ΠΔANΔAIH AND SĪTĀ:
ON THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE SANSKRIT EPICS
ASKO PARPOLA
University Of Helsinki
The Mahābhārata (MBh) and the Rāmāyaṇa (R) reflect the exploits of the "Pāṇḍavas" following the arrival and dispersal of the "Megalithic culture" c. 800-400 B.C. The Vedic (Yādava) trio of the two Aśvins and Uṣas, integrated with agricultural and pastoral deities, became the Vaiṣṇava trio.
THE MAHĀBHĀRATA AND THE MEGALITHS
THE ṚGVEDA WAS MOSTLY COMPOSED in the Punjab c. 1500-1200 B.C. The focus of the MBh is in the upper Ganges Valley, c. 900-700 B.C. (Buitenen 1973: xxiv). In Vālmīki's R, the hero's domicile is in the middle Ganges Valley, and the old core is dated to c. 750-500 B.C. (Goldman 1984: I, 23) or c. 500-300 B.C. (Brockington 1998: 379). The texts reflect a gradual eastward move of the cultural center of the Indo-Aryan speakers (cf. Brockington 1998: 198).
King Janamejaya Pārikṣita's horse sacrifice is glorified in AB 8,21,3 = ŚB 13,5,4,2 = ŚŚS 16,9,1, one of the rare samples of "proto-epic" verses recited in Vedic royal rituals (cf. Weber 1891; Horsch 1966). According to its own testimony (1,40ff.), the MBh was first recited at King Janamejaya's snake sacrifice (sarpasattra), in which snakes were victims thrown into fire. In the Vedic sarpasattra, kings and princes of the snakes in human form officiated as priests, and Janamejaya was one of the two adhvaryus, and the Brahman priest was Dhṛtarāṣṭra Airāvata (PB 25,15; BaudhŚS 17,18). In the MBh, Dhṛtarāṣṭra is not only a Kuru king, but also an ancestor of the snakes sacrificed at the sarpasattra (1,52,13). The MBh thus both preserves and distorts Middle Vedic traditions connected with Janamejaya and Parikṣit, whose descendants are referred to in BĀU 3,3,1-2 as a vanished dynasty (Weber 1852: 121, 177; 1891: 774; Buitenen 1973: I, xxivf.; Shulman 1980: 120f.; Minkowski 1989; Brockington 1998: 6).
The culture distinguished by the use of iron, horse, and Painted Grey Ware (PGW) (c. 1000-350 B.C.) is found lowest at all major sites associated with the main story of the MBh. It thus offers a suitable archaeological correlate to the earliest layers of the MBh (cf. Lal 1981; 1992; Buitenen 1973: I, lf.; Erdosy 1995: 79ff.; Brockington 1998: 133, 159-62). I have suggested that the early PGW culture with few and small towns (c. 1000- 700 B.C.) represents the Middle Vedic culture and its Kuru kingdom, and the late PGW culture with many more towns including Mathurā (c. 700-350 B.C.) the Pāṇḍava period (Parpola 1984: 453ff.).
King Pāṇḍu and the five Pāṇḍavas are never once mentioned in any Vedic text (Weber 1853: 402f.; Hopkins 1901: 376, 385, 396; Horsch 1966: 284; Brockington 1998: 6). The Pāṇḍavas, therefore, have arrived on the scene only after the completion of Vedic literature. They could crush the Kurus by making a marriage alliance with the Kurus' eastern neighbors, the Pañcālas. To consolidate their rule, the victorious Pāṇḍavas let themselves be grafted onto the Kuru genealogy and be represented as cousins of their former foes (Lassen 1847: I, 589-713; Weber 1852: 130-33; 1853: 402-4; Schroeder 1887: 476-82; Hopkins 1889: 2-13; 1901: 376).
The war was over and the epic in existence by c. 400-350 B.C.: Pāṇini refers to the joint worship of Vāsudeva and Arjuna (4,3,98), and mentions also Yudhiṣṭhira (8,3, 95), Hāstinapura (6,2,101), Andhaka-Vṛṣṇayaḥ (6,2,34), and Mahābhārata (6,2,38) (Weber 1852: 176; Hopkins 1901: 385, 390f.; Jaiswal 1981: 64f.; Brockington 1998: 257).
Apart from the absence of their mention in Vedic texts, there are other indications pointing to the foreign, and specifically Iranian, origin of the Pāṇḍavas (cf. Parpola 1984). Their polyandric marriage, which shocked the people present (MBh 1,197,27-29; Hopkins 1889: 298f.), can be compared to the customs of the Iranian Massagetae (Herodotus 1,216). Hanging their dead in trees (MBh 4,5,27-29; Brockington 1998: 227) resembles the Iranian mode of exposure of the corpse to birds.
Foreign, northerly origin is suggested by their pale skin color, which the MBh (1,100,17-18) connects with the name of Pāṇḍu, literally 'pale'; the name Arjuna likewise means 'white' (Lassen 1847: I, 634, 641-43). Sanskrit pāṇḍu-, pāṇḍura-, pāṇḍara- 'white, whitish, yellowish, pale', attested since c. 800 B.C. (SB, SA), are
loanwords going back to the same Dravidian root as Sanskrit phala- 'fruit' (cf. Tamil paḻam 'ripe fruit') and paṇḍita- 'learned' (differently Mayrhofer 1996: II, 70f.,
201f.), namely paḻ- / paṇḍ- 'to ripen, mature, arrive at perfection (as in knowledge, piety), change color by age, (fruit) to become yellow, (hair) to become grey, to become pale (as the body by disease [esp. leukoderma])' (cf. DEDR 4004; Parpola 1984: 455).
This appellation probably originated in Gujarat and Maharashtra, where there is considerable evidence of a strong Dravidian substratum (cf. Parpola 1994: 170ff.). The Pāṇḍavas' hiding in Virāṭanagara( Bairāṭ near Jaipur), their alliance with Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, and the location of their first kingdom in the wooded southern half of Kurukṣetra suggest that they probably entered the subcontinent from the west, via Sindh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. The MBh (2,23-29) and early northern Buddhist texts (cf. Weber 1853: 403) speak of the Pāṇḍavas as marauders over wide areas, also in north India.
If the Pāṇḍavas were foreigners of Iranian affinity coming to India c. 800-400 B.C., do they have any counterpart in the archaeological record? In my opinion (cf. Parpola 1984), a good match is the "Megalithic" culture, first attested c. 800 B.C. at sites such as Mahurjhari and Khapa in Vidarbha in NE Maharashtra. These oldest graves are simple stone-circles, in which people were buried with weapons and horses; the horse-furniture especially has parallels in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and western Iran. The circular huts with wooden posts and a fireplace are similar to the yurts used by the nomads of Central and Inner Asian steppes.
After their arrival in western India, the carriers of the Megalithic culture adopted the Black-and-Red Ware pottery (of local Chalcolithic origin) and during the following several centuries spread over wide areas, mainly southwards to the Deccan, south India, and Sri Lanka. In many regions, folklore associates the megaliths with the Pāṇḍavas. Numerous iron tridents suggest a Śaiva religion. Martial traditions of Megalithic origin still continue in the Deccan, where horsemen accompanied by
dogs worship Śaiva deities with tridents in yurt-like shrines (Sontheimer 1989: 26ff.). In Tamil Nadu the Megalithic culture continued till the second century A.D.
and is reflected in the Old Tamil heroic poetry. (Cf. Deo 1973; 1984; Leshnik 1974; 1975; Allchin & Allchin 1982: 344f.; McIntosh 1985; Ghosh 1989: , 110-30 and 243-51; Maloney 1975: 6ff.; Parpola 1984: 458f.)
THE RĀMĀYAṆA AND THE MEGALITHS
Most notable among the attempts to correlate archaeological cultures with the R (cf. Brockington 1998: 398- 400) is that with the early Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW). This was suggested by B. B. Lal after excavating sites identified as being R's Ayodhyā, Nandigrāma, Śṛṅgaverapura, and Bharadvāja's āśrama. George Erdosy (1995: 100-105) in his assessment of all radiocarbon dates places the early NBPW at 550-400 B.C., which nearly agrees with Brockington's date for the first phase of the R, 500-300 B.C.
Christian Lassen (1847: I, 535) proposed that the R "contains the legend of the first attempt of the Āryans to
extend their power southwards by warring expeditions." Albrecht Weber (1871: 3-5) was inclined to accept this view, though it was clear to him (p. 29f.) that the poem
was composed in north India and that its author did not have any exact knowledge of the southern parts of the subcontinent. Present-day research agrees on this relative
ignorance of the south, which has led many scholars to locate Laṅkā somewhere in Madhya Pradesh; while John Brockington (1998: 420, 423) opts for this alternative, Robert Goldman (1985: 28) finds it unlikely, noting that "the poet knew of an island kingdom, whether real or mythical, said to lie some distance off the coast of the Indian mainland." Indeed, as early as the second or third century A.D., an Old Tamil poem (Akanāṉūṟu 70) refers to Kōṭi (= Dhanuṣkōṭi, the tip of mainland opposite to Adam's Bridge in Ceylon) as the place from which the victorious Rāma crossed over to Laṅkā (cf. Hart 1975: 61f.).
The archaeology of early historical Sri Lanka, so far largely ignored in this connection, has become much clearer than before only recently. Robin Coningham (1995: 159-69) gives a detailed analysis of the stratigraphy of Anurādhapura and a rapid survey of other sites (170ff.). The oldest, "Mesolithic" period is evidenced
by locally manufactured stone tools. In the second, "Iron Age" period the habitation area of Anurādhapura was c. 18 hectares with circular huts indicated by postholes.
People had "typical Black and Red burnished ware," iron, and cattle. Radiocarbon-based dates are c. 600-450 B.C., but the period may have started as early
as c. 800 B.C. In the "Early Historic 1" period (c. 450- 350 B.C.), the site and the circular huts are larger, and there are strong similarities with South Indian Megalithic burials. The pottery is still dominated by Black and Red burnished ware. Horse bones are found, and indications of a major expansion of trade and manufacturing of conch shell, iron ore, amethyst, and quartz. In the "Early Historic 2" period (c. 350-275 B.C.), the site is more than 66 hectares and surrounded by a defensive wall. Finds include mother of pearl, cowrie and conch shells, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and carnelian from Gujarat, five Brahmi (!) inscriptions on potsherds, and, towards the end, coins stamped with a single arched hill or caitya. The "Early Historic 3 and 4" periods (c. 275-225 and 225-150 B.C.) have also yielded typically Hellenistic objects.
Widespread evidence covering the entire island suggests that Sri Lanka was inhabited only by tribes of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers until c. 800-600 B.C., when agriculture and cattle-raising were introduced by an Iron Age culture characterized by "Megalithic" burials and Black-and-Red Ware. It is so similar to the Iron Age Megalithic culture of the Indian mainland that its spread must be ascribed to actual movements of people. But where exactly did these settlers come from? It is sensible
to seek an answer from the legends in the chronicles of Sri Lanka (cf. Coningham 1995: 156-59).
COLONIZATION OF SRI LANKA
The legend of the colonization of Sri Lanka is related in the Dīpavaṃsa (Dīp, chs. 9-11) and with slight variation in the Mahāvaṃsa (Mhv, chs. 6-10), written c. A.D. 400 and 500 respectively, but based on older records (cf. Geiger 1912: ixff.; Hinüber 1996: 87-91; Lamotte 1958: 129-35). This legend derives the Siṃhalas from Gujarat, which is most reasonable on the basis of linguistic evidence, for the best experts classify Sinhalese with Gujarati and Marathi (cf. Lamotte 1958: 132; Masica 1991: 451-49). Pāli, too, is closest to Aśoka's inscriptions at Gīrnār in Gujarat, and is generally considered nowadays to have originated in western India (cf. Hinüber 1986: 20). Gujarat and Maharashtra are also precisely the areas where the Megalithic culture seems to have spread first.
At first seven hundred Siṃhalas led by Prince Vijaya came to Sri Lanka from Sīhapura (Siṃhapurai)n Lāḷa (Lāṭa in southern Gujarat). "Prince Vijaya was daring and uneducated; he committed most wicked and fearful things, plundering the people." He was therefore expelled by his father, King Sīhabāhu. Vijaya and his men sailed down the west coast, stopping at the cities of Bhārukaccha (Broach in Gujarat) and Suppāra (Śūrpāraka = Sopāra near Mumbai). In both places they were offered hospitality and honors, but during their months-long sojourns Vijaya and his men exasperated the inhabitants with their "cruel, savage, terrible and most dreadful deeds" which included "drinking, theft, adultery, falsehood, and slander." Finally they arrived at the island of Laṅkā. This happened when the Buddha reached the parinirvāṇa. In nine months Vijaya and his men destroyed the host of the Yakkhas who had earlier occupied the island. Vijaya founded Tambapaṇṇi, the first town in the island of Laṅkā. After having ruled thirty-eight years, Vijaya sent a message to his brother Sumitta in Sīhapura, asking a relative to take over the rule of Laṅkā after his death.
Vijaya is usually dated to the years 1-38 from the Buddha's parinirvāṇa or c. 486-448 B.C., Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva to 38-39/448-447 B.C., and so on (thus Lamotte 1958: 134). However, Laṅkā is said to have been kingless for one year (Mhv, ch. 8), and Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva came from Siṃhapura on a separate mission. The Vijaya story may be just an attempt to fill the earlier history with a vague memory of the first immigration much earlier: it seems to me that the regular dynastic record was started only with the arrival of Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva, whereafter it was continuous (with regard to the oldest period, Geiger [1912: xxf.] felt "a certain distrust of the tradition and traditional chronology from the very fact that Vijaya's arrival in Ceylon is dated on the day of the Buddha's death"). Indeed Lassen (1852: II, 96f.) has suggested that Vijaya does not actually refer to any specific person but to an event, the "conquest" of Sri Lanka. In any case, the statement that Vijaya found the island occupied by yakṣas only cannot be reconciled
with both the archaeological and the historical chronology, if the yakṣas denote small-sized ancestors of the later Veḍḍas, the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Like the
"cruel and savage" Vijaya, the Rāvaṇa of the epics may symbolize the early rulers of the island.
The Mhv (chs. 8ff.) records some events soon after Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva had arrived and married Bhadda-Kaccānā that could have given rise to the theme of the R: it was predicted that the son of the queen's daughter, the lovely Cittā, would destroy his maternal uncles and usurp the power. Princess Cittā was therefore kept as a prisoner in the palace, in an apartment built on a single pillar, accessible only through the dormitory of the king, and the entrance was guarded by a female servant inside
and by one hundred armed men outside. Bhadda-Kaccānā's mother sent her seven sons (one called Rāma according to the commentary) from India to Laṅkā to see their sister, and one of them, prince Dīghāyu, had a son who conceived an ardent passion for Cittā.
Weber (1871: 3-5) has already suggested that Rāvaṇa probably hails from north India, as he is described as worshipping Brahmanical divinities, and his father is Sage Pulastya, ancestor of a Brahmanical clan and a son of the Brahmanical God of Creation, Prajāpati (MBh 3,258,11). Moreover, Hanuman sees in Rāvaṇa's palace in Laṅkā noble horses from countries in the northern Indus Valley, Āraṭṭa, Kamboja, and Vālhīka (Weber 1871: 29f.). In this paper, I cannot pursue the study of Rāvaṇa much further, but will add a few observations. The term used by the Sri Lankan tradition of the previous inhabitants, yakkha/yakṣa, is of course of North Indian origin and tells something of the religion of the earliest immigrants. Most probably it was Vijaya who introduced the impressive yakṣa cult of exorcism and sorcery that is still alive in Sri Lanka (Kapferer 1991, 1997). Rāvaṇa himself is a magician, and propitiates Prajāpati with asceticism and human sacrifices for the sake of boons (MBh 3,259,15ff.).
