In pursuance of their hegemonic goals, the Bengal Brahmins implemented a policy not of violent extirpation, but of insinuation ... They had to see off Buddhism, which had become well-established by the sixth century in the area. This they did by a combination of threats (the invoking of dire calamities in this life and a hellish state in the next for consorting with the Buddhist pāṣāṇḍa or reprobate) and, perhaps more effectively, by stealing the religious thunder of their rivals. For the Buddhism of the time was heavily Tantricized by means of local goddess cults. No doubt Tantra is the beare
r of various kinds of philosophy. but in Bengal it had reduced largely to a set of bodily techniques coupled with a particular mindset. The philosophies had become too subtle to affect the majority of the population. The situation was ripe then for the Brahmins to appropriate the practice but reject the Buddhist philosophical and other veneer by legitimating their own version of goddess worship. We see this project unfold in the multi-layered, negotiated compositions of the Bengal Purāṇas.

  (Lipner 2002:18)

  The Bengal Brahmins endorsed the region's prevalent Goddess-worship and practice of vow-taking by Vedicizing them, that is, by incorporating such practices socially into a flexible varṇa-framework over which the Brahmins had control, and by injecting into them a judicious, none-too-unsettling dose of Vedic culture such as affirming the primacy of Sanskrit, interjecting into particular ceremonies of worship certain Vedic texts, and so on. As part of their theological content, these Purāṇas also acknowledged Tantric scriptures as alternative Vedas. Thus, as we have seen in Chapter 4, the Mahābhāgavata Purāṇa could make the Goddess declare: ‘The Āgama [here the Tantric texts] 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’ (Chakrabarti 2001:189).

  It is not as if the Brahmins entered Bengal as an elite corps armed with a cunning plan. The process of Brahminization was one of gradual, contextualized negotiation; in the process, by adaptive ingenuity, Brahminization gave a hitherto ethnically and culturally diverse people a sense of solidarity, a legitimation of continuing difference amidst a growing sense of ‘Hindu’ identity.