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

by Julius Lipner

  7.

  Vijita can mean ‘lost (by dicing)’ or ‘defeated’ – a pun on the word.

  8.

  In this context, the left thigh stands for the phallus. On this see O'Flaherty 1976:321f. Note especially that ‘the g Veda calls the phallus a “boneless thigh” [RV. 8.4.1]’ (p.334). It is suggestive that the text goes on to compare Duryodhana's bared thigh to the soft stem of a plaintain tree (kadalīdaṇḍa), which has no hard bark (‘bone’) like other trees. Duryodhana's insult is plain.

  9.

  There are various views on the recapitulative structure of this sequel. Some consider that it resulted from the embroidering of one incident into two, and reconstitute the story as follows: after Draupadi was lost on the nineteenth throw, Dhṛtarāṣṭra intervened and set her at liberty; the final throw was then played and lost by Yudhiṣṭhira, and the Pāṇḍavas were forced into exile. But it is not to our purpose to enter into this discussion here.

  10.

  The more general use of ‘sin’ derives specifically from Christian theological usage. In translating (especially traditional) Hindu texts this term must be used with great care. Our indebtedness to O'Flaherty's scholarship notwithstanding, her indiscriminate use of ‘sin’ in translation, and the repeated slide from ‘gods’ to ‘God’, in a work entitled The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (1976 (1980)), can be very misleading.

  11.

  For pāpa and puṇya as used by religious Hindus in Malayalam in recent times, see Ayrookuzhiel 1983: esp. p.139f.

  12.

  Recall the invocation of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad: ‘From untruth/the unreal (asat) lead me to the truth/real (sat), from the darkness lead me to the light, from death lead me to immortality’ (1.3.28).

  13.

  Bhattacharya and others have pointed out that during the dicing incident Draupadī is often referred to by the description ‘Pāñcālī’, i.e. ‘of the Pañcāla tribe’, to which she belongs. But there is a pun here, for pāñcālī also means ‘doll’ or ‘puppet’. Indeed, Pāñcālī (viz. Draupadī) is treated by the menfolk as a puppet, as having no autonomy of her own, to be wagered or maltreated at will. But I hope our analysis of the episode shows that by persisting with her exacting question, it is she who pulls the strings.

  Chapter 12 Morality and the person; the belief in karma and rebirth

  1.

  See also Manu 6.91–2;cf. the Āpastamba Law Code 1.8.6.

  2.

  Tahtinen makes this point: ‘Non-violence did not come to be generally recognised so much as a reaction against injury done to men (e.g. in war), rather than as a profound opposition to the institutionalized killing of animals’ (1976:38).

  3.

  ‘The first use of the term naga for such men that I am aware of is from the eighteenth century. Sixteenth-or seventeenth-century authors tended to speak of yogis ... when describing these kinds of men ... The eighteenth century saw the increased use of the terms sanyasi ... and fakir ... particularly by British officials in Bengal’ (Pinch 2006:6). Pinch also mentions the use of ‘gosain’ and ‘bairagi’ in other parts of India.

  4.

  See Hara 1973;cf., e.g., Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, 2.2.1.21 (SBE ed.): ‘This [earth] is like a cow; she yields all desires for humans. The cow is a mother. This earth is like a mother – she supports human beings’.

  5.

  For example, in the later writings of the Bengali nationalist Brahmabandhab Upadhyay; see Lipner 1999:371–2, 375.

  6.

  In the next verse, the text goes on to specify the members of such a council by mentioning experts in various kinds of reasoning, viz. a logician (hetuka), a reasoner (tarkin, i.e. someone skilled in putting logical rules into the practice of argument), and an etymologist (nairukta). It seems that ideally all these members were to be Brahmins. Note also 12.106:’Only that person and no other knows dharma who studies the seers (i.e. the Veda) and the instruction on dharma (dharmopadeśa) by reasoning not opposed to Vedic teaching’.

  7.

  Some scholars detect such reference, e.g. Werner 1978. However, the texts cited seem more plausibly to be making reference to a permanent form of existence in post-mortem worlds.

  8.