The yakṣiṇī Kuveṇī, with whom Vijaya had a liaison, helped him to victory over the yakṣas; Sinhalese myths identify her with Goddess Kālī (cf. Kapferer 1991: 167). In order to obtain victory in battle, Rāvaṇa's son Indrajit sacrifices at a terrible-looking banyan tree connected with Goddess Nikumbhilā, alias Bhadra-Kālī (R 6,71,13-22; 6,74,2-4; 7,25,2ff.). This has a parallel in the human sacrifices to a banyan tree for the sake of victory that the Dhonasākha Jātaka (no. 353) reports from Taxila in northern Indus Valley (Parpola 1994: 259).
The Purāṇas associate Rāvaṇa and his brother Kubera with the Himalayas. When people migrate, they often transfer the name of their old domicile to their new habitat.
Siṃhapura, Vijaya's home town in Gujarat, has a namesake, Siṃhapura, in the Indus Valley, conquered by the Pāṇḍavas (MBh 2,24,19); according to Xuan-Zang, this Siṃhapura was c. 200 km SE of Takṣaśilā (Beal
1884: I, 143). In the next verse (2,24,20), the MBh mentions the Cola as a people crushed by the Pandavas, and
people called Cola are otherwise known only from Tamil Nadu in south India (Parpola 1984: 452). Moreover, Vijaya's brother Sumitta, King of Siṃhapura, married a princess of the Madra country in upper Indus Valley (cf. also Lassen 1852: II, 102, n. 4).
PĀṆḌYAS OF SOUTHERN MADHURĀ
The second Siṃhala king was called Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva. Paṇḍu(ka) figures in names of other Sinhalese kings as well, and associates them with the Pāṇḍavas of the MBh (thus also Lassen 1852: II, 102f.), whose father Pāṇḍu is called Paṇḍu (Cullavagga 64,43) or Paṇḍurājā (Jātaka V, 426) in Pāli texts. Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva's father-in-law, who ruled in a kingdom on the Ganges river, was likewise called Paṇḍu. He belonged to the Śakya clan, being a relative of the Buddha. Śakya is derived from Śaka, one of the principal names of Iranian steppe nomads. Its association with the name Paṇḍu is an additional hint of the Iranian origin of the Pāṇḍavas.
The beginning of the second phase (c. 450-350 B.C.) of the Megalithic culture of Sri Lanka coincides almost exactly with the traditional dates for Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva's rule. This phase is said to resemble greatly the Megalithic culture of South India. These archaeological parallels are mirrored in the chronicles. According to Mhv (ch. 7), a fierce demoness (yakkhinī) called Kuveṇī or Kuvaṇṇā had fallen in love with Vijaya and helped the invader to kill the Yakkhas who lived in their cities of Laṅkāpura and Sirīsavatthu. They had children. But when his companions wanted to perform the royal consecration for Vijaya, he said he would accept the proposal only if he obtained a queen of high rank. The companions sent a delegation with jewels and other presents to Southern Madhurā (dakkhina-madhurā); the king ruling there, called Paṇḍu and Paṇḍava, decided to send his daughter Vijayā in marriage to Vijaya and seven hundred daughters of his nobility to Vijaya's retinue of seven hundred men. After marrying Paṇḍava's daughter, Vijaya rejected Kuveṇī, sending her off from his house but promising to maintain her with a thousand bali offerings.
Southern Madhurā is modern Madurai in Tamil Nadu, the capital of the Pāṇḍya kings, whose dynastic name is irregularly derived from Pāṇḍu (Pat. on Vārtt. 3 on Pāṇ. 4,1,168). The Sri Lankan kings kept contact with this city also later on (cf. Malalasekera 1937: II, 439). Megasthenes, writing c. 300 B.C., refers to the Pāṇḍya country when speaking of the Indian Heracles:
this Heracles ... had only one daughter. Her name was Pandaea [Pandaiē], and the country in which she was born, the government of which Heracles entrusted to her, was called Pandaea after the girl.... Some other Indians tell of Heracles that, after he had traversed every land and sea, and purged them of all evil monsters, he found in the sea a new form of womanly ornament... the sea margarita [pearl] as it is called in the Indian tongue. Heracles was in fact so taken with the beauty of the ornament that he collected this pearl from every sea and brought it to India to adorn his daughter ... among the Indians too the pearl is worth three times its weight in refined gold. (Arrian, Indica 8,6-13, trans. Brunt 1983: 329-31)
The Arthaśāstra (2,11) mentions as sources of pearls several places along the coasts of southernmost India and northern Sri Lanka, among them Pāṇḍya-kavāṭa and Tāmraparṇī. Tāmraparṇī is the name of the chief river
of the southernmost (Tirunelveli) district of Tamil Nadu, at the mouth of which was the Pāṇḍya port town of Koṟkai famed in Old Tamil literature for its pearl fishery (cf. Subrahmanian 1966: 329). Tāmraparṇī is also the name of the first Sinhalese capital on the north coast of Sri Lanka, called Tambapaṇṇi in Mhv 7,38-42 and Taprobane by Onesicritus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, who learned it as the name of the whole island in 325 B.C. in the Indus Valley. (The Anurādhapura excavations have confirmed the contact to Indus Valley at this time.) Vijaya's contacts would have been with Koṟkai, before the capital was moved to Madhurā inland (Maloney 1970: 604-6; Parpola 1984: 450).
The Pāṇḍya capital is called "southern Madhurā" to distinguish it from "northern Madhurā," i.e., Mathurā, the famed domicile of Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, after which the Pāṇḍya Madhurā obviously was named (cf. Dessigane et al. 1960, I: xiv; Sircar 1971: 27 n. 1; Hardy 1983: 156). This is suggested also by the name of the second Siṃhala king coming from Gujarat, Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva. It seems to me that it was this second wave of Paṇḍu princes coming by sea to Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu who brought with them the Vaiṣṇava religion to the south. This is suggested also by the legend of the God Uppalavaṇṇa (= Sanskrit Utpalavarṇa 'having the color of blue lotus') being appointed by the Buddha as the guardian deity of the island and taking the immigrants under his
protection, even if the Mhv (ch. 7) associates this with Vijaya (cf. Lassen 1852: II, 98ff.). According to Champakalakshmi (1981: 34), the earliest form of Vaiṣṇava religion in south India is the Pañcavīra cult, i.e., the worship of the five Vṛṣṇi or Yādava heroes, in particular Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva and his elder brother Bala-Rāma, worshipped both independently and together in Tamil Nadu in the early centuries of the Christian era (p. 35). Such a migration of the Yādavas is known from the northern Sanskrit sources too: Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva moved from Mathurā to Gujarat, where he founded the coastal
city of Dvāraka or Dvārāvatī. Sanskrit dvāra 'door' corresponds to Tamil kavāṭam / kapāṭam 'fold of a door', found in the names Pāṇḍya-kavāṭa, one of the pearl sources in the Arthaśāstra (2,11,2), as well as Kapāṭapuram, legendary seat of one of the ancient Tamil literary academies (Maloney 1970: 612f.; Parpola 1984: 453). According to the Old Tamil tradition, Sage Agastya brought the eighteen Vēḷir chiefs and the rulers of the Aruvāḷa country from Dvārakā. The Āy rulers of the eighth-ninth century south Travancore likewise traced their descent from the Yādavas (Champakalakshmi 1981: 34).
NORTHERN MADHURĀ AND BALA-RĀMA
This Heracles is chiefly honoured by the Surasenians, an Indian tribe, with two great cities, Methora and Clisobora [Kleisóbora]; the navigable river Iomanes flows through their territory. Megasthene says that the garb this Heracles wore was like that of the Theban Heracles by the account of the Indians themselves; he also had a great many sons in this country, for this Heracles too wedded many wives, but he had only one daughter. Her name was Pandaea....
(Arrian, Indica 8,5-7, trans. Brunt 1983: 327-29)
Practically all scholars have identified the Indian Heracles with Kṛṣṇa worshipped by Śūrasenas in Mathurā on the Yamunā river. A singular exception is James Tod, who in 1835 identified Heracles with Bala-Deva, the god of strength (bala). Strength is a distinctive characteristic of Greek Heracles, and there are other reasons as well that make me think Tod was right. Textual and iconographic evidence from c. 400 B.C. onwards show that Bala-Rāma was in early Viṣṇuism a very important deity, especially in the Mathurā area (see Sircar 1971: 16ff.; Jaiswal 1981: 52ff.; cf. Brockington 1998: 261f., 266f.). Andreas Bigger (1998) has criticized this "received" view, but his own deconstruction of Bala-Rāma,
based on a text-level analysis of the MBh, is not always convincing and rather contradicted by the Old Tamil poems
of the first centuries A.D. (not considered by Bigger):
In Puṟ. 56, Krishna is invoked for his fame, Balarāma for his strength. Krishna is described as having a body like blue sapphire, having a bird (presumably the garuḍa) on his flag, and being accompanied by Balarāma, who has a body the color of a conch, a plow for his weapon, and a palmyra for his banner. (Hart 1975: 57)
Mathurā is called Madhurā 'sweet' not only in Pāli sources but also by Patañjali in his Mahābhāṣya c. 150 B.C. (cf. Weber 1873: 380f.). The form Madhurā figures in the MBh too, where the name is explained as coming from the demon Madhu, who lived in Madhu-vana on the Yamunā river but was slain by Kṛṣṇa, "the killer of Madhu." The "demoniac" god earlier worshipped at Madhurā seems to have been a snake deity connected
with plowing and identified with Śiva (see further below), whose names listed in the MBh include Madhu and who was addicted to drinking wine (madhu). His cult was then absorbed into that of Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva by transferring all the attributes of this earlier local god to Kṛṣṇa's "elder brother" Bala-Rāma, who is, among other things, a great wine-drinker. Demon Madhu (with Kaiṭabha: cf. Pāli keṭubha 'Brahmin ritualist') is said to have robbed from Brahmā the Vedas regained by Viṣṇu; a Vedic tradition therefore prevailed at Mathurā before Kṛṣṇaism.
THE VAIṢṆAVA TRIO
In the Veda, madhu is specifically associated with the Aśvins (cf. Macdonell 1897: 49f., 52; Zeller 1990: 119). These divine charioteers, twin sons of the Sky (divó nápātā), probably represent (white) day and (black) night (as was suggested by Max Miller, cf. Zeller 1990: 7f.). In ṚV 3,55,11, day and night are spoken of as twin sisters (yamyā) who have assumed different colors, one shining bright (táyor anyád rocate), the other black (kṛṣṇám anyát); the Aśvins, too, are twins and are identified with day and night (MS 3,4,4 ahorātré vā aśvinā). The Aśvins drive around the world in a triple chariot accompanied by the fair goddess of Dawn
(Uṣas), daughter of the Sky or Sun (Sūre / Sūro duhitā, Sūryā), their sister and wife (cf. Zeller 1990: 100ff.). This trio has a counterpart in the divine horsemen of the
Greeks, Kastor and Poludeúkēs (originally Poluleúkēs 'much shining'), who are sons of the sky god Zeus and brothers of Helen, as well as in the Lithuanian twin gods
expressly identified with the morning and evening star wooing the daughter of the sun (cf. Zeller 1990: 8, 97f.).
Many of the Aśvin hymns of the ṚV belong to the Kāṇva family of poets that was associated with the early Vedic tribes of Yadu and Turvaśa, from whom the Yādavas are descended. It therefore appears very likely, as has been proposed by Sen (1976: 124-27), that the trio of Aśvins and their sister / wife is the model of the early Vaiṣṇava trio consisting of two brothers connected with the colors white and black and their sister / wife. Chariotry can be added to the common characteristics mentioned by Sen. In the MBh, the 'black' Vāsudeva is the charioteer of the 'white' car-fighter Arjuna; their joint worship is mentioned by Pāṇini (4,3,98) c. 400-350 B.C. I suspect that the name of the Siṃhala king Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva means 'devotee of Paṇḍu ('the white one' = Arjuna or Bala-Rāma) and Vāsudeva'. The two brothers Vāsudeva and Bala-Rāma and their sister (called variously Ekānaṃśā, (Su)Bhadrā, or Añjanā) were a popular trio in early Vaiṣṇava iconography and still in Puri (cf. Jaiswal 1981: 68f.; Brockington 1998: 341; Yokochi 1999: 74). In the MBh (1,211-12), Arjuna marries Vāsudeva's sister Subhadrā; but in the Skanda-Purāṇa, Subhadrā is both the sister and wife of Vāsudeva. A whole chapter of the Old Tamil epic Cilappatikāram describes the pastoral dance performed by Kṛṣṇa, his beloved Piṉṉai, and Balarāma at Dvārak (cf. Champakalakshmi 1981: 47). Rāma, Lakṣmaṇa, and Sītā, too, are usually depicted as a trio in the iconography (cf. Ramachandra Rao 1992: VI, 26-28), and in the Dasaratha Jātaka, Sītā is a sister of the two brothers, yet married by Rāma (cf. Weber 1871: 1; Jaiswal 1981: 142).
Παυδαίη AND SĪTĀ
Oskar von Hinüber (in Wirth and Hinüber 1985: 1110) has suggested that Greek Pandaíē may correspond to Sanskrit Pāṇḍeyā 'daughter of Paṇḍu'. In Megasthenes' account, Heracles is both the father and husband of Pandaíē:
In this country where Heracles' daughter was queen, the girls are marriageable at seven years, and the men do not live longer than forty years. There is a story about this among the Indians, that Heracles, whose daughter was born to him late in life, realizing that his own end was near, and having no man of his own worth to whom he might give his daughter [ouk ékhonta hótōi andri ekdōi tēn paida heōutoiu epaksiōi], copulated with her himself when she was seven, so that their progeny might be left behind as Indian kings. Thus Heracles made her marriageable, and thenceforward the whole of this line which began with Pandaea inherited this very same privilege from Heracles. (Arrian, Indica 9, 1-3, trans. Brunt 1983: 331)
When doing research on the Sāvitrī legend, I stumbled upon a Sanskrit parallel to this account. (For the following, see Parpola 1998; 2000.) Princess Sāvitrī's father,
King Aśvapati of Madra, fails to marry off his daughter in time, and therefore sends her to search for and choose a husband on her own. The texts do not directly indicate that the king had had an incestuous relationships with Princess Sāvitrī, but they do quote in this context a Smṛti stating that if a girl sees her first menses in her father's house, the father incurs a great sin. According to MBh 3,277,32, Aśvapati asks Sāvitrī to find a husband "equal to herself" (sadṛśam ātmanaḥ) as no wooer is forthcoming, but according to the Skanda-Purāṇa (7,166,16), Aśvapati says that however much he looks, he cannot find for his daughter a bridegroom who in worth is equal to himself (vicārayan na paśyāmi varaṃ tulyam ihātmanaḥ).
In the Sāvitrī legend, the human couple (Princess Sāvitrī and Prince Satyavat) corresponds to the divine couple (Goddess Sāvitrī and God Brahmā). It was through the grace of Goddess Sāvitrī and her husband that the princess was born, and both the human and the divine Sāvitrī along with their husbands are to be worshipped in the ritual of vaṭa-sāvitrī-vrata that is associated with the legend. Even the fate of the human couple has its counterpart on the divine level. In accordance with the prophecy of Sage Nārada, the husband (Satyavat alias Citrāśiva, the young "alter ego" of Sāvitrī's father Aśvapati) dies after one year has passed from his wedding, with his head on the lap of Princess Sāvitrī. Sāvitrī as a faithful wife, Satī, follows her husband to death when Yama comes to fetch him, and with her loyalty gains his life back.
Parallel to this, the Skanda-Purāṇa (3,1,40) tells how the creator god Brahmā alias Prajāpati has sex with his own daughter Vāc and is therefore killed by Śiva, but Brahmā's wives Sarasvatī and Gāyatrī pacify Śiva and make him join Brahmā's severed head with the body. This myth is directly based on a Vedic myth most explicitly told in AB 3,33: Prajāpati is guilty of incest with his daughter Vāc and is killed by Rudra in punishment. Vāc 'speech, voice, sound' is another name of Goddess Sāvitrī, known best as the holiest stanza of the Veda composed in the Gāyatrī meter: its recitations at sunrise and sunset, and (later) at noon, are considered to manifest the Goddesses Gāyatrī, Sāvitrī, and Sarasvatī.
