11.
See, e.g. Srinivas, ‘The social system of a Mysore village’, in Marriott 1955. In an article entitled ‘The Vīraśaiva Religious Tradition: Is it a Religion distinct from Hinduism?’ (‘Vīraśaiva’ and ‘Ligāyat(a)’ are meant to be understood as synonyms), D. Chekki (2007–8) argues for a separate identity for Vīraśaiva faith;yet he himself admits that ‘Despite [the] efforts [of Ligāyats to have their religion regarded as legally different from Hinduism], the Government of India, in the process of its codification of Hindu law since 1947, has incorporated Ligāyatas, along with Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists, for purposes of laws relating to Hindu marriage, inheritance of property, adoption and so forth’ (p 2–3). From the data given in his article, it is not clear that Chekki makes his case. Note that the name ‘Vīraśaiva’ itself indicates some kind of intrinsic affiliation with Hinduism.
12.
Does anything turn on the distinction between being ‘Hindu’ and being a ‘Hindu’ here, between the quality of one's commitment to a Hindu way of life and being simply labelled ‘a Hindu’? It might in some contexts, e.g. for purposes of a census, where some may wish to categorize themselves for reasons of social or political rather than religious identity. But we are talking generally about those Hindus who commit to a Hindu way of life, so that for us being ‘Hindu’ and being a ‘Hindu’ are mutual implicates.
13.
See, for example, Chapter 8, by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, ‘The Mahatma and the Sikhs’, in Coward 2003.
14.
This is still the case in certain situations today. For a diasporic example, see Leslie 2003.
15.
Yogī here would have meant a Śaiva ascetic in the lineage of the ninth-century preceptor, Gorāknāth, who followed non-Vedic or anti-Vedic codes of practice. See Pinch 2006:36–7.
16.
This is the case even amongst the Hare Krishnas themselves, though there has been opposition to this practice within ISKCON, since the preferred designation has always been ‘Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava’, owing to the Gauḍīya origins of the movement both theologically and ethnically. But now, perhaps for reasons of Hindu solidarity, this objection is waning, and ISKCONites are placing themselves within the Hindu fold, at least in the diaspora.
Chapter 2 The voice of scripture as Veda (I): performing the Word
1.
There were other, intervening challenges to Vedic authority no doubt, but these were not on the same scale. These challenges came from the devotional traditions themselves, as well as from ‘unorthodox’ systems such as Tantra (see p. 62 for a definition), and from Islam. But, from the point of view of the steady proliferation of the Ancient Banyan, the devotional schools and Tantra were coped with by forms of assimilation or accommodation, while Islam was largely sidestepped.
2.
As archaeologists have pointed out, the archaeological story of this ‘indigenous’ culture is linked to the development of wheat/barley-based agriculture in the Baluchistan uplands, which in turn were parts of a broad interaction zone from the Oxus valley in north Afghanistan to the Indus valley, and this development goes back to ca. 7000 B.C.E. The agricultural growth in this zone is part of the general agricultural growth between the Balkans and Baluchistan. This growth is unlikely to have been of purely native origin and, it is claimed, is the only feature of the general picture that countenances some population movements of early wheat/barley-based agriculturists into the subcontinent. But then these movements would greatly pre-date the supposed Indo-Aryan migrations mentioned earlier. Was this already-established civilization we shall go on to describe, the result of some previous, more distant, migrations into India of people(s) we may call proto-Indo-Aryans? That is the question.
3.
For a wide-ranging treatment of this civilization, see Allchin & Allchin 1982.
4.
Parpola 1994, for example, makes many suggestive observations in an attempt to connect elements of the Indus and Hindu cultures, but to date this attempt seems largely conjectural. Chakrabarti too, in the essay cited earlier, links various facets of Indus civilization with later Hindu practice (of which we have quoted one example), the tenor of his thesis being to show that the roots of these features of Hinduism seem to have been indigenous to the subcontinent.
5.
Much work on describing and trying to interpret the script has been done by Asko Parpola, though his work on decipherment is still controversial; see Parpola 1994. Even the direction of writing is not uniform: ‘The seal texts ... are sunk (intaglio) in the originals, i.e. engraved in the negative (reversed). Their positive impressions on clay ... stand out in relief. It is the latter that represent the text as it was intended to be read’ (ibid.:64ab). Sometimes the signs seem intended to be read from left to right, sometimes from right to left, sometimes boustrophedon-wise (i.e. alternating linearly from right to left, and then from left to right). However, ‘numerous tests agree in establishing right to left as the preponderant direction of writing in the Indus inscriptions’; ibid.:66b.
6.
This is because in Sanskrit, the r with a dot under it – ṛ – is pronounced more or less like ‘ri’ (without stressing the ‘i’). There will be other instances of such usage in the course of this book. Further, k becomes g when followed by Veda.
7.
Laurie Patton suggests (in Mittal & Thursby 2004:39) that this regular act or cycle of transmission may have given rise to the term maṇḍala to refer to the books of the g Veda.
8.