  This is in keeping with his religious vision of the one underlying Spirit hierarchically ‘involving’ in the grades of being and then progressively ‘evolving’ towards a collective supermind.

  9.

  The belief in krama mukti, or progressive liberation, also exists. According to this ancient belief, one can pass on to the liberated state from the heavenly realm once one's good karma has been expended;there is no need to be reborn in lower worlds again. This indicates how open-ended the belief in karma and rebirth can be.

  10.

  Sanderson tells us how, with respect to the Kashmiri Śaiva Siddhānta school of thought (1988:691).

  11.

  Klostermaier in Neufeldt (1986), provides a review of modern religious accounts of the karma and rebirth doctrine, taken mainly from a particular denominational standpoint. His essay consists of a summary of views of upper-caste Vaiṣṇava leaders and thinkers, i.e. interpreters of what counts for orthodox belief in their traditions, writing for a special number of the Hindi devotional monthly, Kalyāṇa, in 1969 (which at the time had a circulation of over 150 000 copies per month), entitled ‘The Beyond and Rebirth’. This issue was over 700 pages long and contained 280 individual contributions, all in Hindi. Klostermaier writes: ‘Apparently the volume is the fruit of years of systematic effort. The (then) living leaders of all major sampradāyas [denominations] and a great number of well-known scholars contributed essays on all aspects of the topic ... [The volume] is designed to demonstrate that the belief in karma and rebirth is not only an integral part of Hindu devotionalism, but an organic part of a world view, intrinsically meaningful and plausible ... [QJuite often [the contributors] state that belief in rebirth is the central article of faith in the Vedas, Upaniṣads, Smṛtis, Purāṇas, and Śāstras’ (p.85). The author has summarized the data under ten headings: death, the next world, rebirth, time, karma, the devotee and liberation, devotional practices designed to reach the other world, rites for the dead, Yama and his realm, and birth as a ghost.

  12.

  For analytical treatments of the belief in rebirth and/or karma at the levels of (i) experience and (ii) theory, see (i) Stevenson 1974, and (ii) Reichenbach 1990, respectively.

  Chapter 13 Reckoning time and ‘progress’

  1.

  For a treatment of time in Hindu philosophy, see Balslev 1983.

  2.

  The bulk of which Kane (1962, vol. 5:876f., 910) assigns to a period between the seventh and tenth centuries C.E.

  3.

  ‘kali’ as in kali yuga must not be confused with ‘Kālī’ as in ‘Goddess Kālī’; not only are the two terms spelt differently, but the former recalls the losing throw in a game of dice (the number 1 on the dice) and represents loss, disaster, whereas the latter denotes the colour black and refers to a form of the Goddess Durgā.

  4.

  I have been helped here by the writings of Vinay Lal.

  5.

  I have changed slightly the order of sentences as it occurs in the original so as to make my point clearer.

  6.

  Later in this bhakti tradition, when the gopī Rādhā was enshrined by the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas as Kṛṣṇa's divine partner in a ‘binitarian’ relationship with him theologically, the Gauḍīya theologian, Rūpa Gosvāmī, in a play entitled Vidagdhamādhava, hints at the freshness of this love-in-reciprocity that she both enjoys with Kṛṣṇa and represents for the devotee, by making Kṛṣṇa describe Rādhā as jagadapūrvā, viz. both ‘new to’ (i.e. newly discovered in) and ‘pre-existing’ (apūrvā) the world (jagad-); see Wulff in Hawley and Wulff 1986:39.

  7.

  Hein affirms (in Schweig:xv): ‘No report is known, made by either friend or foe, that Bhāgavatas ever performed the Rāsa
as carnal act, either as holy rite or in folk festivals ... At the end of a millennium of the ever-increasing influence of Krishna worship, Hindu society retains its puritan character, more because of than in spite of, Krishna worship’.

  8.

  Also known as Kṛṣṇa-Caitanya, Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and Gaurāga (‘Fair-limbed’). These are religious names;his given name was Viśvambhara Miśra.

  9.

  When sexual intercourse does take place, it is regarded, by virtue ofits churning motion, as a prime means of generating spiritual energy or tapas.

