A n i n t r o d u c t i o n t o H i n d u i s m G A V IN F L O O D Lectur Lectur er in R elig i ous Stud Studies ies D epa part rt me ment nt o f Theology Theology and Relig i ous ous Studies Uni ver ver si ty o f Wale Wales, Lampeter
C a m b r id g e U N I V E R S IT I T Y P R ES ES S
Published Published b y the Press Press Syndicate of the the Un iversity of Cam bridge Th e Pitt Building, Trumpington Stre Street et,, Cam bridge C B 2 i r p 4 0 W e st s t 20 2 0 t h St St r e e t , N e w Y o rk rk , N Y 1 0 0 1 1 - 4 2 1 1 , U S A 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Austral ia © C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i ty t y P re r e ss ss 1 9 9 6 First published 1996 Printed in in Great Britain at the U niv ersity Press, Ca m brid ge
A ca t al o g u e r ec o r d f o r t h i s bo b o o k i s av a i l a b l e f r o m t h e B r i t i s h L i b r a r y
Lib rary o f Cong ress cataloguing cataloguing in publicati publication on data data Flood, Gavin D., 195 4— A n i n t r o d u c ti o n to H in d u i s m / b y G a v i n F lo o d , p. cm. Include s b ibliographical references and index. index. i s b n o 5 2 1 4 3 3 0 4 5 ( h a r d b a c k ) .. - i s b n o 5 2 1 4 3 8 7 8 o ( p a pe pe rb r b a ck ck ) 1. Hin duism . I. Title. Title. b l 1202.F56 1996 294.5-DC20
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Contents
List o f illustrations x Ack nowledge m en ts xii A no te on lang uage an d transliteration xiii Abbr ev ia tions a nd texts xv Introduction I
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Points of departure 5 A ncien t origins 23 Dharma 51 Yoga and renunciation 75 Na rrative traditions and early Vaisnavism 103 The love of Visnu 128 ^aiva and tantric religion 148 The Go ddess and Sâkta traditions 174 Hindu ritual 198 Hindu theology and philosophy 224 Hinduism and the modern wo rld 250 N otes 274 Bibliography 305 Index 329
IX
Illustrations
Plates
Unless otherwise stated, the author is responsible for the plates. Symbolic elephant (Reproduced by kind permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum.) frontispiece Between pages 304 and 305 1 A Saiva holy man by the Kanyakumari Temple, Tamilnadu 2 A mythical representation of Patanjali from the Siva Nataraja Temple, Cidambaram, Tamilnadu 3 Lord Krsna. A popular representation 4 Lord Krsna with Radha. A popular representation 5 Lord Siva the ascetic. A popular representation 6 Siva Nataraja, the Dancing Siva. Bronze, c. 1100 kind permission of the British Museum)
c e
(Reproduced by
7 A Siva lingo, covered in petals, Cidambaram (Reproduced by kind permission of Dr David Smith, Lancaster University.) 8 Lord Ganesa (Reproduced by kind permission of the British Museum.) 9 The Goddess Durga slaying the buffalo demon. Siva Nataraja Temple, Cidambaram 10 The ferocious Goddess Camunda seated upon a corpse (Reproduced by kind permission of the British Museum.)
List oj illustrations
i i I l.inuman, tlie monkey-god (Repro duced by kind permission of Ann and Bury Peerless Slide Resources anil Picture Library.) 12 The Descent of the Goddess Gariga or Arjuna’s Penance, Mahabalipuram, Tamilnadu, seventh century c e i
3 The Kapalesvari Temple, Madras
14 The south gateway (gopura) o f the Siva Nata raja Temple at Cidambaram 15 A yo ung girl offering a flow er to Lord K rsna ’s footprint (Reprodu ced by kind permission of Ann and Bury Peerless Slide Resources and Picture Library.) 1 6 A serpent (naga ) shrine, Bhagamandala, Karnataka 17 Teyyam Shrine housing three teyyam deities, Nileshwaram, Kerala 18 Tey yam Shrine, housing the tw o deities. Nileshwa ram , Kerala 19 The teyyam Goddess Muvalamkuhcamundi 20 The teyyam deity Visnumurti
Maps
1 India show ing some important sacred sites
page 2
2 M ajor sites o f the Indus valley civiliza tion (adapted from P arpola, Deciphering the Indus Script, p. 7)
26
Figures
1 Indus valley ‘pro to-S iva ’ seal
29
2 Th e traditions of the R g and Ya jur Vedas
38
3 The esoteric anatomy o f Yog a
99
4 The development of Vaisnava traditions
11 8
5 Pancaràtra cosm ology
122
6 The development of Saiva traditions
152
7 The development of traditions of Go ddess worship
180
8 Th e twenty-five Sâmkhya tattvas
233
Acknowledgements
Many sources contribute to the formation of a book and I would like to acknowledge my debt both to people and to other writings. A number of excellent introductions to Hinduism have influenced the present work, particularly those by John Brockington, Chris Fuller, Klaus Klostermaier, Julius Lipner and, from a previous generation, R. C. Zaehner. I should like to extend thanks to Professor John Clayton o f Lancaster University for initially suggesting the project to me, and to Dr David Smith of the same university, who first introduced me to the study of Hinduism. I have been deeply influenced b y the wo rk o f Dr Rich Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania who introduced me to the traditions of Kerala. I should also like to acknowledge conversations with Dr Sumati Ramaswami of the Un iversity of Pennsylvania, Steve Jacobs (a postgradu ate student at the University of Wales), Sri A. Thamban of Payannur in Kerala, and an afternoon spent in the hospitality of Sri K. P. C. Anujan Bhattatirippatu, the Tantri of the Peruvanam Temple near Trichur. Many fruitful discussions with Dr Oliver Davies of the University of Wales, Lampeter, have influenced the work, and Professor Paul Morris of Victoria University, N ew Zealand, and the Cam bridge University Press reader offered useful suggestions concerning the text itself. Dr R. Blurton of the British Museum allowed me to reproduce illustrations from the museum collection. I should also like to thank Ms Kim Baxter of Lancaster College of Higher Education for her help with illustrative mate rial, and Mr Alex Wright of Cambridge University Press for his interest and encouragement.
A note on language and transliteration
The languages o f H induism are Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars, particularly Tamil. This book follows the standard form of transliteration with the exception of place names and some proper names wh ich are written in their generally ackno wledged anglicized forms without diacritical marks. There is a distinction in Sanskrit between the stem fo rm o f a w ord and the nom inative o r subject case. I generally use the stem form of San skrit w ord s with the exception of common terms such as karma (which is the nominative singular) and some pro pe r names such as Han um an (rather than Hanum at) and Bhagavan (rather than Bhagavat). Sanskrit is a phonetic language, so transliteration reflects correct pronunciation. There are short vowels in Sanskrit (a, i, u, r, /) and long vo w els (d, i, u, f, e, o, ai, au), twice as long as the short. The vowels are approximately pronounced as follows: a like ‘a’ in ‘woman’ d like ‘a’ in ‘rather’ i like ‘i’ in ‘sit’ i like ‘ee’ in ‘meet’
» like ‘u’ in ‘put’ ii like ‘u’ in ‘rule’
r like ‘ri’ in ‘rig’ f like ‘ri’ in ‘reel’ I like ‘le’ in ‘table’
xiii I
A note on la n g u age a m i translite ration
e like V in ‘ red’
ai like ‘ai’ in ‘aisle’ o like ‘o’ in ‘go’ au like ‘ow’ in ‘vow’
Consonants are unaspirated (such as ka, ga,pa) and aspirated (such as kha, gha,pba). The retroflex sounds ta, tha, da, dba and na are pronounced with the tip of the tongue bent backwards to touch the palate. The dentals ta, tha, da, dha and na are pronounced with the tip of the tongue behind the teeth. The gutteral nasal na, pronounced ‘ng’, and the palatal na, pronounced ‘nya’, are always found in conjunction with other consonants of their class (except in the case of some ‘seed’ mantras). Thus lihga and arijali. The m sound or anusvdra represents a nasalization of the preceding vowel and the b sound or visarga represents an aspiration of the preceding vowel: a ‘h’ sound followed by a slight echo of the vowel (e.g. devah is devaha). Apart from these sounds, two Tamil consonants which have no English equivalents are la and ra which are retroflex sounds.
xiv
Abbreviatio ns and texts
I'lie fo llow ing are abbreviations fo r S anskrit texts referred to. Assu m ing l hat the San skrit editions o f the texts w ill be o f little use to the readers of this book, only bibliographical details of English translations are given, where available. Ait.Ar.
A itareya A ran yaka
Ap.Gr.S.
Äpasthamba Grbya Siitra. H. Oldenberg, The Grhya Sütras , SB E 29, 30 (Delhi: M LB D , reprint 1964 -5)
Ap.S.S.
Apasthamha Srauta Sütra
Ar.S.
Ärtha Sästra o f Kautilya. L. N. Rangarajan, The Arthashastra (Delhi: Penguin, 1992)
As. Gr.S.
Asvaläyan a Grh ya Siitra. H. Oldenberg, The Grhya Sütras, SBE 29, 30 (Delhi: MLBD, reprint 1964-5)
Ast.
Astä dhyäyi of Pänini. See G. Cardona, Pänini, H is Work and its Traditions, vol. 1 (Delhi: MLBD, 1988)
Ath. V.
Atharva Veda. M. Bloomfield, Hym ns o f the Atharva Veda, SBE 42 (1897; Delhi: M LB D , reprint 1967)
BA U
Brhadäran yaka Upanisad, S. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanisads (London: Unw in Hym an, 1953)
Raud.SS.
Baudhayana Srauta Siitra
Bh.G.
Bha gavad Gita. J. van Buitenen, The Bh agavadg itä in the Mahäbhärata (Chicago and London: U niversity of Chicago Press, 1981)
BS B
Brahm a Siitra Bhäsya. G. Thibaut, Vedanta Sutras with
xv I
List of abbreviations a nd texts
Commentary by Sankaracarya, 2 vols., SHI’ 34, 38 (Delhi: MI.BD, reprint 1987) Ch.U.
Chandogya Upanisad. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanisads
Dbh.Pur.
Devibhdgavata Parana. See C. M. Brown, The Triumph o f the Goddess: The Canonical Models and Theological Visions of the Devi-Bhagavata-Purdna (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990)
Devma.
Devimahdtmya. T. B. Coburn, Encountering the Goddess, a Translation o f the Devimahdtmya and a Study of Its Interpretation (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991)
Gaut.Db.
Gautama Dharma Sdstra. G. Biihler, The Sacred Laws o f the Aryas, SBE 2 (Delhi: MLBD, reprint 1987)
Hat. Yog.
Hathayogapradipika of Svatmarama. T. Tatya, The Hathayogapradipikd of Svatmarama (Madras: Adyar Library, 1972) Jdbala Upanisad. Patricke Olivelle, The Samnyasa Upanisads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
Jab.U.
Jay.Sam.
Jaydkhya Samhitd
Kat.U.
Katha Upanisad. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanisads
Kau.
Kaulakjiidnanirnaya
K BT
Kubjikdmata Tantra
Kur.Pur.
Kiirma Purdna. A Board of Scholars, The Kiirma Purdna, All India Tradition and Mythology (Delhi: MLBD, 1973)
Mabbbas.
Mahabhdsya of Patanjali
Mabnar. U. Mahdndrdyana Upanisad Mait. U.
Maitri Upanisad
Manu
Manu-smrti. W. Doniger, The Laws o f Manu (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991)
Mark.Pur.
Markandeya Purdna. F. E. Pargiter, The Markandeya Purdna (Delhi: MLBD, reprint 1969)
Mat.Pur.
Matsya Purdna. A Board of Scholars, The Matsya Purdna (Delhi: AITM, 1973)
Mbb.
Mahdbharata. J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Mahdbhdrata, 3 vols. (University of Chicago Press, 1973-8). W. Buck, The Mahdbharata Retold (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973)
xvi
I.nt of a bbrevia tions a n d te xts
MUM)
Motil.il Banarsidass
MS.
Mimämsä Sutras ol Jaimini. M. C. Sandal, The Mimamsa Sutras o f Jaim in i, 2 vois, (l)clhi: MI.HI), reprint 1980)
M.Stav.
Mahimnastava. Arthur Avalon, The Greatness o f Siva, Mahimnastava o f Puspadanta (Madras: Ganesh and Co., reprint 1963)
Nar.U.
Nâradaparivrâjaka Upanisad. P. Olivelle, The Samnydsa Upanisads
Pas. Su.
Päsupata Sütra. H. Chakraborti, Päsupata-Sütram with Pancbdrtha-Bhdsya o f Kaundinya (Calcutta: Academic Publishers, 1970)
R V
Rg Veda Samhitd, A selection of hymns can be found in M. Müller, Vedic Hym ns, 2 vols., SBE 32, 46 (Delhi: MLBD, reprint 1973); W. D. O ’Flaherty, The Rig Veda (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981)
Sam.Kar.
Sämkhya Kärikä of Isvarakrsna. G. Larson, Classical Sdmkhya (Delhi: MLBD, 1979)
Sat.Br.
Satapatha Brâhmana. J. Eggeling, The Satapatha-Brahmana, 5 vols., SBE 12, 26, 41, 43, 44 (Delhi: MLBD, reprint 1978-82)
SBE
Sacred books of the East
Sp.Nir.
Spanda-Nimaya of Ksemaräja. J. Singh, Spanda Kärikäs (Delhi: MLBD, 1980)
Sribha.
Sribhdsya of Ramanuja. G. Thibaut, The Vedânta-sûtras with Commentary by Rämänuja, SBE 48 (Delhi: MLBD, reprint 1976)
Svet. U.
Svetàsvatara Upanisad. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanisads
TA
Tantrdloka of Abhinavagupta
Tait. Sam.
Taittiriya Samhitd. A. B. Keith, in The Veda o f the Black Yajus School En titled Taittiriya Sanhita, 2 vols., Harvard Oriental Series 18, 19 (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914)
Tait. Up.
Taittiriya Upanisad. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanisads
Vaj.Sam.
Vdjasaneyi Samhitä
Vakpad.
Vâkyapâdiya of Bhartrhari. K. A. Iyer, The Vdkyapadiya (Poona: Deccan College, 1965)
V ay. Pur.
Väyu Puräna. A Board o f Scholars, The Väyu Purdna, All India Tradition and Mythology (Delhi: MLBD, 1973)
l.ist o f abbreviations and texts Vis. Pur.
Visnu Puratia. 11. 11. Wilson, The Visnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition (Calcutta: I’unthi I’ustak, reprint 1967)
Vis.Smrt.
Visnu Smrti. J . Jolly, The Institutes o f Visnu, SBE 7 (Delhi: M LB D , reprint 1965)
Yog.U.
Yogatattva Upanisad. T. R. S. Ayyangar, The Yoga Upanisads (Madras: Adyar Library, 1952)
YS
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. See YS bhasya
YS bhasya
Yoga Sutra-bhasya of Vyasa. Swami H. Aranya, Yoga Philosophy o f Patanjali (Albany: SU N Y Press, 1983)
X V l l l
Introduction
V is it ing India d u ring the first h alf o f the ele venth centu ry, th e rem arkable Islamic scholar Al-Birunl made a distinction between the views of the Hindu philosophers and the ordina ry peo ple.1 In the form er he thought he could find analogues for his ow n m onotheistic belief. Al-B irun l m ay or may not be correct in this, but what is significant is that we have here an early recognition, b y an outsider, of both the diversity o f Hind uism and its seem ingly u nifying features. Fo r A 1Blrun i, und erlying the diversity o f the po pu lar religion is a ph ilosoph ical unity to Hin du traditions. In this bo ok I hope to survey the wide diversity of what has become known as ‘Hinduism’ as well as to indicate some common elements and unifying themes. H indu ism is the religion o f the m ajority o f people in India and N ep al, as w ell as being an im p ortant cultura l force in all o ther continents . A n y v is i tor to south A sia fro m the West is struck b y the colour, sounds, sm ells and v ib ra n c y o f d a ily ritu al observances, and b y th e cen trality o f reli g io n in people’s lives. There are innumerable wayside shrines to local goddesses or div inize d a ncestors, m ajestic temples to the ‘ great’ deities such as Visn u or Siva, festivals, pilgrimages to rivers and sacred places, and garlanded pictures o f deities and saints in buses, shop s and hom es. Hin du s w ill often say that Hin du ism is not so much a religion, but a w ay o f life. H induism also contains developed and elaborate traditions of ph iloso ph y and theol ogy, w hich can be ve ry different from those of the West, A 1-Birum ’s com ments notw ithstanding. Th is bo ok is both a historical and thematic surv ey o f H indu ism . It is an 1
An introduction to Hinduism
Map i India showing some important sacred sites
1
In trod uction
attempt to make clear the structures ol I Imiluism and to explain its inter nal coherence as well as its apparent inconsistencies. While recognizing that it is imp ossible to include ev eryth ing in a subject w hich c ov ers a tim e span of 5,000 years and which has existed over a vast geographical area, 1 this bo ok aims at giving com prehen sive cove rage o f the history, traditions, rituals and theologies of Hinduism. Inevitably, in an approach which is both them atic and historical, there is som e o verlap in the material co vere d, but it is hoped that this will provide mutual reinforcement of important themes and ideas. Th e b oo k presents the realms o f the hou seho lder and the renounc er as distinct, and highlights ritual as a un ifying feature o f Hin du traditions. It also lays emp hasis on the influenc e o f Tantra wh ich has often been underestim ated. Fo r the reader w ishin g to get a general im pressio n o f Hinduism, the introductory chapter i and chapter 9 on Hindu ritual (which I take to be more important than doctrine in understanding Hin duism ) are the mo st relevant. F o r the reader m ainly interested in the ology and philosophy, chapter 10 provides a systematic overview. The b o ok ’s intended readers are students taking hum anities courses in u niv er sities and colleges, thou gh it is hop ed that others, pa rticularly from H ind u com m unities them selves, m ay find som ething o f interest in its pages. C hap ter 1 begins w ith the question ‘w hat is Hin du ism ?’ Th is is a com plex issue, as the term ‘Hindu’ has only been in wide circulation for a couple of centuries and reading ‘Hinduism’ into the past is problematic. This chapter discusses these issues, goes on to develop ideas about Hinduism’s general features and relates its study to some contemporary scholarly debates. The second chapter begins the historical survey of Hin du traditions, starting with the ved ic religion and examining the rela tion between the Aryan culture which produced the Veda, Hinduism’s revelation, and the Indus va lley culture. C ha pte r 3 develops the historical survey, discussing the idea o f d h a r m a , truth and d uty, and the institutions o f caste and kingsh ip. C ha pter 4 introduc es the idea o f w orld renunciation and examines its ideals of liberation from the cycle of reincarnation thro ugh a sceticism and yog a. C ha pte rs 5 to 8 describe the great traditions of Vaisnavism, whose focus is the deity of Visnu and his incarnations, Saivism, whose focus is Siva, and Saktism, whose focus is the Goddess, D evi. C ha pters 9 and 10 are thematic, exam ining H ind u ritual and H indu theo logy respectively, and chapter 1 1 traces the developm ent of Hind uism as a w o rld religion and its m ore recent manifestations in Hin du nationalist politics.
3
An introduction to I linditiim
In writing this hook, I have assumed that the study of religion is of vital importance in the modern world in which everyone is, in some sense, a ‘global citizen’, and in which issues of identity and meaning are as impor tant as ever. In Hinduism we see two contemporary cultural forces which are characteristic of modern communities: on the one hand a movement towards globalization and identity formation which locates Hinduism as a trans-national world religion alongside Christianity, Buddhism or Islam; on the other, a fragmentation which identifies Hinduism with a nar rowly conceived national identity. Both of these forces, towards global ization and a fragmented nationalism, are strong within Hinduism and it remains to be seen which becomes the more prominent voice. I hope that Hindus reading this book will recognize their tradition in its pages, and I leave it for the reader to judge the appropriateness o f the ‘dis courses’ I have highlighted and those I have thereby occluded.
4
i Points of dep arture
W hat is H in d u ism ? A sim ple answ er m ig ht be th at H in du ism is a te rm w hic h denote s th e religio ns o f the m ajo rity o f peop le in India and N ep al, and o f som e com m unities in other continents, w h o refer to themselves as ‘ H indu s’. Th e difficulties arise wh en we try to understand precisely wha t this means, fo r the dive rsity o f H indu ism is tru ly vast and its history long and com plex. Som e might claim, both from within the tradition and from outside it, that because of this diversity there is ‘no such thing as H ind uism ’, wh ile others m ight claim that, in spite o f its dive rsity, there is an ‘essence’ which structures or patterns its manifestations. The truth of the matter probably lies somewhere between these claims. Ask many I lindus and they will be sure of their identity as ‘Hindu’, in contrast to being Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, yet the kinds of Hindus they are w ill v a ry a v e ry gre at deal and differences betw een H in d u s m ig ht be as great as differences betw een Hin dus and Budd hists or C hristians. In Ind ia’s pop ulation o f approx im ately 900 million peo ple,1 700 million are H indu s, the remainder are Mu slim s, Sikhs, C hristians, Jains, B udd hists, Parsees, Jews and followers of ‘tribal’ religions. There are 120 million M uslims and 4 5 m illion tribal peoples o r adivasis, with 14 m illion Sikhs and an estimated 14 m illion Ch ristians.2 Th is is a w ide m ix o f religions and cu l tural groups, all o f wh ich interact w ith Hin du ism in a num ber of w ay s. There are also sizeable Hindu communities beyond the boundaries of south Asia in Sou th A frica, Ea st Africa , South A m erica, the West Indies, the U SA , Canada, Europ e, Australia, N ew Zealand, Bali and Java. The 1981 census in the U S A estimated the popu lation o f Indian com m unities to be
5
An introduction to Hinduism
387,223, most ol whom would he I lindu, while in the UK the number of 1 lindus for the same year is estimated at 300,ooo.3 There are also many Westerners from Europe and America who would claim to follow Hinduism or religionj deriving from it and Hindu ideas, such as karma, yoga and vegetarianism, are now commonplace in the West. The actual term ‘hindu’ first occurs as a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus (Sanskrit: sindhu). In Arabic texts, Al-Hind is a term for the people of modern-day India4 and ‘Hindu’, or ‘Hindoo’, was used towards the end of the eighteenth century by the British to refer to the people of ‘Hindustan’, the area of northwest India. Eventually ‘Hindu’ became virtually equivalent to an ‘Indian’ who was not a Muslim, Sikh, Jain or Christian, thereby encompassing a range of religious beliefs and practices. The ‘-ism’ was added to ‘Hindu’ in around 1830 to denote the culture and religion of the high-caste Brahmans in con trast to other religions, and the term was soon appropriated by Indians themselves in the context of establishing a national identity opposed to colonialism,5 though the term ‘Hindu’ was used in Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographic texts in contrast to ‘Yavana’ or Muslim, as early as the six teenth century.6 Defining Hinduism Because o f the wide range of traditions and ideas incorporated by the term ‘Hindu’, it is a problem arriving at a definition. Most Hindu traditions revere a body of sacred literature, the Veda, as revelation, though some do not; some traditions regard certain rituals as essential for salvation, others do not; some Hindu philosophies postulate a theistic reality who creates, maintains and destroys the universe, others reject this claim. Hinduism is often characterized as belief in reincarnation (samsara) determined by the law that all actions have effects (karma), and that salvation is freedom from this cycle. Yet other religions in south Asia, such as Buddhism and Jainism, also believe in this. Part of the problem of definition is due to the fact that Hinduism does not have a single historical founder, as do so many other world religions; it does not have a unified system of belief encoded in a creed or declaration of faith; it does not have a single system o f soteriology; and it does not have a centralized authority and bureaucratic struc ture. It is therefore a very different kind o f religion in these respects from the monotheistic, western traditions of Christianity and Islam, though there are arguably stronger affinities with Judaism. 6
/Vtints <>) departu re Ja w aharla l N eh ru , tlic first prim e m in iste r of in dependent In dia , said that I lindu ism is ‘ all tilings to all m en ',7 cer tain ly an inclusiv e defin ition, hut so inclusive as to be of little use lor our purposes. Yet while it might not be possible to arrive at a watertight definition of Hinduism, this does not mean that the term is empty. Th ere are clearly so m e kinds o f practices, texts and beliefs which are central to the concept of being a ‘Hindu’, and there are others w hich are on the edges of H ind uism . I take the view that while ‘ H in d u ism ’ is not a categ ory in the cla ssical sense o f an essence defined b y certain properties, there are nevertheless pro totyp ical form s o f I lindu practice and belief. The beliefs and practices o f a high-caste devo tee of the Hindu god Visnu, living in Tamilnadu in south India, fall clearly within the categ o ry o f ‘ H in d u ’ and are p ro to ty p ic a l o f th at c ate gory . The beliefs and practices of a Radhasaomi devotee in the Punjab, who wor ships a Go d witho ut attributes, w ho does not accept the Veda as revelation and even rejects many H indu teachings, are not p roto typ ically H indu , yet are still w ithin the sphere, and category, of H indu ism . Th e sou th Indian devotee of Visnu is a more typical member of the category ‘Hindu’ than the Radh asoam i devotee. In other w ord s, ‘H ind uism ’ is not a catego ry in the classical sense - to wh ich som ething either belongs o r it does not - but more in the sense o f proto typ e theory. Pro totyp e theory, developed by G eo rge L a k o ff,8 maintains that cate gories do no t have rigid b oun daries, but rather there are degrees o f categ ory m emb ership; some members of a category are mo re prototypical than others. Th ese degrees ma y be related throu gh fam ily resemblance; the idea that ‘members of a category may be related to one another without all mem bers having any properties in com m on that define the catego ry’ .9 H ind uism can be seen as a ca teg ory in this sense. It has fuz zy edges. Some forms o f religion are central to H indu ism , wh ile others are less clearly cen tral bu t still w ithin the catego ry. To say w hat is or is not central to the cate go ry o f Hin duism is, o f course, to make judgeme nts about the degree of prototyp icality. The q uestion of the basis of such judg em ents arises. He re w e m ust turn, on the one hand, to Hind u self-understandings, for H indu ism has developed categories for its ow n se lf-de scrip tion ,10 as w ell as, on the other, to the sch olar’s un de r standings o f com m on features or structuring principles seen from outside the tradition. A lth o u g h I have som e sym p a th y w ith Jo n ath an Z . S m ith ’s rem ark that religion is the creation o f the sch olar’s im ag ina tion ,1 1 in so far as the act of
7
An introduction to Hindu ism
scholarship involves a reduction, a selection, a highlighting of some dis courses and texts and a backgrounding of others, there is nevertheless a wide body of ritual practices, forms of behaviour, doctrines, stories, texts, and deeply felt personal experiences and testimonies, to which the term ‘ Hin duism’ refers. The term ‘H ind u’ certainly does refer in the contempo rary world to the dominant religion of south Asia, albeit a religion which embraces a wide variety within it. It is important to bear in mind that the formation of Hinduism, as the world religion we know today, has only occurred since the nineteenth century, when the term was used by Hindu reformers and western orientalists. However, its origins and the ‘streams’ which feed into it are very ancient, extending back to the Indus valley civi lization.12 I take the view that ‘Hinduism’ is not purely the construction of western orientalists attempting to make sense of the plurality of reli gious phenomena within the vast geographical area of south Asia, as some scholars have maintained,13 but that ‘Hinduism’ is also a development of Hindu self-understanding; a transformation in the modern world of themes already present. I shall use the term ‘Hin du ’ to refer not only to the contemporary world religion, but, with the necessary qualifications, to the traditions which have led to its present formation. Religion and the sacred What we understand by Hinduism as a religion pa rtly depends upon what we mean by ‘religion’. Our understanding of Hinduism has been mediated by western notions of what religion is and the projection of Hinduism as an ‘other’ to the West’s Christianity.14 While this is not the place fo r an elaborate discussion of the meaning of religion, it is neverthe less important to make some remarks about it, and to indicate some para meters of its use. The category ‘religion’ has developed out of a Christian, largely Protestant, understanding, whic h defines it in terms of belief. This is indicated by the frequent use of the term ‘faith’ as a synony m for ‘ religion’ . If ‘ religion ’ is to contribute to our understanding of human views and prac tices, its characterization pu rely in terms of belief is clearly inadequate and would need to be modified to include a variety of human practices. Definitions of religion p rovoke much debate and disagreement, but to use the term we have to have some idea of what we mean by it. Religion needs to be located squarely within human society and culture; there is no privileged discourse o f religion outside o f particular cultures and societies. The famous sociologist Emile Durkheim in The E lementary Forms o f the 8
Points o f d eparture
Religious l.ije, first published in lyi 5, defined religion .is ‘a unified set of beliefs and pr.icticcs relative to sacred tilings’ which creates a social bond between people.15 This unified set of beliefs and practices is a system of symbols which acts, to use Peter Berger’s phrase, as a ‘sacred canopy’, imbuing individual and social life with meaning. The ‘sacred’ refers to a quality of mysterious power which is believed to dwell within certain objects, persons and places and which is opposed to chaos and death. Religion, follow ing Berger, establishes a ‘sacred co sm os’ wh ich provides the ‘ultimate shield against the terror o f ano m y’ .16 Th is sense o f sacred po w er is of vital im portance to the experience o f men and wo m en throug hou t the history o f religions. In H induism a sense o f the sacred m ight be experienced as the sense of a greater being outside o f the self, a ‘numinous’ experience to use the term coined by the German theologian Rudolf Otto, characterized by a feeling of awe, fascination and m ys ter y;17 or the sense o f the sacred might oc cu r as an inner or con templative experience within the self, what might be called a ‘mystical’ experience.10 Th ere has been a tenden cy in recent studies to reduce the ‘re ligiou s’ to the ‘po litical’ .19 W hile it is imp ortant to rec ogn ize that the religious exists on ly w ithin specific cultural contexts, as does the political, the con cep t of the sacred is distinctive to a religious disco urse w ithin cultures. Th e sacred is regarded as divine power manifested in a variety of contexts: temples, locations, images and peop le. While this po w er is not divorced fro m po lit ical power, it can nevertheless exist independently, as is seen in popular religious festivals and personal devotional and ascetic practices which result in states o f inne r ecstasy. The sacred exists entirely within culture. The categories of the sacred and the eve ryd ay are not substantive, as Jon ath an Smith has observ ed, but relational; they change acco rding to circum stances and situation. The re is nothing in Hinduism which is inherently sacred. The sacredness of time, objects or persons depends u pon context and the boundaries between the sacred and the ev eryd ay are fluid. A ritual dance perform er wh o is p o s sessed by a god one day, mediating between the community and the divine, will the next day be simply human again; or the temple image or icon prior to consecration is m erely stone, metal, or woo d, but once con secrated is empowered and becomes the focus of mediation: ‘it becomes sacred b y h aving o ur attention directed to it in a special w a y ’ .20 Th e sacred in Hinduism is mediated through innumerable, changing forms which 9
An introduction to Hinduism
bear witness to a deeply rich, religious imagination, centred on mediation and transformation. The understanding of these aspects of human experience is, as Ninian Smart has pointed out, indispensable in the plural cultures of the contem porary world.21 This study of Hinduism assumes this point and assumes that the academic study of religion, or religious studies, draws on a number of methods within the human sciences: anthropology, history, philosophy and phenomenology. There has been much recent debate concerning the nature of objective studies of other cultures by ‘western’ social scientists and a questioning of the very possibility, or desirability, of objectivity. The French social thinker Pierre Bourdieu has asked that we clarify the position of the author, and that the researcher be aware of the limitations o f his or her perspective on the object o f study.22 While it may be true that we are all personally affected by what draws us, methodologi cally, the present study is written from a perspective standing outside Hinduism, rather than from inside. We should, however, be wary of regarding these categories as watertight, for there is a dialectical relation between the objective structures of Hinduism, its beliefs and practices, and the dispositions o f the method used.23 The methods of religious stud ies must mediate between, on the one hand, the objective structure of Hindu traditions and Hindu self-reflection, and, on the other, the com munity of ‘readers’ who are external (whether or not they happen to be Hindus).24 Needless to say, I am not concerned with the truth or falsity of the claims made by the traditions described here. These claims are part of the social and psychological fabric of Hindu communities which have given them life, and which have had profound personal significance for people within them. Gen eral features of Hinduism Many Hindus believe in a transcendent God, beyond the universe, who is yet within all living beings and who can be approached in a variety of ways. Such a Hindu might say that this supreme being can be worshipped in innumerable forms: as a handsome young man, as a majestic king, as a beautiful young girl, as an old woman, or even as a featureless stone. The transcendent is mediated through icons in temples, through natural phe nomena, or through living teachers and saints. Hinduism is often charac terized as being polytheistic, and while it is true that innumerable deities are the objects of worship, many Hindus will regard these as an aspect or 10
hunts of departure manifestation ol sacred power. Devotion (bhakti) to deities mediated through icons and holy persons pro vid es refuge in times o f crisis and even final liberation (m o k s a ) from action {karma) and the cycle of reincarna tion (samsara ). T h e transcenden t is also revealed in sacred literature, called the ‘Veda’, and in codes of ritual, social and ethical behaviour, called d h a r m a , which that literature reveals. Th e tw o terms v e d a and d h a r m a are of central imp ortance in w ha t m ight be called H ind u self-understanding. V E D A A N D
DHARMA
The Ved a is a large bo dy o f literature com po sed in Sanskrit, a sacred lan guage of Hinduism, revered as revelation (sruti ) and as the source of dharma. The term v e d a means ‘knowledge’, originally revealed to the ancient sages (rsi), conveyed to the community by them, and passed throug h the generations in itially as an ora l tradition. Th ere is also a large bo dy o f Sanskrit literature, inspired but nevertheless regarded as being o f human authorship, comprising rules of conduct (the Dharma literature) and stories abou t people and gods (the E p ics and m yth olog ical texts called Puranas). Th ese texts m ight be regarded as a second ary or indirect revela tion (smrti ).25 Th ere are also texts in verna cu lar Indian languages, pa rticu larly Tamil, w hich are revered as being equal to the Veda by some H indu s. The Veda as revelation is of vital importance in understanding Hind uism , though its acceptance is not universal am ong H indu s and there are form s o f Hin du ism w hich have rejected the Veda and its legitim izing authority in the sanctioning of a hierarchical social order. However, all Hindu traditions make some reference to the Veda, wheth er in its accep tance or rejection, and some scholars have regarded reference to its legit imizing au thority as a criterion of being H ind u.26 W hile revelation as an abstract, or even notional entity, is important, the actual content of the Veda has o ften been negle cte d b y H in d u tr adit ions. It h as acted rath er as a reference point for the construction of Hindu identity and selfunderstanding.27 D h a r m a is revealed b y the Veda . It is the nearest semantic equiv alent in Sanskrit to the English term ‘religion’, but has a wider connotation than this, incorp orating the ideas o f ‘truth’, ‘d u ty’ , ‘ethics’, ‘law ’ and even ‘nat ural law ’ . It is that po w er w hich u pho lds or suppo rts society and the cos- | mos; that power which constrains phenomena into their particularity, w h ic h m akes th in gs w h at th ey are .28 T h e nin eteenth -century H in d u reformers speak of Hinduism as the eternal religion or law (sanatana 11
An introduction to H indu ism
dharma), a common idea among modern I lindus today in their self description. More specifically, dharma refers to the duty of high-caste Hindus with regard to social position, one’s caste or class (varna), and the stage of life one is at (asrama ). All this is incorporated by the term varndsrama-dharma. One striking feature of Hinduism is that practice takes precedence over belief. What a Hindu does is more important than what a Hindu believes. Hinduism is not credal. Adherence to dharma is therefore not an accep tance of certain beliefs, but the practice or performance of certain duties, which are defined in accordance with dharmic social stratification. The boundaries of what a Hindu can and cannot do have been largely deter mined by his or her particular endogamous social group, or caste, strati fied in a hierarchical order, and, of course, by gender. This social hierarchy is governed by the distinction between purity and pollution, with the higher, purer castes at the top of the structure, and the lower, polluted and polluting, castes at the bottom. Behaviour, expressing Hindu values and power structures, takes precedence over belief, orthopraxy over ortho doxy. As Frits Staal says, a Hindu ‘may be a theist, pantheist, atheist, com munist and believe whatever he likes, but what makes him into a Hindu are the ritual practices he performs and the rules to which he adheres, in short, what he does’.29 This sociological characterization of Hinduism is very compelling. A Hindu is someone born within an Indian social group, a caste, who adheres to its rules with regard to purity and marriage, and who performs its prescribed rituals which usually focus on one of the many Hindu deities such as £iva or Visnu. One might add that these rituals and social rules are derived from the Hindu primary revelation, the Veda, and from the secondary revelation, the inspired texts of human authorship. The Veda and its ritual reciters, the highest caste or Brahmans, are the closest Hinduism gets to a legitimizing authority, for the Brahman class has been extremely important in the dissemination and maintenance of Hindu cul ture. It is generally the Brahman class that has attempted to structure coherently the multiple expressions of Hinduism, and whose self understanding any account of H induism needs to take seriously. RITUAL AND SALVATION
Dharma implies a fundamental distinction between the affirmation of worldly life and social values on the one hand, and the rejection of wo rldly 12
Points of ilcju irturc
life or renun ciation (samnyasa) in order to achieve salvation or liberation ( moksa) on the other. Religion in worldly life is concerned with practical needs; the help of deities in times of crisis such as a child’s illness, the ensu ring o f a better lot in this life and the next, and the regu lating o f on e’s passage throug h time in the social institutions into which one is born. T his kind of religion is concerned with birth, marriage and funeral rites; the regular ordering o f life through ritual which is generally distinct from reli gion as leading to personal salvation or liberation (moksa). Richard Gombrich, who has highlighted this distinction, has called the former ‘com m unal religion’ to distinguish it from soteriology, the path of salva tion.30 Religion as soteriology is concerned with the individual and his/her own salvation, howsoever conceptualized, whereas communal religion is concerned w ith the regu lation o f com m unities, the ritual struc turing o f a pe rson ’s passage through life, and the successful transition, at death, to another world. The former involves an element of faith and, m ore im portantly, initiation into the particular w ay or method leading to the practitioner’s spiritual goal. The latter is concerned with legitimizing hierarchical social relationships and prop itiating deities. Th e relationship b etween s oterio logy and practical religion is variable. Paths m ight demand com plete celibacy and the renoun cing of social life, in which case the Hindu would become a renouncer (samnydsin), a wa n dering ascetic, or they m ight be adapted to the househ older continuing to live in the wo rld, fo r exam ple by dem anding a certain yo ga practice. Som e spiritual paths m ight allow w om en to be initiated, others m ight not; some might be open to Un touc hab le castes, w hile others m ight not. The aim o f a spiritual path is eventual liberation rather than worldly prosperity which is the legitimate goal for the follower of practical religion. Hindus might, and do , participate in both forms o f religion. This distinction between practical religion and religion as soteriology, between appeasem ent and m ysticism , is expressed at the social level in the figures o f the househo lder, wh o maintains his fam ily and perform s his rit ual obligations, and the renouncer who abandons social life, performs his own funeral and seeks final release. The purposes of the householder and renouncer, as Lo uis D um on t has show n,31 are quite different, even con tradictory, yet are both legitimated within Hindu traditions. The highcaste householder is born with three debts (rna) to be paid: the debt of vedic stu d y to th e sa ges (rsi) as a celibate student ( brahmacarin ), the debt of ritual to the gods ( d e v a ) as a householder, and the debt of begetting a
*3
An introduction to H induism
son to make funeral offerings to the ancestors (Jntr). Traditionally, only once these debts have been paid can a householder go forth to seek libera tion. Sometimes, as in the famous text of secondary revelation, the Bhagavad Gita, the ideals of household obligation and ascetic renuncia tion are brought together by saying that a person can wo rk towards liber ation while still fulfilling his world ly responsibilities. ONE AND MA NY GODS
The term poly theism can be applied to Hindu ism in so far as there is a mu l tiplicity o f divine forms, from pan-H indu deities such as Siva, Visnu and Ganesa to deities in regional temples, such as Lo rd Jagann ath at Puri, and deities in local village shrines. These deities are distinct and particular to their location; the goddess in a shrine in one village is distinct from the goddess in a different shrine. While most Hindu s w ill regard these deities as distinct, many Hindus will also say that they are aspects or manifesta tions o f a single, transcendent Go d. Some H indu s w ill identify this tran scendent focus with a specific God, say Krsna or Siva, and maintain that the other deities are lower manifestations of this supreme God. Other Hindus will say that all deities are aspects of an impersonal absolute and that deities of mythology and the icons in temples are windows into this ultimate reality. What is important is that the deities as icons in temples mediate between the human world and a divine or sacred reality and that the icon as deity might be seen as a ‘sp iritualization’ o f matter. MEDIATION AND THE SACRED
Central to any understanding of Hinduism is the role of mediation between the sacred and the every day or ‘profan e’ . The place of the interac tion o f the sacred with the human is the place o f mediation; the connection between the comm unity or individual and the religious focus. M ediation underlines difference; the difference betwe en humans and deities, and the differences between human groups. These differences are mediated tem porarily through ritual and festival cycles, and spatially through temples, icons, holy persons and holy places. In ritual, offering incense to the icon of a deity mediates between, or is thought to open a channel o f comm uni cation between, the Hindu and the transcendent power embodied in the icon. Similarly, renouncers and gurus mediate between the sacred and the eve ryday world s, as do people who become tempo rarily possessed during certain festivals.