Prajāpati thus had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Vāc, who is explicitly identified with the goddess of Dawn (Uṣas or Sūryā or Sāvitrī) and had to die in punishment for this sin. Pandaίē's incestuous father Heracles also died soon after the copulation. Pāṇḍu, the father of the Pāṇḍavas, after he had killed a mating deer, was cursed to die if he ever copulated again, which came to pass when he had intercourse with his wife Mādrī. Mādrī was a princess of the Madra country, and ascended the funeral pyre of Pāṇḍu, resolute as the goddess Dhṛti. In both respects Mādrī resembles another princess of the Madra country, namely Sāvitrī, who is the prototype of a Satī, and the human counterpart of Goddess Sāvitrī, the wife-daughter of Brahmā / Prajāpati. We have seen that the female member of the early Vaiṣṇava trio (Kṛṣṇa's sister Subhadrā, Rāma's wife Sītā) seems to continue the Goddess of Dawn (Suryā / Sāvitrī) in the trio that she forms with the two Aśvins. Not only Sāvitrī but this entire earlier trio appears to have been worshipped in the Madra country, because Nakula (clever like Kṛṣṇa) and Sahadeva (whose name is a synonym of Baladeva), the Pāṇḍavas sired by the Aśvins, had Mādrī as their mother. Mādrī's brother Śalya, King of Madra, had Goddess Sītā in his banner, and TB 2,3,10 mentions Sītā Sāvitrī as the daughter of Prajāpati. All this suggests that Pandaίē, Uṣas / Sūryā / Sāvitrī, and Sītā are each other's aliases.
FURROW AND PLOW
Albrecht Weber considered Rāma's spouse Sītā to be at least partly mythical. An agricultural goddess Sītā, the personified furrow, is known from the Ṛgveda (4,57,6-7), and her worship is described in detail in PGS 2,17; according to the GGS (4,4,27-29), she was to be worshipped at plowing. It makes sense that the husband of 'furrow' is the god of plowing. Weber therefore kept asking already one hundred fifty years ago, has the hero of the R developed from Rāma Halabhṛt, i.e., was he originally just a personification of an agricultural divinity like Sītā? (Weber 1850: 175; 1871: 7ff.). Bala-Rāma's distinctive iconographic emblems, the plow (lāṅgāla, hala, phāla) and pestle for pounding grain (muṣala), definitely mark him as primarily an agrarian deity. The agricultural connection is also plain from his alternative name Saṃkarṣaṇa, which is derived from the activity of plowing (kṛṣi). Weber's hypothesis is supported by the fact that Bala-Rāma (this name is not found in the MBh) is actually 143 times called just Rāma in the MBh (cf. Bigger 1998: 9).
The plow is instrumental in placing the seed in the womb of the earth, and plowing thus symbolizes sexual intercourse. But the plow also creates the furrow, thus representing its generator. In R 1,66,14-15, Sītā emerges out of the furrow when Janaka the king of Mithilā is plowing a field, and is given the name Sītā and raised as his daughter by Janaka:
atha me kṛṣataḥ kṣetraṃ lāṅgalād utthitā tatah
kṣetraṃ śodhayatā labdhā nāmnā sīteti viśrutā
bhūtalād utthitā sā tu vardhamānā mamātmajā
vīryaśulketi me kanyā sthāpiteyam ayonijā
In the Uttarakāṇḍa (R 7,88,9-14), Sītā finally returns to her mother Earth: the goddess comes to fetch her and the two disappear underground. In the Uttararāmacarita, Janaka is called sīradhvaja, 'having the plough in his banner' (Weber 1871: 8).
Janaka's name denotes 'progenitor, father'. It is one of the names used in the Purāṇas of the Hindu creator god Brahmā, and Brahmā directly continues Vedic Prajāpati, whom TB 2,3,10 mentions as the father of Sītā Sāvitrī. On the other hand, as noted above, the plow and the field plowed (or the furrow) form a couple, so that Prajāpati is also Sītā Sāvitrī's husband through incest. In the R, a plow-god seems to be both Sītā's father (Janaka) and husband (Rāma = Bala-Rāma).
KINGS JANAKA AND AŚVAPATI
But in the R, Janaka is the king of Mithilā and not a god; the above quoted passages clearly belong to a late layer (cf. Brockington 1998: 379ff.) and do not reflect Vālmiki's Sītā, but the popular conceptions current at that time (cf. Bulcke 1952). Even so, the king was responsible
for the fertility and welfare of his country and represented a god, a specific god in each country. King Janaka of Videha, who is often mentioned in Middle
Vedic texts, may or may not be identical with the R's Janaka. The Purāṇnas know a Janaka dynasty that ruled in Mithilā-Videha after the MBh war but before the Buddha (Horsch 1966: 382, 386f.). Janaka's Videha was no longer an independent kingdom by the sixth century B.C. (Brockington 1998: 421). In ŚB 10,6,1,1 and ChU 7,11, King Janaka of Videha is mentioned along with Aśvapati, the king of Kekaya. This suggests a connection, since Sāvitrī's father Aśvapati is the king of Madra,
and the Madra and the Kekaya or Kaikeya peoples are often mentioned together in the epic, and the Madra king Śalya had Goddess Sītā in his banner.
Rāma's brother Bharata brings to his father Daśaratha, the king of Kosala, enormous dogs as presents from Daśaratha's brother-in-law, Aśvapati, the king of the
Kekayas. The dogs had been grown in the palace, equalled the tiger in strength and fought with their teeth (R 2,64,21 antaḥpure 'tisaṃvṛddhān vyāghraviryabalānvitān / daṃṣṭṛāyudhān mahākāyān śunaś copāyanaṃ dadau ). The Greek authors report a gift of similar dogs to Alexander from King Sopeithes:
Writers narrate also of the excellent qualities of the dogs in the country of Sopeithes. They say, at any rate, that Alexander received one hundred and fifty dogs from Sopeithes; and that, to prove them, two were let loose to attack a lion, and, when they were being overpowered, two others were let loose upon him, and that then, the match having now become equal, Sopeithes bade someone to take one of the dogs by the leg and pull him away, and if the dog did not yield to cut off his leg; and that Alexander would not consent to cutting off the dog's leg at first, but consented when Sopeithes said that he would give him four instead; and that the dog suffered the cutting off of the leg by slow amputation before he let go his grip. (Strabo 15,1,31 p. 700, trans. Jones 1931: II, 55, Loeb ed.)
Lassen (1847: I, 300; 1852: II, 161) identified the Greek name Sopeithes with Sanskrit Aśvapati (and Prakrit *Assapati) and concluded that, like Pōros [= Sanskrit Paurava] and Taxilēs, it was the inherited royal title of the Kekaya king rather than his proper name. Quintus Curtius Rufus (8,12,4) explicitly states that Taxiles was a hereditary title of the kings of Taxila [= Sanskrit Takṣaśilā-]: sumpsit ... more gentis suae nomen quod patris fuerat; Taxilen appellavere populares, sequente nomine imperium in quemcumque transiret.
-peίthēs most probably renders Indo-Aryan -pati-ḥ, transformed by contamination with similarly sounding Greek or Macedonian names, such as Peίthōn, one of Alexander's generals. Sō- for Sanskrit aśva- or Prakrit assa- 'horse' is more difficult to explain. Sylvain Lévi derives Sōpeίthēs from the unattested Sanskrit word *Saubhūti 'king of Saubhūta' (cf. Gaṇap. on Pāṇ. 4,2,75) (cf. Karttunen 1997: 35, 53). Because this king is associated with dogs in both Greek and Sanskrit sources, the first part Sō- of Sōpeίthēs could rather render Gāndhārī *so- (cf. Hinüber 1986: 78 Gāndhārī monaso = Sanskrit mānaso) for Pāli sā- 'dog' (in a compound: sā-cakka-) from Sanskrit śvā (sg. nom.), śvan- 'dog'; cf. also Pāli so-pāka = Sanskrit śva-pāka- 'dog-cooker', 'dog-eater'. Svapati 'Lord of the dogs' is known from VS 16,28 as an epithet of Rudra, the Vedic god of hunters and robbers. In Sanskrit, śvapati can after -o / -e in sandhi be interpreted as aśvapati. Both meanings, however, make sense: Prajāpati, whom Aśvapati represents, is the lord of the horse, especially the sacrificial horse; and both the horse and the dog are connected with Rudra / Bhairava and related folk deities, for example in Maharashtra (Sontheimer 1989).
MĪNĀKṢĪ OF MADURAI
Queen Pandaίē of Megasthenes has been compared with the guardian Goddess of the Pāṇḍya capital Madurai, Mīnākṣī. In the local Tiruviḷaiyāṭaṟ-Purāṇam (shorter version from the twelfth, longer from the sixteenth century), she is the daughter of a Pāṇḍya king of Madurai and his queen, who was the daughter of a Coḷa king called Śūrasena. Childless, they performed a Vedic sacrifice to obtain a son, but received from the sacrificial fire a girl. (The birth of Princess Sāvitrī to King Aśvapati in the Indus Valley was similar.) The girl had three breasts, and a voice from heaven told that she should be educated in military arts like a prince, and that she would conquer the whole world. The third breast would disappear when she met her future husband. All this happened, and finally when fighting at Mount Kailāsa, she met God Śiva and the third breast disappeared. After their marriage, Śiva ruled Madurai as King Sundara-Pāṇḍyan.
Here the spouse of Mīnākṣī is called Sundareśvaran 'Beautiful Lord' and considered to be Śiva. However, there is in Madurai a local form of Viṣṇu called in Tamil Aḻakar 'Beautiful Lord'. Aḻakar is the brother of Mīnākṣī, who gives the bride away to the groom. The Aḻakarmalai temple with a standing form of Viṣṇu dates to pre-Pallavan times, and is one of the oldest in Tamil Nadu (Champakalakshmi 1981: 50). Especially in a city called Madhurā, Aḻakar could have been both the brother and the husband of the Goddess in ancient times, as was the case with Rāma and Sītā according to the Daśaratha-Jātaka. Both Sundara and Aḻakar might render Sanskrit rāma, which in classical Sanskrit means 'pleasing, charming, handsome, lovely, beautiful'. Iconographic manuals prescribe that Rāma is to be depicted as beautiful (sundara), others that both Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa are to be exceedingly handsome (atīva rūpa sampannau) (Ramachandra Rao 1992: VI, 26, 28). According to BhP 10,2,13, Bala-Rāma was called Rāma because he charmed people (with his beauty) (rāmeti lokaramaṇād).
Vijaya's Sri Lankan yakkhinī wife Kuveṇī or Kuvaṇṇā likewise had three breasts, and she had also been told that one of them would vanish when she saw her future husband, which happened when she saw Vijaya (Shulman 1980: 204f., quoting Davy 1821: 293-95). As Shulman has pointed out, the Tamil word kaṇ included in Mīnākṣī's vernacular name Aṅ-kayaṟ-kaṇṇ-ammaiyār 'Lady of the beautiful carp-eyes', means both 'eye' and 'breast-nipple'. In the Śrīvidyārṇava-Tantra, Sītā is three-eyed and wears the crescent of the moon on her head; she has four arms holding a noose, a goad, a bow, and an arrow (Ramachandra Rao 1992: VI, 269). Sītā Sāvitrī is an aspect of the warrior goddess Durgā, as is sometimes made explicit in texts (see Parpola 1992, 1998, 1999). In the case of Mīnākṣī, this relationship with Durgā is clear from her local legend. This legend must be old, for in the Mhv (c. A.D. 500), the daughter of King Paṇḍu of Southern Madhurā is called Vijayā, which designates her as the Goddess of Victory.
The legend of a three-breasted princess recurs even at Nāgapaṭṭinam in Tamil Nadu: here this 'Lady of the long dark eyes' (Karun-taṭaṅ-kaṇṇi) is the daughter of Ādi-Śeṣa, King of the snakes, an ardent worshipper of Śiva. Of her, too, it was prophesied that the third breast would disappear as soon as she saw the king who would wed her, in some variants a Nāgarāja (cf. Shulman 1980: 205). Shulman (1980: 200-211) has discussed her relationship with Mīnākṣī and with Kaṇṇaki, the heroine of Cilappatikāram who destroys the city of Madurai with one of her breasts, all multiforms of the three-eyed warrior goddess Durgā-Kālī. At Madurai, too, the bridegroom appears to have been the local Śiva-related snake god, called in Tamil Āla-vāy (Sanskrit Hālaāya) (cf. Shulman 1980: 123ff., 206).
BALA-RĀMA HAS REPLACED RUDRA-ŚIVA
Bala-Rāma incarnates a snake deity connected with fertility and the subterranean regions, called Śeṣa 'remainder' (the name seems to refer to the seed grain left over for next sowing) or Ananta 'endless'. Serpent Śeṣa drinks palm-wine, and has the palmyra palm (Sanskrit tāla, a loanword from Dravidian) and the wine cup as his iconographic attributes. In this regard he is like Bala-Rāma, who in turn has the three-bend (tri-bhaṅga) pose associated with snake deities (cf. Ramachandra Rao 1991: IV, 121-25). Buddhist Sanskrit texts know Pāṇḍuka, Pāṇḍuraka, Paṇḍulaka, and Paṇḍaraka as names of a nāga king, one of the guardians of the great treasures.
The Mathurā region is considered to be "the stronghold of Saṃkarṣaṇa-Baladeva worship" (Jaiswal 1981: 60). The identity of Bala-Rāma is likely to have been pasted onto the earlier local divinity there. The myth of Kṛṣṇa's subduing the snake Kāliya living in the Yamunā river and driving him away from his home has been explained to symbolize the replacement of a snake cult earlier prevalent at Mathurā with the cult of Kṛṣṇa. The excavations at Sonkh have confirmed that snake worship still prevailed to a remarkable degree at Mathurā around the beginning of the Christian era. The only major shrine discovered is an apsidal Nāga temple. The associated finds comprise images and panels representing serpent deities and inscriptions referring to their cult. Nāga, Nāga Bhūmo, and Nāgarāja Dadhikarṇṇa are mentioned by name (cf. Hartel 1993: 413-60).
Although Saṃkarṣaṇa appears as a Vaiṣṇavite divinity in the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas, there are traces of his close connection with the cult of Rudra-Śiva also. The Pañcarātra Samhitās often identify Saṃkarṣaṇa with Rudra-Śiva. The Brahmāṇḍa
Purāṇa states that Rudra was known as Halāyudha. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa speaks of Saṃkarṣaṇa-Rudra, who comes out of the mouth of the serpent Śeṣa at the end of every aeon .. . Śiva also is intimately associated with the nāgas. (Jaiswal 1981: 54)
In Bengal Śiva is worshipped as Lāṅgaleśvara( cf. Smith 1999), and the most important phallic god of Hinduism could really be expected to be the god of plowing and generation. Megasthenes' account of the worship of Dionysos in India underlines Śiva's connection with agriculture and the plow c. 300 B.C.:
The Indians, he [Megasthenes] says, were originally nomads ... until Dionysus reached India. But when he arrived and became master of India, he founded cities, gave them laws, bestowed wine on the Indians as on the Greeks, and taught them to sow their land, giving them seed. (...) Dionysus first yoked oxen to the plough and made most of the Indians agriculturalists instead of nomads, and equipped them also with the arms of warfare.... (Arrian, Indica 7, 2-7, trans. Brunt 1983: 325-27)
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I offer the following provisional reconstruction as a first approximation of the historical background that led to the creation of the earliest versions of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. This is of course open to improvement and modification in the light of other evidence.
