“HINDUISM” AND THE HISTORY OF “RELIGION”:
PROTESTANT PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THE CRITIQUE OF
THE CONCEPT OF HINDUISM
Will Sweetman
The claim that Hinduism is not a religion, or not a single religion, is so often
repeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefs
and practices of the Hindus, were it not typically ignored immediately after having
been stated. The arguments for this claim in the work of several representative
scholars are examined in order to show that they depend, implicitly or explicitly,
upon a notion of religion which is too much influenced by Christian conceptions of
what a religion is, a conception which, if it has not already been discarded by
scholars of religion, certainly ought to be. Even where such Christian models are
explicitly disavowed, the claim that Hinduism is not a religion can be shown to
depend upon a particular religious conception of the nature of the world and our
possible knowledge of it, which scholars of religion cannot share.
Two claims which I take to have been established by recent work on
the history of the concept “religion” provide the starting point for my
argument here. The first is that, while the concept emerged from a
culture which was still shaped by its Christian history, nevertheless
the establishment of the modern sense of the term was the result of “a
process of extracting the word from its Christian overtones” (Bossy
1982: 12).1 The second is that the concept, like all abstractions, implies a categorization of phenomena which is imposed upon rather
than emergent from them: “religion” is not a natural kind. It has
been suggested that the rejection by some scholars of the second
claim is evidence that the term, and the discipline for which it serves
as the central organizing concept, has not yet fully completed the
process of disengagement from Christian theological presuppositions.
Thus Timothy Fitzgerald writes:
Religion is really the basis of a modern form of theology, which I will
call liberal ecumenical theology, but some attempt has been made to
1
Bossy refers not only to the term “religion” but also “society”, noting that “the
history of the word ‘society’ … is practically identical with the history of the word
‘religion’”, and several other terms including “state, property, philosophy, charity,
communion, conversation” (1982: 12).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
15, 329-353
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disguise this fact by claiming that religion is a natural and/or a supernatural reality in the nature of things that all human individuals have a
capacity for, regardless of their cultural context. This attempt to disguise the theological essence of the category and to present it as though
it were a unique human reality irreducible to either theology or sociology suggests that it possesses some ideological function … that is not
fully acknowledged. (Fitzgerald 2000a: 4-5)2
Fitzgerald gives a number of arguments for this claim and for his
further proposal that scholars who do not have a theological agenda
ought to prefer terms which offer greater analytical precision than
“religion”. One such argument considers several works by religionists
and anthropologists on Hinduism in order to show that “religion”
fails to pick out anything that can be analytically separated from
other institutionalized aspects of Indian culture, that “the category
religion does not effectively demarcate any institutions located in a
putatively non-religious domain such as Indian society”, in short,
that “Hinduism is not a ‘religion’” (Fitzgerald 2000a: chap. 7; see
also Fitzgerald 1990 and 2000b). The claim is significant and is found
in the work of several other scholars.3 While agreeing with much of
Fitzgerald’s analysis—specifically that religion is not “in the nature of
things” or a reality irreducible by other forms of analysis, and that
the study of religion continues to be too much influenced by unacknowledged Christian theological presuppositions—I will argue that
it is precisely the claim that Hinduism is not a religion which reveals
lingering Christian and theological influence even in the works of
2
Elsewhere Fitzgerald writes: “What I am arguing is that theology and what is at
present called religious studies ought to be two logically separate levels of intellectual
activity, but that in actual fact the latter is conceptually and institutionally dominated
by the former. This domination is disguised because it is embedded in our a priori
central analytical category, and abandoning that category altogether appears, even
to scholars who are themselves critically aware of the legacy of phenomenology, to be
throwing the baby out with the bathwater” (1997: 97). In more general terms, others
have suggested that the claim that religion is a sui generis phenomenon is associated
with an approach to the study of religion which tends to assume the truth of religion.
So Russell McCutcheon notes that “one aspect of the discourse on sui generis religion” is a “theoretically undefended preference for sympathetic and descriptive insiders’ accounts” and that the “the dominant yet uncritical and theoretically undefendable conception of religion as sui generis effectively precludes other more sociopolitically and historically sensitive methods and theories” (1997: 122-123). Likewise,
the belief that religion, because irreducible to anything else, is best explained “on its
own terms” is described by Samuel Preus as “the last bastion of theology” (1987: xvi).
3
See, in addition to those discussed below, Smith 1987: 34; Hardy 1990: 145;
Oberoi 1994: 17; Dalmia and Stietencron 1995: 20; Larson 1995: 31; Frykenberg
1997: 82.
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
331
those who explicitly disclaim such influence. Such influence exists on
two levels, the first relatively superficial, the other more profound.
The first level will be demonstrated in three authors—R. N.
Dandekar, Heinrich von Stietencron, and S. N. Balagangadhara—
who implicitly or explicitly model the concept of religion on Christianity. This model is disclaimed by two further authors, Frits Staal
and Timothy Fitzgerald, but their arguments against the description
of Hinduism as a religion, I will argue, nevertheless depend upon a
Protestant Christian epistemology.
1. Religion as implicitly modeled upon Christianity
In his chapter on Hinduism for the Handbook for the History of Religions,
a quasi-official document for the International Association for the
History of Religions, R. N. Dandekar argues that
Hinduism can hardly be called a religion at all in the popularly understood sense of the term. Unlike most religions, Hinduism does not
regard the concept of god as being central to it. Hinduism is not a
system of theology—it does not make any dogmatic affirmation regarding the nature of god ... . Similarly, Hinduism does not venerate any
particular person as its sole prophet or as its founder. It does not also
recognize any particular book as its absolutely authoritative scripture.
Further, Hinduism does not insist on any particular religious practice as
being obligatory, nor does it accept any doctrine as its dogma. Hinduism can also not be identified with a specific moral code. Hinduism, as
a religion, does not convey any definite or unitary idea. There is no
dogma or practice which can be said to be either universal or essential
to Hinduism as a whole. Indeed, those who call themselves Hindus may
not necessarily have much in common as regards faith or worship.
What is essential for one section of the Hindu community may not be
necessarily so for another. And, yet, Hinduism has persisted through
centuries as a distinct religious entity. (Dandekar 1971: 237)
The centrality of the concept of god, the veneration of a particular
person as the founder of a religion, and the recognition of a particular book as an absolutely authoritative scripture are characteristic of
certain religions (Christianity and Islam in particular). Dandekar extrapolates from these characteristics and implicitly defines the “popularly understood sense of the term” religion as including these three
characteristics. Had he explicitly defined “religion” in this way, it is
likely that his definition would have been attacked as being too narrow and, in particular, as too much influenced by particular religions,
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especially certain forms of Christianity. Nevertheless, what
Dandekar’s comments amount to is the claim that Hinduism is not
like Christianity, or perhaps that Hinduism is not the same sort of
religion that Christianity is. This claim is unobjectionable, but is
nevertheless quite different from the claim that Hinduism is not a
religion. Dandekar refers only to the “popularly understood sense of
the term [religion]” and this allows him to conclude that “Hinduism
has persisted through centuries as a distinct religious entity”. Other
writers, including S. N. Balagangadhara—who, significantly, misreads Dandekar as referring to the “properly understood sense” of
religion (1994: 15)—draw more radical conclusions from structurally
similar arguments.
One such is Heinrich von Stietencron, who argues that Hinduism
refers not to one religion but, rather, should be taken “to denote a
socio-cultural unit or civilization which contains a plurality of distinct
religions” (1997: 33). The idea that Hinduism is a religion derives, he
suggests, from a fundamental misunderstanding of the term
“Hindu”, which was originally a Persian term denoting “Indians in
general” (Stietencron 1997: 33). Following the permanent settlement
of Muslims in India, Persian authors began to use the term to refer to
Indians other than Muslims and identified several different religions
among the Hindus. However, Stietencron argues that
when Europeans started to use the term Hindoo, they applied it to the
non-Muslim masses of India without those scholarly differentiations.
Most people failed to realise that the term “Hindu” corresponded exactly to their own word “Indian” which is derived, like the name “India”, from the same Indus river, the indos of the Greek. The Hindu, they
knew, was distinct from the Muslim, the Jew, the Christian, the Parsee
and the Jain who were all present in the Indian coastal area known to
western trade. Therefore they took the term “Hindu” to designate the
follower of a particular Indian religion. This was a fundamental misunderstanding of the term. And from Hindu the term “Hinduism” was
derived by way of abstraction, denoting an imagined religion of the vast
majority of the population—something that had never existed as a “religion” (in the Western sense) in the consciousness of the Indian people
themselves. (Stietencron1997: 33-34, emphasis added)4
4
This brief history of European usage of “Hindu” or “Hindoo” and “Hinduism”
is vastly oversimplified and represents Stietencron’s attempt to reconstruct what
might have happened rather than being based on examination of the relevant texts.
A more detailed, but still inadequate, account of the same process is given by
Stietencron in two other articles (1988, 1995). John Marshall, in India from 1668 to
1677 knew that “the name Hindoo” was primarily a geographical, not a religious
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
333
Given that, as several writers have recently shown, the modern
sense of “religion” as a reified entity in which other people are involved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth century,
it would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present in
the consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in the
West.5 Like Dandekar, Stietencron does not make explicit here what
he means by “the Western sense” of religion.6 We can gain some
idea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on which
Hinduism is said to fail to be a religion. Hinduism fails to be a
religion for Stietencron because “[t]here is hardly a single important
teaching in ‘Hinduism’ which can be shown to be valid for all Hindus, much less a comprehensive set of teachings” (1997: 36). Here
Stietencron perpetuates the idea, which he attributes to Christians,
that doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion: because
Hinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity, it is not a religion.
If this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism “never
existed as a ‘religion’ (in the Western sense)”, then what his claim
amounts to is that Hinduism is not, or is not like, Christianity. This
concept (Marshall 1927: 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that “the correct derivation (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768” (1997: 50). Accounts of
Hinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least as
sophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groups
within Hinduism. The same may not have been true for travelers’ tales, but it is
hardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persian
scholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim, al-Masd“, al-Idr“s“ and Shahrastˆn“).
In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality of
religions among Hindus, while at the start of the eighteenth century Bartholomäus
Ziegenbalg noted that the Indians “have forged many different religions” noting
that, in addition to the two main religions ¥aivism and Vai§Èavism, the Jains and the
Buddhists were regarded as separate, heterodox religious groups. For a more detailed
account of these authors and critique of Stietencron’s discussion of them see
Sweetman (2001). Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencron’s oversimplification of the
history of this term, noting that he “quite blithely jumps from the sixth century B.C.
to the nineteenth century A.D. with virtually no discussion whatever of the intervening uses of the term ‘Hindu’ either by foreigners or native Indians” (Lorenzen 1999:
635).