14
Points of depa rture
The distinction between the sacred and the everyday overlaps with the important distinctions between the pure and the impure, and the auspii ious and the inauspicious: distinctions which have been emphasized in recent studies of Hinduism.32 The sacred is generally regarded as pure, i hough m ay also be m anifested in imp urity, as in the Ag ho ri ascetic living in the polluting cremation ground. The sacred is also auspicious, yet may on occasion be inauspicious, as when a goddess o f smallpox and other dis eases visits one’s family. The possessed man or wom an recapitulates the temple icon. Bo th co n tain sacred power and are identified with the deity. Both icon and pos sessed person are not m erely representations o f the deity, but have ac tually become the deity within the particular, circumscribed, ritual situation. The transformation o f the non-empowered icon into em powered icon, or of the low-caste performer into the sacred deity, is a central structure of I lindu religious con sciousne ss. Th e icon, or person w ho has become an icon, mediates between the sacred realm and the human community. Should the divine interact with the hum an outside ritual contexts, such as in an unexpected possession illness, then the unlooked-for mediation might not be we lcom e and, indeed, cou ld be dange rous. Not only certain people, but also certain places, mediate between the sacred and the everyd ay. Places of pilgrim age are called ‘cr ossings’ (tirtha). One such crossing is the sacred city o f Varanasi wh ich is so sacred that lib eration will o ccur at death for those lu ck y enough to die there. H ere, the crossing from everyday to the sacred will be permanent. Again, rivers, such as the Ga nge s in the north o r K av eri in the south, are places wh ere the sacred is manifested and Hindus receive blessings through visiting these sites. Yet, while difference mediated by innu merable spatial and temporal forms is central, identity rather than hierarchy, and by implication the absence of m ediation, is also important. Wh ile the deity is worsh ippe d as distinct, the deity and devotee nevertheless share in the same essence and at a deep level the y are one .33 Th e idea o f a bou ndless id entity is at the heart of many Hin du soteriologies w hich assert the essence of a person, their true self (dtman ), to be identical with the essence of the cosmos, the absolute (brahman). Even traditions which emphasize the distinction between G od and the self at some level usually accept the identity or partial identity of w orshippe r and worshipp ed, o f lover and beloved. This idea o f an iden tity between the worshipper and the deity has even been called, by the 15
An intr<>din to H induism
anthropologist Chris I'uller, one of 1liiului.sm’s ‘axiomatic truths’.34 Yet the coexistence o f identity and difference, of imm ediacy and mediation, is also axiom atic. The re is unity, yet there is difference: the god Krsna ’s con sort, Radha, is united with him, yet she retains her distinct identity; the self and the absolute m ight be one, y et caste and gender difference s matter. Hindu traditions The idea of tradition inevitably stresses unity at the cost of difference and divergence. In pre-Islam ic India there would have been a number of dis tinct sects and regional religious identities, perhaps united by common cultural sym bols, but no notion of ‘H induism ’ as a comp rehensive entity. Yet there are nevertheless striking continuities in H indu traditions. There are essentially two models of tradition: the arboreal model and the river model. The arboreal model claims that various sub-traditions branch off from a central, original tradition, often founded by a specific person. The river model, the exact inverse o f the arboreal model, claims that a tradition comprises multiple streams which merge into a single mainstream.35 Contemporary Hinduism cannot be traced to a common origin, so the discussion is directed towards whether H induism fits the river model or, to extend the metaphor, whether the term ‘Hinduism’ simply refers to a number of quite distinct rivers. While these models have restricted use in that they suggest a teleological direction or intention, the river model would seem to be more appropriate in that it emphasizes the multiple ori gins o f Hinduism. The many traditions which feed in to contemporary Hinduism can be subsumed under three broad headings: the traditions of brahmanical orthop raxy, the renouncer traditions and pop ular or local traditions. The tradition of brahmanical orth opraxy has played the role of ‘ master narra tive’, transmitting a body of kno wledge and beha viour throug h time, and defining the conditions of orthopraxy, such as adherence to varndsramadharma. BRAHMANICAL TRADITIONS
The brahmanical tradition can itself be subdivided into a number of s ys tems or religions which are distinct yet interrelated, and which refer to themselves as ‘traditions’ (sampraddya ) or systems of teacher-disciple transmission (parampard ) . These traditions, which developed signifi cantly during the first millennium c e , are focused up on a particular deity 16
I’oints o f departure
or group of deities. Among these broadly brahmanical systems, three are particularly important in I lindu self-representation: Vaisnava traditions, locused on the deity V isnu and his incarnations; Saiva traditions, focused 011 Siva; and Sàkta traditions, focused on the Goddess or Devi. There is .1 Iso an important tradition o f Brahm ans called Sm artas, those who follow i he smrti or secondary revelation, and who worship five deities, Visnu, Siva, Sürya, G anesa and Devï. Th ese traditions have their own sacred texts and rituals, wh ile still being within the general cate go ry o f Hin du ism .36 Cuttin g across these religious traditions is the theo log y of Vedanta; the unfolding of a sophisticated discourse about the nature and content of sacred scriptures, which explores questions of existence and knowledge. The Vedanta is the theological articulation of the vedic traditions, a dis course wh ich pen etrated Vaisnava and, tho ugh to a lesser extent, Saiva and Sakta thinking. The Vedanta tradition became the philosophical basis of I he Hindu renaissance during the nineteenth century and is pervasive in I he wo rld religion which H induism has become. THE RENO UNCER TRADITIONS
I'he renouncer traditions, while th eir value system is distinct from that of the Brahman householders, are nevertheless closely related to the brah manical religions. Indeed, some brahm anical hou seho lder traditions, such as Saivism, originated among the world-renouncers seeking liberation while living on the edges o f so cie ty in w ild places and in cremation grounds. The renouncer traditions espouse the values of asceticism and world transcendence in contrast to the brah manical householder values of affirming the goals of worldly responsibility (dharma ), worldly success and profit (artha ), and erotic and aesthetic pleasure (kâma ). The ideal of renunciation is incorporated within the structure of orthop rax H induism , though orthoprax renunciation must be seen in the context of general Indian renouncer traditions known as the Sramana traditions. These Sramana traditions, including Buddhism and Jainism, developed during the first millennium b c e and were in conflict with brahmanical, vedic orthopraxy. POPULAR TRADITIONS
While there are pan-H in du traditions o f Vaisnavism, Saivism and Sâktism alongside the renouncer traditions, there are also local or popular tradi tions which exist within a bounded geographical area, even within a
17
An introduction to H induism
particular village. Their languages of transmission arc the regional, ver nacular languages rather than the Sanskrit of the hrahmanical tradition. They are less concerned with asceticism than with ensuring that crops grow, that illness keeps away from the children, and that one is not haunted or possessed by ghosts. Such pop ular traditions are low-caste and need to appease ‘hot’ deities, particularly goddesses, who demand offer ings o f blood and alcohol. While the concerns o f popular religion are dif ferent from those of the renouncer and brahmanical traditions, they are nevertheless informed by the ‘higher’ culture. The pro cess wh ereb y the brahmanical tradition influences popu lar reli gion is called Sanskritization. Local deities become identified with the great deities of the brahmanical tradition and local myths become identi fied with the great, pan-Hindu myths. For example, the Dravidian god dess of pustular diseases, Máriyamman, might be identified as a manifestation of the great pan-Hindu goddess Durgá. Local deities can also become pan-Hindu deities and local narratives become commonly shared m yths.37 The god Krsna, for example, m ay have been a local deity who became pan-H indu. More recent examples might be the northern God dess Santos! Ma, who has become a pan-Hind u deity through having become the subject of a movie, or the Kerala deity A iyap pan, who is com ing to have trans-regional appeal. The influence of south Indian Dravidian culture on the grand narrative o f the Sanskritic, brahmanical trad ition has been underestimated and, until recently, little investigated. The relationship between the popular and the brahmanical levels of cu l ture is the focus o f much debate among scholars o f Hindu ism. On the one hand popular tradition can be seen as a residue or consequence of the grand narrative of the brahmanical tradition: an imitation of the higher culture. O n the other hand popu lar tradition can be seen to function inde pendently of the high, brahmanical culture, but interacting with it.38 Scholars who interpret Hinduism holistically, such as Madeleine Biardeau, tend to favo ur the importance o f brahmanical culture in shaping the tradition.39 Others, particularly anthropologists w ho have carried out fieldwork in a specific locality, stress the discontinuities of tradition, emphasizing the importance and independence of regional or popular religion.40 Hindu traditions, with their emphasis on continuity and the impor tance of the teacher or guru in the transference of knowledge, are essen tially conservative and resistant to change. There is a fine balance between 18
I’oints of departure
such conservatism, which preserves the tradition, and the necessity to adapt to prevalent historical conditions. II traditions adapt too much then they are no longer the traditions that they were, yet if they do not adapt they are in danger of dying out. Some I lindu traditions have faded and others have arisen. Hinduism has adapted and reacted to political and social upheavals throug hout its history, wh ile m aintaining many o f its rit ual traditions and social structures almost unchanged for centuries. The impact of modernity and the development of a middle class in India will inevitably effect Hinduism, and debates about civil rights, nationalism, the rights of the scheduled castes, and the Indian w om en ’s movem ent will inevitably transform it. H induism and contempo rary debate
Issues which h ave arisen in the con tem po rary study o f Hin duism relate to wider cultural p roblem s and general intellectual debates abo ut agency, the relation of religion to politics, and gender issues. M an y o f these issues have arisen out of wha t is generally termed ‘p ostm ode rnism ’, a movem ent orig inating in the West, which manifests in all areas o f culture, and a discou rse which questions and challenges trad itional, rationalist views. Cultura l studies, wh ich cuts across traditional division s in the humanities of soc iol ogy, history, ph ilosop hy and even theology, has developed within the gen eral postmo dernist framew ork. In ‘de construc ting’ rationalist discourses, cultural studies has highlighted traditions wh ich have been occlud ed, both in the West and the East. One of the most important examples of this with regard to India and Hinduism has been the work of the historian Ranajit Guha and his colu- - *• leagues, who have worked on the subordinated or subaltern classes of India. O ne o f the themes of this group is that in western, i.e. colon ial and post-colonial, historiography of India, the highlighting of some themes and backg roun ding o f others has demonstrated the exercise of po we r and a denial of the agency o f those who were oppressed. H istorical discourse, according to G uh a, has tended to write out subaltern classes (the lowest castes) and to see protests by those groups as m erely an ‘erup tion’ o f dis content akin to natural disasters.41 This critique of the western scholar ship of Ind ia, partic ularly o f the discipline o f Indo log y, can also be seen in Ron ald Inde n’s important and influential boo k, Imag ining India.*2 Inden critiques the epistemological assumptions and political biases of oriental ist ‘constructions’ o f Hinduism, wh ich have seen Hinduism prim arily in
19
An introduction to Hinduism
terms of caste, as a romanticized, idyllic community, or as ‘oriental despo tism’. He argues that all these views deprive I iindus of agency and sees them governed by external forces outside of their control. Related to the discussion about the importance of understanding human agency and practice, in contrast to emphasizing impersonal struc tures which govern people’s lives,43 is the debate about gender issues. The history of Hinduism is the history of a male discourse. Its written texts and narratives have, with the exception of some notable devotional poetry, been composed by men, usually of the highest, brahmanical caste. In a tra dition’s self-reflection it is generally high-caste, male perceptions of them selves and of wom en which have come down to us, though some modern scholarship has highlighted women’s voices from the past.44 Because Hinduism has been dominated by men, this book reflects this fact, while being aware that women’s self-perceptions and experience have generally been ‘written-o ut’ of the tradition. These debates, of course, are not exclu sive to Hinduism and some contemporary concerns of the Indian women’s movement, about whether Hinduism is inherently androcentric or whether Hinduism can be separated from androcentrism, have echoes in Christianity and other religions. Recent scholarship has begun to uncover these marginalized traditions and I refer the reader to some of that work where appropriate. The chronology of Hinduism
Before the first millennium c e there is no historiography in the south Asian cultural region and texts are not dated. The chronology of Indian religions has therefore been notoriously difficult to establish. We have to rely on archaeological evidence of coins, pottery and, particularly, inscrip tions, and on the internal evidence of texts. The dating o f early texts is very problematic. The sequence of texts can sometimes be established in that if one text is quoted by another, the former must be earlier, but precise dat ing is impossible. Chinese translations of Buddhist texts are dated, which helps establish the chronology o f Buddhism , but is less useful with regard to Hindu material. The more accurate dating of the Buddha to almost a century later than the traditional dating of 566, to 486, b c e , discovered by Richard Gombrich and Heinz Bechert,45 will hopefully lead to reassess ment of the dating of all early Indian material. One of the cliches about Hinduism has been that it is ahistorical and sees time as cyclic rather than linear, which has militated against the keep 20
Points oj dep artu re
ing of accurate historical records. While it is true that I linduism does have .1 view of time repeating itself over vast periods, it is not the case that I lindus have not been interested in their past. W ithin India, as elsew here, t he record o f the past has reflected the con cern s o f the present, thou gh any historical awareness has been embedd ed in m yths, biograp hies o f peo ple in auth ority (the carita literature), in genea logies o f families (the vamsdnucarita sections o f the Puranas), and in historie s o f ruling families in specific locations (the v a m s d v a l i literature). Th e earliest writing o f history in the south A sian region occurs in the fourth cen tury c e with the chronicles written b y Sri Lankan Buddhis t m onks.46 M yths and genea lo gies hav e been recorded particularly in the Hindu Epics and texts called Puranas, reaching their present form in the mid first millennium c e .47 A particu larly striking text, part of the v a m s d v a l i genre, more concerned with his toricity than with m ytholog y, is the ‘H isto ry o f the Kings of K ashm ir’, the Rdjatarangini com posed d uring the twelfth century b y Kalhana. This records the genealogies of the kings and brief descriptions of their exploits.48 The chronology of south Asia has been divided into ancient, classical, medieval and modern periods. While this scheme does reflect genres of texts, it is imp ortan t to rem em ber that there are con tinuities betw een these periods. The follow ing pages assume the follo w ing general chronological scheme: - the Indus valley civilization (c. 2500 to 1500 b Hinduism may be traced back to this period.
c e
).
Elements of
- the vedic period (c. 150 0 to 500 b c e ). The rise of Aryan, in contrast to Dravidian, culture occurs during this period, though there may be more continuity between the Aryan and Indus valley cultures than was pre vio usly supposed. During this period the Veda was formulated and texts of D harma and ritual composed. - the epic and puranic period (c. 500 b c e to 500 c e ). This period sees the composition of the Mabdbh drata and Rdmdyana, as well as the bulk of the Puranas. A number of important kingdoms arise, particularly the Gupta dynasty (c. 320 c e to 500 c e ), and the great traditions of Vaisnavism, Saivism and Saktism begin to develop. - the medieval period (c. 500 c e to 1500 c e ) sees the development of devotion (bhakti ) to the major Hin du deities, particularly Visnu, Siva and Devi. There are major developments in the theistic traditions of Vaisnavism, Saivism and Saktism. This period sees the composition of
An introduction to Hinduism devotional and poetic literature in Sanskrit and vernacular languages, as well as the composition of tantric literature.
- the modern period (c. 1 500 c e to the present) sees the rise and fall of two great empires, the Mughal and the British, and the origin of India as a nation state. The traditions continue, but without significant royal patronage. The nineteenth century sees the rise of Renaissance Hinduism and the twentieth century the development of Hinduism as a major world religion.
22
2 A ncien t origins
The o rigins o f H ind uism lie in two ancient cultural com plexes, the Indus v alley civ iliza tio n w h ic h flo u rish ed fro m 2500 b c e to about i j o o b c e , ^ though its roots are much earlier, and the A ry an culture which de veloped during the second m illennium b c e . Th ere is som e con troversy regarding the relationship between these two cultures. The traditional view, still supp orted b y som e scho lars, is that the Indus va lley civilization d eclined, to be replaced by the culture of the Aryans, an Indo-European people originating in the Caucasus region who migrated into south Asia and spread across the fertile, no rthern plains, which , thro ugh ou t Ind ia’s long history, have offered no obstacle to invaders o r m igrants. Th e alternative v ie w is th at A ry a n cu ltu re is a d evelop m en t fro m th e In d u s v a lle y c iv i lization and was not introduced by outside invaders or migrants; that there is no cultural disjun ction in ancient sou th A sian history, but rather a continuity from an early period. Yet, whether the Arya ns came from ou t side the subcontinent or not, Hinduism might be regarded as the devel opment over the next 2,000 years of Aryan culture, interacting with non-Aryan or Dravidian and tribal cultures, though it is Aryan culture w h ich has p ro v id e d th e ‘m aste r n a rrativ e ’, a b so rb in g and co n tro llin g other discourses. Th e views and argum ents regarding the origins of H induism have not been free from ideo logica l interests and the que st fo r origins itself has been a factor in the development of Hinduism over the last two centuries. H indu revivalists in the nineteenth century, such as D ayan and a Sarasvatl, looked to Hinduism’s Aryan past to imbue it with new moral impetus
¿3
An introduction to Hindu ism
and the search for origins has been important lor Indology as a scholarly articulation and justification for colonialism. The quest for origins is also relevant in the contemporary politics of Hinduism, which traces continu ity between an ancient past and the present, bearing witness to India’s past, Hindu, greatness (see p. 262). In examining the roots o f Hinduism we must be aware o f the rhetoric of origins, as it might be called. Indeed, the very quest for an ‘origin’ may suggest an ‘essence’ which is highly problematic. In searching for an origin we find only ‘traces’ or signs which constantly point beyond themselves, are constantly deferred.1 That is, an ‘origin’ is always the consequence of something which has gone before, and the ‘origin’ cannot be regarded in a teleological way, w ith hindsight, as pointing towards that which follows. In examining the ‘traces’ which constitute a past culture, we should remember that such a culture was complete in itself rather than in some sense preliminary, lived by people who experienced the fullness and con tradictions o f human life, and that any sketch must necessa rily be selective and restrictive. With these qualifications in mind, this chapter will examine the roots o f Hinduism in the Indus valley and Aryan cultures, and discuss the vedic religion o f early Indian society. The Indus valley civilization
In 19 21 Sir Joh n Marshall, Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, directed D. R. Sahni to begin excavations at Harappa. He and R. D . Banerjee, excavating at Mo henjo-Daro in Sind, discovered the Indus va lle y civilization. As with the great civilizations of Sumer and pharaoic Egypt, this urban civilization was centred on a river and located in the basin of the Indus which flows through present-day Pakistan. This Indus valley or Harappan civilization developed from about 2500 b c e , though its origins reach back to the Neolithic Period (7000 - 6000 b c e ), reached its peak around 2300-2000 b c e (trade links with Mesopotamia have been dated to this period), was in decline by 1800 b c e and had faded away by 1 500.2 This was a developed, urban culture. M ohenjo -D aro and H arappa, sep arated by some 40 miles, were two of this civilization’s most important cities and housed some 40,000 inhabitants wh o enjoyed a high standard of living. The cities had sophisticated water technologie s, most of the houses having drainage systems, wells, and rubbish chutes emptying into waste24
Ancie nt origins
pots which were emptied m un icip ally.' As in .incicm M esopotam ia, grain was the basis o f the econom y and the large store -h ouse s in the Indus towns may have been for grain collected as tax. There were trade contacts with the M id dle East and with the hunter-gath erer tribes o f G u ju rat, the town of Lothal in Gujarat being one of the most important centres for i mporting and expo rting good s. Th ere rem ain other cities o f the Indus va l ley civilization yet to be excavated, at Ju de iro -D aro , L urew ala Th er and Ga naw eriwala Th er on the course o f the H akra , an ancient dried-up river in present day Haryana. The antecedents of this culture can be traced to the site of Mergarh, 150 miles north of Mohenjo-Daro in Baluchistan, where the Fre nch archaeolo gist Je an-Fran§oise Jarrig e has da ted the agri cultural com m unity to before 6000 b c e and has established an unb roke n cultural continuity from that early date to the period of the Indus valley civilzation.4 T H E D E V E L O P M E N T A N D C O N T I N U I T Y O F T H E I N D US V A L LE Y
The development and expansion o f the Indus valley culture was pro bab ly the consequ ence o f a gro w th in popu lation, itself due to the developm ent o f farming and the availability of foo d sup plies gro w n on the rich alluvial deposits of the Indus valley. Indeed, the importance of arable farming is demonstrated b y the large granaries in M oh en jo-D aro on the west bank of the Indus, and in Ha rapp a on the east bank o f the Ravi. Evid ence fo r this civilization has come mainly through the excavations of these two cities and from other, smaller, sites. Ap art fro m M erga rh, the sites at A m ri, 100 miles south o f M oh en jo-D aro , at Kalibanga n in the Punjab, and at Lothal near Ah m ada bad in Ra jasthan, are notable. This culture was very extensive and archaeological evidence for the mature Indus valley civilization has been found at over 1,000 sites cover ing an area o f 750,000 square miles, from Ru pa r in the east in the footh ills o f the Him alay as near Simla, to Sutkagen D o r in the we st near the Iranian border, to Lothal on the Gujarat coast.5 Judging by the archaeological record, there wa s a u nity o f material culture, notab ly pottery, architecture and w riting, in the Indus va lley b y as early as the fourth m illennium b c e , whic h was pre ceded b y a p eriod o f continuous develo pm ent at differe nt sites from the early Neolithic Period. The Indus valley culture did not develop due to the direct influence o f external cultural forces from Sum er or Egypt, but was an indigenous development in the Baluchistan and Indus regions, g row ing o ut o f earlier, local cultures. 25
An introduction to Hind uism
Map 2 Major sites of the Indus valley civilization (adapted from Parpola, Deciphering I ndus Scri pt, p. 7)
2 6
A ncicn t origins
T H E R E L I G I O N OH T H E I N D U S V AI . I. KY
Ne edless to say, w e kn ow little of the pol ity o r religion o f this civilization. There is a system o f writing, the Indus valley script, which has been foun d inscribed on steatite seals and copper plates, but this has not yet been suc cess fully deciphe red and, until mo re samples or a bilingua l inscription are found, will pro ba bly remain largely obscure. Th e biggest issue w hich has bearing on the development of H indu traditions from the Indus valley, lies in the answer to the questions: what is the language of the steatite seals? A nd to w h at gro up o f languages is it related ? T h ere hav e been tw o p re dom inant vie w s am ong scho lars, one that it represents a language belo ng ing to the Dravidian linguistic family, the other that it is an early form of Indo-European.6 The D ravidia n languages include the south Indian languages o f Tamil, Kannada, Telegu and Malayalam, as well as Brahui, the language of a hill peop le in Pakistan. Th e presence o f these langu ages is stron g evidence for there being a pan -Indian D ravidian presence, before the predom inance o f the Ind o-Iran ian language group, itself a part of the Ind o-E uro pe an fam ily. The Indo-European languages include Greek, Latin, and the IndoIranian languages which comprise Avestan (the sacred language of the Zoroastrians), Sanskrit, and the north Indian vernaculars of Gujarati, Urd u, Hin di, Kashm iri, O riya and Bengali. C o lin R en frew makes the point that in deciphering the script w e need to begin w ith som ething kno wn , but there are no bilingual inscriptions, so deciph erers assume a solution and then try to dem onstrate its plausib ility.7 Th e successful decipherment of the script wo uld tell us something about the da ily transactions o f these peo ple and m ight tell us som ething o f their religion o r religions. A s it stands w e h ave to infer social and religious c on tents from the material culture, though A sk o Parp ola claims to have made significant advances in understanding the Indus script and its relation to Drav idian languages and Dravidian form s o f Hind uism. Perh aps the most striking thing abou t the Indu s civilizatio n is the high degree of uniformity of urban planning and even a conformity in size of building bricks. Many of the houses were built on a similar ground plan around a central courtyard, and many houses had a water supply and drainage system . T his suggests a sophisticated adm inistration and a hiera r chical structure of authority. In both Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro there w as a forti fi ed low er city separated fro m a forti fi ed citadel or ‘ acrop oli s’ sit 27
A n in trodu ction to H induism
uated on a raised m ound, which contained li.ills and temples. Such unifo r mity may suggest more than wide diffusion of a culture, even a polity imposed on a large area through conquest, with the centre of this empire and its administration at M oh enjo -Da ro. If so, this w ould be the earliest imperial form ation in South Asia, which m ay also have involved the im po sition o f an official re ligion, perhaps centred on the cult of the king. There is, how ever, no co nclusive evidence witho ut the decipherment of the Indus valley script and ideas about the nature o f the state must remain speculative. Th e religion o f the mature Indus va lley culture has to be inferred from the buildings w hich were most pro ba bly temples, stone statues, terracotta figurine s and pa rticu larly the steatite seals. Th e state religion seems to have involved temple rituals, perhaps animal sacrifice, and ritual bathing in the ‘great bath’ found in the citadel at Mohenjo-Daro. This bath is reminis cent of tanks foun d in later Hind u temples and reflects a concern with r it ual purification through water, an important idea in Hinduism. At Kaliba nga n a ritual area has been found in wh ich animal sacrifice seems to have been practised and seven ‘fire altars’ have been located. Indeed, the brick platforms by the great bath at Mohenjo-Daro may have served a similar p urpose.8 The large number of female terracotta figurines unearthed during the excavations, ma y hav e been goddess images and the presence of the god dess in later Hinduism may be traced back to this early period. It is, of course, impossible to say whether there is a continuity in the cult of the godd ess from this early age, and the fact that the godd esses are the focu s o f wors hip in the Indus cu lture does not ne cessarily mean that these are the forerunners of the Hindu goddesses. Goddess worship and the central concerns o f fertility seem to have been com mo n in the ancient wo rld and the Harappan goddess or goddesses may have more in common with Sum erian than with later Hin du deities. Perhaps suggestive of the later religions are the images on the remark able steatite seals, particu larly the ‘Pa supati’ seal, o f a seated, perhaps ith yphallic, figure surrounded by animals, either horned or wearing a headdress. Sir John Marshall and others have claimed that this figure is a pro toty pe o f the Hin du god Siva, the yo gin and Lo rd o f the animals (pasu p ati ), sometimes represented with three faces, and the posture with the knees out and feet joined has been interpreted as evidence o f yog a in pre A ry an culture (see fig. i).9 However, it is not clear from the seals that the ‘proto-Siva’ figure has three faces, as is claimed, nor is it clear that he is 28
Ändern origins
Figur e i Indus valley ‘proto-Siva’ seal
seated in a yogic posture. Asko Parpola has convincingly suggested that the pro to-Siv a is in fact a ‘seated’ bull, alm ost identical to figures o f seated bulls found on early Elamite seals (c. 3000-2750 b c e ).10 While the claim that in the seals we have representations o f a pro to-Siv a is speculative, it is nevertheless possible that iconographie features are echoed in the icono graphy of Siva; the half-moon in Siva’s hair resembling the horns of the bull-god. ‘Phallic’-shaped stones have also been found, suggestive of the later aniconic representation o f Siva, the linga. However, while these connections may be speculative, Parpola has tried to demonstrate that there are a num ber o f linguistic and iconograp hie continuities between the Indus valley civilization and south Indian, Dravidian forms o f Hinduism. The South Indian god Murugan, the young man identified with the god o f war, Skanda, is represented in the Indus val ley script, argues Parpola, by two intersecting circles (the wo rd muruku, in Dravidian languages, suggestively denotes ‘bangle’), and a seal depicting a person b ow ing to a figure standing in the middle o f a fig tree echoes in later Indian iconography of fig trees (such as the Buddhist banyan tree which
29
An intro duction to Hindu ism
indicates the Buddha in early representations). The fig is furthermore associated with the planet Venus, which is in turn later associated with the goddess Durga, and with the tilak, a red dot worn on the foreh ead.1 1 It is tempting to speculate that there are continuities of religion from the Indus valley into Hinduism, which would make the roots of the reli gion go back a very long way, but we must exercise caution. The ritual bath, the fire altars, the female figu rines, the horned deities and the ‘lirigas’ are certainly suggestive of later Hindu traditions. However, ritual purity, an emphasis on fertility, sacrifice, and goddess worship are common to other religions o f the ancient world as well. Indeed, the steatite image o f a figure battling with lions is more reminiscent of the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh myth than anything found in later Hinduism, though again Parpola has argued continuities with the Goddess D urga battling with the buffalo demon.12 The Indus valley civilization seems to have declined rather suddenly between 1 8 0 0 and 1 7 0 0 b c e , prim arily due to environmental causes such as flooding or a decrease in rainfall. A squatter’s period continued for some time after this and smaller Indus valley towns and villages survived the abandonment of the large cities. At M ohenjo-D aro a number of skele tons were fo und w here they had fallen, the victims o f a violent death. It has been claimed that these deaths were caused by early A ryan invaders.13 The Aryans The most commonly accepted theory to date has been that Hinduism is the consequence of incursions of groups kno wn as Ary ans into the north ern plains of India from central Asia, via the mountain passes of Afghanistan, around 1 5 0 0 b c e . Some o f these groups w ent into Iran and there are close affinities between the Iranian religion of the Avesta (the sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism) and the religion o f the Veda. This nar rative has maintained that the Aryans were of the same stock as groups which went west into Europe. Their language was an Indo -E uropean tongue which developed into vedic Sanskrit and finally into classical Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism, and they worshipped primar ily a fire god, Agni, a hallucinogenic plant, Soma, and a warrior god, Indra. The self-designation of these people was the Sanskrit drya, meaning ‘noble’ or ‘honourable’, which referred to the three highest social classes of their society, as distinct from the indigenous people of south Asia whom they encountered and subjugated by means of a superior war tech
30
Ancien t origins
nology. They spread over the northern plains .mil, some time after iooo b c e , reached the Ganges region which became known as the ‘Aryan homeland’ (drydvarta). Aryan culture slowly spread to the Deccan and was established in south India b y around the sixth century c e . Thus the Indo-European-speaking Aryans are contrasted with the indigenous, Dravidian-speaking descendants of the Indus valley civilization whom they conquered. Knowledge of the Aryans comes mostly from their sacred tex t the R g Veda Samhitd, the earliest literature o f Hind uism . The predominance of Ary an culture over Drav idian culture is not dis puted, but the origin o f the A rya ns as com ing from outside the subconti nent has recently been questioned. Tw o theories concerning the origin o f the Ary an s have emerged: what might be called the Ar ya n m igration thesis and the cultural transfo rm ation thesis. - The Arya n migration thesis. The Indus valle y civilization, which speaks a Dravidian language, declines between 2000 and 1800 b c e . The Aryan migrations, or even invasions, occur from about 1500 b c e and the Aryans become the dominant cultural force. This has been the traditional, scholarly picture and is the one roughly sketched above. - The cultural transformation thesis. Ary an culture is a development of the Indus valley culture whose language belongs to the IndoEuropean family, possibly spoken in the region as far back as the Neolithic Period, in interaction with Dravidian culture. On this view there were no Aryan incursions into India, but Indus valley culture is an early Aryan or vedic culture. These positions are stated rather baldly here for the sake of clarity and there may be variations o f these.
T H E M I G R A T I O N T H E S IS A N D T H E A R Y A N M Y T H
A lthough there is an undisputed connection betwee n Sansk rit and oth er Indo -Eu ropea n languages, the picture may be much more com plex than the Aryan migration thesis allows. Indeed, the history which has been po rtrayed o f the Ary an s in India m ay reflect to a large extent the Euro pean social world in which the theo ry developed. Ac cord ing to Poliakov, the idea of invading In do -A ryan s developed in the eighteenth century when western sc holars were w ish in g to be free fro m the confines o f Ju d eo Christian thought while at the same time becoming aware of Indian culture through co lon izatio n.14 Th e idea o f an Ar ya n invasion developed 31
An introduction to I lim iniw i
with interest in Sanskrit, linguistics and vcdic studies and, according to Shaffer, was perpetuated by Indian historians after independence in order to demonstrate the equality o f ancient India with E uro pe .15 Laying aside, for the moment, the question concerning the truth or fal sity o f Ary an migrations into north India, this history, which Poliakov has called the ‘Aryan Myth’, has constructed Hinduism in a certain way. The Aryans, representing a world-ordering rationality, a ‘higher’ religion, are contrasted with the irrationality o f the Dravidians, the pre-Arya n original inhabitants of India. A ccordin g to this line of thinking, the Dravidian cu l ture increasingly makes incursions into ‘H induism ’ after the vedic period. Inden has shown how the history of Hinduism has been seen by ‘the founders o f Indological discourse’ as an initial phase of pure, intellectual vedic religion, followed by the classical phase which reacted with devotionalism against the ‘higher’ religion of the earlier period, followed by a third religion of an animistic folk level, ‘the religion of the Dravidian or pre-A ryan race’.16 Essentially, the argument goes, the intellectual, nature-religion of the Ary ans - a religion with Greek and Scandinavian equivalents - became corrupted by the emotional devotionalism of the Dravidians. In other words, western reconstructions of Indian history, particularly the early period of its formation, have been governed by deeper cultural interests. This picture has recently been questioned. THE CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION THESIS
If there were Aryan migrations, let alone an invasion, into India after the decline of the Indus valley culture, then this would hopefully be corrobo rated by archaeological evidence. The most convincing evidence to date for the Aryan incursions has been a kind of pottery, painted grey ware, found in the Ganges-Yamuna region, supposedly occupied by the Aryans. Carbon 14 dating places this painted grey ware between 110 0 and 300 b c e , precisely the dates of the postulated Ar ya n m igrations. Some of the sites where this pottery has been found, such as Hastinapur, have been associated with the later Sanskrit epic poem the Mah abharata, thereby further establishing the connection between the Indo-Aryans and the painted grey w are .17 How ever, continuities have been found between the painted grey ware and indigenous protohistoric cultures of the region, thereby suggesting a continuity of culture rather than a disjunction as would be implied by
32
Ancient origins
A ry an incursions. lu rt herm ore, Shaffer lias argued that iron technolo gy develope d within the Indian subcontinen t its elf ,IK rather than being in tro duced by an external source such as the Aryan invaders. According to Shaffer, modern archaeological evidence does not support the idea of A ryan migrations into India. Rather, in Shaffer’s w ord s, ‘it is poss ib le to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indige nous cultural development from prehistoric to historic periods’.19 The idea of Aryan incursions based on the linguistic evidence of the connec tions between Sanskrit and European languages has been read back into the archaeological record w hich, upo n re-evaluation, is not supportive o f that theory. It shou ld be noted here, howe ver, that Parp ola thinks that the pattern of distribution o f painted g rey w are corresponds to the distribu tion o f vedic, A rya n culture.20 Ev en i f the Sha ffer line of argument is correct - that the painted grey ware is incompatible with A ryan in cursions - there is still the linguistic evidence to be considered. O n the one hand archaeo logical evidence sup ports the idea of a continuity of culture from the earliest times in north India, and, accord ing to some, does not sup po rt the A ry an m igration the sis. Yet, on the other, the strong links established between Sanskrit and Indo-European languages and between vedic religion and the religions of other Ind o-E uro pea n groups is undeniable. O ne a rgument wh ich b rings these ideas together is that the language of the Indus va lley doe s not belong to the D rav idian language family, but, as Co lin R enfrew and others suggest, to the Indo-Europ ean. Th is hyp othe sis ‘would carry the history of the Indo-European languages in north India and Iran back to the early Neolithic Period in those areas’.21 There w ould then be continuity at all levels from the In dus v alley th ro ugh to the A ryan cu lture o f the first millenn ium b c e . A ccording to this view, Indu s valley religio n develo ps into the re ligio n o f the Hin dus. Indus valley lan guage develops into vedic Sanskrit and Indus valley agriculture develops into the vedic agrarian lifestyle. THE ARYAN MIGRATIONS RECONSIDERED
Both the Aryan migration thesis and the cultural transformation thesis have bodies o f suppo rting evidence. A rgua bly, h owever, the meticulous, thorough w or k o f Ask o Parpola establishes strong evidence for the Indus valley script belongin g to the D ra vid ia n langua ge grou p. H is ev iden ce is based on an analysis of language from a wide-ranging cultural sphere, 33
An introduction to Hinduism
from Anatolia to the Deccan; 011 iconographic continuities between Indus valley and Dravidian forms of Hinduism, and on discontinuities between vedic or A ry an forms and thosp o f the Indus valley. The Aryan sacred text, the Rg Veda speaks of the Aryans subduing cities of the Dasas, which it describes as comprising circular, multiple concentric walls. While this seems not to refer to the cities of the Indus valley, which are square, it does, Parpola argues, correspond to the hundreds of fortified Bronze Age vil lages in Bactria. The D asas, the enemies of the Aryans, are not the inhabi tants of the Indus valley, but other groups who spoke an Ary an language, and who se migration preceded those of the Aryans. One piece of evidence that the Indus valle y people could not have been Indo-E uro pean speakers, suggests Parpola, is the absence of the horse and the chariot. Wherever Indo-Aryan cultures have been identified, horse remains have been found as well as chariots. The A ryan tribes who entered the north-west of India, argues Parpola, drove in two-wheeled warchariots drawn by horses, terms which have Indo-European etymology. Nowhere in the Indus valley culture have the remains of horses been found, and nowh ere depicted on the seals.22 The horse is an Aryan animal and the chariot an example of a superior wa r technology. A modified Ary an migration theory is therefore supported by Parpola’s work. At the beginning of the second millennium bce, Aryan nomads entered the Indian subcontinent. Th ey were, of course, a minor ity, and, while the Indus valley culture continues without a break, as the archaeological record shows, the Aryan culture lived and developed alongside it and absorbed elements of it. However, there is little doubt that there are continuities between the Indus valley and vedic cultures. The new groups, who possessed arya, ‘nobility’, formed a dominating elite speaking the Aryan language, though Sanskrit has absorbed protoDravidian features, such as the retroflex sound which does not exist in other Indo-European languages, as well as agricultural terms. Dravidian languages, as one would expect, have also absorbed elements of Sanskrit.2-5 Over a number of centuries bilingualism would have developed until the majority of the population adopted the Aryan language, a form of vedic Sanskrit, as Modern French developed from vulgar Latin.24 The idea of bilingualism is perhaps problematic - there would need to be strong social pressures to adopt a new language - but Parpo la’s argu ments are well supported. The vital evidence must come from the Indus va lle y script, and only when that is successfully deciphered can the ques-
34
Ancient origins
lion o f the relation between Ar yan and Indus valley culture be adequ ately addressed. Yet, wh erever the Arya ns o r^ in aie d , wh ether their culture was adev elopm ent o f indigenous cultures or whether they migrated from else where , our knowle dge o f their so cial structu re, th eir m yth olo gies and, above all, their ritual comes from their self-represe ntation in their Sanskrit texts, the Veda. The Yeda Th e Veda is regarded b y som e Hin du s as a timeless revelation whic h is not of human authorship (apaurusya ), is eternal, and contains all knowledge, while oth ers regard it to be the revela tion o f G o d . It w as receiv ed o r ‘se en’ by the ancient seers (;rsi) wh o comm unicated it to other men and wa s put together in its present form by the sage V yasa . Inde ed, a po pu lar definition of a Hindu is somebody who accepts the Veda as revelation. This idea is not without problems and exceptions, but indicates the undoubted imp ortance of the Veda in Hin du self-perc eption and self-representation. Fro m the perspective o f the believer the Veda is timeless revelation, ye t from the text-critical perspective of the western-trained scholar, it was com piled over a long p eriod o f time and reflects different periods o f social and religious development. The two perspectives are not, of course, incompatible: revelation could be gradual and there have been, and are, many scholars w ho have also been believers. Th e term ‘ text’ or ‘ canon ’ in the Indian co ntext implies an oral tradition passed dow n w ith m eticulous care and accu racy through the generations from, according to tradition, the vedic Aryan seers of rsis. The priestly class of the vedic A rya ns , the Brahman s, were - and continue to be - the preservers of this tradition, who preserve the oral recitation of the texts. Indeed the Veda wa s not written do w n until some thousan d years after its com position and the ve ry act o f writing w as itself regarded as a polluting activity.25 Although the main body of the Veda is clearly delineated, the catego ry o f ‘revelation’ sometimes incorpo rates more recent material. F o r example, texts calling themselves ‘ U pan isad’ w ere com posed into the sev enteenth century c e and even the writings of modern holy men and w om en m ig ht be re gard ed as re vela tion. It is this Sanskrit, vedic tr aditio n whic h has maintained a c ontinuity in to m odern times and w hic h has p ro vid ed the m ost im portant re so urc e and in spiration fo r H in du traditio ns and individuals. The Veda is the found ation fo r mo st later developm ents in w hat is know n as H in duis m .
35
An introduction to H induism
The Veda is intimately connected with vcdic ritual and its primary func tion is a ritual one. The categorization ol the Veda is not only the way in which Hindu ism has organized its scriptures, but is also connected with ritual. One of the primary vedic distinctions for its own literature is between mantra, verses used in liturgy which make up the collection of texts called Samhita, and brahmana , texts of ritual exegesis. The Brahmanas are texts describing rules for ritual and explanations about it concerning its meaning and purpose. They contain aeteological myths, posit elaborate correspondences (bandhu ) between the rite and the cos mos, and even maintain that the sacrifice ensures the contin uity o f the cos mos. The Aranyakas, texts composed in the forest, form the concluding parts of several Brahmanas. They are concerned with ritual and its inter pretation and form a transitional link between the Brahmanas and the Upanisads. The Upanisads develop the concerns of the Aranyakas, explaining the true nature and meaning of ritual. THE STRUCTURE OF THE VEDA
The term veda is used in two senses. It is a synonym for ‘revelation’ (sruti), which is ‘ heard’ by the sages, and so can denote the whole b od y o f revealed texts, and is also used in a restricted sense to refer to the earliest layers of vedic literature. Th e Veda in the former, general sense comprises four traditions, the Rg, Yajur, Sama and Atharva, which are divided into three or four categories o f texts: the Samhitas, Brahmanas, A rany akas and Upanisads (these last two are sometimes classified together). In the latter, more restricted sense, the term veda refers to the Samhita portion of this literature; itself comprising four groups of text identified by the four tra ditions, the Rg Veda Samhita , Sama Veda Samhita , Yajur Veda Samhita and the Ath arv a Veda Samhita. Each of these would have its own Brahmana, Aranyaka (‘forest treatise’) and/or Upanisad (‘Secret Scripture’). A further group, the sutra literature is sometimes added to this scheme, but this group is not part o f the prim ary revelation (sruti) but part of secondary revelation (smrti), the texts composed by human beings. This sequence is roughly in chronological order, the earliest text being the Rg Veda Samhita, the latest being the Upanisads. As we shall see, this pattern reflects an interest in ritual which becomes overlaid with an interest in the understanding and interpretation of ritual, an important move in the development of Hindu ideas. The structure is therefore as follows:
36
Ancictii origins
Samhitä: Brähmana: Äranyaka: Upanisad:
Rj>
Y.ijur
S.im.i
Atharva
The Rg Veda is a collection (samhitä ) in ten books (mandala ) of 1028 hym ns to variou s deities, com posed in vedic Sa nskrit from as early as 1200 b c e over a period o f several hundred yea rs.26 Eac h o f its ten boo ks w as composed by sages of different families, the oldest being books two to seven. These texts are our earliest and most important sources of knowl edge about vedic religion and society. The Säma Veda is a bo ok o f songs (säman) based o n the Rg Veda w ith instructions on their recitation ( ga na ). The Yajur Veda is a collection of short prose formulae used in ritual, of whic h there are tw o recensions, the ‘bla ck’ and the ‘w hite’ - the fo rm er being a m ixture of prose and verses, the latter being comp osed entirely o f verses or mantras. The white Yajur Veda contains one book, the Väjasaneyi-Samhitä, the black Yajur Veda comprises three books, the Taittiriya Samhitä, the Maiträya ni Samhitä and the Kathaka-Samhitä. Lastly the Ath arva Veda is a collection of hymns and magical formulae com piled around 900 b c e , though som e o f its material may go back to the time o f the Rg Veda. The Ath arva Veda has less conne ction w ith sacrifice and has been considered somewhat inferior to the other three Samhitäs. Most of this truly vast literature has yet to be translated into any modern Euro pean language.