From 800 B.c. onwards, groups of Iranian-speaking, pastoralist and marauding horsemen started arriving from the steppes of Eurasia and Central Asia in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Their main route to South Asia seems to have been via the Indus Valley to Gujarat, Rajasthan, and northern Maharashtra. These Iranians brought with them their own traditions, such as polyandric marriage, circular yurt-like houses, and funeral customs including exposure and megalithic burial. The newcomers were so fair-skinned that the local population called them 'pale' (pāṇḍu), using a word taken over from Dravidian languages then still spoken in these regions besides Indo-Aryan. While they adopted the local Black-and-Red Ware pottery, the invaders essentially continued living as before in Central India and the Deccan, spreading also further south and adopting there the local Dravidian speech. Around 600 B.C., some megalithic raiders became maritime in Gujarat and colonized the coasts of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu.
Meanwhile some megalithic Pāṇḍus turned towards the culturally more advanced northern India. Through marital and other alliances they eventually gathered such a force that one group, the Pāṇḍavas, took over the rule even in the mightiest kingdom of north India. Another successful group was the family to which the Buddha belonged: the Śākyas, too, were Pāṇḍus, ultimately of Śaka origin, as their name reveals. In north
India, the Pāṇḍus quickly adopted the earlier local culture and language. Their newly won positions were legitimated with fabricated genealogies that made them a branch of the earlier ruling family, and with the performance of royal rituals. The propaganda was disseminated by professional bards, leading to the creation of the Mahābhārata.
The alliance of the Pāṇḍavas and the Yādava chief Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva during the Mahābhārata wars led to the birth of a new Vaiṣṇava religion, at the center of which was at first a trio that succeeded another with Vedic and older Indo-European roots (the Aśvins and their sister): two heroic brothers (the 'strong' white elder brother Arjuna / Baladeva and the black younger brother Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva) and their sister, whom the elder brother marries. This trio amalgamates the earlier cult of another trio worshipped from the upper Indus Valley (Madra, Kekaya, Bāhlīka) through Gujarat (Prabhāsa) and Rajasthan (Puṣkara, Mālavā) to Prayāga at the confluence of Yamunā and Gangā and eastwards up to Gayā (cf. Parpola 1998: 217ff.), evidently including Mathurā.
The earlier trio thus absorbed into Vaiṣṇavism consisted of the incestuous couple of father (Prajāpati = Brahmā = Janaka = Aśvapati) and daughter (Vāc = Uṣas = Sāvitrī = Sītā = Vijayā = Durgā) and the dying and resurrected young prince-husband (Satyāvat = Kumara = Rudra = Śiva) to whom the father married off his daughter (an alter ego of the father). These agricultural divinities were represented by the king and the queen and by such fertility symbols as the plow and furrow, pestle and mortar, and snake and earth. In a recurring new year festival, a young hero (representing the king and the dying sun, etc.) was sacrificed after his "sacred marriage" with the queen; wine drinking, feasting with the meat of sacrificial victims, singing, dancing, and sexual orgies were essential elements of this festival (cf. MBh 8 and Parpola 1998).
As a result of the amalgamation, Arjuna / Baladeva was transformed into (Bala-)Rāma and his wife-sister into Sītā. Around 450 B.C. the new Vaiṣṇava religion was taken from Mathurā via Dvāraka by sea to Sri Laṅkā (by Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva) and to Tamil Nadu (where southern Madhurā became the new Pāṇḍya capital). Rumors about the princess held captive in the royal palace of Sri Lanka (Mhv ch. 9) reached Ayodhyā soon hereafter, and Vālmīki composed his epic in which the local royalties played the roles of Janaka (the father of Sītā), (Bala)Rāma, and Sītā, and Rāma's younger brother (Lakṣmaṇa thus replacing Kṛṣṇa of the early Vaiṣṇava trio).
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parpola
indian-stamp-caldwell
இந்திய அரசாங்கம் திராவிட மொழிகளின் ஒப்பிலக்கணம் தந்த ராபெர்ட் கால்ட்வெல் பாதிரியாரின் தபால்தலையை மே 7, 2010 அன்று வெளியிடுவதாக அறிவித்துள்ளது. அதற்கு முன்னரே திராவிட மொழிக் குடும்பக் கோட்பாடு அளித்தவர் ஃபரான்சிஸ் வைட் எல்லிஸ் ஆவார். எல்லிஸ் சிறுவயதில் நஞ்சுணவை உண்டு மாய்ந்ததால், நூல் எழுதவில்லை. 1856-ல் எல்லிஸ் தொடங்கிய பணியைக் கால்டுவெல் பாதிரியார் (மே 7, 1814 - ஆகஸ்ட் 28, 1891) தனிநூலாகச் செப்பமுடன் எழுதி வெளியிட்டார்.
திசையன்விளை அருகுள்ள இடையன்குடி என்ற வெப்பம் மிகுந்த ஊரில் 50 வருடங்கள் வாழ்ந்து கால்டுவெல் ஐயர் கிறிஸ்து சமயத்தைப் பரப்பினார். அந்தக் கிறித்துவ மிஷனரி தொண்டூழியம் பற்றிய விரிவான திரைப்படம்:
Bishop Robert Caldwell, A Comparative grammar of the Dravidian on South Indian Family of Languages - 1856. முதன்முதலாய் திராவிடர், திராவிட மொழிகள் எனத் தென்னிந்திய மொழிக்குடும்பத்தையும், அம்மொழிகள் பேசுவோரையும் குறிப்பிட்டவர் கால்டுவெல்லே.
கால்டுவெல் 19-ம் நூற்றாண்டில் த்ரவிட என்பது திரமிட என்றாகி அது பின்னர் த்ரமிள ஆகத் திரிந்து பின்னர் தமிள, தமிழ் என்று ஆனது என்றார். 100 ஆண்டு சென்றபின்னர் இதனை மறுத்து, தமிழ் என்பதே திரமிடம், திராவிடம் என்றானது என்று மொழியியல் அறிஞர் சுவெலபில் போன்றோர் எழுதினர். திராவிடம் என்பது தமிழைக் குறிக்கும் பெயரே என்பதைக் கால்டுவெல் கூறுகிறார். தமிழை மட்டும் குறிக்க தமிழ் என்னும் சொல்லையும், தமிழையும் அதன் கிளை மொழிகளான தெலுங்கு, கன்னடம், மலையாளம், போன்றவற்றையும் குறிக்க ‘திராவிடம்’ என்னும் சொல்லையும் தான் பயன்படுத்துவதாகத் தெளிவாகக் குறிப்பிடுகிறார்.(மேலது பக். 8). தமிழ் என்ற சொல்லுக்கான சமஸ்கிருதச் சொல் ‘திராவிட’ என்றும், அச்சொல் திராவிடர் என்று அழைக்கப்படும் மக்கள் வாழும் நாட்டையும், அவர்களது மொழியையும் குறிக்கும் என்றும் கால்டுவெல் குறித்தார். (மேலது பக். 12, கவிதாசரண் வெளியீட்டில் உள்ள பக்க எண்கள்).
மேலும் ஆராய,
Y. V. Kumaradoss,
Robert Caldwell, a scholar-missionary in colonial South India
Delhi : ISPCK, 2007
ரா. பி. சேதுப்பிள்ளை, கால்டுவெல் ஐயர் சரிதம்,
1936: ஹிலால் பிரஸ், நெல்லை
1964: பழனியப்பா பிரதர்ஸ்
Minatcicuntaram, Ka.,
Contribution of European scholars to Tamil
University of Madras, 1974 (Tamil translation: 2003).
எல்லீசன் என்றொரு அறிஞன் - ஆ.இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி
http://www.kalachuvadu.com/issue-89/varalaru.asp
கால்டுவெல் என்ற மனிதர் - தொ. பரமசிவன்
http://www.keetru.com/maatruveli/nov08/tho_paramasivan.php
கால்டுவெல்: பின்காலனிய வாசிப்பு - அ. மங்கை
http://www.keetru.com/maatruveli/nov08/a_mangai.php
கால்டுவெல் என்னும் சிக்கல் - எம். வேதசகாய குமார்
http://www.keetru.com/maatruveli/nov08/vedhasakayakumar.php
கால்டுவெல்லின் திராவிடம்: ஒரு வாசிப்பு -வ. கீதா
http://www.keetru.com/maatruveli/nov08/Va_Geetha.php
M.S.S. Pandian, Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present, Delhi, 2007.
http://muelangovan.blogspot.com/2007/04/1814-1891.html
2009 கிறிஸ்துமஸ் தினத்தன்று முதல்வர் கருணாநிதி தமிழைச் செம்மொழி ஆக்கும் திருப்பணியைத் துவக்கிய கால்டுவெல்லையும், பின்னர் கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கம் மேற்கொண்ட நடவடிக்கைகளையும் பற்றி முரசொலியில் எழுதியுள்ளார்.
அறிக்கை:
தமிழ்மொழி செம்மொழியென முதல் குரல் கொடுத்த தமிழர் பரிதிமாற் கலைஞர் என்றால்; தமிழ்மொழி செம்மொழியென்று முதலில் சொன்ன வெளிநாட்டவர் அறிஞர் ராபர்ட் கால்டுவெல் ஆவார்.
பரிதிமாற் கலைஞர் தமிழ்மொழி செம்மொழியென 1887-ம் ஆண்டு குரல் கொடுத்ததற்கு 30 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்பே, 1856-ம் ஆண்டு அறிஞர் கால்டுவெல், தாம் எழுதிய "திராவிட மொழிகளின் ஒப்பிலக்கணம் என்ற ஒப்புவமை காண்பித்திட இயலாத, உயர்பெரும் நூலில், "திராவிட மொழிகள் அனைத்திலும், உயர் தனிச் செம்மொழியாய் நிலைபெற்று விளங்கும் தமிழ், தன்னிடையே இடம் பெற்றிருக்கும் சமஸ்கிருதச் சொற்களை அறவே ஒழித்துவிட்டு உயிர் வாழ்வதோடு அவற்றின் துணையை ஒருசிறிதும் வேண்டாமல் வளம் பெற்று வளர்வதும் இயலும்.
செந்தமிழ் என்றும் தனித்தமிழ் என்றும் சிறப்பிக்கப் பெறுவதும், பெரும்பாலும் அம்மொழி இலக்கியங்கள் அனைத்தையும் எழுதப் பயன்படுவதுமாகிய பழந்தமிழ் அல்லது இயல்தமிழ், மிக மிகக் குறைந்த சமஸ்கிருதத் தொடர்பையே பெற்றுள்ளது.
சமஸ்கிருதச் சொற்களையும், எழுத்துக்களையும் மேற்கொள்வதை வெறுத்து ஒதுக்கிவிட்டு; பழந்திராவிட தனிச்சிறப்பு வாய்ந்த மூலங்கள், சொல்லுருவங்கள், ஒலி முறைகளை மட்டும் மேற்கொள்வதில் காட்டும் ஆர்வத்தையும் விழிப்புணர்ச்சியையும் விடாமல் மேற்கொண்டிருப்பதினாலேயே அச்செந்தமிழ், தன் மொழியின் உரைநடை, பேச்சு நடைகளோடு சிறப்பாக வேறுபடுகிறது என்று தமிழ்மொழி செம்மொழியே எனச் சான்றாதாரங்களோடு நிரூபித்துக் காட்டினார்.
அறிஞர் கால்டுவெல்லின் ஆழ்ந்த ஆராய்ச்சி அடிப்படையிலான நூல்கள் தமிழகத்தில் பிராமணர் அல்லாதார் இயக்கத்திற்கு ஊக்கமளிப்பதாக அமைந்தன. தமிழ், தமிழர்தம் நாகரிகம், பண்பாடு ஆகியவற்றில் அவர் கொண்டிருந்த பற்றின் அடிப்படையிலேதான், அண்ணா இரண்டாம் உலகத்தமிழ் மாநாட்டின்போது, அவரது திருவுருவச் சிலையைச் சென்னை மெரினா கடற்கரையில் நிறுவிடச் செய்தார்.
தென்னிந்தியத் திருச்சபையினர் வழங்கிய ராபர்ட் கால்டுவெல் திருவுருவச்சிலை, 2.1.1968 அன்று, அன்றைய தமிழக மேலவைத் தலைவர் எம்.ஏ.மாணிக்கவேலர் தலைமையில், பன்மொழிப் புலவர் கா.அப்பாத்துரையாரால் திறந்து வைக்கப்பட்டது.
தமிழ்மொழி செம்மொழியேயென அறுதியிட்டு உறுதியாக சைவ சித்தாந்த மகா சமாஜம் 1918-ம் ஆண்டிலேயே நிறைவேற்றிய தீர்மானம் தமிழ் ஆர்வலர்களாலும், அன்பர்களாலும் மிகுந்த மகிழ்ச்சியோடும், நிறைவோடும் நினைவு கூரத்தக்கதாகும்.
பச்சையப்பன் கல்லூரியில் நடைபெற்ற இந்தக் கூட்டத்தைப் பற்றி, தனித்தமிழ் அறிஞர் மறைமலையடிகளார் 12.3.1918-ந் தேதி பற்றிய தமது நாட்குறிப்பில், "தமிழைச் செம்மொழியாக ஏற்றுக் கொள்ளவேண்டும் என்று அரசாங்கத்திற்கு விண்ணப்பம் விடுப்பதற்குப் பச்சையப்பன் கல்லூரியில் 15-ம் நாள் (15.3.1918) நடக்கவிருக்கும் கூட்டத்தில் என்னை உரையாற்றுமாறு, கா.சுப்பிரமணிய பிள்ளை எம்.ஏ., எம்.எல்., வேண்டினார்'' என்று குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்.
தஞ்சை-கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கம், செம்மொழி வரலாற்றிற்கு வழங்கியுள்ள மிகச்சிறப்பான பங்களிப்பு போற்றத்தக்கது மட்டுமல்ல; புவியில் வாழும் நாள்வரை தமிழர்களால் மறக்கவொண்ணாததுமாகும். த.வே.ராதாகிருஷ்ணப் பிள்ளை உள்ளிட்ட தமிழ் ஆர்வமும், தமிழ்ப் பயிற்சியும் உடையோர் சிலரால் 1911-ம் ஆண்டு தோற்றுவிக்கப்பட்ட கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கம்; தொடங்கிய காலம் முதல் தமது வாழ்நாள் இறுதிவரை அதன் தலைவராக இருந்து அரும்பணியாற்றியவர் தமிழறிஞர் த.வே.உமாமகேசுவரம் பிள்ளை ஆவார். அதனால் தான், 18.2.2006 அன்று சென்னை அண்ணா அறிவாலயத்தில் - கலைஞர் அரங்கில் நடைபெற்ற தமிழவேள் உமாமகேசுவரனார் அஞ்சல்தலை வெளியீட்டு விழாவில் நான் உரையாற்றியபோது:
"உமாமகேசுவரனார் பெயர் இன்று மற்ற அறிஞர்களைவிட அதிகமாக நினைவுக்கு வரவேண்டிய காலகட்டம் இது. காரணம் தமிழ்ச் செம்மொழி என்று எண்ணினால், பரிதிமாற் கலைஞருக்கு அடுத்து, நம் நினைவுக்கு வருகிற பெயர் தமிழவேள் உமாமகேசுவரனாரின் பெயர்தான். அவர்தான் கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கத்தில் தமிழ், செம்மொழியாக ஆக்கப்படவேண்டும் என்ற தீர்மானத்தை இயற்றியவர். இல்லையேல், தமிழ் செம்மொழியாவதற்கு எந்த ஆதாரத்தை வைத்து நாம் மத்தியிலே இருக்கின்ற அரசோடு பேச முடிந்தது?'' - என்று கரந்தை உமாமகேசுவரனாரின் அருமை பெருமைகளுக்கு அணி செய்தது எனது நினைவில் அழுத்தமாக அச்சியற்றப் பெற்றிருக்கிறது.