5
This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have developed independently of Western influence, as Michael Pye has suggested in his discussion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992: 27-28;
see also Pye 2003). And, indeed, there is evidence of a reified understanding of
religion in India in some circumstances. See O’Connell 1973; Wagle 1997; Lorenzen
1999; Sharma 2002.
6
Although he does write that “the term religion … can only be applied to corporately shared coherent systems of world explanation and values” (Stietencron 1997: 45,
original emphasis).
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much is not to be contested.7 It does not follow that because Hinduism is not like Christianity, it is not a religion, unless religion be
defined on an explicitly Christian model. Stietencron in fact comes
close to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes that
“[i]f we accept Judaism, Christianity and Islam as ‘religion’ … we
cannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different ‘religions’ existing side by side within ‘Hinduism’” (1997: 41). He goes on
to propose that we should describe Vedic religion, Advaita Vedˆnta,
Vai§Èavism, ¥aivism, and ¥aktism (among others) as independent
religions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism. 8 Once
again, the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta, Vai§Èavism, or
¥aivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christianity.
[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scriptures
recognized by all its members, each worships the same god as the
highest deity, (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest principle, or recognizes a particular pantheon). Each of the literate Hindu
religions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensive
theological literature, each knows its great saints, its major reformers,
and the founders of sects. (Stietencron 1997: 44)
Stietencron admits: “No doubt, some of the Hindu religions are
closely related to one another” but insists that, like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, “they are different religions”. That which establishes
difference in apparently similar forms of religion is “the authoritative
religious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider community
… . Difference between religions is, therefore, a result of decisive
variance in the authoritative traditions or belief systems” (Stietencron
1997: 41-42). Again, we may see here the influence of a Protestant
Christian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious communities.
Stietencron’s proposal raises three questions of identity and authority: Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetuates authoritative religious tradition? Who decides when variance
becomes “decisive”? Who arbitrates what is and what is not “authoritative tradition”? The difficulty in answering these questions reveals
the arbitrary nature of Stietencron’s willingness to describe
7
Although it is also arguable that, despite some claims to the contrary, historically
Christianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity.
8
An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single, polycentric Hinduism
has been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994, 1996).
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
335
Vai§Èavism, but not Hinduism, as a religion. All Stietencron is able
to say is that a “certain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectarian differentiation in doctrine and practice. Yet there are limits, unseen thresholds. Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsion
and, if there are enough followers, to forming a new religious unit”
(1997: 42). This is not to say that it is never appropriate to consider
Vai§Èavism, ¥aivism, and ¥aktism as separate religions, merely that it
is not the case that they, in contrast to Hinduism, “really” are separate religions. In another article in which he argues for conceiving the
several forms of Hinduism as independent religions, Stietencron
states that
[n]one of these Hindu religions—except perhaps for monastic Advaita
Vedˆnta—developed an all-India institutional body invested with the
power to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scriptures. Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effectively banned. Authority was never vested in a central organization
comparable to the Roman church. (Stietencron 1995: 71)
Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutes
“authoritative religious tradition”, and what constitutes “decisive
variance”. Again, however, Hinduism appears not to be a religion
because it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity.
2. Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity
The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued most
vehemently and at greatest length by S. N. Balagangadhara (1994).
For Balagangadhara, the “Hinduism” discussed by European scholars is “an imaginary entity” (1994: 116, 298), a creation of European
scholars, as are the other world religions supposed to have emerged
from India:
The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism. By this, I do not
imply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into being—this claim, after all, is a standard text-book trivium—but that the
Europeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism. (Balagangadhara 1994: 138)
Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and several
versions of his thesis. The strongest is that not only is Hinduism not
a religion, but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religion:
“no matter what the facts are, there could simply be no ‘religion’ in
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India” (Balagangadhara 1994: 394). His argument for this claim depends on his definition of a religion as “an explanatorily intelligible
account of the Cosmos and itself” and he concludes that “Indian
traditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of the
origin of the world cannot properly be raised there” (1994: 384, 398).
His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be considered
briefly below; however, in his other arguments for a weaker version
of his thesis, Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued is
implicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not a
religion, and it is therefore this part of his work that I will consider
here.
Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus:
Consider just what is being asked of us. The Hindus, the AmericanIndians, and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack the
following: (i) creeds, (ii) beliefs in God; (iii) scriptures; (iv) churches.
Despite this, these traditions are not only ‘religions’, but are also distinguishable from each other as religious traditions. (Balagangadhara
1994: 22-23)
He argues, however, that precisely these properties are “what makes
Judaism, Christianity and Islam into religions”, for if “we bracket
away creeds, beliefs in God and prophets, existence of scriptures and
churches from Judaism, Christianity and Islam … we could not even
tell the difference between these traditions, let alone distinguish them
from Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else. We would get an
amorphous whole that could not even be called a religion” (Balagangadhara 1994: 23-24). Balagangadhara sums up his argument in
the following dilemma:
Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions
(Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to be religions. But if one accepts this, the
threat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all. For some
reason or another, other cultures are said to have religions too. However, the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion are
precisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to be
religions. That is to say, if the Semitic religions are what religions are other
cultures do not have religions. If other cultures have religions, then the
Semitic religions are not religions. The inconsistency lies in insisting
that both statements are true. (Balagangadhara 1994: 24-25, emphasis
added)
The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that “the
Semitic religions are what religions are”; that is, rather than merely
being examples of religion, they are “exemplary instances, i.e. prototypical
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
337
examples of the category religion” (Balagangadhara 1994: 301, original
emphasis).
Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplary
instances by arguing that when “investigating that which is designated by the term ‘religion’” we ought to start with cultures and
languages where the term already exists, because “to pick out entities
as prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and languages where the term ‘religion’ itself does not exist is to take an
epistemic decision. That is, one already assumes beforehand that
objects from other cultures instantiate the term as well. Such a decision is not justifiable at this stage” (1994: 304-305), i.e., at the start of
an investigation into that to which the term “religion” refers. Although the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency in
the West, it emerged against the background of a growing detachment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianity’s uncontested self-description (see Bossy 1982: 12; Preus 1987: xiv).9 This
important gloss is missing in Balagangadhara’s argument. The academic study of the religions is not, in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar
(discussing Balagangadhara), “condemned to be Christian”
(Dhareshwar 1996: 130).10
Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam may
generate problems, Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicality
to Christianity: “Whether Judaism and Islam are religions or not, at
the least, our term picks out Christianity as one. When we use the
category ‘religion’, we minimally refer to Christianity” (Balagangadhara 1994: 305). If one denies this, and argues that “Christianity is
not an exemplary instance of ‘religion’, then we have no other examples of religion” (Balagangadhara 1994: 307). Balagangadhara’s argument, then, has the following form:
First premise:
Christianity is prototypically what religion is.
Second premise: Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the
relevant properties of Christianity.
Conclusion:
Hinduism is not a religion.
Balagangadhara’s second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypical instances of religion is that “[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as a
religion” (1994: 305). As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown, each has
also denied the appropriateness of being so described.
10
In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996: 140) and David Loy (1996: 151152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence of
Christianity on modern European thought.
9
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The first premise, as Balagangadhara expresses it, is problematic, or
at least ambiguous. However, the argument is only valid if he means
something like the set of properties of Christianity is identical with
the set of properties of (a) religion. I have argued that this argument
is implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religion
because it lacks a founder, a single authoritative text, or some other
specified characteristic. The concept of religion invoked in these arguments is plainly too narrow, and too much influenced by Christianity. If such a concept has not already been abandoned by the
academic study of religions—and reasons can be given for thinking
that the process of doing so has started, even if it is not complete—
then it certainly ought to be.11
Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that “because some
properties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditions
elsewhere (like, say, in ‘Hinduism’ or ‘Buddhism’), the latter cannot
possibly be religions”. This position is justified, he writes, “only if one
is able to show that the properties of Christianity which one has
identified are also the properties of religion” (Balagangadhara 1994:
309). His first premise must be making a claim like this in order for
his argument to be valid. But the section of his book in which this
statement appears is entitled “Thou shalt resist temptation…” and
Balagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristics
he has been discussing (creeds, beliefs, scriptures, churches) are the
relevant properties of Christianity, i.e., those that make it a religion
and the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a religion. He states: “I am not defining explicitly what the concept ‘religion’ means; I am simply identifying an example, a prototypical example of the category religion” (Balagangadhara 1994: 307). He has
not yet answered the question “What makes Christianity a religion?”
(Balagangadhara 1994: 317). His answer, when it comes, is that “religion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos and
itself” (Balagangadhara 1994: 384; his argument for this definition is
given in pages 331-334). Because the “configuration of learning” in
Asian cultures is performative, rather than theoretical, such accounts
11
Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in “[t]he insistence in the study
of religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religions” which,
they argue, “has always served as a strategy for insulating the ‘great’ world religions
generally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reserved
for ‘primitives’ — which is to say, all the rest of humanity” (1990: 6).
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
339
are “absent from the cultures of Asia” (Balagangadhara 1994: 314),
and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditions.
The argument is formally valid, but we have as little reason to accept
Balagangadhara’s restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligible
accounts of the cosmos—of a type Hinduism allegedly cannot give—
as we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involving
creeds, beliefs, scriptures, and churches. While Balagangadhara’s
definition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity, Philip Almond
argues that even what Balagangadhara takes as “as essentially or prototypically Christian”—and hence prototypically religious—is in fact
“only one particular manifestation of [Christianity], namely and
crudely put, an Enlightenment deistic Christianity” (Almond 1996:
144) and, thus, that for most of its history Europe too would have
lacked religions. In Balagangadhara’s work can be clearly seen the
form of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors that
Hinduism is not a religion. It is equally clear that this argument
depends on a tendentious concept of religion. Balagangadhara himself acknowledges that “there is a quasi-universal consensus that the
‘Western’ concept of religion is inadequate” (Balagangadhara 1994:
313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinking
that Hinduism is not a religion but, rather, a reason to work out a
better concept of religion.
3. Religion, ritual and the real
While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the importance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that “the idea of
religion is essentially a Western concept, inspired by the three monotheistic religions of the West … not applicable to the phenomena we
find in and around the Himalayas” (Staal 1982: 39), unlike Balagangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider conceptions of religion. Nevertheless, in his argument he does at times slip
back into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara and
the other authors discussed above. More significantly he also depends
upon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundly
influenced by Protestant Christian thought, and which, it will be
argued, is shared by Fitzgerald.