THE DATING OF THE VEDA
A lthough difficult to date, the earliest text and the most im portan t fo r o ur understanding of the early Indo-Aryans is the Rg Veda Samhitä com posed probab ly around 1200 b c e , though some, such as Kak and Frawley, w ould date it v ery much earlier to the In dus valley cu lture, assuming that the Indus valley language was Ind o-E uro pea n.27 The m ore sober chro no l ogy proposed by Max Müller suggests a date of 1500 to 1200 b c e . Assum in g the birth o f the Buddha to be aro und 500 b c e (which scholars no w think is later), M üller suggested that the Upanisads were com posed from 800 to 600 b c e . H ow eve r, this dating m ay be rather early. Giv en the re-dating o f the Bu ddh a to the four th o r fifth rather than the fifth or sixth centuries b c e , the Upanisads were pro ba bly com posed b etween 600 and 300 b c e , as some texts are po st-Bu dd hist. Th e earlier Brähmana literature
37
a r t ü S a y h r G
a a n n a a y y á l á a h k v n s á A $
a r t a n ú a n S a - y a a á y a t l h a u v k a n r s á S Á á
m a a a t n j e a a b k y v m a a á d a y k a h a t n a v a d r s a h n t u a a r a h p t á á B B Á H K M
•
n i a a a s n j c a á b k y v m a a á d a y k a h a t n a v a d r s a h n t u a a r a h p i á á B B Á H K M
d a s i n a p U
i a k a y t c í r s a t i u a A K
a y í r i t t i a T
a k a y n a r Á
i a k a y t c r í a s t i u a A K
a y í r i t t i a T
a n a m h á r B
i a k a y t e r í a s t i u a A K
á t i h m g a S R
a r a k s a r á P
a n a y á y t á K
a k a y n a r a í a t r d h a t i a a h r K M B
a h t a K
a h t a p a h t a S s a d e V r u j a Y a d h n a
a y í r i t t i a T
a h t a K
a y í r i t t i a T
í n a a y n k á a a t r s h t i a á a j i K M V
t g a p R a c h t t h a f S o s n o i t ¡ d * r t e i h y T e i e r u g i F
A n a vn t origins
Miillcr dates between iooo to 800 and I lie S.imhit.i literature around 1200 to 1000, allowin g about 200 years lor the form ulation o f each class o f texts, though even Müller admits that the Rg Veda could be earlier.28 The Brähmana literature, however, may be later than the dates proposed by Müller, given the pro bab le later date o f the Up anisa ds. THE VEDIC SCHOOLS
The classification scheme of the Veda is furthe r comp licated by theo logi cal schools or branches (säkhä ) which specialized in learning certain texts. A Veda might have a num ber of the ological sch ools associated with it. For example, Brahmans of the Taittirlya branch would learn the Taittiriya Samhitä of the black Yajur Veda, its Brähmana, Äranyaka, Up anisad and Srauta Sütras. The schoo l o f the Säma Veda wo ul d learn its Brähmana, the Jaim in iy a Brähm ana, and the Lätyäyana Srauta Sütra. The Brahmans of the Rg Veda would learn the Aitar ey a and Kausitaki Brähmanas, wh ich include the Ä ran ya ka s o f the same name, the Aitareya and Kausitaki Upanisads and the Asvaläyana and Sänkhäyana Srauta Sütras, and so on (see fig. 2). Th ese sch oo ls ensure d the accurate transm is sion of the Veda through the generations with the help o f rules for recita tion, even though the meaning of the early texts may have been lost to most reciters as the language moved away from its vedic origins. An example o f this structure can be seen in fig. 2 wh ich show s the branches of the R g and Ya jur Vedas. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about vedic literature is that it has been orally transmitted with little change to its contents for up to 3,000 years. T his accura cy has been en abled b y a sy stem o f d ouble ch eckin g. The texts were learned at least twice: as a continuous recitation, called the samhitäpätha, in which the Sanskrit rules for com bining words (sandhi) operated, and as the recitation of words without the rules of euphonic com bination, called th epadapätha. F rits Staal gives an illustrative example from the vedic Samhitäs, the verse ‘ the imm ortal goddess has pervaded the w ide space, the depth s and the h eights’ is rem em bere d in tw o versio ns, as the continuous flow of the samhitäpätha (‘orv apra amartya nivato devy udvatah’) and word for word in the padapäth a (‘a/ uru/ aprah/ amartya/ nivatah/ de vi/ udv atah//’ ).29 H ow eve r, not on ly has the Veda been preserved thro ugh oral traditions of recitation, but also through the transmission of ritual. The Veda is primarily a liturgical text and its use in ritual has been its primary and
39
An intro duction to Hindu ism
invariant function. Interpretations of ilic riiu.il enict I liiuluism at a later date with the Upanisads. The Upanisads The Upanisad s are a development of the Aranya kas and there is no clear break between the two genres. The Aitareya Aranyaka, attached to the Rg Veda, calls itself an upanisad ,30 and one o f the earliest, if not the earliest, of the Upanisads, the Brhadaranyaka (‘Great Forest’) of the white Yajur Veda, calls itself an aranyaka (as does the last book of the Satapatha Brahmana belonging to the same sdkha). The oldest Upanisads (the Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya and Taittiriya) are in prose, while the later Upanisads, m oving aw ay from the Aranyakas, are in verse. The Upanisads are not a homogeneous group of texts. Even the older texts were composed over a wide expanse of time from about 600 to 300 b c e , given that some early texts are post-Bu ddh ist, and texts with the title upanisad continue to be composed throughout the middle ages into the modern period. Because of this some scholars have begun to re-evaluate the category o f ‘revelation’ (sruti), which, Thomas Coburn argues, must be seen as an ‘ongoing and experientially based feature of the Hindu reli gious tradition’.31 Yet it is nevertheless the case that the older group of Upanisads, rather than later ones, have been taken to be autho ritative and been commented upon b y H indu theologians.32 Ved ic ritual The central religious practice of the vedic Ar yan s was sacrifice and sharing of the sacrificial meal with each other and with the many supernatural beings or devas. In sacrifice the gods could be propitiated, material bene fits such as sons or cattle received from them, and the social standing, power, or purity of the sacrificer (yajamana), the person who had instig ated it, enhanced. Such religious practice would not require elaborate buildings or icons, but merely the presence of the qualified priests who knew the necessary proc edures and recitations. Jam ison has observed that vedic religion is ‘the idea lly portable religion’ with no fixed places o f w o r ship and no images or sacred texts to be carried around ,33 perhaps sugges tive of a nomadic lifestyle. The term ‘sacrifice’ ( homa , yajha) is not confined to the immolation of animals, but refers more widely to any offering into the sacred fire, notably of milk, clarified butter or ghee, curds, grains such as rice and barley, and the soma plant, as well as dom es 40
A ncictit origins tic animals (go ats, cattlc, sheep anil horses). Indeed I lie offe ring o f milk into the fire was more common than animal offerings. These ritual sub stances would be transported through the fire to the d e v a or d e v a s whic h had been invok ed. Fire is the central focus o f vedic ritual and is both a sub stance or element and a d e v a : the transformative link between the w or ld ly and divine realms. THE SOLEMN AND DOMESTIC RITES
Tw o kinds o f ritual were developed, the srauta or solem n, pub lic rites and the g rh y a , dom estic and life-cycle rites. Th e srauta rites are the older and the two types can be form ally distinguished from each other by the num ber of fires used. Th e srauta, rites required the burn ing o f three sacred fires, while the domestic obse rv ance s re quired o n ly one. The princip al deities whic h w ere the focus o f the srauta observances w ere the fire god Ag ni and the plant god Som a, to w ho m milk, clarified butter, curd s, vegetable cakes, animals or the stalks o f the soma plant itself wo uld be offered into the fire. Ved ic re ligio n was clo sely associated with the rh yth m s o f the day and the seasons and srauta rites wo uld invo lve o fferings at variou s junctures (parv a n ) betwe en night and day, at the new and full m oon s and at the junctures o f the three seasons (rainy, autumn, hot). O ur information concerning the srauta rituals comes m ainly from the Srauta Sutras associated w ith the various branches o f vedic know ledge and formu lated between the eighth and fourth centuries b c e . A ltho ug h this is about half a millennium after the composition of the R g V e d a , w e can assume that some form o f the srauta rites was already established at that early period. The R g V e d a refers to the variou s, num erous kinds o f priests involved in the rituals, refers extensively to soma and its preparation, and describes the horse sacrifice (a s v a m e d h a ).34 Th ere w as also a human sacri fice ( p u r u s a m e d h a ) modelled on the horse sacrifice, though the human victims w ere set free after th eir consecra tion.35 A m ong so m e Bra hm ans, nota bly so me N am b udri families in Kera la studied b y Frits Staal, the srauta rituals have remained intact to the present day, since at least the time o f the Srauta Sutras.36 Th e pre R g- ve d ic origin o f ritual is, o f course, inaccessible, unless it lies in the fragm entary s ug ge s tions o f the Indu s valley. This continuity of ritual traditions in south Asia needs to be stressed. On the whole they have, surprisingly, survived even radical political changes and a variety of different interpretations. This ritual continuity, 4i
A n introductio n to H in duism
whic h may be linked to a continuity ol social relations, is the most im por tant facto r in linkin g modern form s with ancient traditions, though adm it tedly the elaborate srauta rites are only performed among a minority of Brahmans in Kerala. Although the central act o f all vedic ritual, b oth solemn and domestic, is simple - the offering o f substances into the fire - the preparatory and clos ing rites can be very complex due to the embedding of one type of ritual and its ac com pan ying verses into another. In the srauta rites, the com plex ity is com pou nded b y the need for a num ber of specialists. These special ists, and their assistants, were required for specific parts of the rituals and w ould know the appro priate recitations fro m the Veda. In the most ela bo rate rituals, such as the sacrifice of the soma plant, four priests would be present, each of whom would be a specialist in one of the four Samhitas, thoug h o nly tw o priests wou ld be necessary in most rites. Th e chief priest or botr w ou ld recite verses from the Rg Veda, a second priest, the udgatr, w ould chant o r sing songs (stotra) com prising verses set to the melodies o f the Sdma Veda, and the adhvaryu priest would chant verses from the Yajur Veda and perform many of the necessary ritual actions. In later times all this would be overseen by a priest associated with the Ath arv a Veda, the brahman, whose function was to watch out for omissions or incorrect procedures. There were originally only three priests associated with the first three Sam hitas, for the Brahm an as overseer o f the rites does not ap pear in the Rg Veda and is on ly incorpo rated later, thereby sho win g the acceptance of the Ath arva Veda, which had been somewhat distinct from the other Samhitas and identified with low er social strata, as being of equal standing w ith the other texts. Srauta rites wo uld m inim ally involve the establishing of the three fires: the hou seho lder’s fire ( garhapatya ) in the west, the fire to be offered into (ahavaniya) to the east and a third southern fire ( daksinagni). The altar o r vedi, wh ich w as a shallow pit, narro w in the centre and strewn with grass, or, fo r specific rites, a more elaborate brick structure, was placed b etween the eastern and western fires. The ritual implements needed for the sacri fice were placed there and the sacrificers and gods invited to sit there. For animal sacrifice a post (yupa) wo uld be required, to w hich the victim was tied. A number o f srauta rituals, ranging in com plexity, are reco rded in vedic texts. The agnistoma was a fairly simple one-day soma sacrifice, though preceded by various preparations, and the agnicayana, the ‘piling up of 42
Ancient origins
A gn i’, a co m plcx pro ceedin g lasting several days. The agnitayana rite as a living tradition among Nambudri Brahmans in Kerala, has been clearly docum ented and analyzed by Staa l.37 Th is rite invo lved the buildin g of an altar from ov er 2,000 bricks, in the shape o f a large bird, to the w est o f the standard ritual enclosu re o f three fires. N ea r to this altar are tw o areas for chanting the texts and for p reparin g soma. This altar is built in five layers w ith the appro priate recitation o f m an tras. O ver a period o f tw elve days a number of ritual sequences are performed, which involve singing verses (stotra) from the Sdma Veda, reciting from the Rg Veda, o ffering soma to the deities and the drink ing o f soma by the sac rificer and some priests. Th e sacrificer or patron (yajamana), w ho has paid a fee of cattle or m on ey fo r the rites, reaps the benefits, though throughout the proceedings he remains fairly p assive. Be fore the ritual the yajaman a, accompanied b y his wife, undergoes an initiation (diksa), w hich might involve som e degree of asceticism (tapas) such as fasting, to achieve pu rification. SOMA
The soma drink, requ iring an elaborate preparation du ring the Som a sacri fice, was probably originally a hallucinogenic or intoxicating substance prepared from the soma plant. It was almost certainly not a fermented drink wh ich the vedic A rya ns also possessed and called sura. This ‘plant’, Gordon Wasson has argued, may have been the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) whose use in inducing mystical states of conscious ness is attested in Shamanism.38 Alternatively many scholars now think that it was ephedra, the ‘sea grape’; a jointed but leafless desert plant. Traces of this plant have been found in jars from sites in Iran, wh ere soma was called haoma .39 Ephedra is a stimu lant rather than a hallucino gen, but if soma was ephedra, then this circumvents the problem of the fly agaric m ushroom not grow ing in northern India. W hate ver its identity, the im portant poin t is that soma induced exalted states and po ssib ly visio ns in its takers.40 Th e orig inal soma was eventually lost b y the vedic Ary an s and replaced b y soma substitutes; plants without intoxica ting p rope rties. We can see in the vedic m aterial that ritual was the primary religious concern of the Indo-Aryans, but also that mystical experience induced by the soma plant was, at an early date in the dev elo p ment of the tradition, important. These two concerns, ritual and mysti cism, are foun d throug hou t the later traditions o f India. The soma sacrifice was embedded within other rituals as well, most
43
An introdu ction to H induism
notably within animal sacrifices, the most important ol which was the horse sacrifice (as'vamedha), and the consccration of a king (rdjasuya). Th e horse sacrifice41 described in ■'.he Rg Veda and in the Brahmanas42 could only be carried out by a king. The sacrifice involved allowing a stallion to wander free fo r a y ear before it was ritually su ffocated. Befo re the horse was dismem bered and the various parts of its body offered to different deities, the king ’s wife w ou ld sym bo lically cop ulate with the dead stallion: divine p ow er from theh orse - wh o is also identifi ed with the deity Praj apati - entering the queen and the reby entering the king and the people.43 The meaning and functions of ritual in Indo-Aryan culture cannot be reduced to any one factor. Sacrifice could have had a cathartic function, expressing a society’s aggression in a controlled and socially acceptable way, as Girard has argued .44 Whether or no t the sacrifice had a cathartic effect, it certainly functioned to establish the patron’s status and power within the community and may, in a Durk heim ia n sense, have served to reinfo rce social values and legitimate po w er relations within a society, not on ly in allowing o nly higher classes o f society to perfo rm the rituals, but also in excluding others. The ritual was important not only for those it included, but for those it excluded as well, drawing a line between higher and low er social group ings.45 Vedic m yth o lo g y and theology The vedic universe is populated with benevolent and malevolent super natural beings of various kinds. In one sense every tree and river has a divine being associated with it, yet undoubtedly some deities are more important than others. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 46 the sage Yajn avalk ya is asked how many gods there are, and he gives an ambiguou s reply. F irstly he says there are 303, then that there are 3,003 , when pressed further that there are 3 3 ,6 ,3 ,2 ,1 'A, and final ly 1. In the next verse he settles on 3 3. Alth ou gh this must be seen in the light o f the later mo nistic ph iloso ph y o f the Upan isads - that all deities are manifestations o f a single pow er - the text is certainly echoing the early vedic identification o f the various gods with each other; the M oo n is identified with So ma, Som a is identified with Agni, Agni w ith the Sun and so on. T H E DEVAS
The Rg Veda is filled with hymns of praise to the various deities ( deva ) invok ed in ritual. There are, however, fe w straight narrative accounts o f the
44
A ndvnt origins
gods, cither in the Kg Veda or in the Dr.ihin.ui.is, and the texts assume a co m mon kno wledge o f their stories. The great nineteenth-century Sanskritist, Max Muller, though t that all the deities ol the Veda were ‘ the agents postu lated behind the great phenomena of nature’, such as fire, water, rain, the sun and storm s etc.47 While it is certain ly true that ma ny deities o f the Veda are related to natural phenomena, som e gods do not fit into this model and vedic scholarship no longe r accepts this as an explanation o f the pantheon. The gods also have human qualities. The majority of deities are male, though there are a few goddesses (devi) such as Adi ti, the mother of the un i verse, Usa s, the daw n, N irrti, destruction, and Vac, speech. They can be addressed in hymns, they share in human em otions, th ey have desire, they can be invited to the sacrifice and can share in the ritual meal. Indeed in the later texts, the Brahm anas, their conn ection w ith the sac rifice is what distinguishes them from other supernatural beings such as the ‘demons’ or ‘anti-gods’, the asuras. According to the Satapatha Brahmanaw both the dev as and the asuras are said to have been born fro m Prajapati, the ‘ lord o f creatures’, a deity wh o becomes the creator god. The asuras made sacrificial offerings to themselves, whereas the devas made offerings to each other. Because o f this, Prajapati gave him self to the latter as their nourishm ent and so the devas accept ritual offerings, whereas the asuras do not. The devas are beings intimately connected with, and, indeed, defined by, the sacrifice as the class of supernatural beings who accept offerings and, in return, give help or, in the case of more wrathful deities such as Rudra, simp ly stay aw ay from the human world. It is po s sible that the devas represent the original deities of the Aryans and the asuras the deities o f their enemies the Dasas. The devas inhabit a hierarchical cosmos. In one scheme, encapsulated in the three utterances pronounced each day by ortho dox Brahm ans, this cosmos is divided into the three worlds of sky or heaven ( svar ), atmos phere (bhuvas ), and earth (bhur ) , each realm populated by different deities. Th e three realms and the principal deities they contain are: - heaven (svar), contains the sky god Dyaus; the lord of righteousness (rta) and of night, Varuna; the companion of Varuna and god of night, Mitra; the nourisher Pusan; and the pervader Visnu. - atmosphere (bhuvas) contains the warrior Indra; the wind Vayu; the storm gods, the Maruts; and the terrible Rudra. - earth (bhur) contains the plant god Soma; the fire Agni; and the priestly god of creative power, Brhaspati.
45
An introduction to Hinduism
Anoth er classification placcs a group of gods callcd Adilyas, the sons of the Goddess Aditi (namely Mitra, Aryaman, lihaga, Varuna, Daksa, and Amsa), within the categ ory of heaven; the Maruts or Rud ras, the sons of Rud ra, within the atmosphere; and the Vasus, the attendants of Indra, per sonifications of natural phenomena, namely Apa (water), Dhruva (the pole star), Soma (the moon), Dhara (the earth), Anila (wind), Anala (fire), Prabh asa (dawn), and Pra tyusa (light), at the level of the earth. There is no supreme deity in the Rg Veda, though some are undoubt edly more important than others. The two most significant devas, placed at the level of the earth, are Agni and Soma. Agni mysteriously pervades the world as heat and is identified with the earth as the sacred cow Prsni, with the sun, w ith the daw n and with fire hidden in its stomach.49 While being sim ply fire, A gn i is particularly the sacrificial fire. H e transports the dead to the realm of Yama, the lord of death, and transports, and purifies, all offerings to the realm of the gods. The m yth olo gy o f Agn i plays on the idea of fire being hidden within the wo rld and awakened by the fuel-sticks which kindle him. Lik e A gni, Soma is a deity who intercedes between men and gods and is regarded as a link between the human and divine, the pillar o f the sk y and bringer of ecstasy and understanding o f the divine realm s.50 Indeed Soma is identified with A gni and with the moon w hich contains the ambrosia of immortality (amrta ) and there are parallels between the mythology of Soma and that of Agni. Agni, hiding within the waters from where he was originally born, is discovered b y the gods and agrees to conv ey the sacri fice to them.51 Sim ilarly Soma, like Agn i, was hidden from the gods upo n a mountain and captured b y Indra riding an eagle.52 There are parallels here with the Gre ek myth o f Prometheus and both Agni and Soma can be seen as bringers of culture, as things which distinguish the human world from the natural world . Other deities in the Rg Veda are important, though none have such transforming power in the world as Agni and Soma. Indra is the warrior king, empowered by soma, who destroys obstacles with his thunderbolt club. His most famous m yth is the destruction of the snake Vrtra (whose name means ‘obstacle’), symbolizing cosmic chaos, thus freeing the waters of the sky.53 Th e storm gods, the Maruts, accompan y Indra on his adventures which seem to reflect the warrio r ethos o f vedic society: Indra captures the cows as the Aryan w arriors would have gone on cattle raids to neighbou ring groups.
46
Ancicnt origins
Although Indra stands ou t in dear pro file , many of the gods in the Veda are opaque. The Adityas, the sons of the goddess Aditi, include Varuna, the distant, majestic sky god who protects the cosmic and social order (rta ); Mitra, the god o f social responsibilities or contracts, who accom pa nies Varuna; Aryaman, the god of custom such as marriage, and, though very in fe rior to these other three, Pusan, pre sider over jo u rneys.54 O f these, Varuna, the lord of the ethical order, is the most important, and is asked for forgiveness and mercy fo r any m oral transgression or for ‘ going against the cu rrent’ .55 The young Asvin twins are deities of good fortune and health. Apart from these, the elements and natural phenomena are deified, such as the sun (Surya), the sun at dawn and sunset (Savitr), the wind (Vayu), the waters (A pas), the goddess earth (P rthivI) and her conso rt, fa th er sky (Dyaus Pitar). There are other deities in the pantheon such as Visnu and Ru dra (i.e. Siva) wh o b ecom e the central focuses o f later traditions. E AR L Y T H E O L O G Y
In the vedic worldview ritual has supreme importance and the vedic Samhitas prim arily serve as liturgical texts. Alth ou gh the ir use is pr im arily liturgical, the contents o f the vedic so ngs o r hym ns reflect and presu pp ose narrative traditions about the gods, and the origins of the world and of human society. There are also philosophical speculations concerning the origins of life. The most famous of these hymns56 asks unanswerable questions ab out wh at existed at the beginn ing of time whe n there was nei ther existence (sat) no r non-existence (asat), neither death nor imm ortal ity, neither light nor dark. The final verse conveys the hymn’s sense of cosmic mystery and we can read into it both the beginnings of a theistic tradition and also the beginnings of Indian scepticism. It reads: ‘Whence this creation has arisen - perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not - the one w ho looks d ow n on it, in the highest heaven, on ly he kno ws - or pe r haps he does no t kno w .’57 However, it is with the Brahmanas, later developed in the Upanisads, that m ore systema tic speculation begins, particu larly on the nature of sac rifice. The Brahmanas are a discourse b y the Brahm ans on the srauta ritu als, whic h attempt to exp lain ritual action and relate it to wide r cosm ic and mythological phenomena; one Indian commentator on the Taittiriya Samhitd clearly and succin ctly defined a Brah m ana as ‘ an explanation o f a ritual act and of the mantras belonging to it’.58 The sociologist Emile 47
An introd uction to Ih nduis ni
Durkheim once wrote that ‘the moment when men luve an idea that there are internal connections between things, science and philosophy become possible’.59 One of the Brahmanas’ central concerns was the establishing o f such hidden or inner connections (bandhu, nidana) between the srauta rituals and their purposes, and between ritual and mythology. For example, the Satapatha Brahmana clarifies the connection between the upper and lower fire-sticks used to kindle the sacred fires and the divine beings UrvasI and her husband Pururavas, whose names are invoked dur ing the fire-kind ling ceremony. Th e redactor of the text is aware o f the sex ual symbolism of the fire sticks and identifies the ghee in the ghee pan, touched by the adjvaryu priest, with Ayu, the child of the divine couple, which is placed on the lower (female) fire stick. G hee is also identified with semen (retas), and retas in turn is identified with an em bryo and also with rain.60 These kinds of identifications and analogies are found throughout the texts and express a cosmology in which the hierarchical structure of the wider cosm os is recapitulated in the structure of society, in the indiv id ual’s body and in the ritual. The ritual is a microcosm reflecting the wider macrocosm of the cosmos and the mesocosm o f society. COSMICAL HOMOLOGY
Identification, or ‘cosmical homology’, as the historian of religions Mircea Eliade has called it,61 along with hierarchy, might be said to be a principle o f Indian religion. It is present in the vedic tradition fro m the Rg Veda and is found in all later Indian traditions, including Buddhism and Jainism. One of the fundamental vedic identifications or hom ologies, which becomes central in later esoteric traditions, is between the body, the universe and the sacrifice. A key text here, occurring late in the Rg Veda, which is quoted and reiterated throughout the Hindu tradition, is the famous hym n o f the cosmic man, the Purusa Sukta This hym n occurs in a late book o f the R g Veda and prob ably does not accurately reflect vedic society in the earlier period which may have had less clearly delineated boundaries between social groups. This hymn describes the creation of the wo rld by the gods, who sacri fice and dismember a cosmic giant, the ‘male person’ (purusa), from the different parts of whose bod y the cosmos and society are formed and even the verses, songs and formulae of the Veda itself. The highest sacerdotal class, the Brahmans, came from his mouth as society’s voice; the warrior class (rajanya, or later ksatriya), as society’s strength, came from his arms; , 6 2
48
Ancicnt origins
the com mon people (vais'ya) came I rom his (highs as society’s supp ort, and the serfs (südra ), those on whom society stands, came Irom his feet.63 In many way s this is an idealized picture; the Brahm ans as the priests sustain ing the com m unity w ith spiritual sustenance, that is, pe rform ing vedic r it ual; the rulers or warriors protecting and ruling the community; the common folk practising, primarily, animal husbandry and agriculture; and the serfs serving the other classes. Yet this im portant hym n sho ws that the hierarchical, hereditary social groups were part o f the structure o f the cosmo s. I f the cosmos wa s in some sense sacred, then so was soc iety wh ich manifested its hierarchical order. Mo reove r, this ord er is reflected in sacri fice and in the hierarchical structure of the body. The scale of this order was the degree o f purity o r pollution a ssociated w ith the body: the head, as the highest part of the bo dy, wa s the purest and the feet, the low est part, the most polluted. The social and individual bodies were reflections of each other, and both were part of the larger structure or body of the cos mos. This integration of society and cosmos, of body and society, is the sacred order or law ( rta ) o f the universe, w hic h is eternal and unchang ing, bro ugh t to life in vedic ritual, expressed in the songs o f the vedic seers, and elucidated in the Bràhmanas. Vedic socie ty O f the fou r classes (varna) o f Ary an society, the highest three are know n as the ‘tw ice-b orn ’ (dvija ) because their male mem bers have undergon e an initiation (upanayana ), a rite o f passage, wh ich gives them access to being full members of society, who can marry and perpetuate the ritual tradi tions. Th is rite separates the twice- bo rn fro m the fourth estate, the ‘se rfs’ (südra), and clearly m arks the bou nd ary b etween those who have access to the vedic tradition and those wh o do not. G eorg es D um ézil, a scholar of Indo -Eu rope an studies, has argued that Indo -Eu rope an id eolog y is cha r acterized b y a social structure of three classes or functions: the function of the priest, the warrior or ruler and the farmer.64 The sacerdotal class would serve the ru ling, m ilitary aristocracy. This structure has been pre sent throughout Indo-European communities. In vedic India, Du m ézil’s three functions correspond to the twice-born classes of priests (brâhmana), warriors or rulers (ksatriya, râjanya) and commoners (vaisya). The argument has been that upon entering the sub continent the A rya n s w ith their tripartite social structure placed the local population on the bottom, which is the serf class (südra) composed of 49
An i ntroduction to Hinduism
non-Aryan Dravidians. I lowevcr, tlie process ol class formation in early Indian society is more complex and may go l>ack to an indigenous struc ture in the ancient past, perhaps present in the Indus valley civilization. Indeed, the priestly and ruling classes of the Indus valley cities probably lived separately in or near the citadels of their towns. Whatever the origins o f the system, it must be remembered that the fourfold class structure is a theoretical model and ideological justification based on sacred revelation. The reality of social classes in vedic society seems to have been more complex. Rather than a priestly class serving a ruling aristocracy, at least at the time of the Rg Veda, there seems to have been two ru ling elites, the Suris and the Aris, each of whic h were served by their ow n priesthood s. Ag uila r i Matas has argued that Rg-vedic religion was patronized by the Suris and so the Rg Veda favours them at the expense of the Aris who have a negative reputation in the text. This is reflected at cultic and theological levels when Indra, the favourite god of the Suris, triumphs over and becomes more important than Varuna, the supreme god of the Aris. Furtherm ore the two liturgical deities Agn i and Soma, pass from the side of Varuna to Indra, thereby ensuring the Suris’ ritual power.65 Summary We have seen how the origins of Hindu ism lay in the ancient cultures of the Indus valley civ ilization and Arya n culture. Alth ough the issue is con tentious, there is strong supporting evidence to sho w that the language of the Indus valley civilization was Dravidian, which contrasts with the Indo-European language of the vedic Aryans. These two cultures, the Dravidian Indus valley culture and the Aryan vedic, contribute to the for mation o f Hindu traditions, and Hindu civilization can be seen as a pro d uct of the complex interaction between the Dravidia n and A rya n cultural spheres. While the Aryan culture of the Brahmans provides the ‘master narrative’ for later traditions, the importance of the Dravidian cultural sphere should not be underestimated and Ar ya n culture itself, including the Sanskrit language, has absorbed Dravidian elements.
50
3 Dharma
During the late vedic period by the time of the composition of the Satapatha Brdhm ana and the early Up anisads, A rya n culture had become established in the Ganges plain; we know that the Satapatha Brahmana and Brhadaranyaka Upanisad were composed in the Videha region.1 Larger kingdoms replaced smaller ones and a process of urbanization began. This was a formative period in the history of Indian religions, w hic h saw the rise o f the renouncer traditio ns, p artic ula rly Buddhis m , and the establishing o f brahmanical ideology. Between the Mau ryan dyn asty (c. 320-185 b c e ) and the Gu pta empire (320-5 00 c e ), there was a po litic ally unsettled period prompted by incursions from the north-west. The last Mauryan king, Brhadratha, was assassinated by his Brahman general Pusyamitra Süñga in 185 b c e . The Sünga dynasty (c. 185-73 b c e ) lost mu ch of its empire to G ree k invaders from B actria under K ing D em etrios w h o founded an exte nsive em pire, the m ost im porta nt kin g o f w hic h was Menander (c. 166-150 b c e ). A ft er M enander’s d eath the kin gdom bro ke up to be eventu ally replaced by the Sáka empire, established by Sai-W ang tribes from central A sia (c. 140 b c e - 78 C e ). With a slight dec line in Saka power, the Kusánas (Kuei-shang) invaded, and established an empire w hich extended along the G anges plain to beyond Varanasi, culm inating in the rule o f Kan iska (between 78 and 14 4 c e ). Fina lly the Gu pta empire was fo unded b y C andra gupta I (c. 320 c e ) and spread across all of no rth ern, and m uch o f central, India. Political su ppo rt for religions varied w ith d ifferent dynasties and with different kings. Asok a (2 68-233 b c e ) was favourab le to Buddhism , as was 51
An introd uction to
11induis»!
Kaniska (first century ci:), though Ix>tli km^s swiii in have hcen tolerant o f other religions within their realms. ( laiulra^upta M aurya may have been a Jain. With the death of the Iasi Mauryan, his assassin Pusyamitra favoured a return to vedic sacrificial religion and performed the horse sac rifice and seems to have performed a human sacrifice at the city of Kausam bi, perhaps in celebration of a victo ry o ver the Greek s. A lthough official patronage of religions varied, brahmanical ideology grew in importance and established itself as the centre of a sociopolitical religion, intim ately allied to the status o f the king, an ideo logy central to the Gup tas (320-600 c e ) and to later dynasties. This brahmanical religion was con cerned with the ritual status of the king, the maintaining of boundaries between social groups, and the regulation of individual behaviour in accordance with the overarching principle of dharma. W ith the rise of the kingdoms culminating with the Gu ptas, dharma becom es an ideal operat ing in the domestic realm o f the high-caste ho useholder and in the political realm of the Hin du state. The brahmanical ideology of dharma was articulated b y the vedic tra ditions or schools (sakhà ) in texts concerned with the performance of vedic ritual and social ethics, and expressed in the domestic realm by the figure o f the ideal Brahm an and in the political realm b y the figure o f the ideal king. These tw o figures, the Brahman and the king, we re intimately connected. It was the king who legitimized the Brah m an’s power through his patronage, yet it was the Brahmans wh o perform ed the ritual consecra tion of the king. The id eolog y o f dharma was articulated at the level o f the court, embodied in the figure of the king, and manifested in the social world in rules of interpersonal interaction and ritual injunction. In this chapter we shall examine the institutions o f dharma as they are developed in the Dharma literature and as they became expressed in Hindu history. The idea of
dharma
Th e term ‘dharma’ is untranslatable in that it has no direct semantic eq uiv alents in any western languages which convey the resonance of associa tions expressed by the term. It has been variously translated as ‘duty’, ‘religion’, ‘justice’, ‘law’, ‘ethics’, ‘religious merit’, ‘principle’ and ‘right’.2 More particularly dharma is the performance of vedic ritual by the Brahmans. It is ‘the ritualistic order o f Vedic sac rifice’ ,3 wh ich refers espe cially to the performance of the ‘solemn’ rites (srauta) enjoined on all Brahmans, to the domestic rituals ( grhya ), and to ob ligations appropriate 52
I )!urnu
to one ’s fam ily and social gro up. Dharma is .111 .ill enc om passing ideo logy which em braces both ritual and moral behav io ur, whose neglect would have bad social and personal consequen ces. The ph ilosop her o f the Mimam sa school (see p. 236), Jaim ini, defines dharma as that of wh ich the characteristic is an injunction (v i d h i ).4 This means that dharma is an obligation, declared by the Veda, to perform ritual action (karma), which brings of itself no reward other than that its non-performance would be ‘that which is not dharma’ (adharma) and result in retribution or ‘sin’ (papa). T he rituals, particularly the solemn rites, are for their ow n rea liza tion: it is ritual for ritu al’s sake, though it does create rewa rd in heaven fo r the ritual patron. A Brahm an can also perform sup ereroga tory rituals for gaining wealth and happiness in this w or ld and the next, but these are not obligatory. Dharma is identified with vedic obligation, which is eternal, and with action wh ich is particular: the transcendent dharma is expressed or manifested at a human level in ritual action in order to produce that whic h is go od. L The sources o f dharma W hile the so urc e o f dharma is ultimately the Veda, oral texts we re form u lated betw een the eighth and fou rth centuries b c e , within the vedic tradi tions (sdkha), concerne d with ritual and law. Thes e texts, the K alp a Sutras, form part of a body of knowledge, the auxiliary sciences, known as the ‘limbs o f the Veda’ (vedanga). The V edangas are: siksa, correct pronunciation of vedic texts; kalpa, the correct performance of ritual; vydkarana, the study of grammar; nirukta, etymology of vedic words; chandas, prosody; jyotisa, astrology.
The Gautama D harma Sutra says that the Veda is the source of dharma and also o f the traditions which flow from it.5 There are three sources o f dharma according to the Dharma Sutras: revelation (i.e. the Veda), tradi tion (smrti), and the customs or ‘good custom’ of the virtuous or those learned in the Veda. The M anu Sm rti or M d nava D harm a Sastra adds to these three ‘what is pleasing to oneself’ which might be rendered as ‘conscience’.6 53
A n introduction to H in duis m
The Ka lpa Sutras, the second .source nl three groups:
arc catcgori/.cd into
- the Srauta Sutras, texts dealing witli the correct performance of the solemn or public rites; - the Grh ya Sutras, dealing with domestic rites; - the Dharm a Sutras, dealing with law and social ethics. W hile the Veda is re velation, the Kalp a Sutras are tradition or se condary revelation, ‘remembered’ texts (smrti) composed by human sages within the various vedic schools, though regarded as inspired and extraordinary humans. Each sage is thought to have composed a text in all three classes, though in fact only three sages, Apastamba, Hiranyakesin and Baudhayana, have Srauta, Dharma, and Grhya Sutras attributed to them. In all of these texts w e see ho w dharma was seen ve ry m uch in terms of rit ual; to perform dharma c orre ctly is to fulfil o ne ’s ritual obligations. THE SRAUTA SOTRAS
These texts, called srauta because they follow from sruti, lay down the rules, in a highly technical form, for the performance of public, vedic ritual. The actual srauta rites are primarily focused up on A gn i and Soma to w hom vegetarian and non-vegetarian offerings are made into three o r five fires established up on altars. These pu blic rituals are older and more co m ple x than the simpler, dom estic rites, and surpris ing ly have su rvived po lit ical upheav als and social changes througho ut Ind ia’s long history. Du ring the Gupta period they underwent a revival and are preserved in present times among the N am bu dri Brahm ans o f Kerala. T he Srauta Sutras are rit ual manuals which lay out the rules for the performance of srauta rites. The earliest is by Baud hayan a (sixth century b c e or earlier) wh ose text is the first example of the sutra style. A sutra, literally ‘thread’, is a pithy aph orism w hich states a principle or rule. These rules are cum ulative, the later rules assuming the earlier. Thu s, in an injun ction to mak e an oblation, an oblation made with ghee is unde rstood .7 Th e Srauta Sutras are technical manuals comprising rules and metarules for what Frits Staal has called a ‘ science o f ritual’. This science o f ritual has close parallels to the science of language w hic h developed a little later, but w hic h uses the same sutra style. This science is furthermore distinct from the Brahmana literature which preceded it, in not speculating about the hidden meanings of ritual, but rather concentrating on the rules b y wh ich it should be performe d. These 54
I )lurm.i
texts, as Staal lias shown, are also distinct li nm I lie la 1er Mimamsa philo so phy which is concerned with arguing a view point, p articularly against the Buddhists.8 THE GRHYA SÛTRAS
The Grhya Sütras describe different kinds of ritual (yajna) to be per formed in the home. These domestic rituals may have been permitted for all twice-born classes in the earlier vedic period, but came to be restricted to the Brahman class. A Brahman cou ld perform them for himself or for the other tw ice-bo rn classes. These texts contain instructions on kindling the domestic fire which it is incumbent upon the Brahman to keep; rules for ritual purity; and rites of passage, particularly birth, initiation, mar riage and death. Indeed, a househo ld m ight em ploy a Brahman to perfo rm domestic rituals only for rites of passage, classified as ‘occasional rites’ (na.imittika-ka.rma .) rather than ‘daily rites’ (nitya-karma). Concern for ritual became supplemented in the Dha rma Sütras with a concern fo r reg ulating and defining social relationships with in and betwe en groups. It is interesting to note that at the level of self-representation, ritual procedu res took precedence over social considerations, though the two spheres became intimately connected: to perform one’s ritual obligations was to act in accordance w ith o ne’s social status which w as to act ethically. That is, from the perspective of dharma there is no gap between ritual perfor mance and social or ethical obligation, an idea whic h the renouncer tradi tions, particularly Buddhism , were to reject. THE DHARMA SUTRAS
These texts develop material found in the G rh ya Sütras and are concerned with custo ms and correct human conduct. In contrast to the Srauta Sütras, the Grhya Sütras demonstrate the domestic concerns of the Brahman householder, la ying emphasis on domestic rituals and codes of acceptable behaviour. The most important of the Dharma Sütras are ascribed to the sages Gautama, Baudhlyana, Vasistha and Àpastamba, whose texts con tain rules fo r perform ing dom estic rites, jurisprudence, and rules pertain ing to the fou r stages of life (àsrama ). The significance of these texts is that they lay do w n rules for the performance of dharma for the A ryan house holder, and lay the foundations fo r the important traditions of the Dh arma Sâstra.
55
An intro duction to H indu ism
THE DHARMA SASTRAS
Th e Dharma Sastras are a slightly later group ol texts, though they contain older material, which elaborates upon the topics of the Sutra literature. While other texts of human authorship were regarded as smrti, particul arly the Epics (itihdsa) and narrative traditions {pura.no,), it is the Dharma Sastras which are particularly associated with smrti and are, indeed, some times simp ly referred to by that name. The Dharma Sastras differ from the earlier Sutras in that they are composed in verse in contrast to the prose or mixture of prose and verse of the Sutras. The subject matter is the same, though the Sastras give more explication where the Sutras are silent, and contain more material o f a juridical nature, particularly pertaining to the role of the king.9 It is these texts which are particularly important as sources of dharma and which p rovide clear indications fo r the high-caste householder as to what duties he should perform, what was expected of him, what was prohibited, and how these rules relate to a wider, cosmic sense of law and duty. The Brahmans who follo we d the teachings of these texts were known as Smartas, those who followed the smrtis, and were particularly concerned with dharma in respect to caste and stage of life, the varndsrama-dharma. The rules of dharma in the Dharma Sastras merge into jurisprudence and they become important texts in Hindu legislation and litigation, even during the period of British rule in India. Indeed, one o f the first Sanskrit texts ‘discovered’ by the British was the Manu Smrti or Mdnava Dharma Sdstra, first translated into English by the founder of Indology, Sir William Jones, and published in 1794 . While the Manu Smrti is the oldest and most important text of this genre, composed between the second cen tury b c e and third century c e , other Dharma Sastras are important for their legal material, particularly the Yajnavalkya Smrti and the Narada Smrti, probably composed during the Gupta period (320-500 c e ) . The Sanskrit commentaries are also important, particularly Medhatithi’s commentary on the Manu Smrti. These texts contain a doctrine of dharma as a universal, all-encompassing law, which is yet flexible and adaptable to different circumstances and a variety of situations. They were used particularly by assemblies of Brahmans throughout the history of Hinduism to help decide legal matters. We know something of their use from twelfth-century epigraphic evidence. In one inscription, the caste of Wheelw rights, the rathakdras (lit. ‘cart-makers’ ), are disputing their posi56
1 )lurma tion in tlic vedic social hierarchy. Willi quotations Irom a number of Sanskrit sources, including the N arada aiul Ya/tiavalkya Smrtis , the stone records the decision that there are two types ol wh eelwrigh ts, one grou p born from ‘respectable’ or hypergamous marriages of the twice-born classes, and another, menial group , bo rn fro m the marriages o f high-caste wom en with lo w-c aste m en.10 Such inscriptions show that the Dharma Sastras were important and were used in an advis ory capacity to help settle am big uous lega l matters. In quoting from a wide range of textual sources, not only from the Dharma Sastras, the inscriptions suggest an awareness of a scholarly Hindu tradition and a high degree of assertiveness and self-awareness among lower social groups. These inscriptions also show us that texts w ere open to a continuous p ro cess o f in te rp reta tion in the light o f conte m po rary social events. Th e Sastras reflect the dom inant brahmanical ideo l o gy and a vision o f social order in w hic h the Brahm ans, the class w ith the highest status, had an imp ortan t place as the up ho lde rs o f ritual and moral pu rity and the conv ey ors o f the sacred traditions. The context-sensitivity of dharma W hile dharma has been an important concept associated with kingship and has pervaded all classes of Hindu society, the law books have been m ainly concerned with the obligations o f Brahm ans. To fulfil his dharma a Brahman’s ritual action must be pure ( suddhi ). Although there is some debate concerning the importance of p urity in Hindu ism, wh ether the sta tus o f purity is subordinate to political p ow er o r superior to it, purity is un dou btedly a ve ry important concept. Th e b ody, which is polluted every day by its effluents, should be in as pure a state as possible through ritual purification, princ ipally b y water. Th ere is, however, a deeper level of po l lution whic h is a pro pe rty o f the bo dy and differentiates one social group from another. The p olarity o f pu rity and pollution organizes H indu social space, a principle recognized in the Dharma Sastras which view social ethics as the maintenance o f order and the bound aries between grou ps and genders as governed b y degrees of pu rity and pollution. The Brahm an, b y virtu e o f being the highest class o f pers on, is exclu ded from ce rtain kin ds o f interaction with other classes; rules o f com m ensality and strict marriage regulations ensure the clear maintenance o f bound aries. A t a univ ersa l level dharma refers to a cosmic, eternal principle, yet it must also relate to the world of human transaction. At a particular level, 57
An intro duction to H induism
dharma applies to specific laws anil the com ex is in which they are applied. One o f the sources of dharma according to M an n , is 'custom’. This means that dharma can be adapted to particular situations ami particular applica tions o f it were decided by a local assembly o f a number of learned men;1 1 as Wendy Doniger has observed, dharma is ‘context sensitive’.12 The Dharma Sastras provide us with examples of this. The religious obliga tions of men differ at different ages and vary according to caste (jati), fam ily (kula ), and country (desa)P A king, for instance, must judge according to the customs and particular duties (svadharma) of each region. This idea o f svadharma is important in understanding that dharma is relative to dif ferent contexts: what is correct action for a warrio r would be incorrect for a Brahm an, what is correct for a man may be incorrect fo r a wom an, and so on. Manu says: ‘one’s own duty, [even] withou t any good qualities, is bet ter than someone else’s duty well-don e’ .14
V arn asra m a-d harm a Tw o concerns in particular dominate the Dharm a Sutras and Sastras, one’s obligation (dharma) with regard to one’s position in society, that is, class (varna), and obligation with regard to one’s stage of life ( asrama ). These two concerns together became known as varnasrama-dharma whose ful filment was a sign of brahmanical orthopraxy and, indeed, part of an essentialist definition of a Hindu. While it should be remembered that some Hindu traditions have rejected this model, its influence has been substantial in terms of Hindu self-perception and self-representation, and in terms of the West’s perception of Hinduism. It has been integral to brahmanical ideology and many Hindu traditions, such as tantric tradi tions, have defined themselves against this brahmanical norm. C L A S S ( v , 4« A M ) A N D C A S T E ( j A T l )
Vedic society, as we have seen, was divided into fo ur classes, the Brahmans, the Nobles or Warriors ( rajanya , ksatriya), the Commoners (vaisya) and the Serfs (siidra ), the top three classes being called the ‘twiceborn’ (dvija ) because bo ys underwent an initiation (upanayana ). This sy s tem was part of a larger ‘chain of being’, fitting into a cosmical hierarchy in which various categories (jati) were arranged in varying degrees of subtlety and purity and associated with each other.15 O nly the twice-bo rn classes were allowed to hear the Veda and, while in an earlier period all twice-born were eligible to learn it, only the Brahmans came to be its 5«
I )lu rm .\
guardians, learning it and reciting it during i itu.ils. The Visnu Smrti states clearly that the Brahmans’ duties are to te.u'li the Veila and to sacrifice for others, the Ksatriya’s is to practise with arms and protect the people, the Vaisya should tend cattle, practise agriculture and money-lending, and the Sudra should serve the other classes and practise art.16 Th e term translated as ‘class’ is varna, ‘ co lou r’ , which refers not to any supposed racial charac teristics, but to a system of colour symbolism reflecting the social hierar chy as well as the qualities ( guna ) which are present in varying degrees in all things. The Brahmans were associated with white, the colour o f purity and lightness, the Ksatriyas with red, the colou r o f passion and energy, the Vaisyas with y ellow, the colo ur o f the earth, and the Sudras with black, the colour o f darkness and inertia. While the term varna refers to the four classes o f vedic society, the term ja ti (‘b irth’ ) refers to those endogamous sections o f Hin du so ciety which we k now as ‘ castes’ . Castes are characterized by the fo llowin g features: - castes are arranged in a hierarchical structure in any region, with the Brahmans at the top, the Untouchables (barijans , as Gandhi called them; dalits as they call themselves) at the bottom. Between these are a wide array of other castes. - the caste hierarchy is based on the polarity between purity and pollution, the Brahmans being the most pure, the Untouchables the most impure. - the caste of any individual is inalienable; it is a property of the body and cannot be removed (except according to some traditions by initiation). - there are strict rules of caste endogamy and commensality. The term ja ti refers not only to social classes, but to all categories of beings. Insects, plants, domestic animals, wi ld animals and celestial beings are all jdtis, w hich show s that differences between hum an castes might be regarded as being as great as differences between different species. Mem bers of a ja ti share the same bodily substance, substances which are ranked hierarchically.17 This ‘substance’ has been regarded by some anthropologists as something which is exchanged in transactions: social actors constantly emit and absorb each other’s substances and so are not autonomous individuals.18 The human jdtis are a highly complex social reality which incorporate within them many sub-divisions. Indeed the Brahman and K satriya varnas are also taken to be jdtis. The caste system, 59
An introduction to Hindu ism
wh ile having changed through time, as do.ill human social institutions, has nevertheless retained a continuity. It is probable that the caste system was complex even at the time of Manu, and fluid in the sense that different castes can change their rank relative to each other in any region over a period of time by, for example, creating a pure, legendary origin. The varnas on the other hand, prov ide a stable model fo r a stratified social order in which each group is clearly defined and functions as part of an organic whole: as part of the body of society which is also the body of the primal person or being, sacrificed at the beginning of time, as the Rg Veda states. The exact historical relationship between varna and jd ti is unclear. It is not certain that the ‘castes’ or jatis developed from the varna system. Indeed philosophical texts do not consistently distinguish between the two terms and, according to Halbfass,/iiz is used in the sense of varna in the Dharm a Sastra literature.19 The traditional view is that the jatis repre sent a proliferation of social groups from the varna system. Manu could be attempting to make sense of a pre-given social stratification in terms of the clear ideology of the vedic classes, when he attempts to explain the proliferation of jatis in terms of miscegenation amongst the varnas, against the dangers of which he warns the twice-born.20 Indeed Manu prescribes some severe penalties for ‘sexual miscondu ct’. A Brahman who sleeps with a Sudra woman goes to hell and loses brahmanical status upon the birth of a son; hom osexu ality is punished by loss of caste, and adultery by the wom an being ‘ eaten by dogs in a place frequented b y ma ny’ and the man ‘burnt on a red hot iron b ed’ .21 It is not certain whether such severe punishments were ever actually carried out, but these examples certainly have rhetorical impact and Manu clearly makes the point that sex outside the boundaries of marriage pre scribed by dharma is not to be tolerated by an ordered society. Yet while Manu presents a clear visio n of social ethics based on caste hierarchy, there are nevertheless subtleties in dharma which accommodate various human situations. For example, sex outside caste-restricted marriage is wrong, yet there is the institution of the temporary gandharva marriage for the satisfaction of desire, and while killing is wrong, there are circumstances in which it is permitted. Dharma, the universal moral law, must be adapted to human situations and to the every day reality of the householder. Although cross-caste marriages are condemned in Manu, if they are to occur, then those in which the man is of higher caste than the woman, mar riages ‘with the grain’ (anuloma), are better than marriages of low-caste
60
I )lurm,i men with high-caste wo m en, marriages '.tg.imM I lie gr ain’ (jnatiloma ). The jatis, according to Manu, are the consequences ol such mixed marriages. Fo r examp le, three o f the lowe st or outcast grou ps - the castes of carpenters, carvers, and the ‘fierce’ Untouchables ( candala ) - are born from the union of Sudra wo m en with Co m m on ers, W arriors and B rahmans respectively.22 Th e ‘fie rce’ caste, the candalas, w h o m Manu classifies as a grou p wh om he contemptuously calls ‘dog-cookers’, are taken as exemplifying the lowest social groups, h ighly po lluting to the higher castes, and so becom ing kno wn as ‘ untou chab les’ in the West, though the actual term asprsta, ‘ untouched ’, is not much used in Sanskrit sources. Th ere w as never a literal caste of ‘ do gco ok ers ’, this is m erely M anu’s rhetoric for grou ps identified with the most impure of creatures, cocks, dogs and pigs. If a Brahman is touched by a me mber o f one o f these groups, am ongst others such as one fallen from caste or a menstruating wom an, he should p u rify h imself with a bath.23 A lthough unto uchability is no w le gally pro hib ited in In dia, Untouchable castes constitute about a fifth of India’s population. They were to tally excluded from vedic socie ty and high-c aste ritual traditio ns, ‘outcaste’ b eyo nd the system of the fo ur classes (avarna ). Ev en the Sudras were with in the class system , th ough fo rb id den to hea r the Veda and ou t side the twice-born designation, but the Untouchables had no place w ithin the higher so cial ord ers, livin g on the outs id e o f villages, as M an u directs,24 and living by performing menial and polluting tasks such as w orking with leather and sw eepin g excrement fro m the village. Th e fifthcentury C hinese B udd hist pilgrim, Fa-hsien, mentions the Untouchables as having to strike a piece o f wo od before entering a tow n as a wa rning fo r people to av oid them .25 Th e untouch able classes almost certainly go back into the first millennium b c e . The dating of Man u is unsure, though it is earlier than the third ce ntu ry c e and pro ba bly far older. There is evidence, cited by D um ont, o f untouchable castes several centuries before the com mon era, from the Buddhist Jatakas, stories of the previous lives of the Budd ha, and D um ont not im plausibly suggests that both Brahm ans and Untouchables were established at the same time, for the impurity of the Untouchable is inseparable from the purity of the Brahman; they are at op po site ends o f the status hierarch y.26 T H E A S R A M A S Y S T E M
Th e second concept in the ideolo gy o f dharma is that o f life’s stages o r the asramas. These are codifications of different elements present in vedic
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society and an attempt to integrate them into .1 lolicient system. The four stages are: that of the celibate student (brubtnucarya), householder ( grhastba), hermit or forest dweller (vanaprastha), and renouncer (.samnydsa). Patrick Olivelle has shown that the asrama system, as a theo logical construct within the Hindu hermeneutical tradition, should be dis tinguished from the socio-religious institutions comprehended by the system .27 The ds'ramas are a theological entity whose object of reflection is the social institution, or institutions, which the system reflects upon. The asrama system arose during the fifth century b c e as a result of changes within the brahmanical tradition. Initially the term referred to a ‘hermitage’ (asrama, the source of the anglicized ‘ ashram’) and came to be applied to the style of life of those Brahmans who lived there. The brah manical ‘hermits’ who lived in an asrama were householders within the vedic fold, perform ing the domestic sacrifice, who pursued a religious life, probably in areas removed from towns and villages. The term, as Olivelle has shown, referred to this special category of brahmanical householder.28 The meaning of the term came to be extended, referring not only to the place where the brahmanical householder-hermits dwelled, but to the style of life they led, and eventually came to refer to other brahmanical styles of life as well. In the Dharma Sutras the dsramas are not regarded as successive stages through which a man must pass, but as permanent possi bilities - or lifestyle choices - open to the twice-bo rn male after complet ing his studies. The twice -born boy would be separated from childhoo d by the vedic initiation. He would then become a ‘student’ in the house o f a teacher, during which time he would learn about the duties and responsi bilities of each of the four dsramas. At the end of this period of study he would choose one of the dsramas that he wou ld w ish to follo w fo r the rest of his adult life.29 Thus, he could choose a life of study and continue as a ‘student’ or brabmacdrin. B y the time of the Dharma Sastras, the dsramas have solidified into successive stages through which the twice-born should pass, and much space in the Sastras is devoted to describing the demands o f each stage. As with the vama system, the dsramas are a model, this time concerned not with the ordering of society but with the diachronic ordering of the individual’s life: they are a paradigm of how the high-caste man should live. The celibate student stage of life (brahmacdrya) refers to the traditional period after the high-caste initiation (upanayana) when a boy w ould go to the home o f his teacher (acarya, guru) to learn the Veda. The student of the
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Veda or brahmacarin, ‘one who moves wiili or applies himself to brah man', is kn ow n as early as the Atharva V eda, 10 wh ere he has all the charac teristics of the student portray ed in the 1 )harma Sastras: he begs fo r foo d, practises penances, wears an antelope skin, collects fuel, and practises heat-generating austerity (tapas ) ? 1 Yet, unlike the contem porary idea o f the student, the brahmacarin is in a holy condition in which he is identi fied with P rajâpati, the creator d eity in the Brâh m an as, and is und er a strict rule of celibacy. Indeed the term brahmacarin can mean ‘one wh o is celi bate’, the idea behind this, common to all Indian religions, being that to remain celibate is to be unpolluted by sex and to control sexual energy whic h, usually unders to od as the re tention o f semen , can be su blim ated for a religious purpose. A cco rding to M an n, this state w ou ld last between nine and as m any as thirty -six years, d uring w hich time the student w ou ld learn all, or a num ber of, the Vedas. A fter this the student wo uld unde rgo a home-coming ritual and would soon be married and entered upon the householder’s life.32 W hen a household er is w rin kle d an d grey and sees his grandchildre n, then, says M an u, he should retire and become a hermit or forest-dweller (vanaprastha). In this stage a man, along with his wife if he so wishes, retires fro m ho use ho lder ’s duties to live an ascetic life in the fore st and to devote him self to ritual. H ere, in the w ord s of M anu , ‘con stantly devoting him self to the recitation o f the Veda, he shou ld be con trolled , friendly, and m entally comp osed; he should alw ays be a giver and a non-taker, com pas sionate to all living beings’.33 He is not a complete renunciate and has not given up fire for cooking and, more importantly, for making the daily offerings into the three sacrificial fires. Nev erthe less, from the descriptions o f this stage in the D ha rm a Sàstras, w e can see that vanaprastha practised severe b od ily asceticism, eating only certain kinds o f food such as vege ta bles, flow ers , roots and fruits and even prac tising extrem e auste rity such as sitting surrounded by five fires in the summer or wearing wet clothes in winter, in order to gen erate spiritual energ y or ‘ inner hea t’ (tapas).34 The significant difference between this stage and that of the total world renouncer is the use of fire. The renouncer has gone beyond the vedic injunctions of maintaining his sacred fires; living entirely by begging he does not cook his own food . If fire and cooked food are symb ols o f culture and raw food o f nature, as Lév i-Straus s has suggested, then the renouncer in relinquish ing fire has, in a sense, relinquish ed c ulture; he is attempting to transcend culture fo r a pure, trans-hum an realm o f spiritual liberation.