தஞ்சை - கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கத்தின் ஏழு-எட்டாம் ஆண்டுகளுக்கான விழா, 24.5.1919 மற்றும் 25.5.1919 ஆகிய நாட்களில் திருக்கோவிலூர் ஆதீனம், திருப்பாதிரிப்புலியூர் திருஞானியார் மடத்தின் தலைவர் சிவசண்முக மெய்ஞ்ஞான சிவாச்சார்ய சுவாமிகள் தலைமையில், தமிழவேள் த.வே.உமாமகேசுவரம் பிள்ளை, தமிழறிஞர் வேங்கடசாமி நாட்டார், டி.என்.குருமூர்த்திப் பிள்ளை, டி.கூரத்தாழ்வார் முதலியார் ஆகியோர் முன்னிலையில் நடைபெற்றது.
அவ்விழாவில், "தமிழ்மொழியானது தொன்மையும், சீர்மையும், செம்மையும் வாய்ந்து விளங்குகின்ற ஓர் உயர்தனிச் செம்மொழியென உறுதிப்பட பலதிறத்தாராலும் ஏற்றுக் கொள்ளப்படுவதால், சென்னைப் பல்கலைக் கழகத்தார் தாம் இதுகாறும் கொண்டிருந்த கொள்கையை மாற்றித் தமிழ்மொழி, ஓர் உயர்தனிச் செம்மொழியே என்பதை ஒப்புக் கொண்டு, இத்தென்னாட்டுப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் அதற்கு முறைப்படி முதலிடமும், உரிமைகளும் கொடுக்க வேண்டும்'' என்று வற்புறுத்தித் தீர்மானம் இயற்றப்பட்டது.
22.9.1923 மற்றும் 23.9.1923 ஆகிய நாட்களில் தமிழ் வள்ளல் சா.ராம.மு.சித. பெத்தாச்சி செட்டியார் தலைமையில் நடைபெற்ற கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கத்தின் பன்னிரெண்டாவது ஆண்டு விழாவில், "உலகத்து உயர்தனிச் செம்மொழிகளில், முதல் மொழியெனக் கருதப்படுவதற்குரித் தான எல்லா இலக்கணமும் தமிழ் மொழி உடையதாயிருப்பதால், அதனை அத்தகை மொழியாக ஆட்சியாளர் கருதி ஐ.சி.எஸ். பட்டத்திற்கு அதனை ஒரு பாடமாக ஏற்றுக் கொள்ள வேண்டுமென்று இந்திய அரசியலாரை வற்புறுத்திக் கேட்டுக் கொள்ளப்படுகிறது'' எனும் தீர்மானம் இயற்றப்பட்டது.
1938-ம் ஆண்டு ஏப்ரல் மாதம் 15, 16, 17 ஆகிய நாட்களில் நடைபெற்ற கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கத்தின் வெள்ளி விழாவிற்குத் தலைமையேற்ற திருப்பாதிரிப்புலியூர் ஞானியார் அடிகள் தனது உரையில், "இத்தகைய பெருமையும், இனிமையும் உடைய தமிழை உயர்தனிச் செம்மொழி என்ற நிலையில் அரசியலார் போற்றாதிருப்பது கவலத்தக்க தாகும்'' என்று தனது ஆழ்ந்த வருத்தத்தை வெளியிட்டார்.
இவ்வாறு கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கம் தமிழவேள் உமாமகேசுவரனார் தலைமையில் தொடக்கக் கட்டத்தில்; தமிழ், செம்மொழியென அரசியல் நிலையில் அங்கீகரிக்கப்பட்டு உரிய முறையில் சிறப்பு செய்யப்படவேண்டும் என்பதற்கு ஆற்றிய பணி அளவிடமுடியாததாகும். செம்மொழி வரலாற்றில் கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கம் ஆற்றல் மிக்கதோர் அத்தியாயமாக இடம் பெற்றுள்ளது என்று கூறியுள்ளார் கருணாநிதி.
கிறித்துமசு வாழ்த்துச் செய்தி (24. டிச. 2009):
சென்னை, டிச.24 பொறுமையைப் போதித்த இயேசு நாதரின் அடிச்சுவட்டில் வாழும் கிறித்தவ சமுதாய மக்களுக்குத் தனது உளமார்ந்த கிறிஸ்துமஸ் திருநாள் நல்வாழ்த்துகளைத் தெரிவித்து மகிழ்வதாக முதலமைச்சர் கருணாநிதி குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்.
முதலமைச்சர் கருணாநிதி விடுத்துள்ள கிறிஸ்துமஸ் வாழ்த்துச் செய்தி:
இயேசு பெருமான் பிறந்த திருநாள் ஆண்டுதோறும் டிசம்பர் திங்கள் 25 ஆம் நாள் கிறிஸ்துமஸ் திருநாளாகக் கிறித்தவ சமுதாய மக்களால் மிகுந்த மகிழ்ச்சியோடு கொண்டாடப்படுகிறது.
உலகத் தமிழ்ச் செம்மொழி மாநாடு, வரும் ஜூன் திங்கள் 23 ஆம் நாள் முதல் 27 ஆம் நாள் வரை 5 நாள்கள் கோவையில் கொண்டாடப்படும் என அறிவிக்கப்பட்டு, ஆயத்தப் பணிகள் நடைபெற்றுவரும் வேளையில், கிறித்தவ சமயத்தைப் பரப்பிடும் நோக்கில் ஐரோப்பிய நாடுகளிலிருந்து தமிழகம் வந்த குருமார்கள் பலர் ஆற்றிய தமிழ் வளர்ச்சிப் பணிகள் நினைவில் எழுகின்றன. அவ்வகையில், 1606இல் இத்தாலி நாட்டிலிருந்து வந்து, தமிழ்த் துறவியாக வாழ்ந்து, `தத்துவ போதகர்’ எனத் தம் பெயரையே மாற்றிக் கொண்டு தொண்டாற்றி, தமிழ் உரைநடையைச் செப்பம் செய்த இராபர்ட் டி. நொபிலி!
அதே இத்தாலியிலிருந்து 1700இல் வந்து, கிறித்துவத் தொண்டுகளுடன் தமிழ் வளர்ச்சிப் பணிகளாக, “தேம்பாவணி,” “சதுரகராதி” முதலிய நூல்கள் பல படைத்த வீரமாமுனிவர்! 1709இல் ஜெர்மன் நாட்டிலிருந்து வந்து, தரங்கம்பாடியில் முதன்முதல் அச்சுக்கூடம் நிறுவி, பொறையாறில் இந்தியாவிலேயே முதன் முதலாகக் காகித ஆலையையும் நிறுவி, தமிழ் - இலத்தீன் அகராதி, பைபிள் தமிழ் மொழிபெயர்ப்பு முதலான தமிழ் நூல்கள் பல கண்ட சீகன் பால்க்!
இங்கிலாந்து நாட்டிலிருந்து, 1839இல் தமிழகம் வந்து சமயப் பணிகளாற்றி, திருக்குறள், திருவாசகம், நாலடியார் ஆகியவற்றை ஆங்கிலத்தில் மொழி பெயர்த்ததுடன், இங்கிலாந்து திரும்பிச் சென்ற பின் அங்கு ஆக்ஸ்போர்டு பல்கலைக் கழகத் தமிழ்ப் பேராசிரியராகப் பணியாற்றி மேனாட்டினருக்குத் தமிழின் சிறப்பைப் புலப்படுத்தி, தமிழ் மொழி மீது கொண்ட காதலால், “நான் ஒரு தமிழ் மாணவன்” எனத் தம் கல்லறையில் எழுதச் செய்த ஜி.யூ. போப்!
அயர்லாந்து நாட்டில் பிறந்து 1889இல் தமிழகம் வந்து, நெல்லைச் சீமையில் தங்கி, “திருநெல்வேலி சரித்திரம்” என்னும் ஆங்கில நூலுடன், திராவிட மொழிகளை ஆய்ந்து, “திராவிட மொழிகளின் ஒப்பிலக்கணம்” எனும் அரிய நூலைப் படைத்துத் தமிழ்மொழியின் மேன்மையை மேதினியில் நிலைநாட்டிய மேதை கால்டுவெல் போன்றோர் தமிழ்மொழி வளர்ச்சிக்கு ஆற்றிய அளப்பரிய தொண்டுகளெல்லாம் வரலாற்றில் நின்று நமக்கு எழுச்சியூட்டுகின்றன.
அக்கிறித்தவப் பெருமக்களை நன்றியோடு நினைவுகூர்ந்து, மண்ணில் மனிதநேயம் தழைக்க, “அடுத்தவனை நேசி; உன் எதிரியிடமும் அன்பு காட்டு; உன்னைச் சபிப்பவர்களை ஆசீர்வாதம் செய்; உன்னை வெறுப்பவர்களுக்கும் உதவி செய்; உன்னை அவமதிப்பவர்களையும் போற்று;” எனப் பொறுமையைப் போதித்த இயேசு நாதரின் அடிச்சுவட்டில் வாழும் கிறித்தவ சமுதாய மக்களுக்குத் தமிழக அரசின் சார்பில் எனது உளமார்ந்த கிறிஸ்துமஸ் திருநாள் நல்வாழ்த்துகளைத் தெரிவித்து மகிழ்கிறேன்!
இவ்வாறு முதலமைச்சர் கருணாநிதி கூறியுள்ளார்.
Indian traditions & the Western imagination
Indian traditions & the Western imagination
Sen, Amartya
Daedalus, 10-01-2005,
vol. 134, no. 4.
This essay is concerned with Western images of Indian intellectual traditions and the interactions between those representations and a contemporary "internal" understanding of Indian culture.1 I focus particularly on the elementary diversities that characterize Indian society and its intellectual traditions, as well as on the biases that result from paying inadequate attention to them. In an obvious way, this applies to seeing India as a "mainly Hindu" country (as Western newspapers often describe India, as do the newly powerful Hindu political parties within India) ; this "mainly Hindu" country is also the third-largest Muslim country in the world (with nearly no million Muslims).
Less conspicuously, the contrast applies also to Indian intellectual traditions. This home of endless spirituality has perhaps the largest atheistic and materialist literature of all the ancient civilizations. To be sure, this accounting of the amount of unorthodox writing may be a little misleading, since Indian traditions are characterized by some prolixity. For example, the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, which is often compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, is in fact seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. One of the more striking Bengali verses I remember from my childhood is a lamentation about the tragedy of death in a nineteenth-century poem : "Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. / Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to respond." But even this extreme fondness for speech is associated with an enormous heterogeneity of programs and preoccupations. Irreducible diversity is perhaps the most important feature of Indian intellectual traditions.
The self-images (or "internal identities") of Indians have been extremely affected by colonialism over the past centuries and are much influenced - both collaterally and dialectically - by the impact of outside imagery (what we may call "external identity"). However, the direction of the influence of Western images on internal Indian identities is not altogether straightforward. In recent years, separatist resistance to Western cultural hegemony has led to the creation of significant intellectual movements in many postcolonial societies not least in India. This has particularly drawn attention to the important fact that the self-identity of postcolonial societies is deeply affected by the power of the colonial cultures and their forms of thought and classification. Those who prefer to pursue a more "indigenous" approach often opt for a characterization of Indian culture and society that is rather self-consciously "distant" from Western traditions. There is much interest in "recovering" a distinctly Indian focus in Indian culture.
I would argue that this stance does not take adequate note of the dialectical aspects of the relationship between India and the West and, in particular, tends to disregard the fact that the external images of India in the West have often tended to emphasize (rather than downplay) the differences - real or imagined between India and the West. Indeed, I propose that there are reasons why there has been a considerable Western inclination in the direction of "distancing" Indian culture from the mainstream of Western traditions. The contemporary reinterpretations of India (including the specifically "Hindu" renditions), which emphasize Indian particularism, join forces in this respect with the "external" imaging of India (in accentuating the distinctiveness of Indian culture). Indeed, it can be argued that there is much in common between James Mill's imperialist history of India and the Hindu nationalist picturing of India's past, even though the former image is that of a grotesquely primitive culture whereas the latter representation is dazzlingly glorious.
The special characteristics of the Western approaches to India have encouraged a disposition to focus particularly on the religious and spiritual elements in Indian culture. There has also been a tendency to emphasize the contrast between what is taken to be "Western rationality" and the cultivation of what "Westerners" would see as "irrational" in Indian intellectual traditions. While Western critics may find "antirationalism" to be defective and crude, and Indian cultural separatists may find it cogent and penetrating (and perhaps even "rational" in some deeper sense), they nevertheless agree on the existence of a simple and sharp contrast between the two heritages. The issue that has to be scrutinized is whether such a bipolar contrast is at all present in that form.
I will discuss these questions and argue that focusing on India's "specialness" misses, in important ways, crucial aspects of Indian culture and traditions. The deep-seated heterogeneity of Indian traditions is neglected in these homogenized interpretations (even though the interpretations themselves are of different kinds). My focus will be particularly on images of Indian intellectual traditions, rather than on its creative arts and other features of social life. After distinguishing between three of the dominant approaches in Western interpretations of Indian intellectual traditions, I will consider what may appear to be the overall consequence of these approaches in Western images of India and its impact on both external and internal identities.
This essay is concerned with Western images of Indian intellectual traditions and the interactions between those representations and a contemporary "internal" understanding of Indian culture.1 I focus particularly on the elementary diversities that characterize Indian society and its intellectual traditions, as well as on the biases that result from paying inadequate attention to them. In an obvious way, this applies to seeing India as a "mainly Hindu" country (as Western newspapers often describe India, as do the newly powerful Hindu political parties within India) ; this "mainly Hindu" country is also the third-largest Muslim country in the world (with nearly no million Muslims).
Less conspicuously, the contrast applies also to Indian intellectual traditions. This home of endless spirituality has perhaps the largest atheistic and materialist literature of all the ancient civilizations. To be sure, this accounting of the amount of unorthodox writing may be a little misleading, since Indian traditions are characterized by some prolixity. For example, the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, which is often compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, is in fact seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. One of the more striking Bengali verses I remember from my childhood is a lamentation about the tragedy of death in a nineteenth-century poem : "Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. / Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to respond." But even this extreme fondness for speech is associated with an enormous heterogeneity of programs and preoccupations. Irreducible diversity is perhaps the most important feature of Indian intellectual traditions.
The self-images (or "internal identities") of Indians have been extremely affected by colonialism over the past centuries and are much influenced - both collaterally and dialectically - by the impact of outside imagery (what we may call "external identity"). However, the direction of the influence of Western images on internal Indian identities is not altogether straightforward. In recent years, separatist resistance to Western cultural hegemony has led to the creation of significant intellectual movements in many postcolonial societies not least in India. This has particularly drawn attention to the important fact that the self-identity of postcolonial societies is deeply affected by the power of the colonial cultures and their forms of thought and classification. Those who prefer to pursue a more "indigenous" approach often opt for a characterization of Indian culture and society that is rather self-consciously "distant" from Western traditions. There is much interest in "recovering" a distinctly Indian focus in Indian culture.
I would argue that this stance does not take adequate note of the dialectical aspects of the relationship between India and the West and, in particular, tends to disregard the fact that the external images of India in the West have often tended to emphasize (rather than downplay) the differences - real or imagined between India and the West. Indeed, I propose that there are reasons why there has been a considerable Western inclination in the direction of "distancing" Indian culture from the mainstream of Western traditions. The contemporary reinterpretations of India (including the specifically "Hindu" renditions), which emphasize Indian particularism, join forces in this respect with the "external" imaging of India (in accentuating the distinctiveness of Indian culture). Indeed, it can be argued that there is much in common between James Mill's imperialist history of India and the Hindu nationalist picturing of India's past, even though the former image is that of a grotesquely primitive culture whereas the latter representation is dazzlingly glorious.
