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

by Julius Lipner

  23.

  See, e.g., Gāyatrī, Conceived and Created by Inner Voice, Times Music, Mumbai, 2001.

  24.

  For instructive analysis of a mantra of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition of south India that has been given deep theological significance, see F. X. Clooney S.J.,‘Exegesis, Theology, and Spirituality: Reading the Dvaya Mantra According to Vedanta Deśika’, in International Journal of Hindu Studies, 11.1, April 2007, pp.27–62. Vedānta Desika's dates are given as 1268–1369;the Dvaya Mantra is as follows: śrīman-nārāyaṇa-caraṇau śaranaṃprapadye/śrīmate nārāyaṇāya namaṣ// which Clooney has translated as'I approach for refuge the feet of Nārāyaṇ a with Śrī. Praise to Nārāyaṇa with Śrī’.

  Chapter 4 The voice of scripture as Veda and ‘Veda’

  1.

  The text indicates later that this is Prajapati, as a personification of Brahman.

  2.

  I am grateful to Professor John Brockington for some references with regard to the Sanskrit epics in this section.

  3.

  Timm is referring to verse 26 of K.N. Mishra's edition of the TADN, 1971.

  4.

  The list gives the four texts more or less in chronological order, though with respect to the Brahma Sūtra and the Bhagavad Gītā it is not clear which came first. Both the Gītā (ca. 200 B.C.E.-200 C.E.)and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (ca. ninth century) are works glorifying Kṛṣṇa as the supreme personification and embodiment of the deity.

  5.

  Sarva-vedānta-sāraṃ hi śrī-bhāgavatam īṣyate/tad-rasāmṛta-tṛptasya nānyatra syād ratiṣ kvacit//

  6.

  Gītāyāṃ bhagavadvākyāni eva ṣastram iti arthaṣ; vedānām api taduktaprakāreṇaiva arthanirṇayaṣ; śāstra here means interpretive criterion, teaching instrument.

  7.

  I have accepted D. Killingley's recommendation for Ram Mohan's date of birth given in his impressive doctoral dissertation on Ram Mohan (University of London, 1977);see 2.2 of thesis, pp.49–54.

  8.

  ‘Utilitarianism can most generally be described as the doctrine which states that the rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by the goodness and badness of their consequences. This general definition can be made more precise in various ways, according to which we get various species of utilitarianism’, Smart in Edwards 1967:vol. 8, 206b.

  9.

  Within a few years there was occasion for this intransigence to be overcome; see Crawford 1987:86–92.

  10.

  Even in his personal life Ram Mohan was careful not to flout caste observances. Thus, as a Brahmin, he wore the sacred thread and even took a Brahmin cook with him on a visit to England.

  11.

  He died on a visit to England, in Bristol, in 1833. For a description of his Bristol visit, see Barot 1988.

  12.

  ‘Swami’ here means an ascetic teacher; ‘Vivekananda’ means ‘the bliss of discerning knowledge’. It is usual for Hindu ascetics to assume a descriptive title to signify their formal adoption of the ascetic path.

  13.

  Whilst undertaking doctoral research on Vivekananda in the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge, Green pointed out that ‘one of Vivekananda's lectures which deals explicitly with the “tat tvam asi ethic” can be dated earlier than his conversation with Deussen ... In the lecture, “The Spirit and Influence of the Vedanta”, which was originally entitled “The Vedanta: Its Practical Bearings;How it Differs from Other Philosophies”, Vivekananda proclaimed that “this expression of oneness is what we call love and sympathy, and it is the basis of all our ethics and morality. This is summed up in the Vedanta philosophy by the celebrated aphorism, Tat Tvam Asi, ‘Thou art That’”. This lecture took place at the Twentieth Century Club in Boston on March 28, 1896, and conclusively shows that Vivekananda did not gain the tat tvam asi ethic from his meeting with Deussen later that year’ (from an unpublished paper). Apparently this lecture was re-named ‘The Vedanta Philosophy’ and was delivered in March, 1896, before the Graduate Philosophical Society of Harvard University. More extensively, the text runs as follows: ‘Behind everything the same divinity is existing, and out of this comes the basis of morality. Do not injure another. Love everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring myself; in loving another, I am loving myself’; further,’There are moments when every man feels that he is one with the universe, and he rushes forth to express it, whether he knows it or not. This expression of oneness is what we call love and sympathy, and it is the basis of all our ethics and morality. This is summed up in the Vedanta philosophy by the celebrated aphorism, Tat Tvam Asi, “Thou art That”’ (‘The Spirit and Influence of Vedanta’).