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If a Brahman follows through tin- Mali's ol lilt*, says Manu, ami has p a i d his three debts ( r n a ) of vedic study to i lu* s m s ( h i ), ol ritual to the g o d s (ideva ), and of begetting sons to make funeral ollerings to the ancestors ( p it r ), then he may aim at attaining liberation (nioksa). I lowever, if he has not fulfilled his social o bligations then he goes to hell, making it clear that while renunciation and the goal of liberation are valid, they must be deferred until social ob ligation s have been met: here, dharma, in the sense o f social obligation, is clearly superior to moksa. Of the asramas the householder and renouncer stages are clearly the most important both ideologically and in terms of concrete historical developm ents. These two stages, or rather the figures o f the householder and the renounc er who pass through them, reflect the distinction between sociopolitical religion and soteriology. While throughout the history of Hinduism there are attempts to reconcile the householder and the renouncer ideals, the two images, and two institutions, remain in tension. The Dharma Sastras favour the householder’s life. Manu explicitly states that, of the four stages, the householder’s is the best because the householder supports the others and his activity is the supreme good.35 The text presents a picture of the Brahman as a learned man, a model of rational self-control who restrains his senses ‘as a charioteer his race horses’,36 and who performs the correct ritual activity. He abides by the ritual injunctions (vidhi ) of the Veda, namely the performance of obliga tory daily rituals (nitya-karma ), occasional rituals (naimittika-karma ) such as the life-cycle rituals (samskara) o f birth, high-caste initiation, and death rites - and rites perform ed for a desired result (kdmya-karma ) such as going to heaven. This is in contrast to the renouncer, who has given up home, the use of fire for ritual and cooking, and who cultivates total detachment, treating everything with equanimity and going beyond attachment to the material w orld .37 The image of the renouncer might be contrasted not only with the Brahm an but also with the image o f the king, the ideal householder, who , unlike the renouncer, possesses political power, and, unlike the Brahman, does not possess brahmanical purity, being low er in the varna hierarchy and having corpse-pollution due to war and punishment. The relation between the images of the renouncer, the Brahman householder and the king, has been contentious. Some scholars, such as Louis Dumont, have regarded the renouncer and the householder to be the central contrast with Hindu ism, while others, no tably Ja n Heesterman, have argued fo r
64
I )lia rma
i In' similarity between the renouncer ami llu- Brahman and have empha•»i/rd the contrast between the Brahm an anil the k ing38 (see p. 72). Gender roles
All these stages arc characterized by diffe re nt regimen s o f the body, parncularly the control of diet and sexuality. The first and last asramas are explicitly celibate; celib acy is a defining ch aracteristic o f brahmacdrya, the 1 i-ntral ascetic idea being that sexual power contained in semen can be 1 «'directed to a spiritual end and, indeed, be sto red in the head. Th e fore stil weller and the renou ncer, like the brahmacdrin, are seeking to transcend .iiul transform sexual po w er fo r the purpo ses o f the higher goal of libera1 ion. O nl y the hou seh olde r can express and ex plo re his sexu ality as a legit imate goal of life (kdmartha), concerning which there is an extensive Ii 1erature, the K am a Sastras, and the mo st notab le text, Va tsy ay an a’s Kama Smra, a text to which , exceptionally, wom en had access. Sexual enjoym ent was regarded as the fo re m ost of pleasu res and a man o f wealth, particu larly a king, would experience kama with courtesans trained in the arts o f love. Yet even the Brah m an’s sexuality stands with in his rational con trol; a control which o rders his world according to the principles o f maintaining Iitual pu rity and o f controlling elements within it wh ich threaten to dis rupt that pu rity, particu larly his ow n desire and its focu s, nam ely his w ife and other wom en o f his household. That physical love (kama) is a legitimate p urp ose o f life is significant in demonstrating a strand in brahmanical ideo log y wh ich was generally posII i ve tow ards the bo d y and sexuality. Sex is not inhe rently sinful bu t can be legitimately explored and expressed within the correct caste-specific boundaries, especially by m en with we alth and power. Ev en M anu, a text wh ich in the light o f conte m pora ry western sensibilities seems oppre ssive ol women’s rights, recognizes the need for the mutual sexual satisfaction of husband and wife.39 This is also the case in Hindu erotic literature where w om en are not sim ply the instruments o f male desire. A s Biard eau t »bserves, lo ve (kama) was a traditional art which wo m en handed dow n to one another through the generations; love w as a w om an ’s svadharma, or more correctly her stridharma, ‘woman’s duty’,40 and a realm of human experience wh ich is legitimized in the Smrti literature. H ow eve r, sexu ality beyo nd ration al contro l, that is, outside o f caste restrictions and pollu tion controls, was anathema to the orthodox Brahman for it threatened his ritual p u rity and threatened the stab ility o f soc iety and the family.
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M an u’s attitude to women expresses ilie ambivalence ol the general brahmanical ideal. Women are to he revered and kepi happy hy the house holder in order that the fam ily may thrive, yet w omen are also polluting to the Brahman male during menstruation. According to Manu, women are to be subject to male control throughout their lives. A high-caste woman must do nothing independently (svatantra ), but must be subject to male authority - as a child to her father, as a married woman to her husband, and as a widow to her sons.41 By leading a life subject to male authority, a wom an’s virtuou s behaviour will be rewarded by heaven upon her death.42 In later brahmanical tradition, a ‘goo d wo m an’ (sati) is one who dies on her husband’s funeral pyre if he predeceases her, a practice which had devel oped by the fourteenth century though it was not known to Manu , and although no w illegal, still sometimes occurs in contemporary India.43 A n eighteenth-century dharmic text, Tryambaka ’s Stridharma Paddhati, gives details of the wife’s duties towards her husband, who is treated by her as a deva, and his expectations of her. Above all, obedient service to her husband is her primary religious duty, even beyond regard for her own life.44 However, probably the text which best portrays the ideal high-caste woman is not a technical law book, but the Hindu epic poem composed perhaps as early as the fifth century b c e , the Rdmdyana. In this narrative the god-king Rama is banished to the forest with his brother Balarama and his wife Sita. Sita is demure, modest, beautiful and dedicated to her Lo rd Rama, yet she is also strong in herself, endures great hardship and displays great devotion to her husband. She is the ideal highcaste wife. In examining Hindu literature on dharma we are dealing with brah manical self-representations and idealized images of gender roles. In Manu we have the brahmanical view of how things should be, a clear pic ture of brahmanical ideology, but the degree to which this reflected social reality is unclear. Women probably wielded power within the home, within the realm of domesticity, but wielded little power in the realms of public office, administration and politics, a situation which, in India as elsewhere, has on ly begun to change in the twentieth century. Purity and auspiciousness
Two distinctions have been important in the history of Hindu society: on the one hand the distinction between purity (sauca, suddhi) and pollution (asauca, asuddhi) and on the other the distinction between auspiciousness
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(subha, marigala) aiul inauspiciousness (asubha, amangala). The scale of pu rity and pollution is a sc al co f status hierarch y w hich co rrespo nds to the caste hierarchy with the Brahmans at the top and the dalits at the bottom. Hindu society is arranged around this scale. Auspiciousness and inauspi ciousne ss, on the other hand, is a scale of the degree to w hich events, times and relationships are conducive to the we ll-bein g o f the society or ind ivid ual. A stro log y is particu larly important here in determining the degree of auspiciou sness fo r a pa rticular event such as a marriage. Th e degree of pu rity and pollution is concerned w ith status, the degree of auspiciousness and inauspiciousness concerned with power, particu larly political power. While purity has been the predominant concern of the Brahman, auspiciousness has been the predominant concern of the king and the local dominant caste. While the Brahman creates a ritually pure environm ent, so the king must create an auspicious k ingdom ; one in whic h there is good fortune and pro sperity . The abilit y to create auspi ciousness in the kingdo m is a function o f the king ’s divinity. The king, like the icon in a temple, might be regarded as a channel for divine po w er and the level of prosperity in the kingdom related to the degree to which he lives up to this responsibility.
The political theology of kingship One of the most important aspects of dharma is its applicability to kin g ship. K ingsh ip has been v er y im portant in H indu ism , both as an ideal and as a sociop olitical reality, intim ately link ed to the idea o f the sacred. A s the icon o f a deity is thought to m ediate betw een the divine and hum an realms, similarly the king was thought to do so. Whereas the Grhya Sutras are concerned o nly with domestic ritual, the D harm a texts have wide r inter ests in the fo ur stages of life, social or caste obligatio n, jurisp rud enc e and, particularly, the rites and duties of kings. From these texts we see that, w hile dharma is timeless and transcendent, it was also the province of dom estic affairs and pub lic, social relationships, and had a political dim en sion in gov erning the status and behav iour o f the king. Re gardless o f the actions of any particular king, the ideal of kingship was upheld through out Hin du histo ry from the vedic period onw ards, an ideal in which the king was the centre of the H indu universe. This ideal of kingship play s an important role even in contemporary Hinduism and rituals of kingship persist into the presen t.45 A lth ou gh in o ne sense the kin g is the ideal householder, ab le to fu lfi l the
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goals of dharma, of wealth, and of sexual love willi innumerable courte sans, he is also divine. Worldly power in ilic history of 1 lindu kingship is legitimated in terms of a religious symbolism in which the qualities of deities are attributed to kings. The king was regarded as a divine being - a divinity wh ich is attested in one of the names for king, deva - particularly identified in the medieval period with the god Visnu. The beginnings of this id eolo gy are found in the Rg Veda Samhitd where Indra is the king ‘ of that which moves and that which rests, of the tame and of the horned. He rules the people as their king, encircling all this as a rim encircles sp okes.’ 46 Similarly the human king is lord of his kingdom or sphere and as such should protect his realm and wage war against his enemies.47 The king ideally aspires to be a ‘ruler of the universe’ or cakravdrtin (‘one who is at the centre of the whe el’ ). XTh e kings of the ea rly vedic period were constrained by the power of tribal councils, but this changed in the later vedic period when the power of the king became more absolute. While the king is not endowed with divine origin in the Dharma Sutras, later texts clearly identify the king with a de ity or deities. It is from the Dharma Sastras, Kautily a’s Artha Sdstra and the great epic poem the Mahdbhdrata, that we can build a clearer picture o f the ideo logy of sacral kingship in early Indian politics. This model o f sacral kingship was later embellished b y the tantric identifi cation of the king with the deity, particularly the Goddess, and by the ideo logy of the de ity’s energy (sakti) flow ing through him.48 Once consecrated, generally even if not a Ksatriya, the king is no mere human being but a god. According to Manu, the king is emitted by the Lo rd of the Cosm os. He is a great deity in the form of a man, or rather a compo site deity, being formed fro m fragments o f the different vedic gods Indra, Vayu, Yama, Surya, Agni, Varuna, Soma and Kubera and in some sense might be said to contain all gods. Manu writes: Because a king is made from particles of these lords of the gods, therefore he surpasses all living beings in brilliant energy, and, like the Sun, he burns eyes and hearts, and no one on earth is able even to look at him. Through his special power he becomes Fire and Wind; he is the Sun and the Moon, and he is (Yama) the King of Justice, he is Kubera [Lord of wealth] and he is Varuna, and he is great Indra.49 This passage shows the king as the highest point of the kingdom or polity. Ev en a child king is no mere mortal but a great deity in human form. 68
1 )harma Ii was not so much the charisma ol any particular king which maintained power, but the tradition and legitimation ol the institution of kingship through the idea of the descent ol power from above during the king’s anointing. From the king, power descends to the court and to the rest of the realm. W hile th ere is much rh eto ric in the D harm a litera tu re concern in g the need for the king to administer justice, the H indu king was m ore im po r tant as a ritual figure in close proximity to the divine than as a ruler involved w ith the bureaucracy and running o f the kingdom. Th e ruler of a large kingdom, a dharmaraja, was more important as a moral and ritual source, than in the practical concerns of the day-to-day running of a region or regions. The politically segmentary nature of the Hindu king dom was ritually united in the figure o f the king. We cannot sim ply regard the Hin du king as a despot or the institution o f divine kingship as a pec u liar consequence o f caste society. Rather, the king w as an integral part of a w h ole stru ctu re in w h ic h he and th ose b elo w him , do w n to com m on peop le in the villages, functioned in an integrated way. T he H indu po lity w as a com ple x structu re , an ‘im perial fo rm ation’ , to use R onald Inden’s term, in wh ich each part played a role in its maintenance. Inden w rites that w ithin this w orld ‘the kin gsh ip eq uated w ith the su n, its offic ia ld om w ith the lesser gods o f the sky, the queen w ith the earth, w ere, togethe r with the com m oners, all pa rts’ .50 T H E S E G M E N T A R Y H I N D U S T AT E
Th e H indu kingdom , as historian B urton Stein has show n, was segmen tary, comprising a number of embedded elements or socio-political groupings which formed a pyramidal structure. These elements were em bedded w ithin each other; the village w ithin the locality, the loca lity w ithin the supra lo cality , and the sup ralocalit y w ith in the kin gd om .51 Lesser kings gave ritual and symbolic loyalty to more powerful kings and chieftains paid homage to lesser kings. For most of the history of south Asia from the advent of kingship to domination by foreign pow ers, each region would have been ruled by a chief or petty-king who acknowledged and paid allegiance to a sacred centre. The Hindu king w o u ld have bee n the ritu al focus o f the sa cre d ce ntre, a ritu al figure w h o held tog ether his kin gd om not so mu ch as a united adm inistrative entity, but as a segmented political structure within a common moral frame of reference. This m odel is foun d in Ka ut ilya ’s A rth a Sdstra wh ich presents
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A n introduction to Hinduism
the king as the centre of a state f o r m a t i o n lielil t o g e t h e r by alliances and wars. Furthermore, the kingdom was embedded within a hierarchical cos mos. In vedic and later Hindu cosmologies, the universe is regarded as a hierarchical structure in which purer, more refined worlds are located ‘above’, yet at the same time they incorporate, lower, impure worlds which, as in the segmentary Hindu kingdom , have some autonomy. In this hierarchical cosmology the various worlds or realms are governed by an overlord or god w ho also embodies the principles controlling or govern ing that world. The various worlds which comprise the cosmos are con trolled by forces which are also ‘persons’. Inden has observed that the ‘natural world of ancient and medieval India was person-based, con structed by a cosmic overlo rd out of himself’ .52 The human realm must be located within the context of this wider cosmology of which it was thought to be a part. There is a ‘chain of being’ w ithin the Hin du universe which is reflected in the sociopolitical realm of the Hindu segm entary state. As a god might rule a sphere of the cosmos, so the king rules his kingdom. THE BODY OF THE KINGDOM
The famous study by Kantorowicz shows how in medieval Europe the king had two bodies, a natural body subject to disease and death and an immutable political body in which resided his sovereignty.53 This model can be applied to kingship in south Asia. While the physical body of the king w as subject to death, as are all human bodies, the politic al bod y o f the king as a manifestation o f the gods, contained splendour and great power. The physical body of the king could be killed, but the political body, the bo dy o f the kingd om 54 lived on in the form of the new king, regenerated b y the act of roy al consecration. The king is the pivotal point of the bo dy politic: the ‘ bo dy of the king dom’ is recapitulated in his own body. If he acts in accordance with dharma the kingdom prospers, but if he acts against dharma, the body of the kingdom - which means the people - suffers. The king’s body, which expressed the social body, was the worldly counterpart of the cosmic man’s immolated body which comprised the cosmos. The king could be seen, therefore, as the intermediary between the eternal, cosmic law of dharma and its worldly manifestations in justice administered through the courts o f a segmented hierarchical structure. Wh atever happens to him 70
I )ha rm a as the pinnacle of the social hotly affects the domain for good or bad. As the king is a ma nifestation o f the gods, so society is a recapitulation o f the cosmic bo dy o f the primal man. THE
k i n g
’ s F U N C T I O N S
A ccord in g to the D harm a literature, the central functions o f the kin g, the rajadharma, are: - the protection of the people; - the maintaining of social order through the control o f caste boundaries; - the administration of justice (danda). M anu says that the king is created ‘as the prote cto r of the classes and stages of life ’ .55 He is the supreme uphold er o f justice in the social w orld wh o ensures the prosp erity and protection o f the communities which he gov erns so that his subjects live with a sense of security. The king is the absolute dispenser of justice, the term for which, danda (literally ‘the stick ’), also m eant punishment. D a n d a is the way in which dharma is manifested upon the earth. It creates fear in all beings so that they do no t wan der fro m their ow n, castespecific duties and ensures the obedience o f the castes to the dharm ic ideal. It keeps the whole world in order, governs all created beings, protects them while they sleep and without it there would be no order in society; castes wou ld be mixed and the wh ole w or ld w ou ld be in a state o f rage.56 Through the legal processes of the state, the king should see that justice is done and so maintain social order and harmony. A bad king, one who neglects the protection of the people and neglects the administration of justice, w ould bring a bo ut social disharm ony and chaos. W ith British co lo nialism the pow er o f kings in India diminished but was no t w h o lly eradicated. A s Full er notes, there were still 565 kingdoms or prin cely states not under direct British rule in 1947, and even up until the 1930 s the Maharaj o f My sore, a kingdo m wh ich had developed out of the ruins o f Vijayanaga ra, celebrated the navaratri festival, a direct leg acy from the festival of the Vijayanagara kings. The ritual importance of the king should not be underestimated, and even at an ideological level, the king as upholder of cosmic order or dharma is central to the contempo rary H ind u politics (see p. 262). Th e king was the centre o f the Hi nd u uni ve rse in the material world, and the ideal state was the ideal kin gdom 71
An introduction to Hinduism rule d b y a king w h o was the analo gue ol I lie ilei iy; an ideal established in ritual.
The jajmani system
While the king of kings ruled over a number of kingdoms, themselves ruled by kings, those kings in turn ruled over a number of regions con trolled b y a dominant caste or coalition o f castes. These controlling castes are usually not Brahmans, but other castes, often Sudras. Th ejajmdn is a local, powerful landowner who employs Brahmans to perform rituals for him in return for a fee. He also gives a portion of grain to other castes who provide him with services. The term is derived from the vedic yajamdna, the ‘sacrificer’ or ritual patron for whom sacrifices were performed by the Brahmans. The jajmani system is not a purely economic arrangement, but is rooted in the socio-ritual structure of caste hierarchy which itself is regarded as sacred. Dumont has observed that castes can be divided into those who own land and those who do not. The caste in a village or region which owns the land is the caste with political power and control over other castes, because it controls the means of subsistence. The other castes gain access to the means of subsistence through personal relationships with the dominant caste. There is a reciprocal relationship here. The dominant caste employs Brahmans for its ritual needs, barbers, carpenters, and untouchable labourers who in turn receive ‘gifts’ for their services.57 At the level of the kingdom, the king might be regarded as a jajman, receiving the services of others, including worship, and giving in turn gifts and, above all, protec tion. Royal power and transcendence
The worldly power of the king, a Ksatriya, has been contrasted with the purity o f the Brahman. Heesterman contrasts the Brahman, who embod ies an ideal of wo rld transcendence in performing the ritual, with the king, who is necessarily embroiled in the w orldly concerns of power and vio lence. According to Heesterman, the king aspires to participate in the transcendent realm of the Brahman, but necessarily fails because of his involvement and entanglement in the world of politics, desire and inter ests. There is a rift between the king’s order of conflict and the Brahman’s and renouncer’s order of transcendence.58 By employing Brahmans in his court to perform the necessary sacrifices, the king hopes to participate in 72
their sac red level, yet in beco m ing entang led m the wo rld , the B rahm an mo ves a w ay from that transcendence. ’I'hero is thus an insolub le problem here and a gap between the power of the king operating in the ‘turbulent orde r of con flict’ and the auth ority or status o f the Brahm an, operating in the ‘static order of transcendence’.59 The Brahman, according to Heesterman, turns towards transcendence, while the king, lacking the Brahman’s purity and authority, remains within the world of strife and vio le nce. Th is contrast is related to a contrast between tw o senses o f d h a r m a . O n the one hand it refers to an eternal, timeless p rinc iple , and, on the other, it refers to w o rldly or human transactions. The Brahm an faces both w ays , tow ards transcendence throug h ritual, while y et being in the w orld , while the king is embroiled in the realm of worldly, temporal d h a r m a . This is w h at H eeste rm an calls th e ‘inner co nflic t o f trad itio n ’; th e need to assert d h a r m a as the eternal, timeless princip le, in contrast to the need to ac com m odate to w orld ly, tempo ral interests, a contrast wh ich p oses an insoluble dilemma. This model has been criticized from the perspective of history and anthropology, particularly by Ronald Inden and Nicholas Dirks. Inden argues, against Heesterman, that there was no such distinction between the pure Brahm an and the po w erfu l, but im pure, king.60 Ra ther there wa s an intimate relationship between king and Brahm ans w h o lived by the king’s patronage. The king would donate wealth, land and other valu able s to th e B rah m ans, and, w h ile th ey w ere cle arly distinct fro m the king, there was no t the rift between w o rld ly life and transcendence w hich Heesterman suggests. The Brahman perceived a continuity between his inner life and its ou ter expression. N icho las D irks has argued against D um on t that caste cannot be under stood outside o f the ideas o f kingship and the structure o f the H indu state. D irks argues that caste is embedd ed in king ship and that the dom inant ide olo gy has not been one of pu rity but one o f roy al auth ority and social rela tions based on power and dominance. Caste, and particularly the role of the Brah m ans, is based on po w er related to kingship and the Hin du state. W ith th e genera l dem is e o f th e H in d u state, caste becam e separa te d fro m kingship and survived it, a process which led to the ascendancy of the Brahmans. Until recently, however, kings still ruled the small state of Pu dok kottai in the middle of Tamilnadu, where the Brahm ans performed rituals for the king and became emblems of the king’s sovereignty. The king in return gave the Brahmans land. Their importance was always, 73
Art introduction to H induism
argues Dirks, mediated through the king, 'whose kingship was in turn made all the more powerful because ol the presence ol the Brahmans’.61 Pudokkottai provides an example in which the power ol the Brahmans is directly related to the power of the king and in which the Brahman’s purity is subordinated to his dependence on the king's patronage. Summary
Dharma is the central ideology of orthoprax Hinduism, believed to be eternal and deriving from the revelation of the Veda and from the sec ondary revelation of the Dharma literature. It is particularly concerned with caste hierarchy expressed in the varnasrama system and with the nature and behaviour of the Hindu king. The king expresses dharma through just rule and so ensures the prosperity o f the kingdom. Th e rela tion of the Brahman to the king is ambiguous. On the one hand the Brahm an is the highest being on the status hierarchy of purity and pollu tion, yet the Brahman is dependent upon the power of the king for patronage. Heesterman has described the tension between the worldtranscending tendencies of the Brahman and his worldly concerns as the inner conflict of tradition. Studies by Inden and Dirks, in contrast, have argued for the closer prox im ity o f the Brahman to the king and Dirks has argued that the status o f the Brahman cannot be separated from the po wer of the king; the religious realm o f the Brahman cannot be understood out side the political realm of the king. Whether there is an oppo sition between the Brahman and the king, or whether the two figures are closer than has been thought, is a matter of continuing debate. However, one contrast which is made by the Hindu tradition is that between the renouncer and the householder. Hinduism contains a sociopolitical ideology of a chain of being which endorses the social hierarchy, caste, and gender roles, alongside an ideolo gy o f renunci ation wh ich negates those roles at doctrinal and practical levels. In o rder to come to a fuller understanding of orthoprax Hinduism and the contrasts within it, we need to turn our attention to renunciation, the institution fo r leaving the sociopolitical world o f suffering.
74
4 Yo ga and renunciation
B y the sixth century b c e the brahm anical scho ols are well established and the ritual traditions passed through the generations from teacher to stu dent. Prob ably the hey day of vedic ritual performance was between iooo and 500 b c e , though the traditions are never completely attenuated and have survived into the present. Along side the performanc es o f ritual, spec ulation abou t its nature and purpose develope d, initially in the Brâhmanas and later in the Àranyakas and Upanisads. In speculating about the ritual patron and the renewing effects of the ritual upon him, the Brahmanas begin to rep resent the ritual as the sustainer o f life and posit elaborate c o r respondences (band.hu) between ritual and the w ider cosm os. These spec ulations are developed in the Àra ny aka s and Up anisads wh ich com pletely re-evaluate the nature o f ritual, seeing its internalization with in the ind i vid ual as its hig hest meanin g, and subord in ating ritu al action to k n o w l edge. This spiritual knowledge could be attained by asceticism or w o rld-renunciatio n and discip lines w h ic h cam e to be know n as yoga. The Up anisa ds attest to the existence o f ascetic traditions and, by the sixth or fifth century b c e , traditions o f asceticism and world-renunciation for the pu rpose o f spiritual know ledge and liberation had developed b oth within the boun ds o f vedic tradition and outside those boundaries, most notab ly in the Jain and B ud dh ist traditions. General observations
Tw o ideas o f great significance developed betw een the ninth and sixth cen turies b c e , namely that beings are reincarnated into the world (samsara) 75
An intro duction to I litidnism
over and over again and that the results <>l .u'lion (karma) are reaped in future lives. This process of endless rebirth is one of suffering (duhkha), escape from which can be achieved through the minimizing of action and through spiritual knowledge. Patañjali (second century bce), a systematizer of yoga practice and philosophy, states that all is suffering to the spiritually discriminating person (vivekin)} This doctrine that all life is suffering is common to renou ncer traditions and is the first noble truth of the Buddh a. To be free o f suffering one needs to be free from action and its effects. The renunciation o f action at first meant ritual action, but comes to refer to all action in the social world. This renunciation of action could be achieved through asceticism (tapas) and meditation, which means tech niques of altering consciousness or withdrawing consciousness from the world of the senses in order to experience total world transcendence. The groups o f ascetics which grew up during this period are know n as, among other names, sramanas (Pali samana), ‘strivers’, who seek libera tion through the efforts o f their austerity. Th ey are homeless, depend for food on alms (bhiksà ), and minimize, in varyin g degrees, their ownership of possessions. Buddhism, the first world religion, originated in these groups, as did Jainism . Both Buddhism and Jainism reject the Veda as rev elation and emphasize the practice of austerity, in the case of Jainism, and meditation, in the case of Buddhism. Indeed these early renouncer tradi tions cannot be understood in isolation from each other as there is mutual cross-fertilization of terminologies and ideas: Buddhism influences the brahmanical renouncer religion and brahmanical religion influences Buddhism.2 The higher states of consciousness or meditative absorptions spoken of in the Buddhist scriptures, the jbanas (Pali) or dhyânas (Sanskrit), which are certainly pre-Buddhist, are reminiscent of the later Hindu stages o f yogic concentration of samâdhi. These renouncer traditions offered a new vision of the human condi tion which became incorporated, to some degree, into the worldview of the Brahman householder. The ideology of asceticism and renunciation seems, at first, discontinuous with the brahmanical ideology of the affir mation of social obligations and the performance of public and domestic rituals. Indeed, there has been some debate as to whether asceticism and its ideas of retributive action, reincarnation and spiritual liberation, might not have originated outside the orthodox vedic sphere, or even outside Ary an culture: that a divergent historical origin might account fo r the apparent contradiction within ‘ Hindu ism’ between the world affirmation 76
)'<>ga and renunciation
of the householder and the world negation ol the renouncer. I lowever, thisdich otom ization is too simplistic, tor continuities can undo ub tedly be found between renunciation and vedic Brahmanism, while elements from non-brahm anical, Sramana traditions also playe d an im portant part in the formation of the renunciate ideal. Indeed there are continuities between vedic Bra hm anism and Buddhis m , and it has been arg ued that the Buddha sought to return to the ideals of a vedic society which he saw as being eroded in his ow n day.3 General ideological features of w orld renunciation comm on to d iffer ent renouncer traditions can be sum m arized as follow s: - action leads to rebirth and suffering. - detachment from action, or even non-ac tion, leads to spiritual emancipation. - complete detachment, and therefore spiritual emancipation can be achieved through asceticism and methods of making consciousness focused and concentrated. Ascetics in the Veda
In the R g Veda Samhitd the im portant religiou s figures are the priests wh o officiate at the ritual and the inspired seers ( rsi ) who receive the Veda. Th ere are, how ever, some references in the ved ic corp us to figures w h o do not have a ritual function and seem to be outside the brahmanical, vedic comm unity. Tw o groups are o f particular note, the Kesins and the Vratyas. THE KESINS
On e famous h ym n in the R g Veda Samhitd describes lon g-ha ired ascetics (kesin ) o r silent ones (muni), w ho strong ly resemble later Hindu ascetics. T he text describes them as either naked (‘ swathed in w in d ’) or clothed in red tatters. T h ey have ecstatic experiences, being ‘p ossessed b y the god s’, and they fly outside the body, perhaps suggestive o f wh at have become k no wn as ‘ou t-of-th e-b od y exp eriences’. Th e text also indicates that they possess the ability to read minds, a po w er attributed to accom plished yo gin s in later y o ga tra ditio ns. S uch ex periences are seem in gly induced b y an unid entified ‘drug’ (visa) wh ich the ascetic drinks with the god R ud ra, and which is pre pared b y a (possibly hunch-backed) goddess Kunam nama.4 W heth er the hym n desc ribes a drug-in duced visionary ex perience depends up on the interpretation o f the term visa, wh ich is usu ally taken to 77
An introduction to Hindu ism
mean ‘poison’. Some scholars have argued lli.il vis,i here refers to a hallu cinogenic drug, though distinct from soma? while others have argued that to see the hymn in terms of a chem ically induced ecstasy is to disregard the sym bolic nature o f the vedic texts, and that drinking poison is akin to the myth o f Siva’s drinking the poison churned up from the world ocean. On this view the Kesin attained his mystical state through a yo ga practice, and the poison he drinks refers to his ability to remain in the poisono us m ater ial world, w hile being unaffected by it.6 It is, of course, possible to vie w the hym n as describing a hallucinogen-indu ced ecstasy and being sym bolic at the same time. The description of the Kesin is reminiscent of later ascetics who undergo extraordinary inner experiences. Regardless of the cause or facil itator, whether through a drug or through ascetic practices, this hymn provides us with one of the earliest recorded descriptions of an ecstatic religious experience. Other features of the hymn, such as the Kesin’s asso ciation with Rudra, are significant in establishing a connection with later yogic traditions. Rudra, who later becomes Siva, the archetypal ascetic, himself associated with the hallucinogenic plant datura, is a terrible deity with long, braided hair, on the edges o f vedic society, w ho is entreated not to harm the communities by taking away their cattle and children.7 Ru dra is peripheral to the vedic pantheon, there are only three hymns to him in the Rg Veda, and the Kesin’s association with him suggests that he too would have been on the edges of the vedic community. The goddess Kunamnama is only mentioned in the Veda in this hym n, again suggestive of the Kesin ’s location outside of the vedic comm unity. While it might not be legitimate to argue that the Kesin represents a no n-A ryan tradition - after all the composer of the hymn is sympathetic to the Kesin - it would be reasonable to assume that the Kes'in represents a strand of asceticism existing outside mainstream, vedic ritual culture and was pro bably an influence on later renouncer traditions; indeed the Bud dha himself, like the Kesin, is described as a muni. How ever, it wou ld be a gross oversimplification to suggest that the renouncer tradition sim ply developed from this Muni culture. The development o f renunciation in the Upanisads is intimately connected to the vedic ritual tradition, yet one must also recognize the force o f the argument that the Upanisads co n tain a discontinuity of ideas with the vedic ritual tradition; a discontin uity which indicates non-vedic influences, such as are represented by the ‘Kesin Hymn’ . 78
i'agi/ iiniire nu ncia tion
THE VKATYAS
A part fro m the Kesin s, B oo k i 5 of the A tb a rva Veda Sam hita attests to the existence of a community of aggressive warriors moving about in band s, the Vratyas, w ho lived on the edges o f A rya n society and may have been connected with the Kes'ins. These Vratyas comprised itinerant group s, concentrated in the north-east o f India, wh o spoke the same lan guage as the vedic A rya ns , but wh o w ere regarded w ith disdain b y them. Indeed, there is a special purification ritual, the vratyastoma, in which they could be assimilated into vedic society and assume the Aryan status w hic h th ey forfe ited b y not u ndertakin g the brahm anical rites o f passage. W hile ev idence is la ckin g to say p recisely w h o the V raty as were , th ey cer tainly seem to have been on the bou nd ary o f groups w h o were acceptable to the vedic Aryans, though Heesterman has suggested that the vedic, sacrificial initiate (diksita ) derives fro m the V ra ty a.8 Th e A th a rva Ved a describes them as we aring turbans, dressed in black, with tw o ram skins over their shoulde rs.9 The Vratyas practised their own ceremonies. The precise nature and structure o f these rites is unclear, but they w ere p rob ab ly concerned w ith fertility and the magical renewal o f life w ith the seasons. D uring the sum mer solstice ‘great vow’ ( mahavrata ) ritual, the priest (hotr ) muttered chants wh ich include d reference to the three breaths animating the body . Th ese breaths are inhalation, the breath w hic h is retained, and exhalation, and suggest an early kind o f breath control wh ich becomes d eveloped as pranayam a in later yog ic traditions. T his rite is accompanied b y ob scene dialogues and also involves ritual sexual intercourse between a ‘b ard’, wh o may have otherwise remained celibate, and a ‘prostitute’; a rite which has echoes in later tantric ritual (see pp. 18 9 -9 1) . The Vra tyas d emonstrate a close con nection, foun d in later traditions, between asceticism and martialism. Warrior brotherhoods, skilled in phy sical techniques and the technologies o f war, became associated with ascetic, renu nc iatory practices: the outer war, as it we re, becom es an inner w a r to su bdue the b o d y and the passions. T h is connection betw een ascetic and martial fraternities is furthe r bo rne o ut in that ascetic ideo logies and practices emerged within the ruling of warrior classes of Indian society. The Bu dd ha, fo r example, came from a martial backg round and the secret teachings o f the Up anisa ds are associated with rulers. W hile re nuncia tion and asceticism are pre figure d in vedic re ligio n, a 79
An introduction to Hinduism
developed ideology of renunciation comes wiili n change in social and eco nomic conditions in India from the sixth century iu : h . These changes allowed for the development of ideas from outside the strictly brahmanical, ritual frame of reference. To these conditions we now turn. Individualism and urbanization
Vedic ritualism developed in an agrarian society: the Aryans were pastoralists and later agriculturalists living in rural communities. By the fifth century b c e , however, an urban culture is developing along the Ganges plain and major kingdoms have arisen associated with the growth of urban centres. O f particular note are the kingdoms of Magadha and Kosala, with the tribal ‘republics’ of the Vrijis and the Sakyas to the north. Some of these towns, such as Pataliputra (Patna), the capital of the Magadha empire, were well-fortified centres which rapidly expanded with an increase in population, a food surplus, and the development of trade. With the development of kingdoms, trade routes were secured and roads con structed. Such improved communication in turn meant that new ideas could be more easily disseminated, particularly by wandering ascetics. It is in the context of this urbanization that renouncer traditions developed. Richard Gombrich has outlined this process, showing how the rise of towns under royal protection allowed for trade, for the movement of peo ple, and for greater personal freedom and mobility. Alo ng with this devel opment came a bureaucracy and institutions of control which eroded the traditional, rural social order.10 Not only do we need to take these material and political concerns into consideration, but ideological concerns as well. Paul Wheatley has con vincingly argued that the earliest towns and cities are not only commercial centres, but primarily ritual complexes, and that the size and complexity of the city’s walls might be seen not only in terms of defence, but also in terms of status and prestige which reflect the king’s glory.1 1 Such a picture clearly fits into the Hindu theology of sacral kingship. The early cities of the Ganges valley are centres of early polities which reflect or symbolize the ritual status of the king. The urban centre as symbol of the king’s power is a phenomenon which occurs in the later history of south Asia, for example at Vijayanagara, and attests to a continuity of the ideology of kingship from ancient times to the medieval period. With urbanization a traditional agrarian lifestyle was eroded and emphasis placed on trade initiatives and enterprise; values which highlight
80
) “t>x
F ro m abo ut 800 to 400 b c e Sansk rit and Pr ak rit texts bear witne ss to the emergence of the new ideology of renunciation, in which knowledge (jnana) is given precedence o ver action (karma), and detachment from the material and social world is cultivated through ascetic practices (tapas), celibacy, p ov erty and methods o f mental training (yoga). T h e p u r p o s e o f such training is the cultivation o f altered o r highe r states o f con sciousn ess w h ich w ill culm in ate in th e bli ssfu l m y stic a l experience o f final lib eratio n from the bon ds o f action and rebirth. W hile the renou ncer o f sramana tra ditions d iffer on points o f doctrine and m ethod, they generally agree that life is characterized by suffering ( d u h k h a ) and adhere to a teaching in w h ic h lib eratio n (moksa, nirvana) from suffering is a form of spiritual
81
An intro duction to H indu ism
knowledge or gnosis (jriana, vidya). ’1 lie spii\ul ol disease among the new urban population may well have conlrilnitcil (o the growth of ascetic movements and added poignancy to the doctrine of life as suffering.15 In these new ascetic ideologies, spiritual salvation cannot be attained simply due to a high-caste birth, but only by liberating insight or understanding the nature of existence. The true Brahman, according to the Buddha, is not someone born to a particular mother, but a person wh ose conduct is pure and moral.16 Personal experience in this way is placed above the received knowledg e o f the vedic revelation. A t an early period, during the forma tion of the Upanisads and the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, we must envisage a comm on heritage of meditation and mental discipline practised by renouncers with va rying affiliations to non -ortho dox (Veda-rejecting) and orthodo x (Veda-accepting) traditions. The institution of world-renunciation or ‘going forth’ offers the renouncer (sramana, bhiksu, pa rivrd jak a ) an escape route from worldly suffering, as well as from worldly responsibilities, and a life dedicated to finding understanding and spiritual knowledge; a knowledge which is expressed and conceptualized in various w ays according to different sy s tems. While there are elements of doctrine and practice shared by the sramana movements, there are nevertheless wide differences between them. The materialists (lokayata, carvaka), fo r example, rejected the idea of reincarnation and spiritual insight, while the Ajivik as rejected free will. While the Buddhists emphasized a middle w ay between extremes of aus terity and indulgence, the Jains emphasized extreme mortification in order to become detached from action.17 Yet, wh ile there are divergencies within Sramanism, all sramana groups shared a com mon value system and framew ork o f discourse, and all rejected the Veda as revelation and so rad ically turned against orthodox, brahmanical teaching or reinterpreted those teachings. These schools are understandably regarded as heterodox (ndstika) by orthodox (dstika) Brahmanism. Their mutual hostility has been pointed out by Romila Thapar who notes that the grammarian Patanjali refers to their attitude towards each other as being like that between a snake and a mo ngo ose.18 Yet while Brahmanism rejects the authority and teachings of the sramana schools, teachings akin to those of the Sramanas, concerning rebirth, retributive action, and liberation, come to dwell in the heart of the brahmanical tradition and find expression in the Upanisads, the fourth layer of the Veda, and in later literature.