The 1028 hymns of the g Veda comprise about 10600 stanzas. The hymns ‘contain on the average ten stanzas, generally of four verses or lines, but also of three and sometimes five [though particular hymns are longer, of course – the longest having 58 stanzas – and others shorter, with the shortest being only a stanza long]. The line, which is called Pāda (“quarter”) and forms the metrical unit, usually consists of eight, eleven, or twelve syllables. A stanza is, as a rule, made up of lines of the same type; but some of the rarer kinds of stanza are formed by combining lines of different length. There are about fifteen metres, but only about seven of these are at all common. By far the most common are the Triṣṭubh (4×11 syllables), the Gāyatrī (3×8), and the Jagatī (4×12), which together furnish two-thirds of the total number of stanzas in the g Veda’; Macdonell 1971:xvii.
9.
Thus A. A. Macdonell, one of these early scholars, who was an accomplished linguist but not necessarily a good theologian, could say that the religion of the g Veda ‘is concerned with the worship of gods ... [and] is thus essentially a polytheistic religion’; Macdonell 1971:xviii. There may have been an additional, perhaps unconscious, motive for dubbing Vedic religion ‘polytheistic’, a motive predicated on the conviction that Vedic religion/Hinduism was born out of ‘primitive’, natural beliefs and was therefore inferior to Christian faith and culture which derived from ‘revealed'i.e. Biblical truth. By implication, this would have rendered European civilization superior to Hinduism and would have acted to justify colonial rule.
10.
On the identity of Soma, Witzel comments, ‘an unknown plant (probably Ephedra)’, ibid.:74; see also Falk 1989, and Flattery & Schwartz 1989.
11.
Macdonell was writing towards the end of the nineteenth century, so his Vedic Mythology is an old work. Nevertheless, it remains useful for its lists of epithets and their Vedic sources, if not for its interpretive theology; see 1971 (reprint):46.
12.
eka evāgnir bahudhā samiddha, ekah sūryo viśvam anuprabhūtaṣ, ekaivoṣāṣ sarvam idaṃ vibhāty, ekaṃ vā idaṃ vibabhūva sarvam.
13.
See also 10.90 and 10.121, other hymns of creation referring to a single source of power and being. There are various translations available, e.g. Panikkar 1977, and O'Flaherty 1981b.
14.
Since the features of this shadow side are generally depicted in terms of myth, their theological understanding may be attained
more accurately by a more sophisticated grasp of mythic meaning than has usually been the case.
15.
This analysis is obliquely endorsed in M. Jezic's essay on the transfer of divine attributes in the k Saṃhitā (Indologica Taurinensia, 1989–90). In the context of the ‘highly coherent and semiotic structure of our [Saṃhitā] texts’ (p.148), he points to an underlying descriptive and ontological nexus between the various divinities over the passage of time.
16.
The Saṃhitā of the Sāma Veda has come to us in three traditions of chant: the Kauthuma, the Rāṇāyanīya, and the Jaiminīya.
17.
Witzel, op.cit:76, notes an example or two of such formulae: ‘You are heaven, you are earth’, and ‘Move through the interspace!’. There is not much theology here! The Yajur Veda has come down in two traditions, the ‘Dark’ (kṛṣṇa, sometimes translated ‘Black’) and the ‘Bright’ (śukla, sometimes translated ‘White’). It seems that the'Dark'was so called because its formulae are admixed with explanatory comment, whereas the formulae of the Bright are unmixed in this way; its explanatory comment has been recorded separately in the form of the lengthy and important Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, a later genre of Vedic text. The Saṃhitā of the Bright Yajur Veda is called the Vājasaneyī, while that of the Dark Yajur Veda has a number of recensions or branches, the earliest being the Taittirīya, the Kāṭhaka and the Maitrāyaṇi.
18.
Glucklich's book came to hand too late to develop this topic further here. Two recensions of the Atharva Saṃhitā are extant, the Paippalāda and the Śaunaka, the latter being the more usually cited.
19.
Even today, in some circles, Brahmins belonging to the first three Vedas tend to look down upon the ritual standing of the Brahmins of the Atharva Veda.
20.
There is a diagram in Olivelle 1996:xliii.
21.
An elaborate Vedic Soma ritual, called the Atirātra-Agnicayana, has been recorded, with photographs of each step, audio-cassettes and analyses of different features of the performance, and published in two volumes, entitled Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar (Staal 1983). The sacrifice was performed by Nambudiri Brahmins of south India in 12 days over the period 12–25 April, 1975.
22.
Thus the aśvamedha or horse sacrifice was ‘performed by a king both to demonstrate his sovereignty and to ritually enhance his dominion. A fine horse with great speed and possessing special bodily marks and colours is selected and, after an elaborate ritual, set free to roam at will for a whole year. It is guarded by the king's troops. Each day during this year special sacrifices are offered in the presence of the king, and priests recite tales and legends in ten-day cycles. At the end of the year the horse is brought back, killed, and its various parts cooked and offered in sacrifice, a procedure that takes three days’ (Olivelle 1996:xliv–xlv). The aśvamedha became an important political ritual, as one can imagine – a symbol not only of kingly power but also of territorial ambition.