  10.

  Thus saṃskṛta, of which ‘Sanskrit’ is the anglicized form, refers to language at its most polished and finely formed.

  11.

  Following the lead of Pandey 1969.

  12.

  Or husband-substitute, according to the laws of levirate in force at the time. Levirate was abandoned progressively in the early centuries of the Common Era, and finally disallowed as a practice that was kali varjya.

  13.

  Sometimes a horoscope's ambiguous readings can be ‘bent’ to suit one's convenience. Horoscopes still exert a powerful influence on Hindu minds, Westernized or otherwise. I have often heard educated Hindus claim how personal events such as marriages, deaths, jobs, sickness, travel etc., ‘predicted’ by horoscopes, and professedly not believed in before the event, then materialized as predicted.

  Chapter 14 The Sacred and its forms

  1.

  I have changed the order of the last two sentences relative to the whole extract to make my conclusion clearer.

  2.

  Sometimes – mistakenly, I believe – this relief is given another interpretation called ‘Arjuna's Penance’. In any case, it is a wonderful, and at times, amusing illustration of the Indian sculptor's art, which is exemplified further, and also impressively, in nearby reliefs and carvings from the granite.

  3.

  Equivalent to about •175 million, at time of going to press in 2009.

  4.

  ‘The TTD ensures that at least 50 % of Tirumala's energy needs are self-generated – mostly from state-of-the-art windmills and solar panels’, and its chief executive says that it also has a movement to bring Dalits into mainstream Hindu society (ibid.:41–2), though how this is attempted is not clear.

  5.

  These terms may be nuanced differently, but the underlying meaning is the same. When referring to the temple-image in English, Hindus commonly use the term ‘idol’, quite oblivious of the negative emotional and religious impact, built up over generations, that this word might have for Westerners.

  6.

  I have been assisted here by G. Colas’ essay, ‘The Competing Hermeneutics of Image Worship in Hinduism (fifth to eleventh century AD)’, 2004:149–79.

  7.

  For a fairly detailed description of such image-ritual at a large temple, namely the Jagannāth Temple in Puri (Orissa), see Marglin 1985, Appendix 1 to Chapter 6. Fuller, 1992: Chapter 5, shows how the idea of kingship, without its political trappings, is still so much a part of the religious Hindu mentality.

  8.

  Because of the press of the crowds, one can wait for hours in the lines for darshan of Sri Balaji, while the darshan itself usually lasts for no more than a few seconds before a priest peremptorily orders the devotee to ‘move on’ and make way for the next in line.

  9.

  According to a prevailing Hindu view, while the food is not physically touched by the image/deity, of course, the imaged-deity consumes the ‘essence’ of the food offered, which then makes the offering prasāda and ucchiṣṭa.

  10.

  Except in such cases as the wife eating from her husband's plate, etc.

  11.

  Here is another story about Gaṇeśa. Not long ago I was requested to assist a friend select a wood-carving of Gaṇeśa in one of the shops of an upmarket hotel in Mumbai. Image after image of Gaṇeśa was brought out by the shop-assistants, but none with the ‘authentic’ broken tusk. When I asked why, I was told that tourists refused to buy an image of Gaṇeśa they considered defective, so now all images of the deity for the tourist market were produced with two whole tusks!

  12.

  John Masters’ 1952 novel, The Deceivers, was made into a Merchant Ivory Productions film in 1988, starring Pierce Brosnan (as the hero William Savage) and Saeed Jaffrey, among others. Masters himself had a more nuanced understanding of Kālī than most former colonials.

  13.

  See also her ‘A Tantric Icon Comes Alive: The Creation of the “Orientalist Kālī” in Early Twentieth Century Bengal’, forthcoming (see Bibliography). This modern trend, of Bengalis largely worshipping Kālī through devotion (bhakti), has been noticed by other scholars too, e.g. S. Samanta, who writes: ‘To the Bengali, Kālī is the ideal Mother and [she is] worshipped predominantly within an idiom of devotion (bhakti)’ (1992:51). As in the case of McDermott's study, Samanta's fieldwork was conducted in an urban, middle-class Bengali setting among those who did not profess to be Tantrik adepts.