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VtiRii a n d r c n u n d a l io n
Renunciation in the Upanisads
The sramana traditions developed a clear identity, defining themselves against wh at they regard as an em pty v edic ritualism which does not lead to liberation. B y contrast the Up anisad s —the Vedanta or ‘ end of the Ve da’ - define themselves cen trally within the ve dic tradition as a reinterpreta tion o f the ritual process and an elucidation o f its inner meanings. Indeed the Upanisads indicate no explicit awareness of non-vedic, ascetic tradi tions, thou gh practices fou nd in the Up anisa ds seem to be direc tly akin to Jain and Buddhis t m editation m eth ods.19 T he em phasis on a m ore p er sonal religious exp erience is indicated not on ly in internalized m editation but also in the idea of a direct transmission of teachings from teacher to disciple.20 Th e w or d upanisad is perhaps derived from the student or d is ciple sitting at the feet o f a teacher to rece ive his teachings (upa = ‘near to ’; nisad - ‘to sit down’) and the term upanisad takes on the general sense of ‘esoteric teaching’.
T H E I N T E R N A L I Z A T I O N OF T H E R I T U A L
The Upanisads continue the work of the Brahmanas and Aranyakas in interpreting the meaning of the srauta ritual. With these texts we see the increasing imp ortance of know ledge o f esoteric correspondences as co m pared to ritual action; the sections on kno w led ge ( jn anakanda ) take prec e dence over sections on ritual (karmakanda). The earlier Upanisads continue the magical speculations of the Brahmanas, which maintained that knowledge of the correspondences between ritual and cosmos is a kind of powe r. The opening verses o f the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad , for example, begin by identifying the horse sacrifice (asvamedha) with the natural world; the horse’s head is the dawn, its eye the sun, its breath the w ind and so on.21 A gain , the Cbandogya Upanisad illustrates this kind o f speculation, though com bined w ith the idea that kno wled ge gives rise to power or energy. Having identified the udgitha, the verses of the Sdma Veda chanted by the udga.tr priest du ring the srauta ritual, with the sacred syllable aum, the text makes the distinction between kno wledge and igno rance: Saying aum one recites: saying aum, one orders: saying aum, one sings aloud in honour of that syllable, with its greatness and its essence. »3
An intro duction lo Hindu ism He who knows this thus, anil Ik 1 who knows not, both perform with it. Knowledge and ignorance, however, are different. What, indeed, one performs with knowledge, faith and meditation, that, indeed, becomes more powerful.22
The text then goes on in the next group of verses to internalize the ritual: the sound aum is to be contemplated as being identified with various parts o f the bo dy: with the breath, speech, eye, ear and mind. Whereas the Brahmanas are concerned with establishing the hidden connections between the srauta ritual and the cosmos, connections which appear to be fairly arbitrary,23 the Upanisads are concerned with contem plating the deeper significance of these correspondences. The emphasis moves from external perform ance to internal meditation; the true sacrifice becomes the fire oblation on the breath (pranagnihotra ), a sacrifice to the self within the self. The internalization of the ritual means that the real purpose of the rite is not its external performance, but knowledge of its deeper meaning, a meaning which points to an underlying foundation or being, supporting the ritual and even the cosmos itself. This being or essence of the ritual, the cosmos, and the self, is termed brahman and is identified with the sacred sound aum or om (called th epranava). BRAHMAN
In the Brahmanas, the term brahman means the pow er of the ritual, apart from which there is nothing more ancient or brighter.24 Brahman is a neuter noun and it should not be confused with the masculine noun Brahma, the creator god, nor with Brahmana, the group of texts, nor Brahman (brahmana ) the highest caste, though the term is related to these other meanings. In time, a process o f abstraction occurred w hereby brah man became a principle referring not only to the power of the ritual, but also to the essence of the universe; the very being at the heart o f all appear ances. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad there is a dialogue between one of the earliest Hindu theologians, Yajnavalkya, and Janaka, the king of Videha, which illustrates the early Upan isads’ questing spirit fo r the essence of the universe. King Janaka tells Yajnavalkya the teachings of other sages he has heard concerning brahman, that it is speech (vac), vital breath (prdna), the eye, the mind, and the heart (hrdaya). Yajnavalkya replies that these answers are half-true and that brahman is in fact the deeper support o f all these phenomena.25 This brahman is not o nly the essence of the ritual and of the world, but is
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also the cssen cc of the self (atman), iho I ml h o! a person beyond apparent differences. Ud dalaka A run i, wh o along with Y ajna valk yac an be regarded as one o f the earliest H indu theologians, in dialogue with his son Svetaketu, illustrates h ow brahman is the essence, the smallest particle o f the cosm os. In an early exam ple o f theological em piricism, he splits a fruit and then the fruit’s seed to sh ow ho w brahman cann ot be seen. Sim ilarly, as salt placed in w ater b y Svetaketu c om pletely dissolves and cannot be seen, though it can be tasted, so brahman is the essence o f all things, w hic h cann ot be seen but can be exp erienc ed.26 Th is essence is the self, and the passage ex plic at ing this conc ludes w ith the famou s lines: ‘that wh ich is minute, the totality is that self. T ha t is truth. Th at is the self. Th at yo u are, Sve taketu .’ This impersonalist monism is central to the earlier Upanisads and becomes a theology of great importance, particularly in the later Vedanta tradition and in modern Neo-Hinduism (see ch. 11). The essence of the self is the absolu te, realized with in the self, throug h the know ledg e o f the ritual’s inner meaning and the withdrawal of the senses from the sensory w o rld . T he em phasis in the U panis ads is on the in te rn alization o f ritu al and the texts are even critical of their external perfo rm anc e.The true me an ing o f the ritual is not to be fou nd in o uter ac tion, but in the realization o f its sym bo lism and its esoteric meaning revealed b y the U pa nisad s.27 Th e Up anisads represent the culmination o f a process wh ich comes to regard the individu al se lf as having great inner depths, and, indeed, as co n taining the universe within. The truth (satya) is the absolute (brahman) w hic h is also the self (dtman). This is the single reality underlying the diversity o f appearances, kno wledg e o f w hich is the purpose o f the ritual’s internalization. This knowledge is not simply information to be under stood , but a direct and imm ediate intuition expe rienced as jo y o r bliss. To quote the Taittiriya Upanisad: ‘He knew that brahman is bliss (ananda). For truly, beings here are born from bliss, when born, they live by bliss and into bliss, wh en dep arting, they enter’ .28 Th is is no ord inar y bliss, but is at the top o f the hierarchy o f blissful experiences, far bey on d a ny o rdi nary hum an joy. KARMA AND REINCARNATION
Such spiritual fulfilment and the blissful experience of realizing one’s essence to be brahman is the cessation of action and its consequences, namely rebirth. The idea that every action has an effect which must be accounted for in this or future lifetimes, and that the experiences of the 85
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present lifetime are the consequences ol past act ions, is of central impor tance for Hindu soteiiology. Salvation or liberation ( moksa, mukti, apavarga) in most Hin du traditions is freedom from the cycle o f reincar nation (samsara ), which is also to be freed from the store of action (karma) built up over innumerable lifetimes. This basic soteriological structure, developed with variations by most later traditions, begins to be articulated in the Upanisads. The origin of the doctrines of karma and samsara are obscure. These concepts w ere certainly circulating among the Sramanas, and Jainism and Bud dhism developed specific and sophisticated ideas about the process of transmigration. It is very possible that karma and reincarnation entered mainstream brahmanical thought from the sramana or renouncer tradi tions. Yet on the other hand, although there is no clear doctrine of transmi gration in the vedic hymns, there is the idea of ‘redeath’: that a person, having died in this world, might die yet again in the next. Ritual proce dures are meant to prevent this eventuality. From the notion of redeath the idea of a return to this wo rld could have developed. We also have in the R g Veda the idea that different parts of a person go to different places upon death: the eyes go to the sun, the breath (atman ) to the wind, and the essen tial ‘person’ to the ancestors.29 Rebirth into this world could have devel oped from this partite view of a person. A third alternative is that the origin of transmigration th eory lies outside o f vedic or sramana traditions in the tribal religions of the Ganges valley, or even in Dravidian traditions of south Ind ia.30 In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad retributive action first appears to be a secret and little-known doctrine. Artabhaga questions Yajn ava lkya about the fate of a person after death. Echoing the Rg Veda, he asks what becomes of the person after different parts have been dissipated - the eyes to the sun, the breath (atman) to space, the mind to the moon and so on? Yajnava lkya leads him away to a private place and, warning him not to divulge this doctrine, tells him about karma: that merito rious action leads to merit (punya ), while evil action leads to further evil (papa).31 Later the text spells out the theory more clearly - that the self (atman) moves from body to body, as a caterpillar or leech moves from one blade of grass to another.32 By the later Upanisads the doctrine is firmly established. The Svetas'vatara Upanisad (400-200 b c e ), for example, cle arly states that the subject, the ‘perform er of action whic h bears fruit’ , wanders in the cycle of transmigration according to his actions (k a r m a ).33 86
)'t>Ka an d renuncia tion
The origins of renun ciation
Both b rahmanical and sramana asceticism share a num ber o f com m on fea tures, which presents a prob lem in und erstanding the origins o f renuncia tion. On the one hand, the ideology of renunciation can be seen as a natural development from vedic ritual traditions; on the other, it can be argued that renun ciation comes from outside the vedic tradition. It may, of cou rse, be the case that both theories are accurate in some respects w hile lackin g in others. T H E O R T H O G E N E T I C TH E O R Y
W hat has bee n called the ‘orthogenetic th e o ry’ o f re nunciation maintains that there is a development from the vedic, householder ideology of the srauta ritual, to the ideology of renunciation. The term ‘orthogenetic’ is used b y Heesterm an to refer to this gradual, internal developm ent within vedic th ought.34 In oth er w ord s, renuncia tion is not an id ea com in g from outside the vedic community, perhaps from the pre-Aryan Dravidians, but is a dev elopm ent with in vedic culture. Ultim ate ly there is little diffe r ence between the ideal Brahman and the ideal renouncer, save one of emphasis. The gap or conflict in brahmanical society is not between the Brahman householder and the renouncer, but rather between the Brahm an and the king (see above pp. 7 2 -3 ). On this account, renunciation, developed in the Upanisads and later cod ified in the Dh arm a Sastras, has its orig in in the vedic srauta rituals as presented in the Brahmanas and Srauta Sutras. Here the ritual patron ( y aja m d n a ) undergoes initiation ( diksa ), becoming ‘one who is initiated’ (diksita), and pe rform s ascetic practices in prepa ration for the ritual itself. The ritual sym bo lically acts out the regeneration o r renewal of the patron and also symbolizes the regeneration of the cosmos. The patron is at the centre o f the ritual wh ich he has instigated, the reb y em phasizing that ‘man depends o nl y on his ow n (ritual) w o rk ’ .35 Th e idea of the ritual as a private proc ess dev elops, on H eeste rm an’s accoun t, into the upanisadic ideal that the true ritual is its internalization or transcendence, and renunciation deve lops as a conse quence o f this internalization. R E N O U N C E R A N D B R A H M AN
Furthermore, there is a strong parallelism between the ideal code of the Brahm an h ouseh older and the renouncer; their difference is one o f degree 87
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rather than kind. Like the rcnounu*r, (lie lii.ilmun should restrain his senses, be truthful, practise non-violence to all beings, and act with detachment and equanimity36 - the difference between the two figures being that the Brahm an is fulfilling his householder's obligation s, whereas the renouncer is in the last stage of life (asrama ), exempt from ritual oblig ations. Whereas the renouncer has turned his back on society, the Brahman has not, or rather has only turned his back on the social world during the srauta ritual, but returns to it after the rite’s conclusion. Complementing Heesterman’s argument, Madeleine Biardeau and Charles Malamoud have also argued for the continuity of vedic tradition. For Biardeau the various traditions within the Hindu universe are united at a deeper level: the diverse, though interrelated, parts are integrated into a complete Hindu culture. This integration is not an institutionalized unity, which is now here found in Hinduism , but rather a structural unity all the fragmented movements within Hinduism, including renunciation, stemming from the vedic revelation.37 This structural unity can be per ceived in the two most important elements within Hindu culture, sacrifice and renunciation, which are two sides of the same coin, the difference being that the householder is concerned with external sacrifice, whereas the renouncer has internalized the sacrifice. The continuity is further stressed in that both the ritual patron and the renouncer undergo purifica tory rites and so are structurally related to each other. N O N - V E D I C O R I G I N S OF R E N U N C I A T I O N
Undoubtedly, as Biardeau and Heesterman have shown, there are ele ments in the renouncer tradition which are also present in the house holder’s ritual tradition, and the full documentation of the renouncer traditions is later than texts describing the srauta rituals. Ye t it might be the case that the renouncer traditions develop outside the vedic ritualist cir cles, and gradually become incorporated and assimilated by the vedic tradition. Patrick Olivelle has argued in a number of publications that renuncia tion represents a new id eolo gy wh ich emerges within the context of vedic ritualism and uses the term inolo gy o f that tradition, but whose ethos and aims are quite distinct. More than mere difference, there is a conflict between the two traditions. The ‘conflict o f tradition’ is not therefore, as Heesterman argues, between the Brahman ritualist and the king, but rather between the Brahman ritualist and the renouncer. The fault line 88
)'(ig,i andrenunciati on r u n s in a d i f f e r e n t d i r e c t i o n , s e p a r a t i n g t h e w o r l d o ! ( li e B r a h m a n h o u s e h o l d e r f r o m t h e w o r l d o f th e r en o u n c e r.
This distinction between householder and renouncer has been a focus of Lou is Du m ont's wo rk, on wh ose ideas Olivelle builds. D um ont argues that Hinduism can be seen in terms of a dialogue between the ‘worldrenouncer’ and the ‘man-in-the-world’, namely the Brahman, male, householder. Unlike the renouncer, the man-in-the-world is defined by his social existence, and functions within the restrictions and boundaries o f his social context, nam ely the caste system . Th e caste system , based on the distinction between purity and impurity, determines the Brahman hou seho lder’s status. Because o f the social restrictions o f caste, the manin-the-world is not an individual, but exists purely in a network of social relationships, unlike the renouncer who has stepped outside this net w o rk .38 A ccordin g to this vie w, the renouncer is outsid e socie ty and so has established an individuality. Th e reno un cer is an individu al devoted to his ow n salvation, from wh om the seminal ideas and influences on the ho use holder religion are derived. The renouncer, as an individual outside soci ety, is the true agent of de velopm ent in Ind ian religion and the creator o f values w hic h en ter the b ra hm anical h ousehold er tra ditio n fr om outside. W hile m any criticism s c an be lev elled aga in st D um ont’s thesis, p arti cu larly that it takes away agency from Indian social actors,39 the idea that renunciation introduces a ‘n ew ’ element into Indian religions and presents a challenge to vedic orth od ox ritual tradition needs to be taken seriously. O livelle has develop ed the distinction betw een the renou ncer ideal and the househ older ideal, arguing that the ‘p rofo un d co nflict’ between the two cannot be explained if H eesterma n is correct in thinking that renunciation is a develo pm ent o f vedic tho ught. Statements in the later Dh arm a litera ture wh ich p raise the Brah m an as the ideal renouncer, rather than reflect ing the close pro xim ity o f renouncer and Brahm an, sho w that renouncer va lues are in corporate d into vedic id eolo gy, and statements laudin g the Brah m an as the ideal renoun cer are often ‘ mere rheto ric’ .40 To su m ma rize this discussion so far: there are essentially tw o po sitions w ith re gard to the origin s o f renuncia tion in In dia : on the one han d it m ay have developed from vedic ritualism (the view of Heesterman and Biardeau), on the other it may have developed from outside the vedic w o rld , th ough not necessarily outsid e the brahm anical w o rld (the v ie w o f O livelle drawing on the w ork of D um ont). The form er position highlights the continuities between the vedic tradition and renouncer traditions,
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between the individualism of the ritualist .uid mioimccr, and between the purificatory practices oi the ritualist and renouncer. The latter position highlights the discontinuities, arguing that the world-negating values of renunciation are quite distinct from the world-atfirming values o f the ritu alist householder. It seems clear that the origins o f renunciation cannot be understood simply in terms of either a vedic or a non-vedic tradition. Rather, there is a complex process of assimilation from outside the vedic sphere as well as a transforma tion o f elements within the vedic tradition. Orthodox renunciation
The early renouncers wandered alone, in small itinerant groups, or, with the advent of Bud dhism , joined a monastic community. While there have been women renouncers, most have been men. Renouncers are homeless except for four months of the year during the rainy season, they obtain food by begging and dress in an ochre robe or go naked. It is significant that early Brahmanism does not contain institutions o f renunciation akin to those of Buddhism or Jainism. There are certainly lineages of teachers going back many generations, but these are not monastic institutions. N o monastic institution develops in Hinduism until the medieval period, though, nevertheless, in the Upanisads we do find the idea of giving up w orld ly life and retiring to the forest to pe rform religious observances. For example, in the Brhaddranyaka Upanisad the sage Yajiiavalkya decides to leave his tw o wives, his status as a householder, and retire to the forest.41 While there is no monasticism in early brahmanical tradition, the fo ur fold system of the as'ramas or stages of life develops, in which renunciation (samnydsa) is the final, liberating institution. Orthoprax renunciation is open only to the twice-born, and is meant only for those who have ful filled their wo rldly, social obligations as householders o r for those celibate students who have never become householders. Orthoprax renunciation is only for those who have fulfilled vedic obligations and who correctly perform rules laid down in the Dharma Sastras. This contrasts with the heteroprax renouncer traditions of Buddhism and Jainism, which accept peop le from a wid er social spectrum and of all ages, though there are some restrictions on peop le entering the early Bud dhist monastic order, includ ing a ban on soldiers and slaves.42 The central emphasis of brahmanical religion is on the househo lder and the performance of the appropriate ritual, though by the time of the
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Dh arma Sastras (c-. 500 m; K-500 c n) m m iu u iio ii (samnyasa) is incorp o rated into the brah manica l sy stem as I lie last stage of life (asrama ). The actual term samnyasa is pu rely brahm anical, not occu rring befo re the sec ond century b c e , and does not occur in the literatures of Buddhism and Jain is m . Late r texts develo p the idea o f re nunciation, parti cularly the Samnyasa Up anisads, com posed du ring the first few centuries o f the com mon era. These texts describe the act of renunciation, the behaviour expected of the renouncer, and types of renouncers. Like his heterodox counterpart, the orthodox renouncer seeks liberation from the cycle of birth and death by fostering detachment from worldly concerns and desires throu gh a sceticism and yo ga p ractices. The rite of renunciation is a ritual to end ritual and the shift, at least sym bo lically, from a ritual to a no n-ritual state; from action to non-action. The rite of renunciation will be the last time the renouncer kindles his sacred fire. Renunciation means the abandoning of the religion of vedic ritual and the abandoning o f fire, a sym bo l o f the Brahm an's status. In giv ing up fire, the renou nce r has given up brahm anical rites, he has given up coo king and must hence forward beg for foo d, and he has given up life in the home for the homeless life of wande ring. The L a w Bo ok s, such as the Vtsnu Smrti, state that a renoun cer m ust not stay fo r m ore than one night in a village,43 thoug h he can remain in the same place du ring the rainy sea son. Symbolically breathing in the flames during his last rite, the reno unc er internalizes the fire o f the ve dic solem n ritual and so aband ons its external use.44 Taking the fire into himself, the renouncer also gives up his old clothes, becom es naked and so resem bles his cond ition at birth. He offers his sacred thread, a symbol of his high-caste status worn over the shoulder, into the fire and takes on a waistban d, loincloth and ochre robe, w h il e bearing a staff, w ater pot and beggin g b o w l. Som e re nouncers, the N aga s, remain naked. There are a number of variations on the ritual of renunciation. Sometimes a renouncer will sym bolically perform his ow n funeral before the fire, which consumes his old, social self. Sometimes the rite will invo lve the burning o f the ritual imp leme nts, but, wh ateve r the variations, the imp ortant po int is that this is the last time the ren ounc er will kind le fire and thenceforth he will not be allowed to attend further rituals.45 There are exceptions to this and some renouncers do maintain fires, practising austerity through the ‘five fire sacrifice’, which involves meditating sur round ed b y five fires in the heat o f the day. Ne verth eless, these exceptions 9
i
An intro duction to Hindu ism
aside, generally the renouncer has abandoned lire aiul will not even be cre mated at death, but rather his body placed in a sacred river or buried upright in a special tomb or samadh. Later renun cíate orders
When they are not wandering, many renouncers, also known as ‘good men’ (sadhus) and ‘ good wom en’ (sadhvis ), have chosen to live a life alone on the edges of society, by the banks of sacred rivers, or in wild places such as mountainous regions or cremation grounds. Wearing ochre robes, or naked, covered with sacred ash, with shaven heads or long, matted hair, these renouncers develop their own spiritual practice (sádhana) for the purpose of liberation while living (jivanmukti ). Others have joined com munities of renouncers and live in ‘hermitages’ (dsramas) or ‘m onasteries’ (;mathas ). Such communities are associated with larger Hindu traditions, particularly the Saiva and Vaisnava traditions, focused on the great Hindu deities Siva and Visnu respectively. Some renuncíate orders are centrally placed within the vedic tradition, while others, such as cremation ground ascetics associated with the worship of Siva and the Goddess, are on the edges of vedic orthod oxy and orthopraxy (see p. 16 1 ). While monasticism developed in Buddhism from its inception, similar institutions only appear later in Hinduism. According to tradition, the great Vedanta theologian Sankara (c. 788-820 ce) founded monastic centres in the four corners o f India, namely at Sringeri in Kerala, D warka in the far west, Badrinath in the Himalayas and Puri on the east coast. Anoth er important centre at Kanchi in Tamilnadu may have been founded by Sankara or his disciple Suresvara. Along with these monastic centres, Sankara founded the renuncíate order of the ‘ten named ones’, the Dasanámis, namely giri (‘mountain’), pun (‘city’), bhdrati (‘learning’), vana (‘forest’), dranya (‘forest’), parvata (‘mountain’), sdgara (‘ocean’), tirtba (‘ford’), dsrama (‘hermitage’) and sarasvati (‘eloquence’). These orders are associated with the different monastic centres: the Bháratis, Puris, and Sarasvatis at Sringeri; the Tirthas and Asramas at D wa rka; the Giri, Ságara and Parvata at Badrinath; and the Aranyas and Vanas at Puri. The hierarch of the monastery at Puri is regarded as the head of the entire Dasanámi order and is referred to as thejagadguru, the teacher of the uni verse. A t initiation, the renouncer into these orders is given a new name, often ending in Ananda, and the name of the order he or she is joining. The orders founded by Sankara were partly instrumental in eradicating
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ibfiii itntl renunciation Ja in is m anil Buddhism Irom so uth India and also in giv in g cohere nce and a sense o f pan -Indian identity to orth od ox , veil it traditions. Indeed, renouncers have provided an important sense of coherence within Hinduism, as they wander around the villages teaching and conveying religious ideas to ord ina ry peop le. A lso o f impo rtance in giving a sense of cohesion to vedic tradition is the renou ncer’s pilgrimage o f circumam bu lating India b y visiting the ‘ fou r corne rs’ o f Badrinath in the north, Pu ri in the east, Ram eshw aram in the south, and D w ark a in the west. The Dasanamis are among the most orthodox and learned of Hindu renouncers. Clad in ochre robes they can be contrasted with the naked renouncers, the N aga s, w ho , since the seventh century c e have been wa rrior-A sce tics, protectors o f the D asanami tradition. These armed ascetics, like the D asanam is, ph iloso ph ically adh ere to a mo nistic metaph ysics (see pp. 2 4 1- 2 ) and their tutelary diety is Siva, the lord o f ascetics and yog ins. These warrior-ascetic orders develop from the ninth to eighteenth cen turies as a response to M uslim inva sions and o rganiz e themselves into six ‘regiments’ or dkhdras (called Anand a, NiranjanT, Jun a, A vaha n, A tal and NirvanT).46 D urin g the seventeenth cen tury Vaisnava w arrio r sects arise, the bairagis, w h o, unlike the Naga s, do n ot go naked. There are also trad i tions o f fighting ascetics wh o have develope d elaborate fighting systems, pa rticularly in K erala. H avin g abandoned the wo rld, the renounce r can practise asceticism or the development of ‘inner heat’ (tapas) in order to attain liberation. A sc eticis m mig ht take the form o f a severe penance, such as v ow in g not to lie do w n or sit for twe lve years but o nly rest leaning on a frame, or to h old aloft an arm until the muscles become atrophied. However, an ascetic is particularly encouraged to practise y og a in order to achieve a state of n on action: to still the bo dy , still the breath, and, fin ally, to still the mind. Yoga
A lo ngsid e concepts o f w o rld re nuncia tion, transm ig ra tion, karm a, and liberation are ideas abo ut the w ay s o r paths to liberation - the m ethods or technologies which can lead out of the world of suffering. There are a num ber o f responses to the question o f ho w liberation can be attained in H ind u traditions. O n the one hand, theistic traditions maintain that libe r ation occu rs through the grace o f a benign d eity to wh om one is devoted, on the other, non-theistic traditions maintain that liberation occurs through the sustained effort of detaching the self from the sen sory w orld 93
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through asceticism and meditation, which lo.uls to a state of gnosis (jndna ). Both responses can be combined when devotion is seen as a form of know ledge and grace as a complement to effort. The term yoga, derived from the Sanskrit root yuj, ‘to control’, ‘to yoke’ or ‘ to unite’, refers to these technologies or disciplines of asceticism and meditation which are thought to lead to spiritual experience and pro found understanding or insight into the nature of existence. Yoga is the means whereby the mind and senses can be restrained, the limited, empiri cal self or ego (ahamkdra ) can be transcended and the self’s true identity eventually experienced. It is this aspect of Hinduism which is not neces sarily confined to any particular Hindu worldview and has, indeed, been exported b eyond the boundaries of Hinduism to the contemporary West. While the development of yoga, and the idea o f spiritual salvation (moksa ) to which it leads, must be understood historically in the context of tradi tions of renunciation, which, as we have seen, form an ideological and social complex developing in the new urban centres of ancient India, yoga becomes detached from the institution of renunciation and becomes adapted to the householder’s life. The concept of yog a as a spiritual discipline not confined to any partic ular sectarian affiliation or social form, contains the following important features: - consciousness can be transformed through focusing attention on a single point; - the transformation of consciousness eradicates limiting, mental constraints or impurities such as greed and hate; - yoga is a discipline, or range of disciplines, constructed to facilitate the transformation of consciousness.
Yoga in Hindu traditions
The history of yoga is long and ancient. The earliest vedic texts, the Brahmanas, bear witness to the existence of ascetic practices (tapas) and the vedic Samhitas contain some references, as we have seen, to ascetics, nam ely the Munis or Kes'ins and the Vratyas. In the sramana traditions and in the Upanisads technologies for controlling the self and experiencing higher states of consciousness in meditation are developed, and the litera ture of yoga traditions on this subject is extensive. In the Upanisads one of the earliest references to meditation is in the Brhaddranyaka Upanisad,
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the earliest Upanisad, which stales ili.it, li.ivinj^ In-come calm and concen trated, one pcrceives the sell (atman) within outsell.47 The actual term yoga first occurs in the Katba Upanisad wlitre it is defined as the steady control of the senses, which, along with the cessation of mental activity, leads to the supre m e state.48 Y o ga’s ap pearance in the Katha Upanisad is in the context of the sto ry of Na ciketas and Death. N aciketas, wh o is banished to the realm o f death w hen he irritates his father, is kept waiti ng w hile the god o f death, Yam a, is out. U p on his return Yam a grants Nacike tas three boons in recomp ense for so rudely keeping him waiting. Naciketas’ first request is to be returned to his father, for the second he asks abo ut the sacrificial fire which leads to heaven, and for the third he asks how to conquer re-death (punarmrtyu). Yam a tries to dissuade him from asking this third que stion with the promise of long life and riches, but in the face of death, Naciketas replies, ‘all life is short’ . N o matter ho w long life lasts, death takes it in the end. Yama eventually responds to the question, saying that the wise man realizes G o d through the practice of self-contemp lation. The text goes on to liken a pe rson to a chariot: the self (dtman) is the con troller of the cha r iot, the bo dy the chariot itself, and the senses are the horses. As a ch ario teer con trols the horses o f the chariot, so the self should c ontrol the senses throu gh k eepin g them restrained.49 The Svetdsvatara Upanisad sim ilarly says that a yo gin sh ould h old the body erect, repress the breathing and restrain the mind as he would ‘a chariot yo ke d w ith vicious horses’ . Th is yo kin g o f the mind leads to inner vis io ns and , m ore im portantly, ‘ a b o d y made in the fire o f y o g a ’ whic h ensures that the w ise m an is healthy, freed fro m sorro w, his pu rpo se co m pleted .50 Th e last of the classical Up anisad s to deal with y og a to any extent is the M aitrd yaniya or M aitri Upanisad, belonging to the branch of the black Y ajur Veda. This text describes a retired king, B rhadratha, w ho prac tises austerity (tapas) by staring at the sun with his arms raised high for 1,000 day s. H e is then visited by an enlightened ascetic, w ho tells the old king about the difference between the phenomenal self subject to karma, and the pure self unaffected by action. The seer, Sakayanya, then teaches the king a six-faceted yoga involving breath-control (prandyama), with drawal of the senses (pratyahara ), meditation ( dhyana ), concentration ( dharana ), inquiry (tarka ) and absorption (samadhi ), a classification w h ich predates the sim ilar system o f Pataiija li’s classical yo ga (see below).51 95
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There are several centuries between (lie composition ol the Katha and the Svetasvatara Upanisads and we must assume that the yoga tradition developed during this time within the orbit ol I lindu thought. Parts of the famous epic poem the Mahabharata (c 400 B CK-300 c e ) contain pas sages describing the practice of yoga as does the Bhagavad Gita, includ ing a complete chapter (ch. 6 ) devoted to traditional yoga practice. The Gita also introduces the famous three kinds of yoga, ‘knowledge’ ( jn ana ), ‘action’ (karma), and ‘love’ (bhakti). Upanisads continue to be com posed into the comm on era and tend to become sectarian in orienta tion. One group of about twenty texts, the Yoga Upanisads, probably dating from around 100 b c e to 300 c e , contain interesting details about the practice of yoga, such as postures, breath control, inner visions, the yoga of inner sound (nada, s'abda), and descriptions of esoteric or subtle anatomy. The most famous of the Yoga Upanisads, the Yogatattva, mentions four kinds of yoga: mantra-yoga, which involves the repetition of mantras; laya-yoga, the symbolic dissolution of the cosmos within the body and the raising of a corporeal energy known as Kundalinl; hatha yog a, the yoga of ‘force’ focusing on various postures, breath control, visions of light, and inner sound; and raja-yoga (‘royal’, or simply ‘the best’, yoga), which is the classical system of Patanjali. The text also men tions the magical powers (siddbi) gained by the yogin. Hatha-yoga itself develops an extensive literature, particularly Svatmarama’s Hathayoga pra dip ik a (fifteenth century ce), which has links with Indian alchemy, Tantrism and the Siddha tradition. RAJA-YOGA
The text which is most significant in the yoga tradition is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. This text, composed sometime between 100 b c e and 500 c e , con tains pithy aphorisms on classical yoga, called the ‘eight-limbed’ (astdnga) or ‘ the best’ (raja) yoga. The Yoga Sutra represents a codification of yoga ideas and practices which had been developing for many centuries. Patanjali gives a succinct definition of yo ga in the second sutra: ‘y oga is the cessation of mental fluctuatio ns’ .52 That is, yo ga is a state o f concentration in which the wandering mind, fed by sense impressions and memories, is controlled and made to be one-pointed (ekdgratd). This mental control occurs through developing eight aspects or limbs o f the yogic path. These are:
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1 ctliics or restraint (yama ), com prising non violence (ahimsa ), telling the truth, not stealing, celibacy and not being greedy; 2 discipline (niyama ), comprising cleanliness, serenity, asceticism, study, devotion to the Lord; 3 posture (dsana); 4 breath-control (pranaydma ); 5 sense-withdrawal (pratyahdra ); 6 concentration (dharana ); 7 meditation (dhydna ); 8 absorbed concentration (samadhi), com prising: (i) concentration with the support of objects of consciousness (samprajndta samadhi) sustained on four levels - initial thought (vitarka ), sustained thought (vicara ), joy (dnanda ), and the sense of T (asmita ); (ii) concentration without the suppo rt o f objects o f consciousness (asamprajnata samadhi). H avin g developed ethical beh aviour and discipline the yog in stills the bo dy and the breath and withd raws attention from the external w orld , as a tortoise pu lls its limbs and h ead into its shell, in ord er to co ntrol the mind through v arious degrees o f concentration o r m editation. Th ere is a clear connection here between consciousness, breath and body; the body is stilled through posture, the breath through pra naydma and the mind through concentration. In the state of concentrated absorption or samadhi the yo gin is no longer conscious of the bod y or ph ysical environ ment, but his consciou sness is abs orb ed in a high er state, free from greed, anger and delusion. The states of samadhi are classified by Patanjali into various degre es o f subtle ty and re finem ent until the transc en dent state o f ‘isolation ’ is finally achieved. These degrees o f absorption represent levels o f consciousness pu rified o f limiting constraints. W hile the experience o f samadhi leading up to liberation (kaivalya ) is ineffable, kaivalya is nevertheless conceptualized within a framework of dualist metaphysics, namely the metaphysics of the Samkhya school of ph ilosop hy . In this schoo l there is a com plete distinction between the self or the passive, conscious observer {purusa ) and matter (prakrti ). In his expo sition, P atanjali assumes this system as the philosophical b ackd rop to his thinking. Kaivalya, in Patanjali’s system, is liberation from the wheel o f transmigration. H ow ever, un like the m onistic U panisads, liberation is here not the realization o f the se lf’s ide ntity w ith the absolute, but rather 97
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the realization o f the sel f’s solitude and complete transcendence. This is a condition of pure awareness in which the sell has become completely detached from its entanglement with matter. It is a state beyond worldly or senso ry experience, in which consciousness is absorbed in itself with out an object, or is reflexiv e, having itself as its ow n object. HATHA-YOGA
While Patanjali’s yoga is prim arily concerned with developing mental concentration in orde r to experience samadhi, hatha-yoga, or the ‘yoga o f force’, develops a system of elaborate and difficult postures (dsana ) accompanied b y breathing techniques (prdndydma ). Although aspects of these practices are much older, hatha-yoga as a complete system was developed fro m about the ninth century c E by the Nath or Kanphata sect, which traces its origins to a saint, Matsyendranath, revered also in Buddhism , and his disciple G orakhn ath (between the ninth and thirteenth centuries ce). The purpose of hatha-yoga is the realization of liberation during life, in which the self awakens to its innate identity with the absolute (sahaja ), a realization made possible throug h cultivating a bo dy made perfect o r divine in the cfire’ of yoga. One of the main texts of the tradition is the Hathayoga-pradipika by Svatmarama (fifteenth century) which describes the various co mplex p os tures (dsana), breath control, and ‘lo cks’ (bandha), wh ich are the muscular constrictions o f breath and energy which flow through the bod y.53 Other texts of note are the Gheranda Samhita, the Siva Samhitd and, probably the oldest Nath text, the Siddhasiddhanta Paddhati. W hile these texts are concerned with the more subtle levels of meditation, the emphasis is und oub tedly upon disciplines of the body : cleansing the stomach by swal lowing a cloth, drawing water into the rectum, cleaning the nose with threads and taking water through the nose and expelling it through the mouth. Such practices are hig hly regarded as purifications which make the bo dy fit for the more difficult practices o f postures and breath control. ESOTERIC ANATOMY
These texts also describe the existence of a subtle body with centres or ‘wheels’ (cakra) located along its central axis, connected by channels (nadi) along which flows the energy (prdna), o r the life-force, which ani mates the body. O f these channels, three are of particula r importance: the central channel (susumnd nadi ) which connects the base of the trunk to the
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crow n o f the head, form ing a vertical axis through the body, and two chan nels to its right and left, flowing from the nostrils and joining the central channel at its base. Through hatha-yoga the ene rgy lyin g dorm ant at the base of the central channel in the ‘root centre’ ( muladhara ) is awakened. This energy is envisaged as the goddess KundalinI, the ‘serpent power’, whic h flo w s up the central ch annel to the ‘th ousa nd petalled lo tu s’ (sahasrarapadma) at the crow n o f the head, whe re the bliss of liberation is experienced.54 W hile in earlier texts there are various system s o f cakras and nadis , one system of six or seven cakras along the bo d y’s axis becomes the dominant, pan -Hin du model, adopted b y m ost yog a schools. This system originates in the cult of the tantric goddess K u b jika in abou t the eleventh cen tury C E , but rapidly becomes a popular and standardized model of esoteric anatomy. These centres are said to be located in the regions of the per ineum , the genitals, the solar plexu s, the heart, the throat, betw een the eyes and at the cro w n o f the head (see fig. 3). Th e po w er o f KundalinI, aw ak ened by hatha-yoga rises up the central channel, piercing these centres until the bliss of un ion w ith the god S iva residing at the crow n o f the head 99
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is achieved. Each ccntre or lotus is desaibnl .is being associated with a particular sound and having a specific number of petals, upon which are inscribed the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. It is not clear that such sys tems of esoteric an atom y were meant to be understood in a literal or on to logical sense; they were rather systems of visualization in meditation for the purpo se o f achieving samadhi. One important ‘centre’ for the Nath yogis, not incorporated into the six-centre scheme, is the ‘palate centre’ (talu-cakra ) or uvula, kn ow n as the ‘ro ya l tooth ’, from w hich is said to drip the nectar of imm ortality (amrta ). This part of the body as an important locus for spiritual realization is attested from as early as the Taittiriya Upanisad wh ich describes this point as the ‘ birthplace o f Indra’ where the head is ‘split’ a hair’s wid th.55 On e o f the Nath practices, known as the khecari mudra, is to stop the nectar of immortality dripping away through this ‘tooth’ by turning the tongue back inside the palate and entering the cavity leading into the skull. The Hathayogapradipika details how this is to be achieved by cutting the membrane which connects the tongue with the lower part of the mouth and gradually stretching the tongue.56 The dripping of the nectar of imm ortality from the crow n o f the head through the talu-cakra is not only regarded as a metapho r fo r the attention flow ing out into the worl d, but at one level is taken literally, and the khecari mudra is meant to stop this flow. A yogin who has perform ed this technique is said to be not afflicted by disease, not tainted by karma and unaffected b y time. H e does no t need to sleep and can control desire, even if ‘ embraced b y a passionate wo m an’ .57 THE YOGA OF INNER SOUND
Th e practice o f Ku ndalini y oga, the raising of ene rgy in the body, and the doctrine of an esoteric anatomy, is accompanied in hatha-yoga by a fur ther practice, the yoga of inner or ‘unstruck’ sound ( anahata nada or sabda). The absolute manifests in the form of sound in hatha and other yoga doctrines. T his subtle sound resounds in the central channel and can be heard b y the yogin b y bloc king the ears, nose and eyes and controlling the breath. Through concentrating on this inner sound, which, according to the Hathayogapradipika initially resembles a tinkling sound, then a rumbling sound like a kettledrum, a flute, and then a lute, the yogin becomes absorbed in the supreme reality w hich is, ultimately, his true self. Through the yoga of inner sound the mind is controlled and becomes absorbed, like a serpent which, on hearing the sound of a flute, ‘becomes
ioo
)(>#
W hile the ultimate aim o f y oga practice is libera tion in life, along the w ay yoga traditions claim that magical powers are attained, almost incident ally. While generally the cultivation of these powers for worldly ends is frow ned u pon , they nevertheless hold an imp ortant position as indicators of progress along the path. The third section of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra is devoted to m agical powe rs or won ders. Patanjali says that upon attaining conce ntration, or the mental penetration o f the objects o f consciousness, various powers begin to arise. These powers include knowledge o f past and future, knowledge of past lives, telepathy, the ability to disappear, foreknowledge of one’s own death, great strength, supernormal senses, levitation, and omn iscience, including kn ow ledg e o f the cosmic reg ions.60 W hile such powers m ay be adv an tageo us fr om the p erspective o f w akin g consciousness, they are a hindrance to higher consciousness, for they create attachment. The com m entary on the Yoga Sutra by Vy asa lists eight magical pow ers
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or accomplishments (siddhi): the ability to become as small as an atom, levitation, the ability to expand, all-pervasiveness, the power of irresistible will, control over the natural elements, the power to create and the fulfil ment of desires.61 This is a standard list of magical powers found in other texts, though there are variants. These powers are included in the Buddh ist system as the first of the five higher knowledges (abhijnd ) attained by meditation, which shows that the association of meditation or yo ga with supernormal powers has been within Indian meditation traditions from an early date. We are dealing here with oral traditions of teachings in which the list of powers, as well as of other states, has been standardized and the original meaning of some o f this terminolo gy has become obscure. Summary
This chapter has surveyed a complex set of concepts, practices and social forms which are at the heart of Hindu ism and which have developed o ver thousands of years. Renunciation, while being incorporated within main stream vedic tradition, may have originated outside that tradition in the sramana movements of which Buddhism and Jainism are a part. Yet wh at ever its origin, whether from w ithin the vedic tradition or fro m outside it, renunciation is a vital institution within H induism and central to H indu soteriology. A lon g with renunciation go ideas of karma - that a person reaps the consequences o f their action - reincarnation, and liberation or salvation from the cycle of rebirth. Yoga is the method of attaining libera tion, for both renouncers and laity, and we have in this chapter surveyed the origins of yoga and some of the central developments in its vast history. Yoga has been adapted to different doctrinal systems and has been used in the service of different traditions within Hinduism , most notab ly of the traditions o f Siva and Visnu. To the latter tradition we no w turn.
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5 N ar ra ti v e traditions and early Vais navis m
The first millennium b c e saw the developmen t o f the brahmanical tradi tions of ritual, adherence to varnâsrama-dharma and the ideology of renunciation. These developments occurred within the context of the grow th o f kingd om s, such as Màgadh a in the fourth century b c e , and an ideo logy o f sacral kingship. Fro m about 500 b c e throu gh the first millen nium c E, there was a grow th o f sectarian wo rship o f particular deities, and vedic sacrifice, though never dy ing out, gave w a y to devotio nal w o rsh ip ipüjâ). P erforming/?«;';* is a w ay of expressing lov e o r devo tion (b h a k t i ) to a deity in some form, and became the central religious practice of Hinduism. Bhakti to a personal God ( B h a g a v d n ) or Goddess (B h a g a v a t i ), became a central, all-pervasive movement. This growth of H ind u theism and dev otiona lism is reflected in the Sanskrit narrative tra ditions o f the Ep ics ( itibdsa ), in m ytho logica l and ritual treatises kn ow n as the Purânas, and in devotional poetry in vernacular languages, particu larly Tamil. Th is chapter will trace some of these developments, focusing on the rise o f the gods V isnu and K rsn a and the traditions associated with them, w hich came to be characterized as ‘Vaisnava’ . Hindu narrative traditions
There is no historiography in south Asia, with a few exceptions, of the kind wh ich developed in the G reek , Arab ic and Eu rop ean traditions. This lack of historiography has made the dating of Sanskrit texts difficult and has reinforced a tendency to construct India as ahistorical, mythical and irration al, in contra st to the West - seen as historica l, scientific and
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rational. 'I'hc construction of liulia .is I lie West's irrational ‘ other’ lias tended to hide the strongly ‘rationalist’ element in I lindu culture (the sci ence of ritual, grammar, architecture, mathematics, logic and philosophy) and to underplay the mythical dimension in western thought. Nevertheless, Hinduism did produce elaborate mythical narratives in which there is no clear distinction between ‘histo ry ’, ‘hagiography’ and ‘m yth olo gy ’ . Indeed, the Sanskrit term itihdsa embraces the western cate gories of ‘history’ and ‘myth’. We have texts written in Sanskrit, and ver nacular languages, which are clearly presenting what were regarded as important ideas, stories and presentations of normative and non-norma tive behaviour, and the histo ricity of particular events is either assumed, or is simply not an issue. Rather, what seems to be important with these mythological narratives is the story being told, the sense of truth that it conveys, and the sense of communal or traditional values and identity being communicated. The tw o most important groups of H indu narrative traditions embod ied in oral and written texts are the two Epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the Puránas. The Itihdsa Purdna is even known as the ‘fifth Veda’, although it is classified as smrti, texts of human authorship, and not sruti, revelation, and all castes have access to it, not only the twiceborn. In these texts we see reflected the concerns of political life at the court, the concerns of Brahmans, the concerns of ordinary people, and descriptions of ritual, pilgrimage and mythology. These texts also docu ment the rise of the great theistic traditions of Hinduism focused on the gods, particularly Visnu, Siva and Devi, the Goddess. Hindu traditions have been communicated through the generations in these narrative gen res, which still play a vital role in contemporary H indu life, though some times no w mediated through the television and cinema screen. The Itihdsa Purdna has had, and continues to have, immense impact upon Hinduism at all levels. Although the Epics contain a wealth o f material which cannot be neatly categorized as belonging to any particular tradition, there is nevertheless a case for saying that the Epics are primarily Vaisnava in orientation, as, indeed, are many of the Puránas. Even the Mahabharata which is some times compared to an encyclopaedia of Hindu deities, stories, yoga, rituals and theologies, is orientated towards the traditions o f Visnu. Some review o f this vast literature is necessary in order to understand the unfoldin g o f Hindu theistic traditions in general and the religions of Visnu in particular.
