Download RELS102 AnIntroductionto HinduismandBuddhism Semester1 2017

RELS 102
An Introduction to
Hinduism and Buddhism
Semester 1
2017
Department of Theology and Religion
University of Otago
Copyright Warning Notice
This coursepack may be used only for the University’s educational purposes. It includes
extracts of copyright works copied under copyright licences. You may not copy or distribute
any part of this coursepack to any other person. Where this coursepack is provided to you
in an electronic format you may only print from it for your own use. You may not make
a further copy for any other purpose. Failure to comply with the terms of this warning may
expose you to legal action for copyright infringement and/or disciplinary action by the University.
This selection, introductory material, and topic overviews
©Will Sweetman and Ben Schonthal 2017
Contents
Course outline
Introduction . . . .
Paper structure . . .
Assessment overview
Distance Learning .
Resources . . . . . .
Glossary . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
5
5
7
9
11
11
13
I. Hinduism
19
Introducing Hinduism
21
The Sources of Hindu Tradition
Introducing Hinduism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reading: Weightman, “Hinduism” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23
23
36
Trimārga: The Three Paths
Karma, jñāna, bhakti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reading: Goldman and Goldman, “Rāmāyaṇa” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
73
90
Hinduism in Practice
113
Hindu Gods and Goddesses
115
Viṣṇu, Śiva and the Goddess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Reading: Fuller, “Gods and Goddesses” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Life and Death in Hindu Society
149
Hindu Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Reading: Quigley, “Caste and Hinduism” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
1
2
CONTENTS
Other Hinduisms
171
The Fifth Veda
173
Other Hinduisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Reading: Hess, “Rejecting Sita” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Guru Movements
213
Guru Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Reading: Spurr, “Guru Movements” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
II. Buddhism
237
The Triple Gem: Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha
239
The Buddha and Buddhism
Buddhism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Śākyamuni Buddha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reading: Harvey, “The Buddha and his Indian Context”
Reading: Kūṭadanta Sutta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
241
241
245
251
267
The Dhamma
Understanding Buddhism . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Anattā . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reading: Walpola, The First Noble Truth: Dukkha
Reading: Extracts from the Milindapañha . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
273
273
279
279
284
292
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The Dhamma Lab?: Buddhist Meditation
295
Buddhist Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Reading: Satipatthāna Sutta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Sangha: The Buddhist Community
309
The Sangha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Reading: Strong, “Experience of the Sangha” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Reading: Berkwitz, “Founding the Bhikṣuṇi order” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
CONTENTS
3
Buddhism Beyond the Triple Gem
331
Buddhist Ritual and Practice
333
What do Buddhists ‘do’? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Reading: Crosby, “Devotion to the Buddha” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Reading: Description of a Thai Buddhist Funeral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Buddhism, Politics and the State
Buddhism and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Buddhism and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reading: Harris, “Buddhism and Politics in Asia”
Reading: Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta . . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
365
365
371
380
391
Course outline
Introduction
As much as a quarter of the world’s population can be described as either Hindu or Buddhist, and
many more live in cultures which have been deeply influenced by these religious traditions. However, to many people, Hinduism and Buddhism remain exotic, unfamiliar faiths. What do Hindus do?
Who was the Buddha? Why are there so many deities? What is enlightenment? This paper explores
these questions and many others. We will examine the ways in which Hinduism and Buddhism are
intertwined with Asian culture, society and history and we will ask questions about the relationships
between Asian religions and ‘the West.’ In studying these religions, we look closely at myths and rituals, texts and cosmologies, devotion and meditation, gods and goddesses, heavens and hells, morality
and transgression, reality and rebirth, suffering and ultimate liberation.
We teach this paper on campus and by distance learning. Distance students should make sure to
look at the section on “Distance Learning” below.
Who we are
Will Sweetman and Ben Schonthal research and teach about Asian religions. Will Sweetman completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and writes about the encounter between Asian religions and the West in the early modern period, with a focus on South Indian Hinduism. Ben Schonthal
completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and writes about religion, law and politics in contemporary Asia, with a focus on the Theravada Buddhist countries of Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand.
Will and Ben both teach 200- and 300-level papers that build upon the themes and content in this
course. See: http://www.otago.ac.nz/religion/courses.
Will and Ben can be found in the Religion offices on the first floor, 97 Albany St. Their office hours
are Mondays at 2–3pm and Fridays at 11am–12 noon. You may also arrange another time by emailing
([email protected] or [email protected]) or calling (Will: 03 479 8793 or Ben: 03
479 8795).
5
6
COURSE OUTLINE
Aims and learning outcomes
The aims of this paper are to:
introduce characteristic forms and key concepts of ancient, classical and contemporary Hinduism, and of new religious movements of Hindu origin;
introduce central ideas and practices of early and later Indian Buddhism, and the Theravāda
tradition in Asia and the West; and
prepare students for further study of Asian religions.
Students who successfully complete the paper will be able to:
outline the historical development of Hinduism on the basis of a sound factual knowledge of
its characteristic forms and key concepts;
relate the religious practices of Hindus to their underlying philosophical and theological ideas;
discuss the issues raised by the perpetuation of the Hindu tradition in the form of new religious
movements within and beyond India;
outline the origin and early development of Buddhism in relation to some of its central ideas
and practices;
identify and give an account of the distinctive ideas and practices of Theravāda Buddhism;
discuss the development of Theravāda Buddhism in modern South and Southeast Asia, and its
spread beyond Asia; and
use accurately specialized terminology relevant to the different phases of Hinduism and of early
and Theravāda Buddhism.
Must Read: Your responsibilities as a student
There is nothing extraneous in this course: readings have been chosen very carefully and pared down
to essential materials; there are only three assessments. Similarly, we have a short list of non-negotiable,
minimal responsibilities for students. As a student in this paper, we expect that you will:
Access course materials through Blackboard. If you have issues, contact the ITS service desk on
0800 479 888, [email protected].
Make sure that you are receiving and reading all electronic communication sent through Blackboard. (This may mean updating your communication preferences so that you receive the
emails and announcements sent to the entire class through Blackboard.) “I never read that
email” is not viable excuse in this paper.
Make sure that you read and understand our assessment policies below.
Complete class readings and/or viewings of films before the relevant lecture. While we don’t
police this, we do design lectures with this assumption in mind.
Complete all assessments on time. We almost never grant extensions.
Our intent is to be fair by being firm. With a class of this size, it is important that we all play by the
same rules.
PAPER STRUCTURE
7
Paper structure
The paper is divided into five sections. The first three deal with Hinduism and the lectures will be given
by Will. In the other two sections, Ben will lecture on Buddhism. The dates listed below indicate the
times when students on campus will meet and provide a guideline for distance students to plan their
reading. The asterisks indicate the weeks when tutorials will take place (on campus and online).
Introducing Hinduism
27 Feb–1 Mar
1
Read
6–8 Mar*
2
Watch
Read
The Sources of the Hindu Tradition
Weightman, “Hinduism”
Trimārga: The Three Paths
Altar of Fire
Goldman and Goldman, “Rāmāyaṇa”
Hinduism in Practice
13–15 Mar*
3
Read
20–22 Mar*
4
Watch
Read
Hindu Gods and Goddesses
Fuller, “Gods and Goddesses”
Life and Death in Hindu Society: varṇa and jāti
Wages of Action
Quigley, “Caste and Hinduism”
Other Hinduisms
27–29 Mar*
5
Watch
Read
3 Apr
5 Apr
The Fifth Veda
The Poojari’s Daughter
Hess, “Rejecting Sita”
Researching and writing essays for Religious Studies
6
Read
Guru Movements
Spurr, “Guru Movements’’
The Triple Gem: Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha
10–12 Apr
7
Read
17 Apr—3 May
1 May
8–10 May*
11 May
The Buddha and Buddhism
Harvey, “The Buddha and his Indian Context”; Kūṭadanta Sutta
Mid-semester break
5pm
8
Deadline for submission of essay
The Dhamma
Read
Walpola, “The First Noble Truth: Dukkha”
Milindapañha 25–28, 40, 46, 71
5pm
Essays submitted on time returned
8
COURSE OUTLINE
15 May*
9.1
Read
Listen
17 May*
9.2
Read
Watch
The Dhamma Lab?: Buddhist Meditation
Satipattāna Sutta
Meditation by Joseph Goldstein (22 mins)
The Sangha: The Buddhist Community
Strong, “Experience of the Sangha”; Berkwitz, “Founding the Bhikṣuṇi order”
The Mindful Way (20 mins)
Buddhism Beyond the Triple Gem
22–24 May*
10
Read
Watch
25 May
29 May
5pm
11
Read
Watch
31 May
Buddhist Ritual and Practice
Crosby, “Devotion to the Buddha”; Swearer, “A Thai Buddhist Funeral”
Caring for the Beyond (24 mins)
Deadline for submission of glossary and optional resubmission of essay
Buddhism, Politics and the State
Harris, “Buddhism and the Political Order”
Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta
Pinnacle of Buddhism (50 mins, or as much as you can)
Documentary on JHU, short clip on 2007 Saffron Revolution
Course Summary
Required and Recommended Readings, and Films
The articles in this coursebook represent the bare minimum required reading for this class. The articles and chapters which make up the required reading have in some cases been abbreviated1 to keep
the focus on the most important sections, but the full versions are available through the library. The
references in the readings have in most cases been altered to follow the Chicago style recommended
by the Department, but in some cases you will need to consult the full version of the article if you wish
to follow up references.
In each section we have also listed a number of recommended readings. We strongly encourage
you to look at them. Not only will they deepen your understanding, they will help you write your
essay. For some classes we ask you to view films, instead of read. These films will be available to watch
online, through Blackboard.
Tutorials
A simple truism applies to this course, as it applies to almost every other course you’ll take at uni:
you get out of it as much as you put in. You don’t have to come to tutorials. They’re optional. That
said, we find that tutorials are the most effective places for consolidating, synthesizing and digesting
new information. There are seven tutorials over the course of the semester (i.e., each week, except
for the first and last weeks of each of the two main sections of the course), you can attend as many
1Abbreviations are marked by an ellipsis […].
ASSESSMENT OVERVIEW
9
as you like. When you do come, make sure that you complete the relevant readings and/or viewings
beforehand. Also make sure you bring the text along. We can almost guarantee you that those students
who come to tutorials regularly will learn the most and do the best. Tutorials for distance students will
be conducted by videoconference, on Wednesday evenings (please see the Distance section below).
Assessment overview
Final Exam (50%)
Half your grade in this paper will come from a final exam, in which you will answer 40 multiple choice
questions and write two essays. The content of the exam will be based on the materials in the coursebook. Copies of the essays portion of past exam papers are available on the library website. The
date, time, and location of the exam is set by the Examinations Office (http://www.otago.ac.nz/study/
exams) and will be communicated to you around mid-semester. All questions about the time and location of the exam should be directed to the Examinations Office. Exam venues for Distance students
are based on your semester address in eVision so you must ensure this is kept up to date.
Glossary Assignment (10%)
This paper requires students to become familiar with many new Sanskrit and Pali terms. To help
you learn these terms, we require students to complete a glossary assignment, in which they must
define fifty key terms in Hinduism and Buddhism. Detailed instructions for completing the glossary
are found at the end of this section of the coursebook.
Essay Assignment, with a twist (40%)
Writing a clear, cogent, persuasive argument is one of the most important skills you will learn at university. A key goal of all Religious Studies papers is to help you cultivate that skill. In addition to
discussing arguments in lectures and tutorials, we dedicate an entire lecture before the mid-semester
break to the art of researching and writing academic arguments (recorded for distance students).
Drawing upon this, this paper requires you to write a 2,000 word essay on a title/topic chosen
from the list below. (You are not expected to adapt or replace the title of the essay, as is usual in some
universities). In researching your topic, we suggest that you start with the recommended readings
listed in the coursebook. The best essays will also draw from other peer-reviewed, academic sources
outside of the coursebook.
Format counts. Make sure you do the following: use a ‘normal’ English font, double-space, include
page numbers, and make sure you write your name, student id number, the date, and the word-count
at the beginning. Proper academic citation format is expected. Please see the Religion Programme’s
Study and Style Guide2 for more on proper citation.
2http://www.otago.ac.nz/religion/pdfs/styleguide.pdf
10
COURSE OUTLINE
Essay questions
1. What is the Veda? To what extent are the ideas of the Veda significant for later Hindu beliefs
and practices?
2. Describe the forms in which Śiva is commonly represented in temples. What is the significance
of these different representations for Hindus?
3.
A girl, a young woman or an old woman must do nothing independently, even at
home. In childhood she should be subject to her father, in youth to her husband,
and after her husband’s death to her sons. A woman should not have independence.
The Laws of Manu 5, 147.
Discuss the view of women which lies behind this rule and assess the extent to which it has
affected the lives of Hindu women.
4. Choose two modern Hindu gurus. Outline what they share, how they differ, and explain whether
or not you think they represent the same religious tradition.
5. How do images of the Buddha differ from images of Hindu deities? What might explain those
differences? Be specific.
6. How is the doctrine of rebirth in Buddhism different from that of Hinduism? What does this
tell us about the two religions?
Marking
Essays will be marked according to the following rubrics:
Basics and polish: Did the author follow the prompts listed in the reader and is the piece
free from careless errors (grammar, spelling, citation style).
Argument/Structure: Does the piece make a clear argument and have a clear structure?
Does the argument flow logically and draw upon ample and well-analyzed evidence? Is
it clear what ‘work’ the paragraphs are doing and are there strong transitions between
paragraphs? Does it have a clear introduction that lays out the argument and a conclusion that explains the significance of the argument?
Content: Does the piece show evidence of time spent researching and thinking? Does it
build upon, critique and advance ideas presented in lectures, required readings and/or
recommended readings (rather than simply summarize)? Does it present original ideas?
The submission date for the essay is 5pm on Monday May 1. Essays must be uploaded to the appropriate link on Blackboard. It is your responsibility to make sure that your essay has been submitted
properly. Double-check and if there is a problem send us an email that same day with a copy of your
essay in PDF or MSWord format. Telling us two days later that “Blackboard lost my submission” is not
a legitimate excuse (and you know why).
DISTANCE LEARNING
11
The twist: resubmission
Essays submitted on time will be returned to you on May 11 with comments. Based on those comments,
students may choose to revise and resubmit the essay by 5pm on Thursday May 25 for a new grade.
Revised essays must be accompanied by a paragraph explaining in detail how the essay has been
revised. For those who resubmit, final essay marks will be the average of the original submission and
the resubmission. The point of this resubmission scheme is give you a chance to build upon the essay
feedback to improve your writing. Cliché though it is, good writing comes with rewriting.
Another reminder about deadlines. As mentioned above, we do not give extensions, so plan
ahead. Late essays will incur a penalty of 5% for each working day late.
Distance Learning
This paper is taught concurrently on campus and by distance. While distance students cannot come
to the weekly lectures, we make sure that they stay on target by recording lectures and sharing them
on Blackboard. These recordings can be used alongside uploaded pdfs of the lecture slides used for
each class.
Tutorials for distance students will take place on Wednesday evenings, from 8.10–9pm, in the
weeks indicated with an asterisk on the schedule (i.e., 8, 15, 22 & 29 March, for Hinduism and 10, 17 & 24
May for Buddhism). As for campus students, tutorials are optional but highly recommended. Tutorials
will use Zoom Videoconferencing (http://www.otago.ac.nz/its/services/teaching/otago028772.html).
The URL for the Zoom sessions will be posted on Blackboard. For instructions on using Zoom and
technical requirements see the link in the next section.
Resources
A comprehensive list of advice about the Religion programme is available and regularly updated on
our website at: http://www.otago.ac.nz/religion/courses/resources.html. This includes information
on how to use Blackboard and Zoom, how to format and submit assignments, and where to find help.
It is important that you review this information!
12
COURSE OUTLINE
A Note on Languages and Scripts
One learning objective for this paper is to use accurately specialized terms relevant to the different
phases of Hinduism and of early and Theravāda Buddhism. Many of these terms are difficult to translate with a single English word and most secondary literature leaves these terms untranslated, so that
the full range of their meaning in their original context is not lost. Developing a good sense of their
meaning will help your understanding of the religions themselves, and the glossary is intended to
assist you with this.
Sanskrit and Pāli are both usually written in a script called Devanāgarī: वनागरी.3 When transliterated into the Roman scripts used for English and most other European languages, diacritical marks
are required to represent accurately sounds for which the ordinary 26 characters of the Roman alphabet are not sufficient. For example, in Sanskrit we have the following three sounds: श ष स which
are transliterated as śa, ṣa and sa. These letters (strictly speaking, syllables) which look similar when
transliterated into Roman characters are as different in Sanskrit as c, s and z are in English. They are
also pronounced differently (although the difference between the śa and ṣa is hard to distinguish—
both sound like the ‘sh’ in English ‘ship’—which is why you will see Śiva written as Shiva and Viṣṇu
written as Vishnu). It is therefore necessary to distinguish them when they are written in Roman
characters. Hence diacritical marks (accents, macrons etc.) are used. Devanāgarī does not distinguish upper and lower case, but it is conventional to do so when transliterating into Roman script
(thus Śiva, not śiva). It is likewise conventional to form plurals on the pattern of English rather than
Sanskrit (or Pāli) when using Sanskrit terms in English (thus devas—‘gods’—not devā). In most cases
Sanskrit words (e.g., deva) are written in italics, but names (e.g., Śiva) are not. Some writers regard
Sanskrit words commonly used in English (such as karma, or nirvana) as having becoming English
words, and therefore omit italics and/or diacritics. In the readings scanned for this coursebook the
author’s preferences have been followed. Both Hindus and Buddhists also have sacred literature in a
wide range of other languages, including many Indian languages and others from other parts of Asia
(notably Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese). In addition to Sanskrit and Pāli, you will also encounter
a few terms from two other languages, Tamil and Sinhala. Like Sanskrit, Tamil, which is spoken in
South India, has sounds not found in English and is written in a different script: தம ழ் எ த்
(tamiḻ eḻuttu—‘Tamil writing’). For the purposes of this paper most Tamil words may be rendered in
their Sanskrit equivalents; the major exceptions are Tamil proper names, such as the god Murukaṉ
and the goddess Koṟṟavai (pronounced Kotravai). In the last part of the Buddhism section, you will
encounter some words transliterated from the Sinhala language ංහල. Sinhala (sometimes rendered as Sinhalese) is from the same language family as Sanskrit and is spoken by three-fourths of the
people in Sri Lanka today.
Diacritical marks are used on this paper to assist you in pronouncing these terms, and in recognizing them in your reading. However, you are not required to use diacritical marks in your own writing
in assessments on this paper.
3See http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm for a brief explanation of the script.
GLOSSARY
13
Glossary
Many of the terms you will encounter in the readings do not need to be memorized. There are, however, some key terms which you will need to learn. The glossary assignment is intended to assist you
with this. The glossary is in two parts, containing 25 key terms each for Hinduism and Buddhism. For
Hinduism, all terms are given in their Sanskrit form, For Buddhism most terms are given in their Pāli
forms. Where variations in spelling are found, more than one form of the word may be given.
The glossary is assessed, and will count for 10% of your final mark for this paper. Note, however, that the aim of this exercise is to develop a genuine understanding of these terms to the point
where you are able to use them confidently in your essay and exam. You are therefore encouraged to
make notes on each term—in your own words—as the paper progresses and not merely to copy out
definitions from a textbook or reference work. You can of course use reference books to check your
understanding of the term. For each term you will receive:
two marks for notes indicating a full understanding of the term, expressed in your own words,
or
one mark for a partial understanding or where your notes rely heavily on a single secondary
source.
Serious misunderstanding or no entry will result in no marks being awarded for that term. Total marks
(out of a maximum possible 100) will be converted into a percentage score.
To submit your glossary, you should download from Blackboard either
a Word file. The file can be edited, and is suitable for digital submission. Note, however, that it
includes diacritical marks and you will need a Unicode-compatible font to ensure the diacritics
display correctly.
a RTF file. This file can be edited, and is suitable for digital submission. It does not include
diacritics.
Many recent computer systems will have a font suitable for displaying diacritical marks already
installed, e.g., Arial MS Unicode (supplied with some versions of Microsoft Office) or Lucide Grande
(supplied with Apple’s OS X). The font used in the Word file is called Gentium. It is available for free
download at http://scripts.sil.org/default and should work on both Windows and Apple computers.
If you require assistance with installing this font, please contact the ITS helpdesk. Note however, that
you are not required to use diacritical marks on either your glossary, or your essay. If you have any
difficulty displaying the characters correctly, please use the RTF version of the glossary.
On Blackboard you will also find the glossary as a PDF file, which should display diacritical marks
accurately on any combination of computer and printer, but which cannot be edited. You may wish
to use this for making notes, but for submitting your assignment you should type up a clean version
of your notes using one of the other formats (RTF or Word).
14
COURSE OUTLINE
Hinduism glossary
1. ārya
2. āśrama
3. ātman
4. avatāra
5. bhakti
6. brahmā
7. brahmācarya, brahmācaryin
8. brahman (sometimes also written as bráhman)
9. brāhmaṇa (sometimes also written as brahmin)
10. deva/devī
11. dharma
12. jāti
GLOSSARY
13. jñāna
14. kāma
15. karma, karman
16. mokṣa
17. mūrti
18. purāṇa
19. saṃsāra
20. saṃskāra
21. saṃnyāsa, sannyāsin
22. śāstra
23. sūtra
24. upaniṣad
25. varṇa
15
16
COURSE OUTLINE
Buddhism glossary
1. anattā
2. Aśoka
3. bhikkhu
4. Buddha
5. Buddhist nationalism
6. cetiya
7. dāna
8. dharma/dhamma (1,2,3)
9. dukkha
10. JHU
11. khandha
12. lokuttara
GLOSSARY
13. Mahāvaṃsa
14. Modernist Buddhism
15. nirvāṇa/nibbāna
16. paṭiccasamuppāda
17. paritta
18. puñña
19. stūpa/thūpa
20. taṇhā
21. Theravāda Buddhism
22. upāsikā
23. uposatha
24. vinaya
25. vipassanā
17
I. Hinduism
Introducing Hinduism
21
1 The Sources of Hindu Tradition
Topic overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
outline some of the characteristic features of Hinduism,
identify the primary sources of the Hindu tradition, and
give an account of some of the difficulties involved in interpreting the remains of the Indus
Valley Civilization and connecting it with the other important cultural complexes in India.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
defining religions
material culture vs. textual evidence
Introducing Hinduism
The aim of this unit is to introduce you to the primary sources of Hindu tradition, and thereby to
help you gain an overview of some of the main features of Hinduism. It may be helpful to compare
studying Hinduism to looking at a digital image or a mosaic. Examined very close up, such an image
is composed of thousands of pieces, each of which, when examined individually, differs in colour and
shape. Patterns only begin to emerge as you draw back from the individual pieces and take a view of
many of them at once. Our aim in this unit, is to detect some of those larger patterns. In later units we
will come to take a more detailed view of some of the smaller components which make up the larger
patterns. For now, relax your focus and worry less about the details than about seeing the big picture.
The flavour of Hinduism
It is often said, not least by Hindus, that beneath their surface differences all religions are essentially
similar. In this section we will adopt the opposite point of view, and attempt to bring into focus what
it is that makes Hinduism unique, or at the very least what gives Hindu religion its distinctive flavour.
While it may not be possible to define Hinduism, it is possible to identify practices which are characteristically Hindu even if not shared by all Hindus.
23
24
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Rasam
An essential element of the daily midday meals served across the southeastern Indian state of Tamil
Nadu is rasam. There are many variations of rasam, but it is usually a hot, sour, clear soup made with
tomato, tamarind, pepper, and coriander. It may be poured over rice or drunk on its own toward the
end of the meal. For those not accustomed to the spicy nature of much Indian food, the alternative
Tamil name for it, miḷaku-taṇṇīr or ‘pepper water’, may seem more appropriate. In the nineteenth
century the British adapted miḷaku-taṇṇīr to create Mulligatawny soup which is, however, a pale imitation of the Tamil original. It is, however, more usually referred to as rasam, a name which is not Tamil
in origin but derived from the Sanskrit word rasa. In Sanskrit rasa has a rich variety of meanings—
one dictionary lists no fewer than thirty. It can mean flavour but also has a range of meanings which
suggest something deeper. Thus it can also mean sap, pith, or extract and in this way refers to the essential quality of a thing, its nature or essence. In good Indian cooking, flavour is not something added
apart from the other ingredients. The ‘added flavouring’ that appears on the list of ingredients on so
much processed food in modern supermarkets has no place here. What is required is rather that each
of the ingredients bring its own flavour and that over time—and this should not be hurried—those
individual flavours merge to produce the distinctive rasa of the dish.
Later, we will examine some of the main sources of the Hindu tradition each of which has contributed to the overall rasa, the flavour, of Hinduism. That flavour is not the same as that of any of
the individual ingredients which, over time, have made their contribution to the rich Hindu tradition
in the same way that the individual flavours of the ingredients have contributed to the rich flavour of
a good curry.1 Before coming to the sources which have contributed to Hinduism however, we will
consider the rasa of the broader Hindu tradition as a whole. For as well as flavour, rasa can refer also
to taste, both the taste of something (its flavour) and a taste for something—for example, the connoisseur’s love of good curry. The aim of this unit then is to help you cultivate a taste for Hinduism,
an appreciation for the taste—or flavour—of Hinduism. In this sense rasa has also taken on a further
dimension of meaning, which is a key element of Indian aesthetic theory. Thus rasa can also mean
relish, the delight in savouring anything particularly fine. In this sense rasa comes also to mean the
feelings or mood which the artist sets out it inspire in the hearts and minds of an audience. The different types of moods, emotions or sentiments associated with particular times of day, seasons of the
year, or phases of life were correlated with those created by depicting a particular scene in a play or
painting, or the use of a particular rāga—a melodical mode—in a musical composition. For all the
efforts of those Indian theorists to define the nature of these moods, the truly great works of art tend
to achieve their effect as much by breaking the rules of the theorists as by following them. The rasa—
the connoisseur’s delight in savouring the mood engendered by such a work of art—may therefore
be impossible to define, but the taste for it can be cultivated by paying attention to many examples
of successful works of art. Similarly while it may be impossible to define Hinduism, it is possible to
cultivate a feeling for what Hinduism is, the rasa of Hinduism. We will begin the process here by attempting, like a clumsy theoretician, to describe what can only really be achieved by a long process
of attention to the rich variety of Hinduism—the beliefs, practices, texts, institutions, and habits of
Hindus.
1Curry, which came into English even earlier than Mulligatawny, in the seventeenth century, is from another Tamil
word, kaṟi, meaning ‘sauce.’
INTRODUCING HINDUISM
25
Multiplicity
The first thing to say about the rasa—the distinctive flavour—of Hinduism is that it is characteristic
of Hinduism to value multiplicity rather than unity. It is only to be expected that Hinduism, a religion
which is not only ancient but which continues to inspire hundreds of millions of people, will be internally diverse. The same is true of all the great religions. Unlike those religions, however, Hindus have
not typically been troubled by this diversity and multiplicity. They have not, for example, produced
creeds prescribing what a Hindu ought to believe. Although there are some exceptions to this in the
modern period, it is telling that they were consciously inspired by the model of other religions which
have been concerned to reduce diversity by specifying a single correct set of beliefs.
Hinduism famously has many gods and, even if many Hindus would assert that these many gods
have ultimately to be understood as one, Hindus have not sought to restrict the ways in which the
divine can appear. New gods, or new manifestations of the divine, continue to appear among Hindus.
As we will see when we come to examine the ways in which Hindus worship, each of the major gods
and goddesses has multiple forms. While there have been attempts to specify these different forms—
for example by listing the ten āvataras or ‘descents’ of the god Viṣṇu into the world—in practice many
more appearances of the divine are recognised. The Hindu conception of the divine is fluid, in part
because of the stress placed on divine immanence—god’s inhabiting the world—which makes it easy
to recognise material manifestations of the divine in many forms, including human beings.
Hinduism also has many creation stories. The oldest of these express in different ways the emergence of order out of chaos but there are also other ideas, including the idea that the earth arose by
chance, formed from the cloud of dust kicked up by the feet of the gods as they danced.2 While some
of these creation stories were later elaborated into systematic philosophical accounts of the origins of
all things, it has never been possible to speak of a single Hindu creation story and Hindus have seldom
insisted on any one such account. One of the best-known Hindu accounts of creation concludes on a
note of uncertainty which suggests that all such accounts must remain incomplete:
Who really knows? Who shall here proclaim it? From where was it born, from where
this creation? The gods are on this side of the creation of the world. So then who knows
from where it came to be?