The special characteristics of the Western approaches to India have encouraged a disposition to focus particularly on the religious and spiritual elements in Indian culture. There has also been a tendency to emphasize the contrast between what is taken to be "Western rationality" and the cultivation of what "Westerners" would see as "irrational" in Indian intellectual traditions. While Western critics may find "antirationalism" to be defective and crude, and Indian cultural separatists may find it cogent and penetrating (and perhaps even "rational" in some deeper sense), they nevertheless agree on the existence of a simple and sharp contrast between the two heritages. The issue that has to be scrutinized is whether such a bipolar contrast is at all present in that form.
I will discuss these questions and argue that focusing on India's "specialness" misses, in important ways, crucial aspects of Indian culture and traditions. The deep-seated heterogeneity of Indian traditions is neglected in these homogenized interpretations (even though the interpretations themselves are of different kinds). My focus will be particularly on images of Indian intellectual traditions, rather than on its creative arts and other features of social life. After distinguishing between three of the dominant approaches in Western interpretations of Indian intellectual traditions, I will consider what may appear to be the overall consequence of these approaches in Western images of India and its impact on both external and internal identities.
Western Approaches to India: Three Categories
A dissimilarity of perceptions has been an important characteristic of Western interpretations of India, and several different and competing conceptions of that large and complex culture have been influential in the West. The diverse interpretations of India in the West have tended to work to a considerable extent in the same direction (that of accentuating India's spirituality) and have reinforced each other in their effects on internal identities of Indians. But this is not because the distinct approaches to India are not fundamentally different; they certainly are very disparate. The similarity lies more in their impact - given the special circumstances and the dialectical processes - than in their content.
The analysis to be pursued here would undoubtedly invite comparison and contrast with Edward Said's justly famous analysis of 'Orientalism." Said analyzes the construction of the "Orient" in Western imagination. As he puts it, "The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West."2 This essay has a much narrower focus than Said's, viz. India, but there is clearly an overlap of subject matter since India is a part of the "Orient." The main difference is at the thematic level. Said focuses on uniformity and consistency in a particularly influential Western characterization of the Orient, whereas I shall be dealing with several contrasting and conflicting Western approaches to understanding India.
Said explains that his work "deals principally not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient. "3 I would argue that unless one chooses to focus on the evolution of a specific " conceptual tradition (as Said, in effect, does), "internal consistency" is precisely the thing that is terribly hard to find in the variety of Western conceptions of India. There are several fundamentally contrary ideas and images of India, and they have quite distinct roles in the Western understanding of the country and also in influencing self-perceptions of Indians.
Attempts from outside India to understand and interpret the country's traditions can be, I would argue, put into at least three distinct categories, which I shall call exotidst approaches, magisterial approaches, and curatorial approaches.4 The first (exotidst) category concentrates on the wondrous aspects of India. The focus here is on what is different, what is strange in the country that, as Hegel put it, "has existed for millennia in the imagination of the Europeans."
The second (magisterial) category strongly relates to the exercise of imperial power and sees India as a subject territory from the point of view of its British governors. This outlook assimilates a sense of superiority and guardianhood needed to deal with a country that James Mill defined as "that great scene of British action." While a great many British observers did not fall into this category (and some non-British ones did), it is hard to dissociate this category from the task of governing the Raj.
The third (curatorial) category is the most catholic of the three and includes various attempts at noting, classifying, and exhibiting diverse aspects of Indian culture. Unlike the exoticist approaches, a curatorial approach does not look only for the strange (even though the "different" must have more "exhibit value"), and unlike the magisterial approaches, it is not weighed down by the impact of the ruler's priorities (even though the magisterial connection would be hard to avoid altogether when the author is also a member of the ruling imperial elite, as they sometimes were). For these reasons, there is more freedom from preconceptions in this third category. On the other hand, the curatorial approaches have perspectives of their own, with a general interest in seeing the object - in this case, India - as very special and extraordinarily interesting.
Other categories can be proposed that are not covered by any of the three. Also, the established approaches can be reclassified according to some other organizing principle. I am not claiming any grand definitive status of this way of seeing the more prominent Western approaches to India. However, for the purpose of this essay, I believe this threefold categorization is useful.
Curiosity, Power, and Curatorial Approaches
I shall begin by considering the curatorial approaches. But first I must deal with a methodological issue, in particular, the prevalent doubts in contemporary social theory about the status of intellectual curiosity as a motivation for knowledge. In particular, there is much skepticism about the possibility of any approach to learning that is innocent of power. That skepticism is justified to some extent since the motivational issues underlying any investigation may well relate to power relations, even when that connection is not immediately visible.
Yet people seek knowledge for many different reasons, and curiosity about unfamiliar things is certainly among the possible reasons. It need not be seen as a figment of the deluded scientist's imagination, nor as a tactical excuse for some other, ulterior preoccupation. Nor does the pervasive relevance of different types of motivation have the effect of making all the different observational findings equally arbitrary. There are real lines to be drawn between inferences dominated by rigid preconceptions (for example, in the "magisterial" approaches, to be discussed presently) and those that are not so dominated.
There is an interesting methodological history here. The fact that knowledge is often associated with power is a recognition that had often received far too little attention in traditional social theories of knowledge. But in recent social studies, the remedying of that methodological neglect has been so comprehensive that we are now in some danger of ignoring other motivations altogether that may not link directly with the seeking of power. While it is true that any useful knowledge gives its possessor some power in one form or another, this may not be the most remarkable aspect of that knowledge, nor the primary reason for which this knowledge is sought. Indeed, the process of learning can accommodate considerable motivational variations without becoming a functionalist enterprise of some grosser kind. An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest ; it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.
The curatorial approach relates to systematic curiosity. People are interested in other cultures and different lands, and investigations of a country and its traditions have been vigorously pursued throughout human history. Indeed, the development of civilization would have been very different had this not been the case. The exact motivation for these investigations can vary, but the inquiries need not be hopelessly bound by some overarching motivational constraint (such as those associated with the exoticist or magisterial approaches). Rather, the pursuit may be driven primarily by intellectual interests and concerns. This is not to deny that the effects of these investigative pursuits may go well beyond the motivating interests and concerns, nor that there could be mixed motivations of various kinds, in which power relations play a collateral role. But to deny the role of curiosity and interest as powerful motivational features in their own right would be to miss something rather important. For the curatorial approaches, that connection is quite central.
I shall begin by considering the curatorial approaches. But first I must deal with a methodological issue, in particular, the prevalent doubts in contemporary social theory about the status of intellectual curiosity as a motivation for knowledge. In particular, there is much skepticism about the possibility of any approach to learning that is innocent of power. That skepticism is justified to some extent since the motivational issues underlying any investigation may well relate to power relations, even when that connection is not immediately visible.
Yet people seek knowledge for many different reasons, and curiosity about unfamiliar things is certainly among the possible reasons. It need not be seen as a figment of the deluded scientist's imagination, nor as a tactical excuse for some other, ulterior preoccupation. Nor does the pervasive relevance of different types of motivation have the effect of making all the different observational findings equally arbitrary. There are real lines to be drawn between inferences dominated by rigid preconceptions (for example, in the "magisterial" approaches, to be discussed presently) and those that are not so dominated.
There is an interesting methodological history here. The fact that knowledge is often associated with power is a recognition that had often received far too little attention in traditional social theories of knowledge. But in recent social studies, the remedying of that methodological neglect has been so comprehensive that we are now in some danger of ignoring other motivations altogether that may not link directly with the seeking of power. While it is true that any useful knowledge gives its possessor some power in one form or another, this may not be the most remarkable aspect of that knowledge, nor the primary reason for which this knowledge is sought. Indeed, the process of learning can accommodate considerable motivational variations without becoming a functionalist enterprise of some grosser kind. An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest ; it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.
The curatorial approach relates to systematic curiosity. People are interested in other cultures and different lands, and investigations of a country and its traditions have been vigorously pursued throughout human history. Indeed, the development of civilization would have been very different had this not been the case. The exact motivation for these investigations can vary, but the inquiries need not be hopelessly bound by some overarching motivational constraint (such as those associated with the exoticist or magisterial approaches). Rather, the pursuit may be driven primarily by intellectual interests and concerns. This is not to deny that the effects of these investigative pursuits may go well beyond the motivating interests and concerns, nor that there could be mixed motivations of various kinds, in which power relations play a collateral role. But to deny the role of curiosity and interest as powerful motivational features in their own right would be to miss something rather important. For the curatorial approaches, that connection is quite central.
Curatorial Approaches in Early Arabic and European Studies
A fine example of a curatorial approach to understanding India can be found in Alberuni's Ta'rikh al-hind (The History of India), written in Arabic in the early eleventh century.5 Alberuni, who was born in Central Asia in A.D. 973, first came to India accompanying the marauding troops of Mahmud of Ghazni. He became very involved with India and mastered Sanskrit; studied Indian texts on mathematics, natural sciences, literature, philosophy, and religion ; conversed with as many experts as he could find; and investigated social conventions and practices. His book on India presents a remarkable account of the intellectual traditions and social customs of early eleventh-century India.
Even though Alberuni's was almost certainly the most impressive of these investigations, there are a great many examples of serious Arabic studies of Indian intellectual traditions around that time.6 Brahmagupta's pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had first been translated into Arabic in the eighth century (Alberuni retranslated it three centuries later), and several works on medicine, science, and philosophy had an Arabic rendering by the ninth century. It was through the Arabs that the Indian decimal system and numerals reached Europe, as did Indian writings in mathematics, science, and literature.
In the concluding chapter of his book on India, Alberuni describes the motivation behind his work thus : "We think now that what we have related in this book will be sufficient for any one who wants to converse with [the Indians], and to discuss with them questions of religion, science, or literature, on the very basis of their own civilization."7 He is particularly aware of the difficulties of achieving an understanding of a foreign land and people, and specifically warns the reader about it :
... in all manners and usages, [the Indians] differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs, and as to declare us to be devil's breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper. By the bye, we must confess, in order to be just, that a similar depreciation of foreigners not only prevails among us and [the Indians], but is common to all nations towards each other. 8
While Arab scholarship on India provides plentiful examples of curatorial approaches in the external depiction of India, they are not, of course, unique in this respect. Chinese travelers Fa Hsien and Hsuan Tsang, who spent many years in India in the fifth and seventh centuries A.D. respectively, provided extensive accounts of what they saw. While they had gone to India for Buddhist studies, their reports cover a variety of Indian subjects, described with much care and interest.
Quite a few of the early European studies of India must also be put in this general category. A good example is the Italian Jesuit Roberto Nobili, who went to south India in the early seventeenth century, and whose remarkable scholarship in Sanskrit and Tamil permitted him to produce quite authoritative books on Indian intellectual discussions, in Latin as well as in Tamil. Another Jesuit, Father Pons from France, produced a grammar of Sanskrit in Latin in the early eighteenth century and also sent a collection of original manuscripts to Europe (happily for him, the Bombay customs authorities were not yet in existence then).
However, the real eruption of European interest in India took place a bit later, in direct response to British - rather than Italian or French - scholarship on India. A towering figure in this intellectual transmission is the redoubtable William Jones, the legal scholar and officer of the East India Company, who went to India in 1783 and by the following year had established the Asiatic Society of Bengal with the active patronage of Warren Hastings. In collaboration with scholars such as Charles Wilkins and Thomas Colebrooke, Jones and the Asiatic Society did a remarkable job in translating a number of Indian classics - religious documents (such as the Gita) as well as legal treatises (particularly, Manusmriti) and literary works (such as Kalidasa's Sakuntda').
Jones was quite obsessed with India and declared his ambition "to know India better than any other European ever knew it. " His description of his selected fields of study included the following modest list: ... the Laws of the Hindus and the Mohamedans, Modern Politics and Geography of Hindustan, Best Mode of Governing Bengal, Arithmetic and Geometry, and Mixed Sciences of the Asiaticks, Medicine, Chemistry, Surgery, and Anatomy of the Indians, Natural Productions of India, Poetry, Rhetoric, and Morality of Asia, Music of the Eastern Nations, Trade, Manufacture, Agriculture, and Commerce of India.9
One can find many other examples of dedicated scholarship among British officers in the East India Company, and there can be little doubt that the Western perceptions of India were profoundly influenced by these investigations. Not surprisingly, the focus here is quite often on those things that are distinctive in India. The specialists on India pointed to the uncommon aspects of Indian culture and its intellectual traditions, which were obviously more interesting given the perspective and motivation of the observers.10 As a result, the curatorial approaches could not escape being somewhat slanted in their focus. I shall come back to this issue later.
The Magisterial Burden
I turn now to the second category, the magisterial approaches. The task of ruling a foreign country is not an easy one when its subjects are seen as equals. In this context, it is quite remarkable that the early British administrators in India, even the controversial Warren Hastings, were as respectful of the Indian traditions as they clearly were. The empire was still in its infancy and was being gradually acquired, rather tentatively (if not in a fit of absentmindedness).
A good example of a magisterial approach to India is the classic book on India written by James Mill, published in 1817, on the strength of which he was appointed as an official of the East India Company. Mill's History of British India played a major role in introducing the British governors of India to a particular characterization of the country. Mill disputed and dismissed practically every claim ever made on behalf of Indian culture and its intellectual traditions, concluding that it was totally primitive and rude. This diagnosis fit well with Mill's general attitude, which supported the idea of bringing a rather barbaric nation under the benign and reformist administration of the British Empire. Consistent with his beliefs, Mill was an expansionist in dealing with the remaining independent states in the subcontinent. The obvious policy to pursue, he explained, was "to make war on those states and subdue them."11
Mill chastised early British administrators (like William Jones) for having taken "Hindus to be a people of high civilization, while they have in reality made but a few of the earliest steps in the progress to civilization."12 At the end of a comprehensive attack on all fronts, he came to the conclusion that the Indian civilization was on a par with other inferior ones known to Mill - "very nearly the same with that of the Chinese, the Persians, and the Arabians" ; he also put in this category, for good measure, "subordinate nations, the Japanese, Cochinchinese, Siamese, Burmans, and even Malays and Tibetans. "13
How well informed was Mill in dealing with his subject matter? Mill wrote his book without ever having visited India. He knew no Sanskrit, nor any Persian or Arabic, had practically no knowledge of any of the modern Indian languages, and thus his reading of Indian material was of necessity most limited. There is another feature of Mill that clearly influenced his investigations, to wit, his inclination to distrust anything stated by native scholars, since they appeared to him to be liars. "Our ancestors," says Mill, "though tough, were sincere ; but under the glossing exterior of the Hindu, lies a general disposition to deceit and perfidy."14
Perhaps some examples of Mill's treatment of particular claims of achievement may be useful to illustrate the nature of his extremely influential approach. The invention of the decimal system with place values and the placed use of zero, now used everywhere, as well as the so-called Arabic numerals are generally known to be Indian developments. In fact, Alberuni had already mentioned this in his eleventh-century book on India,15 and many European as well as Arab scholars had written on this subject.16 Mill dismisses the claim altogether on the grounds that "the invention of numerical characters must have been very ancient" and "whether the signs used by the Hindus are so peculiar as to render it probable that they invented them, or whether it is still more probable that they borrowed them, are questions which, for the purpose of ascertaining their progress in civilization, are not worth resolving."
Mill proceeds then to explain that the Arabic numerals "are really hieroglyphics" and that the claim on behalf of the Indians and the Arabs reflects the confounding of "the origin of cyphers or numerical characters" with "that of hieroglyphic writing."17 At one level Mill's rather elementary error lies in not knowing what a decimal or a place-value system is, but his ignorant smugness cannot be understood except in terms of his implicit unwillingness to believe that a very sophisticated invention could have been managed by such primitive people.