  14.

  See G.P. Upadhyaya 1956;on Dayananda, see Jordens 1978.

  15.

  A good account of the controversy and its context is given in Young 1981;see also Lipner 1987.

  16.

  Yadi granthe'sti viśvāso veda evāvalambyatām, yato'sau sṛṣṭikālādicalito'sti mahītale. Young 1981:99, note 95; my translation.

  17.

  The book was first published in 1932, and then revised;this extract is from the 1961 paperback edition.

  18.

  See, e.g. ‘The changing status of a depressed caste’, a study by Bernard S. Cohn, of the ‘untouchable’ Camars of Madhopur village in eastern Uttar Pradesh, in Marriott 1955: 53–77.

  Chapter 5 The voice of tradition: smṛti and its divisions

  1.

  Thus in the context of the Veda, smṛti must enable what passes for Vedic dharma to be followed. This relationship is affirmed in the opening words of the Dharma Sūtras of Gautama, itself an ancient smṛti text: vedo dharmamūlam: ‘The Veda is the root of dharma’.

  2.

  Well-known Śrauta Sūtras include the Āśvalāyana and Śāṇkhāyana Śrauta Sūtras (of the g Veda), the Lāṭyāyana and Drāhyāyana Śrauta Sūtras (of the Sāma Veda), the Kātyāyana Śrauta Sūtra, which belongs to the Vājasaneya Saṃhitā of the ‘White’ Yajur Veda, and the Baudhāyana, Āpastamba and Vaikhānasa Śrauta Sūtras of the ‘Black’ Yajur Veda. Many of these names may be patronymics. There were other kinds of texts that fall within this division of the Vedāga but since we have a fair idea of the genre we do not need to go into these.

  3.

  For scholarship in this vein, which relates also to contemporary Western insights, see e.g. the work of Madhav Deshpande, Michael Witzel, and Eivind Kahrs.

  4.

  alpākṣaram asaṃdigdhaṃ sāravad viśvatomukham; astobham anavadyaṃ ca sūtraṃ sūtravido viduṣ. There are a number of variants of this old definition, for which I have found no original source.

  5.

  These are two different kinds of compound: athātaṣ (which becomes athāto when it precedes a soft consonant like b) is a ‘euphonic compound’ since both members of the compound retain their case-endings but are conjoined for euphonic purposes; brahma-jijñāsā is a‘stem compound'since one member, viz. brahma-, has no case-termination but remains in stem-form while the other, jijñāsā, is inflected. See further in text.

  6.

  This is a very brief summary; an English translation of Śaṃkara's commentary on these two compounds, which seeks to refute alternative views and so on, would run to several pages.

  7.

  Radhakrishnan's apt translation: 1974:698,701.

  8.

  The rationale of the mantra as a verbal device, though analogous, would carry different emphases.

  9.

  For a survey under various headings, see Gonda 1980. For detailed technical information see also his The Ritual Sūtras, vol. I.2 of Gonda 1975, which deals largely with the Śrauta and Gṛhya Sūtras.

  Chapter 6 The voice of tradition: smr ti and its divisions (II)

  1.

  ‘To protect this whole creation, the Great Luminary [Brahmā or Prajāpati?] determined separate actions for t
hose produced from mouth, arms, thighs and feet’. Indeed, some scholars claim that this g Vedic verse itself is an interpolation in the hymn;even if this is so, it is very ancient and so could exert great influence on Hindu culture from very early times.

  2.

  See the Majjhima Nikāya, II.148 (also the DĪgha Nikāya, III.81–2). I am grateful to Dr Alexander Studholme for this reference.

  3.

  See 2.2.2.6,4.3.4.4 etc., following J. Eggeling's translation of the text in The Sacred Books of the East series.

  4.