This creation—from where it came to be, if it was produced or if not—
he who is the overseer of this world in the highest heaven,
he surely knows. Or if he does not know… ?3
Hinduism also has many sacred texts. While the Veda is set apart as a text which is eternal and
therefore of the highest authority, Hindus acknowledge the authority of many other texts. The Veda
itself is also not one—not only can it not be said to present a single religious worldview, but Hindus
have also identified other texts as also being, in some sense, Veda. The Veda is written in Sanskrit, but
the Tamil-speaking worshippers of Śiva and Viṣṇu—the main Hindu gods—each have texts which
they claim are the ‘Tamil Veda.’4 As we shall see, the ritual practices embodied in women’s knowledge
are also sometimes said to be Veda.
2Ṛg Veda X, 72, 6.
3Ṛg Veda X, 129, 6-7, trans. Joel P. Brereton, “Edifying Puzzlement: Ṛgveda 10. 129 and the Uses of Enigma,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 119, no. 2 (1999): 257–258. Brereton (259) notes, however, that later poets could not resist ‘resolving’
this poem by naming a fundamental principle, brahman, as the source of all things.
4For Śaivas (worshippers of Śiva) the Tiruvācakam, a text composed by Māṇikkavācakar, is regarded in this way, while
Vaiṣṇavas (worshippers of Viṣṇu) make the same claim for an entirely different work, the Tiruvāymoḻi of Nammāḻvār.
26
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
There are many other instances where this characteristic valuing of multiplicity is apparent: the
sacred centres visited by Hindu pilgrims (the ‘four places’ in the cardinal directions, or the four sites
of the Kumbh Melā festival, the twelve jyotirliṅgas (sites where Śiva appeared) visited by Śaivas or
the four (or fifty-one, or 108) Śakti pīṭhas sacred to the goddess) or the multiple religious authorities
(the four Śaṅkarācāryas or heads of the Śaiva centres of learning). From this relish or appreciation of
multiplicity emerge some of the other characteristic features of Hinduism.
Orthopraxy: correct action
The first is a concern with action, rather than belief. Hinduism may be said to have an orthopraxy
rather than an orthodoxy. As noted above, Hindus have rarely sought to formulate creeds prescribing
what Hindus ought to believe. They have, however, devoted an enormous amount of attention to
prescribing how Hindus ought to act. Two spheres of action in particular have been important: ritual
action and, connected to this, the preservation of ritual purity. Both are captured by the term dharma.
Dharma is a crucial concept in Hinduism, and has many shades of meaning.5 As sanātana dharma,
‘eternal dharma,’ it has been used since the nineteenth century by Hindus as a synonym for the English
word ‘Hinduism.’ Here, however, we are concerned with a more restricted sense of the term, in which
it refers to duty or obligation. There is a whole class of texts, the dharmaśāstras, which prescribe how
Hindus ought to act in every sphere of life. Within the scope of the dharmaśāstras lie not only matters
of religious ritual, but also of law, morality, societal and family relationships, diet and hygiene. We
will examine the content of these texts—and the degree to which the daily lives of Hindus are in fact
influenced by them—later on. Here we will consider them as they contribute to the rasa of Hinduism.
The tradition out of which modern Western moral thought has emerged tends to emphasize principles which are universal. Although rights and obligations—for example, the right to buy alcohol, or
the obligation to pay full fares to use public transport—are sometimes particular to certain groups,
the emphasis in this tradition of moral thought is universalist. By contrast Hindu thinking on dharma
is characteristically particularist rather than universalist. That is, the dharmaśāstras are for the most
part concerned with the duties appropriate for particular classes of person, rather than for everyone.
There are of course exceptions, just as there are exceptions to the Western tendency to universalism.
For example, homicide is always condemned. Even here, however, the particularist tendency is apparent in the different penances prescribed for killing humans of different classes. Thus in general we
can say that Hinduism places great emphasis on differentiating the dharma appropriate to different
groups of people. Such groups are differentiated not only by class, but also by family or clan, stage of
life, region or occupation. Several texts state that it is better to perform one’s own dharma, however
badly, than the dharma of another, however well.
Classifying the universe
A concern with classification is another very characteristic feature of Hindu thinking. Scriptures, goddesses, the stages of life, tastes, seasons, landscapes, moods and more were all analysed and assigned
to categories. Moreover these classifications may overlap to produce a rich lattice of possibilities.
The effect of this can be seen by examining the way food—always a matter of concern for Hindus—
is fitted within these multiple classificatory schemes. Food can be categorised according to its taste
5And further shades of meaning when taken over by Buddhists.
INTRODUCING HINDUISM
27
(sweet, sour, savoury, astringent, bitter or salty), its effect on the body (‘heating’ or ‘cooling’), its essential qualities (in terms of the three guṇas: sattva, rajas, tamas, or the three doṣas (humours): bile,
wind and phlegm), who it is prepared by, received from or offered to (whether someone within the
family, or within the same or a higher caste, or not), how it has been cooked (whether boiled or fried;
the very orthodox may further classify food according to the fuel source—wood, charcoal, kerosene,
gas), stored and served (in containers made of clay or leaves, or of steel, brass, bronze, silver or gold).
Food can be still further categorised according to the time: depending on the season (winter, frost,
spring, summer, rains, autumn) or the occasion (which may depend on further classifications based
on astrological, ritual or family circumstances). Each of these considerations may affect whether the
food can be eaten.
Food is perhaps the area where this kind of classificatory thinking is most comprehensively applied, but it is characteristic of Hindu thinking generally. The effect of overlapping classificatory
schemes of this nature is for example also the basis for much of Indian aesthetic theory. The results
were embodied in treatises which attempted to lay out these classifications systematically. The Kāmasūtra is only one—albeit the best known—of many such treatises which, according to one Indian
writer, ‘indulge in a systematization which is thorough to the point of absurdity’.6 A. K. Ramanujan
argues that the model for this type of thinking is grammar, and describes the Kāmasūtra as ‘literally a
grammar of love—which declines and conjugates men and women as one would nouns and verbs in
different genders, voices, moods and aspects.’7 He notes that the early Sanskrit grammarian, Pāṇini,
holds a place in Indian thought comparable in importance to that of the Greek mathematician Euclid
in Western thought.
The dharmaśāstras and other Hindu treatises embody two opposed impulses which are characteristic of much Hindu thinking. On the one hand the texts seek to be comprehensive, to cover every
imaginable situation in life, and to prescribe the correct way to behave. On the other hand the texts
themselves acknowledge the impossibility of this endeavour. The Dharmasūtra of Āpastamba declares: ‘The Righteous (dharma) and the Unrighteous (adharma) do not go around saying, ‘Here we
are!’ Nor do gods, Gandharvas, or ancestors declare, “This is righteous and that is unrighteous.”’8 The
text goes on to recommend following the advice of those ‘who have been properly trained, who are
elderly and self-possessed, and who are neither greedy nor deceitful’. This is repeated at the end of the
dharmasūtra and reflected in other texts on dharma in the references to authorities whether named
(‘According to Hārīta… ’) or not (‘Some say… ’). The texts also recognise many alternative regulations,
and also that there may be occasions when circumstances dictate that the ordinary way of dharma
cannot be followed.
Both the impulse to provide a comprehensive account of every imaginable situation, and the
recognition that there will always be exceptions can be seen as a response to the rich diversity of
the Hindu tradition. The final element in our discussion of the rasa of Hinduism can also be seen as
a way in which Hindus bring order to the diversity of their tradition. This is a characteristic mode
of thought which one writer describes as ‘the identificatory habitus.’ As Hindus have sought to make
sense of the diversity of the world they have repeatedly asserted an identity between two apparently
6Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Hinduism: A Religion to Live By (London: Chatto & Windus, 1979), 218.
7A. K. Ramanujan, “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay,” in India through Hindu Categories, ed.
McKim Marriott (New Delhi: Sage, 1990), 53.
8Patrick Olivelle, Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 31. Cf. Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, The Laws of Manu (London: Penguin Books, 1991), xv.
28
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
different things, that one thing is in some sense the same as another. The roots of this way of thinking
appear to lie in the discussions of ritual in some of the earliest textual sources for Hinduism. One
dimension of this identificatory habitus is the acceptability of substitutes in ritual. The texts which
explain how sacrifices are to be carried out assert that one ritual element may stand for another: a
rice cake may be sacrificed if a goat is not available, or if animal sacrifice is no longer regarded as
acceptable.
Another dimension is apparent at a more abstract level of reflection upon sacrifice. The texts
which explain why sacrifice has the effects that it does assert that there are hidden connections between the elements of the universe. For example, one of the most elaborate of the sacrifices described
in early Hindu sources is the horse sacrifice. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad the connections between
the sacrificial horse and the universe are developed in detail as follows:
Om! The dawn is the head of the sacrificial horse. The sun is his eye, the wind his breath,
the fire within-all-men his breath. The year is the body of the sacrificial horse. The sky is
his back, the middle realm of space his stomach, the earth his underbelly; the quarters
of the sky are his sides, the intermediate quarters his ribs; the seasons are his limbs, the
junctures between the months and the fortnights his joints; day and night are his feet,
the stars are his bones, and the clouds are his flesh.9
Ultimately the most important of these ritual equivalences was that made between the sacrifice and
the self. This opened the way for a new kind of speculation about the relationship between human
beings and the rest of the cosmos, and will be discussed at greater length below. Independently of
these developments, however, the assertion of identities or equivalences between one thing and another became a very characteristic feature of Hindu thinking. Thus while for Hindus the Ganges is
the sacred river, other rivers—both in India and, latterly, in other countries—have been identified
with the Ganges, or are able to stand for the Ganges, and hence able to play the part of the Ganges in
rituals of purification.10 Similarly, as mentioned above, one text is often said to ‘be’ another: different
collections of Tamil hymns are each said to be the Tamil Veda, and thus to substitute or supercede the
Sanskrit text which appears to have quite different concerns. Many other examples of identifications
of this nature are to be found, as we will see later on.
This type of thinking has also enabled Hindus to make sense of the varied ideas and practices
found among Hindus in both the present and the past. Hindus rarely reject any religious idea or practice outright, preferring to redefine it or recognise but relegate it to a lower level of practice. The best
example of this is the identification, in Bhagavad-Gītā, of true renunciation as inner renunciation: giving up attachment to the fruits of action, while continuing to act in the world, rather than renouncing
the world in the manner prescribed for ascetics. Renunciation is not rejected outright, and outward
renunciation is accepted as one path toward achieving liberation, but true renunciation is identified
with an apparently entirely different form of religious behaviour: continuing to act but making of all
one’s actions an offering to god.
These then are some of the constituent elements of the rasa of Hinduism—the valuing of multiplicity rather than unity, a concern with action rather than belief, a tendency to particularism rather
than universalism which in turn gives rise to a concern with classification and finally a tendency to
9Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.1-2, tr. in Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), 25–6.
10Mythologically, this is explained by a myth in which the earth was dry until the Ganges (identified as the Milky Way)
was brought down from heaven. Thus all water is Ganges water.
INTRODUCING HINDUISM
29
assert identities between one thing and another. It is, however, the combination of these ingredients,
like a good curry, which gives Hinduism its special flavour.
The Sources of Hindu Tradition
Hinduism is an ancient religion, and over time has drawn from several different sources. In this unit
we will introduce some of the more important of these sources. While each of these have made some
contribution to the rich diversity of the Hindu religion, it is sometimes difficult to be sure about the
exact nature of their contribution and how these different traditions interacted with one another.
The difficulty arises in part from the fact that these are ancient traditions, and we have only limited
evidence of the early stages of their interaction. For some of the sources we have abundant archaeological evidence and almost no textual sources, for others the reverse. The result is that there are
ongoing debates about the relationship between these sources among both those who study these
religions and those who practice them. Here we will outline some of the most widely-held theories
but we cannot enter into details of the debates.
The Aryans
The first of the main sources of Hinduism are the ritual, mythological and philosophical traditions
of the people who called themselves Aryans, embodied in a collection of oral (and only much later,
written) texts called Veda and preserved in the Sanskrit language. Despite the fact that (or, perhaps,
precisely because) they were initially preserved only in memory and not in writing, these texts have
been transmitted with remarkably few changes from ancient times until the modern period. Some of
these texts are still used daily in Hindu ritual. Nevertheless we know relatively little about the culture
of the Aryans at the time that the Vedas were composed. There are a number of reasons for this.
The first is that the texts themselves are almost the only evidence we have for the culture of which
they were a part. The earliest parts of the Veda predate the introduction of writing in India and thus
while the Vedas have been preserved with great fidelity, we have no other textual evidence regarding
the period of their composition. Archaeological evidence is also limited, in part because the religion
of the Veda did not require the construction of permanent temples, and we have no clear visual or
iconographic evidence for the early period. Nevertheless the texts themselves are extensive and give
a detailed picture of at least some elements of the life of those who composed and preserved them. Not
only do many elements of Hindu practice familiar from later times first appear in the Veda but, and
this is almost equally important, many Hindus believe that other elements of their religion can also
be found in the Veda. We will have more to say about the Veda and the religious beliefs and practices
associated with it in the next chapter.
The Indus Valley Civilization
The north-west of the Indian subcontinent, a region which is now the southern part of Pakistan and
the far west of India, was once home to a vast urban civilization which is usually referred to as the
Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). Like other ancient civilizations which flourished at around the same
time in Egypt, Mesopotamia and China, the IVC developed along the fertile banks of a major river
system. The civilization takes its name from the first of these rivers, the Indus, which still flows from
30
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea but in ancient times the river plain on which the IVC developed was
bordered by another great river, the Saraswati (or Ghaggar-Hakra) river, which has now disappeared.
Archaeological evidence indicates that humans have been living in this region for many thousands
of years, with the first evidence of domesticated animals and crops from about 6500 bce. The great
flourishing period of the IVC, during which the large urban centres for which it is best known were
constructed, is somewhat later. The evidence suggests that from about 2600 bce these large cities
were integrated into a single political order which flourished for some 700 years before entering a period of fragmentation and eventual decline. More than 1500 distinct settlements made up a single
civilization spread over an area twice the size of the Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations. Since
the 1920s, when systematic excavations began, thousands of artefacts have been recovered and large
well-planned cities with extensive systems of wells, reservoirs and drains have been uncovered. What
has so far been excavated represents only a small part of what is known to exist, and our knowledge
of the IVC is likely to develop greatly in the future. What we can learn from the artefacts and monuments that have been excavated is also limited by the fact that although many of these artefacts are
inscribed with symbols nobody has yet been able to decipher them successfully and hence to say with
confidence what they mean. More than fifty different proposed methods of reading or deciphering
the inscriptions have been published, and they have been linked with many of the ancient languages
and scripts of India but also with those of other regions ranging from China to Egypt. Not only have
none of these attempts been successful in gaining a consensus among scholars but recently a group of
scholars have argued that the symbols in the inscriptions do not represent a script or written language
at all, but should rather be seen as non-linguistic symbols which helped to unify a civilization with a
large and multilingual population.
The lack of literary evidence, or at least any that can be read with confidence, limits what we
can say about the religious beliefs and practices of the IVC and any possible contribution that they
may have made to later Hinduism. Although it has been suggested that some of the excavated buildings had a religious purpose—for example the so-called “Great Bath” at Mohenjo-daro11—there is no
unambiguous evidence for this, and alternative explanations remain possible. There are a series of
tantalizing similarities to what we know of later Indian religion which could indicate a connection of
some sort between the IVC and subsequent developments in the region, but the exact nature of that
connection—if indeed there was a connection—remains controversial. In many cases the similarity
may only be apparent, and the result of overinterpreting the IVC remains based on what is known of
Hinduism. Thus, for example, one reason for interpreting the Great Bath as a religious site is because
later Hindu temples incorporated such baths (usually called ‘tanks’ in a hangover from the English usage of the colonial period) which have a clear religious purpose. Similarly, the large number of private
wells dug within individual houses at Mohenjo-daro has been interpreted as evidence of a concern for
purity and pollution in relation to access to water which is characteristic of later Hindu caste society.
The fact that the wells appear to be private, rather than public, might indicate a concern to restrict
access by ‘polluted’ and ‘polluting’ groups or castes. There is however no compelling reason to interpret them in this way rather than, for example, simply as evidence of growing competition for scarce
water resources in an area of increasing urban population.
11An photograph of the remains of the “Great Bath” is among the images for this unit available through Blackboard.
INTRODUCING HINDUISM
31
The IVC and Hinduism
Nevertheless there are a number of items of potential evidence of a connection with later Indian religion that are striking enough to be worth considering. Some, including the most famous, must probably be rejected, others cannot be rejected on the basis of our current knowledge, but are not necessarily
evidence of direct influence.
The first, and most famous, of the items which have been thought to show evidence of a connection between the IVC and later Hindu iconography is the so-called “proto-Śiva”. This figure is depicted
on a number of the IVC remains so far excavated, but it was a version on a seal found at Mohenjo-Daro
which prompted the suggestion that it might represent an early form of the god Śiva. The seal, which
is about 2cm square and broken on one corner, depicts a figure seated in what may be a yoga posture,
wearing a horned headdress and surrounded by animals. The figure appears to have three faces and
the upper body is covered with necklaces and bangles. Most commentators on the seal would agree
on the description given thus far, but beyond this there is disagreement. Sir John Marshall, who first
proposed the identification of the figure with Śiva, suggested that the figure is naked from the waist
down, revealing an erect phallus, although he noted that it might also simply be end of a waistband. In
later times Śiva is often represented by a phallic form, the liṅga, and a number of stones of similar, but
not identical, shape have been found at IVC sites. The yogic posture recalls Śiva’s role as the master of
yoga and it has been suggested that the horned headdress represents an early form of either the trident, or the crescent moon, which later feature in the iconography of Śiva. The animals surrounding
the figure suggest Śiva’s later title Paśupati, ‘Lord of beasts’. Although there is a Vedic god, Rudra, who
has many of the qualities of Śiva, the fact that Śiva is not prominent in the Veda made the suggestion
that the origins of Śaiva religion (and of yoga) were to be found in the IVC very attractive. There are
then a number of reasons which can be given for thinking that this figure represents a ‘proto-Śiva’.
However, when the seal is placed in the wider context of both Indus and other ancient Asian cultures
there are a number of cogent reasons for thinking that this identification is unlikely.
First, as mentioned, the so-called ‘proto-Śiva’ seal is only one of a number of seals depicting a
horned figure. It is not clear whether any of the others are naked from the waist down and some are
clearly clothed. Moreover, none is clearly ithyphallic and, although it has been argued that one depicts stylized genitalia, others appear to support Marshall’s alternative suggestion that it is the end of
a waistband which is depicted on the ‘proto-Śiva’ seal. Both in the IVC and in ancient Mesopotamia,
there are many depictions of horned figures which may be deities and there is therefore no particular
reason to connect this seal with later depictions of Śiva with a trident in hand or the crescent moon in
his hair. Some of the IVC images depict a figure in a similar ‘yogic’ posture but many others do not, and
none of the other poses resemble any known yoga asāna (pose). Finally, several of the animals surrounding the figure are wild (tiger, rhinoceros and, at least at the time of the IVC, elephant), whereas
the Vedic texts which mention the Paśupati present him rather as a protector of domestic animals,
notably horses and cattle.
The evidence for the identification of the figure on this seal has been reviewed at some length
in order to demonstrate the difficulties inherent in interpreting archaeological evidence without the
benefit of being able to correlate it with written evidence. The same difficulties attend other remains
from the IVC which have been seen as possible origins for aspects of later Hinduism: female figurines
which may indicate goddess worship, depictions of the pipal tree (with its distinctive heart-shaped
leaves) in relation to what may be ritual or cultic acts, use of the swastika. Although goddess worship,
32
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Figure 1: Proto-Śiva Seal. Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai. Photo: Will Sweetman
the pipal tree and the swastika all have an important place in later Hinduism in each case there is no
compelling reason to think that they must derive from a connection with the IVC. Even if the female
figurines represent goddesses (and depictions of females—human or animal—are otherwise notably
rare on the IVC seals), goddess worship was widespread in the ancient world. The swastika is not a
prominent symbol among IVC remains, and is likewise known from other cultures and regions, including some that have strong linguistic connections to the Vedic culture. The pipal tree—and other
trees of the same family (fig)—is sufficiently striking to have found a place in many religions, including Islam, and while this may indicate some degree of cultural continuity it may equally simply be
coincidence.
While some IVC artefacts show similarity to elements of later Hindu religious symbolism and perhaps practice, we cannot point to any single remain as offering unambiguous evidence for the origins
of any Hindu belief or practice in the IVC. Other IVC artefacts offer evidence of religious beliefs and
practice that have no clear correlate in Vedic religion. While a connection of some sort between the
two cultural complexes cannot be ruled out entirely, there is one very significant difference between
the two which is sufficient to undermine any strong claim about the religion of the IVC and the religion of Veda. Horses are an important feature of the Vedic religion—as well as appearing in Vedic
INTRODUCING HINDUISM
33
mythology, the horse was the sacrificial victim in one of the most important and elaborate of the rituals described in the Ṛgveda. Despite the many depictions of animals in IVC artefacts, there are no
depictions of horses until a very late stage in the history of the IVC nor is there any undisputed archaeological evidence for the presence of real horses in the region until the same period, when the
IVC was already in decline. This is the strongest reason for thinking that we should not place much
weight on the apparent similarities between the IVC and the culture of the Veda.
The IVC and the Dravidian culture
An alternative theory aligns the IVC not with the culture of the Vedas but instead with a third primary
source of Hinduism. This is the culture associated with the speakers of a distinct family of languages
collectively called Dravidian languages. The Dravidian languages are now dominant only in the southern part of India, but there is reason to believe that they may formerly have been more widespread
and some scholars have argued that the language of the IVC was a form of Dravidian. This is partly
a matter of elimination—if the language of the IVC is not related to Sanskrit it must, it is argued, be
related to the other major family of languages found in India. A strong piece of evidence for this is
the presence of several hundred thousand speakers of a Dravidian language, Brahui, in an area which
was once part of the IVC but is far removed from the main Dravidian-speaking areas of South India.
There is also evidence—for example loanwords in the other north Indian languages—to suggest that
Dravidian languages were formerly more widely spoken in northern India. Assuming, then, that the
language of the IVC is related to known Dravidian languages, scholars have attempted to interpret the
seals and the inscriptions they bear in relation to what is known of religion in the context of Dravidian
culture. As an example of the arguments offered for a link between the IVC and Dravidian language
and culture we will consider another important seal.
This seal—which has been labelled the ‘fig deity’ seal by one scholar—is of obvious religious significance and has been widely discussed.12 It depicts an anthropomorphic figure standing upright
within the branches of a pipal tree before which is depicted a human figure kneeling, with upraised
arms. Both figures wear head-dresses bearing horns and a fig branch, and both have a braid or pendant hanging down behind their heads. In front of the kneeling figure is a low stool, on which there
appears to be a human head. Most interpreters agree that the two figures represent a deity and a worshipper, some identify the deity as female. Behind the worshipper is a goat or ram with a human face,
made prominent by being depicted on a much larger scale than the human figures. Below, or in the
foreground, are seven robed and decorated figures, with smaller head-dresses and long braids. The
seal also bears seven signs which partially overlap with the seven signs on the ‘proto-Śiva’ seal. One
of the signs which occurs on both seals, albeit in slightly different forms, resembles a fish. This sign is
the most common of all Indus signs, including all its variants it represents no less than a tenth of all
signs on Indus remains.13 Almost all of those who believe the language of the IVC to be some form of
Dravidian read this sign as mīn, the common word for fish in the Dravidian languages. Mīn also means
‘star’, or ‘planet’, in a number of those languages and because (among other reasons) the stars are later
associated with the principal gods of Hinduism, it has been argued that the fish sign indicates a deity.
As these inscriptions occur on seals which depict anthropomorphic figures identified as deities, it has
12An image of the seal is among the images for this unit available through Blackboard.
13Asko Parpola, Deciphering the Indus Script (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 180.
34
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
been suggested that the signs include the name of the deity. Another of the shared signs on these
seals resembles a human stick-figure. Based on the fact that seals have been found widely distributed
in different houses, and on parallels with similar seals in Mesopotamia, it has been thought likely that
these short inscriptions encode the name of a person or, in the case of these two seals, a priest. The
sign sequences have been read then as indicating the name of the person who worshipped a particular
deity. The question then arises as to the identity of the deity in the fig tree.
Asko Parpola has identified this deity as a form of the goddess Durgā, well-known in later Hinduism as a goddess of victory. He offers a number of arguments, based on the name and mythology
of Durgā. A more detailed argument points to the practice of offering the head of a sacrificial victim
or even one’s own head as an offering to Durgā. The primary myth relating to Durgā is her defeat of
the buffalo (or buffalo-headed) demon Mahiṣāsura, who she pins down with her foot and spears. A
number of other IVC seals depict a buffalo being speared by a man who places his foot on the buffalo’s
head. Even if this may be taken as evidence for worship of a goddess like Durgā in the IVC, the worship
of Durgā is widespread in India there is no particular reason to associate it with the Dravidian complex. Parpola goes on to argue, however, that the particular form of the fish sign on this seal, which
is distinguished by a dot, indicates that the word should be read as a Dravidian word ‘poṭṭu-mīn,’ and
be taken to refer both to a particular type of fish and to a star associated with Durgā. The argument is
elaborate and what Parpola regards as accumulating evidence in favour of his interpretation, others
have seen as special pleading.
We cannot then conclude that the fig-deity seal offers us compelling evidence for a connection
between the IVC and the Dravidian culture, any more than the proto-Śiva seal offers us compelling
evidence for a connection with the Vedic culture. It remains possible that, for example, elements of
the Mahiṣamardinī myth, or of Śiva’s iconography, may derive from the IVC and therefore that the IVC
influenced the development of Hinduism through one of these cultures but it is not necessary for the
culture of the IVC to have been either Dravidian or Vedic in order for it to have contributed to the
development of Hinduism. It may be that the ongoing archaeological excavations in the Indus valley
region will allow us to make some more confident assertions about the contribution of this culture to
later Hinduism, but at present any claims must remain tentative.
Although we cannot be sure that the IVC was a Dravidian culture, there is no doubt that the cultures of the Dravidian speaking peoples have made a significant contribution to the development of
Hinduism. The bhakti tradition of passionate devotion to a particular deity who, it is believed, will
grant salvation to his or her devotees is likely to have had its roots in the south. Those responsible for
the some of the most sophisticated and influential philosophical systematizations of Hindu thought
were also from the south, although they wrote also in Sanskrit. While much of the south’s distinctive
contribution to Hinduism has been absorbed by the wider tradition, Hinduism in the south retains
its own flavour, most visibly in the style of the temples built there during the flourishing of a series of
powerful Hindu kingdoms in the medieval period. We shall have much more to say about Hinduism
in the south in a later unit. Here we will conclude our consideration of the sources of Hinduism by
proposing an image which may help you to understand how they relate to one another.
A number of images have been proposed to help visualize the relationship between the different
sources of the Hindu religion. One is the idea of a mighty river which is fed by many tributary streams,
each contributing to the main stream. The image is a natural one as rivers, especially the Ganges, are
important in Hinduism. However, while the image does justice to the complex origins of Hinduism, it
tends to underplay the diversity of the later tradition by suggesting that it is always possible to identify
INTRODUCING HINDUISM
35
Figure 2: Waimakariri River, Canterbury. Photo: Greg O’Beirne
the ‘mainstream’ of Hinduism. I would like to suggest here a modification of this image, which better
captures the diversity of Hinduism both in its origins and in its later manifestations.
This is the image of a braided river which has not only multiple tributaries, but also multiple
channels which constantly converge and diverge along the river’s length so that although at points one
may be wider or deeper than the others, no single one of them can be identified as the ‘mainstream’.
Rather the river is multiple from its origins until it discharges into the sea, and the many streams
which constitute it are constantly shifting in relation to each other. These rivers are found only in
certain regions of the world. They are a very prominent feature of the south island of New Zealand,
but they are also found in the Himalayan region, where the Ganges has its source. Here I suggest that
the image of a such a river may help us to understand how Hinduism has drawn from many sources,
and continued to change throughout its history, without our needing to identify any one stream of
Hinduism as the ‘mainstream’ and hence more important than any of the others.
Recommended reading
Lipner, Julius J. “On Hinduism and Hinduisms: The Way of the Banyan.” In The Hindu World, edited by
Sushil Mittal and Gene R. Thursby, 9–34. London: Routledge, 2004.