Another interesting example concerns Mill's reaction to Indian astronomy and specifically the argument for a rotating earth and a model of gravitational attraction (proposed by Aryabhata, who was born in A.D. 476, and investigated by, among others, Varahamihira and Brahmagupta in the sixth and seventh centuries). These works were well known in the Arab world; as was mentioned earlier, Brahmagupta's book was translated into Arabic in the eighth century and retranslated by Alberuni in the eleventh. William Jones had been told about these works in India, and he in turn reported that statement. Mill expresses total astonishment at Jones's gullibility.18 After ridiculing the absurdity of this attribution and commenting on the "pretensions and interests" of Jones's Indian informants, Mill concludes that it was "extremely natural that Sir William Jones, whose pundits had become acquainted with the ideas of European philosophers respecting the system of the universe, should hear from them that those ideas were contained in their own books."19
For purposes of comparison it is useful to examine Alberuni's discussion of the same issue nearly eight hundred years earlier, concerning the postulation of a rotating earth and gravitational attraction in the still-earlier writings of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta:
Brahmagupta says in another place of the same book: "The followers of Aryabhata maintain that the earth is moving and heaven resting. People have tried to refute them by saying that, if such were the case, stones and trees would fall from the earth." But Brahmagupta does not agree with them, and says that that would not necessarily follow from their theory, apparently because he thought that all heavy things are attracted towards the center of the earth.20
Alberuni himself proceeded to dispute this model, raised a technical question about one of Brahmagupta's mathematical calculations, referred to a different book of his own arguing against the proposed view, and pointed out that the relative character of movements makes this issue less central than one might first think: "The rotation of the earth does in no way impair the value of astronomy, as all appearances of an astronomic character can quite as well be explained according to this theory as to the other."21 Here, as elsewhere, while arguing against an opponent's views, Alberuni tries to present such views with great involvement and care. The contrast between Alberuni's curatorial approach and James Mill's magisterial pronouncements could not be sharper.
There are plenty of other examples of "magisterial" readings of India in Mill's history. This is of some practical importance, since the book was extremely influential in the British administration and widely praised. It was described by Macaulay as "on the whole the greatest historical work which has appeared in our language since that of Gibbon."22 Macaulay's own approach and inclinations echoed James Mill's:
I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic.... I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.23
This view of the poverty of Indian intellectual traditions played a major part in educational reform in British India, as is readily seen from the 1835 "Minute on Indian Education, " written by Macaulay himself (the quoted remark is actually taken from that document). The priorities in Indian education were determined, henceforth, by a different emphasis - by the need, as Macaulay argued, for a class of English-educated Indians who could "be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern."24
The impact of the magisterial views of India was not confined only to Britain and India. Modern documents in the same tradition have been influential elsewhere, including in the United States. In a series of long conversations on India and China conducted by Harold Isaacs in 1958 with 181 Americans academics, professionals in mass media, government officials, missionaries and church officials, and officials of foundations, voluntary social-service groups, and political organizations - Isaacs found that the two most widely read literary sources on India were Rudyard Kipling and Katherine Mayo, the author of the extremely derogatory Mother India.25 Of these, Kipling's writings would be more readily recognized as having something of the "magisterial" approach to them. Lloyd Rudolph describes Mayo's Mother India thus:
First published in 1927, Mother India was written in the context of official and unofficial British efforts to generate support in America for British rule in India. It added contemporary and lurid detail to the image of Hindu India as irredeemably and hopelessly impoverished, degraded, depraved, and corrupt. Mayo's Mother India echoed not only the views of men like Alexander Duff, Charles Grant, and Iohn Stuart Mill but also those of Theodore Roosevelt, who glorified in bearing the white man's burden in Asia and celebrated the accomplishments of imperialism.26
Mahatma Gandhi, while describing Mayo's book as "a drain inspector's report," had added that every Indian should read it and seemed to imply, as Ashis Nandy notes, that it is possible "to put her criticism to internal use" (as an overstern drain inspector's report certainly can be).27 Gandhi himself was severely attacked in the book, but given his campaign against caste and untouchability, he might have actually welcomed even her exaggerations because of its usefully lurid portrayal of caste inequities. But while Gandhi may have been right to value external criticism as a way of inducing people to be self-critical, the impact of the "magisterial approach" certainly gives American perceptions of India a very clear slant.28
Mahatma Gandhi, while describing Mayo's book as "a drain inspector's report," had added that every Indian should read it and seemed to imply, as Ashis Nandy notes, that it is possible "to put her criticism to internal use" (as an overstern drain inspector's report certainly can be).27 Gandhi himself was severely attacked in the book, but given his campaign against caste and untouchability, he might have actually welcomed even her exaggerations because of its usefully lurid portrayal of caste inequities. But while Gandhi may have been right to value external criticism as a way of inducing people to be self-critical, the impact of the "magisterial approach" certainly gives American perceptions of India a very clear slant.28
Exoticist Readings of India
I turn now to the "exoticist" approaches to India. Interest in India has often been stimulated by the observation of exotic ideas and views there. Arrian's and Strabo's accounts of Alexander the Great's spirited conversations with various sages of northwest India may or may not be authentic, but ancient Greek literature is full of uncommon happenings and thoughts attributed to India.
Megasthenes's Indika, describing India in the early third century B.C., can claim to be the first outsider's book on India; it created much Greek interest, as can be seen from the plentiful references to it, for example, in the writings of Diodorus, Strabo, and Arrian. Megasthenes had ample opportunity to observe India since, as the envoy of Seleucus Nicator to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, he spent nearly a decade (between 302 and 291 B.C.) in Pataliputra (the site of modern Patna), the capital city of the Mauryan empire. But his superlatively admiring book is also so full of accounts of fantastic objects and achievements in India that it is hard to be sure what is imagined and what is really being observed.
There are various other accounts of exotic Indian travels by ancient Greeks. The biography of Apollonius of Tiyana by Flavius Philostratus in the third century A.D. is a good example. In his search for what was out of the ordinary, Apollonius was, we are assured, richly rewarded in India : "I have seen men living upon the earth and not upon it ; defended without walls, having nothing, and yet possessing all things. "29 How such contradictory things can be seen by the same person from the same observational position may not be obvious, but the bewitching charm of all this for the seeker of the exotic can hardly be doubted.
Exotic interests in India can be seen again and again, from its early history to the present day. From Alexander listening to the gymnosophists' lectures to contemporary devotees hearing the sermons of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Shri Rajneesh, there is a crowded lineage. Perhaps the most important example of intellectual exoticism related to India can be seen in the European philosophical discussions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, among the Romantics in particular.
Important figures in the Romantic movement, including the Schlegel brothers, Schelling, and others, were profoundly influenced by rather magnified readings of Indian culture. From Herder, the German philosopher and a critic of the rationalism of the European Enlightenment, we get the magnificent news that "the Hindus are the gentlest branch of humanity" and that "moderation and calm, a soft feeling and a silent depth of the soul characterize their work and their pleasure, their morals and mythology, their arts."30 Frederich Schlegel not only pioneered studies of Indo-European linguistics (later pur- > sued particularly by Max Muller) but also brought India fully into his critique of the contemporary West. While in the West "man himself has almost become a machine" and "cannot sink any deeper," Schlegel recommended learning from the Orient, especially India. He ; also guaranteed that "the Persian and German languages and cultures, as well as the Greek and the old Roman, may all be traced back to the Indian."31 To this list, Schopenhauer added the New Testament, informing us that, in contrast with the Old, the New Testament "must somehow be of Indian origin : this is attested by its completely Indian ethics, which transforms morals into asceticism, its pessimism, and its avatar (i.e., the person of Christ)."32
Not surprisingly, many of the early enthusiasts were soon disappointed in not finding in Indian thought what they had themselves put there, and many of them went into a phase of withdrawal and criticism. Some of the stalwarts, Schlegel in particular, recanted vigorously. Others, including Hegel, outlined fairly negative views of Indian traditions and presented loud denials of the claim of preeminence of Indian culture - a claim that was of distinctly European origin. When Samuel Coleridge asked: "What are / These potentates of inmost Ind?"33 he was really asking a question about Europe, rather than about India.34
In addition to veridical weakness, the exoticist approach to India has an inescapable fragility and transience that can be seen again and again. A wonderful thing is imagined about India and sent into a high orbit, and then it is brought crashing down. All this need not be such a tragedy when the act of launching is done by (or with the active cooperation of ) the putative star. Not many would weep, for example, for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when the Beatles stopped lionizing him and left suddenly; in answer to the Maharishi's question of why were they leaving, John Lennon said, "You are the cosmic one; you ought to know. "35
But it is a different matter altogether when both the boom and the bust are thrust upon the victim. One of the most discouraging episodes in literary reception occurred early in this century, when Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, and others led a chorus of adoration at the lyrical spirituality of Rabindranath Tagore's poetry but followed it soon afterwards with a thorough disregard and firm denunciation. Tagore was a Bengali poet of tremendous creativity and range (even though his poetry does not translate easily - not even the spiritual ones that were so applauded) and also a great storyteller, novelist, and essayist; he remains a dominant literary figure in Bangladesh and India. The versatile and innovative writer that the Bengalis know well is not the sermonizing spiritual guru put together in London ; nor did he fit any better the caricature of "Stupendranath Begorr" to be found in Bernard Shaw's "A Glimpse of the Domesticity of Franklyn Barnabas."
Interactions and Reinforcements
These different approaches have had very diverse impacts on the understanding of Indian intellectual traditions in the West. The exoticist and magisterial approaches have bemused and befuddled that understanding even as they have drawn attention to India in the West. The curatorial approaches have been less guilty of this, and indeed historically have played a major part in bringing out and drawing attention to the different aspects of Indian culture, including its nonmystical and nonexotic features. Nevertheless, given the nature of the curatorial enterprise, the focus inevitably leans towards that which is different in India, rather than what is similar to the West. In emphasizing the distinctiveness of India, even the curatorial approaches have sometimes contributed to the accentuation of contrasts rather than commonalities with Western traditions, though not in the rather extreme form found in the exoticist and magisterial approaches.
The magisterial approaches played quite a vigorous role in the running of the British Empire. Even though the Raj is dead and gone, the impact of the associated images survives, not least in the United States (as discussed earlier). To some extent, the magisterial authors also reacted against the admiration of India that can be seen in the writings of curatorial observers of India. For example, both Mill and Macaulay were vigorously critical of the writings of authors such as William Jones, and there are some important dialectics here. The respectful curatorial approaches painted a picture of Indian intellectual traditions that was much too favorable for the imperial culture of the nineteenth century, and contributed to the vehemence of the magisterial denunciations of those traditions. By the time Mill and Macaulay were writing, the British Indian empire was well established as a lasting and extensive enterprise, and the "irresponsibility" of admiring the native intellectual traditions - permissible in the previous century for early servants of the East India Company - was hard to sustain as the favored reading of India in the consolidated empire.
Turning to the exoticist approaches, the outbursts of fascinated wonder bring India into Western awareness in big tides of bewildering attention. But then they ebb, leaving only a trickle of hardened exoticists holding forth. There may well be, after a while, another tide. In describing the rise and decline of Rabindranath Tagore in London's literary circles, E. M. Forster remarked that London was a city of "boom and bust," but that description applies more generally (that is, not confined only to literary circles in London) to the Western appreciation of exotic aspects of Eastern cultures.
The tides, while they last, can be hard work though. I remember feeling quite sad for a dejected racist whom I saw, some years ago, near the Aldwych station in London, viewing with disgust a thousand posters pasted everywhere carrying pictures of the obese - and holy physique of Guru Maharajji (then a great rage in London). Our dedicated racist was busy writing "fat wog" diligently under each of the pictures. In a short while that particular wog would be gone, but I do not doubt that the "disgusted of Aldwych" would scribble "lean wog" or "medium-sized wog" under other posters now.
It might be thought that since the exoticist approaches give credit where it may not be due and the magisterial approaches withhold credit where it may well be due, the two might neutralize each other nicely. But they work in very asymmetrical ways. Magisterial critiques tend to blast the rationalist and humanist aspects of India with the greatest force (this is as true of James Mill as of Katharine Mayo), whereas exoticist admirations tend to build up the mystical and extrarational aspects with particular care (this has been so from Apollonius of Tyana down to the Hare Krishna activists of today). The result of the two taken together is to wrest the understanding of Indian culture forcefully away from its rationalist aspects. Indian traditions in mathematics, logic, science, medicine, linguistics, or epistemology may be well known to the Western specialist, but they play little part in the general Western understanding of India.36 Mysticism and exoticism, in contrast, have a more hallowed position in that understanding.
The Dialectics of Internal and External Identity
Western perceptions and characterizations of India have had considerable influence on the self-perceptions of Indians themselves. This is clearly connected to India's colonial past and continued deference to what is valued in the West.37 However, the relationship need not take the form of simple acceptance it sometimes includes strategic responses to the variety of Western perceptions of India that suit the interests of internal imaging. We have to distinguish between some distinct aspects of the influence that Western images have had on Indian internal identities.
First, the European exoticists' interpretations and praise found in India a veritable army of appreciative listeners, who were particularly welcoming given the badly damaged self-confidence resulting from colonial domination. The admiring statements were quoted again and again, and the negative remarks by the same authors (Herder, Schlegel, Goethe, and others) were systematically overlooked.
In his Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru comments on this phenomenon:
There is a tendency on the part of Indian writers, to which I have also partly succumbed, to give selected extracts and quotations from the writings of European scholars in praise of old Indian literature and philosophy. It would be equally easy, indeed much easier, to give other extracts giving an exactly opposite viewpoint.38
In the process of accepting the exoticist praise, the Indian interpretation of the past has extensively focused on the objects of exoticist praise, concentrating more on the mystical and the antirationalist, for which many in the West have such admiration.39
Second, the process fit into the politics of elitist nationalism in colonial India and fed the craving for a strong intellectual ground to stand on to confront the imperial rulers. Partha Chatterjee discusses the emergence of this attitude very well:
...anticolonial nationalism creates its own domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before its political battle with the imperial power. It does this by dividing the world of social institutions and practices into two domains - the material and the spiritual. The material is the domain of the "outside," of the economy and of statecraft, of science and technology, a domain where the West had proved its superiority and the East had succumbed. In this domain, then, Western superiority had to be acknowledged and its accomplishments carefully studied and replicated. The spiritual, on the other hand, is an "inner" domain bearing the "essential" marks of cultural identity. The greater one's success in imitating Western skills in the material domain, therefore, the greater the need to preserve the distinctiveness of one's spiritual culture. This formula is, I think, a fundamental feature of anticolonial nationalisms in Asia and Africa.40
There was indeed such an attempt to present what was perceived to be the "strong aspects" of Indian culture, distinguished from the domain, as Chatterjee puts it, "where the West had proved its superiority and the East had succumbed."
Chatterjee's analysis can be supplemented by taking further note of the dialectics of the relationship between Indian internal identity and its external images. The diagnosis of strength in that nonmaterialist domain was as much helped by the exoticist admiration for Indian spirituality as the acceptance of India's weakness in the domain of science, technology, and mathematics was reinforced by the magisterial dismissals of India's materialist and rationalist traditions. The emphases on internal identity that emerged in colonial India bear powerful marks of dialectical encounters with Western perceptions.
Third, as the focus has shifted in recent decades from elitist colonial history to the role of the nonelite, the concentration on the intellectual traditions of the elite has weakened. Here we run into one of the most exciting developments in historiography in India. There has been a significant shift of attention from the elite to the underdogs in the writing of colonial history, focusing more on the rural masses and the exploited plebeians- a broad group often identified by the capacious term "subalterns."41 The move is entirely appropriate in its context (in fact, much overdue), and in understanding colonial history, this is a very important corrective.
While this shift in focus rejects the emphasis on elitist intellectual traditions in general (both of the materialist and the nonmaterialist kind), it is in many ways easier to relate the religious and spiritual traditions of the elite to the practices and beliefs of the nonelite. The cutting edge of science and mathematics is inevitably related to formal education and preparation. In this context, the immense backwardness of India in mass education (an inheritance from the British period but not much remedied yet) compounds the dissociation of elite science and mathematics from the lives of the nonelite. Acceptance of the achievements of Indian spirituality tends to look less "alienated" from the masses than the achievements in fields that demand more exacting formal education. Thus, the exoticists' praise of India is more easily accepted by those who are particularly careful not to see India in elitist terms.