Discussing what he calls “‘religion’ in its fullest sense”, Staal writes:
“Doctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve
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belief in a god or gods, in paradise and hell, salvation, and similar
religious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheistic
religions of the West” (Staal 1989: 389).12 He makes the point that
most of the other ‘religions’ of mankind are deficient in one or another
respect when studied within this perspective … . The main reason,
however, that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion is
that their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs, but on ritual, mysticism or both. In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all, they
are not primary but added: they are of the nature of secondary interpretations, often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts. (Staal 1989:
389-390, emphasis added)
There are certainly
Asian traditions. It
Rˆmˆnuja’s project
or an after-thought.
counter-examples to Staal’s characterisation of
would be difficult, for example, to describe
as a secondary interpretation, a rationalization
Nevertheless Staal asserts:
Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion; it is not even a meaningful unit of discourse. There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitary
notion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena, unless it is done by
exclusion, following the well-worn formula: a Hindu is an Indian who is
not a Jaina, Buddhist, Parsi, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Animist … (the list
is indefinite). When faced with such data, should we abandon the concept of religion altogether? Basically, there are two possible procedures.
We can either start with a rather narrow concept of “religion”, based
upon the three Western monotheisms, and see to what extent such a
concept of religion can be used in Asia. Or else we can try to formulate
a wider and more flexible concept, and see just where that leads us.
(Staal 1989: 397)
Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the first
procedure “would involve such notions as a belief in God, a holy
book, and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founder”
(Staal 1989: 398). Because the Asian traditions lack some of these
characteristics—Buddhism and Confucianism have “a founder, but
neither a belief in God nor a holy book”, Taoism a founder and a
holy book but no belief in God—Staal concludes that “none of the
so-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense …. [A]ny notion
of religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Western
monotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asia” (Staal 1989: 398). Con12
Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being “its fullest sense” a concept of
religion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be “a rather narrow
concept of religion” (Staal 1989: 397).
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
341
spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhism,
which has all three characteristics. Nevertheless, we can admit Staal’s
point to a degree, a degree which, once again, amounts to the claim
that Asian religions are, in some respects, not like the Western
monotheisms.
Staal’s argument relies on equating two subtly different concepts
that ought to be distinguished from each other. The first is “religion
in the Western sense” (Staal 1989: 415, 416), which may be taken to
mean what religion is, or what forms it has taken, in the West. Thus,
“religion in the Western sense” may be taken to mean that form of
monotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The second is “the Western concept of religion” (Staal
1989: 419), or “Western notions of religion” (Staal 1989: 393), which
refers, or ought to refer, to that concept of religion which developed
in the West from about the sixteenth century. This concept is not
identical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms. It did
emerge in the modern West, but it emerged out of criticism of religion, especially of Christianity. Moreover, the concept has continued
to develop, and is no longer, or at least ought no longer to be,
dominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or belief.13 Thus the modern academic concept of “religion”, although
Western in origin and perhaps also in use, is not identical to the
form(s) that religion has taken in the West. The “Western concept of
religion” no longer means only “religions in the Western sense”, still
less “Western religions”. It is clear that Asian religions are in significant respects not “religions in the Western sense”, i.e., not monotheistic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinal
conformity. Staal has not shown, however, “the inapplicability of
Western notions of religion to the traditions of Asia” (Staal 1989:
393), that is, that Asian traditions cannot be understood through a
concept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition and
no longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion.
13
David Chidester lists those who have argued for “an open, multiple, or
polythetic definition of religion” (1996: 259). Brian K. Smith has attempted a definition that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to be
important. He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referents.
Religion, he argues, “is defined by its rules of discourse, rules that always (by definition) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize all
present and past creations, perpetuations, and transformations of that tradition”
(1987: 53).
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Staal concludes that “the imposition of the Western concept of
religion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialism
continues to thrive in the realms of thought” (1989: 419). Ironically,
in insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they are
not religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam, that is, they
are not religions “in the Western sense”), it is Staal who remains
enthralled by a Western concept of religion. Insofar as his argument
relies on the slippage between “religion in the Western sense” and
“the Western concept of religion” it is formally similar to that of
Stietencron and Balagangadhara. Staal does acknowledge, however,
that this is a “rather narrow” concept of religion and suggests that we
might “try to formulate a wider and more flexible concept, and see
just where that leads us” (1989: 397). As it has been argued here that
this is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries of
academic study of the religions, his argument must be examined, for
he concludes that this does not enable us to rescue “religion” as a
universal term, and that we ought either to abandon religion or to
confine its use to the Western monotheisms.
Staal uses what he calls an ‘“extended-Durkheim” concept of religion, a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief),
ritual, mystical experience, and meditation (the latter either as a
fourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the others’)
(1989: 401). Of the categories he states that “rites [or rituals] are
primary because they are almost always independent and can be
accounted for on their own terms … . Rites become ‘religious’ when
they are provided with a religious interpretation” (1989: 388). Moreover, he states:
Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religious
traditions, where they are provided with constantly changing interpretations; rituals remain the same even across so-called religious boundaries: they are invariant under religious transformation. This is demonstrated
by the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic, Hindu and Buddhist
forms, not only in India but also in China, Japan, Tibet, and Indonesia.
(Staal 1989: 401)
Staal says little about the other categories, noting only that “[l]ike the
other so-called religions of Asia, Buddhism is characterized by the
fact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important than
mystical experience (which only a few attain), which is in turn more
important than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophers,
scholarly monks or reserved for Western converts, anthropologists,
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
343
and tourists)” (1989: 400).14 Thus, for Staal, “the trio of ritual, meditation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the category of religion itself”, ritual being the most important of these three
in the Asian traditions. But because “rituals remain the same even
across so-called religious boundaries” they cannot be used to justify
our existing taxonomy of religions. “Only doctrine or belief may be
in a position to constitute a religious category per se” (Staal 1989:
401). This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs means
that if
we adopt the “extended-Durkheim” concept of religion, which incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief), ritual, mystical experience and
meditation … we have a concept on our hands that has all the characteristics of pathological, if not monstrous growth, tumorous with category blunders. It is worse than a spider with a submarine, a burning
bush, an expectation and a human head. (Staal 1989:414-415)
Even in Buddhism, “the Asian tradition that is in many respects most
religion-like, doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experience and rites are basic” (Staal 1989: 415). 15 Therefore, says Staal,
“[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherent
concept and therefore misleading. It does not hang together like a
concept should and should either be abandoned or confined to Western traditions” (1989: 415).
Attention to ritual, rather than belief, as a defining feature of religion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the one
with which we are familiar, although Staal does not suggest what
such a taxonomy based on ritual might look like. Such a taxonomy
14
He leaves aside the question of “whether meditation constitutes a fourth “fundamental category”“ noting only that “[m]editation, at any rate, is not gazing upon
nothing (except in the limiting case), but is closely related to ritual and mantras”
(Staal 1989: 400).
15
Staal concedes that a “phenomenon more like religion in the Western sense
appears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditions” (1989: 415).
By this he means the development of ¥aivism and Vai§Èavism and of the Bodhisattva
ideal in Buddhism. Because these phenomena are more like “religion in the Western
sense”, he is prepared also to describe them using “the Western concept of religion”.
Thus ¥aivism and Vai§Èavism “should perhaps be regarded as the first two indigenous religions of India”, for with their appearance “a Hindu is no longer an Indian
concerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likes”, but becomes,
for the first time, “a believer in God equipped with faith and a holy book” (1989:
415). Buddhists finally have belief “not in God but in the Buddha” (1989: 416) and
Buddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authoritative text.
344
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may be more useful in understanding the history and function of
Asian religion,16 but would be neither more nor less a natural taxonomy—given in the nature of things—than one based upon belief.
Staal’s proposal raises the question of how we are to describe the
“Asian traditions that are generally called religions” (Staal 1989: 405406) if we abandon the concept of “religion” or redefine it to refer
specifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions. Although
at one point he refers to Buddhism as “a ritual-mystical cult” (1989:
406), Staal more often relies on other locutions such as “so-called
religions” or “traditions”. Thus he speaks of “the so-called religions
of Asia” (1989: 398, 400) or “the so-called religions of mankind”
(1989: 418). Yoga, Mˆmˆ‡sˆ, ¥aivism, Vai§Èavism, and Buddhism
are all referred to as “Asian traditions” or “Indian traditions” (1989:
390, 406, 410, 414, 415). Staal also refers to “so-called religious
traditions” (1989: 401), the “Asian traditions that are generally called
religions” (1989: 405-406), “what is now called a ‘religious’ tradition”
(1989: 393) and simply “religious traditions” (1989: 387). The difficulty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomena
he wishes to discuss is not insignificant, and will be returned to later.
Here the point is that “Western traditions” and “non-Western traditions” (Staal 1989: 415) are discussed together in a way that suggests
the only difference between them is that Western traditions are concerned with doctrine, and are therefore religious, while non-Western
traditions are not. They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal as
members of a class, comparable with each other. In practice, then,
Staal replaces “religion” with “tradition”, where traditions may be
religious or not. A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religious
tradition, a concern with ritual does not.
Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relation
to doctrine or belief: “Only doctrine or belief may be in a position to
constitute a religious category per se” (Staal 1989: 401). While the
same lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of religion has been detected in other authors, a fundamentally religious
ideal underpins Staal’s epistemology at a deeper level. Staal argues
that study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assumption that “Buddhism is a religion, and that there is therefore a certain
16
Although this is not so in every case. As Staal notes, many of the rituals in
which Buddhist monks engage are “independent of Buddhism” (1989: 401) and
therefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy.
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
345
unity to the subject”. Because “the concept of religion is not easily
applicable to Buddhism … [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from the
outside and a priori … . For scholarship to be adequate, it should not
be based upon such assumptions. Only if we abandon them are we in
a position to discover whether, and to what extent, such a unity may
in fact exist” (Staal 1989: 410). The idea of such a position, free of all
assumptions, from which we can discover whether or not Buddhism
is a unified entity is not only illusory, as many Buddhists would surely
recognize, but also an essentially religious ideal. An indication that
Staal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from the
confidence with which he feels able to distinguish “genuine manifestations” of Buddhism from other “representations of Buddhism by
Asian Buddhists” (1989: 402). The ideal of such an understanding of
the way things are, unmediated by language (and thus by concepts
which have a specific history), is very old, going back in the Western
tradition at least to Plato. However, as Jonathan Z. Smith points out,
in its more recent forms it is
above all, a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in which
the category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to the
experience of the interpreter, the one who is being directly addressed
through the text … . As employed by some scholars in religious studies it
must be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation into
revelation. (J. Z. Smith 1990: 55)
The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category than
religion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (although comparable to) those we presently use to denote different
religions. Nevertheless, the impossibility of occupying a position free
of all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts might
represent would no more have a definite ontological status than that
represented by the terms with which we denote the collections of
beliefs and practices which we call religions. The “unity” of Buddhism does not exist, except in, and for the purposes of, analysis,
whether that analysis chooses religion—no longer defined simply as
the possession of a god, founder, and text—or ritual as its key.