Llewellyn, J. E., ed. Defining Hinduism: A Reader. London: Equinox, 2005.
Ramanujan, A. K. “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay.” In India through Hindu
Categories, edited by McKim Marriott, 41–58. New Delhi: Sage, 1990.
36
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Required Reading
Simon Weightman, “Hinduism,” in A New Handbook of Living Religions, ed. John R. Hinnells (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997), 261–309.
Note
This reading—which is longer than most in the coursebook—provides a condensed overview of the entire
Hindu tradition. It uses all but two of the terms in the Hinduism section of the glossary. Many of the themes
it touches upon will be returned to in later weeks in greater depth, but before examining the elements of
Hindu belief and practice in detail it is useful to have a sense of their place in the whole. Once you have
completed the first half of the paper (the part on Hinduism) it is recommended that you return and read
Weightman’s article again, in order to be sure you understand it.
Introduction
What is Hinduism?
T
he word Hinduism is used to refer to the complex religious tradition which has evolved organically in the Indian subcontinent over several thousand years and is today represented by the highly
diverse beliefs and practices of more than 650 million Hindus. Apart from communities in neighbouring states, and those communities in such places as Bali, South‑West Africa and the Caribbean that
have been created by migration (together forming less than 10 per cent of the totality), the majority
of Hindus live in India, where they constitute over four-fifths of the entire population. Hinduism is
so diverse internally that the only way of defining it acceptably is externally, in terms of people and
places; the term ‘Hindu’ is, in origin, simply the Persian word for Indian. The land of India is crucial
to Hinduism; its sacred geography is honoured by pilgrimages and other ritual acts and has become
deeply embedded in Hindu mythology and scriptures.
There are two principal reasons why it is preferable to regard Hinduism as an evolving religious
tradition rather than as a single, separate ‘religion’ in the sense that the term is usually understood. The
first reason is that Hinduism displays few of the characteristics that are generally expected of a religion.
It has no founder, nor is it prophetic. It is not creedal, nor is any particular doctrine, dogma or practice
held to be essential to it. It is not a system of theology, nor a single moral code, and the concept of
god is not central to it. There is no specific scripture or work regarded as being uniquely authoritative.
Finally, it is not sustained by an ecclesiastical organization. Thus it is difficult to categorize Hinduism
as a ‘religion’ using normally accepted criteria.
The second reason for this preference is the extraordinary diversity of Hinduism, both historically
and in the contemporary situation. Such diversity is scarcely surprising when it is remembered that
Hinduism refers to the mainstream of religious development of a huge subcontinent over a period
of several thousand years, during which time it has been subject to numerous incursions from alien
races and cultures. The subcontinent is not only vast, but is also marked by considerable regional variation. Regions differ from one another geographically, in terms of terrain, climate, natural resources,
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
37
communications etc., and also ethnographically, in terms of the many and varied ethnic, cultural and
linguistic groupings that inhabit them. Diversity is, therefore, to be expected in almost every domain.
Hinduism evolved organically, with new initiatives and developments taking place within the tradition, as well as by interaction with and adjustment to other traditions and cults which were then
assimilated into the Hindu fold. These two processes of evolution and assimilation have produced an
enormous variety of religious systems, beliefs and practices. At one end of the scale are innumerable
small, unsophisticated local cults known only to perhaps two or three villages. At the other end of
the scale are major religious movements with millions of adherents across the entire subcontinent.
Such movements have their own theologies, mythologies and codes of ritual and could, with justice,
be regarded as religions in their own right.
It is, then, possible to find groups of Hindus whose respective faiths have almost nothing in common with one another, and it is also impossible to identify any universal belief or practice that is
common to all Hindus. Confronted with such diversity, what is it that makes Hinduism a single religious tradition and not a loose confederation of many different traditions? The common Indian
origin, the historical continuity, the sense of a shared heritage and a family relationship between the
various parts: all these are certainly important factors. But these all equally apply to Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, each of which arose within the Hindu tradition but separated from it to become
an independent religion. Crucial, however, is the fact that Hindus affirm it is one single religion. Every time a Hindu accepts someone as a fellow Hindu, in spite of what may be radical differences of
faith and practice, he is making this affirmation. Whatever its seeds, Hindu self‑awareness certainly
developed in early confrontations with Buddhists and Jains, acquired greater potency as Hinduism
was confronted by Islam and then Christianity, and finally was considerably strengthened in recent
times by the growth of nationalism and political identity. It is Hindu self‑awareness and self‑identity
that affirm Hinduism to be one single religious universe, no matter how richly varied its contents, and
make it a significant and potent force alongside the other religions of the world.
Approaches to Hinduism
The first attested usage of the word ‘Hinduism’ in English was as late as 1829. This is not to say that
the beliefs and practices of the Hindus, or ‘Gentoos’ as they were referred to in the eighteenth century, had not been previously studied. Indeed, serious work had already begun, spurred on by the
exciting ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit and the realization that it was related to Latin and Greek. Philological
work, the editing and translation of texts, has been a continuing and major scholarly concern. Because the corpus of religious and philosophical works is so vast, however, there still remains much
that awaits thorough investigation. Nevertheless the huge body of religious writings, sometimes referred to as Hindu scriptures, has helped to form a mistaken view of Hinduism. Certainly these works
are of primary importance. But it must be remembered that they were written by a priestly elite, the
Brahmans, and are, of necessity, unrepresentative of the beliefs and practices of the great majority of brāhmaṇa
Hindus at any given time. They are, moreover, not a coherent corpus, but as diverse as the history of
Hinduism itself. Some authors, through excessive reliance on texts, and through failing to place these
texts in their overall contexts, have perpetuated an image of Hinduism as being concerned solely with
the higher realms of metaphysical and theological teachings when, in fact, a very great deal more is
entailed.
38
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Early observers in contact with the everyday realities of Hinduism, understanding the writings,
beliefs and practices of the Brahmans to represent the true ‘orthodoxy’, were thus obliged to relegate
much of what they found to the status of folklore and superstition. More recently, ethnographic and
anthropological research has gone a long way towards removing this misleading polarization and has
partly succeeded in integrating both aspects into a single totality. This process has itself generated
further dualities, however, such as ‘the great tradition’ and ‘the little tradition’, which may prove in the
long run to be equally unhelpful.
The Christian missionaries were highly critical of most of what they encountered in India, although they welcomed monotheism wherever they found it as providing further evidence of the universality of this phenomenon. Subjected to the scorn of the missionaries, the more Westernized and
educated Hindus took the opportunity that the new word ‘Hinduism’ offered to reinterpret and project
Hinduism almost as they wished, since it was never clear precisely what the term referred to. As will
be seen later, Hinduism came to be projected as ‘the most ancient and mother of all religions’, and
through being, by implication, the best of all religions, it was naturally the most tolerant. This new
mythology was coupled with the notion of the spiritual East and the materialistic West, as if there
were no spirituality in the West and no materialism in the East. Such dubious popular images were
supported by the equally false notion of the changelessness of India. In fact Hinduism and India are
characterized by both continuity and change, and no single image can be appropriate either to so
complex an agglomeration as Hinduism or to so vast a continent as India.
There is still a relativism in the use of the word Hinduism. To someone reading the literature it
becomes clear that there are almost as many ‘Hinduisms’ as there are authors who write about it. Recently one scholar has commented trenchantly on the term Hinduism, describing it as ‘a particularly
false conceptualization, one that is conspicuously incompatible with any adequate understanding of
the religious outlook of Hindus’.1 While the arguments cannot be rehearsed here, there is much validity in them, although it is improbable that his wish to have the word dropped will ever be fulfilled.
The word is here to stay. In this chapter it will be used as many now use it to embrace the totality of
beliefs and practices of all Hindus, both as they are now, and as they have evolved over the centuries.
History and Sources of Hinduism
All that is known of the earliest stage of religious life in India—designated by some as protohistoric
Hinduism—is derived from excavated seals and statuettes belonging to the Indus valley civilization
(?4000‑1750 bce) (see figure 1). These are usually interpreted as indicating that veneration was shown
to a male god, seated in a yogic posture and displaying characteristics of the god known in later Hinduism as Shiva (see figures 4–6 below); also to female goddesses, phallic symbols and certain animals
and trees. Ritual purification with water seems also to have been an important element. Fragmentary
as these details are, however, all of these features reappear in classical Hinduism and are widespread
in current belief and practice—testimony to the persistence of religious forms in India.
The second historical phase, that of Vedism or Vedic religion, is usually taken to extend from about
the middle of the second millennium bce to about 500 bce. It was ushered in by the arrival of the
ārya semi‑nomadic Aryan tribes who, by conquest and by settlement and assimilation, spread during these
1Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (1962;
New York: New American Library, 1991), 63.
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
Figure 3: General map of India
39
40
deva/devī
brahman
upaniṣad
ātman
saṃsāra
mokṣa
karma, karman
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
centuries across north India. The Aryans were that branch of the Indo-European peoples who moved
down into Iran and Afghanistan and then into India. What is known of their religion when they were
in India derives mainly from the Veda, a remarkable corpus of religious literature which displays a
considerable evolution of religious attitudes throughout the period.
The oldest of these works is the Rig‑veda, a collection of hymns addressed to various gods or divine
powers (devas) and used during the main official religious rites. These rites centred on fire sacrifices
and the use of a sacred plant, Soma, from which a drink was made which was believed to heighten
spiritual awareness. The ceremonies were complex and required specialist priests, for whose use two
further works, the Sama‑veda and the Yajur‑veda, were added to the corpus. Alongside the official
religion there was a domestic cult requiring rites to be performed by the householder. The fourth and
latest work, the Atharva‑veda, presumably also intended for domestic use, contains magical spells
and charms to cope with a wide range of natural and supernatural situations. This early acceptance
of a very wide range of religious concern, from the cosmological to the magical, must have greatly
facilitated the assimilation of indigenous cults and tribes into the Aryan fold.
The next stage in Vedic development is found in the Brahmanas, prose commentaries containing
practical and mythological details relating to the sacrifice. Here ritualism is pre‑eminent. No longer
was it the response of the devas to human praise and offerings that ensured the welfare of man and
the order of the cosmos, but rather the correct performance of the sacrifice itself. This major change
in the status of the sacrifice weakened the position of the devas, a position further undermined by the
search for one single underlying cosmic power which was thought to be the source of the devas and
their powers. This one great cosmic power was sometimes personalized as—Prajapati or Purusha, for
example—but eventually was conceived of as the single impersonal absolute called brahman. Brahman’s seat was the sacrifice, and knowledge of brahman was the key to cosmic control. Another trend
that becomes apparent about this time is that of asceticism and meditation, which were represented
as being the internalization of the sacrifice within man, the microcosm.
The final stage of Vedic evolution is found in the last works of the Veda proper, the Upanishads.
Here the emphasis is away from ritual towards the personal and mystical experiencing of the One.
When the various worldly influences are reduced, the human self (atman) is able to experience itself
as, or at one with, brahman. Here for the first time too the very important doctrine of samsara appears.
Samsara is the endless cycle of birth and rebirth to which each soul is subject until it obtains liberation
(mukti or moksha) in brahman. The conditions of each birth are determined by the acts (karma)
performed during the previous life. Whereas the early hymns were little concerned with the afterlife,
now the major preoccupation is how to escape from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
The ten centuries from about 500 bce to 500 ce are the period of classical Hinduism. Because the
chronology is problematic it will be better to review the main religious developments thematically.
Certainly the period began in a time of great ferment. The Vedic cult was in decline. The Upanishads
and the quest for moksha represented a turning away from the world. Meanwhile a new merchant
class was flourishing whose members either supported their own non‑Vedic cults or else followed the
new sects that were then arising, of which Buddhism and Jainism were to become the most important. The Brahmans, as priests, could well have lost much influence in consequence, but they were
also the educated elite, sole guardians of Sanskrit and the textual traditions. It is they who were the
principal agents in creating a sufficiently flexible religious and social framework within which they
were able to assimilate the new classes, peoples and cults. One of the main powers and functions of
the Brahmans at this time was that of legitimation. Perhaps the first really significant exercise of that
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
41
power, as well as the first affirmation of Hindu self‑awareness, was to establish allegiance to the Veda,
however contrived, as the criterion of orthodoxy. In consequence, some of the newly arisen sects, notably Buddhism and Jainism, were treated as heterodox and separated to go their own way, although
cross‑fertilization continued for many centuries.
The change of emphasis to living‑in‑the‑world was firmly established in the religious law books,
dharma sutras and dharma shastras, which codified how Hindu society should be and how Hindus
should live, at least according to Brahmanical prescription. The essential concept was varnashrama
dharma, that is, the duties or right way of living of each of the four classes of society (varnas) in each
of the four stages of life (ashramas). Although there is also a general dharma, righteousness or moral
code, incumbent on all, this relativist code of behaviour was founded on the belief that people are
not the same and that their duties or ethics vary according to who they are and where they are in
life. The four varnas—Brahmans (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas
(merchants and cultivators) and Shudras (menials)—were ordered hierarchically on Vedic authority; the first three, the ‘twiceborn’, had full religious rights, while those of the menials were much restricted. Unsubjugated tribes or groups with unacceptable practices were considered ‘untouchables’
and outside the Hindu pale. These prescriptive works, the dharma shastras, deal with domestic rituals, life‑cycle rites, sin, expiation, ritual pollution, purification and many other matters fundamental
to the Hindu way of life. The three aims of life were dharma, the acquisition of religious merit through
right living, artha, the lawful making of wealth, and kama, the satisfaction of desires, thus embracing
the major aspects of human life. Only later was moksha, the quest for liberation, added as the fourth.
Right living in this world, dharma, had displaced moksha, liberation from this world, at the very centre
of Hinduism. But moksha was never ignored. It was explored by schools of speculative philosophy, often with very sophisticated metaphysical systems, all purporting to be valid means of salvation. Six of
these darshanas (doctrines) were accepted as orthodox, but only one of them, Vedanta, was to evolve
and play an important part in the later development of Hinduism.
There is ample evidence that non‑Vedic theistic cults were widespread throughout the Vedic period. The process whereby these cults and divinities were brought within Hinduism and somehow
connected to the Veda is both complex and little known. Suffice it to say that, for Hinduism, the
rise, or re‑emergence, of theism was one of the most profound developments of the period. Two gods,
Vishnu and Shiva, both relatively unimportant in the Veda, became preeminent, although many other
gods were also worshipped.
Vishnu (see figures 2 and 3) came to be identified with various existing deities, and this syncretism
has given him the character of a benevolent god, concerned for the welfare of the world, who periodically, in times of moral decline, descends to the world in various forms and guises to restore righteousness. There are believed to be ten such descents (avataras) of Vishnu. Some of these are in the
form of giant animals: the Fish, the Boar and the Tortoise. Then there is a Man‑Lion and a Dwarf. But
the most important in terms of devotion are Krishna and Rama, the seventh and eighth avataras. The
mythology of these two is very elaborate. Krishna is worshipped in three forms: as a divine infant;
as a mischievous youth who plays the flute and wins the hearts of the cowherd girls (gopis); and as
a mighty hero. Rama, who like Krishna is a prince, restored righteousness to the earth by destroying
the demon Ravana who had abducted his wife Sita. The word for a devotee of Vishnu, however he is
worshipped, is Vaishnava (also an adjective meaning ‘relating to Vishnu’) and the entire cult of Vishnu
is referred to as Vaishnavism.
sūtra
śāstra
varṇa
āśrama
dharma
kāma
avatāra
42
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Figure 4: Vishnu and his attributes
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
43
Figure 5: Vishnu as Shrinivasa with consorts (south Indian bronzes from Srinivasanallur, Tiruchirapalli
district, 15th-16th century ce
44
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Shiva is also syncretic, but the various elements that go to form the mythology of Shiva are not
represented as being separate avataras as in the case of Vishnu, but rather as different aspects of the
god’s complex character. In fact, Shiva is not thought to descend to the earth and take on a form;
rather, he intervenes to help those who worship him. Shiva’s character has various facets (see figures
4, 5 and 6). He is to some a loving god, full of grace towards his devotees. But there is also the dark side,
Shiva the destroyer, who is fearsome and frequents cremation grounds and other frightening places.
Shiva is also represented as the Lord of the dance (figure 6), as a great ascetic god meditating on the
Himalayan Mount Kailash and, as the Lord of the beasts, also as a god of procreation. The word for a
devotee of Shiva is Shaiva, which is also an adjective meaning relating to Shiva, and the cult of Shiva
is referred to as Shaivism.
Vishnu’s wife is Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity (see figure 7). The wife of Shiva is Durga (figure 8)
in her fierce aspect, and Parvati in her benevolent form (figure 5). It was around Durga‑Parvati that, at
the end of this period, the Mother Goddess cult re‑emerged. Its followers were called Shaktas because
they believed the goddess to be the immanent active energy (shakti) of the transcendent and remote
Shiva who was otherwise inaccessible.
The two great epics, the Ramayana and, particularly, the Mahabharata, are rich encyclopedic
sources for the religion of this period. Included in the Mahabharata is the Bhagavadgita, a poem
which has become one of the most influential Hindu scriptures. In it Lord Krishna speaks of three
ways to salvation: that of enlightenment; that of action, including religious rites; and, the most highly
bhakti recommended, that of loving devotion to the Lord (bhakti). It is bhakti that has inspired and informed
the greater part of Hinduism to the present day. Other consequent developments also took place. The
Vedic sacrificial rites had to give ground to new forms of worship (puja), often performed in front of
an image or a statue symbolizing or representing the deity in question. A rich mythological literature evolved in works called Puranas, and temple‑building began, so that, by the end of this period
of classical Hinduism, temples must have been a familiar feature of the landscape (see figure 9). The
characteristic features of Hindu temples are: (1) a ‘sanctuary’ housing the image, referred to as the
garbhagriha (or ‘womb‑house’); (2) a spire (‘shikhara’) over the sanctuary; and (3) a porch or canopy.
The next period, that of middle or medieval Hinduism, from the sixth century to the nineteenth
century of our era, is characterized by proliferation in almost every domain. It is also interesting
that many of the major initiatives, especially in the earlier centuries, took place in the south of India where Buddhism and Jainism were in decline and new Hindu kingdoms arose fostering Hindu
jāti self-awareness. At a social level this period saw the proliferation of castes (jatis), but no theory as
to their origin is, as yet, conclusive. It is not thought that they arose through the mixing of the four
classes (varnas), from which they differ substantially, but clearly the varna model of hierarchy, specialization of functions and social separation provided an ideological backing. Whatever the defects
of the system, and various sects attacked it vehemently, it served to provide social stability in times
of political turbulence, to ensure the continuity of a richly diversified culture, and, above all, to give
Hindus a social identity, even if it was not the identity that they themselves wished.
The major developments in religious philosophy, the darshanas, or schools of salvation, took
jñāna place within Vedanta. Shankara (?788–850 ce), who advocated the way of knowledge (jnana), formulated his system of Advaita, non‑duality, as an exposition of Upanishadic thought, and also founded
a monastic order which was to be the forerunner of many others. The Advaita position is held by
many Hindus to this day. Briefly, Shankara asserted that only brahman was real; all else, including the
phenomenal world, the sense of individuality, even the devas, was unreal, only appearing to be real
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
Figure 6: Eka-mukha-linga (lingam with one face of Shiva)
45
46
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Figure 7: The domestic life of Shiva and Parvati (from a late 18th- or early 19th-century Kangra drawing
for a miniature in the British Museum
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
Figure 8: Shiva as Nataraja, king of dancers
47
48
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Figure 9: Lakshmi, as goddess of prosperity (Kushana, 2nd-4th centuries ce). This early image represents Lakshmi (who is Kamala, the lotus goddess) in association with symbols of water, fertility and
female beauty
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
Figure 10: Durga and her attributes (from a c. 10th-century relief from eastern India)
49
50
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
Figure 11: Plan of the Svarga Brahma temple, Alampur (seventh century ce). In the appropriate niches
of the outer walls are positioned the Dikpalas, the guardians of the eight directions of space.
because of maya, brahman’s power of illusion. When the human spirit, through meditation and enlightenment, realizes that it is itself of the substance of brahman and has no separate identity, then it
merges with brahman, as the drop is absorbed in the ocean. This non‑dualistic position, that the soul
and God are of the same substance, is unsatisfactory for theists, because it does not allow for there to
be a relationship between the individual soul and God. Thus in the twelfth century Ramanuja produced a system called Vishishtadvaita, differentiated non‑duality, which, while accepting that the soul
and God were of the same essence, also taught that the individual soul retained its self‑consciousness,
and hence was able to exist in an eternal relationship with God. This new system of Ramanuja opened
the way for theism, especially Vaishnavism, within Vedanta, and provided the initial theological impetus for later schools such as those founded by Madhva (thirteenth century), Nimbarka (fourteenth
century), Vallabha (sixteenth century) and Caitanya (sixteenth century), all of whom followed and
advocated the way of bhakti, devotion.
As the three principal currents of theism evolved, so each diversified and produced its own literature. The main genres, the Vaishnava Samhitas, the Shaiva Agamas and the Shakta Tantras, are
primarily handbooks dealing with doctrine, yoga and meditation, temple‑building and the consecration of the image of the deity in the temple, worship and festivals and the conduct expected of the
adherent. At a less institutional level, bhakti was transformed from a restrained respect into a passionate and ecstatic experience by the Tamil devotional poets, the Vaishnava Alvars and the Shaiva
Nayanars. These saint‑poets in the south of India expressed their impassioned spirituality in hymns
to Vishnu and Shiva respectively, not in Sanskrit but in Tamil, from the eighth to the tenth century. It
has been said that, with them, bhakti ceased to be a way to salvation, but became salvation itself.
purāṇa
Within Vaishnavism this new attitude was reflected in the Sanskrit Bhagavata Purana (c. ninth
century), which became a powerful source of inspiration for Krishna bhakti (devotion to Krishna) in
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
51
the north. Numerous new sects arose and many fine devotional poets used the vernacular languages
such as Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali for their verses, thus enabling millions to come into direct
contact with the scriptural traditions for the first time. Devotion to the other important avatara of
Vishnu, Rama, found powerful expression in the Ramacaritamanasa of Tulsidas (sixteenth century),
which is one of the most loved works in north India.
Shaivism, too, developed strongly. A distinctive school of Shaivism arose in Kashmir, certainly
before the ninth century, which was much influenced by Advaita. The devotional outpourings of the
Nayanars of the south were incorporated into a theological system called Shaiva‑siddhanta which was
formulated in the twelfth century. Also in the twelfth century, a movement came into being called
Vira‑Shaivism whose followers were called Lingayats. Vira‑Shaivism, which rejected both the caste
system and temple worship, exists to this day in a somewhat modified form.
Shaktism also developed and proliferated. One aspect of Shaktism that had a strong influence on
both Shaivism and Buddhism was called Tantrism. The movement was of a highly esoteric nature and
had its own form of yoga, a secret language, a psychophysiological theory and characteristic modes
of worship and practice designed to lead to self‑realization and liberation. Although some of its practices have been much criticized, Tantrism, whose boundaries are difficult to define, is now generally
thought to have added a new vitality to much of medieval Hinduism.
There remains one movement of major significance: the Sant tradition. The sants, themselves
mainly from the lower castes, rejected the caste system and all forms of external religion, both Muslim
and Hindu. They preached a form of interior religion based on constant awareness of and love for a
personal God who was without attributes. Kabir, Raidas and Dadu, all of whom lived in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, were three of a long line of preacher‑poets in whose name sects were later
formed. One such sect, whose ‘founder’ was Guru Nanak, later developed into Sikhism.
Thus during the Muslim period in India, and especially from the fifteenth century, Hinduism was
vital and alive. Bhakti sects flourished, the vernacular languages were used, most of the population was
involved at some level, and caste, however much loathed by certain groups, provided social stability
and identity. In the face of this, Islam made surprisingly little headway, except perhaps to strengthen
Hindu self‑awareness. But it is in the modem period, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which
will be considered in the final section of this chapter, that Hinduism faced its greatest self‑examination
as it confronted Western culture and Christianity.
Hindu Presuppositions and Belief
It will be apparent from the above examination of the inherently diverse nature of Hinduism that any
attempt to produce a concise exposition of ‘basic teachings’ or ‘fundamental beliefs’ could only be
misleading and partial. Beliefs and teachings there are in abundance, but few command universal acceptance. Well‑articulated systems of belief, theology and philosophy are found in specific sectarian
traditions or philosophical schools, most of which have their own recommended sadhana (method
of practical realization) for their adherents. But these are the particulars, not the universals, of Hinduism. At the most general level there are, however, certain underlying presuppositions which together constitute a kind of received understanding, although this understanding is modified for each
individual by personal, family, caste, regional and, maybe, sectarian viewpoints. The most important
of these presuppositions will now be examined, together with certain other areas of Hindu concern
and belief.
52
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
One of the most important and potent concepts for all Hindus is that of dharma. Dharma has
various levels of meaning, but no single English equivalent. The word ‘Hinduism’, though, is often
rendered in Indian languages by the term Hindu dharma, the dharma of the Hindus. Here it signifies
the religion or the right way of living for Hindus. At the cosmic level dharma is sanatana dharma, the
eternal dharma, which is the unchanging universal law of order which decrees that every entity in the
universe should behave in accordance with the laws that apply to its own particular nature. Coming
to the world of man, dharma is the source of moral law. There is, on the one hand, sadharana dharma,
the general code of ethics that applies to everyone. This includes injunctions to perform meritorious
acts such as going on pilgrimages, honouring Brahmans and making charitable endowments, as well
as prohibitions against causing injury, lying, etc. On the other hand there is the relativist varnashrama
dharma, which has already been discussed above. In fact, today, varnashrama dharma is understood
as accepting and following the customs and rules of one’s caste (jati). Thus dharma means, among
other things, eternal order, righteousness, religion, law and duty. The central importance of dharma
has led some to state that Hinduism is a way of life, a proposition that has much, but not total, validity.
A person is a Hindu because he is born to Hindu parents, and thereby into their caste. Caste is
the principal factor that determines an individual’s social and religious status. Caste is too complex
a subject to discuss in any detail here, but it is underpinned by, or expresses itself by means of, the
religious notion of purity and pollution which is one of the most fundamental Hindu ritual concerns.
Nobody can escape from pollution, since the natural functioning of the body produces sources of pollution. All human emissions, for example, are polluting: saliva, urine, perspiration, faeces, semen,
menstrual flow and the afterbirth. Menstruating women, and women for a period around childbirth,
are considered impure and are subject to restrictions, which vary from caste to caste, to prevent them
from polluting others, especially by means of food. But perhaps the most powerful source of pollution
is death. Not only are those who handle corpses heavily polluted, but a dead person’s household and
certain of his relatives are also polluted by the death and have to observe various types of prohibition
for varying periods. There are many ways of coping with the different types of pollution, but a particularly common one is the use of running water. A pious Hindu’s morning bathing is not simply a
wash, but a ritual purification to bring him to the state of purity considered necessary in Hinduism
before approaching a deity.
A caste is a separate, hereditary group which is normally endogamous: that is, marriage takes
place usually only within the caste. A caste protects its corporate purity by restricting various types
of contact with other castes it considers to be polluting, and hence impure. Thus the attribution of
‘pure’ or ‘impure’ to castes is, to some extent, relative to the status of those making the judgement. The
Brahman castes, though, are always at the top of the hierarchy, being the most pure, and hence the
most vulnerable to pollution. At the bottom are those castes who, for example, handle dead animals
or skins, or function as menials at funerals. The middle-ranging castes in any locality rank themselves
hierarchically between these two extremes. Food is a major area subject to restrictions, because it
readily carries pollution. The intercaste hierarchy in any locality is clearly demonstrated in food transactions, since it quickly becomes apparent which castes or group of castes will accept or reject water,
cooked food and raw food from which other castes. Physical contact used to be another sensitive area,
hence the ‘untouchable’ castes, now called Harijans, but this is much less of an issue nowadays, perhaps because of legislation making untouchability illegal. The Harijan castes, however, still remain
at the very bottom of the hierarchy. In a close‑knit community, for example in a multi-caste village,
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
53
the system results in the most minute discriminations being made in the sphere of interpersonal relations, but in the looser society of a town there is much greater relaxation. If a member breaks his
caste’s purity rules, the pollution he incurs can affect the whole caste group, so the social sanctions
against the offender can be severe, and he can be required to perform various ritual acts of purification before he is entitled to resume full caste rights. An individual’s ritual status is determined by the
status of the caste group into which he is born.