23.
This function in Vedic religion of purifying, transforming and endowing with the power to rise to a transcendent level, by the heat of Agni, is discussed in detail by Vesci 1985.
Chapter 3 The voice of scripture as Veda (II): discerning the Word
1.
Śrauta derives from the term śruti, ‘hearing’, another word for the Veda.
2.
The recension of the Mādhyaṃdina branch of interpretation has been translated into English by Julius Eggeling in the well-known The Sacred Books of the East series, edited by F. Max Müller, vols. 12,26,41,43,44; 1882f., and reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1963–72.
3.
For an idea of the Mahāvrata, for example, see Ram Gopal 1983:169–71, and Keith 1969:26–8.
4.
This Upaniṣad is the final section of the Śatapatha Brähmaṇa. The dividing lines between Brāhmaṇa, Śraṇyaka, and Upaniṣad are not always clear.
5.
Flood 1996:77–80 summarizes the characteristics of both groups.
6.
[seyaṃ] brahmavidyā upaniṣacchabdavācyā tatparāṇāṃ sahetoṣ saṃsārasyātyantāvasādanāt. upanipūrvasya sades tadarthatvāt. tādarthyāt grantho'py upaniṣad ucyate; from the opening lines of his commentary on the Bṛadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.
7.
Simultaneously a new form of polycentrism is being developed with respect to traditions of devotional theism. We shall examine this development later.
8.
‘In spite of claims made by some, in reality, any dating of these documents that attempts a precision closer than a few centuries is as stable as a house of cards’;Olivelle 1996:xxxvi.
9.
‘Given the importance of these basic [Upaniṣadic] texts, numerous documents, often espousing sectarian viewpoints, were composed with the title “Upaniṣad”, and, at least among some segments of the population, they enjoyed the authority and sanctity attached to the Vedas; most of these late texts are ascribed to the Atharvaveda. Such Upaniṣads continued to be produced possibly as late as the sixteenth century CE and number in the hundreds’;Olivelle 1996:xxxiii.
10.
The Vedāntins referred to the Upaniṣads as the ‘head’ (śiras) of the whole ‘body’ of the Veda.
11.
An analogous debate, bearing on the nature of religious language, took place in Western philosophical circles from the early decades of the twentieth century.
12.
For a discussion of aspects of this debate as it had developed by the turn of the first millennium, see Keith 1978 (1921), D'Sa 1980, Lipner 1986a (especially Chapter 2), Bartley 2002.
13.
See the beginning of his commentary on the Brahma Sūtras 1.1.3.
14.
Translated from the Sanskrit in J.L. Shastri 1973:13. For a fuller version, see O'Flaherty 1988:65–8.
15.
The ideology of Tantra exists not only among the different denominations of later Hinduism, but also among Buddhists and Jains. ‘The Śaivas were not the only Tantrics. There were also the Vaiṣṇava Tantrics of the Pāñcarātra system, whose Tantras, considered by them to be the word of the deity Visnu, prescribed the rituals, duties and beliefs of the devotees of Vāsudeva in his various aspects (vyūha) and emanations (vibhava, avatāra). In addition to these two major groups of Tantrics, there were Sauras, followers of Tantras revealed by the Sun (Sūrya);but while we have access to a number of Vaiṣṇava Tantras and to a vast corpus of Śaiva materials, the Saura tradition is silent ... The production of Tantric revelations was not limited to those who accepted the supernatural authority of the Vedas. It went on, though on a much smaller scale, among the Jains, while the Buddhists added an enormous Tantric corpus to their canonical literature during the period c.400–750 CE’;Sanderson in Sutherland et al. 1988:660–1. For working definitions of Tantra as an ideology, see David White's Introduction in White 2000.
16.
This view also occurs in Sikh teaching. Its affinity with the Vedic conception of the transcendent word is reflected in the Sikhs’ use of ekokār (from the Sanskrit eka oṃkāra, the one om sound’) as a name of God. I am grateful to Dermot Killingley for advice in this regard. See Lipner 2006a:vol. 5, 308.
17.
I have capitalized the first letter of ‘Name’ in quoting this translation to reflect better the true theology of the term.
18.
As in the case of the British, the ruling Muslim elites derived from foreign stock. Such Muslim ancestry could be traced to Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran, in contrast to that of local converts.
19.
The novel has been translated under the title Ānandamaṭh, or The Sacred Brotherhood, with an extensive Introduction and Critical Apparatus; see Lipner 2005.
20.
The whole Song is annotated in Lipner 2005:242–5.
21.
Its early history is discussed by Killingley in
Lipner 1986b.
22.
The Māṇḍukya Upaniṣad has been interpreted musically by the renowned classical vocalist Pandit Jasraj;see Māṇḍukya Upaniṣad: A Musical Experience of Om, conceived and created by Inner Voice, a Times Music presentation, Mumbai, 2000.
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 67