Staal states that “[t]he unities presumed to cover early and late
Buddhism, or Indian, or Chinese, and other forms of Buddhism, are
functions of the same unproven assumption” (1989: 410) that Buddhism is a religion and thus a unity. Fitzgerald makes a similar point
with respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra, Theravˆda
Buddhists in other parts of South Asia, and Japanese Buddhists, argu-
346
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ing that each inhabit “a significantly different semantic universe”,
and that the idea that “these are three different manifestations of one
essence”, or that “Buddhism is an entity with an essence that can be
described and listed with other such entities, the Religions or the
world religions, can be described as an essentialist fallacy”. While
“historical and philosophical links between these different culturally
situated institutions” exist,
[i]n the Maharashtrian context, it is extremely difficult to separate out
some putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste and
thus from the complex ideology of caste institutions. In the Japanese
context, it is difficult to conceive of ‘Buddhism’ as distinct from other
indigenous cultural institutions, or from a dominant system of Japanese
values in particular. (Fitzgerald 2000a: 26-27)
Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism. The “analytical centre of gravity of Hinduism” is fundamentally a conception
of ritual order or hierarchy, “and there is a strong case for claiming
that it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with the
caste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenon” (1990: 102). Even
the more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain “rooted”
in this “ideologically defined context”, such that Fitzgerald asks in
what sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern England
is the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal: “It seems to
be the same question essentially as ‘What is Christianity’, or any
other example of ‘a religion’, abstracted from a particular sociological
context? … . That these are variants of the same reality is a theological claim, made by sociologically specific groups of people. This
claim is part of the object of non-theological observation; it should
not be one of its basic assumptions” (1990: 115).
Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then to
be the study of “one or other or all of these institutions in their actual
context” (2000a: 27): “we first have to understand the totality within
which such institutions are established. We might then hazard a series of abstractions for comparative purposes, without making the
mistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give to
them to anybody but ourselves” (1990: 108). Fitzgerald argues that
scholars, whose study of Hinduism is guided by the “essentially theological concept” of a religion as an entity transcending particular
social groups, “cut across the data in the wrong places” with the
result that “[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed about
Hinduism is ignored” (1990: 111; 2000a: 136).
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
347
Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism he
“found the concept of religion unhelpful and instead … analyzed it in
terms of the concepts ritual, politics and soteriology” (2000a: 121).
Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same “concept of hierarchical order” he identifies elsewhere as the “analytical
centre of gravity” of Hinduism. While elements of the practice of this
ritual order—for example, practising untouchability against other
untouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar as
though they were Hindu gods—are incompatible with Ambedkar’s
teaching, they are nevertheless “to some variable degree part of the
actual situation and identity of Buddhists” (Fitzgerald 2000a: 130).
Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others who
share their ritual practices by their politics, which departs from the
traditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status, and by
their soteriology, which, though often reinterpreted as “liberation
from inequality and exploitation”, has “an important spiritual or
transcendental element as well … pursued through reading Buddhist
texts, practicing meditation, and going on retreats” (Fitzgerald
2000b: 5). These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity, Fitzgerald argues, than religion, which covers and therefore obscures the
relations between ritual, politics, and soteriology. Religion generates
a lack of clarity because it “does not effectively demarcate any nonreligious institutions” (Fitzgerald 2000b: 1; cf. Fitzgerald 2000a: 134135).17
The issue is whether or not ‘religion’ does genuinely pick out a distinctive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions or
whether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that pervade many or most institutions, such as the ritual, the soteriological,
and the political. (Fitzgerald 2000a: 149)
So much, states Fitzgerald, “can be, and is, called religion in India
that the term picks out nothing distinctive” (2000a: 149). For the
term to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to state
“what counts as religion and what counts as non-religion” (2000a:
153). However, as Fitzgerald states elsewhere, when “we talk about a
religion … we are not talking about some real type of object” (1990:
17
Fitzgerald adds, “nor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists, Christians,
Jainas, Muslims, or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in India”, and explains that
because religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchy
which are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness which
analysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal.
348
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109) or essence, but, rather, we are making an abstraction, usually for
the purposes of comparison. He is wrong to suggest that such an
abstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the religious from the non-religious.18 It would only be possible for the
concept to allow such precise demarcation, to identify what is religion and what non-religion, if religion were indeed a real object, an
essence whose manifestations could be identified.
The claim that religion is such an essence, and that the boundaries
between the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with such
precision is, as Fitzgerald suggests, a religious or theological claim.19
In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances among
different groups in India, Roberto Nobili made the claim, crucial for
his theological argument, that “there is a norm by which we can
distinguish between social actions and the purely religious” (1971
[1619]: 155). Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study of
religion. Again, as Fitzgerald states, when “we talk about a religion
… we are not talking about some real type of object that is only
contingently associated with any empirical social group, and which
can be studied in its own right”; rather, we are “using an analytical
category” (Fitzgerald 1990: 109).20 He goes on, however, to state that
this analytical category “corresponds to what some religious ideologies proclaim themselves to be” (1990: 109). This is only true if we
continue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity which
exists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies. If,
instead, religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we might
hazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (without,
as Fitzgerald states, making the mistake of attributing the abstraction
and the meaning given to it to anyone else), there is no reason to
regard “religion” as a theological category with no place in an avow18
Neither can the ritual, political, or soteriological always be precisely demarcated from other categories of analysis. Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra “some
forms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system, which was
very much embedded in ritual status” (2000a: 122); thus ritual is to some degree
confounded with economics. Likewise, some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizes
as soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics.
19
Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independent
of any particular social group is in fact a theological conception, allied to the idea of
God, “who transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to all
individuals everywhere” (1990: 109).
20
Cf. McCutcheon’s contention that “the category of religion is a conceptual tool
and ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in reality” (1997: viii).
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
349
edly non- theological discipline, or to expect the category to be able
infallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phenomena. To think that because the concept of religion emerged from
theological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of that
religion) the concept remains theological is to commit the genetic
fallacy. Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what religious ideologies proclaim themselves to be. Fitzgerald argues that if
we take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in Tamil
Nadu, the claim “that these are variants of the same reality is a
theological claim, made by sociologically specific groups of people.
This claim is part of the object of non-theological observation; it
should not be one of its basic assumptions” (1990: 115). It is at least
as likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two versions of Christianity (let alone, say, Christianity and Hinduism in
Tamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality, where non-theological
scholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants of
the same reality, not in the sense of being both manifestations of a
single essence, but in the sense that both could be understood better
by being brought under a single analytical category. That category
need not be “religion” but there is no compelling reason why it
should not be.
4. “Hinduism” and “what has come to be called Hinduism”
Donald S. Lopez suggests that “one of the ways that scholars of
Hinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at the
annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by their
overdeveloped pectoral muscles, grown large from tracing quotation
marks in the air whenever they have mentioned ‘Hinduism’ over the
past ten years” (2000: 832). The gesture has several oral analogues,
usually of the form “what has come to be called Hinduism”, or “what
Western scholars have designated by the term Hinduism”. What is
signified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identical
with what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from its
earliest use.21 H. H. Wilson, in an essay first published in 1828, notes
21
As Lorenzen notes, “most scholars of Indian religions who have not directly
addressed this question—and even several who claim that Hinduism is a modern
construction—continue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centuries earlier” (1999: 631).
350
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that “[t]he Hindu religion is a term, that has been hitherto employed
in a collective sense, to designate a faith and worship of an almost
endlessly diversified description” (1846 [1828]: 1). Having drawn attention to the constructed nature of the term, such physical and
verbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes of
selection by which the term’s meaning is constituted, while allowing
her or him to retain the analytical function for which the term was
coined. This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in our
understanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academic
study of religion, not only of Hinduism, but of religion itself. Dissociating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underlies
our use of this or any other general term (for example, by referring to
“what has come to be called Hinduism”), without specifying an alternative basis for selection, merely perpetuates a confusion between
conceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion.
It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any other
religion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result of
decisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and preconceptions of the analyst. It is not a representation of what Hinduism
“really” is. Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu selfperception, not least because any such self-perception (and these
would be legion, not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equally
dependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions. The
representation of Indian religions, which emerged in the works of
European writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries,
was the result of just such a decision-making process. The usefulness
of such representations will depend upon the extent to which we
share their purposes.
What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of a
number of possible ways of cutting across the available data. Provided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabulary,
and refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractions
and representations, there is no reason why such a vocabulary should
not continue to be used. This is not to say that this is the only, or
even the best, way of making a selection of data. The question ought
therefore to be: How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as a
religion? There can be no doubt that at times Vai§Èavism, ¥aivism,
and ¥aktism, or ritual, politics, and soteriology will be more profitable concepts for analysis. But we should never forget that these also
are abstractions, and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if
“hinduism” and the history of “religion”
351
they are also shared by Hindus). They may, or may not, pre-exist in
the consciousness of those studied, or be taken up later (as was the
case with some neo-Hindu groups). The intuitive appropriateness of
some of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconception
of religion, but despite its emergence in the modern West this ought
no longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigm
of what a religion is. That the modern academic concept of religion
emerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept is
inapplicable in other cultures, any more than it means that religion
did not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern sense
of religion.22
Having reviewed the history of their production and reproduction
as contested terms, David Chidester states that “we might happily
abandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not, as a
result of that very history, stuck with them. They adhere to our
attempts to think about identity and difference in the world” (1996:
259). The recovery of that history in the work of several writers
means that these terms can no longer be used innocently. Precisely
because it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as “religion” and “Hinduism” without being aware that in doing so one is
applying a theoretical framework to the world, the use of such terms
is less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a framework than the use of some new coinage, whose theory-laden status
may initially be obscured by its novelty. Catherine Bell writes: “That
we construct ‘religion’ and ‘science’ [and, one might add, ‘Hinduism’] is not the main problem; that we forget we have constructed
them in our own image—that is a problem” (1996: 188). If so, then
not only is there no reason to abandon the terms “religion” and
“Hinduism”, but there is good reason to retain them.
Department of Religious Studies
University of Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
United Kingdom
22
Note Ninian Smart’s comment that “[t]he non-traditional nature of western
terms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification. ‘Gamesmanship’ is
of fairly recent coinage, but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the success
of the coinage)” (1974: 46)
352
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Hindu Festivals and· the
Christian Calendar
R. D. IMMANUEL
(A paper read at the Conference on Christian Worship held
.at Matheran in April, 1957.)
The average Hindu feels at home in the atmosphere of
festivities ; .feasts and festivals enable him to give his religious
experience a social expression. ~n other words popular Hindu
religion has a large element of social thinking and social feeling,
and feasts and festivals are only concrete expressions of this .
feature of Hinduism. The Indian Christian has the same cultural
background, rinless he has been made to forgo it by urban or
foreign influences. But since most of our Christians live ·in rural
surroundings, the question of our attitude towards Hindu festivals
is. a matter for serious study and consideration. The principles
underlying these festivals must be made clear if we are to .make
any progress at all.