But caste‑linked dharma is not solely concerned with whom a person may marry and with purity
rules that affect interpersonal behaviour. It can also determine, for example, what work a person
may do, whether meat may be eaten or alcohol drunk, or whether widows may remarry. What one
caste finds acceptable another does not, so that, at this level, dharma produces a relative morality,
based on conformity to custom backed by social sanctions and scriptural authority. This by no means
exhausts dharma. The most intimate group to which a Hindu belongs is the family. It is mainly within
the family that dharma is transmitted from one generation to another, by custom and example in
the normal process of growing up, by stories and myths which are usually highly moral and contain
idealized relationships and situations, and finally by scripture and precept, although this is probably
the least significant in practice. The handing down of dharma to the next generation is made easier
by the extended nature of the Hindu family, which results in a greater exposure to adult moral and
religious influences than is usually found in Western families. The Hindu family ethic is very strong,
so the structure of authority and the roles and responsibilities of different relationships are usually
strictly adhered to. The Hindu lifecycle rites as well as various lineage and caste cult observances take
place within the family and form an important part of its religious life. Thus the Hindu is initiated
into both the specific and the generalized dharma as a natural thing from his earliest years.
Dharma is more than an ethical system, but, in so far as it is viewed as such, it contrasts with
the moral systems of those theistic religions which posit an ethical god. Dharma is ideologically supported by other important presuppositions, the already mentioned doctrine of samsara (the endless
cycle of birth and rebirth to which the soul is subject), the allied doctrine of karma, that every action
produces its inevitable result so that one’s status in this life is determined by one’s conduct in a former
birth, and the notions of papa (sin) and punya (merit). Actions that deviate from dharma, whether
by omission or commission, are papa, sin, and increase an individual’s store of demerit. To follow
dharma is meritorious, and especially meritorious are such acts as pilgrimage, making gifts to Brahmans or sponsoring a religious recitation. The merit, punya, so attained adds to one’s own store, or
can be transferred to, say, a departed ancestor. Certain expiatory rites, such as bathing in the Ganges,
reduce papa and hence increase the merit balance. It is the balance between sin and merit that will
eventually determine, through the law of karma, how a person is born in a future life, as an insect, animal or human, and, if human, with what status. The law of karma is used by most Hindus to explain
people’s present status and situation, but thoughts of future lives do not, on the whole, act as a factor
in determining immediate behaviour, since the acquisition of merit through following dharma is an
end in itself, being one of the four Hindu aims of life.
If there are many restrictions for a Hindu in the domain of conduct, in belief there is almost total
freedom. Provided that a Hindu observes the rites and cults inherent in his dharma, he may believe
what he likes. There are, however, certain metaphysical presuppositions, like samsara and karma, to
which Hindus are heir, reject them or modify them as they may.… Primary among these is the concept
of brahman, the impersonal absolute or world soul that underlies the phenomenal diversity of the
universe and is, at once, both immanent and transcendent. Questions about God can produce the
54
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
answer brahman. Other answers represent brahman in a more personal form as bhagvan or ishvara,
the Lord. Those who worship Vishnu or Shiva may replace bhagvan with their chosen deity. Broadly
speaking, the Hindu position, in so far as there is a single position, can be described as a mixture of
pantheism and monotheism, the blend being determined by the emphasis given to the concept of
brahman as World Soul or to that of bhagvan as High God.
There are certain other aspects of the Hindu approach to the divine that need to be considered.
One is the principle of the ishtadeva, the chosen deity, which accepts that individuals worship their
preferred deity exclusively as the supreme god. Connected with this is the inclusiveness of the Hindu
approach. Other deities and beliefs are not denied or opposed, but are accepted as valid for others,
although not regarded as of the same order of excellence as one’s own. Thus a devotee of Vishnu,
for example, will subordinate all the other major gods, seeing them as servants or manifestations of
the one supreme Vishnu. A devotee of Shiva will do likewise. While, therefore, to enumerate all the
various deities worshipped in India would produce a formidable list, and perhaps be suggestive of
polytheism, to do so would be misleading without taking into account the position of the individual
worshipper. For the individual there is one supreme God, however conceived or named, and various
other devas, gods or spiritual powers. These merit respect and perhaps worship, but are conceived of
as subordinate manifestations, often with specialized functions. One author has rightly pointed out
that one could spend a lifetime in India and never find a ‘polytheist’ in Western terms, because even
an unlettered peasant who has just made offerings at several shrines will affirm that ‘Bhagvan ek hai’,
God is one. Finally, the divine is also seen in men of great sanctity, in animals such as the cow, in
certain trees, rivers and mountains, and in countless sacred sites across the subcontinent (figure 10).
Another concept central and essential to Hinduism is moksha (liberation), which is also one of the
four Hindu aims of life. That from which liberation is sought is samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth.
The part of the human individual which is immortal—variously described and designated by different
schools of thought—passes at death to diverse heavens and hells where it works out its karmic debt
and is then reborn in the form it has deserved. This cycle continues endlessly unless it merits, or
is blessed with, a lifetime during which, through spiritual efforts, the intervention of a guru or the
grace of God, moksha is attained, whereby it passes out of the cycle altogether. Samsara is generally
described as unbearable and characterized by dukkha (grief). Moksha, and how to attain it, has been
a major Hindu concern for over two and a half millennia. One of the oldest methods of achieving
saṃnyāsa, moksha is sannyasa, renunciation, whereby the renouncer (sannyasi) abandons home, society, the
sannyāsin world and all its bondage. Through this renunciation, and usually by performing extreme austerities
and practising some form of the spiritual exercises now generally known as yoga, the sannyasi seeks
to become jivanmukta, liberated while still alive. In India today there must be hundreds of thousands
of sannyasis, most belonging to one or other of the ascetic orders, each of which has its own code,
organization, disciplines and traditions.
If the sannyasi is one ideal Hindu type, the other is the householder (grihastha), whose major
concern is living in the world, and for whom sannyasa is the final ashrama or stage of life. As has been
mentioned, the Bhagavadgita describes three ways to moksha: the way of works (karma); the way
of enlightenment (jnana); and the way of loving devotion (bhakti). Since works (karma) constitute
a form of bondage in themselves, the renunciation necessary on this path is of the fruits of actions.
Dharma should be pursued and actions performed disinterestedly, without attachment to the outcome, and this renunciation is one way to liberation. The way of jnana, enlightenment, deals with
another aspect of the problem. It is avidya, wrong knowledge or perception, or maya, illusion, that
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
Figure 12: Chief deities at sacred places in India
55
56
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
prevents man from knowing what is real and what is unreal, particularly with regard to that part of
himself which is immortal. Through various yoga techniques and contemplation, man attains enlightenment whereby he perceives reality, renounces unreality, and, realizing his own immortal self, thus
obtains liberation. The way of loving devotion, bhakti, is preferred by the theistic traditions. Here the
renunciation is the total surrender of oneself to the Lord. The way also requires constant awareness of
the Lord through devotions, meditation, prayer and the repetition of his name. The theistic traditions
do not, of course, consider salvation to be solely a matter of human effort. Those who believe God to
be loving and full of grace await God’s grace as the means to salvation, to lift off the burden of their
sins and to carry them safely across the ocean of existence, since, in the view of some, God’s grace is
able to override karma.
The state that obtains when moksha is achieved has been the subject of much speculation among
the various sects and schools. At one end of the spectrum of opinion is the monist Advaita position of
Shankara, which holds that the immortal self of man is identical with brahman and is absorbed into
brahman as the drop of water into the ocean. At the other end of the spectrum are the theists, who
hold that the immortal soul of man lives in an eternal relationship with God. Thus Vishnu, Shiva and
Krishna each have their own abodes, heavens, in which selves retain their identity in various states of
nearness to God. Between these two extremes there is a range of intermediate positions. For sinners,
though, there is the certainty of hell, whose horrific tortures, matching the seriousness of different
sins, are graphically described.
Just as humanity is subject to cycles of birth and rebirth, so the universe itself is thought to go
through cycles of dissolution and recreation within immense time spans. The gods responsible for
this cyclicity vary with the sectarian sources in which the myth is recorded. Within these cycles are
lesser periods—yugas, or ages. The present age, the Kali‑yuga, is thought to last 432,000 years and to
have begun in the year 3102 bce. The characteristics of this age are a decline in righteousness, piety and
human prosperity. At the end of the age the world will be destroyed again by flood and fire, although
there are alternative versions of what might happen.
The presuppositions and concerns that have just been discussed form the central elements of the
received Hindu religious understanding, at least at the most general level. There are, of course, other
elements, of which astrology is one important example, but the essentials have been covered. At the
level of the particular, one would need to examine the nature and the mythology of the various gods,
and the theology and philosophy of the different schools and sects. It is, however, within the general
conceptual framework just presented that the particular systems and beliefs are articulated, and the
individual Hindu derives his or her personal faith.
Hindu Practice
The concept of dharma, and how it can affect almost every aspect of a Hindu’s life, has already been
discussed. One author refers to this as the ‘ritualization of daily life’,2 while others consider Hinduism
itself to be primarily a way of life. There is another view that sees Hinduism essentially as a sadhana, a
way, or ways, to self‑realization and the attainment of moksha. In considering Hindu practice, therefore, one should remember that it has a far broader application than simply the performance of rites
2Clifford Geertz, ““From the Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding,” Bulletin of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28, no. 1 (1974): 37.
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
57
and rituals, being concerned with the practical realization of religious values at every level. That said,
however, few religions have devoted so much attention to ritual as has Hinduism. From the earliest
times, the ritual manuals contain details of the most astonishing complexity and elaboration. Many
of these works were, of course, produced for officiating Brahman priests, and absolute accuracy in
performance is considered essential, since the smallest mistake invalidates the entire rite and brings
retribution. It is, however, clear that the domestic rituals that the twice‑born householder, in particular the Brahman, is expected to perform daily are no less complex and demanding.
A Brahman should perform a sequence of devotional rituals called sandhya three times a day,
at dawn, at midday and in the evening. He should also worship his ishtadeva; make offerings to the
devas, the seers of old and his ancestors; perform an act of charity; pay reverence to his teacher; and
read from the scriptures. Some of these rituals are very elaborate. The morning sandhya includes
rituals on rising, answering the calls of nature and brushing the teeth. The sequence continues with
the Brahman purifying himself by bathing, purifying his place of worship, practising breath control,
invoking the deity by the ritual touching of his limbs, meditating on the sun, making offerings of water
and constantly uttering various prayers that he may be pure, free from his sins and strong enough
to remain holy. One of the most important prayers, which may be repeated as many as 108 times,
sometimes with the aid of a rosary, is called the ‘Gayatri’, a Vedic verse addressed to the sun as the
Inspirer and Vivifier, and now understood as referring to the supreme God. It has been estimated
that, if the enjoined rituals were performed in full, they would take at least five hours a day. Certainly
there are some pious Brahmans who do in fact perform such rituals every day, but for most the daily
rituals are very much abbreviated, and observance decreases proportionately as one descends the
socio‑ritual scale.
Of great importance among domestic rituals are the samskaras, or sacraments, which are the saṃskāra
life‑cycle rites that mark the major transitions of a Hindu’s life. In the early texts there were as many
as forty such rites, but now fewer than ten are generally performed. Their purpose is to sanctify each
transition of an individual’s life, to protect such individuals from harmful influences and to ensure
blessings for them. The pre‑natal rites have nowadays fallen from use and the first observances are
those attending birth. These are designed primarily to contain the pollution generated by the birth
and to protect the mother and child, who are considered to be particularly vulnerable to harmful influences. The exact time of birth is noted so that a horoscope may be drawn up. On the sixth day, or
sometimes on the twelfth, there is the namakarana, or name‑giving ceremony; the house is purified
and a number of the restrictions on the mother are lifted. Some castes and families observe rites on
the child’s first sight of the sun, and the first taking of solid food. More widely observed is the rite of
ritual tonsure, when the child’s head is shaved. This can take place in the child’s first year or later and
is often done at a temple or religious fair, sometimes as the fulfilment of a vow made by the mother
to a deva in return for the deva having kept the child healthy. Another rite, that of ear‑piercing, is also
fairly common, although there is wide variation as to when it is performed.
The next rite, the upanayana, initiation, has great traditional importance, because it is the rite by
which the three highest varnas, or classes, become ‘twice‑born’ through receiving initiation into the
Hindu fold. Nowadays, however, the rite is not regarded with the same importance as previously, and
it appears to have become mainly the concern of the Brahman castes. At this ceremony the young
man is invested with the sacred thread, janeu, which must be worn at all times and kept free from
impurity. He is also initiated into the ‘Gayatri’ prayer by the presiding Brahman priest, who thereby
often becomes his guru, or spiritual preceptor. In some castes a different kind of initiation takes place
58
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
when, for example, a Vaishnava ascetic acts as the guru and whispers a mantra, sacred formula, to
those being initiated.
The rite that signals the ritual climax of the life‑cycle is vivaha, marriage. Standing midway between the impurity produced at birth and death, it represents the point of maximum ritual purity,
in token of which the couple are treated as gods. It is a Hindu’s religious duty to marry. Through
marriage the religious debt to the ancestors is paid off by the production of progeny. Marriage is,
therefore, a sacrament of the utmost social and religious significance in Hinduism, and usually the
greatest expense a Hindu incurs is that arising from having his children married. The elaborate complex of marriage rituals can take a week or more. Because of this there is great variation in practice.
The actual marriage is sealed by a rite called phera during which the couple walk seven times round
the sacred fire, although this is only one small part of the extremely elaborate series of social and
religious rituals that constitute Hindu marriage.
The antyeshti samskara, the funeral sacrament, is the last of the rites performed. Again there is
variation in practice, but the observances have a twofold purpose. The first is to enable the departing
spirit (preta) to leave this world and attain the status of an ancestor (pitri) so that it does not remain
as a ghost (bhuta) to trouble the living but can pass to its next destination. The second is to deal with
the massive pollution that is released at death, which automatically affects certain of the deceased’s
relatives. The body is cremated on a pyre lit preferably by the eldest son of the departed. Then begins
a period of ten or eleven days of ritual restrictions on the relatives, at the end of which offerings of
milk and balls of rice or barley (pindas) are made. These offerings, which are made at ceremonies
called shraddha, usually take place between the tenth and twelfth days and thereafter annually. Their
purpose is to enable the departing spirit, the preta, to acquire a new spiritual body with which it can
pass on. The funeral rites should properly by performed by a son so that the deceased may best be
assured of a good rebirth. It is for this reason that Hindus long above all to have a son.
One of the major differences in the style of domestic ceremonies is whether or not they are conducted by a Brahman priest. Not all Brahmans are priests—in fact, few are; nor are all religious practitioners Brahmans. The Brahman becomes a priest first because of his ritual purity, a necessary condition for acting as an intermediary between man and God, and second because of his specialized
knowledge of ritual and sacred prayers and utterances. When a priest presides the rite will be more
elaborate and in accord with scriptural prescription than when a head of household officiates. Rites
without a priest are not invalid, but are less prestigious. An experienced priest can perform highly
complex rituals and deliver a stream of sacred utterances and instructions at great speed, but many
have to resort to handbooks to guide them through the ceremonies. A Brahman priest who serves a
family is called a purohita. He will serve a number of families, usually by hereditary right, in return
for an annual fee. After each ritual he will be paid a sum called dakshina, but this is not thought of as
a fee, rather as a meritorious gift made to a Brahman. Brahmans will normally only serve as priests to
twice‑born castes.
Hindu worship (puja) falls into three categories: temple worship; domestic worship; and a form
of congregational worship. This last type, kirtana, mainly consists of hymn‑singing, and is the characteristic mode of bhakti devotion. It has to be said that the majority of temples in India are small,
although there are a significant number of large ones, especially in the various sacred centres. A temple is the home of the enshrined deity, who will have been installed by a rite of consecration in the
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
59
inner sanctuary. The god’s consort may also be present, and other associated deities are often represented in different parts of the temple. Vishnu and his avataras, mainly Rama and Krishna, are usually represented by images—statues, often of considerable complexity—portraying many of the god’s
mythological attributes. This is also the case with the Goddess in her various forms. Shiva, however,
is usually represented by the lingam, an object (usually a black stone) shaped like the male organ, and
often set in the yoni, the shaped form of a female organ; these are the universal symbols of Shaivism.
Temple priests called pujaris serve the deity, treating him or her either as royalty or as an honoured
guest, or both. They carry out, at set times of the day, a schedule of worship and attendance which
begins before dawn. The deity is awakened, bathed and fed; holds court; rests; is anointed, decorated,
and finally retired for the night. This schedule is accompanied by various ceremonies such as arati
(the waving of lamps), the sounding of bells, the performance of music, hymns, prayers, the offering
of flowers, fruit, grain, food and incense, together with other forms of worship and supplication. On
festival days connected with the deity there are often spectacular ceremonies and processions which
draw people from far around. There is no requirement for any Hindu to go to a temple, although many
do, and worship is private. A Hindu goes to a temple in the hope of obtaining a darshana—a sight
or experience—of the deity, to make offerings, to pray to or petition the deity, or perhaps to make or
fulfil a vow. Often food which has first been offered to the deity and hence has become consecrated
(prasada) is available for worshippers for whom it is a much desired blessing.
Domestic worship takes place in most households, but rarely with the elaboration of the temple
routine. In most houses there is an area set aside for worship and maintained in a state of ritual purity. Here the ishtadeva of the household is represented by an image, by some symbol of the deity
concerned, even by a poster. It is usually the women of the household who attend the deity and carry
out the various rituals. These can comprise arati, offerings, prayers and acts of supplication. Geometrical designs called yantras and mandalas are sometimes used as symbols for worship. These range
from fairly complex mystical symbols, used mainly in Tantric rites, to simpler designs made on the
ground with different‑coloured powders which can be used in the worship of any deity.
The devotees who gather together to worship by chanting bhajanas or hymns are usually, but not
necessarily, affiliated to a sect. The chanting, the music, the rhythm and the atmosphere of fervent
devotion can produce a deep effect and some enter a state of trance. At these gatherings there is also
sometimes an arati ceremony and the distribution of prasada. Groups who gather together in this
way to worship through hymn-singing occur all over India and at most levels of society. In those parts
of Assam where bhakti has become institutionalized, bhajanas are the principal mode of worship.
A different kind of communal worship is the katha, or recitation of a work of scripture. It is meritorious to sponsor such a recitation, and priests are commissioned and an audience invited. Each text
normally relates in specific terms exactly what benefits will accrue to those who hear the text and to
those who sponsor its performance.
Another highly meritorious and widely practised religious act in Hinduism is pilgrimage. All over
India pilgrimages are taking place daily, on every scale and in every region (see figure 11). There are
local and regional pilgrimage sites as well as all‑India pilgrimage sites like Banaras and Conjeeveram.
Each site has its own characteristics, its own benefits to offer the pilgrims. There are regional sites,
for example, which offer help to the blind, to the childless or to those suffering from skin complaints.
Banaras and Gaya are particularly concerned with salvation, the absolution of sin and the making of
offerings for ancestors. Mathura and Brindavan are associated with Krishna, and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims go every year in the hope of obtaining darshana, an experience, of their Lord Krishna
60
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
of whom they are devotees. Thus people undertake pilgrimages for a mixture of motives: for merit and
salvation; for absolution of sins; to worship or experience the divine; to propitiate ancestors or to appease an angry deity; to obtain relief from illness or misfortune; or to ensure prosperity or some more
specific blessing. The consequence of hundreds of thousands of Hindus mingling together away from
their own localities is to reinforce the sanctity of the sacred geography of India to which Hinduism is
so closely tied, and to continue to foster the sense of Hindu unity and self-awareness.
Pilgrimage sites are usually very well organized, with guides and priests who receive the pilgrims
and then take them through the round of locations and ceremonies. There are booklets describing the
various features and temples of each site, detailing their respective mythological associations, praising
their merits and enumerating the benefits that accrue from each. Sometimes pilgrimages take place
on particular days of the year when there is some great festival or religious ceremony at a certain site,
such as the Jagannatha festival at Puri. By far the largest gatherings, which run into several million
people, take place at the melas, religious fairs, which occur every twelve years at Allahabad, Hardwar,
Ujjain and Nasik.
Perhaps, however, the most colourful aspect of Hindu practice is the annual cycle of festivals.
Indeed, Hinduism has been described as a religion of fasts, feasts and festivals, since fasting, vigils and
feasting are usually integral parts of the celebration of Hindu festivals. As with pilgrimage, festivals
are local, regional and all‑Indian. When festival lists from villages in the same region are compared,
often there are very few common to all. The number of festivals celebrated throughout India must run
into thousands, but the number actually celebrated in any given locality will rarely exceed twenty, and
is usually much smaller. It is not only, of course, a matter of location. Certain castes and sects have
their own festivals, and devotees of a particular deity will be concerned in the main with the festivals
associated with that deity.
No attempt can be made here to describe even the most notable all‑India festivals in any detail,
but they can be approximately located. The first month (lunar) of the Hindu religious year is Cait
(April/May) which contains the New Year’s Day, the minor Navaratri, nine nights devoted to the Goddess, Ram Navami, the birthday of Ram, and Hanuman Jayanti, the birthday of Hanuman. The birthdays of two of Vishnu’s avataras, Parashuram and Narasinha, are celebrated in Besakh (April/May).
Jeth (May/June) contains an important three‑day fast observed by women to ensure conjugal happiness which culminates in worship to Savitri. Asarh (June/July) contains the Ratha Yatra, the chariot journey, which celebrates Krishna as Jagannath, of which the ceremonies at Puri in Orissa are
renowned. The month also marks the beginning of Caturmasa, a period of four months of fasting and
austerities variously celebrated. Nag Panchami, devoted to serpent deities, and Raksha Bandhan, the
tying of amulets to secure brotherly protection, occur in Savan (July/August) which is particularly a
month of fasting and vows. In Bhad (August/September) there is Krishna’s birthday, an important
fast for women and ten days of worship for Ganesh. Kvar (September/October) contains pitri‑paksha,
the fortnight for the fathers, when offerings are made for three generations of the departed, as well
as the major Navaratri, the nine nights of Durga‑puja. In the North, Ram‑lilas enact the struggles of
Ram over Ravana throughout the period of Navaratri, so that both the conclusion of Durga‑puja and
the triumph of Ram are celebrated on the same day, Dassahra, which is a major festival. Katik (October/November) is marked by Divali, a four‑ or five‑day festival of lights, of which the day of Divali
itself is considered auspicious for all new beginnings and the start of the new financial year, and also
by the end of the period of Caturmasa. Sometimes in the month of Pus (December/January) but always on 14 January, is Makara Sankranti, which marks the entry of the sun into Capricorn and is an
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
Figure 13: Important pilgrimage sites in India
61
62
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
important festival, especially in the south. The month of Magh (January/February) is important for
ritual bathing and fairs. Phagun (February/March) contains two major festivals, Mahashivaratri, the
Great Night of Shiva, and Holi, the boisterous spring festival.
Even with these major all‑India festivals there is considerable regional variation in the manner
of their celebration, in the mythology and sometimes even in the deity connected with a particular
date. Although this treatment of Hindu festivals has been short and it has not been possible to include
description, this should not be taken to imply that their significance is small. They bring vitality to
Hindu life; they provide an annual renewal of religious values; and they are often occasions for great
joy and celebration.
Many sweeping generalizations have been made about the position of women in Hinduism, but
the diversity of sources and the contradictory nature of their pronouncements cannot sustain a single
view. Apart from the omission of certain Sanskrit mantras from some of the life‑cycle rites, and the
fact that marriage is regarded as such a significant event in a woman’s life that initiation (upanayana)
is not performed, there are almost no major areas of Hindu practice from which women are excluded.
A woman is held to be an equal partner in dharma with her husband, and thought to share his destiny,
which is why many Hindu women fast regularly for the welfare of their husbands. As the mistress of
the household, ritual purity is in her charge, as are many of the household rituals. Women go on
pilgrimages, sponsor kathas, visit temples, fast, and make vows and offerings. In fact, much of the
living practice of Hinduism is dependent on the participation of women.
One of the ideals of Hindu womanhood is Sita, the wife of Rama, who is portrayed as ever obedient
and subservient to her Lord’s wishes. But although the Hindu woman is expected to show public
deference to her husband, this in no way indicates the nature of their private relationship. As manager
of the household, and as mother, the Hindu woman wields considerable authority. Child marriage is
now illegal and the remarriage of widows lawful. The practice whereby a widow immolated herself on
her husband’s funeral pyre (sati)—which was always the exception rather than the rule—has been
forbidden in law for over a century. The battle to overcome prejudice against the education of girls
was won in the nineteenth century. In short, there is little reason to think that the Hindu woman is
at any greater disadvantage than women elsewhere in the world, as the presence of women in many
leading positions in India conclusively demonstrates.
Hinduism in the Villages
Of the total Hindu population of India, over 80 per cent, that is over 500 million Hindus, live in villages.
The number of villages is over 500,000. Thus the Hinduism of the villages must certainly be regarded
as the religion’s most prevalent if not its most characteristic form. It is in the villages that one meets
the full diversity of Hinduism. Some have regarded the religion of the villages as a ‘level’ of Hinduism,
as folk or popular religion, but this is a mistake. There is no separate ‘village Hinduism’ any more than
there is a separate ‘village Christianity’. The entire spectrum of Hinduism, from its most sophisticated
to its most unsophisticated manifestations, can be found in the villages.
There is certainly a specific emphasis. The majority of villagers are simple, unlettered folk who
struggle for their livelihood in the face of poverty, disease, climatic uncertainty and many other kinds
of threats and difficulties. As is to be expected, such people are concerned not so much with the
higher realms of metaphysical speculation, nor with elaborate ritualism, but rather with the practical,
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
63
pragmatic side of religion. This latter aspect of religion, which seeks to attain ends in this world—
a son, a good crop, recovery from illness, etc.—is as much a part of Hinduism as any other aspect,
and has been since at least the time of the Atharva‑veda. This is, however, only a matter of emphasis.
Dispersed and localized in the villages of India, the continuing tradition of Hinduism flourishes and
is still evolving in all its multiplicity and diversity.
There is no such thing as a typical Indian village. Almost every village is different from any other.
This is not surprising given the great regional variations of the subcontinent, especially with regard
to terrain, climate, ethnic and linguistic groupings and cultural traditions. The population of India,
moreover, is not wholly Hindu. There are Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and some
Jews. Thus in religious terms, too, the population of the villages is not homogeneous. This lack of
homogeneity is further increased by the segmentation of the Hindus into castes. There are single‑caste
and multi‑caste villages. The nature and number of castes, and the strength of their representation,
crucially affects the types of religious beliefs and practices found in a village, as well as determining
its social structure. It is often the case in a multi‑caste village that the pattern of residence reflects
the caste composition, with, perhaps, each caste having its own quarter, and sometimes the Harijans
occupying a separate hamlet.
The effect of having a number of different caste groups and also maybe households, sometimes
hamlets, of adherents of other religions, is to produce considerable religious diversity within a single
village. It may be that some of the castes are high, aspiring to Brahmanical norms in their behaviour
and practices. Other castes, like the Harijans, who are denied the service of Brahman priests, have
had to develop their own forms of religious expression. Not only are their customs quite different
from those of the higher castes, but the deities they venerate are usually more local and tend to be
more specific in their functions (like, for example, a smallpox goddess). Some castes have a traditional
association with a particular deity, who functions rather like a patron saint, and in large castes which
have a complex internal organization there are also clan and lineage deities. These caste cults add
further diversity to the religious life of any particular village. It is because of this range and diversity
that one must reject the notion of there being a special ‘village Hinduism’.
The hierarchy into which the castes arrange themselves is determined at the village level. But,
usually, unless there are some special factors, there will not be a marked difference between the ranking of a caste in one village and the way the same caste is ranked in the villages around, provided that
the caste composition of the villages is more or less the same. The hierarchy is not, however, fixed,
except that the Brahman is always at the top and the Harijan at the bottom. If a caste group does well
economically and seeks to have its newly won material position ritually recognized in an enhanced
position in the hierarchy, it will abandon those of its customs and religious practices which are considered ‘low’, adopting instead those of the castes above it in the hierarchy. In a generation or two it
will have established itself higher up and become accepted in its new ritual status. Likewise a caste
group might, for some reason, lose prestige or standing and slowly slip down in the hierarchy. Although at any one time the hierarchy seems fixed, in fact there is perceptible and constant movement
when measured over decades. Low castes do not humbly accept their lowly status. There is generally
much bitterness, and continual effort to improve their position.