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N arrati ve Ir.u lilioin a n d e ar ly Vaisnavisni
T h e M a h a b h a r a ta 'I'he M ah abharata is an epic of universal proportions with appeal across centuries and across cultures, as the pop ularity o f Peter Bro ok 's nine -hour English stage production has attested. It is the longest epic poem in the w orld , com prisin g o ver 10 0,0 00 verses. A cco rd in g to traditio n, the a uth or of the text was the sage Vyasa whose name means ‘an arranger’, though scholarship has shown that it was in fact compiled over several centuries from the first half of the first millennium b c e , reaching its established form b y the first century c e , though still being formulated b y the fourth century. There were probably two major stages in its composition. The first, a ve rsion o f about 7,000 verses or s'lokas, attributed to Vy asa, the sec ond, an elaboration by Vaisampayana. By the medieval period the Epic existed in two m ajor recensions, one n orthern and one southern, and was retold in a Tamil version. The critical edition of the Sanskrit version was produced by scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute at Poona, in India, wh o compared m any different m anuscripts.1 Th eir ver sion is the one form ulated b y the Brahm an fam ily o f Bhargava, descended from the ancient sage Bhrgu, who rewrote the epic incorporating into it much material on dharma. Indeed, the central hero of the Epic, Yudhis th ira, is the so n o f D harm a personifi ed as a deity. The text itself is divided into eighteen parts o f va ryin g length, the longest com prising ov er 14,000 verses, the shortest having on ly 120 verses. The text is further su b divided into 98 sub-portions. There is also a supplement to the Epic, the Harivamsa, a text abou t the life of K rsna . A p art from the northern and southern re censions, there are re gio nal variations o f the te xt and it is im porta nt to em phasize th at the M ahabhara ta exists not o n ly as a ‘critical editio n’ or as the object o f scho l arly study, but also as a vital and fluid part of contemporary Hinduism, still in the process o f being recast in different m odes. The Sanskrit narra tive traditions o f the M ahabhara ta are also acted ou t and recited o ra lly in vern acula r languages th roughout the villages o f In dia at popula r fe stiv als. The M ahabhara ta lives in these presentations and recitations, not to men tion in a television series which presented the story to rapt audiences throu gho ut India in the 1980s. Th e origins o f the M ah abhara ta lay in non-brahmanical social groups o f the ‘A rya n hom eland’ (arydvarta), nam ely the Ksa triya aristocracy, and it gives us some u nderstanding o f the life o f those groups, though the story
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was qu ickly appropriated by orthodox, S.mski iI u Hi ahnuns and overlaid by the Bhárgava family with a brahmanical ideology which emphasized the performance o f social duty (dharma ). While the text is enjoyed simply as a story, it is also understood to have different levels o f meaning and to be a metaphor for the ethical battle on the human plane, and for the battle between the low er and higher self on a world-transcending plane. The story is as follows. A king of the lunar dynasty, Vicitravirya, had two sons, Pandu and Dhrtarastra. Dhrtarastra, the elder prince, should have succeeded his father on the throne, but as he was born blind, a partic ularly inauspicious karma, he could not. Pandu reigns and has five sons, the Pándavas or ‘sons of Pandu’. When Pándu dies, his blind brother Dhrtarastra takes over the throne and the Pándavas (namely Yudhisthira, Bhima, A rjuna, N akula and Sahadeva) gro w up with their 100 cousins, the sons of Dhrtarastra: the Kauravas. The eldest of the Kauravas, Du ryod han a, claims to be the rightful succe ssor to the throne and has the Pándavas, and their common wife Draupadi, exiled. Duryodhana becomes king and his father abdicates. The P ándavas, h owever, challenge his right to the throne, so, to avoid conflict, the blind old ex-king divides the kingdom in two, with Duryodhana ruling in the north from Hastinapur, and Yudhisthira, the eldest Pándava, ruling in the south from Indraprasta (modern Delhi). Duryodhana pays a visit to Indraprasta, but while he is there he falls into a lake whic h provo kes laugh ter from Yudhisthira. Duryodhana cannot abide this insult and challenges Yudhisthira to a game of dice at Hastina pur fo r the entire kin g dom. Yudhisthira who has a passion for gambling, loses everything to Duryodhana, including his wife Draupadi. She is publicly humiliated by the Kauravas who try to tear off her clothing, but it miraculously never unfolds due to the po we r of Krsn a’s grace. Th ey p lay one further game of dice, the loser having to go into exile in the forest for twelve years and spend a further year incognito. Once again Yudhisthira loses and so begins the Pándavas’ thirteen-year exile with Draupadi. In the forest many adventures befall them, all recorded in the Mah abharata, and there are stories within stories told b y different charac ters. Th ey spend the thirteenth year in disguise in the court o f a king and emerge from exile in the fourteenth year to reclaim their kingdom. By now, however, Duryodhana is no longer willing to give up his kingdom and so the stage is set for war. The w ar lasts eighteen days. On the field of Kuruksetra the two armies are lined up and the eve of the battle sets the
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scenc lor the lihagavad Gita, the famous dialogue between Krsna and A rjuna. T h e battle is fierc e and all the K auravas are killed. A lt h ou gh the Pandavas w in, they are filled with sor ro w at the loss of so man y allies and relatives, even though they were their enemies. Yudhisthira abdicates, leaving the kingdom under the sovereig nty o f a yo un ger relation, and w ith his brothers and DraupadI leaves for the realm of Indra’s heaven in the Himalayas. DraupadI and four of the brothers die along the way. Only Yudhis th ira, accom panie d b y a devote d do g w h ich had attach ed itself to him, continues the journey. Indra in his chariot meets Yudhisthira and invites him into heaven, but Yu dh isthira w ill not go with out the dog w h o has been devoted (bhakta ). The dog, however, turns out to be the god Dharma himself, who then leads Yudhisthira into heaven where he is astonished to see Duryodhana, the cause of so much suffering, enjoying heaven because he had fulfilled his dharma as a warrior. Yudhisthira, the exemplum of dharmic conduct, has yet to be reborn on earth because of his affection: a last attachment to be purged before liberation can be attained. W ithin th is basic narrative structu re m any other stories are em bedded w hic h m ay o rigin ally have been in dependent tales, su ch as the lo ve sto ry of Nala and DamyantI2 and the story of the nymph Sakuntalá.3 The famous Bhag avad Gita, ‘ the Song o f the L o rd ’, dated to not before the sec ond century b c e , m ay well have been inserted into the M ahdbharata , though some scholars think that it was c om pose d as part o f the text.4 Th is dialogue between Arjuna and Krsna, narrated by the sage Sanjaya to the blind king Dhrtarástra, became one of the most important texts in Hinduism. As the dialogue unfolds, Krsna responds to Arjuna’s doubts about the wa r and grad ually reveals him self as a supreme Lo rd , the creator, maintainer and de stroye r o f the universe. The Rámáyaná The second, slightly shorter, Epic is the Rdmayana, the story of King Ram a, attributed to V alm lki. This text wa s certainly in circulation b y the first cen tury c E , though on stylistic grounds its origin m ay be later than the Mahd bha rata. As with the M ahdbhara ta there are two major recen sions, the northe rn and the south ern, the south ern bein g the earlier.5 Th ere are later Sansk rit versions o f the text and versions w ere co m posed in ve r nacular languages, of particular note being Kampan’s Tamil rendering (ninth—tw elfth ce nturies) and the fam ou s H ind i Rdmacaritmanas (‘The
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Lake of Rama’a Deeds’) by Tulsidas (c. i f 4 \ 1623). Apart from these texts, there are innumerable versions ol the lexi mid and retold in different regions.6 The Ramayana exists in many versions and in many tellings, from a Hindi television production in 1987 which attracted 80 million viewers to village performances in Tamilnadu or stage productions in the USA.7 The annual Ram Lila festivals and performances, particularly at Ram nagar near Varanasi, attract thousands o f pilgrims and express the liv ing, enacted tradition o f the Ramayana .8 The sto ry is essentially simple. Rama , a prince of Ay od hya , son of King Dasaratha, marries Princess Sita, the daughter of King Janaka of Videha (who first appeared in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad). Because of his father’s second wife, Kaikeyi, who makes Dasaratha promise to banish him, Rama is forced to go into exile into the Dandaka forest, out of filial duty. He is accompanied by his wife and brother Laksmana. While the brothers are away hunting, Sita is abducted by Ravana, the ten-headed dem on-king o f Sri Lanka, but with the help of a mo nkey army sent by the monkey king Sugriva, Rama wins her back. Under the leadership of the mo nkey general Hanuma n, who is no ordinary m onkey but the son of the wind-god V ayu, a causeway is built fro m India to Sri Lank a, which allows Rama and his army to cross over and defeat the demon-king. Ravana and his army are killed and Ram a returns with Sita to Ay od hya where he reigns as king. The people of the city, however, suspect that Sita did not remain chaste while held by Ravana, though Rama himself has no doubts about her virtue (since she had previously proved this to him by emerging unscathed from a fire ordeal). To fulfil his duty to his subjects, Rama ban ishes Sita to the hermitage of Va lmiki, tradition ally the author o f the text, where she gives birth to twins. M any years later Ram a discovers the twins and wishes to take back Sita along with their children, but not wishin g to return to Ayodhya, Sita calls on the Earth, her mother, who opens and swallows her. The text ends with Rama and all the inhabitants of Ayod hy a going to the Sarayu river and there entering the bo dy of Visnu. The Ramayana is the story of a heroic king who becomes deified. Indeed, by the last books of the text Rama is referred to as an incarnation (avatara) of Visnu. Above all, however, as with the Mahdbhdrata, it is a tale about dharma. Dasaratha is forced to banish his son because he must keep his word, and his word is his power; Rama must go to the forest to obey his father, as dharma dictates; and Rama must banish Sita in the end to fulfil his duty to his subjects, even though her virtue is not in question.
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N arrati ve traditio ns and early Vaisnavism
The Ramayana is llic story ol the triump h oi good ov er evil, of ord er over chaos, of dharma over adbarma. Kama and Sita are ideal examples of dharmic gender roles for I lindu couples. I le is honest, brave, the fulfiller o f all his ethical respo nsibilities, and devo ted to his wife, w hile she is m o d est, demure, virtuous, dedicated to her Lord and husband, yet strong in herself. This strength, and some degree of independence, asserts itself at the end of the narrative when Sita, whose name means ‘furrow’ and who perhaps originated as an independen t godde ss associated w ith agriculture, returns to her mother the Earth, whence she sprang when her father, Janaka, w as p lo ughin g. Sita is the id ea l H indu w om an, fulf illing h er ‘ w o m anly duty’ (strisvadharma ) to the letter, yet who retains self-possession and an element of autonomy and identity independent of her husband Rama. Th e story is m ore straightforward than the M ahdbhdrata and has w ide spread, popular appeal. The language is beautiful in its detailed descrip tions, even down to describing the spiral movements of the hairs on Hanuman's tail, and is a precursor of later Sanskrit poetic literature or k a v y a . Th e w orship of Ra m a became widespread in the medieval period in northern India and the name ‘Ram’ became a synonym for ‘God’.9 The w orsh ip o f R am a has becom e h ig h ly sig nific ant to d ay as the fo cus o f politicized Hindu movements in recent years (see pp. 264-5). Yet the R a m a y a n a is imp ortant beyon d these considerations and plays a vibrant part in contempo rary Hinduism . Lik e the M ahdbh drata it is an oral tra di tion recited and acted out thro ugh ou t the villages and tow ns o f India. The Puranas
In contrast to the Ep ics, the Pu ranas, ‘ stories o f the ancient pas t’, are a vast bo dy o f comp lex narratives which contain genealogies o f deities and kings up to the G up tas, cosmo logies, law codes, and descriptions o f ritual and pilgrimages to h oly places. With the Puranas w e are dealing with oral tra ditions which were written down and which have absorbed influences from the Epics, Upanisads, Dharma literature and ritual texts. The Puranas wo uld have been recited at gatherings b y specialists wh o w ere tra ditionally the sons of Ksatriya fathers and Brahman mothers, and today the texts are recited b y special individuals kn ow n b y the Hin di term bhat. There are eighteen major Puranas and eighteen related subordinate texts known as Upapuranas, though there are variations as to which texts are included within the ideal number of eighteen. The Puranas have
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traditionally been classified according to I In ft* qualities (guna) which are inherent in existence, namely the quality ol light or purity (sattva), pas sion (rajas) and darkness o r inertia (tamas). Six Puranas belong to each cat egory. The sattva category contains the Vaisnava Puranas (the Visnu Bhdgavata, Garuda, Naradiya, Padma and Varaha Puranas ), the rajas category contains Puranas wh ose central deity is the creator Brahma (the Brahma, Brahmanda, Brahmavaivarta, Markandeya, Bhavisya and Vamana Puranas), while the tamas category contains the Saiva Puranas, those texts whose central deity is Siva (the Siva, Linga, Matsya, Kurma, Skanda and Agn i Puranas). This neat classification, although interesting in terms o f the tradition’s self-understanding, does not really th row light on the nature or contents of these texts, which do not fall easily into this frame of reference for the texts themselves are not exclusively focused upon a single deity. Nevertheless there are tendencies towards sectarian affiliation, and some texts, such as the Visnu and Siva Puranas, are clearly centred on a particular god. Others such as the Agn i Purana which con tains material about both Visnu and Siva, are not so clearly sectarian. There are also Puranas affiliated with a particular place or temple, the sthdla Puranas. We do kn ow that the bulk of the material contained in the Puranas was established during the reign of the Guptas (c. 320-c. 500 c e ), though amendments were made to the texts up to later medieval times. Attempts have been made by scholars to establish the original portions and chronologies of individual texts,10 but this is notoriously difficult. Because these texts developed over a long period of time and had fluid boundaries, it is impossible to precisely date them or to establish an accu rate chronology. It is possible to find passages which have parallels across different Puranas but it is very difficult to establish the sequence of their com position or inclusion. To understand the Puranas it makes more sense to treat them as complete texts in themselves and examine them and their intertextuality synchronically, rather than to try to establish their diachronic or historical sequence. The Puranas contain essential material for understanding the religions of Visnu, Siva, the Goddess (Devi) and other deities of the Hindu pan theon such as Agni (the god of fire), Skanda (the god of war and son of Siva), Ganesa (Siva’s elephant-headed son) and Brahma (the four-headed creator of the universe). Th ey indicate the rise in pop ularity o f Visnu and Siva and document the brahmanical expression of their cults, showing
no
N arrati ve tr,in> a n d ear ly Vaisnavism
how po pu lar levels of religion we re assimilated by I lie Urahmans wh o com po sed them. A ltho ug h these texts are related to each other, and ma ter ial in one is found in another, they nevertheless each present a view of ordering of the wo rld from a particular perspective. T h ey must not be seen as random co llections o f old tales, but as high ly selective and crafted ex po sitions and presentations of worldviews and soteriologies, compiled by particular groups o f Brahm ans to propa gate a particular vision, wh ether it be focused o n Visnu, Siva or D evi, or, indeed, any n um ber of deities. The Visnu Pu r ana for example (fourth century c E ), wh ile generally fo l lowing the typical puranic style, is centred on Visnu and presents a Vaisnav a w orld vie w . Vis nu awakens, becom es the creato r god Brahm a, creates the unive rse, sustains it and d estro ys it as Ru dr a (a name fo r Siva). He then rests on the serpent Sesa upon the cosmic ocean. The text thus establishes Visnu as the supreme deity; it is really Visnu, whom the text calls Janarddhana, ‘the adored of humanity’, who takes the designation Brahma, Visnu and Siva.11 The supremacy of Visnu in this text is also established b y narratives such as the sto ry o f Prahlada. P rahlada is the son of the demon H iranyakasipu w ho cannot be killed b y day o r by night, by man or by beast, within or outside the house. Hiranyakasipu orders the bo y to be killed because he is a w orsh ipp er o f Visnu. Y et despite his efforts the b o y cannot be killed and Visnu , to avenge P rahlada, incarnates as the ‘man-lion’ Narasimha (neither man nor beast), at twilight (neither day no r night), bursting ou t from a pillar (neither inside n or outside the house) to kill the demo n. PURANIC COSMO LOGY
A lt h o u gh no one text stric tly adheres to this pattern , the Puranas tradi tionally cov er five topics: - the creation or manifestation of the universe; - destruction and re-creation of the universe; - the genealogies o f gods and sages; - the reigns of the fourteen Manus or mytho logical progenitors of humanity; - the history of the solar and lunar dynasties of kings, from which all kings trace their descent. Th e m ost imp ortant features o f the Puranas are the genealogies o f various royal lineages, in which history as well as m yth olog y m ay be embedded, h
i
An introduction to Ilinduism
and the elaborate cosmologies occurring over vast expanses of time. The universe is conceptuali/.ed as an array of concentric circles spreading out from Mount Meru at the centre, enclosed within the vast ‘world egg’. Imm ediately surrounding Meru is Jam bu-dvipa, the earth or ‘island of the rose-apple tree’, though itself several thousand miles from Meru. Jambudvipa is surrounded by a salt ocean. Spreading out from here are seven fur ther lands and various kinds o f ocean made of sugar-cane juice, wine, ghee, buttermilk, milk and sweet water, until the realm o f darkness is reached by the outer shell of the egg. This is very similar to Jain cosmologies which list the oceans as containing salt, black water, clear water, rum, milk, ghee and treacle.12 Within Jambu-dvipa are a number of lands, including India (Bharata) which is subdivided into nine regions ruled by descendants of the culture-hero Prthu, who cultivated the earth (prthvi). Below and above the level of the earth in the cosmic egg are further layers. B elow the earth are the seven un derworlds and below them at the base of the egg, the hell realms, whose various names, such as ‘impaling’ and ‘red-hot iron’, viv id ly describe their contents. Above the earth (bhur) are the atmosphere (bhuvas), sky (svar) and various other worlds up M ount Meru to the ‘true w orld ’ (satyaloka) at the top. This entire cosmos is populated by all kinds of beings; humans, animals, plants, gods, snake-beings (ndga ), nymphs (,apsaras ), heavenly musicians ( gandharv a ), domestic beings (paisaca) aftd many more, and one can be reborn into any of these realms depending upon one’s action (karma).li Life in all of these worlds is, of course, impermanent and one will eventually be reborn elsewhere. Neither hell nor heaven are permanent here. Alongside a vast conception o f the structure o f the co smos, the Puranas also have a vast conception o f time. The world goes through a cycle o f four ages or yugas: the perfect krta or satya age which lasts fo r i ,728,000 human years; the tretd age of 1,296,000 years; the dvapara age of 864,000 years; and the dark kali age of 432,000 years which began with the Mahabharata war, traditionally dated to 3 1 02 b c e . This makes a total of 4,3 20,000 years during which time the wo rld moves from a perfect state to a progressively more morally degenerate state in which dharma is forgotten. The kali yuga, the present age of darkness, is characterized by loss of dharma which will be renewed b y the future incarnation o f Visnu, Kalki, who w ill come to begin a new perfect krta yuga.14 The image used is of a cow stand ing on all four legs in the perfect age, standing on three legs in the tretd age, on tw o legs in the dvapara age, but tottering on on ly one leg in the kali age.
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N a r r a ti v e l> l>,ul ,ulili iliou ou\\ a n d ear e ar ly V aisnav ais navisr isrn n
The total period ol lour yuga yu gass is called .1 manvantara, the age or lifeperiod of a Manu. After 1,000 manvantaras, which comprise one day for Brahma, the universe will be destroyed by fire or flood and undergo a night o f Brahm a of the same period (i.e (i.e.. 1,000 m anvantaras), anvantaras), until until the the process begins again for all eternity. A kalpa is one such night and day of Brahma comprising 8,649 million years. There is no end to this process; nor purpo se other than than the the Lord 's pla y (lild). THE SMARTAS
W ith it h the th e c o m p o s i tio ti o n o f the th e P u ran ra n a s a m a in stre st re a m f o r m o f b rah ra h m a n ica ic a l religion developed which expanded and continued into the medieval period. period. The Brahmans w ho follow follow ed the puranic puranic religion religion became became know n as smarta, those whose worship was based on the Smrtis, or pa p a u r a n ik a , those based based on the the Puranas. This form o f religion religion was concerned with the the domestic worship of five shrines and their deities, the pan p an ca ya ta n a -pu -p u ja, ja , namely Visnu, Siva, Ganesa (Siva’s elephant-headed son), Surya (the Sun) and the Goddess (Devi). The Smartas may be seen in contrast to the Srauta Srautass wh o p erform ed elaborat elaborate, e, public, vedic rituals rituals - the the solemn rites rites and also in contrast to the Tantrikas, heterodox followers of non-vedic revelation called the the Tantras. A ltho ug h the authors o f the the Puranas are not Tantrikas, the texts nevertheless contain a significant amount of tantric material, particularly on ritual. Although the central Smarta practice was the the dom estic estic w orsh ip o f the the five five deities, deities, wh ile, of course, abiding b y ved ic social values and purity rules, there also arose worship of particular deities deities,, especially Visnu and Siva, wh o w ere elevat elevated ed to a supreme po si tion. Th us w ith the Puranas, the normative, mainstream mainstream Sm arta arta worsh ip of Visnu and §iva is established, which absorbs into it external, nonbraham nical and som som etimes no n-ved ic or tantric material. material. The de velopm ent of temple citi cities es
Th e com piling of the the Puranas and and the the developm ent o f devotion o r bhakti to particular deities deities mu st be seen firstly in the con text o f the the stab ility of the G up ta pe riod and secondly, after the the collapse collapse o f the the G up tas, in the context context o f the the rise rise o f regional kingdom s, particularly in the the south. Du ring the sev enth enth centu ry these these we re the the kingdom s o f the Cha luky as in the the centr central al and we w e s te rn D e c c a n , and a nd the th e P a la v a s in the t he s o u th - e a s t. F r o m a b o u t 900 90 0 to to 12 0 0 these kingdoms are replaced by the dynasties of the Pandeyas in the far south, the C ho las in the the Tamil region, and the Rashtraku tas, replacin replacin g the the
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Chalukyas. Each of these kingdoms developed urban centres and these cities became the centres of those kingdoms; cities which were not only centres of commerce and administration, but ritual centres with the temple at the hub o f the town and the the streets streets radiating ou t from there. there. The ritual sovereignty of the king was established through his brahmanical legitim ization izatio n in the temple and, from the eleventh eleventh to thirteenth thirteenth centuries, large temple complexes were built as centres of the regional kingdoms. Examples of such cities are the Jagannatha temple at Puri in Orissa, the Natarâja temple at Cidambaram in Tamilnadu, and the Râjarâjesvara temple at Tanjavur also in Tamilnadu. Each of these temples would have installed one of the major puranic deities or a manifestation of those deities. deities. O f particular importance are the gods Visnu, Siva and Dev i, all of wh w h o m had h ad their the ir ow o w n Purâ P urâna nas, s, and all of o f who wh o m wer w eree establi est ablishe shed d in im p or or tant temples. Visnu in particular is associated with the ideal of the divine king, king , and it is to his history hist ory and tradition tradition we no n o w turn. Vis V isn nu The late late Upanisads Upanisa ds composed compo sed from the the eighth eighth to sixth centuries centuries b c e , par ticularly the Svetâsvatara and the Mahànàr Mah ànàrayan ayana, a, bear witness to the beginnings of Hindu theism. Theism is the idea that there is a supreme, distinct God (Bhagavdn ) or Goddess (Bhagavati ) wh o generat generates es the the cos mos, maintains it, and finally destroys it, and who has the power to save beings through throu gh his grace. Two Tw o deities begin to becom e the focus o f theistic theistic attention, Siva, who in the Rg Veda appeared as Rudra, and Visnu, who both gain in importance and become identified by their devotees as the highest god, the supreme supreme o r absolute reali reality. ty. The devotees o f Siva come to be referred to as Saivas; those o f Visnu and his manifestation, manifestatio n, as Vaisnavas. Vaisnavas. In the Rg Veda Visnu is a benevolent, solar deity, often co upled w ith the wa w a rrio rr io r god In d ra.15 ra .15 T h e name Visnu Vi snu m ay be deriv de rived ed fro fr o m the Sansk Sa nskrit rit verb ve rbal al root ro ot vis (‘to enter’ ), so Visnu is ‘he who enters enters or pervades the uni vers ve rse’ e’ . In one hym h ym n, Visn Vi snu u takes ta kes three strides stri des ther th ereb ebyy sepa se parati rating ng the earth ea rth from the sky,16 a story which forms the basis of the later myth in the Purânas where V isnu, incarnat incarnated ed as a dwa rf, covers co vers the the universe with three three strides strides and and destroys the powe po werr of the demon B a li.17 By the time of the Purânas (fourth-sixth century ce), Visnu is iconographically depicted in two ways. Firstly as a dark blue youth, standing upright, possessing four arms and holding in each hand, respectively, a conch, discus, mace and lotus. He wears the jewel called the kaustubha
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- in his ten ten incarnations incarnations (avata.ro) upon the earth during times of darkness; - in his various manifestations manifestations or icons (m u r t i , area) in temples and shrines; - within the hearts hearts of all all beings as as their inner controller (antarydmin). These ideas are maintained, with varying degrees of emphasis, by all Va V a isn is n a v a tra tr a d itio it io n s a n d h av e b een ee n a rtic rt icu u late la ted d in S a n s k rit ri t and an d in T a m il texts. The incarnations of Visnu
V isn is n u is the th e su p re m e L o r d w h o m a n ife if e sts st s h im s e lf in the th e w o r l d in tim ti m e s o f darkness darkness when d h a r m a has disappeared disappeared fro m view. The se m anifest anifestati ations ons are his his incarnat incarnations ions o r ‘ descen t-form t-form s’ (avatara). Th e classic classic statement statement of this doctrine is in the B h a g a v a d G i t a . Here Krsna, an incarnation of V is n u , is i s a d d re s sin si n g A r ju n a (w h o m he a d d ress re ssee s as B h a rata ra ta): ): Alt A lth h o u g h , inde in deed ed,, I am unb un b orn or n and impe im peris risha habl ble, e, alth al thou ough gh I am the lord of the creatures, I do resort to nature, which is mine, and I take on birt birth h by my own wizardry (maya). F or whenever th the Law (dharma) languishes, Bharata, and lawlessness (adharma) flourishes, I 1 1 5
An A n intro in trodu duct ctio ion n to t o I lindu lin duis ism m
create myself. I take on existence liom aeon lo aeon, lor the rescue of the good and the destruction ol the evil, in order to re-establish the Law (dharma).18 This Th is is a clear statement statement of the doctrine. doctrine. Althou Alth ough gh particular incarnations incarnations are not mentioned mention ed here, they th ey do begin to appear in the the later epic literature literature in varyin var yingg num bers, and and by the the eighth eighth century centu ry c E the standard standard number of descent-forms in the Vaisnava Puranas is ten. These are Matsya (‘The Fish’), Kurma (‘The Tortoise’), Varaha (‘The Boar’), Narasimha (‘The Man-Lion’), Vamana (‘The Dwarf’), Parasurama (‘Rama with the axe’), Rama or Ramacandra, Krsna, Buddha and Kalkl. Apart from this list, some other figures are mentioned as incarnations in the Puranas, such as Balarama, Krsna’s brother; Hayagriva (‘Horse-necked’) who recovered the Veda stolen by Titans (daityas); and Dattatreya, a rustic, pleasureseeking figure, later regarded as an incarnation of the three gods, some times erroneously referred to as the ‘Hindu trinity’: Brahma, Visnu and Siva. This picture is further complicated by the idea of portions of Visnu (amsa ) manifested in history. These incarnations are represented as appearing during different wo rld ages ages (yuga ) which display signs of grad ual degenerac degen eracyy from the first to the fourth fou rth or dark da rk age (see (see above). The mythology of these incarnations focuses upon the creation, destruction and recreation of the cosmos. The Mat M atsy sya a Pura Pu rana na tells how the first man, Manu, is saved from a cosmic deluge by the Fish.19 The Tortoise places him self at at the the bottom o f the ocean of m ilk as the the support for the mountain Mandara, which is then used as a stick by the gods and demons to churn the cosmic ocean, from wh ich various desired, and and unde und e sired, objects emerge, including the nectar of immortality (amrta ). The Boar rescues the Earth, personified as a Goddess, from the bottom of the cosmic ocean and brings her to the surface where he spreads her out, piles up mountains and divides her into seven continents.20 Narasimha, the man-lion, destroys the wicked demon Hiranyakasipu, who has tried to destroy his son Prahlada, a devotee of Visnu (see above). The Dwarf avatdra strides across the universe in three steps and destroys the demon Bali (see above). Parasurama is incarnated to destroy the arrogant Ksatriyas who threaten the Brahmans, while Ramacandra and Krsna are the hero kings of o f the the epics. The Bu ddh a is a curiou curi ouss inclusion inclu sion in this this list: an incarnation sent to lead the the wicked wick ed and the the demons astra a strayy and so to hasten hasten the end of the current age of darkness ( kali-yuga ). Lastly Kalki, ‘The Whi W hite te H o rse rs e ’ , wil w illl com co m e at the end o f the d ark ar k age to d estr es tro o y the w icke ic ked d
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and restore p urity ur ity and righte ousnes ou snes s. We see in I lieso lieso inca rnations rna tions a mo ve ment from lower, aquatic life forms lo higher life forms living on the land .21 .21 Mythological texts are never neutral but always present a particular angle angle or viewp oint, u sually from the the perspective perspective o f a particular group. Th e doctrine doctrine and m yth olo gy o f the the incarnations incarnations is imp ortant in in Vaisnavism Vaisnavism fo r it emphasizes the supremacy and transcendence of Visnu. The 'Visnu Purdna says that all beings, including the gods, worship Visnu’s incarna tions, for his supreme form is unknowable.22 This allows for non Va V a isn is n ava av a de itie it iess to b e in c o r p o ra te d in to the th e V a isn is n a v a tra tr a d itio it io n a nd f o r other cult cultss to be colonized by Vaisnava ideology. Som e, if not all, all, of the descent-forms m ay have had an independent life life with cults cults of their ow n. Fo r example, Balarama, K rsn a’s brother brother,, was a distinct distinct fertility fertility deity and, indeed, Krsna himself was a distinct deity incorporated into the main stream stream tradition. Th e avatdra do ctrine ctrine a llows for the universalizing universalizing claim o f Visnu ’s total total world-transcendence , wh ich is ye t expressed in finitude, finitude, and allow allow s fo r Vaisnavism Vaisnavism to incorporate other traditi traditions. ons. Early Vaisnava traditions
The early history o f the the developm developm ent of Visnu and and his worship is highly com plex. In this this history Visnu becomes fused w ith other other,, originally inde pendent deities, and the traditions which focused upon these deities become merged in the Vaisnava tradition. While there are difficulties in applying the western term ‘religion’ to Hinduism as a whole before the nineteenth nineteenth century, the term term can be applied w ith mo re justification justification to the great theistic traditions of Vaisnavism and Saivism. These are religions w i th re v e a led le d , a u th o rita ri ta tiv ti v e tex te x ts, ts , d e v e lo p e d d o c trin tr in e s , ritu ri tuaa ls and an d so cia ci a l orga nization s. In its its early stages, stages, Vaisna vism represents the merging o f the the religions of a number of different social groupings from both north and south India. We shall firstly describe the formation of Vaisnavism in the northern traditions before moving on to the southern. Literature in Sanskrit attests to the existence of a number of originally independent deiti deities es - and cults cults focused focused up on them - w ho became fused fused with Visnu, particularly Va sudeva, K rsna and and Na raya na . O f thes thesee dei deiti ties es Krsn a is is pa r ticularly important and Vaisnava traditions tend to cluster around either Vis V is n u o r K r s n a . I n d e e d , the th e ter t erm m ‘ K r s n a is m ’ has b e e n use u sed d to d e s c rib ri b e the th e cults cults of K rsna, reserving ‘Vaisnavism’ fo r cult cultss focu sing on Visnu in w hich Krsna is merely an incarnation, rather than the transcendent being
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An A n intr i ntrod oduc uctio tion n to t o Ili I lin n d nisn ni sn i Visn Vi snu u in the Veda ^ Vaikh Va ikh anasa an asa
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^ Pancaratra
^ Bhagavata
T amil mil so urc es
Krsna-Gopala Puranic Vaisnavism .
i
Vais nava Samprad Sampradaya ayass -M-Mmodern Vaik Vaikha hana nasas sas
Sri Vaisnava
Gaud Ga udly lyaa
Vallabhacarya etc. etc.
Figur e 4 The development development o f Vaisnava Vaisnava traditio ns
himself.2 himself.23 The independe independent nt cul cults ts of V asud as ud ev a-K a- K rsn a, Krsn a-Gopa a-G opa la, and and N arayan ara yan a become merged in Va isn avism av ism , itself a term used to to encompass a spite of o f the diversity dive rsity o f number o f distinct distinct traditions traditions (sampraddya ). Yet in spite traditions within the Vaisnava fold, there are certain features which are held in comm common: on: - the the Lord Lo rd is the the ‘ Supreme Person’ (purusottama ) with personal qualities (saguna), rather than than an abstr ab strac actt absolute (nirguna); - the the Lord Lor d is the the cause cause of the co sm o s, he creat creates, es, maint maintains ains and and destroys, it; - the the Lord reveals reveals himself himself through sacr sa cred ed scriptures, scriptures, temple temple icons, in his incarnations (avatdfa) and in saints. Ea rly Vaisnava Vaisnava worsh ip focuses focuses o n three three deiti deities es who wh o become fused fused together, namely Vasudeva-Krsna, Krsna-Gopala and Narayana, who in turn all become identified with Visnu. Put simply, Vasudeva-Krsna and Krsn a-G opa la were worshipped b y groups generally generally referred referred to as Bhagavatas, while Narayana was worshipped by the Pancaratra sect. The picture is, however, more complex than this, as the traditions intersect over time, time, with Vasud eva becoming a term term used for fo r the the Panc aratrin’s absolute. To help clarify this complex picture, we shall firstly describe the formation of the three deities Vasudeva-Krsna, Krsna-Gopala and Narayana, and then move on to describe the traditions associated with them.
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THE
C U I . T Ol Ol - ' V A S U D I ' I V A - K K S N / V
Va V a sud su d ev a , w h o b ec o m cs iden id enti tifi fied ed with wi th K rsn rs n a and an d V isn is n u , w as the supreme deity of a tribe called the Vrsnis or Satvatas and may have origi nated nated as a V rsn i hero o r king, thoug h it is imp ossible to trace trace a line line back to an original Vasudeva. The Vrsnis became fused with the Yada vas, the tribe tribe of Krsna. Th e wo rship o f Vasud eva is recorded recorded as early as the fifth or sixth centuri centuries es b c e , being mentioned mentioned by the famou s grammarian Panini in in his his bo ok o f grammar the the Ast term vasudevaka A std d d h y d y i H ere he explains the term as referring to a devotee (bhakta ) of the god Vasudeva. Megasthenes, a G reek ambassador to the the court of K ing Cand ragupta M aurya (c. 3 20 b c e ) at Pataliputra, records that the people of Mathura on the river Yamuna revered revered H eracles, thought to be the the nearest nearest G ree k equivalent o f Vasud eva. Two centuries later another Greek ambassador, Heliodorus, says on an inscription found at Besnagar in Madhya Pradesh, that he erected a col umn with an image of Garuda at the top in honour of Vasudeva (c. 1 1 5 b c e ) . Heliodorus describes himself as a bhdgavata, a devotee of Va V a su d e v a , w h ic h sh o w s that th at the th e V a su d e v a re lig li g io n w a s a d o p ted te d b y (at least some of) the Greeks who ruled Bactria in the far north-west. The scriptures scriptures o f the the Theravada Bud dhists, the Pall canon w ritten ritten d ow n in the the first century b c e , also mention the worshippers of Vasudeva in a list of va v a rio ri o u s re lig li g io u s sect se cts. s.25 25 V a su d e v a is m e n tio ti o n e d in the th e Bhagavad Gitd2(> and in the gramm arian P atanjali’s Ma ’),27 a M a h abbd ab bd sya sy a (‘G reat Co m m entary ’),2 commentary on Panini (c. 150 b c e ) , wh w h e re he d escr es crib ibee s V a su d e v a as belon ging to the Vr sn i tribe. tribe. Krsn a was a deity of the the Yad ava clan, clan, w ho pro bab ly became became fused fused with the deity Vasudeva. While it is impossible to arrive back at an original Krsna - the the histori historical cal formation formation o f the the deity is too too com plex - it is is pro ba bly the case that Krsna was a deified king or hero. The historicity of Krsn a is imp ossible to to assess assess from sources in wh ich ha giogra phy and his to ry are inextricably bound togethe together. r. Ho w eve r, the the historicity o f Krsna is imp ortant fo r the tradition, and Vaisnava s be lieve that he w as a historical perso nage .28 .28 Th ere is a reference reference to K rsn a in the Chdndogya Upanisad ,29 Upanisad ,29 a reference reference which , for his devotees, places K rsna w ithin the vedic frame o f reference. In the M a h a b h d r a t a , K rsna appears as the chief of the the Yada vas of D varaka, p resent-day D w arka on the north-west coast coast,, and, and, indeed, indeed, he he is one of the central focuses of that text, particularly the Bbagavad-Gitd. By the second century b c e V a s u d e v a - K r s n a w a s w o r sh ip p e d as a . 2 4
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distinct deity and finally identified with Visnu in the Mahabharata, appearing, for example, three times in the lihagavad (lita i 0 as synony mous with Visnu. THE CULT OF KRSNA-GOPALA
B y the fourth century c e the Bhagavata tradition, that is, the tradition about Vasudeva-Krsna in the Mahabharata, absorbs another tradition, namely the cult of Krsna as a you ng man in Vrndavana: K rsna-Gopala, the protector of cattle. Krsna-Gopala, a tribal god of the Abhiras, along with his brother Balarama or Samkarsana, were pastoral deities who became assimilated into the Vaisnava tradition. The Harivamsa (the ‘appendix’ to the Mahabharata ), the Visnu Purana, and particularly the Bhagavata Purana, em body narrative traditions about Krsna as a bo y and young man in Gokula, a settlement of cowherds of the Abhiras clan, on the banks of the Yamuna. The Harivamsa directly influenced the Visnu Purana which in turn influenced the Bhagavata Purana, though this text was composed in the south under the strong influence of south Indian emotional devotionalism. The Harivamsa is dated to the first few centuries of the com mon era and sees itself as supplying information about Krsna before the events of the Mahabharata war. These stories, which are so important as the focus of later devotional and folk traditions, describe Krsna -Gopala as an amorous young man, wandering with his brother Balarama through the forest of Vrndavana, destroying demons, dancing and making love with the cowgirls (gopis). The erotic exploits of the young Krsna become highlighted in later Vaisnava poetry, such as Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda (twelfth century) which extols the love between Krsna and his favourite gopi, Radha, and in the poetry of Candidas and Vidyapati (fourteenth century). THE CULT OF NARAYANA
The cult of Na rayana is another important ingredient in the fusion o f tra ditions which forms Vaisnavism. Narayana is a deity found in the Satapatha Brdhmana 31 where he is identified with the cosmic man (purusa), who possibly originates outside the vedic pantheon as a non vedic deity from the Hindu Kush mountains. His name, according to Manu, means ‘resting on the waters’,32 and in the Nardyaniya section of the Mahabharata he is the resting place and goal o f men,33 both of which are characteristics of Visnu. Narayana appears in the Mahandrayana
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U p a n i s a d ^ (composed around the lounli century itcn), wliicli praises him as the absolute and highest deity who yel dwells in the heart. In the Mah abharata and in some Puranas, he is the supreme deity, lying, like Visnu, on a giant sn ak e in an ocean o f milk. A ccording to a later text o f the eleventh century, the Kathasaritsagara, Narayana dwells in his heaven of ‘w hite island’ where he lies on the bo dy o f Sesa with La ksm i sitting at his feet.35 H ere N ara yan a has clearly becom e identified w ith Visnu. Visnu is there fo re a co m posi te fig ure, a fig ure w h o has fu se d w ith o rigi nally distinct deities and various elements fro m the my thologies o f those deities over the centuries. Yet although these forms become identified with each other, differe nt form s o f V is nu still becom e fa vou red above others by devotees of particular Vaisnava traditions. This is particularly salient with regard to Krsna. For some Vaisnavas, such as the Sri Vaisnav as, he is an in carn ation o f V isnu, and th ere fo re subord in ate d to Visnu, w hile fo r oth ers, su ch as the G au d iy a Vaisnavas, he is the su pre m e deity himself.
T h e P a n c a r a t ra The tradition associated with the worship of Narayana is the Pancaratra.The name ‘panca ra tra ’ (‘five-night’) may well be derived from the ‘five night sacrifice’ mentioned in the Satapatha Brdhmana in whic h P u ru sa-N arayan a conceiv es the id ea o f a sacrifice la stin g fiv e nights whereby he would become the highest being. The doctrines of the Pancaratra are mentioned in the N drayaniy a section of the Mahabharata ? 7 where Bhagavan Narayana, who pervades the universe and is seen in all religious systems, is regarded as the preceptor of the Pancaratra tradition. Yet although N ara ya na denotes their supreme deity, the term V asu de va is also used. Indeed , the Panc aratra is characterized b y a doctrine o f the manifestation o f the absolute thro ugh a series o f emana tions or vyuhas. These begin w ith Vasuv eda w ho manifests Samkarsana, w h o in tu rn m anifests P radyum na, fro m w h o m A nir uddha em erges. These are the names of Krsna’s elder brother, his son, and grandson, respectively, though the familial relation is not particularly significant in the cosm olo gy of the system. Th is series o f vyuha emanations comprise the highest level o f the universe, the ‘pure c reation’, while b elow this are intermediate or ‘mixed’ creation and the ‘impure’ or ‘material’ creation. Each vyuha has a cosm ological fun ction with regard to the low er creation, w h ic h m anifests thro ugh Pra dyum na. Th e cosm os b elow the vyuhas is , 3 6
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The vyubiis Vasudeva Samkarsana I
pure creation
Pradyumna Aniruddha I
mixed creation I
impure creation .