  On 1.1.1.15, the Ujjvalā, mentioned earlier, comments:‘Like a father [gives birth] through a mother’ (yathā pitā mātuṣ). Manu 2.146 expatiates: ‘Of the two [who give birth viz.] one's progenitor and the one who gives the Veda, the “father” who gives the Veda is the superior, for the Vedic birth of one who knows the Veda (vipra) is eternal in this life and after death’.

  5.

  The ancient Codes prescribe different materials for the sacred thread, depending on the varṇa of the initiate (see, e.g. Manu 2.44). Nowadays cotton is widely used for all castes.

  6.

  In The Sacred Books of the East edition, vol. 2.

  7.

  Baudhāyana Dharma Sūtra, 1.10.18.5–6;SBE edition, vol.14.

  8.

  See Lipner and Gispert-Sauch 2002:155–6; for an account of the life and work of Upadhyay, see Lipner 1999.

  9.

  AV. 11.5.3. It seems clear that by this time initiation was a formal ceremony and that the term ‘upanayamāna’ in the text is being used in a technical sense.

  10.

  This idea had much earlier roots;see the Baudhāyana Dharma Sūtra 2.6.11.33.

  11.

  Derived from the name of an ascetic, Vikhānas, who is supposed to have written a treatise, not now extant, on ascetics. The relatively late Vaikhānasa Dharma Sutras gives a most elaborate description of the various kinds of ascetics and their practices.

  12.

  On this see, e.g., Altekar 1959, esp. Chapters 1 and 7;F.M. Smith, ‘Indra's curse, Varuṇa's noose, and the suppression of the woman in the Vedic Śrauta ritual’, in Leslie 1991.

  13.

  ayajñīyo vā eṣa yo'patnīkaṣ;, quoted as 2.2.2.6 by Altekar 1959:31 (see also p.197).

  14.

  The Bengali novelist, Bankim Chatterji, uses it in his famous novel Ānandamath (1882), mentioned in Chapter 1, to refer to a dutiful wife (though the novel is set in the 1770s); see Lipner 2005:193, 263.

  15.

  The same Upaniṣad informs us (4.5.1, 4.5.5) that Yājnavalkya's favourite wife, Maitreyī, was also a ‘discourser on Brahman’. So he knew how to deal with woman discoursers on Brahman.

  16.

  It was only in 1861, however, that suttee became illegal all over India under full British paramountcy in the land. For a good account of Ram Mohan's role in the campaign to ban suttee, see Crawford 1987: 101–15.

  17.

  There is a similar construction in Rāmāyaṇa 6.9.22: ‘Give up anger, which destroys happiness and dharma. Devote yourself to dharma (bhajasva dharmam), which increases pleasure and fame’. I am grateful to Dr J.D. Smith for this reference (I have used his translation). But this is a rare construction in the epics.

  18.

  I have used the translation from Lipner 2005, but inserted the original Bengali expressions, sanātana Dharma and dharma, wherever they occur in the extract quoted.

  Chapter 7 The voice of tradition: caste and its realities

  1.

  See the discussion of this topic in Chakravarti 2006: esp. 36–50.

  2.

  The poet makes the point that as the potter creates the pots by touching, so the divine potter creates by ‘touching’. If all humans are the result of the divine touch, how can untouch-ability among humans be justified?

  3.

  He was one of the first among Hindu intellectuals to use the homogenizing term ‘Hinduism’. Killingley notes, ‘Rammohun was probably the first Hindu to use the word Hinduism’ (1993:61, emphasis in original), and in a footnote adds that Ram Mohan used the word in 1816.

  4.

  Since jāti is so prevalent in Indian society, there are also numerous Muslim and Christian dalit castes in the subcontinent today. ‘Dalit Christian Theology’ is a pre-occupation among certain Christian circles in a way analogous to the Liberation Theology of Latin America. In some later writings, Ambedkar also indicates that dalits were drawn from the ranks of early Buddhists.

  5.

  The separate neighbourhood where the Mahārs lived.

  6.

  This ambivalence about nomenclature obtains among many Untouchables today, with a number of groups increasingly seeking to repudiate the ‘Hindu’ label.

  7.