It used to be thought that villages were somehow self‑contained units; but this is not the case
and probably never has been. In the religious sphere, as in every other, villages are integrated into
the locality and the region of which they form a part. There are considerable differences between
the varieties of Hinduism found in the major regions of India: between, for example, Bengal, Gujarat
64
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
and Tamil Nadu. Not only do these regional forms determine the religious outlook of the villagers,
the location of a village within a region can also be influential. It could be situated near a major
temple, the centre of a sect or an ascetic order, a place of regional pilgrimage, or some other sacred
site with a long mythological pedigree. These can create subregional influences that again colour the
beliefs and practices of the villagers in that locality. Some of the villagers might be drawn to join a sect
whose centre was near by, or become disciples of a guru who had taken up residence in the vicinity.
Local cults can develop around the tomb of a man who was considered to be of great holiness. Those
elements of Hinduism that are considered to have an all‑India spread, like certain festivals, in fact
are mediated through regional and sub‑regional traditions to the individual villagers. Although the
names and dates may correspond, there are major differences in the rationale and significance of such
festivals in different regions, and even greater differences in the significance they might hold within
the total structure of each village’s sacred year.
It is often the case that there are several small temples in a village, perhaps Rama, Shiva or Hanuman temples, but by far the most numerous structures are the small shrines that house the grama
devatas, the village deities. If the various divine beings of Hinduism were to be ranked in terms of
importance or power, brahman or bhagvan, the Godhead or God, would come first, in second place
would come the devas, the major gods of Hinduism, and lastly would come the grama devatas, the
village deities. If the ranking is in terms of immediacy and the amount of attention received from the
villagers, then the order is reversed. The reason for this is that, in the unsophisticated understanding of
a substantial proportion of the village population, bhagvan, God, is too transcendent, too remote, too
concerned with the cosmos to be interested in a villager’s problems. The devas too, who do bhagvan’s
work at a universal level, are also thought to be too busy or too grand to be concerned with humble
peasants. But the various devatas or local deities are believed to be the supernatural powers which
not only affect a villager’s life and welfare, but which also demand his attention and can be extremely
angry if they are not given it, with dire results for the villager.
The term grama devata is generic, and refers to all the deities of this category associated with a
village. In a sense they all have a general function as guardian or tutelary deities of the village and they
are all considered powerful and liable to bring disaster if not suitably propitiated. In fact, though, they
are very varied. Some have specialized functions, like the goddesses of hydrophobia or smallpox. Others are associated with a specific part of the village for which they are the guardians. Many come into
being as deifications of natural forces or the spirits of both the benevolent and the malevolent dead.
One type of grama devata which is common to almost all parts of India is called mata, mother. In reality this is a euphemism, because matas are far from being maternal. Some are positively bloodthirsty,
demanding animal sacrifices and offerings. They are among the most feared and most propitiated
spirits in the villager’s experience.
Not all devatas have shrines. Those that do, such as the special deity of a caste group, are usually
represented by a statue or a brightly decorated figure of some kind. Sometimes, however, it is only
possible to know that a devata lives in a thorn‑bush or a clump of bamboos because rags are tied to it
as votive offerings by the villagers. Sometimes bricks placed in a particular way or stones painted with
lead oxide are the only indications of a devata. It should not be thought that all villagers are entirely
convinced about the power, even the existence, of many of the devatas. The higher castes in particular
usually have little to do with them, regarding them as just the sort of thing that low castes would
believe in. But the higher castes and the sceptical apart, this still leaves a substantial proportion of the
village population who do accept that they live in an environment peopled with supernatural powers
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
65
and spirits who can help them or harm them, and who require attention, propitiation and worship,
as a matter of prudence if nothing else. No villager, however, will confuse this type of supernatural
presence with bhagvan, although sometimes an identification is made between a particular devata
and one of the devas.
When a villager is in some kind of difficulty, facing a crisis or an illness, he will first exhaust natural
causes and remedies. If the problem persists, he may decide that supernatural causes are at work
and turn to one of the village specialists in the supernatural. All villages have some such specialists,
maybe one of the informal priests who tend the grama devatas, or perhaps an exorcist or a diviner. A
quite different idiom operates here from that of the devas, who are approached by Brahman priests
and in purity. The informal priests are nearly always from the lower castes and they have a special
relationship with the village devatas, of whom they are the instruments through which the deities
speak to the villagers. In many parts they are ecstatics and become possessed by their tutelary deity or
some other deity who is then able to speak directly to the villager. These informal priests or ecstatics
attain the trance state, in which they become possessed, often by means of drumming, flagellation
or the use of intoxicants. Sometimes the worshippers and petitioners standing around also enter a
trance and nod or collapse or howl. The kind of answer that a villager with a problem will be given
by these priests is that such and such a deity is angry with them for some reason, usually neglect, and
demands an offering, or that they are troubled by a hostile spirit or a ghost, or that their problem is
caused by the effects of the evil eye on their crops or on a child. Whatever the diagnosis, the priest will
prescribe a remedy which is usually the performance of rituals of various kinds that the villager must
carry out. If the ecstatic is possessed by the deity that is causing the problem, then it speaks directly
to the person concerned explaining what is required and why.
Exorcists are another kind of supernatural specialist commonly resorted to in the villages. They
deal with people possessed by a spirit or, more usually, a ghost. A ghost is the spirit of someone who
has died an unnatural or untimely death and for whom the funeral rites were not effective (in which
case ghosts remain on earth haunting people and places). The most powerful male ghosts are the
ghosts of Brahmans and the most feared female ghosts are those of women who died childless or in
childbirth. When a possessed person comes to an exorcist, the exorcist, having enlisted the aid of his
own tutelary deity, will perform a few rituals and then ask the ghost to leave. A long conversation
might then ensue with negotiations about the offering the ghost will require before it consents to
leave the victim. Whatever the technique of the exorcist, he will usually try to coax the ghost out and
confine it in a clove or small object. Later he will ‘seat’ the ghost elsewhere. The patient will have to
provide offerings for the ghost and the tutelary deity, and also some form of payment for the exorcist.
But a villager’s contact with the devatas is not always through these kinds of intermediaries. The
most common religious act in villages is a simple act of worship, like the making of an offering, by a
single person in private. Sometimes it is made out of piety, sometimes in thanksgiving, sometimes
as propitiation. One of the most common practices is the making of vows. This is very much like a
contract between a villager and a devata made in the villager’s head. It will specify that if a desired
event comes about, then the villager will worship the devata by making a special offering, keeping a
vigil or some such act. The desired event might be that the villager finds a spouse for an offspring, has
a good harvest or locates a lost animal. If the event does not take place, then there is no obligation on
the villager. If it does, then the vow must be fulfilled otherwise there could be serious consequences.
Many of the troubles of villagers are attributed by the devatas’ priests to the nonperformance of vows
and the resulting anger on the part of the deity concerned.
66
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
These local deities and their cults have been treated at length because they constitute an important part of many villagers’ religious life. But they are by no means all of it. Those selfsame villagers
deva might also venerate one or more of the devas, the major gods of Hinduism. That this should not be
thought of as polytheism has already been explained. The major events in the religious life of a village
are the festivals that punctuate the year and are observed usually with great enthusiasm according
to the manner of the place. Life‑cycle rites too, a birth, a wedding or a funeral, provide important
ceremonial occasions which are remembered for years and often bring relatives from far and near.
Sometimes a wandering holy man or singer comes to the village and attracts much interest with bhajanas, recitations or preaching. Then there are the occasions when the villagers go out on small‑scale
pilgrimages or to visit a temple or some other sacred spot. All of this, both what is seen and what is
unseen, forms part of the living Hinduism of the villages.
Finally, it should again be stressed that the entire range of Hinduism is to be found in the villages,
from the most orthodox Brahmanical observance to the purely local lower‑caste cult. Also, it must be
remembered that it is the entirety that constitutes Hinduism, not just those elements that are Brahmanical or which have an all‑India spread.
Modern Developments
The very great changes that have taken place in the Indian subcontinent between the late eighteenth
century and the present were matched by developments in the Hindu religious tradition, which underwent a series of major transformations. The causes that wrought these changes are multiple and
complex: the demise of the Mughal empire; the arrival, rule and departure of the British; the expansion of communications and the arrival of the printing press; the development of the modem vernacular languages and the use of prose; Western education and the use of English; and the challenges
from Christianity and its missionaries—all of these were factors. Equally important were the growth
of political awareness, nationalism, the pressure of national and international events and the final development into independent nationhood and partition. Since independence, there has been a great
expansion of the Hindu diaspora and Hindus are spread over most parts of the globe, creating new
forms of the tradition, while a number of new religious movements or teachers coming from within
Hinduism have gained many thousands of followers in India, Europe, Britain, America and elsewhere.
These and many other factors have all been profoundly influential in various ways in bringing about
the changes that have resulted in a tradition which is certainly far more self‑aware, self-confident,
even self-assertive, than it was in the final decades of the eighteenth century.
In looking first at the transformations in the century and a half prior to 1947, it is possible to identify two major intertwined directions of change: first, the developments which came from a revival
and renewal within the tradition itself; second, the emergence of ‘Neo‑Hinduism’, a form or representation of the highly diverse Hindu tradition created largely by the English-speaking educated elite, but
within the Western concept of ‘a religion’, ‘Hinduism’, which was to be the face the tradition presented
when it went public on the world stage. It is the second current, naturally, which has received the most
attention in Western writing. The first current was more localized and lower‑profile, expressing itself
in vernacular tracts, in the formation of local associations and in countless other unobtrusive and
more parochial ways; but, in so far as it produced a widespread revitalization and a restatement, even
a re‑creation, of the tradition itself, it has the greater long‑term significance. The two currents were
in constant interaction and should perhaps be seen as the internal and external manifestations of the
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
67
same transformation, but since this is not yet how they are dealt with in the literature it is necessary
to treat each separately.
The late eighteenth century saw the rise of a mercantile class which proved to be a new source
of patronage for Hindu institutions and traditions, and this was certainly one important factor in the
revitalization of Hindu religious life. The European ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit led to the production of
grammars and dictionaries and the printing of Sanskrit and other religious texts and translations,
thereby providing material for a restatement of the tradition and its past. In this restatement the
tradition was referred to as Sanatana Dharma, which in the discourse of the time has the sense of ‘oldstyle religion’. Many local associations were set up to protect Sanatana Dharma, and issues such as
caste, image‑worship and cow‑protection were debated, often heatedly. The creation of ‘Hindi’ from
a de‑Persianized Urdu written in the Devanagari script and the demand for its use became a religious
as well as a political and nationalistic issue. All of these processes resulted in a new self-awareness
and self‑identity, and in new formulations and developments in the many and diverse forms of the
tradition. It is only now being realized just how much of the contemporary Hindu tradition and its
manifestations were the results of this nineteenth‑century redefinition and re‑creation of Sanatana
Dharma.
In contrast to this far‑reaching inner transformation there remains the second current of change,
the creation of ‘Neo-Hinduism’. At the beginning of this process stands Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833).
He was born into a well‑to‑do Bengali Brahman family and was educated first in Patna, a centre of
Muslim learning, where he formed an intense dislike of image‑worship. In 1814 he joined the East India Company in Calcutta. There he embarked on a study of the Upanishads, from which he concluded
that they contained a pure theism and certainly provided no justification for idol‑worship. He learnt
English and was deeply influenced by Western culture and scientific thought. He also had much contact with Christian missionaries. While thoroughly approving of the ethical teachings of Christianity,
he could not, however, accept the divinity of Christ. He brought a rationalist approach to Hinduism
and rejected not only image‑worship but the doctrine of reincarnation as well. Appalled by certain
Hindu practices, he became an active social campaigner. So effective was his campaigning against sati,
the practice where widows immolated themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres, that in 1829 it was
made illegal. A strong advocate of Western education, for women and girls as well as men and boys, he
founded the Hindu College in Calcutta, which opened in 1819. In 1828 he founded the Brahmo Samaj,
a society that met once a week to hear readings from the Upanishads and sermons and to sing theistic
hymns. Prayer, or any attempt to approach the divine, formed no part of this rather cold, austere approach, which appealed mainly to the educated intellectual elite. Reminiscent of eighteenth‑century
deism, and also peculiarly un‑Indian, Roy felt this to be a return to the former purity of Hindu worship.
The next effective leader of the Brahmo Samaj after the death of Roy was Debendranath Tagore,
father of the famous poet, who joined the society in 1842. He was an intensely religious man who
added prayer to the Samaj service. He initiated a study of the Veda and concluded that its claim to
inerrancy and to be the unique scriptural authority could not be accepted. From then on reason and
conscience became the primary sources of authority for the Samaj, and Debendranath himself compiled an anthology of passages taken from various scriptures, mainly the Upanishads, which accorded
with the position of the Samaj. A book, the Brahma Dharma, became the principal sacred work for
the Samaj.
In 1857 a young radical reformer called Keshab Chandra Sen joined the Samaj and quickly became pan of the leadership, greatly impressing Tagore. At his instigation the Samaj rejected the Hindu
68
saṃskāra
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
sacraments, the samskaras, and produced rites of its own. It was the question of caste, however, that
led Tagore and Sen to separate, and the Samaj to split. Sen wished to repudiate caste and for the
twice‑born to abandon the sacred thread. This was too much for the more conservative members of
the Samaj. They remained with Tagore while Sen and his followers left to found the Brahmo Samaj
of India. Sen thereafter became increasingly influenced by Christianity, and he compiled a scriptural work for the new Samaj drawing on sources some of which were not Hindu but were taken from
other religions, particularly Christianity. He also made various changes in the service, incorporating elements of Bengali bhakti. But his greatest achievements were in the field of social reform. He
campaigned strongly to improve the position of Hindu women and girls, and against child marriage.
Under his leadership the Samaj celebrated inter‑caste marriages and also the remarriage of widows,
both revolutionary moves to the orthodoxy of the day.
The Brahmo Samaj was to split yet again, and Sen to found another movement called the Church
of the New Dispensation. This was even more eclectic, and included a great deal from Christianity, but
it did not survive his death in 1884. Meanwhile the Samaj itself continued and had a certain amount of
influence in Bengal and in missionary centres elsewhere. Its real importance, however, is that it began
the process of Hindu self‑examination and heralded the awakening of the Hindu social conscience.
The campaigning eventually proved to be successful. Not only were Brahmo marriages recognized in
law, but so were inter‑caste marriages and the remarriage of widows, while child marriage was made
illegal.
Mention should also be made of the Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra, which was not dissimilar
to the Brahmo Samaj with which it had links. Its members, too, were theists, opposed imageworship,
and rejected the authority of the Veda and the doctrine of reincarnation, but they saw their theism
to be a continuation of medieval Maharashtrian bhakti. Under the leadership of Mahadev Govind
Ranade (1842–901) their main effort was in the field of social reform and social welfare, particularly
with regard to the depressed castes. In this their achievement was considerable.
Quite different from both the Brahmo and the Prarthana Samaj was the Arya Samaj which was
founded in 1875 by Dayananda Sarasvati (1824–83). Dayananda, after a childhood experience, had become disillusioned with image‑worship. Eventually he found a guru under whom he studied and to
whom he gave a pledge to remove from Hinduism all the corruptions and accretions that had entered
it after the Veda. Whereas the trend of previous reform movements had been towards Westernization,
here was a movement that was Hindu through and through, intent on returning Hinduism to its Vedic
purity. Dayananda’s view, however, of what constituted the message of the Veda was highly idiosyncratic and is beyond the scope of this account. What is really significant about the Arya Samaj is that it
marked the movement of Hinduism on to the offensive. Dayananda fiercely attacked both Islam and
Christianity since he saw them as threats to Hinduism in that they were attracting converts, especially
from the lower castes. The Samaj instituted a ceremony for reconversion to Hinduism, and began to
invest untouchable castes with the sacred thread, a procedure not recognized by the orthodox. The
Samaj had some success, particularly in Punjab and the north. Colleges were established and the use
of Hindi encouraged. Seeking to establish itself as a universal church, the Arya Samaj was militant,
dogmatic and aggressive. It still exists in various parts of the world. Most Hindus did not like either
its message or its methods, but it gave Hinduism a boost of self-confidence when it was needed.
A further boost came from an unlikely quarter. In 1877 Mme Blavatsky and her helper Colonel
Olcott arrived in India. They had opened the Theosophical Society two years earlier in New York,
but with little success. However, there is no doubt that both Mme Blavatsky and her successor Mrs
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
69
Annie Besant (1847–1933) greatly raised the self-confidence of Hindus. Hailing Hinduism as a repository of ancient wisdom and the source of all religions, these two formidable ladies travelled round
India, lavish in their extravagant and uncritical praise of all things Hindu, awakening pride in the religious heritage of Hinduism and removing any feelings of inferiority that had developed following the
activities of Christian missionaries, about whom they were scathing.
The next really significant influence came from deep within Hinduism. In 1852 Gadhadhar Chatterji, the son of poor Brahman parents, became a priest at the Kali temple near Calcutta. Here, in
his longing for the Mother, he went through endless trances and mystical states until finally he was
granted a vision of the Goddess. He turned to Tantric disciplines to control the stream of spiritual
experience he was passing through and eventually was initiated by a monk of the Advaita school into
the Vedantic teaching of pure monism. The name he received on initiation and by which he is generally known is Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Ramakrishna’s deep spirituality made a powerful impact
on all who came in contact with him, often producing in them some form of spiritual experience.
Many came to see him, including Keshab Chandra Sen and other reformers, and they found that what
they could only speak of from their minds, he spoke of from the depth of his own spiritual experience.
Much that he said was not new, but his own consciousness enabled him to see God in every man and
in every religion. He affirmed that all religions were true and that everyone should follow their own
as their way to God realization. He was also insistent on the need to serve one’s fellow men.
Among Ramakrishna’s disciples was a young Bengali called Narendranath Dana who had received
a Western education in Calcutta and had been hovering on the edge of the Brahmo Samaj until he had
met Ramakrishna. This meeting transformed his life. After Ramakrishna’s death he became a sannyasi
with the name of Vivekananda and travelled throughout India. In 1893 he went as the representative of
Hinduism to the first session of the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Here he made a very
great impact, presenting Hinduism for the first time to the world as a universal faith. His message,
although questionable in part, was that all religions were true, that Hinduism is the most ancient, the
noblest and the mother of all religions, that India was spiritual and the West materialistic, though
he believed that India should use Western science and methods to improve its lot. His philosophical
position was that of Advaita. He spent four years lecturing in America and England and as a result
Vedanta centres were set up in several cities. His return to India was greeted with great enthusiasm,
for Hinduism had found an outstanding exponent and it was even thought that he had convened most
of America. He immediately set up the Ramakrishna Mission, which devoted itself to social work and
the relief of suffering as well as to promoting its religious message. The Ramakrishna Mission has not
had a great impact, although it still exists. But Vivekananda had made an unprecedented contribution.
He had raised Hinduism to the status of a world religion in the outside world, and he had affirmed to
Hindus that all pans of Hinduism were good, though some had been misunderstood and distorted. It
was on these foundations that Mahatma Gandhi was to build.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) was born to a family of Gujarati Vaishyas and, after
a somewhat unsettled education, he was sent to London to study law, being called to the Bar in 1891.
After two years in India he went to South Africa where he remained for twenty years. He worked
with the Indian community there and led them with some success in their struggle for justice, and
against oppressive measures. By the time he returned to India in 1915, Gandhi was forty‑six. Most of
the values, convictions and techniques for which he later became famous in India had already been
formed and tested. He had already formulated his concept of satyagraha, adherence to the truth,
which he combined with ahimsa, non‑violence, and sarvodaya, universal uplift or the welfare of all,
70
SOURCES OF HINDU TRADITION
as the three main essentials of his approach. His passionate belief in human equality and justice he
had demonstrated in his work, and by personally taking an untouchable to live in his house in South
Africa. His favourite religious reading was the Bhagavadgita, the Ramacaritamanasa of Tulsidas and
the Sermon on the Mount. He was greatly influenced by the writings of Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau and
William Morris. He had established a community in a farm near Durban which sought to achieve
simplicity of life, and it could be that it is to these authors that he owed his belief in the virtue of
manual labour and his aversion to large‑scale industry. Also deeply rooted in him was the belief that
brahmacarya brahmacarya, total self‑control, was essential to the pursuit of truth.
On his return to India, Gandhi established an ashram, or spiritual community, and set about both
his political activities and also his campaign to improve the position of the untouchables, initially
fasting until temples were opened to them for the first time ever. The history of the national movement, the winning of independence and Gandhi’s central part in this cannot be chronicled here, but
what must be realized is that Gandhi was a religious leader first, and a political leader second. He
came to the masses of India as an ascetic, a sannyasi, and they regarded him as a mahatma, a saint or
great soul, and even as an incarnation of Vishnu. He called himself a follower of sanatana dharma, the
eternal dharma or righteousness, and he believed that the soul of India must first become liberated
from its vices before there could be freedom from the British. That is why he campaigned so strongly
against untouchability, calling the untouchables Harijans, the people of God; that is why he fasted and
prayed endlessly that there should be neither violence nor inter‑communal hatred between Hindus
and Muslims; and that was why partition and the blood‑bath that followed were for Gandhi failure,
even though the British had gone and India had achieved nationhood.
But if Gandhi felt this to be a failure, and if his efforts to remove untouchability have not succeeded, still his achievement is immense. Gandhi was truly a mahatma, a great soul, for he embraced
within himself the entire people of India, imbuing them with his own deep spirituality, and led them
to independent nationhood. Certainly this was a major political triumph, but, more important, it was
the realization of religious values in the hearts and minds of men and women on a prodigious scale. In
the process he, perhaps more than any other before, brought Hindu self‑awareness and self‑identity
to a new maturity.
It is now more than half a century since Gandhi died and the Republic of India became an independent secular state. One feature of this period has been a hardening of that current which can be
called political Hinduism, mainly right‑wing and Hindu nationalist, which opposes the very secularism of the state and seeks to establish a ’Hindu nation’. This tendency can be traced back to 1909 when
Mohan Malaviya and other members of the Arya Samaj established the Hindu Maha‑sabha which was
to turn into a right‑wing Hindu nationalist party. One of its members, K. V. Hedgewar, in 1925, founded
the Rastriya Svayam‑sevak Sangh (RSS), a tightly organized and highly influential Hindu nationalist
body, which remains extremely active to this day and is the subject of considerable controversy. Although itself not a political party, the RSS has nevertheless been closely associated with the Jana Sangh
Party (founded in 1951), the Janata Party, and, finally, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, which has
recently been attracting international attention through its involvement in the demolition of Babri
Masjid, the mosque at Ayodhya which was destroyed in 1992 on the grounds that it was built over the
birthplace of Rama. India, however, is as diverse politically as Hinduism is diverse religiously, so it
will be as hard for the BJP to command nationwide acceptance as it will be for the Hindu nationalists
to articulate a single form of ‘Hinduism’ which is universally acceptable as a unifying ideology. None
REQUIRED READING: WEIGHTMAN
71
the less, these are powerful forces which have certainly led to an increase in inter-communal tension,
and they cannot be ignored.
Meanwhile the main body of the tradition has continued to evolve. New temples have been built,
pilgrimage sites have been expanded, new deities have emerged as others have become neglected,
new gurus and movements have arisen as others have given way. Among the movements, one, coming
from within Vaishnava Krishnaite tradition and founded by Swami Narayan (1781–1830), has become
particularly influential among Gujaratis both within India and in the Hindu diaspora. Among gurus,
often regarded by their followers as incarnations of the deity, one of the most popular, again both in
India and in the diaspora, is Sathya Sai Baba. Born in 1926, he announced early on that he was an incarnation of the Maharashtrian saint Sai Baba of Shirdi, whose name he took. In 1963 he declared he
was Shiva. He is particularly renowned for the miracles he performs, but his inclusivist stance means
he has a large following in the urban middle classes. These are but two examples among many. Some
figures and movements have been influential in the West as new religious movements: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with transcendental meditation, which has been a particularly successful transplantation
of a yogic technique to the West; Prabhupada and ISKCON, or Krishna Consciousness, which comes
as a Westernized version of Chaitanya’s form of Vaishnavism; the followers of Rajnish; Sahaj Yoga, a
restrained middleclass form of Tantrism; the Radhasoamis, who are firmly within the Sant tradition;
and the Brahma Kumaris, an international Shaivite millenarian movement deriving from Sindh, are
among the most notable. Whether in India or in the diaspora, the tradition is continually unfolding
in new transformations, some local, some regional, all testimony to the diversity, the richness and
the creativity of Hindu religious life and spirituality. The Hindu tradition, Hinduism, stands now as
an equal alongside other world religions. Whatever the future holds, there can be no doubt that the
contribution of Hinduism will be rich and valuable and will mark yet another stage in its continuing
evolution.
2 Trimārga: The Three Paths
Topic overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
explain the idea of the trimārga, the ‘three ways’ of Hinduism,
outline the beliefs and practices associated with each way, and
discuss how the three have been related to one another in the history of Hinduism.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
continuity and change
genres of literature (liturgy vs. epic)
Karma, jñāna, bhakti
Although Hindus have not typically sought to define a single orthodoxy, there are nevertheless a number of ways in which they have tried to make sense of the diversity of Hindu practice by organising it
within some conceptual scheme. One such scheme organises Hindu practices by suggesting that they
constitute three different paths (trimārga) of practice: the path of action (karma), the path of knowledge (jñāna) and the path of devotion (bhakti). This is a late concept which does not quite manage to
contain within three tidy categories the long history of Hinduism. That is to say, those whose religious
practices were later regarded as forming the way of action were not necessarily conscious of being part
of one particular path among others. There have never been formal schools or traditions corresponding to the three paths, and the practice of most Hindus has probably always included elements from
one or more of the three.
It should also be noted that the idea is not always entirely neutral with respect to the different
ways or paths it identifies. In the Bhagavad-Gītā, an important post-Vedic text, the three paths are
referred to as the three yogas, or three disciplines: karmayoga, jñānayoga and bhaktiyoga. Although
all are regarded as valid, there is nevertheless a sense in which they are hierarchically ranked, and the
path, or yoga, of devotion is thought to be especially appropriate for the age in which we live—from
a Hindu point of view, a time of decline and decay in which religious practice becomes increasingly
difficult. This sort of ranking—not rejecting what has gone before, but retaining it while at the same
73
74
TRIMĀRGA
time relegating it to a lower level—is absolutely characteristic of Hinduism, and is one of the patterns
we shall see repeated again and again in the mosaic of Hindu tradition.
Here I will use the idea of the three paths as a way of distinguishing three broad phases in the
development of Hinduism from the ritualism of the early Vedic period (karma), through the period of
intense philosophical in the early Upaniṣads (jñāna) to the emergence of the theistic devotion (bhakti)
characteristic of classical Hinduism in the later Upaniṣads and the epics, most notably the BhagavadGītā. While the three paths proved a useful way of thinking about the most characteristic features of
Hinduism during three broad phases of its history, the three phases are not sharply distinguishable
from one another and many of the ideas and practices characteristic of each of these phases are still
to be found in the daily lives of Hindus.
Thus rather than seeing the three ways as separate paths, or distinct historical periods, it may
be useful to think of them as three different strands which intertwine to create the sacred thread of
Hindu tradition, and which account for much of its strength. With all these qualifications, the idea of
the three paths nevertheless retains the advantage of being a way in which Hindus themselves make
sense of the diversity of their tradition.
At this point in the paper, our aim is still to gain a general overview of Hinduism, we will return
later to look at the practices typical of each of these paths in more detail. Here I will continue to sketch
in broad strokes and I encourage you to continue to focus on the big picture and leave the finer details
for later.
Karmamārga—The Path of Action in the Early Veda
Even if you know nothing else about Hinduism, it is likely that you will have heard the word karma.
The sense the word has in modern popular culture is close to that which it has in later Hinduism,
but rather different from the sense that it has when it makes its first appearance in the early sacred
literature called Veda. In its origins in the Vedic literature karma simply means action, in particular
ritual action which in turn, in the Veda, means above all sacrifice. Vedic religion was centered upon
sacrifice. Sacrifice was necessary to maintain the order of the universe, and was understood to be a
repetition of the sacrifice performed by the gods in the beginning which produced the universe. This
idea—that even the gods sacrifice—immediately makes us aware that in some ways it is sacrifice
itself, rather than the gods to whom sacrifice is offered, that is central to Vedic religion. Although
extravagant praise is offered to the gods in the course of sacrifice, through sacrifice a person creates
a kind of obligation on the part of the gods who are thereby bound to bring about what that person
desires, insofar as it lies within their power. In the later Vedic literature there is intense speculation
on the power which lies behind sacrifice, for by knowing the secret of this power a person can become
equal to the gods. This emphasis on knowledge is part of the transition to the jñānamārga—the path
of knowledge—and is accompanied by a shift in the meaning of karma which coming to refer not only
to action, but also the consequences of action. First, however, we shall examine the path of action in
the older Vedic literature.