The fact remains, however, that illiteracy is a deprivation. The issue of interclass justice cannot be a matter only of recognizing the real role of the subalterns in history (for example, in anticolonial national movements), important though it is. It is also a matter of remedying the immense inequalities in educational and other opportunities that severely limit, even today, the actual lives of the subalterns.
Interestingly enough, even by the eleventh century, the seriousness of this loss was noted by Alberuni himself (one of the major curatorial authors whose work was referred to earlier). Alberuni spoke of the real deprivation of "those castes who are not allowed to occupy themselves with science. "42 This substantive deprivation remains largely unremedied even today (except in particular regions such as Kerala), with half of the adult population of India (and nearly twothirds of the adult women) still remaining illiterate.43 In understanding the nature of Indian cultures and traditions, focusing mainly on the achievements - rather than deprivations - of the Indian subaltern can yield a deceptive contrast.
This shift in emphasis has also, to some extent, pushed the interpretation of India's past away from those achievements that require considerable formal training. While this move makes sense in some contexts, a comparison of a self-consciously nonelitist history of India with the typically classical understanding of the intellectual heritage of the West produces a false contrast between the respective intellectual traditions. In comparing Western thoughts and creations with those in India, the appropriate counterpoints of Aristotelian or Stoic or Euclidian analyses are not the traditional beliefs of the Indian rural masses or of the local wise men but the comparably analytical writings of, say, Kautilya or Nagarjuna or Aryabhata. "Socrates meets the Indian peasant" is not a good way to contrast the respective intellectual traditions.
Concluding Remarks
The internal identities of Indians draw on different parts of India's diverse traditions. The observational leanings of Western approaches have had quite a major impact - positively and negatively - on what contributes to the Indian self-image that emerged in the colonial period and survives today. The relationship has several dialectical aspects, connected to the sensitivity towards selective admirations and dismissals from the cosmopolitan West as well as to the mechanics of colonial confrontations.
The differences between the curatorial, magisterial, and exoticist approaches to Western understanding of Indian intellectual traditions lie, to a great extent, in the varying observational positions from which India has been examined and its overall images drawn. The dependence on perspective is not a special characteristic of the imaging of India alone. It is, in fact, a pervasive general feature in description and identification.44 "What is India really like?" is a good question for a foreign tourist's handbook precisely because the description there may sensibly be presented from the particular position of being a foreign tourist in India. But there are other positions, other contexts, other concerns.
The three approaches investigated here have produced quite distinct views of Indian intellectual history, but their overall impact has been to exaggerate the nonmaterial and arcane aspects of Indian traditions compared to its more rationalistic and analytical elements. While the curatorial approaches have been less guilty of this, their focus on what is really different in India has, to some extent, also contributed to it. But the bulk of the contribution has come from the exotidst admiration of India (particularly of its spiritual wonders) and the magisterial dismissals (particularly of its claims in mathematics, science, and analytical pursuits).
The nature of these slanted emphases has tended to undermine an adequately pluralist understanding of Indian intellectual traditions. While India has inherited a vast religious literature, a large wealth of mystical poetry, grand speculation on transcendental issues, and so on, there is also a huge - and often pioneering - literature, stretching over two and a half millennia, on mathematics, logic, epistemology, astronomy, physiology, linguistics, phonetics, economics, political science, and psychology, among other subjects concerned with the here and now.45
Even on religious subjects, the only world religion that is firmly agnostic (Buddhism) is of Indian origin, and, furthermore, the atheistic schools of Carvaka and Lokayata have generated extensive arguments that have been seriously studied by Indian religious scholars themselves.46 Heterodoxy runs throughout the early documents, and even the ancient epic Ramayana, which is often cited by contemporary Hindu activists as the holy book of the divine Rama's life, contains dissenting characters. For example, Rama is lectured to by a worldly pundit called Javali on the folly of his religious beliefs: "O Rama, be wise, there exists no world but this, that is certain! Enjoy that which is present and cast behind thee that which is unpleasant. "47
What is in dispute here is not the recognition of mysticism and religious initiatives in India, which are certainly plentiful, but the overlooking of all the other intellectual activities that are also abundantly present. In fact, despite the grave sobriety of Indian religious preoccupations, it would not be erroneous to say that India is a country of fun and games in which chess was probably invented, badminton originated, polo emerged, and the ancient Kamasutra told people how to have joy in sex. Indeed, Georges Ifrah quotes a medieval Arab poet from Baghdad called al-Sabhadi, who said that there were "three things on which the Indian nation prided itself: its method of reckoning, the game of chess, and the book titled Kalila wa Dimna [a collection of legends and fables]. "48 This is not altogether a different list from Voltaire's catalog of the important things to come from India "our numbers, our backgammon, our chess, our first principles of geometry, and the fables which have become our own. "49 These selections would not fit the cultivated Western images of Indian historical traditions, which are typically taken to be pontifically serious and uncompromisingly spiritual.
Nor would it fit the way many Indians perceive themselves and their intellectual past, especially those who take a "separatist" position on the nature of Indian culture. I have tried to discuss how that disparity has come about and how it is sustained. I have also tried to speculate about how the selective alienation of India from a very substantial part of its past has been nourished by the asymmetrical relationship between India and the West. It is, oddly enough, the rationalist part of India's tradition that has been affected most by this alienation. The impact of the West on internal identities in India has to be seen in fundamentally dialectical terms.
FOOTNOTE
Even on religious subjects, the only world religion that is firmly agnostic (Buddhism) is of Indian origin, and, furthermore, the atheistic schools of Carvaka and Lokayata have generated extensive arguments that have been seriously studied by Indian religious scholars themselves.46 Heterodoxy runs throughout the early documents, and even the ancient epic Ramayana, which is often cited by contemporary Hindu activists as the holy book of the divine Rama's life, contains dissenting characters. For example, Rama is lectured to by a worldly pundit called Javali on the folly of his religious beliefs: "O Rama, be wise, there exists no world but this, that is certain! Enjoy that which is present and cast behind thee that which is unpleasant. "47
What is in dispute here is not the recognition of mysticism and religious initiatives in India, which are certainly plentiful, but the overlooking of all the other intellectual activities that are also abundantly present. In fact, despite the grave sobriety of Indian religious preoccupations, it would not be erroneous to say that India is a country of fun and games in which chess was probably invented, badminton originated, polo emerged, and the ancient Kamasutra told people how to have joy in sex. Indeed, Georges Ifrah quotes a medieval Arab poet from Baghdad called al-Sabhadi, who said that there were "three things on which the Indian nation prided itself: its method of reckoning, the game of chess, and the book titled Kalila wa Dimna [a collection of legends and fables]. "48 This is not altogether a different list from Voltaire's catalog of the important things to come from India "our numbers, our backgammon, our chess, our first principles of geometry, and the fables which have become our own. "49 These selections would not fit the cultivated Western images of Indian historical traditions, which are typically taken to be pontifically serious and uncompromisingly spiritual.
Nor would it fit the way many Indians perceive themselves and their intellectual past, especially those who take a "separatist" position on the nature of Indian culture. I have tried to discuss how that disparity has come about and how it is sustained. I have also tried to speculate about how the selective alienation of India from a very substantial part of its past has been nourished by the asymmetrical relationship between India and the West. It is, oddly enough, the rationalist part of India's tradition that has been affected most by this alienation. The impact of the West on internal identities in India has to be seen in fundamentally dialectical terms.
FOOTNOTE
1 This essay draws on an earlier article entitled "India and the West," The New Republic (June 7, !993). For helpful discussions, I am grateful to Akeel Bilgrami, Sugata Bose, Barun De, Jean Drèze, Ayesha Jalal, Dharrna Kumar, V. K. Ramachandran, Tapan Raychaudhuri, Emma Rothschild, Lloyd Rudolph, Suzanne Rudolph, Ashutosh Varshney, Myron Weiner, and Nur Yalman.
2 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York : Random House, 1978 ; Vintage Books, 1979), 5; italics added.
3 Ibid., 5.
4 In the earlier article "India and the West" on which this essay draws, the third category was called "investigative" rather than "curatorial" ; the latter is more specific and I believe somewhat more appropriate.
5 See Alberuni'sIndia, trans. E. C. Sachau, ed. A. T. Embree (New York: Norton, 1971).
6 See Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York : State University of New York Press, 1988), chap. 2.
7 Alberuni's India, pt. II, chap. LXXX, 246. The same Arabic word was commonly used for "Hindu" and "Indian" in Alberuni's time. While the English translator had chosen to use "Hindus" here, I have replaced it with "Indians" in view of the context (to wit, Alberuni's observations on the inhabitants of India). This is an issue of some interest in the context of the main theme of this essay, since the language used here in the English translation to refer to the inhabitants of India implicitly involves a circumscribed ascription.
8 Alberuni's India, pt. I, chap, I, 20.
9 William Jones, "Objects of Enquiry During My Residence in Asia," included in The Collected Works of Sir William Jones, 13 vols. (London : J. Stockdale, 1807 ; republished, New York : New York University Press, 1993).
10 I have discussed the "positional" nature of objectivity, depending on the placing of the observer and analyst vis-à-vis the objects being studied, in "Positional Objectivity," Philosophy and Public Affairs (1993), and "On Interpreting India's Past," in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, eds., Nationalism, Democracy and Development : State and Politics in India (Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1997).
11 Quoted in Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians andlndia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 2.50.
12 James Mill, The History of British India (London, 1817 ; republished, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1975), 225 - 226.
13 Ibid., 248.
14 Ibid., 247.
15 Alberuni'sIndia, pt. I, chap. XVI, 174-175.
16 For a modern account of the complex history of this mathematical development, see George Ifrah, From One to Zero (New York : Viking, 1985).
17 Mill, The History of British India, 219-220.
18 Mill found in Jones's beliefs about early Indian mathematics and astronomy "evidence of the fond credulity with which the state of society among the Hindus was for a time regarded," and he was particularly amused that Jones had made these attributions "with an air of belief." Mill, The History of British India, 223 - 224. On the substantive side, Mill amalgamates the distinct claims regarding 1) the principle of attraction, 2.) the daily rotation of the earth, and 3) the movement of the earth around the sun. Aryabhata and Brahmagupta's concern were mainly with the first two, on which specific assertions were made, unlike on the third.
19 Mill, The History of British India, 223 - 224.
20 Alberuni's India, pt. I, chap. XXVI, 276-277.
21 Ibid., 277.
22 Quoted in John Clive's introduction to James Mill, The History of British India (republished, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1975), viii.
23 T. B. Macaulay, "Indian Education : Minute of the 2nd February, .1835" ; reproduced in G. M. Young, ed., Macaulay : Prose and Poetry (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1952), 722..
24 Ibid., 729.
25 See Harold Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1958); republished as Images of Asia : American Views of India and China (New York : Capricorn Books, 1958). See also the discussion of this issue in the "Introduction" in Sulochana Glazer and Nathan Glazer, eds., Conflicting Images: India and the United Slates (Glen Dale, Md. : Riverdale, 1990).
26 Lloyd I. Rudolph, "Gandhi in the Mind of America," in Glazer and Glazer, eds., Conflicting Images, 166.
27 Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias : Essays in the Politics of Awareness (Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1987), 8.
28 On this, see Glazer and Glazer, eds., Conflicting Images. The influence of magisterial readings on American imaging of India has been somewhat countered in recent years by the political interest in Gandhi's life and ideas, a variety of sensitive writings on India (from Erik Erikson to John Kenneth Galbraith), and the Western success of several Indian novelists in English.
29 Quoted in John Drew, India and the Romantic Imagination (Delhi and New York : Oxford University Press, 1987), 95.
30 J. G. Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte: Samtliche Werke, translated by Halbfass, India and Europe, 70.
31 Translations by Halbfass, India and Europe, 74 - 75. Halbfass provides an extensive study of these European interpretations of Indian thought and the reactions and counterreactions to them.
32 A. Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena translated by Halbfass, India and Europe, 112.
33 See John H. Muirhead, Coleridge as a Philosopher (London: G. Alien & Unwin, Ltd., 1930), 283 - 284, and Drew, India and the Romantic Imagination, chap. 6.
34 The nature of exoticist reading has typically had a strongly "Hindu" character. This was, in some ways, present even in William Jones's curatorial investigations (though he was himself a scholar in Arabic and Persian as well), but he was to some extent redressing the relative neglect of Sanskrit classics in the previous periods (even though the version of the Upanishads that Jones first read was the Persian translation prepared by the Moghul prince Dara Shikoh, Emperor Akbar's great-grandson). The European Romantics, on the other hand, tended to identify India with variants of Hindu religious thought.
35 William Davis, The Rich (London : Sidgwick and Jackson, 1982), 99.
36 On this issue, see Bimal Matilal, Perceptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). See also Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
37 On this issue in general, and on the hold of "a predominantly third-person perspective" in self-perception, see Akeel Bilgrami, "What Is a Muslim? Fundamental Commitment and Cultural Identity," Critical Inquiry 18 (4) (1992).
38 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Calcutta: Signet Press, 1946; centenary edition, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 158.
39 While the constitution of independent India has been self-consciously secular, the tendency to see India as a land of the Hindus remains quite strong. The confrontation between "secularists" and "communitarians" has been an important feature of contemporary India, and the identification of Indian culture in mainly Hindu terms plays a part in this. While it is certainly possible to be both secular and communitarian (as Rajeev Bhargava has noted in "Giving Secularism Its Due," Economic and Political Weekly, July 9, 1994), the contemporary divisions in India tend to make the religious and communal identities largely work against India's secular commitments (as Bhargava also notes). I have tried to scrutinize these issues in my paper "Secularism and Its Discontents," in Kaushik Basu and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds., Unravelling the Nation : Sectarian Conflict and India's secular Identity (Delhi: Penguin, 1996). See also the other papers in that collection, and the essays included in Bose and Jalal, eds., Nationalism, Democracy and Development : State and Politics in India.
40 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 6.
41 The most effective move in that direction came under the leadership of Ranajit Guha; see his introductory essay in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1982). See also the collection of "subaltern" essays edited by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
42 Alberuni's India, chap. II, 32.
43 Indeed, in conceptualizing "the good life" even from the perspective of the deprived underdog, it would be a mistake to ignore altogether the intellectual achievements of the elite, since part of the deprivation of the exploited lies precisely in being denied participation in these achievements. While Marx might have exaggerated a little in his eloquence about "the idiocy of the village life," there is nevertheless a substantial point here in identifying the nature of social deprivation. There is, in fact, no basic contradiction in choosing the subaltern perspective of history and taking systematic note of the scholarly accomplishments of the elite.
44 I have tried to discuss this general issue in "Description as Choice," Oxford Economic Papers 32 (1980) (reprinted in Choice, Welfare and Measurement [Oxford: Blackwell; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982]), and in "Positional Objectivity," Philosophy and Public Affairs (1993).
45 This contrast is discussed in my joint paper with Martha Nussbaum, "Internal Criticism and Indian Rationalist Traditions," in Michael Krausz, ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
46 For example, the fourteenth-century book Sarvadarsanasamgraha (Collection of All Philosophies) by Madhava Acarya (himself a good Vaishnavite Hindu) devotes the first chapter of the book to a serious presentation of the arguments of the atheistic schools.
47 English translation from H. P. Shastri, The Ramayana of Valmiki (London : Shanti Sadan, 1959), 389.
48 Ifrah, From One to Zero, 434.
49 Voltaire, Les ouevres completes, vol. 124; translated by Halbfass, India and Europe, 59.
AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
Amartya Sen, recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, has been a Fellow of the American Academy since 1981. Sen is Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, positions he held at the time of this essay's appearance in the Spring 1997 issue of "Dædalus. " He also served as Master of Trinity College in Cambridge, U.K., between 1998 and 2004.
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