  Ambedkar's influence lives on additionally in this respect. The Times of India reports (on-line edition of 28 May, 2007) that on Sunday 27 at the Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai, at least 50000 dalit and tribal men, women and children drawn from 42 different castes converted to Buddhism ‘to escape the rigid Hindu caste system’ and to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Ambedkar's conversion to the religion. ‘It was definitely one of the biggest mass conversions in modern Indian history’.

  8.

  Because of the bodily discharges associated with this event; hence, in Hindu culture, an occasion can be auspicious and polluting at the same time. The birth of a child (especially, traditionally, a son) is a joyous event, but it is also associated with polluting influences that need to be warded off or overcome, and the traditional occupation of midwife was a polluting one. In the modern hospital environment, such thinking tends not to apply. Nevertheless, perhaps this is one reason why there has been an inordinately high proportion of Indian Christian nurses in the modern Indian hospital environment.

  9.

  Since farming was reckoned to be a caste-free occupation, some of the Brahmins were farmers. This should not cause undue surprise. The Vaikhānasa Dharma Sūtra, believed to have been produced in southern India, and relatively late among the ancient Dharma texts, permits all four varṇas to live off agriculture.

  Chapter 8 The voice of tradition: itihāsa and sacred narrative

  1.

  Julia Leslie (2003) discusses the circumstances and the arguments, with special reference to the reverence shown to Vālmīki by the so-called Vālmiki community both in India and the UK.

  2.

  In line with this perception, a number of scholars maintain that the Mahābhārata had a written archetype which became susceptible to accretion and variant transmission. But the question is: did this archetypal form – if there was one – succeed an oral version?

  3.

  A. Hiltebeitel offers a dissenting view: ‘[I]n each Sanskrit epic, transmission goes ... from Brahmans to bards: a Brahman author creates the new poem, and bards ... are among those said first to disseminate it’ (2001:13, footnote 51). He also dismisses the prevailing consensus that the epics began as oral compositions which were then committed to writing: ‘I think the Rāmāyaṇa must have been written at about the same time as the Mahābhārata, or if anything a little later [viz. ‘between the mid-second century B.C. and the year zero’, p.18]’. He ‘continues:’ With the creation of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, epic is something new on the Indian scene. Prior oral epic versions of these texts are, for now at least, a creation of modern scholarship ... I propose further that the Mahābhārata was written by “out of sorts” Brahmans who may have had some minor king's or merchant's patronage, but, probably for personal reasons, show a deep appreciation of, and indeed exalt ... Brahmans reduced to poverty who live a married life and feed their guests and family by“gleaninggrain”’(2001:19). The speculative nature of all this emerges from the tentative language used (‘must have been written ... probably for personal reasons’ etc.). We are asked to believe that the Sanskrit epics qua epics were first committed to writing by ‘out of sorts’ Brahmins and then taken up by non-Brahmin
bards and transmitted orally, presumably in variant forms (considering that more than one recension of each epic is extant). Not only is this a curious privileging of continuing Brahmin compositional hegemony, but it overlooks and interrupts the original (metrically refined) transmitted orality in which Vedic religion arose (see Chapters 2–3). This is an expertise that need not be confined to Brahmins. It is asserted that against the momentum of this original Vedic orality, popular tales represented in the epics were first composed in written form (on the assumption, presumably, that they could not have been composed orally in formulaic form as the Vedic texts were), and were then inserted into the cultural oral flow, to be disseminated according to the dynamics of oral transmission. This view requires much more critical justification, taking into account all the evidence available (particularly the linguistic), if it is to overturn the prevailing broad scholarly consensus on this matter.

  4.

  Translating the epic's title is not without its problems, as S.H. Levitt (2007–2008) points out. He concludes: ‘I think the most likely import of the title Rāmāyaṇa is “the course, or path travelled by Rama”. It is not clear to me, though, whether we should understand by this “The Travels of Rāma”, or a translation “The (Exemplary) History of Rāma”, understanding the import of the term [ ayana] to focus on Rāma's exemplary conduct [by taking our cue from the analogous term carita]’ (p.56). He also allows for ‘The Sallying Forth of Rāma’, though he seems not to have taken into consideration the fact that the compound Rāmāyaṇa can also be broken down into Rāma + āyana, where āyana can be given the sense of ‘coming, arrival’; in view of the information adduced by Levitt, however, this latter reading seems unlikely.