What we know and how we know it
In interpreting the Indus Valley Civilization, scholars are faced with an abundance of material remains but no texts, or at least none that we can read with confidence. Regarding the Vedic religion
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
75
we have almost the opposite situation: we have an abundance of texts which we are able to read but
almost nothing outside the texts. We know from the texts that Vedic religion required no permanent
structures—no grand temples—and it appears that there were no physical representations of the
gods either. The material artefacts used in Vedic ritual were for the most part very simple and made
anew each time and then disposed of afterwards. Even the texts themselves were not preserved in
physical form until long after the period in which they were composed. They were instead preserved,
with remarkably little variation, in memory. Our knowledge of Vedic religion therefore comes almost
exclusively from the Vedic texts. This literature offers us only a partial view of that religion and the society within which it was practiced. Like many later Hindu texts, the Veda made full sense only within
the context of a living oral tradition which must have embodied many assumptions which remain unspoken within the texts as we know them today. Some groups of Brahman ritualists have continued
to carry out archaic Vedic rituals into modern times, and studying their practices has helped scholars
to interpret the Vedic literature, but many questions remain unanswered. The earliest layer of Vedic
literature consists largely of hymns in praise of a number of deities which were recited during the
sacrificial rituals which lay at the heart of Vedic religion. Although we have an extensive later literature describing, sometime in minute detail, how these rituals were to be carried out, for the early
period we have nothing like a comprehensive theology, and details of the worldview of the Veda often
have to be inferred from allusions in the hymns. Despite their age, the hymns are by no means simple
documents, and their literary style reveals their authors to have been capable of subtle and sophisticated thought. It is likely that the Vedic literature as we know it includes material composed over the
course of several centuries, and it is reasonable to expect that there were changes in Vedic religion and
thought over that period. The sources we have allow us to trace these changes only incompletely, but
even to survey what is known would require more space than is available here.1 Here we will outline
the main features of religion in the Vedic period, paying particular attention to those elements which
are important in later Hinduism.
The evidence that we have for Vedic religion is partial also in that the religion we can study in the
Veda is clearly the religion of only a certain section of society, namely the priestly and courtly elite. In
other periods of Indian history for which we have fuller evidence, we know that this form of religion
existed alongside other forms which are usually described as popular or folk religion. There is every
reason to expect that the religion of the Veda developed alongside and perhaps drew from these other
religious beliefs and practices. There are occasional hints in the Veda which suggest what the religions
of these others may have been, but we cannot be sure how far these are accurate.2 By its very nature,
what we call popular religion tends not have the kind of institutions which enable the preservation
of evidence of its history. In the absence of such historical evidence there is always a temptation to
assume that the forms of popular religion in the past were similar to those studied in recent times by
ethnographers or anthropologists—but this is a dangerous assumption.
1For an excellent survey of Vedic Hinduism, which has often been relied on here, see Michael Witzel and Stephanie
W. Jamison, “Vedic Hinduism,” in The Study of Hinduism, ed. Arvind Sharma (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press,
2003), 65–113.
2Wendy Doniger has recently attempted to write a history of Hinduism which gives full weight to these alternative
forms of religious practice. See Wendy Doniger, Hindus: An Alternative History (New York: Penguin, 2009).
76
TRIMĀRGA
Vedic religion
Vedic religion was centred upon the yajña, the sacrifice. Sacrifice was necessary to maintain the order
of the universe, and both the sacrifice and the Veda were understood to be timeless. The vedic texts
are primarily concerned with the performance and later the meaning of the sacrifice. The religion of
the earliest period has to be inferred from the few details mentioned in the texts; most of what we
know of Vedic ritual comes from a slightly later period.
Vedic religion pre-dates the construction of the permanent temples which are such a prominent
feature of later Hinduism. A site was consecrated, the ritual performed, and then de-consecrated.
The important elements of the site are described in the text, in particular the altar, with details of the
shape and number of bricks, and their symbolic importance. Thus one altar is built out of 360 bricks—
connected to the 360 day year, and 360 degrees of a circle.3 In this way the ritual encompasses both
time and space. Other texts homologize the altar to the human body, or the body of the Supreme
Being. In the Agnihotra ritual, an elaborate twelve-day ritual, the central altar is in the form of a
bird. It was a performance of this ritual which was specially commissioned in 1975 so that it could be
studied, and filmed, by a team of scholars led by Frits Staal.4
Vedic ritual
The Vedic texts themselves divide rituals into two types. Śrauta, solemn or public, rituals required
a number of priests and three or more fires. Gṛhya, domestic, rituals required only a single fire and
were performed by the householder or a single domestic priest. In some cases, such as the new and full
moon rituals, this is the only significant distinguishing feature but in other respects the kinds of rituals
found in the two categories were different. Domestic rituals consist mainly in a series of regular rites in
cycles of different lengths from daily or twice-daily rites to annual rites performed in connection with
the seasons. The other domestic rituals are the life-cycles rites or sacraments (saṃskāra) marking the
stages of life from conception to death and beyond, and occasional rites connected with significant
events such as building a house. Not all domestic rituals took the form of sacrifice.
Public rites also include many rites to be performed on regular cycles as well as other rites to be
performed according to one’s desires or circumstances. The different rituals were classed as obligatory, optional, and occasional. Public rites were more elaborate than the domestic rites, in some
cases hugely more, but the two types of rites often share the same basic pattern or ritual unit. The
complexity of the public rites arises from the repetition or combination of these ritual units, and in
the various preparations and purifications which precede the central act and the exit rites or desacralization which follows it. The most elaborate rituals required many days of preparation and their performance could extend over a whole day, multiple days or even a whole year. Even the simpler, daily,
rituals could involve a hundred separate actions.
The essence of the sacrifice is nevertheless in principle quite simple: the offering of liquids or food
into a fire, accompanied by the recitation of mantras (ritual formulas) or hymns. Most of these are
found in the first, and generally oldest, section of the Veda, called the Ṛg (or Ṛk)veda saṃhitā. This
is a collection of ten books of sacred hymns to the major Vedic gods, Agni (fire), Soma (sacred drink,
3This is described in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa X.5–4.
4Robert Gardner and Frits Staal, Altar of Fire. Film Study Center at Harvard University, 1976, 45min. This is required
viewing for this unit—the film is available online through Blackboard.
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
77
possibly a hallucinogen extracted from a plant), Indra and Rudra. A few hymns include narrative or
mythical elements, including some which were later important sources for the later gods of classical
Hinduism and other elements of Hinduism such as caste. The majority however are simply hymns of
praise, most of which ‘were intended to be recited at the yearly Soma ritual, celebrated at the time of
the New Year.’5 Some of these hymns are still part of daily Hindu life, e.g., the Gāyatrī mantra:
We meditate on the lovely light of the god, Savitri:
May it stimulate our thoughts!6
The simpler rituals, both public and domestic, usually involve offering dairy or vegetable products such as milk and butter or rice and barley. The texts also describe various kinds of animal, and
even human, sacrifice. The most common animal victim was the goat, but other victims include bulls,
donkeys, dogs and horses. The horse sacrifice or aśvamedha was one of the most elaborate of all. It
was performed on behalf of a king in order to demonstrate his sovereignty and for the benefit of his
kingdom and subjects. The rite involved hundreds of participants, and hundreds of other animal victims in addition to the horse. After wandering for a year, accompanied by 400 young men, the horse is
sacrificed as part of a three-day ritual which is preceeded by many days of preparation. Understandably, such rituals were rarely performed but the aśvamedha served as a paradigm for other rituals,
including the puruṣamedha or human sacrifice, and was the focus of intense speculation in the later
ritual and philosophical literature. The sacrifice of the primal man Puruṣa is, as we have seen, one of
the cosmogonic myths in the Ṛgveda. Whether actual human sacrifice was ever carried out remains
controversial. Some scholars accept the texts at their face value, pointing to archaeological and anthropological evidence from both the Indian and other contexts. Of those who do not, some see the
puruṣamedha as a priestly fantasy, the greatest of all sacrifices which would equate the sacrificer with
the gods who sacrificed the primal man. Others point to one text which specifies human victims are to
be released without being killed. It is important to bear in mind here what we have called the identificatory habitus, which allowed the use of substitutes in ritual. In the 1970s a group of anthropologists
and textual scholars commissioned the performance of one of the more elaborate Vedic rites, the agnicayana or piling of the fire altar.7 One part of the ritual calls for the sacrifice of goats, but the group
of priests who had been commissioned to perform the ritual no longer perform animal sacrifice and so
substituted rice-cakes. Later texts exploit this identificatory habitus to the fullest, even to the extent of
giving up outward sacrifice altogether and substituting ascetic practice as a form of ‘inner sacrifice’. It
is therefore conceivable that ‘human’ sacrifices were carried out, but with substitute victims. There is
a suggestion of this in one ritual which requires that a small golden figure of a human being be buried
at the base of an altar, together with a living tortoise.
The sacrificial fire is understood to convey the offering to the gods. The preliminaries to the sacrificial ritual include inviting the gods and preparing seats for them. The offerings are understood to be
enjoyed by the gods, together with the praise which is offered to them during the sacrifice. Thus the
sacrifice is modelled on offering hospitality to an honoured guest. Although later Hindu rituals differ
in many ways from Vedic sacrifice, they continue to be based on the model of receiving a guest. The
gods invited to the sacrifice vary depending on the purpose of the sacrifice.
5Michael Witzel, “Vedas and Upaniṣads,” in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin A. Flood (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 63.
6R. C. Zaehner and Nicol Macnicol, Hindu Scriptures (London: Everyman, 2000), 3.
7The documentary produced on this occasion, Altar of Fire (Robert Gardner and Frits Staal. Film Study Center at Harvard University, 1976) is available in the library.
78
TRIMĀRGA
A large number of gods are identified in the Vedas, and many sacrifices include a catch-all reference to ‘all the gods’ to ensure that no god to whom an offering is owed is inadvertently forgotten. It
is difficult to specify an exact number of gods—many different figures are given in the texts and, as in
later Hinduism, the idea of divinity is fluid and can accommodate the idea of humans achieving divine
status or the embodiment of the divine in the world. The gods are also not always clearly distinguished
from one another, as the same qualities and titles are attributed to different figures in the course of
praising them, and there seems also to have been some historical shifts in the roles of some of the
more important deities. Varuna, for example, is one of the gods identified as sovereign and seems to
have taken over in this role from Mitra, with whom he is often invoked. Varuna in turn seems to have
ceded his place to Indra, a warrior god who replaces him in some rituals. Gigantic in stature, tawny
in colour, armed with a thunderbolt, Indra is a powerful figure and has a developed mythology in the
hymns of the Ṛgveda, no less than a quarter of which are addressed to him. He is praised for defeating
enemies, notably the dragon Vṛtra who had stopped up the waters. He is empowered in his fight with
Vṛtra by having drunk soma, an invigorating juice pressed from a plant whose identity is now uncertain. The ritual offering of soma serves as a paradigm for many other sacrifices and is incorporated as
a part of many of the more elaborate rituals. Soma, along with Agni, the fire, are two elements of the
sacrifice which are deified and praised along with the other gods.
Dozens of other divine figures feature in the Vedas, but few of these gods and goddesses are important in later Hinduism, although their names continued to be invoked in ritual and they retain a
place in mythology. The decline of these deities may have begun with a shift in attention to the power
of the sacrifice itself, identified as brahman, the subject of much speculation in the later Vedic literature. It is, however, possible to trace in the Veda the roots of two gods who later become the primary
objects of Hindu devotion. Rudra is a minor but distinctive deity in the Ṛgveda, marked out by his
fearsome character which resulted in his share of the offerings being kept apart from those made to
other deities. He is associated with the mountains and the wilderness, is a ruler of animals and connected with ascetic practices, death and fecundity. All of these connect him with Śiva, a name which
first appears as an epithet, meaning ‘kindly, auspicious’, which is applied to Rudra.
The other god who is the focus of much later Hindu devotion, Viṣṇu, is still less prominent in
the Vedas. We do find reference there to the three strides with which he traverses the world and
the heavens. This is later developed into a myth demonstrating how Viṣṇu defeated the Asuras, the
perpetual opponents of the gods. Viṣṇu’s later importance derives from his identification with the
sacrifice and his association with Indra, many of whose characteristics he takes over as he develops
into one of the great gods of Hinduism.
Having received their share of the offerings, the gods depart and the human sacrificers can receive
their ‘share’ along with gifts which the gods offer in return. For the most part the gifts which are desired
are mundane: sons, rain, cattle and a long life. For the earlier Vedic literature the goal of religious
practice is not escape from the world but rather the maintenance of the universe and a series of long
and fruitful existences within it. It was important to have sons so that after your death they could carry
out on your behalf the sacrifices which would serve to sustain you during the afterlife. A remnant of
the offerings made to the gods while alive was also thought to await the sacrificer in heaven. After
remaining in heaven as long as possible, the cycle would begin again with rebirth on earth. It is only
in the later texts that the ideas which will eventually develop into key doctrines of classical Hinduism
begin to emerge. The first is connected with the fear of retribution in another world for the evil of
killing, including ritual killing, performed in this world. Where it was once thought that the benefits
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
79
of ritual could ward off this type of retribution, later texts become increasingly concerned with it
and claim either that it can be warded off by further ritual or that ritual killing does not give rise
to retribution. The second idea raises for the first time the prospect of escaping the cycle of rebirth
altogether. This is not conceived as liberation, but rather as a fall into darkness and oblivion.
These ideas first appear in the texts from the middle of the Vedic period called brāhmaṇas. Brāhmaṇa is an adjectival noun formed from brahman meaning ‘that which pertains to brahman’, ‘having
to do with brahman’. As the priests who are entitled to perform Vedic sacrifice can also be described
as ‘having to do with brahman’, they too are described as brāhmaṇas. When referring to the priests the
term is usually written as ‘Brahmans’, or ‘Brahmins’, in order to distinguish them from the texts called
brāhmaṇas. The name of the texts indicates their primary concern, that is, the nature of brahman
which at the time of their composition was identified as the inner power of the sacrificial ritual. The
brāhmaṇas seek to understand why ritual produces the effects that it does. They are still closely connected with the performance of the sacrifices and comment on each component of the sacrifice, each
act or mantra, and on the sacrifice as a whole. Much of the commentary consists of identifying elements of the sacrifices with the parts of the universe and of the self, hence explaining why performing
those elements will have an effect upon the world or the sacrificer.
Brahman — Brahmā — Brāhmaṇa — Brahman (brāhmaṇa)
[all from the root √bṛh meaning ‘grow’, ‘expand’]
Brahman (neuter): in the Brāhmaṇas (texts) the power of ritual, and the sacrificial utterance, later the essence of the universe, the very being at the heart
of all appearances. The brahman which Vedānta identifies with ātman (discussed later). The single reality underlying the diversity of appearances.
Brahmā (masculine): creator god in late Vedic period onwards.
Brāhmaṇas: texts, the second oldest division of the Vedas.
Brahmans (properly brāhmaṇas, often Brahmin): priestly caste.
The fullest development of these ideas is found, however in the latest layer of the Vedic literature,
the Upaniṣads. The development of these ideas is accompanied by a shift in the meaning of karma,
marking the beginning of a new phase of Hinduism, the jñānamārga.
Jñānamārga—The Path of Knowledge in the Upaniṣads
The Upaniṣads collectively are referred to as vedānta or the ‘end of the Veda’. For Hindus they represent the ‘end’ of the Veda in both senses of the term: both the last section of the Veda but also its
telos, its ultimate purpose or goal. From the viewpoint of most of later Hinduism, they are the most
important section of the Veda, and the part most likely to be known to Hindus, although traditionally
very few beyond a small group of learned Brahmans would have had any close acquaintance with the
texts themselves. The Upaniṣads as a whole mark the end of the Vedic period of Hindu religion and
lay the foundations for what we might call classical Hinduism. It is in these texts that the ideas of
saṃsāra, reincarnation and mokṣa are first elaborated and in which karma and brahman take on new
80
TRIMĀRGA
and important senses. The later Upaniṣads also reveal evidence of a shift to theism which will become
characteristic of classical Hinduism and which sees worship of the gods take central place.
The Upaniṣadic period, roughly the middle part of the first millennium bce (800-300 bce), was
a time of transition and religious change. As well as the developments which laid the foundations
of classical Hindu thought, the period also saw the emergence of other rival traditions of religious
thought. Not all of these traditions have survived, but among those which did are both Buddhism and
Jainism which share, in modified forms, a number of the key ideas which emerged in this period. In
seeking to explain these developments scholars have pointed to several factors external to the Vedic
tradition, notably the re-emergence of cities in northern India for the first time since the decline of the
Indus Valley Civilization.8 With cities came a growth in trade and a monetary economy which brought
about changes in society, notably the growth of a merchant class and a shift from petty chiefdoms
to larger kingdoms. There is, however, sufficient continuity with ideas found in the earlier layers of
the Vedic literature to suggest that for the most part we should see these changes as promoting the
development of some currents of religious thinking at the expense of others rather than effecting a
radical break with what went before.
The Upaniṣads reflect the divergence of opinion in this period, both in their literary form—debates,
challenges to authority, setting riddles—and in their lack of a single viewpoint on essential religious
questions concerning the nature of reality and the purpose of life. Although they have served as the
primary sources for later Hindu philosophical schools the early Upaniṣads in particular are to be read
as poetic rather than philosophical accounts of reality. They have a preference for concrete, rather
than abstract images, often reshaping the symbolism of the older Vedic literature in new ways.9 There
are consistent themes, but as much variation as we would expect in a literature composed and continually reshaped over a period of some six centuries.
Saṃsāra and karma
As we have seen, the earlier Vedic literature does have some conception of rebirth, but it is in the
Upaniṣads that this idea is developed into the form which becomes widely shared in Indian religious
thought, whether Hindu, Buddhist or Jain. This is the world conceived as saṃsāra—the cycle of birth,
death and rebirth. The Upaniṣads also suggest that an escape from the cycle is possible for those who
understand it correctly.
When a man lacks understanding, is unmindful and always impure;
He does not reach that final step, but gets on the round of rebirth.
But when a man has understanding, is mindful and always pure;
He does reach that final step, from which he is not reborn again.10
The motive force behind saṃsāra is karma. For the Upaniṣads, karma is not only ritual action, but all
action and, most importantly, the consequences of action. This can be seen as a development of the
8For more on this, see the reading for Unit 4.2 below, Richard F. Gombrich, “Gotama Buddha’s problem situation,” in
Theravāda Buddhism: a social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo, 2nd ed. (1988; London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 2006), 32–60.
9Joel P. Brereton, “The Upaniṣads,” in Approaches to the Asian Classics, ed. William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 117–118.
10Kaṭha Upaniṣad 3,7-8; cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.2, 15-16. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from the Upaniṣads are from the following translation: Patrick Olivelle, Upaniṣads (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
81
older idea of karma as ritual action in that one performed the ritual in order to achieve some particular
goal which is therefore the consequence of that action. In the Upaniṣads the theory is developed so
that the result of action, the accomplished deed, is thought of as a new entity which then exerts its
influence on the person who performed the action. The statement that ‘[t]he one who… performs
fruitful actions also enjoys the fruits of that very act’11 is very much in line with the Vedic thinking
about ritual action, except that it is broadened to refer to all ‘fruitful’ actions. However the claim that
‘A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad action’, suggests
a more strongly ethicized conception of action and its consequences.12 Some scholars attribute this
ethicized conception of karma to the Buddha; whether or not that is the case, the idea found broad
acceptance and represents a significant change in the Hindu tradition. In its developed form this idea
of karmic consequences is combined with the idea of rebirth and hence karma comes to refer to the
stored-up results of action which determine the nature of one’s rebirth. The karma of former births
is what determined one’s present birth, and the karma acquired in this birth determines one’s future
birth.
The internalisation of sacrifice
Thus the Upaniṣads, in a way that is typical of Hinduism, preserve while at the same time also transforming the idea of karma which we find in the earlier Veda literature. The same happens with a number of other elements of the Vedic tradition, most notably the idea of sacrifice itself. One of the earliest
of the Upaniṣads, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad begins with an important passage which demonstrates
how sacrifice comes to be reinterpreted.
The head of the sacrificial horse, clearly, is the dawn—its sight is the sun; its breath is
the wind; and its gaping mouth is the fire common to all men. The body of the sacrificial
horse is the year—its back is the sky; its abdomen the intermediate region; its underbelly
is the earth; its flanks are the quarters; its ribs are the intermediate quarters; its limbs are
the seasons; its joints are the months and fortnights; its feet are the days and nights; its
bones are the stars; its flesh is the clouds; its stomach contents are the sand; its intestines
are the rivers; its liver and lungs are the hills; its body hairs are the plants and trees; its
forequarter is the rising sun; and its hindquarter is the setting sun.
The correlations between the parts of the sacrificial horse and the dimensions of the universe, both
spatial and temporal, serve to explain sacrifice has the effects that it does. However as it continues
the text also opens the way for a shift in emphasis from the practice of sacrifice to the understanding
of these correlations, which are known only to some.
Only a man who knows the horse sacrifice in this way truly understands it... [Whoever
knows this] averts repeated death—death is unable to seize him, death becomes his very
body, and he becomes one of these deities.13
The principle of homology is also applied to the sacrifice and to the body: thus the heat (tapas)
thought to be generated in the body through practices of asceticism and meditation (which are also
first mentioned in the Upaniṣads) is identified with the fire of Vedic sacrifice. ‘The ritual manual of
11Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 5.7.
12Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.2.13. It is not entirely clear whether karma has already taken on an ethical sense in this
text. ‘Good action’ may still refer to correct performance of ritual.
13Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.2.7.
82
TRIMĀRGA
Baudhāyana asks: “Where then is sacrifice?”. The answer is, “In man.”’14 Once you know this, it is
possible to dispense with external ritual, and to concentrate on the internal sacrifice. In a much later
text, a compendium of religious duties ascribed to Manu, the religious duties of men are said to be
different in each age; a way of explaining the shift from the path of action to the path of knowledge.
The flame of sacrifice is also identified with the inner self, the ātman, giving rise to the most important
homology of all for the Upaniṣads, that between the ātman, the inner self, and brahman, by the time
of the Upaniṣads identified as the impersonal absolute, the essence of the universe, being itself, the
single reality underlying the universe.
Thus for the authors of the Upaniṣads the universe is constituted by a web of relations, things that
appear to be separate are in fact bound together. These connections are unknown to most people,
and discovering them constitutes real knowledge. Where once action, doing something, was important now it is above all knowledge, knowing something, which is important. This is the reason for
the description of the Upaniṣadic path as the path of knowledge. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad promises:
‘When a man knows the correspondence, his desires, both human and divine, are fulfilled for him.’15
The Upaniṣads repeatedly speak of what is to be known. In the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad a wealthy householder asks a teacher named Aṅgiras: ‘What is it my lord, by knowing which a man comes to know
this whole world?’ Aṅgiras tells him: ‘Two types of knowledge a man should learn—those who know
brahman tell us—the higher and the lower. The lower of the two consists of the Ṛgveda, the Yajurveda,
the Sāmaveda, the Artharvaveda, phonetics, the ritual science, grammar, etymology, metrics, and astronomy; whereas the higher is that by which one grasps the imperishable.’16 The value of knowing the Veda saṃhitās and their auxiliary sciences is not here denied altogether, but it is said that a
higher knowledge is available in the Upaniṣads. This knowledge is, however, not accessible to all. In
the Bṛhadāraṇkaya Upaniṣad the philosopher Yājñavalkya claims to be the most learned among the
brahmins and is then tested by a series of questions put to him by his rivals. He begins by answering
their questions but when Jāratkārava Artabhāga questions him about where a man goes after death
Yājñavalkya replies:
‘My friend, we cannot talk about this in public. Take my hand, Artabhāga; let’s go and
discuss this in private.’ So they left and talked about it. And what did they talk about?—
they talked about nothing but action... Yājñavalkya told him: ‘A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad action.’17
Ātman and brahman
The Upaniṣads insist on the importance of a teacher to impart knowledge, but the teachers do not
immediately reveal all that they know, and not all teachers are equal—there is constant rivalry between them. Nor are all students equal: in the eighth chapter of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad we have
the story of two students, the god Indra and the demon Virocana, who are sent by the other gods and
14Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra 24.2: 186.5, quoted in J. C. Heesterman, The Broken World of Sacrifice: an essay in ancient
Indian ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 5. If you are familiar with it, you might like to compare this with a
similar shift which takes place in ancient Israelite religion, expressed in Psalm 51: ‘For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would
I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart.’
15Chāndogya Upaniṣad 1.2.7.
16Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.1.3-4.
17Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.2.13.
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
83
demons to approach Prajāpati, the creator god and therefore the father of all, for instruction. They
want to ‘discover that self (ātman) by discovering which one obtains all the worlds, and all one’s desires are fulfilled’. Prajāpati had them live as celibate students for 32 years before asking them what
they wanted. He then tells them that the self (ātman) is simply that which one sees in a reflection.
Both were initially contented with this explanation, and returned to their groups. Virocana teaches
the demons that ‘It is the body (ātman) that one should extol in this world’ and that by caring for the
body both in life and after death (i.e. performing correct funeral rites) one wins both this world and
the next. Indra, however, realises this cannot be the whole truth, even before he reaches the gods, so
he returns to Prajāpati and questions him further. Prajāpati gradually instructs him about the truth
of the self on deeper and deeper levels, over the course of 101 years. The Upaniṣad ends with the announcement that it is brahman which is the self.
The text here exploits the ambiguity of the term ātman, which can mean both body and something
less physical, the core of one’s identity. Olivelle writes that ātman
has many meanings and usages in Upaniṣadic vocabulary; one such usage refers to the
“Self”, the ultimate essence of a human being, even though there is no agreement as to
what constitutes that essence. It will, however, be anachronistic to interpret this usage
of the term as referring only to to some “spiritual” core of a human being; the image of
the physical human body is present even when the Upaniṣads are attempting to isolate
that core.18
This ambiguity over the meaning of the term ātman is mirrored more widely in the processes
of internalization which are characteristic of the Upaniṣads. Put simply, the ātman is the self but a
distinction is drawn between the self as body, and the ‘real’ self, the self of knowledge, the knowing
or intelligent self. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad puts it like this: ‘As a heavily laden cart goes along
creaking, so this bodily self (ātman, saddled with the self (ātman) of knowledge, goes along groaning’.19
The weight that causes the groaning (an expression of the unsatisfactory nature of saṃsāric existence)
is karma.
This ‘real’ self, is elusive, and the Upaniṣads say apparently contradictory, or paradoxical, things
about it. This partly reflects the fact that the Upaniṣads were written over a long period, in a time of
religious change, and represent different speculations about the ātman. But it also reflects the nature
of the ātman as it is understood in Hindu thought. It is repeatedly said one cannot speak directly of
the ātman. The following formula is repeated three times in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad alone:
About this self (ātman), one can only say “not—, not—” (neti, neti). He is ungraspable,
for he cannot be grasped. He is undecaying, for he is not subject to decay. He has nothing
sticking to him, for he does not stick to anything. He is not bound; yet he neither trembles
in fear nor suffers injury.20
The most important truth about the self for the Upaniṣads is its identity with brahman. Again the texts
understand both brahman and the nature of its identity with the self differently. Brereton points out
that while later religious movements give brahman ‘a particular definition and a specific character…
for the Upanishads, the brahman remains an open concept. It is simply the designation given to whatever principle or power a sage believes to lie behind the world and make the world explicable.’21
18Olivelle, Upaniṣads, lv.
19Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3.35.
20Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15.
21Brereton, “The Upaniṣads,” 118.
84
TRIMĀRGA
Mokṣa: becoming brahman
In the third chapter of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad we find the statement that ‘Brahman, you see, is this
whole world. With inner tranquillity, one should venerate it as jalān.’ Olivelle explains that the term
jalān is probably meaningless; its meaning was not known even to the most famous of commentators
on the Upaniṣads, Śaṅkara. By ‘venerate’ he says the Upaniṣads mean ‘recognize the hidden connection or homology between the two’.22 In the Upaniṣads the homologies between the sacrifice and the
universe (the focus of the brāhmaṇas) come to be overshadowed by those between the human body
and the universe. Thus the text continues:
Now, then, man is undoubtedly made of resolve. What a man becomes on departing from
here after death is in accordance with his resolve in this world. So he should make this
resolve:… ‘This self (ātman) of mine that lies deep within my heart—it is smaller than a
grain of rice or barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller even than a millet grain or
a millet kernel; but it is larger than the earth, larger than the intermediate region, larger
than the sky, larger even than all these worlds put together. This self (ātman) of mine that
lies deep within my heart—it contains all actions, all desires, all smells, and all tastes; it
has captured this whole world; it neither speaks nor pays any heed. It is brahman. On
departing from here after death, I will become that.’ A man who has this resolve is never
beset at all with doubts.23
The Upaniṣads present this realisation as the overcoming of ignorance (avidyā), coming to see
the world as it really is, seeing through false conceptions of the self, the world, brahman and the gods.