Figur e 5 Pancaratra cosmology
made up of categories (tattva) some of which have their origin in the earlier philosophical system of Sam khya (see p. 23 2). Apart from the Ndrdyaniya section of the Mahdbhdrata, which bears witness to the early existence of the tradition, Pancaratra literature as a dis tinct genre develops o nly from about the seventh or eighth centuries c e .. This literature, kn ow n as the Pancaratra Samhitas, is classified as part of a wid er group of texts known as Agamas or Tantras (see pp. 158-61), texts which were rejected by many orthodox Brahmans. The most important of these texts are the ‘three gems’ of the Pauskara, Sattvata and Jakak hya Samhitas, and the Ahirbudhnya Samhita and Laksmi Tantra should also be mentioned as important texts within the tradition.38 The concerns of this literature are cosmology, initiation ( diksa), ritual, sacred formulae (mantra) and temple building. The texts form the basis of worship in south Indian temples to this day, with vedic mantras replacing tantric mantras and vedic deities replacing tantric deities. The Pancaratra Samhitas represent ‘tantric’ Vaisnavism in contrast to an ‘orthodox’ vedic Vaisnavism of the Bhagavatas. While this distinction should not be exaggerated, it is nevertheless an important factor in that many orthodox Brahmans who accepted the authority of the Veda, rejected the authority of the Tantras. Indeed, the status of the Pancaratra Samhitas within Vaisnavism - whether or not they could be classed as rev elation - was an issue which pro voked debate, with Yam una, one of the teachers of the Sri Vaisnava tradition, arguing for the status of these texts
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N arrati ve t).in\,u n i early Vaisnavism
as revelation .39 One tradition ol brahmans who are associated with the Pancaratra, but who remain distinct from them over this issue of ortho dox y, are the Vaikhanasas. T h e V a ik h a n a s a s Th e Vaikhanasa sect regards itself as a Vaisnava tradition, w h o lly o rtho dox and vedic, b eing within the Taittiriya scho ol o f the black Y ajur Veda. The sect has its own Vaikhanasasmarta Sutra (fourth century c e ) w hic h describes daily w orsh ip o f Visnu as a blend o f traditional vedic and non vedic ritu al. There is also a collection o f Vaik hanasa Sam hitas, distinct from the Pancaratra Samhitas, wh ich describe kinds o f offerings and the w orship o f the L o rd in his form s as V is nu , Purusa, Saty a, A cy u ta and A niruddha. There is so m e connection here w ith the Pancara tra Sam hitas, for the Ja yak h ya lists Purusa, Satya and Acyuta as the vyiihas o f V asudeva.40 The daily ritu al pro ceeds b y m akin g the obligatory vedic offering s into the fire, and m aking of fering s to Visn u in either his essential, indivisible form , installed in the inner sanctum o f a temple, or his divisible, movable form. During the worship (puja), Visnu is welcomed as a royal guest and given food offerings accom panied b y the recitation of vedic and non-vedic mantras. With Visnu’s grace, the devotee will attain liberation (;moksa), un derstoo d as entry into V isn u’s heaven ( vaikuntha ). The Vaikhanasas came to function as chief priests (drcaka ) in many south Indian Va isnava temples, wh ere th ey rem ain to this day, particu larly at the Tiru pati temp le, a pilgrim age centre in An dh ra P radesh. In the trad i tion’s self-perception it is clearly distinguished from the ‘unorthodox’ tdntrika tradition o f the Pancaratra, insisting on its orth od ox or vaidika status. The Bhagavatas
By the second century b c e , if not earlier, the terms V asude va and K rsna w ere used to re fe r to the same deity. T h e w orsh ip pers o f this deity w ere Bhagavatas, those wh o fo llow Bhagavan, a name wh ich had developed to refer to a personal absolute or theistic God. The term bhagavata might have referred to a general tradition o r orientation tow ards theistic conc ep tions and modes o f worship , particularly o f Vasud eva-K rsna, rather than a spec ific sect in the sense that the Pancaratrins or Vaikhanasas we re specific sects. The G up tas, w ho ruled during the fourth to sixth centuries c e , su p ported the religion of the Bhagavatas, as well as the Buddhist Yogacara
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traditio trad ition, n, though thou gh Vaisnavis Vais navism m remained Ilie most most importan im portantt religion relig ion in the state. The royal patronage ol the Guptas suggests the wide influence and appeal o f the Bhagavata Bhaga vata religion - that that it was more central to sta state te life and culture than a narrowly defined sect. Indeed, the central text of the Bhagavatas, the famous and eminent Bhagavad Gita, has had a non-sectarian and universalist appeal in Hinduism, which reflects the non-sec t-specific nature of the Bhagavata tradition. This is not to to say that that the text text does not have a specific theology, but that the the theolo gy was estab lished on a broad basis with royal and brahmanical support. The terms Krsna, Krsn a, Va sudeva, sudeva , Visnu and Bhagavan all refer to to the same, same, supreme, supreme, per sonal deity for fo r the Bhagavatas, Bhag avatas, a deity wh ose qualities are are articulated articulated in the the Gita. The Bhagavad Gita Gita The Bhaga vad Gita, famous of Gita, the ‘Song of the L o rd ’ , is perhaps the most famous the Hindu scriptures, translated into many European and Indian lan guages and and reported to have been Ga ndhi’s nd hi’s favourite favo urite b ook. ook . It has has touched touched the hearts of millions of people both in south Asia and throughout the wo w o rld rl d . The T he first fir st E n glis gl ish h transla tran slatio tion n was wa s made m ade b y C harl ha rles es W ilkins ilk ins in 178 17 8 5, 5, with wi th a pref pr efac acee b y Warr W arren en Hasti Ha sting ngs. s. N u m e rou ro u s rend re nditio itions ns have hav e been bee n made, made , since then, then, and it has even been referred to as the ‘H ind u N e w Testament’ Testa ment’ . It did not, however, always enjoy popularity and such great interest has only occurred since Hindu revival movements of the nineteenth century, particularly among more educated social groups. Even Gandhi read, and was w as influe inf luenc nced ed b y the Eng E ngli lish sh render ren dering ing o f the Gita by Sir Edw in Arnold. Ho wever, we ver, in the the villages, rather than than the the Gita, it is the earthy stories o f the the Bhagavata Bhagavata Pu r ana an a which have always had had much wide r appeal. appeal. Althoug h it is important to get the the fame o f the the text into into perspective perspec tive - its its mass appeal being a fairly fair ly recent phenom enon - we must m ust nevertheless nevertheless acknow ledge the text’s theological theological importance as as one which has provo ked a number of co m mentaries upon it by famous Hindu theologians, particularly Sankara, Ramanuja Ram anuja and Madhv Ma dhv a in the the Vedant Vedantaa tradition, and Abhin avag upta in the the Saiva tradition. It was reworked in vernacular languages, notably into a Marathi verse rendering by Jnanesvara (thirteenth century), and contem po rary commentarie commentariess have appeared appeared in in English, by for example the the famous Transcendental Meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Hare Krsna Krsn a guru Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Swami Prabhupada. The Th e Vedanta V edanta tradition claims the the Gita as its own , as one o f three system s
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which wh ich c o n stit st itu u ted te d it, a long lo ng with wi th the U p .inis .in is.u .uls ls ,uul the Hrahma Sutra. I lowev er, the the text’s text’s theo logy differs co nsid erab ly from these these others and it it must must he he understood on its its own terms, as as a the olo gy in which de vo tion to ihe Lord and action in the world for the sake of social order, performed wit h deta de tach chm m ent, en t, b eco ec o m e cen c entra tral. l. T h e text te xt p u ts in n a rrat rr ativ ivee fo rm the c o n cerns of Hindu orthodoxy: the importance of dharma and of maintaining maintaining socia sociall stability, stability, the the impo rtance o f correct and respon sible action, and the the importance of devotion to the transcendent as a personal Lord (not dis similar to the ideal king). The Gita displays a number of influences, including the bhakti cult of Krsna, Samkhya philosophy and even Buddh ist ideas and and terminolo gy. Th e main themes o f the the Gita can be be sum marized as as follow s: - the the importance importance o f dharma-, - dharma and renunciation are compatible: action (karma) should be performed with complete detachment; - the soul is immortal immo rtal and until liberated is subject subjec t to rebirth; - the Lo rd is transcendent transcendent and immanent; - the the Lo rd is reache reached d through devotion (bhakti) by his grace. On the eve of the great battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, Arj A rju u n a is fac fa c ed w ith it h a m o ral ra l dile di lem m m a: sh o u ld he figh fi gh t in the b attl at tlee and an d so kill kill members o f his his fam ily or wo uld it not be be better to renounce and and go beg ging ging for alms, thereby avoiding, fo r him, the inevita inevitable ble blood shed o f the the batt battle le ? There is a conflict conflict within A rjun a b etween his duty - as a w arrio r and son of Pandu - to fight, fight, and the ideal o f non-violence (ahimsa), espoused by the renouncer traditions. In response to his deep misgivings, Krsna exhorts him to go to battle, battle, for not to do so w ou ld be unm anly and and disho n ourable. Arjuna, however, rejects this argument and refuses to fight, so Krsna gives two further reasons for Arjuna’s involvement in the battle. Firstly, the soul canno t be killed, it it ‘is not killed no r does it kill’ , but rather: rather: As A s a man disca di scards rds his w o rn-o rn -o u t clothe clo thess An A n d puts pu ts on diffe di ffere rent nt ones that are new, So the one in the body discards aged bodies An A n d join jo inss with wi th ones on es that are new.41 new .41 Reg ardless o f wheth er Arjun a fights or not, his action action will not affect the the eternal soul which journeys from body to body in a series of reincarna tions. The second, more significant, reason, and the one which convinces i
*5
An A n intro in trodu duct ctio ion n to t o I lin li n d u iw i
Arj A rju u n a to figh f ight, t, is that it is Ar Arjun juna's a's own ow n duty du ty (svadbarma ) and responsi bility as a warrior to do battle. The war is lawful and should be fought to uphold dharma ,42 ,42 A num nu m ber be r o f themes them es run throu th rough gh the text: tex t: the neces ne cessit sityy o f doin do ingg o n e ’s duty which is nevertheless compatible with liberation; the unfolding of Krsna’s divinity; and the development of the paths to liberation. One of the most important imp ortant messages that that the the text text conveys conv eys is the the necessity of o f per per form ing one ’s appropriate approp riate duty, yet perform ing these these actions actions with detach ment. ment. K rsna, as Lo rd, rd , says to A rjuna rjun a that although he is the the creator o f the the four social classes (varna) he is not bound by action (karma) and has no attachment attachment to the the results or fruits o f his actions. actions. A man who understands understands the Lord similarly becomes detached from the fruit of his actions. The term ‘action’ here refers to both everyday action in the world and also to the traditional, tradition al, vedic ritual action. As the ancient sages w h o desired libera libe ra tion were detached from the result result of their their ritual performances (karma), so too Arjuna Arju na should become detached detached and give ove r the the results results o f his his acts to to Krsna. No action accrues to a person who acts with a controlled mind, wit w ith h o u t expe ex pecta ctatio tion n and content con tented ed with wi th wh atev at ever er comes com es his way. wa y. Throu gh non-attach non-attachment ment to action, action, and knowledge o f the the Lo rd, a person person wil w illl be b e liberat libe rated ed and be unite u nited d wit w ith h the L o rd at death.4 death .433 . Krsna gradually reveals reveals his his divinity to A rjuna, a process which culm i nate natess in the the theophany of chapter chapter n . Here A rjuna asks Krsna, the Supreme Person (purusottama ), to reveal his majestic or glorious form. Krsna responds to this request by giving Arjuna a divine eye with which he can see Krsna as the creator and destroyer of the universe: a cosmic form of innumerable shapes and colours, containing the entire universe, all gods and all creatures, within it.44 The Gita expounds the idea that there are various paths (mdrga) to lib eration, eration, an idea which whic h has been been developed in modern Hinduism Hind uism.. The path o f action (karma-yoga), which, as we have seen, is detachment from the fruits of action or ritual action, is emphasized as a way of reconciling wo w o rld rl d ly com co m mitm mi tmen entt w ith it h libera lib eratio tion, n, an idea ide a w h ich ic h is clea cl earl rlyy impo im porta rtant nt to the Gita . Yet above a bove action is is the path of o f devotio n (bhakti-yoga) as a w ay o f salvation. salvation. Indeed, even wom en and low castes castes can achieve achieve liberation in this way ,45 ,45 a statement statement in in stark contrast to the orthod orth odox ox brahmanical brahman ical idea that only the twice-born have access to liberation through renunciation (i.e. through the dsrama system). Thro ugh ug h dev otion, one attains attains the the state state o f brahman and enters enters the the Lor d through throug h his grace grace (prasada). The idea idea even
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appea rs here, (or the the firs firstt time in I lind uism uis m , ilu l .1 human b eing, nam ely Arj A rju u n a , is de d e ar (priya ) to the Lord; there is a bond of love between human and divine .46 .46 These paths of action action and and devo tion co ntrast with the the path of kno wled ge jn (jn a n a -y o g a ) mentioned in the text, which refers to knowledge of the absolute (brahman ) but also also refers refers to the the Sam khy a system o f discriminat ing the variou s constituents ( tattva ) o f the the cosm os.47 os.47 Th e Bhagavad Gita Gita is a rich and open text, as the variety of interpretations placed upon it show. Co m m entators have put their their ow n emphases on its its diverse aspects aspects:: the monist philosopher Sankara highlighted knowledge of the absolute jn (jn d n a ), whereas the Vaisnava Ramanuja regarded knowledge only as a condition condition o f devotion. devotion. Summary
D urin g the last last half o f the last last millennium millennium b c e devotion (bhakti) to a pe r sonal Lord (Bhagavan) began to develop in Hindu traditions. This devotionalism is expressed in the ‘fifth Veda’, the tradition of the Epics and Puranas (Itihasa Purdn a). Th ese texts reflect reflect a brahmanical brahmanical app ropriation o f pop ular traditions traditions on the the one hand, and the the ascendancy o f the the ideal ideal of kingship on the other. The theistic traditions centred on Visnu and Siva pa rticularly begin to to dev elop during this period and w e have traced here here the rise of Visnu and some of the early traditions which worshipped him or one o f his his forms. We shall shall no w trace the the developm ent o f this this worsh ip in later traditions, partic ula rly in the the south o f India.
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6 Th The e love of Visnu
So far we have described the Sanskrit narrative narrative traditions whi ch developed dev eloped in the north and focused on the religions of Visnu reflected in that litera ture. Although it comes to have pan-Hindu appeal, the Bhagavad G ita ita originated in the north, as did the cults of Visnu and Krsna. However, there is is a vast bo dy o f devotional devotiona l literature, literature, both Saiva and Vaisnava, Vaisnava, from the south of India, composed in the Dravidian language of Tamil. While the Sanskrit material is important in understanding the development of theism in India, the Tamil literature had a deep effect upon that develop ment and, in the south, its influence is equal to that of the Sanskrit mater ial. The earliest Tamil literature developed before the onset of Sanskritization and so is originally quite distinct from Sanskrit literature. Sanskritization Sanskritization is the the process whe reby local or regional forms of culture and religion religion - local deities deities,, rituals, rituals, literary genres genres - become identified with the ‘great tradition’ of Sanskrit literature and culture: namely the culture and religion of orthodox, Aryan, Brahmans, which accepts the Veda as revelation and, generally, adheres to varnâsrama-dharma. Tamil began to be cultivated as a literary language around the third-fourth centuries b c e and a descriptive grammar of the early literary Tamil language, the around 100 b c e by a Jai n m onk in southern southern Tolkâppiyam, was compo sed around Kerala, who seems to have been conversant with Sanskrit grammatical thinkin g.1 From the the first first century b c e to the the first, and perhaps through thro ugh to the sixth century ce, a tradition of bardic poetry developed which was gathere gathered d into a number of anthologies collectively know kn ow n as the the Cankam literature.2 Once established, Hindu Tamil culture thrived under the rule
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Vistiu // ' ><■ lovcoj Vistiu
ol I lie Cliola dynasty (rom the ninth I o I l i e * 1 11i i leenl li cent ce ntu u ries ri es c k and the K.iveri basin bccame as important in the development ol I linduism as the ( ianges basin basin in the north. I he process o f San skritizatio n on ly began to signific an tly influence the south south after the the first few centuries c e and Tamil deiti deities es and forms of w o r shi ship became adapted adapted to n orthern Sansk rit form s. Y et, nevertheless, nevertheless, a thriv thriv ing ing Tamil culture flourished and Tamilnadu became the central central region fo r i he developm ent o f Hind uism after the M uslim M ugh als established established their their empire empire in in the the north. north. E norm ous temple com plexes, unsurpassed unsurpassed b y an y in the north, grew up at Cidambaram, Srirangam, Madurai and Tanjavur. These became bastions of classical, orthodox Hindu doctrines and praci ice ices associated associated w ith brahmanical w orsh ip o f the deities deities and with the cult cult ol the deified king. In the process of Sanskritization, indigenous Tamil deities became identified and absorbed into Aryan, vedic deities. The Tamil deities Mudvalan and Tirumal became identified with Visnu and Siva, Kotravai the goddess of war with Durga, and the important deity M urukan, with S iva’s son, Skanda, the god o f war. Tamil Tamil poetry and culture
before the influence of Sanskritic or brahmanical culture, Tamil culture was wa s its it s e lf v e r y ric ri c h and an d a n y infl in flu u e n ce s o r c u ltu lt u ra l fo rm s f ro m the th e n o rth rt h wer w eree a d a p ted te d and an d sh a p ed b y in d ig e n o u s T a m il w a y s . W ith it h re g a rd to d e v o tional tional religion, there there are are tw o im portant factors wh ich a llowed its its deve lop ment ment in Tamil culture, culture, namely Tamil p oe try and the the Tamil deity M urukan. Th e earlie earliest st bod y o f the the Carikam literat literature ure com prises prises tw o m ain groups, the ‘Eigh t An tho logies’ and the ‘Ten ‘Ten So ngs’ . These anthologies anthologies of bardic po etry have tw o central concerns: love and war. The class of love po etry is called akam (‘inside’ or ‘internal’), ‘internal’), wh ile the class class o f war o r heroic poetry is called p u r a m (‘o utside’ or ‘ external’). external’). Th e clas classs o f love poetry is particu larly significant for it classifies the inner emotions of love ( u r i ) into five groups which correspond to five types of external landscape and their sym bolic represent representati ations; ons; correspondences correspondences wh ich are are furthermore identi fied fied with types o f flower. flower. These are love-m love-m aking, wh ich corresponds to a mountainous landscape, with the mountain flower that blooms every twelve years, sym bolized by millet millet fiel fields ds and waterfalls; waterfalls; waiting an xiously for the beloved, which corresponds to the the seashore, seashore, sym bolized b y sharks and fishermen; separation, wh ich co rrespo nds to an arid landscape, landscape, w ith a desert flower, symbolized by vultures, starving elephants and robbers;
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An A n intro int roduc ductio tion n to H indu in duism ism
patiently waiting lor a wile, which corresponds to a pastoral landscape, wit w ith h the jasmi jas mine ne flowe flo wer, r, sym sy m boliz bo lized ed by a hull, hul l, cowh co wherd erd or the rain r ainyy sea sea son; and anger at a lover's infidelity, real or imagined, which corresponds to an agricultural, river-valley landscape, symbolized by a stork or heron. The significance of this poetry is that we see within Tamil culture a strong tradition of emotional expression through verse and a pattern of stylized or cu lturally classified classified emotional state statess associated associated with love. This allows for the wholehearted adoption of bhakti and sets the scene for the poetry of emotional devotion so characteristic of Tamil religious litera ture, and and for the development developm ent of an emotional bhakti which was to signif icantly influence influence northern Hindu culture. culture. The Cankam Can kam p oetry oe try reflects reflects an elite elite culture culture which propagated an ideolo gy o f a ve ry th is-world is-w orldly ly nature, nature, depicting the ideal man living livin g a married life, fighting, fighting , hunting and making love: a far cry cr y fro m the ascetic ascetic ideal ideal of the northern renounce ren ouncerr tradition. tradition. A lower level of society, which the Cankam literature hardly mentions, wou w ou ld com co m prise pr ise manual man ual labou lab ourer rers, s, iro i ronn- and gold g oldsm smith iths, s, carpe ca rpenters nters,, po p o t ters and farmers.3 Within Wit hin this cultu cu lture re there was wa s little littl e idea o f transcen trans cenden dence, ce, as had h ad been developed, develo ped, fo r example, in the the Upanisads. Upanisad s. Rather, there is is a concept concep t of the divine or supernatural (katavul) which can be manifested in possession, states. A god mentioned in the Cankam anthologies is Murukan, a deity wh w h o is you yo u ng ng,, handso han dsome me and heroi he roic, c, and w h o accepte acc epted d bloo bl ood d sacrific sacr ifice. e. He is a god of both war and of love. His cult may have been served by priestesses and and the texts indicate indicate a possession possessio n cult in which whi ch you y oung ng wom w omen en became possessed by the god and danced ‘in a frenzy’ (veri ayartal ).4 ).4 Murukan later became identified with Siva’s son Skanda, the god of war, and absorbed into the Hindu pantheon. Yet his presence here shows, firstly, that this this religion was far from fro m the the ascetic ascetic ideals o f renunciation and world wo rld-tr -tran ansc scen ende denc ncee propa pro paga gated ted in the Upan Up anisa isads ds and also b y the renouncer traditions of Jainism and Buddhism, and, secondly, that the ‘fol ‘f olk k religion’ relig ion’ which wh ich he seems seems to represent was important im portant and had had official, officia l, cou rtly sanction. sanction. H ard y makes makes the the point that that the the cult cult of Muruka M urukan n was not unlike folk religion in the north, and represented a ‘very archaic and uni vers ve rsal ally ly India In dian n form fo rm o f popu po pula larr religi rel igion on o f n o n -A rya ry a n orig or igin in’’ .5 Inde In deed, ed, Parpola has argued argued that that Murukan was a deity o f the the Indus valley civiliz a tion whose name name is preserved preserved in the Indus valle y language.6 The possession cult of Murukan and a developed bardic tradition of love -poetry -po etry allowed for the the easy absorption of a bhakti ideology from the
I 30
ihclovv oj Visnu a transformation ol it into ,i pan uul.uly Tamil form. Krsna and tin- stories ol Vrndavana begin to move .south and infiltrate into the I .ink.ini litera ture from as ea rly as the third ce ntury c h . Krsna becomes M.iyon and his mythical landscape of Mathura becomes translated into a 1.1111iI landscape. The narrative traditions and cult o f K rsna becom e firm ly mi iied in the south, linking into patterns o f culture a lready established. B y i lie seventh c en tu ry c e bhakti, as an intense, em otional love f o r a persona l l ord, for both V isnu /K rsna and Siva, emb odied in a temple icon and expressed in narrative traditions, had d eve lope d in the south. Th is intense devotion w as expressed in the p oe try o f the Vaisnava A lvars and the Saiva N.iyanars, and was to influence later b h a k t i traditions both in the north .mil the south. T h eir son gs are still recited in Tam il hom es and in temples i in public occ asions such as wed din gs. fih a k ti traditions often reject institutionalized forms of religion, such ■is lormal temple w orsh ip, y og a and the olog y, in fav ou r o f an im m ediate experience o f the divine. D evotion al form s of religion, particularly those which develo ped in the south du ring the early m edie val period, tend to si i ess the dev ote e’s emotio nal ou tp ou rin g fo r his or he r deity and the sense id losing the limited, self-referential ego in an experience of self1i anscending love. This kind o f devotional religion wh ich em phasizes pe r sonal experience is often centred around a charismatic founder who is ilei fied b y the later tradition . Th e b h a k t i traditions w hich developed in the south, both V aisna va and Saiva, illustrate these general tendencies. i n m i l . i ik I
The Alvars and the Tamil Veda I'he A lva rs, ‘tho se imm ersed in go d’ , are po et-sa ints, revered in Vaisnava comm unities, wh o, betw een the sixth and ninth centuries, wan dered from temple to temple in south India singing the praises o f Visnu. T h ey helped to establish pilgrimage sites (particularly at the famous temple at Srirarigam), to convert m any pe ople o f all castes to the wo rship o f Visnu, and to help stem the growth of Buddhism and Jainism in the south. Tradition maintains that there were twelve Alvars,7 the most famous of w h om is N am m a lv ar an d one o f w h o m , A ntal, w as a w o m an .8 T h e A ]v ars came from the whole social spectrum of Tamil society. Nammalvar was from a low-caste farm ing fam ily (vellala), while his disciple, Maturakavi, was a B rahm an. A n tal w as the daughte r o f a B rahm an priest o f the te m ple o f Srivillippu ttur, him self one o f the Alv ars. She came to be regarded as an incarnation o f V isnu ’s w ife S ri, and legend has it that she wa s abso rbed into
1 31
An introduction to Ilitiduistn
Visnu’s icon in the fam ous Vaisnava temple nl Stirangam. The ot her Alvars were similarly regarded as incarnations ot Visnu or his deified regalia, the mace, conch, discus, kaustubha jewel, and ammonite stone (sdlagrdma). Th e songs of the Alva rs were collected in the tenth century b y Nathamuni, a theologian and a founding father of the Sri Vaisnava community, in a col lection known as the ‘Four Thousand Divine Compositions’ (Ndldyira Divyaprabandham or Prabandkam fo r short). This collection prov ed to be ve ry influential as a scriptural basis fo r the Sri Vaisnavas. It attracted a number of significant commentaries and had impact beyond the south in Bengali Vaisnavism. Within this collection the most famous and influen tial text is the Tiruvdymoli of Nammajvar (c. 880-930), which contains 1,000 verses of songs to Visnu - referred to by his Tamil name M ayon (‘the D ark O ne’) - as both K ing and Lover, thereby reflecting the old Tamil poetic genres of akam and pu ram. The Tiruvdymoli (‘the ten decads’) is regarded as equal to the Veda among Vaisnavas and is called the ‘Tamil Veda’ . Indeed the Tamil tradition of the Sri Vaisnavas is known as the ‘Dual Vedanta’ (ubhaya vedanta) because it reveres both the Sanskrit tradition fr om the Veda and the Tamil tradition of the Alvars. The Tamil Veda contains songs of emotional power, expressing the poet’s devotion to Visnu in many of the forms ia which he is installed in the temples of Tamilnadu. Th ese ‘poem s’ were intended to be sung and so are more akin to bardic compositions than to the more formal Sanskrit poetry (kavya ) of the court. In these poems Nammajvar conveys the idea of Visnu’s transcendence and formlessness and yet the Lord is also manifested in the form of icons in particular tem ples. The weeping, dancing and singing of the devotee, possessed by the god, is characteristic of emotional devotionalism, the devotion of longing (viraha bbaktt), so characteristic of the Alvars and later devotees o f KrsnaGo pala. This is a religion o f longing, ecstasy and service to a personal Lo rd who is beyond the cosmos and yet present in the world in specific loca tions in the sacred geogra phy of Tamilnadu. H e is installed in temples and devotion to him must be seen in the context of temple worship (pujd ) to these specific forms. Indeed the forms o f the Alvars themselves came to be treated as icons or manifestations of the Lord. Later Vaisnava traditions
The poetry and ecstatic bhakti of the Ajvars influenced later traditions and was adopted by devotees in different regions and at various temples
132
/ he love of Vi sun I In • mi}'lu )iu the land. The Hhagavata Parana, com pose d in Sans krit in the h i i i i I i , was inlluenced by Tamil d evo tio iu li sm , .is was Sansk rit devotional Iit ici i y and northern form s of Va isnavism , pa rtic ularly in Be ngal. I »evniionalism, espe cially in the south, em phasized the exp ressio n o f i mniions, rather than their control through yoga, and emphasized the IMmIy as a sacred locus o f the Lord in the w orld , in con trast to the gnos tic u n i o n of the body and senses as the prison of the soul, expounded by II ime systems such as Samkhya. The bhakti tradition placed emphasis on die body, the emotions and the embodied forms of the Lord which ■i mid be seen and w ors hip pe d, rath er than on the idea o f the so ul’s w or ld 11 .mscendence, cog nition , and the ab stract, transp erson al brahman. Some i il I lie most fervent bhakti po etry w as in Tamil, but there were also more ph ilosophica l texts in Sansk rit such as the Bh akti Siitra o f Sandilya (eighth lentury ce). Yet bhakti always retained an emotional dimension and |tl.uTil emphasis on affective exp erience ra ther than cogn itive un derstandIII); I'lie N ara da Bhakti Siitra (possibly twelfth century) says that Krsna should be worshipped in varying degrees of emotional attachment: from perception of the Lord’s majestic glory to experiencing the various emoi ions associated with the roles of Krsna’s slave, his companion, his parent .mil finally his wife.9 1 'he early m edieval p eriod saw the rise o f regional kingd om s and the popularization of brahmanical ritual and mythology which sometimes i .ime to be fused w ith regio nal and local tradition s, and expressed in ve r nacular languages. A num ber of traditions develop ed in Vaisnavism dur ing the medieval period. Many of these traditions are associated with a particular individual saint as their founder, though most of the earlier ones, as Fuller has observed, probably evolved gradually over a long period. C laim ing descent from a particular saint is, how ever, impo rtant in order to establish a pupillary succession and so validate the tradition’s authenticity. These orders also needed to locate themselves in a wider social context and needed the support of the laity and, particularly, the patronage of the kin g.10 W ithin Vaisnavism , fou r traditio ns o r sampraddyas are highlighted, based respectively on the teachings o f Ram anuja (c. 1 0 1 7 - 1 1 3 7 ) , the f amous Sri Vaisnava theologian; M adh va (thirteenth century), the dualist theologian; Vallabha (1 4 7 9 -15 3 1), the ‘pure non-dualist’; and Nim barka (twelfth century) wh o em phasizes total surrender to the guru. The histo r ical reality of the development of Vaisnavism is, however, more complex 133
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than this. The most important order in the souih, directly influenced by the Alvars, was that of the Sri Vaisnavas. This in turn inlluenced devotion to Krsna in Bengal, or Gaudiya Vaisnavism, and the cult of Vithoba or Vitthala in Maharashtra, as well as the orders, just mentioned, founded by the Vaisnava theologians and saints, Madhva, Nim barka and Vallabha. The term ‘sect’, ‘order’ or ‘tradition’ is a rough equivalent of the Sanskrit term sampraddya, which refers to a tradition focused on a deity, often regional in character, into which a disciple is initiated by a guru. Furthermore, each guru is seen to be within a line of gurus, a santana or parampard, originating with the founding father or po ssib ly the deity. The idea of pupillary succession is extremely important in all forms of Hinduism as this authenticates the tradition and teachings; disputes over succession, wh ich have sometimes been vehement, can be of deep religious concern, particularly in traditions which see the guru as the embodiment o f the divine, possessing the pow er to bestow the L o rd ’s grace on his devo tees. With initiation (dlksd) into the sampraddya the disciple undertakes to abide by the values of the tradition and community, he or she receives a new name and a mantra particularly sacred to that tradition. A sam praddya might demand celibacy and comprise only world-renouncers, or it might have a much wider social base, accepting householders of both, genders and, possibly, all castes including Untouchables. These sampradayas developed within the wider mainstream of brahmanical worship based on the Smrti texts, especially the Puranas. Smarta worship (based on smrti) was itself pervaded by forms and ideas derived from non-vedic revelation, the Tantras, but incorporated these forms in a respectable, vedic, way. Indeed the Vaisnava sampradayas generally located themselves within the context of Smarta wo rship , particu larly the Sri Vaisnava and Gaudiya Vaisnava traditions which are squarely in the ve dic, puranic tradition, yet which nevertheless have absorbed many ele ments from the non-vedic Tantras. A number of devotional attitudes to the personal absolute developed, often associated with different sampradayas. Th e relationship b etween the disciple and the Lord could be one o f servant to master, of parent to child, friend to friend, or lover to beloved. The Bengali Vaisnavas, for example, regarded the attitude of the lover to the beloved as the highest expression of devotion, while the sect of Tukaram view ed the devotional relationship as one of servant to master. However, what is significant here is that the relationship between the devotee and the Lor d is modelled on human rela13 4
The lo ve oj Visrin
I it >iisliips and that the Lo rd can lie pe rce ive d .mil a pproa ch ed in a variety ill w ays: the love of Go d takes many lorm s. While it is im portant to re mem ber llia t there is a strong elem en t o f p er i l m.il seeking and devotion within bhakti traditions, the forms that this devotion will take have been moulded by the devotee’s place within the -.in 1.11hierarchy, that is b y caste and gender. Eve n thoug h at an ideolog ical level most bhakti traditions have maintained that caste and gender are immaterial to devotion and final salvation, nevertheless some are more tolerant of non-discrimination on the grounds of caste and gender than others. The Sri Vaisnavas, for example, while not excluding lower castes ,md wo m en, restrict low er-ca ste access to their tem ple at Srirang am , w hile ni her sects such as the Raida sis are them selves low -caste. T he m ost im po rt.int Va isnava ord ers and cults are: - the Sri Vaisnavas located in Tamilnadu wh ose centre is the temple at Srirangam, for w hom the theology of Ra manuja is particularly important. - the G aud iya or Bengali Vaisnavas located mainly in Bengal, Orissa and Vrndavana. T hey revere the teachings of the Beng ali saint, Caitanya, and focus their devotion on Krsna and Radha. - the cult of Vithoba in Maharashtra, particu larly in the pilgrimage centre o f Pandharpur. The ir teachings are derived fro m the saints (sant) Jnanesvara, N amdev, Janabai etc. - the cult of Rama located mainly in the north-east at A yo dh ya and Ja nakpur and associated with an annual festival of RamlTla in which the Rdmdyana is performed. The ascetic Ramanandl order is devoted to Rama and Slta. - the northern Sant tradition; while not being strictly Vaisnava, worshipping a transcendent Lord bey ond qualities, this tradition nevertheless derives much of its teachings and names of God from Vaisnavism. Esp ecially venerated are Kablr and Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. T H E S RI V A I S N A V A T R A D I T I O N
The Sri Vaisnava tradition, which developed in Tamilnadu, inherited a dual visio n o f the universe: on the one hand, the northern San skrit tradi tion o f the Pancaratra and puranic wo rship o f Visnu, with its emphasis on the Lord as the transcendent cause and sustaining power of the cosmos, !35
A n in tro du ction to H in d u is m
and, on the other, the southern Tamil tradition ol longing devotion to a personal Lord installed within specific temple icons. The Sri Vaisnavas therefore revered sacred scriptures in Sanskrit, both the Vedas and the Pancaratra Agam as or Samhitas, and the Tamil songs of the Alvars. The Sri Vaisnavas also revered a line o f teachers (dcdrya) who functioned as the ologians and interpreters of the tradition and as hierarchs o f the order. The first o f these dcdryas, and the founder o f the Sri Vaisnavas, was Nathamu ni (tenth century c e ) who collected the songs o f the Alvars in his P r a b a n d h a m . While his emotional and aesthetic inspiration came from the Tamil poet-saints, Nathamuni’s main intellectual inheritance was the Sanskrit philosop hical tradition, particularly the Vedanta, and the theo lo gies of the B h a g a v a d G i t a, the Visnu Purdna and the Pancaratra Agamas. He is attributed with founding the Sri Vaisnava tradition and legitimated the tradition b y establishing a lineage with the Tamil Alva rs. N athamu ni is said to have gone on pilgrimage to Vrndavana in the north, the Vaisnava religious centre and mythological home of Krsna, where he received a vision of Visnu in the form Mannanar, the icon in his local temple in Tamilnadu. In the vision the god told him to return to his home town. He did so and became an administrator, firstly in the temple o f Mannanar and later in the Visnu temple at Srirarigam which became the centre of the Sri Vaisnava community. Nathamuni’s grandson, Yamun a, became the next Sri Vaisnava dcdrya, noted for his defence of the Pancaratra Agamas as having revelatory status and of the Pancaratra ritual as being equal to orthodox brahmanical rites.11 The most famous Sri Vaisnava leader, whose influence was to extend throughout Hinduism, was Ram anuja (c. 10 17 -1 13 7 ). H e did not directly meet Yam una, but became the recognized leader o f the community, de vel oping a Vaisnava theology and interpretation of the Vedanta tradition in the light of his theism, which became known as ‘qualified non-dualism’ (visistadvaita; see p. 243). Ramanu ja wrote in Sanskrit, but he was influ enced by the bhakti poetry of the Alvars. His favoured disciple, Pillan, wrote a commentary on Nammajvar’s Tiruvdymoli in a language which was a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil, manipravdla, thereby elevating the status o f the Tamil text, the first text in a Dravidian language to have c om mentary written on it. Piljan, who was a Sudra, implies here that caste is not an impediment to salvatio n.12 Salvation or liberation fo r the Sri Vaisnavas was conceived as transcend ing the cycle of reincarnation (samsdra ) and karma and going to Visnu’s
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ihvlovcof
V i s u h
In .ivcn (vaikuntha ) at death, where the soul is united with the Lord in a Invmg relationship, while yet maintaining its distinction. This state is .it hieved throug h attachment to the L ord and detachm ent from the w or ld , ni, more specifically, through the religious practice ( upasana ) o f devotion .mil service (seva ) to the Lord in one of his incarnations in temple icons [.utavatara). Th ere is also a path of total surren der ( prapatti ) in wh ich the ilcvotee gives himself up to the Lord who saves him through an act of unmerited divine grace (sarandgati ). In the form er there is some emph asis mi effort and human agency, in the latter the emphasis is entirely on the f,i .ice and agen cy o f the L or d. Ahout 200 years after Ram anuja ’s death, the Sri Vaisnava com m unity 11.itI split into sub-sects called the ‘northern culture’ ( vatakalai ) and the 'southern culture’ ( tenkalai). The vatakalai emphasized the Sanskrit ii i iptures and salvation thro ug h tradition al bhakti-yoga, that is dev otion io the temp le icon , wh ile the tenkalai emp hasized the Tamil scriptures and m11 render to the Lo rd b y his grace. Th ese tw o th eologies becam e kn ow n as i In- ‘ m on ke y’ and ‘cat’ schools respectively. In the ‘m on ke y’ sch ool, salva tion is achieved by both effort and grace; the devotee clings to God 1 11 rough his effort, wh ile the Lo rd saves him, as a ba by m on key clings to its mother as she m oves throu gh the trees. The ‘c at’ scho ol, on the other hand, emph asized the grace o f the L or d, claim ing that the devo tee is saved on ly I h rough grace, as a m other cat picks up her yo u ng and carries them w ith out any e ffort on their part. This distinction is brough t out in two und er standings of a passage in the Bhagavad Gita (18.66), the famous carama-sloka, wh ich reads ‘A ba nd on ing all law s seek shelter in me alone. I will sa ve yo u from all sins. D o not fear.’ T h e tenkalai understood this pas sage to mean that there were two distinct paths, traditional bhakti-yoga and the esoteric, superior, path o f surrend er (prapatti). O n the other hand, the vatakalai theologian, Vedantadesika (12 6 9 -13 0 7 ), m aintained that the verse refe rred to tw o gro ups o f p eople , th ose w h o are tw ice-born and lib erated through the performance of ritual devotion and those of lower castes w h o ca nnot perfo rm ritual dev otion in the temp les, and so are liber ated throu gh su rrender.13 The Sri Vaisnava community, consisting of Brahmans and non Brahmans, existed within the wider social context of Brahmans who adhered to the puranic worship of Visnu and other deities, namely the Smartas, and non-B rahm an castes wh o w orship ped and became possessed by local village deities. The Sri Vaisnavas encompass high-caste levels of 137
An intro duction to Hindu ism
Sanskrit learning and theological tradition, while at the same time having a wid e popular appeal even amongst lower castes. Yet while thedevotionalism of the A.lvars had been ecstatic, the devotion ot the Sri Vaisnavas was controlled, occurring in the context of formal temple ritual. This ecstatic dimension in bhakti traditions did not, however, die out with the Alvars but developed in northern Vaisnavism, particularly in Bengal. GAUDlYA VAISNAVISM
Devotio nal traditions focused on Krsna the Cow he rd developed in north ern India, and found articulation in Sanskrit devotional and poetic litera ture as well as in more popular devotional movements, particularly around Vrnda vana and in Bengal. The form of Vaisnavism wh ich grew in Bengal (Gaudiya) developed a theology which laid great emphasis on devotion and the love relationship between the devotee and Krsna. Although in Saivism a direct correspondence between the religious and the aesthetic had been perceived, the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition devel oped a theolog y in whic h the categories of aesthetic experience, described in classical poetry (kdvya ), came to be applied to devotional religious experience. By the early medieval period, there was a thriving tradition of courtly love poetry in Sanskrit, a poetry which was ornate and baroque, expressing prescribed emotions in a particular form. In the court of the Bengali King Laksmanasena (c. 1 179 -120 9) , Jayadev a, a poet under his patronage, composed a famous poem, the Gitagovinda, about the love of Krsna and Radha his mistress.14 Jay adeva is a high-class poet in the classi cal kdvya tradition, wh o used the formal conventions o f kdvya - the pre scribed vocabulary, the ornamental language and the stock metaphors - to express the love o f Radha for Krsna and, by implication, of the devotee for Krsna. As with courtly poetry generally, the theme of the poem is the union, separation and reunion of the lovers. While they meet secretly in the forest for their love-play, the lovers yet k no w that with the dawn they must be separated, a fact which causes great longing (viraha ) until their next meeting. This tradition of poetry focused on the love of Krsna and Radha continued, particularly with the Bengali poetry of Candldasa and the Mathili verses of Vidyapati (fourteenth/fifteenth century).15 Their poetry, written from the point o f view o f Radha, expressed her deep emo tional longing for Krsna, as the devotee longs for the Lord. Candldasa beautifully expresses the essential longing, characteristic of bhakti, when he describes Radh a hearing the sound o f Krsna’s flute. He writes:
138
/hr love oj Vistiu
le t us not talk of that fatal flute. It calls a woman away from her home and drags her by the hair to that Shyam |i.e. Krsna]. A devo ted wife forgets her spouse ’lb be drawn like a deer, thirsty and lust, liven the wisest ascetics lose their minds And the plants and trees delight in its sound. What then can a helpless, innocent girl do?16 I lowever, the figure w ho did m ost to p rom ote K rsna b h a k t i was l\Isnacaitanya or simply Caitanya (1486-1533), who is regarded as an incarnation of Krsna and Radha in one body. He generated a tradition which co ntinues to this day, and in the W est is m anifested as the H are K 1 sna movement. Caita ny a was bro ugh t up in a Vaisnava Brahm an fam ily w here he had a conventional Sanskrit education. In 15 08 he w ent to G a y a it> perform a mem orial rite for his deceased father. Th ere he had a co nv er sion experience induced by a south Indian renouncer who initiated him into the wo rship o f Krsna. H e returned to his home tow n o f Na vadv lpa (Nabadw ip) in Bengal where he began to worsh ip Krsna w ith a group o f devotees by singing or chanting his praises. H e began to exp erience ecstalic or possessed states of consciousness. In 1510 Caitanya took formal vows o f renuncia tion and m oved to the pilgrim age to w n o f P uri in O ris sa where K rsn a is w orsh ip p ed as L o rd Jagannatha in the fa m ous tem ple. I ach year, during his annual festival, the L o rd Jaga nn atha is parad ed ou t of 1 lie temple in a huge proc essiona l carriage. C aita ny a and his follo w ers would accom pany the carria ge, dancin g and singin g the Lo rd 's pra ise. ( laitanya spent the rem ainder of his life at Pu ri, worsh ippin g R adh a and Krsna, and frequ en tly going into ecstatic states.17 A lt h ou gh C ait anya w as not the founder o f an order in a fo rm al sense, by writing a commentary on the Brahma Sutra, he nevertheless firmly established G au diy a V aisnavism and determined its style and flavour. The central focus o f G au diya V aisnava devotion is the love between Radha and Krsna, a love wh ich is strong ly erotic, thou gh w ith an eroticism wh ich is regarded as transcendent and not worldly. The eroticism of Gaudiya dev otion is perhaps no t dissimilar to the ‘bride -m ysticism ’ (brautmystik ) of Christian mystical theology. Indeed, liberation for the Gaudiya Vaisnav as is the consta nt, ec static experience o f the div in e love-play (lild) between Rad ha and K rsna in a spiritual or perfected body. This erotic love and attraction between Rad ha and K rsna is ‘pure lo ve’ (prema ) as op po sed *39
An intro duction to Hin duism
to an impure worldly love pervaded hy selfish desire (kama). 1x Krsna is the supreme L ord (not simply an avatara of Visnu) who creates, maintains and destroys the cosmos over and over again. Radha is Krsna’s ‘refreshing power’ through which the cosmos is manifested, and although they are united, they are yet distinct. Indeed the relationship between the Lord as the ‘holder of power’ (saktimat ) and Radha as his power (sakti), and between the devotee and the Lord, is characterized as ‘inconceivable difference-in-identity’ (acintya-bhedabheda ). This relationship is manifested in the world in the love between Radh a and Krsna, and an erotic devotional theology was developed by six of Caitanya’s disciples, known as the Gosvamins, focused on this relation ship. This theology may have been influenced by a tantric Vaisnava sect, the Sahajiyas, who maintained that ritual sexual union could overcome duality and reflect the divine union o f Krsna and Radha, a tradition which developed into the low-caste, antinomian and ecstatic Bauls.19 The Gaudlya Vaisnava tradition, however, rejects these practices as a misun derstanding of a profound spirituality. The works of the Gosvamins are, indeed, highly orthodox in the sense that they accept the authority of the Veda, but they include within the catego ry o f revelation the Puranas, espe cially the Bhdg avata Purana. . Although much of the Bhdgavata Purana contains reference to Krsn a’s love-play with the gopis, it does not mention by name Radha who only appears with the Gitagovinda and in later literature and visual art. In Vaisnava m yth ology , she is an older married woman and the love between her and Krsna is conv ention ally adulterous. Radh a leaves a shadow o f her self by her husband’s side and goes out at night, pulled by the sound of Krsna’s flute, to meet him. This is theologically important and relates to a distinction in Sanskrit poetics between love-in-un ion (svakiyd , ‘one’s own wom an’) associated with marriage, and lo ve-in-separation (parakiyd , ‘another’s wo m an’ ) associated with adulterous love. The fo rmer is charac terized by lust (kama) and union, the latter by pu re love (prema) and long ing (viraha). In loving Krsna, Radha disobeys wifely duty (stridharma) (see p. 65), for the love of God transcends social obligation. The love between Radha and Krsna is love-in-separation characterized by longing - as the soul’s longing fo r the Lo rd is the highest human spirituality. Rupagosvam in wrote two important texts in Sanskrit on Krsna d evo tion, the Ujjvala-mlamani (‘The Splendid Blue Jewel’) and the Bhaktirasdmrta-sindhu (‘The Ocean of the Immortal Nectar of Devotion’20).