THE THEOLOGY OF HINDU FESTIVALS
· When a particular day is set apart as sacred, it means that
certain moments or periods of time can become instnlnients of
deeper or richer religious experience by association .with events
of religious importance or with the lives of spiritual leaders. If
this were the only principle there would be nothing against
adapting and incorporating Hindu festivals into our calendar.
But along with this is a deeper and non-Christian idea, namely
pantheism, according to which there is not an object in heaven
or on earth or underneath the earth whi~h the Hindu is not pre.pared to worship. This is a rather serious matter for the
Christian, since one of the cardinal doctrines of our faith is that
there is an eternal difference · between the Creator and the
creature and that worship, honour and glory belong to God alone.
The modem Hindu can easily explain away the crudity of some
of these facts philosophically, but the impression on the rural
Christian will not be anything less than gross idolatry. So the
greatest care must be taken to. see that any festival that has in it
any trace of worship of anyone other than the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be . rejected utterly and
uncompromisingly.
Ill
When we study the evolution of festivals we find that some
are magical in character, or at the best originated in nature or
vegetation myths. During centuries of evolution they have been
_transformed and in many cases new ceremonies have been grafted
on to old. There is nothing new fu this for the Church. In the
past the . Church has taken non-Christian festivals and baptized
them with Christian na,mes, given them Christian meanings and
included them in the Christian calendar.
In .the ·festivals connected with sowing and reaping there
are quite a number of magical elements. But agricultural
festivals should not be discarded just because some elements in
them are unworthy. Religion should pervade every aspect of
life and consecrate it for the glory of God. If the Church does
not care to exercise this important function of religion, secularism
and materialism will invade. So the better way will be to take
over the agricultural cults, purge them of all linworthy elements,
and give them good Christian concepts. Instead of the unwholesome myths, the. Christian doctrine of God as the supreme giver
of life, and man as the steward responsible to his. Maker for all
that he possesses should be taught. - From the point of view of
theology this is one of the most important features of festivals.
Feasts and festivals enable religion to pervade every aspect
(secular, social or private) of human life. Church Hist<>ry and
Theology can be taught in a very elementary but nevertheless
unforgettable way by the wholesome use of festivals directed and
co~trolled by the Church. .
. .
THE· PsYCHOLOGY OF Hrnnu FESTIVALS
Our Master compared His religion to a wedding feast, and
so showed that there is no greater merit in that type of asceticism
which makes suppression of the flesh an end in itself. Most of
the festivals in Hinduism are occasions for joy. Any institution
that helps people to be cheerful and happy has a rightful place
in bur religion. It is very right and proper that our days of joy
and merriment . should be consecrated to God and integrated
with religion. Such are festivals like Divali and the Pmigal.
But there are other festivals which. are connected with regulating
or controlling the natural appetites of man. The popular faith
of Hinduism is that piety and devotion are strengthened by
fastings, vigils, worship and ablutions. It also recommends· gifts
to holy persons, practice of austerities and physical hardships for
the benefit of the spirit within. So we find that there are a
number of festivals that recommend these. For instance, fastiilg
is the rule during Vaikuntha Ekiidasi ; people are enjoined to keep
a vigil throughout the night of Sivtiitri. The principles underlying such festivals deserve our consideration and careful study.
The Roman Catholic Church advocates fastings and vigils and
according to certain texts, our Lord made the statement ' this kind
(of demons) can eomeforth by nothing but by prayer and fasting·~
112
IB
A large number of Protestants have given up the practice of vigils
and fastings because when ~ey are enforced in_ a mechanical way
(as they would be if a date 1s .fixed on the calendar and everyone
everywhere is asked to fast) they become somewhat formal. So
also is alms-giving. Our Master told us definitely: 'Take heed
that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father who is in heaven '. However, since the cultural background is helpful, the Church leaders;
with. great caution, may reinforce the practice of vigils, fastirigs
and ahns-giving.
·
So fasting, vigil an:d alms-giving oil certain days especially
set apart by the Church have to be considered. as aids to worship.
As Evelyn Underhill points out:
' It is surely mere arrogance to insist that with angels and
archangels we laud and magnify the Holy N arne, whilst disdaining
the shaggy ~mpanions who come with us to the altar of faith:
having alieady, ind~ed, discerned that altar in a darkness which
we have left behind, and given costly offerings to the unknown
God, whom · we coldly_ serve; The primitive, sensitive to the
mysterious quality of life, worshipping by gift and gesture, and'
devising ritual patterns whereby all the faculties of his nature
and all the members of his group can be united in common action
towards God, still remains _a better model for human worship'
than the speculative philosopher, or the solitary quietist, for he
accepts his situation humbly instead of trying to retreat from it ..
(Worship, p. 21). Whether we like it or not, we are body and
mind : only when our body is given a chance to participate in
such things as vigils and fasts, will our worship experience be
complete.
THE SOCIAL AsPECT
oF
FEsnvALS
as
Religion is an ambivalent affaiJ;. It is an individual
well
as a social phenomenon. In the past centuries, the Protestant
churches as a whole, and in a general way, emphasized the
individual aspect of religion. It is· only recently that more and
more emphasis is being laid on the social nature of religion.
Feasts, festivals and fairs form a part of the indigenous technique
. to produce a ·corporate religioUs experience in the community:
Social experience of religion is a natural and innate craving put
in the heart of man by his Creator and feasts and festivals provide
a congei:lial atmosphere for such a social expression~ Let tis take
as an instance the car festival at Puri in Orissa. A hundred
thousand or more pilgrims flock to· this small town. Every year
three Ra:thas or cars_ are constructed anew for the three· deities.
The one draped in blue cloth is for Jaganath, the one in red for
Subhadra and the one in white for Balariimari. ·Each one· is
adorned with flags, floral wreaths and festoons. They are ·
dragged over the broad path with thick ropes by pilgrims of both
sexes and of all stations_ in life. The Raja of Puri sweeps the
road before the car. A replica of the ' same can be seen at
113
Riimeswaraxn, M~durai, Conjeevaraxn, '{irunelveli, etc. Here is
an exa~ple of a social expression of religion which can be a
matter of careful study. Whether we like it or not, sqci~
plJ.enomena condition individual feelings and emotions. So if
we have projects to work out (as for instance evangelism) it is
much easier to accomplish it by organizing it around a yearly
festival. Of course, there are very grave disadvantages. FU:st
and foremost these outbursts of activity are not steady. Secondly,
they are not based upon reason. Thirdly, there are likely to be
reactions. In spite of all these shortcomings, the Church leaders
as wise stewards ought to devise means and ways of making use
of feasts and festivals by incorporating them in the Christian
calendar. Thus it is much easier to participate in evangelistic
work when everyone is doing it on a specific day. Similarly it is
much easier to fast or go to Church or sing when the whole community does so; when many participate. in religion~ festivals
emotions that lie dormant in the heart are naturally roused and
one member helps every other member.
In dealing with the social aspect of religion due consideration
should be given to festivals like Ashtabhandan and AraiJya
Shashthi, and Vijiiya Da.Smi. Ashtabhandan is a social institution
that is intended to promote the growth of genuine love and affection between brothers and sisters. V ijiiy,a Dafmi is the tenth day
of the waxing moon of Octoper and the purpose of its rituals is
to. promote reunion, and reconciliation, obeisance to superiors,
lov~ and- embrace to equals, and. blessings to juniors. If there
are quarrels they are made up on this day. AraiJya Shashthi
might be called the picnic festival. On this day women go in
parties outside the village to a banyan tree in the neighbouring
jungle and hold a sort of picl).ic as a part of the function. The
sons-in-law are invited and entertained with food and new clothes.
:
Such indigenous festivals that emphasize healthy social
relationships deserve to be considered for adaptation and inclusion
ip the Christian calendar.
THE EcoNoMic-AsPEcT
OF
FEsTIVALs
.
Communism's one-sided emphasis on the economic and
material aspect of life is a great danger to the Church. However,
communism has taught the Church a lesson that she forgot to
learn from our Master. He fed the five thousand and told His
disciples: 'give ye them to eat'. In these days when labour awl
capital are tending to divide into two great camps of mutual
!'lnmity, the Church should take advantage of opportunities to
bring about a reconciliation between labour .and capital. One of
these ways is to organize festivals to reconcile the parties. The
sacredness of labour, man's stewardship of the soil, God's mercy
and grace and His wonderful providence to man, all these and
a score of other important doctrines are emphasized in the agricultural festivals. The trouble about them is that they are full of
m,agic and y.pe,Q.ifying myths and legends.
114
The followl.ng ate sortle important festivals of this kfud : 1. Akshayya Tr{tiyii. This occurs in the month of VaiSiikha
or May-June. Tradesmen begin theU: year this day especially
when they want to start a new venture. As an advertisement,
they give sweets and sea~onal fruits as presents to customers:
2. Ayutha Puja. All those who work with tools set them
apart and offer worship to their patron deity ViSvakarmii. It is
the artisan's holiday. Women too do not cook on this day; fried
rice and confectionery are suqstituted for meals.
3. Poizgal, especially Miittu Poizgal, is an agricultural
festival. The boiling of milk and sugared rice is only a magical
way of insuring plenty and prosperity.
Agricultural and labour festivals have great religious value
because they help religion to invade every sphere of human
activity. They help us to see that earth is crammed with haven,
and that trust in God our Creator and faith in His providence is
a fundamental necessity for our very living. The joy of reaping
the harvest should be linked to a religious festival and be transformed into a joyous thankoffering festival, as is done now in
many churches.
·
THE HrNnu CALENDAR
The Hindu calendar was adjusted to the ancient Hindu way
of life-a life of agriculture. The weather was another factor
that was taken into consideration. But in modem days when we
have air-conditioned third class coaches in railway trains, we cannot and need not follow the Hindu calendar strictly. However,
the principles should be studied and all non-Christian factors
should be eschewed. All Hindu festivals are movable because
they depend upon the apparent journey of the sun, the star constellations, the phases of the moon and its relative position to
other bodies. On account of a pantheistic theology, the sun,
moon, and stars are objects of worship for Hindus. So they are
given primary importance. In the Christian calendar, such can
never be the case. But at certain seasons the Indian farmer is
extremely busy, while at other seasons he has little or nothing to
do. If the Church does not fill the idle moments of the farmer
the devil has plenty of means and ways to £ill them. Evangelistic
campaigns, membership crusades, financial appeals that require
long and steady work, should be fixed at this time. Generally
speaking our policy should be to gear consistently the Christian
festivals into the recurring changes of weather, occupation, and
the energy as well as the leisure of th~ population.