However, realisation of the identity of ātman and brahman means more than simply understanding
the equation. Realising that the nature of one’s self (ātman) is the same as the nature of brahman,
is spoken of as becoming brahman: ‘When a man comes to know that highest brahman, he himself
becomes that very brahman.’
In the beginning this world was only brahman, and it knew only itself [ātman], thinking:
‘I am brahman’. As a result, it became the Whole. Among the gods, likewise, whosoever
realized this, only they became the Whole. It was the same also among the seers (ṛsis)
and among humans. Upon seeing this very point, the seer Vāmadeva proclaimed: ‘I was
Manu, and I was the sun.’ This is true even now. If a man knows ‘I am brahman’ in
this way, he becomes this whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he
becomes their very self [ātman]. So when a man venerates another deity, thinking, ‘he
is one, and I am another’ he does not understand.24
The realisation of the nature of ātman-brahman is one way in which the Upaniṣads characterize mokṣa,
that is, the attainment of the highest condition, liberation or enlightenment. Mokṣa is release from
the repeated death spoken of in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, and thus also from repeated birth.
The rituals prescribed in the earlier Veda are seen by the Upaniṣads as providing only a temporary
relief from the effects of karma, and suffering inevitably returns with rebirth. The Upaniṣads therefore
seek rather to eliminate karma altogether, to break the bond between karma and the ātman, to leave
the subtle body behind with the gross body, and attain final release from karma. The means (sādhana)
in the Upaniṣads are through realisation of the secret knowledge contained in the Upaniṣads. This in
22Olivelle, Upaniṣads, liii.
23Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14.1-4.
24Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.10.
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
85
turn is acquired through rigorous asceticism, yoga and meditation, a way of life cut off from society
and possible only for a few. Thus the achievement of mokṣa was for the Upaniṣads only possible for a
few. For the rest, the best they could do was to perform their dharma in the hope of gaining rebirth as
someone capable of pursuing the Upaniṣadic path.
There are however, also other conceptions of mokṣa or mukti. For the Yoga and Sāṃkhya schools,
mokṣa consists in the consuming of karma through mastering the body. This requires not only meditation but also the cultivation of positive virtues—non-violence, truthfulness, celibacy. Here mokṣa
is spoken of as kaivalya, ‘aloneness’ and may be attained while still alive (jīvanmukti—liberation in
the body). There is a certain reluctance (not shared by all later movements) to characterise this state,
in part perhaps because no personality as we understand it survives to experience it. It cannot then
be compared to anything we have experienced. Suggestions are made of a blissful state of isolation.
Sāṃkhya is sometimes spoken of as an atheistic school of thought, and indeed in Sāṃkhya thought
and other schools developing Upaniṣadic thought, the gods are relatively unimportant. By contrast,
the most popular post-Upaniṣadic movements, however, developed the theistic trend apparent in
some later Upaniṣads, to the point where devotion to god became the primary means for achieving
salvation.
The later Upaniṣads
In the earlier Upaniṣads realisation of the identity of ātman and brahman takes place at the feet of
a teacher, who is honoured in the ways prescribed in the earlier Veda. These Upaniṣads are still part
of the world of sacrifice with rituals of initiation. The later texts introduce other methods. In the
Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad we find a description of meditation, and an assertion that yogic practice and
yogic restraint, will lead to the perception of the true nature of the self, and also the knowledge of God.
When he keeps his body straight, with the three sections erect, and draws the senses together with his mind into his heart, a wise man shall cross all the frightful rivers with the
boat consisting of that formulation (brahman).
Just as a disk smeared with clay, once it is cleaned well, shines brightly, so also an embodied person, once he has perceived the true nature of the self, becomes solitary, his
goal attained, and free from sorrow.
When, by means of the true nature of the self, which resembles a lamp, a man practising
yogic restraint sees here the true nature of brahman, he is freed from all fetters, because
he has known God, unborn, unchanging, and unsullied by all quarters.25
The body is here not only a source of symbols and homologies, but also the means, the vehicle by
which one can realise the nature of ātman and its identity with brahman.
The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is also one of the first Upaniṣads to introduce a theistic emphasis.
The sixth and last chapter of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad presents an emphatically theistic, and indeed
monotheistic, view of a supreme God as the source of all things, including liberation:
The one God who covers himself with things issuing from the primal source, from his
own inherent nature, as a spider, with the threads—may he procure us dissolution in
brahman.
The one God hidden in all beings, pervading the universe, the inner self of all beings,
25Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 2.8,14-15.
86
TRIMĀRGA
the overseer of the work, dwelling in all beings, the witness, the spectator, alone, devoid
of qualities, the one controller of the many who are inactive, who makes the single seed
manifold—the wise who perceive him as abiding within themselves (ātman), they alone,
not others, enjoy eternal happiness.
He is the creator of all; the knower of all; his own source of birth; the knower; the architect
of time; the one without qualities; the one with all knowledge; the Lord of both the primal
source and of individual souls; the ruler over the qualities; and the cause of liberation
from remaining within, and bondage to the rebirth cycle.26
The one god of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is Rudra, a god whose personality is later connected
with that of Śiva. The text repeatedly calls him the ‘one God’, and characterizes him as śiva, meaning
‘benign’ or ‘auspicious’, although in earlier literature, some of which is quoted in this Upaniṣad, Rudra
is a fearsome god.
The short Īśā Upaniṣad, one of the first in which we see a strong theistic tendency, begins with the
words ‘This whole world is to be dwelt in by the Lord, whatever living being there is in the world.’27
The word translated here as ‘dwelt in by the Lord’ (īśāvāsya) can also be translated as ‘enveloped or
pervaded by the Lord’. Together these two Upaniṣads foreshadow the turn to the worship of Śiva, and
of Viṣṇu, who is thought to pervade the world in the manner described in the Īśā Upaniṣad, and the
development of the path of bhakti.
Bhaktimārga—The Path of Devotion in Post-Vedic Literature
Abandon all the Laws and instead seek shelter with me alone.
Be unconcerned, I shall set you free from all evils.28
The later theistic movements represent mokṣa as communion with the deity, living in the dwellingplace of the deity. There are variations on what form this communion takes: for example, different
degrees of sharing in the deity, from simply sharing in the presence of the deity, through becoming an
an aspect of the deity, to complete absorbtion by the deity. More popular conceptions of the state of
mokṣa are similar to some western ideas of heaven or paradise, except that they are often not thought
of as never-ending. It is possible to be reborn in heaven and then subsequently to be reborn on earth,
particularly in mythological and purāṇic accounts. The way to obtaining mokṣa is through devotion
to the deity, which may be expressed in many forms.
Devotion is said to be appropriate to the declining age in which we live. In this age, few are capable
of performing the sacrifices required by the path of action, or the austerities of the path of knowledge.
The first text to proclaim bhakti as the highest path, because it is available to all, is the BhagavadGītā, which is part of a larger epic, the Mahābhārata. This prepared the way for the great flowering
of devotional Hinduism, which we might call classical Hinduism, focussed on the great gods and goddesses who are still at the centre of modern Hinduism. New textual sources, for example the Purāṇas,
accompanied the rise of these devotional movements. Although brahman, the impersonal absolute,
remains a concern for those of a more philosophical orientation, who pursue the path of jñāna, the
26Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.10-12, 16.
27Īśā Upaniṣad 1.
28Kṛṣṇa speaking in the Bhagavad-Gītā 18.66, trans. in J. A. B. Buitenen, The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata: text and
translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 143–5.
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
87
personal deities such as Śiva, Viṣṇu, and the Goddess become the focus of the religious striving of the
majority.
Post-Vedic Literature: The Epics
The Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa were originally orally-transmitted bardic poems, comparable
to the Greek Iliad and Odyssey. They are however considerably longer: the Rāmāyaṇa is twice the
length of the Iliad and the Odyssey put together and the Mahābhārata is longer still. They developed
over a substantial period, perhaps as long as a millennium (5th century bce to 4th century ce). This
period saw a shift from the Vedic Hinduism—a religion based on sacrifice aimed at ensuring prosperity and a favourable afterlife—to classical Hinduism—a religion focussed on the deities, devotion
to whom provides liberation from repeated rebirth. This shift is reflected in the epics—they do not
represent a consistent religious viewpoint, but rather exhibit development from a basically heroic
ethos (in which honour, sacrifice and posterity are primary concerns) to a more typically ‘religious’
outlook which results in the identification of Rāma and Kṛṣṇa as avatāras of Viṣṇu. They also provide
instruction in dharma—another characteristic concern of classical Hinduism. Later, we will look at
how dharma is codified in the rules contained in the dharmaśāstras. The epics not only provide instruction in dharma through didactic speeches placed in the mouths of the heroes and their advisers,
but also in their dramatic sections. The Mahābhārata deals with the dilemmas that arise when the demands of dharma seem to conflict, and the Rāmāyaṇa exemplifies dharma in the person of its central
protagonist, the ideal king Rāma.
The epics exist in numerous recensions, including Jain versions, and later Indian poets have produced their own versions, which vary in different degrees from the older texts. The different versions
are interesting for the way in which they attempt to shape the hearers’ perceptions of the main characters. The epics have been and are extremely influential on Indian and specifically Hindu popular
consciousness. A. K. Ramanujan is reported to have said that no Indian hears the Rāmāyaṇa for the
first time, meaning that, as Brockington puts it ‘the stories and… characters [of both epics] are integral
to every Hindu’s consciousness’.29
The Mahābhārata
John Brockington provides the following synopsis of the Mahābhārata:
The basic plot of the Mahābhārata… concerns the struggle for control of the Kuru kingdom between two sets of cousins: the hundred sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, usually called the
Kauravas, and the five sons of Pāṇḍu, the Pāṇḍavas. Both fathers have ruled in turn, so
the line of succession to the throne is by no means clear and the rights of the situation
are debatable. This leads eventually to open warfare between the cousins, although this
is preceded by various events of which the most significant is the dicing match in which
the oldest Pāṇḍava, Yudiṣṭhira, first loses everything to the Kaurava champion and then
the five brothers, along with their [joint] wife Draupadī, are exiled to the forest for 12
years, plus a further year to be spent undetected within society. After their return and
the continued refusal by the Kauravas to reach an agreement, war becomes inevitable
29John L. Brockington, “The Sanskrit Epics,” in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin A. Flood (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 128.
88
TRIMĀRGA
and, as the actual battle is about to begin, the third Pāṇḍava brother, Arjuna, confides
to his friend Kṛṣṇa, chief of the Yādavas, his qualms about fighting the opposing side
because they are his relatives. This is the setting for Kṛṣṇa’s sermon to him, the Bhagavadgītā, which has become the best known part of the whole epic. The battle itself,
over 18 days, occupies the middle part of the epic (itself comprising 18 books) and is followed by the lamentations of the women, two lengthy books of advice to Yudiṣṭhira by
the dying Bhīṣma (the senior member of the family), and several shorter books narrating
various events up to the end of the Pāṇḍavas’ lives.30
As we have seen, the Bhagavadgītā proclaims the way of devotion to Kṛṣṇa as the highest religious
practice. But it also skilfully incorporates other Hindu religious concerns—finding a place for action,
and in particular fulfilling one’s dharma, and the idea of renunciation, within its overall message of
devotion to and reliance upon God as the best means for achieving liberation.
The Rāmāyaṇa
The basic story of the Rāmāyaṇa is described in the reading for this unit, which also draws some
contrasts between it and the Mahābhārata. Nevertheless the Rāmāyaṇa exists in many versions, of
which the best-known are Vālmīki’s Sanskrit version, the Hindi Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsīdās (16th century) and the Tamil Irāmāvatāram by Kampaṉ (probably 10th century ce, but perhaps later). Stuart
Blackburn suggests there are perhaps 3,000 different versions,31 but Tulsīdās wrote: ‘Rāma is born in
countless ways, and there are tens of millions of Rāmāyaṇas’.32 A. K. Ramanujan notes that part of the
aesthetic pleasure of the Rāmāyaṇa derives from variations in the telling which, in turn, rely on the
knowledge of previous tellings:
In several of the later Rāmāyaṇas … when Rāma is exiled, he does not want Sītā to go
with him into the forest. Sītā argues with him. At first she uses the usual arguments:
she is his wife, she should share his sufferings, exile herself in his exile, and so on. When
he still resists the idea, she is furious. She bursts out, “Countless Rāmāyaṇas have been
composed before this. Do you know of one where Sītā doesn’t go with Rāma to the forest?” That clinches the argument, and she goes with him. And as in India nothing occurs
uniquely, even this motif appears in more than one Rāmāyaṇa.33
In north India all-night recitations of the Rāmcaritmānas and dramatic enactments of the story
of the Rāmāyaṇa take place during the festival of Rāmlīlā. The film by Michael Macintyre, The Story
of Rāma, follows a public performance of the Rāmāyaṇa in Benares.34 The myths recounted in the
epics are also the source for countless later works of art. The epics, especially the Rāmāyaṇa, are
also important in Southeast Asia, e.g., the Thai version of the Rāmāyaṇa, the Rāmakien. The Thai
30Brockington, “The Sanskrit Epics,” 117.
31Stuart Blackburn, Inside the Drama-House: Rāma Stories and Shadow Puppets in South India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996), 22.
32Rāmcaritmānas 1.33.6.
33A. K. Ramanujan, “Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” in Many
Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991), 33.
34See also Philip Lutgendorf, “Rām’s Story in Shiva’s City: Public Arenas and Private Patronage,” in Culture and Power
in Banaras: Community, Performance, and Environment, 1800–1980, ed. Sandra B. Freitag (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1989).
KARMA, JÑĀNA, BHAKTI
89
kingdom Ayutthaya (1350–1767), is named after Rāma’s city, Ayodhyā, and the kings were named Rāma.
In Indonesian shadow puppet theatre (wayang), Rāma is the model Islamic prince.
Religion and politics after television
The epics were televised in India in the late 1980s (Rāmāyaṇa 1987–9; Mahābhārata 1988–90). Richman notes that: ‘Many people responded to the image of Rāma on the television screen as if it were
an icon in a temple. They bathed before watching, garlanded the set like a shrine, and considered the
viewing of Rāma to be a religious experience.’35 The Rāmāyaṇa was screened first, and when screening stopped after a year’s worth of weekly episodes, sanitation workers across north India went on
strike because the seventh and final book had not been televised. (The seventh book contains the
story of Vālmīki, from whom the sanitation workers claim descent). The government was forced to
step in and instruct the national broadcaster to film the remaining episodes. Another indication of
the continuing importance of the Rāmāyaṇa, and of the impact of the televised version may be seen
in the use made of it by conservative Hindu political movements. Recent years have seen the rise of a
new form of specifically Hindu nationalism, whose followers are concerned to defend Hinduism from
what they see as attacks upon it by the secular Indian state. The ideology of these Hindu nationalist
political groups relies heavily upon the idea of the ideal Hindu kingdom embodied in the rule of Rāma
in Ayodhyā. Conservative Hindu groups aim to re-establish ‘Rāmrājya’, ‘the rule of Rāma’, in India.36
One particular issue which has been used by Hindu nationalists to stir up nationalistic and antiMuslim sentiment is a religious site in the town of Ayodhyā, which has been identified by Hindus as
the birthplace of Rama and the site of a temple, the Rāmjanmabhūmi, which was built to mark this
sacred spot. According to the Hindu nationalists, this temple was torn down in 1528 by the soldiers of
the first Mughal emperor and a mosque built in its place, the Babri Masjid. There is evidence that sites
and stones of Hindu temples were used to build mosques, just as there is evidence that Hindu temples
have been built on the sites and using the stones of Buddhist and Jain temples. But evidence relating
to the claims about the Babri Masjid prior to the mid-nineteenth century is scarce. Nevertheless from
the mid-nineteenth century the site has served as a rallying call for Hindus and was the object and the
scene of numerous eruptions of violence, in 1850s and sporadically afterwards. In 1949 after another
incident in which images of Rāma and Sītā ‘appeared’ inside the mosque the site was closed to all
worshippers, although Hindus were permitted to worship outside. The debate continued and in 1992
again erupted in violence, when a crowd of Hindus broke into the compound, tore down the mosque
and began to build a Hindu temple, dedicated to Rāma. Religious violence erupted in many places
across India and thousands died. The countdown to the riot began with the heightened religious tensions caused by the rath yātra, or chariot pilgrimage, of Lal Krishna Advani the leader of the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), from Somnath on the west coast to Ayodhyā, the stated purpose of which was to
raise support for the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the building of a Rāma temple in its place.
The Toyota van in which Advani travelled was decorated to resemble the war-chariot of Arjuna, more
specifically, the chariot as it had been depicted in the televised version of the Mahābhārata.37
35Paula Richman, Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991), 3.
36See Sheldon Pollock, “Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination in India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (1993): 261–
97.
37Richard H. Davis, “The Iconography of Rama’s Chariot,” in Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics
of Democracy in India, ed. David Ludden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 27–54.
90
TRIMĀRGA
Recommended reading
Brereton, Joel P. “The Upaniṣads.” In Approaches to the Asian Classics, edited by William Theodore de
Bary and Irene Bloom, 115–35. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Buitenen, J. A. B. The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata: text and translation. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981.
Doniger, Wendy. Hindus: An Alternative History. New York: Penguin, 2009.
Required Viewing
Robert Gardner and J. F. Staal, dirs., Altar of Fire (Film Study Center at Harvard University, 1976), 45
min., http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/764444.
Required Reading
Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, “Rāmāyaṇa,” in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene R. Thursby (London: Routledge, 2004), 75–96.
A
lthough it is little known to the average, educated Westerner, the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa is arguably
one of the three or four most important and most widely influential texts ever written. For the impact this poem and the countless other works it has inspired upon the religions, the arts, and the social
and political thought of much of Asia has been and continues to be both profound and widespread.
Indeed, the influence of the Rāmāyaṇa is in many ways comparable to that only of such monumental
texts as the Bible and the Qur’ān.
But where these other two great religious documents have, like the Rāmāyaṇa, made themselves
at home in many different cultures, each of them has done so within the confines of a single greater
religious tradition, the Judeo-Christian and the Islamic, respectively. In contrast, the Rāmāyaṇa, over
the past two-and-a-half millennia, has established itself as a central cultural document of most of the
major Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist, and Islamic cultures of South and Southeast Asia.
In short, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that in terms of its diversity, longevity, and ability to
transcend boundaries of language, culture, religion, social class, gender, and politics, the Rāmāyaṇa—
by which we mean the collectivity of the oral, literary, folk, performative, and artistic representations
of the ancient Hindu tale of Rāma and Sītā that have permeated, indeed saturated, the cultures of
South, Southeast, and to some extent Central, West, and East Asia beginning with the first millennium bce—is among the most popular, versatile, and influential stories the world has known. In the
following pages we will attempt to trace a few of the outlines of the extraordinary trajectory of this
vast and complex polymorphic set of texts (to use the broadest possible reading of that term), as its
components have impacted the lives, beliefs, aesthetics, politics, social relations, and general culture
of diverse nations and communities spanning nearly three millennia of human history and stretching
over immense areas of Asia from Iran to the Philippines and from Sri Lanka to Mongolia.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
91
The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki
We will begin with a discussion of what we believe to be the oldest surviving version of the Rāma
story, the monumental Sanskrit epic poem, the Rāmāyaṇa (the Adventures of Rāma), attributed to
the legendary poet-sage Vālmīki. This epic appears to have been largely composed during the first
half of the first millennium bce.1 The precise dating of the poem is, however, difficult, and scholarly
opinion on the matter varies considerably.2 It is also apparent that some portions of the text, as it has
come down to us, were composed later than others.3 Moreover, indigenous traditions of India regard
the poem to be a work of the Tretā Yuga, the second of the four great cyclical ages of cosmic time,
since its author is a contemporary of the epic hero, who is said to have lived in that age. This would,
in the traditionalist reckoning, date the epic many hundreds of thousands of years before the modern
era. Then, too, a corollary of Yuga theory is that the cosmic ages constantly recur and that events of a
given yuga will recur with some variations when that same era comes around again. By this reckoning,
Rāma reappears and—with some variations—undergoes his adventures, trials, and triumphs in each
of the endlessly recurring Tretā Yugas.
As it has come down to us, the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa is a lengthy, originally orally composed, narrative poem of roughly 25,000 verses in generally simple, but sometimes moderately ornate, Sanskrit
couplets divided into seven large books or kāṇḍas. For the purposes of comparison, then, the poem
is approximately twice the length of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined. Because of the popularity
of the work and its central cultural and religious significance, it is likely that the poem was subject
to a long and complex history of oral transmission before and during the period in which it came to
be frequently copied and recopied over the centuries in all of the regions and scripts of India. As a
result there has evolved a complex recensional history of the poem during which it, like its sister epic
the Mahābhārata, came to be transmitted in two major regional recensions, the northern and southern, each of which has a number of subregional variants. These in turn are subdivided into groups of
manuscripts composed in the various scripts of the subcontinent.4 The textual variations that characterize the two major recensions are significant, with only about one-third of the total text identical
in the two versions. Despite this textual variation and the fact that the two larger versions sometimes
breakup one or two of the kāṇḍas differently, the general configuration of the narrative is quite similar
in all recensions and has generally been regarded by scholars as the departure point for the sometimes
quite different treatments of the tale in other, later Rāmāyaṇa versions.
It will be helpful, we believe, to summarize the plot of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa as a starting point
to a discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theological significance of the poem in the development of the larger Rāmāyaṇa tradition and of Hindu civilization in general.
1Vālmīki, The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, trans. Robert P. Goldman, vol. 1 of 5: Bālakāṇḍa (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984), 14–23.
2John L. Brockington, Righteous Rāma: The Evolution of an Epic (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), 1, John L. Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 377–79.
3Brockington, Righteous Rāma, 312, 315.
4G.H. Bhatt and U.P. Shah, The Vālmīki-Ramāyāṇa: Critically Edited for the First Time, 7 vols. (Baroda: Oriental Institute,
1960–75), 1: xiii–xxix.
92
TRIMĀRGA
The Story
Unlike the Homeric epics, but somewhat similarly to the Mahābhārata, the poem begins with a framing narrative whose purpose is to provide a history of its conception, composition, and early dissemination. The sage Vālmīki is introduced in conversation with the divine seer Nārada. Questioned by
the former as to the existence of a truly exemplary man in the current era, Nārada responds with a
terse biography of Rāma, the current ruler of the kingdom of Kosala, whose capital is the city of Ayodhyā. After fulsome praise of Rāma’s physical and moral perfection, the sage relates his career from the
eve of his first, abortive consecration, through his exile and sufferings and the war in Laṅkā, to his ultimate accession to his ancestral throne and the utopian era that this inaugurates. This brief narrative
essentially encompasses, in much abbreviated form, the substance of Books 2 to 6 of the larger epic.
āśrama
Reflecting on Nārada’s edifying tale, Vālmīki wanders into the woodlands surrounding his āśrama
for his daily ablutions. There his blissful contemplation of nature is rudely interrupted as he witnesses
the cruel death of one of a pair of mating cranes at the hands of a tribal hunter. Stunned by what he
sees as an act of unrighteousness and deeply moved by the grief of the surviving bird, the sage curses
the hunter for his wanton act. The form of this particular curse, however, turns out to be more interesting than its substance, for it issues from the sage’s lips as a perfectly formed metrical unit, a verse,
consisting of four equal quarters of eight syllables each whose prosody makes it ideal for singing to the
accompaniment of stringed and percussion instruments. Puzzled by these strange events, Vālmīki returns to his āśrama to ponder them. There he is visited by the great creator divinity Lord Brahmā who
tells him that he need not be perplexed, for it was through the inspiration of the god that the sage has
been able to transform his sorrow (śoka) for the suffering of the grieving crane into an entirely new
aesthetic medium: śloka or true poetry. Brahmā then reveals his purpose, commissioning Vālmīki to
employ his newfound poetic inspiration to compose a monumental poem about the career of Rāma,
a brief account of which he had heard earlier that morning from Nārada, and granting him the divine
vision to be able to know the events of that remarkable career intimately. The sage composes the epic,
filling it with all of the poetic moods (rasa), and teaches it to his disciples, notably the twins Lava and
Kuśa, who perform it throughout the land to the plaudits of all who hear them. Eventually the fame of
these singers of tales—who are in actuality the sons of Rāma—reaches the ears of King Rāma himself,
and he calls them to his court where he becomes both the audience and subject of the narrative. It is
at this point that the epic story proper begins.
This charming and interesting preamble (upodghāta) to the poem is important because it is the
source of the widely established tradition that regards Vālmīki as not just a great poet but in fact as the
ādikavi or first poet and his immortal composition as therefore the ādikāvya or first poem, the source
and inspiration for all later poetic composition. This reputation, in many ways richly deserved, is
significant for a larger study of the Rāmāyaṇa tradition, in that it accounts in large measure for the
enormous prestige the Rāmāyaṇa has enjoyed over the centuries, even among those who do not, and
in fact cannot, read its Sanskrit. It also firmly establishes the tradition that Vālmīki’s is the original
formal or literary rendering of the Rāmakathā or the story of Rāma and the direct or indirect source
of all subsequent versions.
The epic narrative proper begins with a description of the rich and powerful kingdom of Kosala,
the ancestral domain of the Solar dynasty, the noble race of kings who trace their lineage back to the
very sun god himself. As the tale begins, the kingdom is being ruled from its prosperous, fortified capital city of Ayodhyā by the Solar dynast Daśaratha. The aged monarch is represented as possessing
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
93
everything a man could desire in terms of wealth, virtue, power, and fame with the critical and potentially tragic exception of a son to carry on his ancient line. On the advice of his ministers and with
the assistance of the sage Ṛśyaśṛṅga, the king performs sacrifices with the aim of remedying this lack.
Out of the sacrificial fire emerges a divine personage bearing a vessel filled with porridge which, the
king is instructed, is to be fed to his three wives so that they may conceive and bear him sons.
While the king’s putrakāmeṣṭi or rite for the production of a son is in progress, the gods, assembled
to receive their shares of the oblation, address the creator Brahmā, complaining to him that a terrible
demon, a rākṣasa named Rāvaṇa, taking advantage of Brahmā’s boon of invulnerability at the hands
of all supernatural beings, has begun to oppress the whole world. Learning from the creator that, in
his arrogance, Rāvaṇa had omitted the mention of mere mortals from the list of those who could not
harm him, the gods appeal to Lord Viṣṇu, asking him to divide himself into four parts and take birth
as the four heroic sons of Daśaratha in order to encompass the destruction of the demon king. Viṣṇu
accepts this mission, and Brahmā instructs the gods to father countless semidivine apes and monkeys
to serve as his allies.
This episode—found in all surviving recensions and manuscripts—is of considerable significance
to our understanding of the theological importance of the Rāmāyaṇa, as it establishes the poem early
on as one of the central texts of the emerging Vaiṣṇava corpus and identifies Rāma (along with his
three brothers) as, like Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, one of the principal avatāras or incarnations of Viṣṇu and, in
the course of time, one of the major objects of Hindu devotionalism. We shall return to the discussion
of Rāma’s divinity below when we consider the history of Rāmāyaṇa scholarship.
Unlike the later narratives of the life of Kṛṣṇa and some relatively modern retellings of the Rāma
story, Vālmīki’s poem pays little attention to the childhood of its hero, moving swiftly from the narrative of his birth to that of his coming of age. As the idealized prince and his brothers approach
manhood, the tranquility of the Kosalan court is shattered by the arrival of the frightening and irascible sage Viśvāmitra who demands that the aged king lend him his beloved son to defend the sage’s
āśrama from the depredations of some rākṣasas who have been interfering with his sacrificial rites.
The fond king is reluctant to part with Rāma but is at last persuaded under the threat of a curse, and
Rāma, together with Lakṣmaṇa, his inseparable companion and younger brother, is committed to the
care of the sage. The three set off on what amounts to a kind of initiatory journey, during the course of
which Rāma receives instruction in mythological lore from the sage, rids the woodlands of a terrible
demoness, is initiated in the secret lore of divine weapons, and, finally, fulfills his mission by ridding
the Viśvāmitra’s āśrama of its predatory rākṣasas.