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The love o] VisriH
I In c .icstlictic catego ries wh ich had been de velo pe d in San skrit poetics writ' applied to diffe rent kinds ol devotio nal em otion ami experience. At m illin g to Sanskrit poetics, em otion (bhava) can he transformed into ,h " . i helic experience (rasa): fo r example, grief can he transform ed into the rupmcncc of tragedy, humour into comedy, and sexual desire into the i Hpmcncc of the erotic. Similarly, sexual desire can be transformed into n ni ic or ‘sweet’ love (srngara- or madhura-bhakti) for Krsna: the sublimi.ii ion of h uman s exua l lov e into d ivine, o r transcend ent, ero tic love . Th is passionate all-consuming love for Krsna is called, by Rupagosvamin, i.i^itiuga-bhakti, in contrast to devotion in which the devotee follows 11tics and injunctions (vidhi) laid do w n in scripture, called vaidhi-bhakti. In raganuga-bhakti K rsna can be as close and intimate with the dev otee as ,i lover, whereas in v a i d h i - b h a k t i Krsna is perceived as a powerful and majestic king. Bo th paths lead to salvation, thou gh passion ate dev otio n is higher than the mo re form al appro ach and leads direc tly to Krsna . I he main practices of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas to achieve their soteriological goals were the ritual practices of repeating the names of Krsna (n,irna japa), singing hymns (kirtana), worship of temple icons or the Inlasi plant sacred to Visnu , and, on the path o f raganuga-bhakti, visualiz ing Krsna’s acts, particularly the love-play of Krsna and the gopis (lila \niarana). A fter initiation the Krsna devotee w ou ld perform wo rship in ilie morning, afternoon and evening. This would involve repetition of k i sna’s names, such as the famo us H are K rsn a m antra - bare krsna, hare krsna, krsna krsna, hare hare, hare rdm a, hare rdm a, rdma rdm a, hare hare lollowed by libations for the ancestors and making offerings.21 The name of the deity embodies his essence, so by repeating it the devotee is invok ing his presence. A t death the devotee w ill serve K rsna in a perfected spiritual body (siddha-deha) in one o f the L o rd ’s spiritual abodes.22 O T H E R K R S N A S E C TS
( )ther Vaisnava sampradayas similarly maintained an element of erotic mysticism. Vallabha (1 4 7 9 -1 5 3 1) founded a tradition centred on the w o r ship of Krsna the Cowherd after receiving a vision of Krsna. He wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutra and Bhdgavata Purana and con structed a theology which is a fusion of monistic and devotional ideas, calling his w a y the ‘path o f grace’ (pustimarga) and his doctrine ‘pure n on dualism’ (suddhadvaita). Vallabha identifies Krsna with the absolute (brahman) and maintains that the world is not illusory ( m d y d ) but is real 1 41
An introduction to Hinduism
and is identified with Krsna. I.ibcraiion occurs, with Krsna’s grace, through following a path comprising a series ol stages until the devotee, as in Gaudiya Vaisnavism, becomes part of his play (lila ), though unlike Gaudiya Vaisnavism the Pusti Marga is non-renunciatory, comprising only householders. While maintaining an erotic dimension, the main focus of Pusti M arga devotion is on Krsna as a child and the devotee as the parent. The Pusti Marga is particularly large in western India, its main temple being at Nathdvara in Rajasthan.23 An important order developed from the Pusti Marga in the nineteenth century, the Swaminarayan move ment, whose followers take refuge in the sect’s founder Swaminarayan, rather than in Krsna.24 Several other orders focus their attention on the erotic pastimes of Krsna. The Radhavallabhis founded by Harivamsa (1585) concentrate their worship on Radha, while an offshoot, the male sect of the Sakhi Bhavas, who still exist, dress in women’s clothing and adopt female man nerisms in order to emulate the gopis. Lastly, the Visnusvamis should be mentioned, founded in the twelfth century, famous for a Sanskrit text by one o f their devotees, Bilvamarigala: the Krsnakdrndmrta (‘The Nectar of the Acts o f Krsna’).25 THE CULT OF VITHOBA
Vaisnava devotionalism spread northwards and local deities, associated with the great Hindu gods, became the focus o f devotional movements. In Maharashtra, situated by the eastern seaboard within the northern Sanskritic cultural sphere yet strongly influenced b y the Dravidian, were a number of Vaisnava devotional movements which can broadly be described as Sant traditions. The term sant means ‘ good man’ and refers to saints from all castes who lived between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. They taught a path to liberation through devotion to the Lo rd ’s name (nam ), devotion to one’s guru, and the devotional meetings or satsang (‘the comm unity in truth’). The Vaisnava Sants taught devotion to the Lord as a personal being installed in temples, with qualities (saguna ), though another Sant tradition based in the Punjab, from which Sikhism developed, taught devotion to an abstract Lord beyond qualities (;nirguna ). In Maharashtra, within the general Sant category, several devotional traditions were established. The Mahanubhava Sampradaya, founded by Chakradhar Swami in the thirteenth century, worshipped only Krsna, 142
the to w of Vi anu
wh ile the m ost im porta nt sect, the V a rk a n I’an th (‘T h e P ilgrim s’ p ath ’), »■■is len tred on the w or sh ip o f Vitho ba w ho se m ain temp le, the focu s o f an important pilgrim age, is at Panelharpur in southern M aharashtra. A d evo inMi.il literature in Marathi, a Sanskritic language, developed in the writ ings ol a number of Marathi saints, notably Jnanesvara (thirteenth m i t i i r y ) , N a m d e v (c . 1 2 7 0 - 1 3 5 0 ) , T u k a r a m (c. 1 5 6 8 - 1 6 5 0 ) , J a n ab a i , I k 11.1th (c. 15 33 -9 9 ) and Ra m das ( 16 0 8 -8 1), all except Ram das b elonging in 1 he Varkari tradition.26 By the seventeenth century the Varkaris were 1 lie most im portant sect in M aha rashtra and the fam ou s K ing Sivaji, the om ge o f the M ugh al A uran gze b, is said to have met Tuk aram and been initiated b y Ram das. Jnanesvara is som etim es consid ere d to be the fo u n d er o f th e V a rk ari I'.mill, though w orsh ip o f Vithoba predates him. H e w rote a M arathi com 1 un itar y on the B h a g a v a d G it a , the Jn d n e s v a ri,27 wh ich show s influences 1 >1 apart from Vaisnava b h a k t i — A d v a ita V edanta and the N a th s (see p. ijH). I lis text exto ls de vo tion to the L o rd and to his guru w h o , says In.mcsvara, rescued him from the ocean of worldly existence. For In.mesvara liberation is merging with the Lord, though the individual devotee can never comprehend his immensity. Namdev is not only 1 evcred as a saint in M aha rashtra bu t in the P un jab as we ll, and som e o f his ve rses have fo u n d th eir w a y in to th e sacre d scripture o f the Sik hs, th e A d i ( iranth. Tukaram is perhaps the most revered saint in Maharashtra, who st 1 essed the lov e o f the L o rd as the path to libera tion and the necessity o f 1 lie dualism be tween the devotee and the L o rd in ord er for lov e to de velop. As with m an y other Sants , Tu karam advocated sin gin g th e L o r d ’s praise .mil a m editational devo tionalism in wh ich one attains liberation b y sitting 111 m editation and repeating the L o rd ’s nam e (n d m ) - a teaching w hich is I'omm on to the Sant traditions o f the north as we ll. In contrast to G au dly a Vais navism , erotic im a gery is not used b y th e M ah arash tria n Sants and the pure dev otion ( p r e m a - b h a k t i ) w hic h the y a dvocate represents the Lo rd as .1 lov ing p aren t rathe r than a lover. W hile fo r h ig h ly o rth o p rax Sm arta H in d u s, lo w castes and w o m e n are excluded from spiritual liberation and forms of worship, for the Maharashtran Sants caste and gender are not obstacles. Although Jnan esvara w as a B rah m an , m an y o th er M ah arash tran Sants w e re lo w caste: Namdev was a tailor and Tukaram was a Sudra. There were also a number of women saints in the Varkari tradition, though generally the images of women in the poetry of Eknath and Tukaram are negative, *4 3
An introd uction to Hindu ism
presenting woman as the tempiross and disiiactor Irom the male’s path ol detachment from the world. Notable women Sants are Jn.inesvara's sister Muktabai, who was an initiate of Nath Yoga, and Janabai, the maid servant of Namdev, whose verses to Vithoba sometimes address him as a woman, Vithabai. That Janabai could address Vithoba as a woman demonstrates the ambiguity of the god. While he is generally male, he is sometimes female and referred to as a mother. While he is generally associated with Visnu or Krsna, he is sometimes associated with Siva, thereby blurring the distinc tion between Vaisnava and Saiva. Indeed the cult of Vithoba goes beyond sectarian divisions and the two pilgrimages each year to his temple at Pandharpur attract a wide cross-section of the community. Up to 6,000 people are attracted to the more important of the pilgrimages during asadha (June-July), though caste divisions during the pilgrimage are not entirely eradicated.28 THE SANT TRADITION
While the Vaisnava Sant tradition developed in Maharashtra, focused on devotion to a saguna form of Visnu or Krsna, further north, and especially in the Punjab, another Sant tradition developed which advocated devotion to a nirguna Lord as the ineffable absolute without shape or form, the source and support of the cosmos, by whose grace beings are liberated from the cycle of birth and death. This northern Sant tradition drew on Vaisnava bhakti, Sufism and Nath Yoga, whose terminologies can be found within Sant literature, but rejected external ritual, emphasizing, rather, the personal experience of a transcendent Lo rd, b eyond form. Like the Maharashtrian Sants, these northern Sants comp osed devotional songs in vernacular languages, namely forms of Hindi and Punjabi. Among the most famous Sants are Kabir, Nan ak, Mlrabai, Raidas and Dadu. M any o f these were low-caste, such as Raidas who was an untouchable leather work er (chamar )29 and K ab ir who was a weaver.30 How eve r, not all were of low status: Na nak was a ‘warrior’ (khatri) and Mlra bai a princess. Som e of the Sants spawned traditions which continue to the present, most notable, of course, being Sikhism from Guru Nanak, but there are also Raidasis, Dadup anthis and Kabirpanthis. The teachings o f the Sants are preserved in collections o f po etry in their respective languages and in the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, the A di Granth. The songs of these Sants would have circulated around north
i 44
r
The lov e o) Visnu
Im11,i <1111 ing the sixteenth century, being sung .11 various temples by wanhauls, as would probably have happened in the south with the on 1!•', 1 ill lie Alva rs and N a y an ar s.T h e m ost p op ula r and influential o f the Vniu was Kablr. Kabir (13 9 8 -14 4 8 ) was born into a weaver fam ily in |li nines who had converted to Islam one or two generations prior to his I n11 11 11 ad ¡lion maintains that his guru w as the Vaisna va R am anan da, w ho w ii . 111 1 he Ramanuja lineage, th ough if Ram ananda was born in 1299, as mu lex! suggests, it is high ly un likely that Kab ir, bo rn almost 100 years Inn, could have met him. He was influenced by Namdev and by the (Mirny of the Saiva woman saint, Lalla (fourteenth century). Kabir’s Iit mi 1 y is qu ite distinctive. O ne o f its strik ing features is his u se o f stark inures in ‘ upside-dow n language’ (ultavdmsi), such as ‘the co w is suck ing ii 1 lie calf’s teat’, used to shock his audience out of complacency and to . 1 h i vcy the idea that the Lo rd is ineffable and b eyond everyday lo gic . H e is 1 111 u al o f caste, main tainin g that it is irre levan t to libera tion , and h igh ly I 111 it a I o f H ind u and M uslim relig iou s pra ctices and do ctrin es current at 1111 lime. He writes: ‘The Hindu says Ram is the beloved, the Turk says II .1111111. Th en the y kill ea ch othe r.’31 While there are, o f course, indiv id ual diffe re nces betw een the n orthern Yinis, there are com m on them es in th eir teachings. Th e so ul is trapped in 1 1it- world governed b y D eath or Tim e (k a l ) and illusio n (mdyd ), and must 1 ri 11111 to the Lo rd thro ug h the m editative de vo tion o f repeating his name {n,nn simran ) and by the grace of the guru. Through this repetition the 11111 1 will perceive the ligh t o f G o d , hear the div in e ‘u nstru ck sound’ 1 ,1 nah ata sabda ) o f the Lo rd , and rise up throug h the hierarchical cosm os, I lack to its true abode (sach-khand ). Th e names fo r the Lo rd used b y the Sants are generally Vaisnava, such as Ram, Madhav, Krsna and Hari, 1 hough sometimes the more Saiva names of Natha or Umapati might be used and even the term A llah is som etimes re ferred to. THE CULT OF RAMA
While the term R am is used b y the Sants to re fe r to the transcendent L o rd , in the Rama cults the term refers to the Lord as he was incarnated in King Kama, the he ro o f the Rdmdyana, king of Ayo dh ya. D evotion to Rama, as well as his m onkey com m ander H anum an, becam e w id esp read in north ern India during the medieval period. C entres o f Ram a w orship are found in Janakpur, the legendary birthplace of Sita, and Ayodhya in Andra I'radesh, R am a’s legen dary birthplace and capital of his kingdom . Indeed 145
An introduction to Hinduism
the cult of Ràma continues to have .serious consequences in contemporary India as the demolition in 1992 ol the Ikbji Masjid in Ayodhya demon strates. One sect of Râma worship predominates in Ayodhya, the Ràm ànandï order, wh o are also found in Nepal near the Bihar border.32 The Ràmànandis, whose main centre is at Ayodhya, were founded by Ràmànanda (fifteenth century?), with possible connections with the Sri Vaisnava tradition. Th eir literature is expressed in the medium of H indi, though no writing o f Ràmànanda himself is preserved. According to the tradition, he advocated devotion to Râma and Sïtâ, a devotion which, in contrast to Gaudiya Vaisnavism, is devoid of eroticism. In this style of bhakti the devotee’s attitude is as a servant to the master, rather than as a lover to the beloved, hence Hanumàn is hailed as the exemplum of devo tional service to his master Râma. While there are no writings of Ràmànanda himself, the theology of the sect is based on the writings of Tulsidas (15 32 -16 23 ) w ho composed the Râmacaritmânasa (‘The Sacred Lake of Rama’s Deeds’33), a version of a version o f Vàlmïki’s Râmâyana, composed in Hindi rather than the sacred language of Sanskrit. The Brahmans o f Varanasi, where the text was composed, are said to have been shocked by the compositio n of such a text in a vernacular language. It was tested by being placed in the Siva temple fo r one night, with the Vedas and Purànas placed on top of it. In the morning, Tulsidàs’ text was on top of them all, whereby its authority was legitimized.34 In this text and other compositions by Tulsidàs, Râma is the supreme Lord and other deities, while being eulogized, are subordinated to him. The Ràmànandï order is predominantly ascetic and renunciatory. In the past, all castes, including Untouchables, were initiated into it and at initia tion all previous caste duties were abandoned and service to Râma insti tuted in their place. In contemporary practice, however, caste restrictions are imposed in Ràmànandï temples and only Brahmans can be priests. Originally both sexes were initiated, though now there are few nuns remaining in the order. The most popular festival associated with Râma is Ràmlïlà which occurs throughout north India, particularly at Ramnagar near Varanasi. During this festival Tulsidàs’ Ramacaritmânasa is recited by priests of the Maharàja o f Varanasi, along with the recitation of dramatic dialogues. The story o f Râma and Sïtà is enacted from his birth, through the major events of his life - his marriage, banishment, war against Ràvana - to his tri umphant return and the establishing of Ràm a’s kingdom.35
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I' hv love of Vi i UH
Summary In 1 1ns survey of the Vaisnava and associated traditions we can see a |n hi css in which an exuberan t and em otional form o f dev od on alism , orig inal in the sou th, beco m es associated w ith a m ore sob er traditio n o f i. *|»«-* 11(iI d ev otio n, or ig in atin g in th e no rth . T h e p atte rns o f b h a k t i that h i ire here - such as the association o f local o r regional deities w ith the ili 11 it's ol the great Sans kritic tradition , and the estab lishing o f ord ers by i.unis are also follow ed by dev otional m ovem ents within Saivism. /Milimigh Saivism has tended more towards the ideals of yoga and ■ I-1,n lied asceticism rather than tow ard s em otion al devo do na lism , there 111 v i nevertheless been stro ng de vo tion al tenden cies wi thin it, pa rticu larly in iIn- south. To the development of this similarly vast tradition we now mi II.
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7 Sa iva and tantr ic religion
Within the de veloping Hin du traditions we can see the process of Brahmanization o r Sanskritization, where by the great brahmanical tradi tion of vedic social values, vedic ritual forms and Sanskrit learning absorbs local popu lar traditions of ritual and ideology. We have seen this, fo r exam ple, in the cult of Vithobâ who becomes identified with Visnu and of Murukan who becomes identified with Skanda. Regional traditions expressed in vernacular languages, local deities, local mythologies, ritual forms and possession cults become universalized through S anskritization. The poetry and emotional devotion of the Àlvârs becomes a pan-south Asian ph enomenon (i.e. the tradition becomes universalized) when their poetry is absorbed within the brahmanical ideolo gy o f the £rí Vaisnavas (i.e. it becomes Sanskritized). Th eo log y is thus built up from a level of regional ritual and possession cults and in turn influences those cults. Regio nal ritual and possession form the basis o r substratum o f brahmanical theology. A second im portant process can also be identified, nam ely the transfor mations of the ascetic ideal: on the one hand its assimilation into the higher-caste householder’s ideology, as in the Bhagavad Gitâ, on the other its assimilation into the low-caste possession cults of the cremation ground. Between these extremes we have the highly revered, orthodox renouncers such as the Dasanâmis. These manifestations of the ascetic ideal may be linked to the historical question regarding the vedic or non vedic origins o f renunciation, which we have discussed. Yet, whatever its origins, there have been, and still are, ambivalent attitudes towards renouncers amongst householders.1 At the one extreme is the highly
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SiiiiVii a nil tan tric religion
levered, orthodox renouncer, the ideal o) many higli-caste male house holders, yet at the othe r extrem e there is the I eared u no rtho do x ascetic, openly courting pollution and living in the cremation ground. This .imbivalent attitude is clearly dem onstrated in the religions o f Siva w h o is himself a god o f paradox : bo th the ideal ho us eh old er and the ideal ascetic. Saivism refers to the traditions which follow the teachings of Siva (\ivasasana) and which focus on the deity Siva, or sometimes his consort .11 id power, Sakti. Processes occur in Saivism w h ich are also found in V.iisnavism : the absorption b y brahm anical o rth o p rax y o f non-vedic ritii.il forms and ideas and the identification o f local deities with p an -H ind u ones. In this chapter we w ill trace the rise o f Siva and the traditions centred on his wo rship. Lik e Vaisnavism, Saivism has absorbe d within it a variety ol ritual practices and theologies, though it has tended more towards .isceticism or the ascetic ideal, even in its householder forms, than has Vaisnavism . In deed, the ge niu s o f Saiv ism , or its inspiratio n, is to be found in the renouncer traditions, in particular the renouncer traditions of the i remation ground. The Saiva ideals of asceticism contrast with those of V.iisnavism w h ic h is str ongly associa te d w ith th e house hold er, w ith li fe in i he world and with the ide olo gy o f kingship. In other wo rds, Va isnavism has tended to be m ore vedic and o rtho pr ax than Saivism. The pictu re is, of co urse, m ore co m ple x than this and Saivism did have toyal pa tronage, bu t gen erally ascetic, and sometim es ecstatic, tendencies predom inated. W hile one needs to be cautious o f generalizations, it migh t be argued that Ruth Benedict’s distinction, derived from Nietzsche, between Apollonian cultures in which order, control and law are imporlant and D ion ysia n cultures wh ich revere the ‘ec stasy of the dance’, can be ■ipplied to Vaisnavism and Saivism at an ide olog ical level.2 A ltho ug h there .ire undoubtedly ecstatic and antinomian dimensions in devotion to Krsna, the ideologies of Vaisnavism have tended towards vedic ortho praxy and the maintaining o f vedic values. Saivism, w hile also h avin g so m e orthoprax tendencies, unreservedly accepted the non-vedic revelation of the Tantras and draws its inspiration from the polluting cremationground asceticism. Some of the ecstatic tendencies of Saivism are em bod ied in the m yth olog y of the deity Siva himself. T h e m y t h o f D a k sa
An important m yth in the corpu s o f Saiva narratives is the myth o f Daksa. ’ This s to ry is to ld in the M ahabharata and there are a num ber o f variants in
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An introduction to H indu ism
the Puranas. Daksa, the soil ol Hr.ihm.i (in the Vcd.i his mother is Aditi), is the father of Satl. Sati becomes the wile ol Siva who is attracted to her because o f the po wer of her austerities as well as her beauty, but, during the wedding, tension builds up between Daksa and his unconventional sonin-law. Siva and Satl retire to Mount Kailasa and Daksa prepares a horse sacrifice to which he invites all the gods except Siva. While Siva is not bothered by the snub, Sati is distraught at the insult and goes in anger to her father’s sacrifice where she is rebuffed by Daksa. In her rage she com mits suicide by burning herself through her yogic power. Upon hearing the news o f his wife’s death, Siva is enraged and attacks Da ksa’s sacrifice in the terrifying form o f Virabhadra with his hordes of demonic beings. A ll is destroyed and Daksa is killed, beheaded by Siva, thereby himself becom ing the sacrificial victim. Siva then resuscitates the sacrifice as well as Daksa, in some versions with a goat’s head, and the sacrifice proceeds smo othly w ith Siva included.3 In some, po ssib ly later, versions, Siva finds the body of Sati and, in a state of grief and frenzy, picks up her corpse and dances wildly with it across the universe (see p. 192 for what happens next). While this myth is multi-levelled and can be understood in a variety of ways, perhaps an obviou s reading is that Siva was originally excluded from the vedic sacrifice; that he is a deity perhaps originally from outside the vedic pantheon, but who came to be accepted as one of the gods. Indeed, in destroying the sacrifice with fire, Siva is paradoxically fulfilling it and so ensuring that the sacrifice is his. We can, in fact, see in this myth an analogue for the developm ent of Saivism. As Siva is outside the vedic fold, so are the traditions associated with him, and as Siva makes his presence known so forcefully and is, of necessity, absorbed within the vedic pantheon, so Saiva traditions are incorporated into vedic ideology and practice. The image of Siva
Siva is a god of ambiguity and paradox. He has been described by Wendy Donig er O ’Flaherty as the ‘erotic ascetic’, the ithyphallic and prom iscu ous god, who is also the celibate yogin, practising austerities in the Himalayas. H e is the three-eyed god who has burned Desire with his third eye, who dances in the cremation ground and yet who seduces the sages’ wives in the pine forest. He is the wild matted-haired ascetic, yet he is also the ideal family man and householder with a wife, Parvati, and their two
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S’l i m i ,i n d l untric religion »mi', ( i.mesa and Skan da . I le co nta ins all op po site s w iilim linn and is even linn i lin'd as hall male and hall female ( a r d b a n a n s v a r a ).4 Siva is some thin %described as the god o f des truc tion , part of the ‘ I lindu trin ity ’ with Mi.111n 1.1 as crea tor and Visn u as sustaine r, but to r his dev ote es he is the •!ii|Mi'ini' Lord who creates, maintains and destroys the cosmos. He con• i tIs his true natu re fro m hum anity , ye t, at the sam e time, can rev ea l his iiiii iii i' as an act of grace. While there is a very strong sense of Siva’s tran.■ i n
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An introduction to Hinduism Ma rl y w o r s h i p o t K i u l r a
> Puranic Saivism
Non-Puranic Saivism
I Mantram arga
Atim drga I---------- L —
I
Pásupata áaivism
Kápalika
Saiva
I Lákula
Saivism
Siddhánta
/ x
I ?
Kaula
Trika
Kálámukha Tamil popu lar worship of Siva
Liñgayat
Saiva Siddhanta Aghc
Figur e 6 The development of the Saiva traditions
praised, to go away and strike down someone else instead! In the Taittiriya Samhitd of the black Yajur Veda and in the Vdjasaneyi Samhitd of the white,6 is a hymn to the ‘hundred names of Rudra’ (satarudriya ) which further develops the ambiguous nature of the god, speaking of his auspi cious form in contrast to his malignant form. He is the god of wild, haunted places, who lives apart from human communities who are terri fied b y his feral habitations. Yet, as in the Rg Veda, he is also the healer, the Lord of medicinal herbs, and Pasupati, the Lord of cattle. This hymn is an early example of enumerating the divine names of a deity in order to make contact with him/her. By the first few centuries c E, the recitation of the Satarudriya is claimed, in the Já bala Upanisad, for instance, to lead to immortality,7 and the Satarudriya is often referred to in the Siva Purdna. The hymn is still recited in Saiva temples today.8 Rudra is a peripheral deity in the vedic pantheon and the descriptions o f him as living away from the Aryan communities may indicate that his ori gins are non-vedic, yet, nevertheless, the fact that he is included in these hymns shows that he is still, however peripherally, part o f the vedic pan-
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ilicnn. Hy the fifth or fourth centuries in: i , however, Kudra-Siva lias risen in ,i more prominent position and in the Svclasvatara Upanisad has bn nine identified with the supreme absolute, the efficient and material i ¡him' of the cosmos. T h e S v e t a s v a t a r a U p a n is a d I lie Svctasvatara Upanisad, the teachings o f the sage with the white m ule (vrrtasvatara), was composed around the fifth or fourth centuries b c e , . Inonologically after the Brhadaranyaka and Ch ando gya Upanisads, but Iirlore the B h a g a v a d G i ta . T his text is ve ry im portant for understanding iIn- development of Hindu religious thought, for it marks a transition I mmween the simp ler m onism o f the earlier U pa nisa ds and the theism o f the I nci Saiva and Vaisnava traditions. Th e text begins by asking a series of questions about the origin of the universe and the origin of humanity: w Ii.u is the ca use o f all this ? W ho ru les over o u r vario us conditio ns o f pleaMiie and pain? T he text then attempts to answ er these queries by p ro p o s ing a theology which elevates Rudra to the status of supreme being, the l o rd (Isa) w h o is transcendent yet also has cosm olo gic al functions, as does Siva in later traditions. F o r the Svetdsvatara’ . - the Lo rd is the cause of the cosmos. - the Lo rd is a ‘ magician’ (mayin ) who produces the world through his power (sakti) and sustains it. - the Lo rd is transcendent, dwelling bey ond the cosmos, yet also immanent, dwelling in the hearts of all beings. There are parallels here with the slightly later Vaisnava theologies of the M abdnardyana U panis ad and the B h a g a v a d G i t a , and like those texts there seems to be some distinction between the Lord and the individual soul and, altho ug h the term b h e d a b h e d a is not used, the Svetdsvatara pre sents a difference -in-identity theo logy. The soul, which is withou t gender, jo urneys fro m b o d y to b o d y accordin g to its karm a until libera ted through the efforts of yoga and by the grace (prasdda ) of the Lo rd with whom it is united . In deed the term b h a k t i in the context of one having highest devotion for God and for one’s guru as God, occurs here for the first time.9 However, as this is the last stanza of the text it is probably a later interpolation, for, while the seeds of b h a k t i are here, they have not yet d evelo ped.
1 53
An introduction to / linduism The form ation o f Saivism While R udra -S iv a is eulogized in the Rg Veda and identified with a theistic absolu te in the Svetasvatara Upanisad, there are other early references to Siva and Saiva worship. In the grammarian Pataiijali’s ‘Great Com mentary’ ( M ahdbhdsya ) on Panini’s famous Sanskrit grammar (second century b c e ) , he describes a devotee o f Siva, a Siva-bhdgavata, as clad in animal skins and carr yin g an iron lance as the sym bo l o f his god, perhaps a precu rsor of Siva's trident. Coin s o f Gree k, Saka and Parthian kings who ruled north India (200 b c e - 10 0 c e ) have been found bearing a bull, a symbol of Siva, and there are references to early Saiva ascetics in the M ahdbhdrata However, it is with the Puranas that we see Saivism develop as a m ajor strand o f Hin du religiosity. . 1 0
PURANIC SAIVISM
D urin g the Gu pta dyn asty (c. 3 20-5 00 c E ) puranic religion developed and expanded, and the stories of the Puranas spread rapidly, eventually throughout the subcontinent, through the singers or reciters, and indeed composers, of the narratives. This expansion was accompanied by the developm ent of brahmanical forms of worsh ip, the Smarta or paurd nik a, based on those texts. With the decline of the Guptas, while this Smarta worship is well established, there occu rs an increase o f esoteric cults, ma ny o f which, or elements of which, become absorbed into brahmanical forms o f worship. The Saiva Puranas, the most important of which are the Liriga, and the Siva Puranas, contain the usual puranic subjects o f genealogies, the duties o f different castes, Dharm a Sastra material and astrology, as we ll as exc lu sively Saiva elements such as the installing of lihgas in temples, descrip tions of the various form s o f Siva, and the nature o f Siva, wh ose bo dy is the cosm os, as transcendent and immanent. Ap art fro m material on the formal worship o f Siva, Pu ranas such as the Lihga also contain information on asceticism and yoga, particularly the yoga of the Pasupatas, the earliest Saiva sect of which w e know . The P uranas classify Saivas into four groups, nam ely the Pasupata, Laku llsa, Saiva and Kapa lika, wh ile Ram anuja in his com mentary on the Brahma-Sutra lists the Saivas, Pasup atas, Kapalins and Ka lam ukh as.1 1 A ll these groups are generally outside the vedic o r puranic system. Indeed all the Puranas were com posed w ithin the sphere of vedic or Smarta orthodoxy and texts such as the Kurma-Purdna condemn the 154
i n i'l l iitnl htnlrii religion
I'.isup.ila sy ste m ,1" favouring instead Ilie .mi lioi it y ol lli v tiatarudriya and i I.He Upanisad containing Saiva maieri.il, I hi* Atbarvasiras Upanisad. Although the Puranas arc pervaded by non-o rtliodox Saiva material, they nevertheless distance themselves from these non-orthodox or tantric sysimis which po sed a threat to vedic pu rity and dharma. A Hrah man householder who worshipped Siva by perform ing a pm .mic ptija, m aking offerings by using vedic mantras to orthod ox forms hI iva, was not an initiate into a specific Saiva sect, but worshipped Siva wii liin the general context o f vedic domestic rites and Smarta adherence to v.imasrama-dharma. In his commentary on the Brahma Sutra (the same i ci sc as commented on by Ramanuja) Sankara refers to Mahesvaras wh o w< Hship Siva, probably meaning those wh o fo llow thepaurdnika form of worship. As Alexis Sanderson has described, such a brahmanical Saiva wiihin the Smarta dom ain, a Mahesvara, can be contrasted w ith an initiate, technically known as a Saiva, who has unde rgone an initiation (diksa ) and wlio fo llows the teachings of Siva (sivasasana) contained in Saiva scrip tures (sdstra).13 While the Saiva initiate hoped for liberation (moksa ), the S.iiva househ older or M ahesvara w ou ld at death be taken to Siva’s heaven (Siva-loka) at the top o f the world egg (where vaikuntha wo uld be for the I hi ranic Vaisnava). The Saiva initiates (as opposed to the lay, pau rdn ika devotees) can be lurther classified within a more general distinction, again clearly expli cated by Alexis Sanderson, between on the one hand the ‘Outer Path’ (atimdrga) and on the other the ‘Path of M antras’ ( mantramarga ).14 These are two main branches described in Saiva texts, the Agamas or Tantras. The former, open to ascetics only, is a path exclusively for the purpose of salvation from samsara, while the latter, open to ascetics and household ers, is a path wh ich leads to eventual salvation, but also to the attainment of supernatural or magical powers (siddhi ) and pleasure (bhoga ) in higher worlds along the way. The path of the atimdrga might also be rendered as the ‘highe r path ’ - the path which has transcended the orthod ox system o f four stages o f life (dsrama), going even higher than the orthodox stage of renunciation according to the Atim argins. PASUPATA SAIVISM
Within the high er path (atimdrga ) two important orders existed, the Pasupata and a sub-branch, the Lak ula, part of which was the Kalam ukha order. The Pasupatas are the oldest Saiva sect, probably from the second
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century c k , referred to in the Ntir,iniy,i section of the Mahabharata , lfi though no ancient texts belonging to them have survived. The only Pâsupata scripture which we have is the comparatively late, though pretenth-century, Pasupata Sütra with a commentary by Kaundinya.16 According to tradition, this text is the revelation of Rudra who became the possibly historical sage, Lakulïsa, by entering and reanimating the corpse of a Brahman in a cremation ground. This form is also regarded as the last of Siva ’s incarnations (avatâra) mentioned in the Kurma PuranaP In this form he gave out the teachings contained in the Pâsupata Sütra. The Pasupata ascetic had to be a Brahman male, who had undergone the high-caste initiation ceremony. Although he could become a Pâsupata from any stage of life, his high-caste status was still important in his reli gious practice in so far as he should not speak with low castes nor with women. Indeed one passage of Kaundinya’s commentary on the Pasupata Sütra18 speaks in misogynistic terms of women as the temptresses of the ascetic, who creates madness in him, and whose sexuality cannot be con trolled by scripture. The Pâsupata ascetic had to be a Brahman and had to be celibate (brahmacarya), though he was nevertheless disapproved o f and rebuked by some vedic, Smàrta texts such as the Kürma-PurânaP The Pâs'upatas seem to have been very much on the edges of orthodox house holder society, going beyond the four stages (dsrama) to a fifth, ‘perfected stage’ (siddha dsrama) and spurning vedic householder injunctions on purity and family life. Yet, unlike many other Saiva groups, the Pâsupata never completely abandoned or explicitly rejected vedic values, wishing to see his tradition as in some sense the culmination and fulfilment of vedic life rather than its rejection. Liberation from karma and rebirth occurred at death: a liberation which was conceptualized as acquiring the qualities of omniscience and omnipotence. Alth ough ultimately this liberation was through the grace of Rudra, some effort on the part of the Pâs'upata was needed. This took the form o f a vow or observance (vrata) which involved a spiritual practice (sddbana) in three developmental stages. The first involved the ascetic living by a Saiva temple, covering himself in ashes while avoiding bathing in water, and worshipping the deity through dancing and singing, meditation on five mantras sacred to Siva, laughter and temple circumambulation. The second stage was to leave the temple, remove external signs of his cultic affiliation, and behave in public places in anti-social ways such as acting as if deranged, making lewd ges tures to young women, snoring loudly while not being asleep, and even
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ii ini^ as il cripp led. 'I'llis be ha vio ur w as in invite the abu se o f pa sse rs-b y iimii d rr that their merit o r goo d karm a w ou ld be trans ferred to the ascetic, wlull- his bad karma w ould be transferred to th ose w ho had abused him. I lie third and final stage w as to w ith dr aw to a rem ote p lace, such as a cave in deserted house, in order to meditate upon the five sacred mantras and mi Ihr syllab le ow . W hen this med itation cou ld be achieved effo rtlessly, he Im.illy w ithdrew to a cremation ground w here he lived from wh ateve r he i mild find and ultima tely died gaining u nion w ith R ud ra (rudrasayuIV>i m ) . 20 S U B - D I V I S I O N S O F T H E P A SU P AT A S
lliere were various sub-divisions among the Pasupatas, the most impor..... I of which was the Laku la. Th ese w ere ascetics wh o accepted the docilines of the Pasupata Sutra, though they were more extreme in their ■iMTtic practices and rejection or transcendence of vedic injunctions than i lie othe r Pasu patas. San derson quo tes on e su rvivin g m anu script o f the u-i i which d escribes them as wa nd erin g, ca rry ing a sku ll-top pe d sta ff (k-batvanga), with a skull begging bowl, a garland of human bone, and i overed in ashes, with matted hair or shaven head in imitation of their I ord R ud ra.21 H ere the ascetic takes his imitation o f R u d ra to the extreme, as one wh o has taken the ‘great vo w ’ (mahavrata) required of someone for killing a Brahman. The Dharma Sastras state that one who Ii.is killed a Brahm an should p erform penance b y living ou tside vedic societ y, in a hut in a forest, c arry ing the sku ll o f the pe rson slain like a flag, fo r a I wel ve -ye ar pe riod , in ord er to expiate the crim e.22 Th is idea is further reinforced b y a m yth told in a num ber of variants in I he Puranas. T he essential sto ry is that the go d B rah m a feels passion fo r his daughter and attempts to sleep with her. As a consequence, Siva, in the form o f the terrible Bh airava, cuts off B rah m a’s fifth head with his thumb nail. The h ead does not leave B ha irava ’s hand, so he wan ders a round va ri ous pilgrimage sites (tirtba ) until he reaches Va ranasi wh ere the sku ll falls at the Kap alam oca na (‘freeing the sku ll’) tlrtha; Siva is then freed from the sin of Brahm anicide. A s the wa nde rer w ith the Brah m an’s (i.e. Bra hm a’s) skull, Siva is also kn ow n as the beggar Bhik saya tana and the skull-bearer Kapalin. The re are a num ber o f versions o f this my th ,23 but the main point here is that the narrative serves to reinfo rce the iden tification o f the La ku la ascetic with the sku ll-carrying form o f Siva. Part of the Laku la order were the Kalamu khas w ho flourished from the 1 57
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ninth to thirteenth centuries and about whom we gain information mainly from south Indian epigraphic evidence. They were prevalent in Karnataka where they were superseded by the Lingayat sect in the thirteenth century. The Kâlâmukhas had their own temples and, in spite of strongly hetero dox elements in their practices, such as worshipping Rudra in a pot filled with alchohol and covering themselves in the ashes of corpses rather than cow-dung, they regarded themselves as being within the vedic fold. In contrast to the higher path (atimdrga) which was thought to lead straight to liberation, the path of mantras ( mantramârga ) leads to libera tion via the acquisition of magical powers and experiencing pleasure in higher worlds for initiates. Within this general category are a number of traditions and ritual systems which, Sanderson has shown, can be divided into two broad categories, the Saiva Siddhânta and non-Siddhânta systems which incorporate a number of other groups and texts.24 All of these tra ditions within the path of mantras revered as authoritative revelation a vast body of texts known as the Agamas and Tantras, texts which were regarded as heterodox by the strictly orthodox vedic tradition. Even so, many o f these texts came to infiltrate orthodoxy and came to be revered as authoritative even within Smârta circles. The traditions of the path of mantras are known as the ‘tantric traditions’, for their revelation com prises the Saiva tantric texts. Before going on to examine the traditions of the mantramârga, we need first to make some general points about the tantric revelation, the Agamas and Tantras. The tantric revelation
The Tantras cannot be dated before 600 c e at the very earliest, most were probably composed from the eighth century onwards and by the tenth century a vast body of Sanskrit texts had developed, generally called ‘Tantra’, though the term ‘Agama’ is also used and ‘Samhitâ’ for Vaisnava texts of the Pâncaràtra (see p. 122). There is a large corpus of Buddhist Tantras which form the textual basis of the Vajrayâna which, though little remains in Sanskrit, are preserved in Tibetan translations. The religious culture of the Tantras is essentially Hindu and the Buddhist tantric mater ial can be shown to have been derived from Saiva sources.25 There is a sub stantial body o f Jain Tantras and there was a corpus of Tantras to the Sun (Sürya) in the Saura tradition, none of which have survived. The tantric texts are regarded as revelation, superior to the Veda, by the traditions which revere them: the Saiva Tantras are thought to have been revealed by
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Siv.t, the Vaisnava Tantras by Vis mi anil I In- S.iku 'I'.ultras l>y the Goddess, ind transmitted to the human world via a series ol intermediate sages. While being rejected by vedic o rth od o xy, the fo llow ers o f th eTantr as, the I .uilrikas , included the ortho do x system within their ow n as a low er level nl attainment and unde rstanding. R eve lation w as, in some sense, pro gre s sive, the Tantrikas placing their own systems at the top of a hierarchy. I'.miric Saiva group s w ou ld regard the ir revelation s as the esoteric culm iii.it ion of Vedic o rthod oxy , wh ile Bu dd hist V ajrayanists w ou ld sim ilarly i c|;ard their Tantras as the culmination o f M ah aya na B ud dh ism . The main geographical areas fo r the early m edieval explosion o f tantric ielision were Kashmir and Nepal, areas in which important manuscripts li.ive been preserved. Bengal and Assam were also important and the Tantras penetrated to the far south. Indeed , the tantric ord ers and practices i >1 which the texts speak we re p ro b ab ly p an -Ind ian b y the tenth or eleventh i enturies. M an y Tantras have been translate d into Tam il and are used as the basis for liturgies in south In dian temp les. Tantrism has been so perva sive i hat all of H ind uism after the eleventh century, perhaps w ith the excep tion of the vedic Srauta tradition, is influenced by it. All forms of Saiva, Vaisnava and Smarta re ligio n, even th ose form s w h ich wante d to distance I hemselves from Ta ntrism, abso rbed elements derived from the Tantras. Th e Tantras gen erally take the form of a dialogue b etween Siva and the Goddess (Devi, Parvati, Uma). The Goddess, as the disciple, asks the questions and Siva, as the master, answers. In the Vaisnava Tantras (i.e. I’ancaratra Sam hitas) the dialogu e is betw een the Lo rd (Bhaga van) and the Go ddess Sri or Laksm i. In some Tantras focused on the Godd ess - those of the Sakta tradition - it is Siva wh o does the asking and the G od de ss w ho replies. This narrative structure reflects the importance and centrality of the guru in Tantrism. As the Goddess receives wisdom from Siva, or in some cases vice versa, so the disciple receives w isdo m from his or h er mas ter. The mean ings o f the Tantras are often ob scure and it must be rem em bered that they w ere comp iled within the context o f a living, o ral tradition and teachings given by the guru. The Tantras often regard themselves as secret, to be revealed by the guru only with the appropriate initiation whic h w ipes aw ay the p o w er o f past actions.26 W hile the Tantras are n otorious fo r th eir ero tic and antinom ia n j elements - ritual sex and the co nsu m ption o f alcohol and meat offere d to ' ferociou s deities - m ost of their contents are o f a more sobe r nature and they contain material on a wide range of topics. Although they are 159
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primarily ritual texts, the Tantras also explain tlu* formation of mantras, hierarchical cosmologies, initiations, the evolution of sound from subtle to gross levels, yoga, doctrine, appropriate behaviour and temple architec ture. Traditionally the Tantras should cover four topics or stand on four ‘feet’ or ‘supports’ (pada), namely doctrine (vidya - or jnana-pada), ritual (,kriya-pada), yoga (yoga-pada ) and discipline or correct behaviour < (cdrya-pada ), though only exceptionally do the texts follo w this scheme.27 While there is divergence over doctrine and each tantric system regards itself as superior to the others, there are nevertheless common elements, particularly in respect of spiritual practice (sadhana ) and ritual: practice cuts across doctrinal distinctions.28 The most common features contained in the Tantras are the following, though some of these are not unique to the Tantras and not all Tantras contain all these elements: - the Tantras are concerned with practice or sadhana, which involves initiation (diksa), ritual and yoga. - there is a common ritual structure in the Tantras, though variation with regard to deities and mantras. This structure can be summarized as the purification of the body through its symbolic destruction; the creation of a divine body/self through mantra; internal worship or visualization; followed by external worship or pujd. This process * involves the use of hand gestures (mudra), mantra repetition and the construction of sacred diagrams (yantra, mandala). - the Tantras present elaborate hierarchical cosmologies which absorb the cosmic hierarchies of earlier traditions. For example the highest world of the Saiva Siddhanta is transcended by further worlds within Kashmir Saiva traditions.
- the body is divine and contains the cosmic hierarchy within it, and the cosmic polarity of the male deity and his consort, the female energy. The male deity is often Siva and his Sakti is the Goddess Kundalini. Their union within the body is the symbolic expression of liberation. - the Tantras are concerned with the attaining of magical powers (,siddhi) and the experience of bliss in higher worlds ( bhoga) as part of the practitioner’s spiritual journey, which is also conceptualized, and experienced, as a journey of the Kundalini through the body. - the Tantras are concerned with possession (aves'a) and exorcism. Although these are common features, the tantric orders tended to be sectarian, regarding their own revelations as going beyond those of other
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i i ,ni il ions. T h e Tan tras ther eb y reca pitu late a general Ieat u re o f H ind u trailmons: they incorporate previous religious tonus and texts within them ,ii ,i lower level. The social basis of the Tantras I here is ve ry little kn ow n abou t the social status o f the Tantrikas. The I .mtras seem to have orig inated am ong ascetic grou ps livin g in crem ation Kit Hinds , w h o w ere p ro b a b ly not o f brahm anic al o rig in, but w h o w ere .ilmve low-caste groups. Such cremation-ground asceticism goes back a lung way in Indian religion and the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism lu-ars witness to it.29 These ascetics are beyond the pale of vedic ortho dox y: the ascetic ideal is here exp ressed at a low er social level. B y the early medieval period, groups of ecstatic ascetics would imitate their terrible deities such as Bhairava and the goddess K ill , w ho m th ey wo uld appease with non-v egeta rian offerings, alc ohol and sexual substa nces. C o n tro lle d possession wo u ld have been a feature of their practice, in w hic h the practilioner would invite the deity to possess him (àvesa mâm, ‘enter me’) but would attem pt to con tr ol the d eity and so gain pow er. Texts such as the N etra Tantra bear witness to cults of possession and exorcism.30 These ascetic groups w ou ld have been supported b y low castes who lived b y the cremation ground s. Th e ideologies of these groups began to influence not on ly pop ular reli gion, but also brah man ical circles, as we see in eleven th-cen tury K ashm ir. 1lere the pop ular cult of the deity Sv acchan da-Bh airava, a form o f Siva, is influenced b y tantric asceticism, bu t mo re sign ificantly so are the higher social levels o f the Brahm ans and the court. Indeed the learned Brah m an elite, of wh om the Saiva theologian Abh inavag upta was a part, began to transform extreme tantric ide olo gy into a m ore respectable religion o f the higher castes. Tan tric influen ce wa s a real social con cern and its infiltration into courtly circles in Kashmir was caricatured by dramatists such as Ksemendra.31 However, after the twelfth century, Tantrism rapidly declined in northern and central India, largely due to Muslim onslaughts and the establishing of the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). Kashmir was plundered by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1014, though remained free from Muslim domination until the twelfth century. In the south, beyond the region o f M uslim dom ination, Tantrism has survived and been absorbed into the social matrix. The Tantras are used as temple texts and are quite respectable in Tamilnadu and Kerala where ‘Tantris’ are high-caste
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