ALTERNATIVES BEFORE THE CHtJRCH
Such in brief are some of the features of Hindu festivals:
What is the Church to do with them ? Three alternatives at
least lie before us : 115
1. ·.To exclude- completely any _trace . of Hinduism in
, festivals.
.
2. To take some festivals of the Church from the West
and observe them in. ways which are typ;cally
Indian.
3. To take some Hindu. festivals, purge them of nonChristian elements, . and give them Christian meaning and content.
·.
Let us examine each of. these. '.To· exclude completely any
trace of Hindu culture.' This has been more or less the policy
of the early Church _leaders. In their anxiety to be uncompromisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took
a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their
favpur.
However, from the point of· religious experience the
Indian Christian, who has not some festival or other like the
Hindu, is deprived of something which. is his birthright. Indian
Davids can. slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they
are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the
brook, than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul.
Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu
culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian
content. This would mean inventing new festivals which would
suit the temperament of the people, and their practices. The
following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals :processiqns ; singing bands ; ablutions ; community gathermgs ; corpor~te undertakings for some special causes ; pilgrimages ; melas ; conventions ; vigils ; fasts ; continuous reading
aloud of fhe Scriptures ; offerings at a shrine ; use of flowers in a
special way ; use of kathas or kaletchepams.
However, a note of caution must be sounded. Our Master's
religion is a universal religion. It exalts above national needs
the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities. So if India is
not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World
Christian Church, it should not give up its connection with the
World Church.: That is why we cannot change the date of
Easter or Christmas. There must be something that is common
in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughout the world. So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals
our aim should •be only to enrich olir religious experience.
. The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for
gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India. If the
Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the
elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals.
The second alternative is to take some festivals of the·Church
and observe them in typically Indian ways. For instance we can
observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman
Qatholics) during the season of Lent. . One or more of the twelve
practices. mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great
festivals, viz. Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Day and Whit
116
Sunday. Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of
cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the
master i.e. the spirit of religion, from the tent.
The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals, purge
theni of non-Christian ele:rnents and give them Christian meaning
or content. If this method is adopted, the present Christian
calendar will remain as it is, and the Indian Church will follow
with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but, in
addition to it, it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying
and transforming them. Here we are on delicate ground and the
utmost caution should be observed. For instance Divali might
be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world ;
suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lighting rituals might be inserted. A. Church service where this
ritual takes place, with an appropriate sermon, will be an enrichment of our Christian experience. Besides this we might have
processions, singing bands, katha, etc.
·
Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibilities. The Hfudu worships his tools. But ·the Church can use
this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for
consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to the.honour and
glory of God. The importance lies in teaching that man receives
from God everything he has, his tools as well as his skill. · Special
services have to be worked out for this.
Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a
festival of first fruits. That is exactly what Hindus are. doing.
But while they worship the sun, we bow down with-reverence
and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow.
· These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watertight compartments. Through the ages, slowly but surely cultural
practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual
osmosis. But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true
religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised.
We live in India. Our background is predominantly Hindu.
This environment we cannot eradicate, but we can change it ;
we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences .
of our ·culture, but we can bring theni under the orbit of the
Church and make our weaknesses, by His grace, a means ·of
grace for the glory of His holy name.
117
Introduction
Indian Christian theology has a rich, varied and ancient history dating back to
the Apostle Thomas, according to legend. Many Hindus have thought, acted and
written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into
both faiths. Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Nehemiah Goreh and Sri
Ramakrishna are among the earliest Hindu reformers who delve into Christian
doctrine from a Vedic perspective. In the early twentieth century Sadhu Sundar
Singh, famously characterised by the Anglican priest Charles Andrews, drew out a
challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message. From the second half
of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to
create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox
Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition. However, through most of the history
of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between
the conservative elements of both. Thus the theology that has evolved tends to be
individualistic, esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics. Very rarely
has conventional Indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse.
Manilal C. Parekh, as we shall discover, is an unusual and extreme example.
However, the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis
and taken Indian theology in a new direction. By challenging the status quo it has
created many controversies of its own. However, it is yet to be sufficiently selfcritical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots.
The context of the emergence of Indian liberation theology, or Dalit theology,
is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing
awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by Indian theologians looking
for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church, most notably in Latin America.
However, the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial
enough, but is heading in the right direction. To be postcolonial is to resist the
supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their
influence. Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers – the formation of the liberal
democratic nation state – is rarely mentioned or challenged. The formation of the
state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology, herein lays the problem.
Yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view, not
uncritically, the nation state. In finding the resources to make this challenge real
Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor, another invention of
the statistic colonisers – the Vedic reformers.
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2
Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism
Dalit theologian Peniel Rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians
to radically change their approach to the discipline.1 He brings together four
important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the
Churches’ responses to the Dalit situation. First, he argues, there is a ‘lacuna
between theology and action’,2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to
more theology; there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no
sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition
that they are the majority of Indian Christians. Second, Dalit Christology and
Soteriology, popularly expressed by the Exodus motif in liberation theologies, has
proved inadequate for Dalit theology. Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or
victor – passive servant or violent revolutionary. The motif is colonialists because
the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites, it romanticises
servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest.3 The
Exodus motif also supports the unhelpful ‘polemic binarism’4 that is Rajkumar’s
third criticism. He writes of a ‘failure to recognise the paramount importance of
engaging both Dalits and “non-Dalits”’5 in the need for liberation. Fourth, Dalit
theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a
‘performative and embodied hermeneutics to take place’.6 In other words, the
Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that
matter to them.
This book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many
ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that Rajkumar makes:
that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against
non-Dalits and Dalit sources against Hindu or other sources. This book will
seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of Indian culture
politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before, during and
after the British administration’s control. Anarchism both recognises that there
are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression
that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free. Rajkumar, in
his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the
Jesus tradition that back this up.7 This book will attempt to further bring together
Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism
of much liberation theology.
Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful
postcolonial discourse in the contemporary Indian context. An understanding of
1
Peniel Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms and
Possibilites (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
2
Ibid., p. 60.
3
Ibid., pp. 62–5.
4
Ibid., p. 64.
5
Ibid., p. 69.
6
Ibid., p. 71.
7
Ibid., pp. 145–67.
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Introduction
3
Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the
liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance. The hermeneutic
of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments
in theology, literature, Missiology and political ideology. This is because
postcolonial theology, which is what Indian theology must be, has to challenge the
continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony.
This chapter asks why the state, or colony, has come to be admired so much even
by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically Indian when it took so
much enthusiasm and violence to create. Leo Tolstoy and Walter Wink offer
useful models for understanding India’s sociotheological context having ways of
challenging colonial state-making in the West.
Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters
of sociotheological discourse. We name some of the defining powers of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology. Namely, we
identify Mother India as the god of states; the Missionary God as the ideological
position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church; and the
Vedic God as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically
Indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism,
statism and coercive violence.
Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate
of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to
deal with increasing tension, violence and competing truth claims. Here we take
a closer look at the violence that has troubled Gujarat state, north India, over the
past decade. We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and
in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors. Indian theology has
responded by revisiting what it means to be Indian and Christian. We look at the
growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in India
as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing.
Chapter 4 reveals that Missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was
not universally conservative and statist. Some missionaries, listening carefully to
high caste reformers like Gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits,
offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation
theology long before the term was coined, but in a distinctively Indian way. We also
look at Roman Catholic mission by returning to present day Gujarat and showing
how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity
with the marginalised. A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian
Missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression.
Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging
assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history,
particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse.
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi are often seen
as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors. Neither figure
is as he would first appear, according to this carefully nuanced study of their
relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state.
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4
Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism
Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by Gandhi to Indian theology
miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews. Dalit movements that
uncritically accept Ambedkar’s role as one of a ‘Moses-like’ figure redeeming his
enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position.
Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement, from the 1960s to the present
day, along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology, has
shaped Indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways.
In Chapter 7 we see that Indian theology has responded to but not always
engaged with the Dalit movement’s symbology or literature. While certain
theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation, especially
A.M. Arulraja and Sathianathan Clarke, there are gaps in this emerging theology
that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored:
a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of ‘foreignness’.
Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference
to Jesus and his political theology of resistance. This chapter, as well as being
a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of
setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian
patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism. Instead,
they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of
solidarity with those on the margins of state. Subversive foreignness leads to a
new understanding of Mother India more in keeping with both Dalit religion and
Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her
consort and the uniformity of statism. In taking this position Dalit theology could
be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed ‘Indian’ and creating new
paradigms for transforming Indian life.
978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebden.indb 4
4/27/2011 12:19:18 PM
Science in Ancient India
Subhash C. Kak
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-5901, USA
November 15, 2005
In Ananya: A portrait of India, S.R. Sridhar and N.K. Mattoo (eds.). AIA: New York,
1997, pages 399-420
1
‘Veda’ means knowledge. Since we call our earliest period Vedic, this is suggestive of the
importance of knowledge and science, as a means of acquiring that knowledge, to that period
of Indian history. For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to no
more than speculations regarding the self; this is what we are still told in some schoolbook
accounts. New insights in archaeology, astronomy, history of science and Vedic scholarship
have shown that such a view is wrong. We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physics,
mathematics, astronomy, logic, cognition and other disciplines. We find that Vedic science
is the earliest science that has come down to us. This has significant implications in our
understanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations.
The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also on
their appendicies called the Vedangas. The six Vedangas deal with: kalpa, performance of
ritual with its basis of geometry, mathematics and calendrics; shiksha, phonetics; chhandas,
metrical structures; nirukta, etymology; vyakarana, grammar; and jyotisha, astronomy and
other cyclical phenomena. Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic books
that tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times.
Briefly, the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view. The universe is
viewed as three regions of earth, space, and sky with the corresponding entities of Agni,
Indra, and Vishve Devah (all gods). Counting separately the joining regions leads to a
total of five categories where, as we see in Figure 1, water separates earth and fire, and air
separates fire and ether.
In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars. Furthermore, the
five categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers. The great altars were built
of a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions. The discovery that the details of the
altar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history of
astronomy (Kak 1994a; 1995a,b).
1
Sky
Vishve Devah
Space
Indra
Earth
Agni
Ether
Sound
Emotion
Air
Touch
Intellect
Fire
Form
Mind
Water
Taste
Prana
Earth
Smell
Body
Figure 1: From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis
In the Vedic world view, the processes in the sky, on earth, and within the mind are
taken to be connected. The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universe
lead to logical paradox. The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahman.
Understanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view but
this did not mean that other sciences were ignored. Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling of
this world view.