  14.

  The day of the new moon before the great autumnal festival of the Goddess Durgā in Bengal. Kālī is invoked as a fearful form of Durgā here.

  15.

  Jayā and Bijayā are names signifying victory, and refer to female attendants of Durgā/Kālī.

  16.

  Tāl and Betāl are two demons; reference to them suggests both the rhythm (tāl) and frenzy (betāl) of Kālī’s dance, usually accompanied by the kettle-drum.

  17.

  Veneration for the Ganges too varies from context to context. In his anthropological survey of the township of Chirakkal, 6 km north of the city of Cannanore (Kannur) in the state of Kerala, Ayrookuzhiel notes that only 25 out of 187 people questioned believed ‘that the Ganges is a puṇya nadī [sacred river], that bathing in it removes pāpam [sin, guilt, impurity] and that for their dead it is a means of getting mokṣa [liberation]’ (1983:49). Chirakkal, of course, is geographically very far from the Ganges, and the river's physical inaccessibility may well have had something to do with the lack of belief in its purifying and salvific qualities. Jameson (1976) who did his research in Har(i)dwar, near the mouth of the Ganges, paints a very different picture of reverence for the river.

  18.

  Erndl's work (1993: Chapter 5) has been of special assistance to me on this subject. For an account of the range of spirit-possession, good and bad, also see Fuller 1992: esp. Chapter 10.

  19.

  Erndl describes the ‘play’ of Goddess-possession in some detail together with its socio-cultural implications (1993: Chapter 5).

  20.

  Sahasranāmas may also be composed in the vernacular.

  21.

  In the Poona critical edition: 13.135.14–120.

  Chapter 15 Ways, means and ends

  1.

  Though the description of Durgā Pūjā given here is based largely on my personal experience of the festival over a long period, for background information, I have been helped by Robinson 1983.

  2.

  Putul pūjo kare nā hindu, kāṭh māṭi diye gaḍā; mṛnmay mājhe cinmay dekhe, haye jāy ātmahāra.

  3.

  De Michelis 2004, and Singleton 2008, discuss how traditional yoga developed into various modern forms of yoga.

  4.

  The ‘hymns'or mantras of the k Saṃhitā seem to have had two dimensions: (i) as discrete units of meaning, often imbued with devotional content, they made ‘sense’ in their own right; as such, we may ask, were they used in what we might properly call ‘prayer’? On the other hand, (ii) as performance, viz. as stilted utterances configured by and configuring the sacrificial rite, through coloratura, hand gestures and so on, their discrete meaning was dispersed while they effected/affected macrocosmic changes of being (as such, they seem to have acted as precursors of the use of mantra in the systems of Tantra that developed later). Further scholarly study is required to throw light on the
relationship between these two dimensions of Vedic mantra.

  5.

  There is a nearly complete translation in De Bary 1958: vol.I. 327–30. For an elaborate treatment from a Hindu point of view, see Tyagisananda 1972.

  6.

  guṇa.māhātmya.āsakti, rūpa.āsakti, pūjā.āsakti, smaraṇa.āsakti, dāsya.āsakti, sakhya. āsakti, vātsalya.āsakti, kāntā.āsakti, ātma.nivedana.āsakti, tan.maya.āsakti, parama.viraha. āsakti, rūpa.ekadhā.api.ekādaśadhā bhavati. I have separated the compounds for easier recognition of the sense.

  7.

  I have run two discussions on the topic together: see the Śrī Bhāṣya on Brahma Sūtra 2.3.41 and the Vedārthasaṃgraha para.90 in J.A.B. van Buitenen's edition (1956:125).

  8.

  I am of the opinion that there is more hearsay on record about the activities and numbers of the ṭhags in colonial times than actual facts about an established cult. Such hearsay served the vested interests of various authorities.

  9.

  In fact, theologically, this is how his dalliance with the gopis, etc. is explained as being free from concupiscence and other sinful passions. Such passions etc. arise from being subject to karma; Kṛṣṇa, however, transcends karma.