Chronology
To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of the
chronology of the Vedic literature. There are astronomical references in the Vedas which
recall events in the third or the fourth millennium B.C.E. and earlier. The recent discovery
(e.g. Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati, the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times, went dry
around 1900 B.C.E. due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated prior
to this epoch, perhaps prior to 2000 B.C.E. since the literature that immediately followed
the Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe. But we cannot be very precise
about our estimates. There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greater
antiquity to the Rigveda: for example, the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 B.C.E. and
the Varāhamihira tradition mentions 2400 B.C.E. According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)
of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area, the Sarasvati river had ceased to be a
perennial river by the third millennium B.C.E.; this supports those who argue for the older
dates. But in the absence of conclusive evidence, it is prudent to take the most conservative
of these dates, namely 2000 B.C.E. as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda.
The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven supposition that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 B.C.E. and, therefore, the
question of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas, Sutras and other literature remains open.
The detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been worked
out. A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical
2
evidence in the important book “Ancient Indian Chronology” by the historian of science
P.C. Sengupta in 1947. Although Sengupta’s dates have the virtue of inner consistency, they
have neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeological
evidence.
This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology of
the texts: assign Rigveda to the third millennium B.C.E. and earlier and the Brahmanas to
the second millennium. This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvati
period, which are coeval with Rigveda literature, can be used to cross-check textual evidence.
No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist. The textbook accounts like the
one to be found in Basham’s “The Wonder that was India” are hopelessly out of date. But
there are some excellent surveys of selected material. The task of putting it all together into
a comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science.
This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science. We begin with
an outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science; these models parallel those
used in ancient Indian physics. We also review mathematics, astronomy, grammar, logic and
medicine.
1
Vedic cognitive science
The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order. It is assumed that there exist equivalences of various
kinds between the outer and the inner worlds. It is these connections that make it possible
for our minds to comprehend the universe. It is noteworthy that the analytical methods are
used both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world. This allowed
the Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge. Such
paradoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches of
inquiry (Kak 1986).
In the Vedic view, the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world, is of
fundamental significance. Knowledge is classified in two ways: the lower or dual; and the
higher or unified. What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxical
but at a deeper level it has a unity. The Vedic view claims that the material and the conscious
are aspects of the same transcendental reality.
The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophic
traditions as well, so that complementary approaches were paired together. We have the
groups of: logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika), cosmology (sankhya) and psychology
(yoga), and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta). Although these philosophical schools
were formalized in the post-Vedic age, we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts.
In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of Indra,
Ashvins, or Agni; and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mind.
The same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad and
the Bhagavad Gita; this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses, representing
senses, which are yoked to it. The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses; but
next to the mind sits the true observer, the self, who represents a universal unity. Without
this self no coherent behaviour is possible.
3
The Five Levels
In the Taittiriya Upanishad, the individual is represented in terms of five different sheaths
or levels that enclose the individual’s self. These levels, shown in an ascending order, are:
• The physical body (annamaya kosha)
• Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)
• Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)
• Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)
• Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )
These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels. At the highest level, above the
emotion sheath, is the self. It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellect.
This is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associations
which are influenced by the emotional state.
The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana. One may look
at an individual in three different levels. At the lowest level is the physical body, at the next
higher level is the energy systems at work, and at the next higher level are the thoughts.
Since the three levels are interrelated, the energy situation may be changed by inputs either
at the physical level or at the mental level. When the energy state is agitated and restless,
it is characterized by rajas; when it is dull and lethargic, it is characterized by tamas; the
state of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva.
The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergent
on the ground of the previous level. In this theory mind is an emergent entity, but this
emergence requires the presence of the self.
The Structure of the Mind
The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components: manas, ahankara,
chitta, buddhi, and atman. Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1.
Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions. Its perceptions shift from
moment to moment. This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearing,
touch, sight, taste, and smell. Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separate
agent.
Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective and
personal experience.
Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara, their evaluation and
resulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi, the intellect. Manas, ahankara, and buddhi are
collectively called the internal instruments of the mind.
Next we come to chitta, which is the memory bank of the mind. These memories constitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates. But chitta is not merely
a passive instrument. The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual or
primitive urges which creates different emotional states.
4
This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is called
atman, the self, brahman, or jiva. Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration of
categories.
All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual. The traditions of yoga and
tantra have been based on such analysis. No wonder, this model has continued to inspire
people around the world to this day.
2
Mathematical and physical sciences
Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which show
that the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner.
Geometry and mathematics
Seidenberg, by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana, showed that Indian
geometry predates Greek geometry by centuries. Seidenberg argues that the birth of geometry and mathematics had a ritual origin. For example, the earth was represented by a
circular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consisted
of converting the circle into a square of an identical area. There we see the beginnings of
geometry!
In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics, Seidenberg (1978) concluded: “OldBabylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babylonia
and India got it from a third source. Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a date
so far back as 1700 B.C. Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (i.e., pre-1700 B.C.)
source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras, or at least for
the mathematics involved in these rituals.” That was before archaeological finds disproved
the earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium B.C.E.;
it was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earlier
source. Now with our new knowledge, Seidenberg’s conclusion of India being the source
of the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the new
chronology of the texts.
Astronomy
Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices, an astronomy of
the third millennium B.C.E. has been discovered (Kak 1994a; 1995a,b). Here the altars
symbolized different parts of the year. In one ritual, pebbles were placed around the altars
for the earth, the atmosphere, and the sky. The number of these pebbles were 21, 78, and
261, respectively. These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year. There were other
features related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were aware
that the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days.
The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code. To
give just one simple example, the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20,358 which
5
Sun
Earth
Moon
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Figure 2: The Vedic planetary model
equals 261 × 78, a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers! The Vedic ritual followed
the seasons hence the importance of astronomy.
The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical astronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon. This marked
the beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies.
Planetary knowledge
The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2. The sun was taken to be midway in the
skies. A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demons
and the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994).
The famous myth of Vishnu’s three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligible
when we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury. The myth appears to celebrate
the first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals the
number assigned in altar ritual to the heavens. Other arguments suggest that the Vedic
people knew the periods of the five classical planets.
Writing
Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved out
of the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script. The Sarasvati script was perhaps the first
true alphabetic script. The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers the
development of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river. It also appears that the symbol
6
for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for “ten” in Brahmi and this occurred
around 50 B.C.E.-50 C.E. (Kak 1994b).
Binary numbers
Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pingala’s Chhandahshastra. Pingala, who lived around the early first century B.C.E., used
binary numbers to classify Vedic meters. The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deep
understanding of arithmetic. A binary representation requires the use of only two symbols,
rather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation, and it has now become the
basis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers.
Music
Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth. McClain argues that
the connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth. The
invariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the development
of the earliest astronomy. The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search of
similar invariances in the heavenly phenomena.
The Samaveda, where the hymns were supposed to be sung, was compared to the sky.
Apparently, this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy. The Vedic
hymns are according to a variety of meters; but what purpose, if any, lay behind a specific
choice is unknown.
Grammar
Panini’s grammar (6th century B.C.E. or earlier) provides 4,000 rules that describe the
Sanskrit of his day completely. This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatest
intellectual achievements of all time. The great variety of language mirrors, in many ways,
the complexity of nature. What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entire
grammar in terms of a finite number of rules. Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammar
of Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system. From this perspective
it anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987).
Medicine
There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine. For example, the idea of breath
(prana in Sanskrit, and pneuma in Greek) is central to both. Jean Filliozat (1970) has argued
that the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind, the gall, and
the phlegm, which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine, appears to be derived from
the earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda. Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurred
via the Persian empire.
These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian science
but also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas.
7
3
Rhythms of life
We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the external
and the internal worlds. The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets. These are
sometimes the luminaries in the sky, or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes or
both.
To the question on how can the motions of an object, millions of miles away, have any
influence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnected.
In this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directly.
Rather, the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the periodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings and
plants.
It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response, but an internal
clock governed by the genes. We know this because in some mutant organisms the internal
clock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis. So these cycles
can be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the body’s inner “planets.” In the
language of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the genetic
inheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years that
they must have provided for survival.
The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon. It
is reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendar,
the ancients had discovered many of the biological periods. This would include the 24hour-50-minute circadian rhythm, the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motions
of the moon, the life cycles of various plants, and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep, the
three-week cycles of cattle and pigs, and the six-month cycle of dogs.
The moon (Soma) is called the “lord of speech” (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda. It is also
taken to awaken eager thoughts. Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic times
the moon was taken to be connected with the mind.
This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta, the Cosmic Man hymn, of
the Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brahmana where we have: “the mind is the moon.” Considering the fact that the relationships
between the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities, doubtless,
this slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon.
Fire, having become speech, entered the mouth
Air, becoming scent, entered the nostrils
The sun, becoming sight, entered the eyes
The regions becoming hearing, entered the ears
The plants, becoming hairs, entered the skin
The moon, having become mind, entered the heart.
—Aitreya Aranyaka 2.4.2.4
This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels. At the literal level there
is an association of the elements with various cognitive centers. At another level, the verse
connects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center.
8
Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm. Air represents
seasons so here the rhythm is longer. The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle. The regions
denote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to the
planets. The plants have daily and annual periods; the hairs of the body have an annual
period. The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon.
What are the seats of these cycles? According to tantra the chakras of the body are
the centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related to
“internal planets.” The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology.
4
Cosmology
We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world was
applied to the analysis of the mind. But the question remains: How does inanimate matter
come to have awareness? This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entities
for smell, taste, form, touch, and sound as in Figure 1. In the Sankhya system, a total of
twenty-four such categories are assumed. These categories are supposed to emerge at the
end of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material. The breath of
life into the instruments of sight, touch, hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifth
category, which is purusha, the soul.
The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles of
creation and destruction. This view became a part of the astronomical framework and
ultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed. The Sankhya evolution takes
the life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle.
The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well. Life mirrors
the entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history. Surprisingly similar are the
modern slogan: ontogeny is phylogeny, and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speededup ontogeny (Brown 1994).
5
Concluding Remarks
We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmology.
We now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millennium
B.C.E. which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago; and
mathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E.
Indian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy or/and cognitive
science. We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dates
elsewhere. What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and its
interactions with Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Greece? Was Indian knowledge carried
to the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places?
Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the “self”
and see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (e.g. Kak 1996b).
Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise; it
9
is now possible that the exploration of the inner world, which is the heart of modern science,
will also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis.
2
In the earliest period of Indian science, it is exceptional when we know the authorship of a
text or an idea. For example, although Lagadha (c. 1400 B.C.E.) is the author of Vedanga
Jyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarized
what was then well known. Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in the
Shulba Sutras, of Baudhayana, Apastamba, and other authors, which describe geometry,
or Pingala’s Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner. The major
exception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical tradition
starting with Panini. This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific method
where the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number of
rules.
With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476), we enter a new phase in which it becomes
easier to trace the authorship of specific ideas. But even here there remain other aspects
which are not so well understood. For example, the evolution of Indian medicine is not as
well documented as that of Indian mathematics. Neither do we understand well the manner
in which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved.
Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and space—abstract concepts that developed in the scientific context just a hundred years ago. The Puranas speak of countless
universes, time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on.
The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each becoming, after maturation in a separate pot, a healthy baby; this is how the Kaurava brothers
are born. There is also mention of an embryo, conceived in one womb, being transferred to
the womb of another woman from where it is born; the transferred embryo is Balarama and
this is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki.
There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Mahabharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction. According to the
well-known Sanskritist J.A.B. van Buitenen, in the accounts in Book 3 called “The Razing
of Saubha” and “The War of the Yakshas”:
the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thundering
cannon, no doubt a spaceship. The name of the demons is also revealing: they
were Nivātakavacas, “clad in airtight armor,” which can hardly be anything but
space suits. (van Buitenen, 1975, page 202)
Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the ants
in Brahmavaivarta Purana. Here Vishnu, in the guise of a boy, explains to Indra that
the ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems in
different times! These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforward
generalization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe. They must be viewed in
10
the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought
(see e.g. Staal 1988; Kak 1994).
The context of modern science fiction books is clear: it is the liberation of the earlier
modes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technology. But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary tradition
two thousand years ago? What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticated
ideas arose?
I do not answer these questions directly. My goal is to provide a survey so that the reader
can form his or her own conclusions. I begin with an account of Indian mathematics and
astronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomy.
Then I consider material from one randomly chosen early text, Yoga-Vasishtha, to convey
basic Indian notions about time, space, and matter. Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variously
as early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century. It claims to be book regarding
consciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time, space, matter and the nature of
experience. We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculations
in physics. Lastly, I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra, whose
origins, some scholars believe, go back to the age of Atharvaveda.
6
Mathematics and astronomy
One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy went
through several phases but we don’t have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases. A
certain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books, but there existed additional
sources which have not survived. For example, there were early astronomical siddhantas of
which we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600);
this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering of
art, literature, and the sciences.
Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now. Perhaps
one reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by the
more accurate later works. In addition to these siddhantas, practical manuals, astronomical
tables, description of instruments, and other miscellaneous writings have also come down to
us (Sarma 1985). The Puranas also have some material on astronomy.
Aryabhata
Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam which
sketches his mathematical, planetary, and cosmic theories. This book is divided into four
chapters: (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table, (ii) mathematics required for
computations, (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets using
eccentrics and epicycles, (iv) the armillary sphere, rules relating to problems of trigonometry
and the computation of eclipses.
The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have, as their origin, the commencement of Kaliyuga
on Friday, 18th February, 3102 B.C.E. He wrote another book where the epoch is a bit
different.
11
Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis; this idea appears to have been his innovation.
He also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 4.32 billion years; here he
went with an older tradition, but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within this
great cycle. According to the historian Hugh Thurston, “Not only did Aryabhata believe
that the earth rotates, but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)
of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun, rather
than the sun orbiting the earth. The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relative
to the sun.”
That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in his
book,“Just as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction, so
an observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the west.”
Varahamihira
Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books: Panchasiddhantika, Brihat Samhita, and Brihat Jataka. The first is a summary of five early astronomical
systems including the Surya Siddhanta. (Incidently, the modern Surya Siddhanta is different
in many details from this ancient one.) Another system described by him, the Paitamaha
Siddhanta, appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha.
Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interesting
details of the beliefs of those times. Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears to
be considerably influenced by Greek astrology.
Brahmagupta
Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan, who was born in 598, wrote his masterpiece,
Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, in 628. His school, which was a rival to that of Aryabhata, has
been very influential in western and northern India. Brahmagupta’s work was translated into
Arabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind.
One of Brahmagupta’s chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order indeterminate equation which is of great significance in number theory.
Another of his books, the Khandakhadyaka, remained a popular handbook for astronomical computations for centuries.
Bhaskara
Bhaskara (born 1114), who was from the Karnataka region, was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer. Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentials.
He was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani, a book in four parts: (i) Lilavati on arithmetic,
(ii) Bijaganita on algebra, (iii) Ganitadhyaya, (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy. He epicycliceccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas.
Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomy
in Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata. We know of the
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contributions of very many scholars in this tradition, of whom we will speak only of two
below.
Madhava
Madhava (c. 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every
36 minutes. He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets. He gave power
series expansions for trigonometric functions, and for pi correct to eleven decimal places.
Nilakantha Somayaji
Nilakantha (c. 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomy.
It appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center of
the planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar system.
He also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava.
The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the European
mathematics of the day.
7
Concepts of space, time, and matter
Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text, over 29,000 verses long, traditionally attributed to Valmiki, author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old. But
the internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later. It has
been dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14th
century (Chapple 1984). Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basis
that one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasa’s plays considering Kalidasa
to have lived around the fifth century. The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and new
arguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age of
YV are further muddled.
YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel. It describes
the instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama, the hero of the epic Ramayana. Its premise
may be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels with
the notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers. Its most interesting
passages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of space,
time, matter, and consciousness. It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not stand
in isolation. Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts. At its deepest level the Vedic
conception is to view reality in a monist manner; at the next level one may speak of the
dichotomy of mind and matter. Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered in
Puranas and Tantric literature.
We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation of
the book done by Venkatesananda (1984).
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Time
• Time cannot be analyzed... Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon for
its pastime. [16]
• The world is like a potter’s wheel: the wheel looks as if it stands still, though it revolves
at a terrific speed. [18]
• Just as space does not have a fixed span, time does not have a fixed span either. Just
as the world and its creation are mere appearances, a moment and an epoch are also
imaginary. [55]
• Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionth
of the twinkling of an eye: and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epoch
consisting of several revolutions of the four ages, which is the life-span of one cosmic
creation. Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these, for it is devoid of rising
and setting (which are essential to all time-scales), and it devoid of a beginning, middle
and end. [72]
Space
• There are three types of space—the psychological space, the physical space and the
infinite space of consciousness. [52]
The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all, inside and
outside... The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions of
time, which pervades all beings... The physical space is that in which the elements
exist. The latter two are not independent of the first. [96]
• Other universes. On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rock
within which I dwell. The world within this rock is just like yours: it has its own
inhabitants, ...the sun and the moon and all the rest of it. I have been in it for
countless aeons. [402]
• The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice, and the three worlds exist
within one strand of hair. [404]
Matter
• In every atom there are worlds within worlds. [55]
• (There are) countless universes, diverse in composition and space-time structure... In
every one of them there are continents and mountains, villages and cities inhabited by
people who have their time-space and life-span. [401-2]
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Experience
• Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs... That substratum is the experiencing
intelligence which itself becomes the experiencer, the act of experiencing, and the
experience. [36]
• Everyone has two bodies, the one physical and the other mental. The physical body
is insentient and seeks its own destruction; the mind is finite but orderly. [124]
• I have carefully investigated, I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to the
top of my head, and I have not found anything of which I could say, ‘This I am.’ Who
is ‘I’ ? I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge or
knowing and is free from self-hood. I am that which is indivisible, which has no name,
which does not undergo change, which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversity,
which is beyond measure. [214]
• I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth, neither trees and
plants, nor even mountains. For a period of eleven thousand years the earth was
covered by lava. In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar region:
for in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone. Only one half of the
polar region was illumined.
Then demons ruled the earth. They were deluded, powerful and prosperous, and the
earth was their playground.
Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water. And then
for a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests, except the polar region.
Then there arose great mountains, but without any human inhabitants. For a period
of ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons. [280]
Mind
• The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other. [39]
• Thought is mind, there is no distinction between the two. [41]
• The body can neither enjoy nor suffer. It is the mind alone that experiences. [109-110]
• The mind has no body, no support and no form; yet by this mind is everything consumed in this world. This is indeed a great mystery. He who says that he is destroyed
by the mind which has no substantiality at all, says in effect that his head was smashed
by the lotus petal... The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front of
him is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material].
• The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind. [175]
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Complementarity
• The absolute alone exists now and for ever. When one thinks of it as a void, it is
because of the feeling one has that it is not void; when one thinks of it as not-void, it
is because there is a feeling that it is void. [46]
• All fundamental elements continued to act on one another—as experiencer and experience—
and the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean. And,
they are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated from
one another till the cosmic dissolution. [48]
Consciousness
• The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom.
[41]
• The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree; and the eternal consciousness if the seed of the elements. [48]
• Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever; in it are no worlds, no created beings.
That consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation. [49]
• This consciousness is not knowable: when it wishes to become the knowable, it is known
as the universe. Mind, intellect, egotism, the five great elements, and the world—all
these innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone. [50]
• The world exists because consciousness is, and the world is the body of consciousness.
There is no division, no difference, no distinction. Hence the universe can be said
to be both real and unreal: real because of the reality of consciousness which is its
own reality, and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe, independent of
consciousness. [50]
• Consciousness is pure, eternal and infinite: it does not arise nor cease to be. It is ever
there in the moving and unmoving creatures, in the sky, on the mountain and in fire
and air. [67]
• Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beam
of light. In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be, with all their components
like space, time, action, substance, day and night. [120]
• The universe exists in infinte consciousness. Infinite consciousness is unmanifest,
though omnipresent, even as space, though existing everywhere, is manifest. [141]
• The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliance
with time, space and causation. Thence arise infinite names and forms. [145]
• The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmic
dance. He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance
(the happenings). [296]
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The YV model of knowledge
YV is not written as a systematic text. But the above descriptions may be used to reconstruct
its system of knowledge.
YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe. In other words, the
laws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve. According to YV, new information
does not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mind
and matter.
It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades the
whole universe.
One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics are
a result of the inherent structure of the mind.
8
The Shri Yantra
Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sources,
some scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda. The
Shri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formation
of 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984). Whatever the antiquity of the idea of this
design, it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during the
middle ages. The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge that
sum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees.
The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has asked
is whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuries
before its systematic study in Europe.
It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of its
mathematical properties. But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the construction
of this yantra requires mathematica knowledge.
9
Concluding Remarks
This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade. If the
revisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects also
then we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India.
Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that sets
it apart from that of most other nations, viz. the belief that thought by itself can lead to
objective knowledge. Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science, this
aspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as being
irrational and mystical. Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself one
would expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas. We can hope to address issues
such as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times.
Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not appear in any rational manner. Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that
17
his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri? This claim, so
persistently made by Ramanujan, has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see, for
example, Kanigel, 1991). Were Ramanujan’s astonishing discoveries instrumented by the
autonomously creative potential of consciousness, represented by him by the image of Namagiri? If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha and
other Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend.
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