In the wake of Rāma’s success Viśvāmitra reveals to him a further purpose of their journey. He
informs him that King Janaka of the nearby city of Mithilā is holding a contest of strength and martial
vigor for the hand of his adoptive daughter, a princess of rare beauty whom he had found as an infant
in the ploughed furrow of a sacrificial ground and accordingly named Sītā, “furrow.” The test, which
no warrior has yet passed, is the lifting and wielding of an immensely heavy and powerful bow that
had been entrusted to the king’s care by its owner, the mighty lord Śiva himself.
Although still a mere youth, Rāma easily passes the test, lifting and, in fact, breaking the mighty
bow. He thus wins the hand of Sītā in marriage, while his brothers wed other girls of Janaka’s household. On the return journey the wedding party is accosted by Rāma Jāmadagnya (Paraśurāma), the
dreaded Brāhmaṇ nemesis of the warrior class. To the horror of Daśaratha and his attendants, the
Brāhmaṇ-warrior expresses his contempt for what he considers the defective bow of Śiva that Rāma
has so easily broken and challenges him to test his mettle with the more powerful weapon of Viṣṇu
94
Bildungsroman:
novel dealing with
a person’s
formative years or
spiritual
education
dharma
TRIMĀRGA
that he himself carries. Rāma seizes and masters the bow using it to cutoff the heavenly path of the
irascible Brāhmaṇ.
This odd confrontation of the two Rāmas is interesting, since both are regarded as avatāras or
incarnations of the lord Viṣṇu. Here the younger Rāma literally displaces the elder and comes into his
own more fully as the incarnation of his age. It similarly serves as the final element in the opening
book’s Bildungsroman of Rāma as an epic hero who has overcome the oedipal dread of the patriarchal
Brāhmaṇ to emerge as a fully formed hero in his own right.
The happy couple, Rāma and Sītā, returns to Ayodhyā deeply absorbed in their mutual love. This
brings to a close the first book of the epic, the Bālakāṇḍa.
The action of the second book, the Ayodhyākāṇḍa, opens some years later and concerns itself
centrally with a political intrigue in the women’s apartments of King Daśaratha’s household and its
cataclysmic consequences. The old king, feeling the burden of his years, decides that the time is propitious for him to withdraw from the life of a householder and monarch and consecrate his eldest
and most deeply beloved son, Rāma, as yuvarāja or prince regent. He determines that the moment is
particularly opportune since his next oldest son, Prince Bharata, the son of his favorite queen Kaikeyī,
is temporarily away from the capital on a visit to his mother’s family. The immediate consecration of
Rāma is announced to the general rejoicing of the populace. However, when the news reaches the
ears of Kaikeyī’s lifelong servant-woman, the hunchback Mantharā, she rushes to her mistress to report what she sees as a calamity. The naive queen is at first delighted at the good fortune of Rāma,
but Mantharā soon persuades Kaikeyī that the accession of Rāma and the attendant elevation of his
mother, Kausalyā, to the status of queen-mother can only spell disaster for her and her son. At length
persuaded, the simple-minded Kaikeyī skillfully employs her feminine wiles and takes advantage of
the sexual thralldom of the aged king to force Daśaratha to grant her two thus far unfulfilled and unspecified boons he had once promised her as a reward for her assistance. Using the boons she forces
the king, for whom the keeping of his given word is sacred, to agree to the exile of Rāma to the wilderness as a penniless wanderer for fourteen years and to the succession of her own son Bharata in his
place. The blow to Daśaratha is a crushing one.
Most noteworthy at this juncture is the way in which Rāma distinguishes himself by the stoicism
and calm fortitude with which he accepts the sudden reversal of his fortunes. His only concern is
to maintain the truth of his father’s word despite the advice to refuse his father’s command on the
part of his impetuous brother Lakṣmaṇa and his own mother. Rāma takes his leave of his family. His
mother is desolate, but Sītā, arguing passionately that a wife’s place is at her husband’s side through
thick and thin, rejects Rāma’s arguments that she should remain behind in safety and comfort. In this
way, Sītā establishes herself firmly in the popular imagination as the archetype of the pativratā, the
unconditionally devoted Hindu wife, just as Rāma has now proven himself to be the idealized son,
deferring unconditionally to patriarchal authority and the all-powerful code of dharma.
Divesting themselves of their wealth and finery, Rāma, Sītā, and the ever-faithful Lakṣmaṇa set
out for the wilderness, followed by virtually the entire population of the city. Slipping away from their
devoted followers, they cross the Gaṅgā and enter the idyllic woodlands of Mount Citrakūṭa. In the
meanwhile, Daśaratha, his heart broken, dies grieving for his beloved son.
Bharata, alerted to the catastrophe at Ayodhyā through prophetic dreams, returns home in haste
to find his father dead, his brother banished, and the kingdom without a ruler. Rebuking his mother
for what she has done and refusing the royal consecration pressed upon him by the court Brāhmaṇs,
he organizes a grand expedition to bring Rāma back to take up his rightful place as king. The brothers
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
95
meet but cannot come to any immediate resolution of the succession issue. Both refuse the throne,
Rāma on the grounds that he must adhere strictly to his father’s words, and Bharata on the grounds
that Rāma should, by virtue of his age and qualities, be the king in any case. At length a compromise
is reached whereby Bharata will rule the kingdom as Rāma’s regent for the specified period of the
latter’s exile, placing Rāma’s sandals on the throne as a symbol of the latter’s true sovereignty. At the
end of the fourteen years, Rāma is to return and take up his long delayed consecration as king. Bharata
returns to a village outside Ayodhyā to await his brother’s return. Rāma and his party, however, eager
to avoid further such encounters, plunge deeper into the wilderness. This brings the Ayodhyākāṇḍa
to a close.
The third book of the epic, the Araṇyakāṇḍa, finds the hero wandering with his wife and brother
Lakṣmaṇa amongst the hermitages of the sages of the Daṇḍaka Forest. The ascetics appeal to Rāma to
protect them from the savage rākṣasas that haunt the region. Rāma agrees, despite Sītā’s uneasiness
at her husband’s involvement in the world of violent conflict. After several hostile encounters with
monstrous demons who foreshadow the central moment of the book and the poem by attempting
to abduct Sītā, the threesome settles into a peaceful, rustic life near the banks of the Godāvarī River.
This sylvan idyll, however, is soon interrupted by the arrival of a promiscuous rākṣasa woman, Śūrpaṇakhā, sister of the demon-king Rāvaṇa. Attempting first to seduce the brothers and then devour
Sītā, she is teased and ultimately disfigured by the heroes. She reports her humiliation first to the local
rākṣasa garrison, whose warriors are then annihilated in combat by Rāma, and ultimately to Rāvaṇa
himself. Śūrpaṇakhā’s report fills the rākṣasa overlord with hatred for Rāma and passion for his beautiful wife, Sītā. He forms a plan to lure Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa away from the āśrama with the assistance
of a rākṣasa named Mārīca who takes the form of a golden deer. Sītā, seeing the enchanting animal
covets it, and she sends Rāma to catch it for her. Mārīca draws Rāma off to a great distance and, when
he is finally struck down by Rāma’s arrow, cries out for assistance in Rāma’s voice. Sītā, hearing what
she thinks to be her husband’s desperate cries, urges Lakṣmaṇa to go to his aid. The latter, knowing
that Rāma cannot really be in danger and heedful of his brother’s instructions not to leave Sītā unguarded, attempts to reason with her. But Sītā, in her alarm, accuses Lakṣmaṇa of harboring a desire
to eliminate Rāma in order to possess her for himself. Cut to the quick Lakṣmaṇa disobeys Rāma’s
orders and rushes off into the forest.
Rāvaṇa, who has been lurking nearby, then takes on the form of a venerable forest ascetic and
presents himself at Sītā’s hut on the pretext of asking for alms. His conversation soon takes a decidedly non-ascetic turn. Rāvaṇa reveals himself in his true form, seizes the princess, and carries her off
through the sky in his flying chariot. Attracted by the commotion, the vulture-king Jaṭāyus, an old
friend of Daśaratha, attempts to come to Sītā’s aid, but he is overpowered and mortally wounded by
Rāvaṇa. Rāvaṇa then carries Sītā off through the air to his island kingdom of Laṅkā.
Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa return from the forest to find Sītā missing. They search for her in desolation
and at length come upon the dying Jaṭāyus, who informs them of her abduction but who dies before
he can tell them where she has been taken or by whom.
Rāma wanders mournfully in search of his wife, giving vent to a terrifying outburst of anger in an
almost mad display of grief and rage. Soon he and Lakṣmaṇa encounter the monstrous rākṣasa Kabandha, who, when killed and cremated by the princes, reveals himself to be a divine being. Kabandha
directs them to the mountain Ṛśyamūka, where he says they will find the monkey-lord Sugrīva, who
will assist them in their search. The brothers proceed to lake Pampā, near Ṛśyamūka, bringing the
Araṇyakāṇḍa to a close.
96
TRIMĀRGA
The fourth book, the Kiṣkindhākāṇḍa, opens with Sugrīva, the exiled lord of the monkeys, dispatching his loyal minister Hanumān to find out the intentions of the two princes who are wandering
in the guise of ascetics. Rāma and Sugrīva meet and exchange their sad histories. Like Rāma, the
monkey-king claims that he has been wrongfully driven from his kingdom and robbed of his wife. He
tells Rāma of how, mistakenly thinking his powerful elder brother Vālin to have been killed in a battle
with a demon, he took over both the kingdom and his brother’s wife. When Vālin returns, he drives
his brother Sugrīva out of the kingdom and takes his wife in turn.
Rāma and Sugrīva form a pact of mutual assistance, with Rāma agreeing to kill Vālin and replace
Sugrīva on the throne in exchange for Sugrīva’s assistance in finding and recovering Sītā. Rāma instructs Sugrīva to engage his brother in single combat and, true to his word, strikes down Vālin from
ambush, justifying this questionable action in the face of the complaints of the dying monkey. This
episode has remained one of the more vexed ethical problems in the story until the present day.
After some delay, Sugrīva marshals vast numbers of his monkey troops and organizes them into
four great search parties, each of which is dispatched to scour one of the four cardinal points of the
compass. The southern party, led by Vālin’s son Aṅgada, eventually makes its way to the southern
slopes of the Vindhya Mountains, where, in despair at the failure of their mission and the daunting
immensity of the southern ocean, the monkeys vow to fast themselves to death. Their vow is interrupted by the vulture Sampāti, the older brother of Jaṭāyus, who approaching to devour them ends by
informing them that he has seen Sītā being carried across the ocean to the rākṣasas’ island kingdom of
Laṅkā. Resolved to send one of their number as a spy to scout for the abducted princess, the monkey
leaders each declare the distance he can leap. Only Hanumān, son of the wind god, sits silent. When
it has been made clear that none of the other monkeys has the power to leap the mighty ocean, the
task falls to him. As he prepares to make his flight, the Kiṣkindhākāṇḍa draws to a close.
The fifth book of the epic, the Sundarakāṇḍa, opens with a lengthy account of Hanumān’s prodigious leap and his long and frustrating search of the rākṣasa king’s city and palace grounds. The poet
depicts the forlorn princess in captivity and her confrontations with her monstrous suitor Rāvaṇa.
Eventually, Hanumān discovers Sītā in a park attached to the harem. He reveals himself to her, reassuring her with his accurate description of Rāma and his presentation of Rāma’s signet ring. He offers
to carry her back, but she refuses, stating her preference of being rescued by her husband himself.
Hanumān then takes his leave of Sītā and begins a rampage of destruction in the palace parklands,
during which he encounters and kills many of the rākṣasa warriors sent to capture him. At length he
is captured by Rāvaṇa’s son Indrajit. Dragged before the rākṣasa king, the monkey rebukes him for his
lawless conduct and urges him to restore Sītā to Rāma or face the most severe consequences. Rāvaṇa
orders that Hanumān be paraded through the town with his tail set ablaze. But the monkey slips his
bonds and, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, sets the city ablaze.
Taking leave once more of Sītā, Hanumān leaps back across the ocean, to the delight of the waiting
monkeys. In high spirits they march back to the monkey capital of Kiṣkindhā to report the discovery
of Sītā to Rāma, Lakṣmaṇa, and Sugrīva. This brings the Sundarakāṇḍa to a close.
The sixth book, called the Yuddhakāṇḍa (or in some versions the Laṅkākāṇḍa), is the longest of
Vālmīki’s poem and deals with the great battle before the gates of Rāvaṇa’s gilded citadel. Rāma and
his forces march to the shore of the ocean, where, after Rāma subdues the turbulent ocean divinity,
the monkeys construct a great causeway by means of which the army crosses to Laṅkā. There they are
joined by Rāvaṇa’s younger brother Vibhīṣaṇa who has defected after Rāvaṇa has brutally rejected his
advice to return Sītā. Rāma and his forces lay siege to Laṅkā, and a protracted and gory battle rages for
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
97
many days with triumphs and disasters on both sides. Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa encounter and ultimately
destroy such fearsome warriors as Indrajit, Rāvaṇa’s son and master of supernatural weaponry, and
the demon king’s gargantuan brother, the monstrous Kumbhakarṇa. Nonetheless, their victory does
not come easily. At one point both of the brothers are immobilized and nearly killed by the magical
serpent arrows of Indrajit and are revived only in the eleventh hour by the arrival of the divine bird
Garuḍa, the celestial mount of Viṣṇu and the sworn enemy of all serpents. When the redoubtable
Indrajit uses his supernatural weaponry to strike down virtually the entire monkey host, Hanumān
once more saves the day by flying to the Himālayas to carry back a mountain on which healing herbs
are growing. This episode remains in popular art and the popular imagination as one of the central
iconic moments of the epic tale and in the cultus of Hanumān. At length, after a terrific battle, Rāma
is finally successful in slaying the ten-headed demon-king.
But now, after his long sought and costly victory, Rāma is far from demonstrating the expected joy
at the recovery of his abducted wife. Instead, he speaks harshly to Sītā, repudiating her as one who
has lived in the house of another man and claiming that he has fought the battle only for the sake of
his own honor. He dismisses her, telling her to go with whomever she wishes. It is only when Sītā
subjects herself to an ordeal by fire, and thus publicly demonstrates her fidelity to her lord, that Rāma
agrees to take her back, stating that he had known all along of her loyalty but needed to demonstrate
it to others. The couple then returns to Ayodhyā, where at long last Rāma, having carried out to the
letter his father’s orders, is consecrated as king. This brings to an end the sixth book.
The last book of the poem, the Uttarakāṇḍa, serves both as an epilogue to the epic narrative and
a prologue to the careers of some of its secondary characters. Thus it provides a lengthy biography of
Rāvaṇa, relating his birth, his conquests, his penances, his boons, and the curses that will lead ultimately to his undoing. Similarly, but much more succinctly, it provides an account of the childhood
and early deeds of Hanumān. Returning to the central characters, the book describes Rāma’s formal
dismissal of his monkey and rākṣasa allies and the well-deserved pleasures of his life with Sītā. The
felicity of the royal couple is, however, soon shattered when Rāma’s spies bring him reports of gossip
among the citizens of Ayodhyā concerning the chastity of the queen during the year in which she lived
in captivity in the house of Rāvaṇa and the propriety of Rāma’s having taken her back into his household. Acting to protect the honor of his house and his moral authority as a ruler, Rāma commands
Lakṣmaṇa to take Sītā, now pregnant, to the forest on the pretext of an excursion and abandon her to
her fate. The forlorn queen takes refuge in the āśrama of none other than the sage Vālmīki, author of
the poem, where she gives birth to Rāma’s twin sons, Lava and Kuśa. These two, as was narrated in
the upodghāta of the Bālakāṇḍa, will become principal performers of the epic poem. The kāṇḍa continues with a variety of exemplary epic and Purāṇic narratives of great kings and supernatural beings.
At one point, Rāma dispatches his brother Śatrughna to aid the sages of the Yamunā region by slaying
the oppressive demon Lavaṇa. Śatrughna accomplishes this feat and establishes himself in the city of
Mathurā. At another point, Rāma is confronted by a Brāhmaṇ grieving for the untimely death of his
son. Realizing that such an untoward event could occur only if there were irregularity in his otherwise
perfect kingdom, Rāma scours his realm until he finds the source of this disharmony in the form of
a lowly Śūdra engaged in the austerities normally reserved for his betters. Rāma unhesitatingly slays
the offending Śūdra, thus restoring harmony to the kingdom and the Brāhmaṇ’s son to life.
At length Rāma decides to perform an aśvamedha, the great horse sacrifice of the ancient Hindu
kings. In the course of the ritual, Kuśa and Lava, acting on the instructions of their guru Vālmīki, proceed to Ayodhyā to sing the Rāmāyaṇa at the gateway of Rāma’s sacrificial enclosure. Rāma is amazed
98
TRIMĀRGA
and delighted by the poem, and upon inquiry discovers that its singers are in fact his own sons and
that its author has been sheltering his beloved Sītā. He sends for Sītā, bidding her to declare her fidelity under oath once again in the assembly. Sītā appears with Vālmīki who, as an irreproachably
truthful seer, attests to her innocence. Rāma declares that he has always been convinced of Sītā’s fidelity but repudiated her for fear of public censure. He acknowledges his sons and expresses his desire
to be reconciled with his wife. Sītā, however, calls upon her mother, the earth goddess, to witness her
devotion to her husband and to once more receive her if she has been pure in thought and deed. The
goddess emerges from the earth on a celestial throne and, taking her daughter in her arms, descends
once more into the depths. Rāma is filled with rage at this turn of events and threatens to tear up the
earth and destroy it, if Sītā is not returned to him. He is, however, pacified through the intercession of
Brahmā, the creator god, who reminds him that he is in fact the supreme divinity Viṣṇu and assures
him that he will be blissfully reunited with his beloved wife in heaven. Bereft of Sītā, Rāma rules his
kingdom joylessly for many years. At last, Yama, the god of death himself, comes to Rāma to remind
him that the purpose of his earthly existence has been accomplished and that it is time for him to
return to the heavenly realm. Acting on the advice of Bharata, whom he is prepared to consecrate in
his place, Rāma divides his territory into the kingdoms of northern and southern Kosala, establishing his sons in these realms respectively. Then, surrounded by all the inhabitants of Ayodhyā, Rāma
immerses himself in the waters of the Sarayū River and ascends to heaven in his divine form, thus
bringing the kāṇḍa and the epic to an end.
Levels of significance in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa
The Rāmāyaṇa as an aesthetic creation
As will be evident from a reading of the earlier synopsis, the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa works powerfully on
a number of critical levels. One of these, which we have already discussed, is the literary and aesthetic. This poem, uniquely among all versions of the Rāma story, is regarded as the original and the
archetype of human poetry. In its claim to have originated the genre of poetic composition through
the transmutation of raw emotion into aesthetic delight by means of literary composition and artistic
performance, the poem lies at the heart of the important and well-known philosophy of aesthetics,
which we recognize under the rubric of rasa or aesthetic relish, derived from the sublimation of human emotion. The prologue to the epic contains one of the earliest if not the earliest listing of the rasas
first systematized by Bharata in his Nāṭyaśāstra. The prestige of the work as the “great source for all
poetry” has, moreover, carried over to a number of major retellings in important regional languages of
South Asia. Thus works such as the Irāmāvatāram of Kampaṉ, the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulasidāsa, and
the Rāmāyaṇa of Kṛttibāsa are frequently regarded as the outstanding and even foundational literary
compositions in their respective languages, here Tamil, Avadhi, and Bengali, respectively.
The Rāmāyaṇa as a social text
A second critical level on which the Rāmāyaṇa operates powerfully is the social. The poet has skillfully
crafted his central characters, and the situations in which they find themselves, to be monovalent
examples of idealized positive and negative role models in Hindu society. Thus Rāma is the ideal son,
elder brother, husband, monarch, and general exemplar of a favored Hindu norm of masculinity. He is
handsome, energetic, brave, compassionate, stoic, and wholly committed to the governing principles
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
99
of dharma by which society, and indeed the entire cosmos, is supposed to be regulated. These traits
emerge most clearly in a number of focal episodes in the epic narrative. Particularly noteworthy here
is Rāma’s calm acceptance of the cruel and unjust exile (2.16),5 which he must undergo as a result
of Kaikeyī’s manipulation of King Daśaratha (2.9–10). At no point does Rāma betray either dejection
at his loss of the kingship or even anger at the wickedness of his stepmother. His sole concern is his
deference to his father’s orders and his preservation of the king’s reputation for truthfulness. This easy
renunciation and seeming indifference to worldly power and pleasures are among the characteristic
traits of the spiritual hero as described in Hindu literary and religious texts from a very early period.
One of the main concerns of the epic poet in the creation of the character of Rāma is a focus on
the maintenance of the integrity and harmony of the Hindu joint family. The poet is everywhere eager
to portray his hero as ready to sacrifice his personal good for that of the family. In this the Rāmāyaṇa
contrasts very starkly with its sister epic the Mahābhārata, where conflicting interests lead inexorably
to the rupture and annihilation of the central ruling house. Although depicted as a supremely competent warrior, Rāma is shown as always willing to take the path of peace, deferring to Bharata (2.16,
2.99), accepting Vibhīṣaṇa (6.12), and even, it appears, being willing to make peace with the demonic
Rāvaṇa should he somehow abandon his evil ways (6.12.21). This, too, contrasts strongly with the implacable enmity and bloodthirsty vengefulness of the warrior heroes of the Mahābhārata.
Similarly, figures such as Lakṣmaṇa, Sītā, Kausalyā, and Hanumān represent, respectively, the idealized deferential younger brother, the single-mindedly devoted wife, the virtuous mother, and the
perfect servant-devotee. On the other hand, the epic’s plethora of monstrously perverse characters,
notably the licentious and violent Rāvaṇa himself, represents in uncomplicated form the radical opposite of those models of restraint, decorum, chastity, and deference that the epic idealizes so powerfully. The complex ambiguities, conflicting loyalties, and shades of gray that so characterize the
central figures of the Mahābhārata are almost nowhere to be seen in Vālmīki’s work. In this way,
the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa and many of its subsequent reworkings stand out as among traditional South
Asia’s most powerful and widely disseminated instruments for the formation of and reinforcement of
characteristic social and cultural norms.
Central to Vālmīki’s social vision is the powerful valorization of the late Vedic conception of varṇāsramadharma. This is the set of the normative rules laid out most clearly in the Dharmaśāstras or law
texts. According to these, society is to be ordered by means of a strict social and ritual hierarchy in
which each of the four varṇas or social classes knows and maintains its traditional place, status, and
duties and each individual, at least those of the higher varṇas, is expected to pass through a prescribed
series of life stages. This is the rigid top-down system of the four varṇas: Brāhmaṇ, Kṣatriya, Vaiśya,
and Śūdra. Each of these adheres to its immemorial function and defers to the classes above it. In
this system, Brāhmaṇs are to be especially respected and feared as the equals or even superiors of
the gods themselves. This seminal concern of the Brāhmaṇical literature is nowhere more powerfully
illustrated than in the Bālakāṇḍa’s extensive treatment of the history of the sage Viśvāmitra and his
conflicts with and triumphs over kings, sages, and divinities in the course of his struggle to transform
himself from a Kṣatriya to a Brāhmaṇ (1.50–64). The question of the traditional āśramas or life stages
(student, householder, hermit, renunciant) is not explicitly taken up in any elaborate way in the epic
but can be seen implicitly in such episodes as that in which King Daśaratha in his old age wishes to
renounce the throne in favor of his son (2.1).
5All Rāmāyaṇa references are to the critical edition published in Baroda.
śāstra
varṇa
brāhmaṇa
āśrama
100
TRIMĀRGA
A particularly significant aspect of the social message of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa is the way in which
the epic poet and his characters deal with the issues of gender and sexuality. In a number of ways,
the Rāmāyaṇa has become a touchstone in traditional India for the assertion and reinforcement of
the power of patriarchal attitudes. Sītā’s idealization as the perfect woman and the perfect wife rests
centrally on her unwavering subordination to the wishes and interests of her husband. Although she
is shown occasionally to question Rāma’s decisions, she does so only when his initial decision is at
variance with the demands of the normative subordination of women. This, of course, is most clearly
seen in the famous episode where Sītā refuses to accede to Rāma’s plan to leave her behind when he
goes into exile (2.24). Sītā’s lengthy meditations and soliloquies during her captivity (5.23–24, 5.26),
as well as her sharp rebukes of her demonic suitor (5.19–20), focus largely on the issue of gender subordination and the representation of the wife virtually as a form of property of the husband.6 In this
way Sītā stands in sharp contrast to a figure such as Draupadī, heroine of the Mahābhārata, who, aside
from having five husbands, is far more outspoken in defense of her rights and privileges as a woman.7
Surely, the most critical gender related issue in the Rāmāyaṇa in terms of its impact on the lives
of the people of South Asia is Rāma’s treatment of Sītā after she has been freed from the clutches of
the demon-king. The issue is clearly of great importance to Vālmīki, since he highlights it twice in
the poem, once during the course of Sītā’s agniparīkṣā or trial by fire (6.104–6), and again when she is
banished on the strength of vulgar rumors about her conduct in the house of Rāvaṇa (7.44–47). It is
noteworthy that the poet constantly stresses the fact that Rāma, for all his harsh treatment of his wife,
never for a moment in fact doubts her absolute fidelity. His brutal treatment of Sītā on both occasions,
it is stressed, derives from his concern for the loss of honor and prestige that unchecked rumors about
the queen’s chastity would bring in their train. The Sītātyāga or “abandonment of Sītā” is a somewhat
controversial episode and is not present in all versions of the story. Nonetheless it has sent a powerful
message.
If Sītā represents the idealization of feminity in Hindu India—chaste, demure, dependent, and
soft-spoken—the epic poet has, as in the case of his male characters, given us several striking counterexamples. On the one hand, there is the somewhat ambiguous characterization of Kaikeyī, essentially a good-hearted and devoted, if somewhat simple-minded, mother to her son Bharata, who allows
herself to be led away from the path of wifely devotion by her twisted alter ego, the scheming hunchbacked serving maid, Mantharā.8 Kaikeyī, although she becomes the representation of the proverbial
“shrewish wife” in popular imagination,9 is quietly rehabilitated by the poet and appears to blend back
in with the other mothers at the court of Ayodhyā after the exile of Rāma.
On the other hand, in his characterization of the voracious and voraciously sexual rākṣasa women,
notably Tāḍakā and Śūrpaṇakhā, the poet has given us dramatic examples of traditional South Asia’s
nightmare image of femininity run amok. The treatment of Śūrpaṇakhā is in radical contrast to that of
Sītā, for whereas the latter is dependent, submissive, generally compliant, and fiercely chaste, the former is independent, outspoken, and, above all, sexually aggressive. The sexual liaison she proposes
6Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, “The Voice of Sītā in Vālmīki’s Sundarakāṇḍa,” in Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian
Tradition, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 223–38.
7Sally J. M. Sutherland, “Sītā and Draupadī: Aggressive Behavior and Female Role-Models in the Sanskrit Epics,” Journal
of the American Oriental Society 109, no. 1 (1989): 63–67.
8Sally J. M. Sutherland, “Seduction, Counter Seduction, and Sexual Role Models: Bedroom Politics and the Indian Epics,”
Journal of Indian Philosophy 20, no. 2 (1992): 243–51.
9Vidyut Aklujkar, “The Framing of the Shrew: Kaikeyi as Kalahā in the Ānanda Rāmāyaṇa,” in The Rāmāyaṇa Culture:
Text, Performance and Iconography, ed. Mandakranta Bose (D. K. Printworld, 2003), 57–80.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
101
between Rāma and herself in the Araṇyakāṇḍa is treated by the poet and his heroes as ludicrously
incongruous and as a source of both amusement and violent retribution (3.16–17). This attitude contrasts very notably with the parallel situation in the Mahābhārata where, with the sanction of his
mother and brothers, the Pāṇḍava hero Bhīma enjoys just such a sexual idyll with the rākṣasa-woman
Hiḍimbā (Mahābhārata 1.139–43).10
For all its powerful assertion of patriarchal authority and the subordination of women in almost
every respect to males, the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki puts forward a somewhat gentler vision of masculinity than is to be found in some parallel documents of ancient Hindu culture. Thus, for example, where
the warrior heroes of the Mahābhārata tend to exemplify a certain brutal, boastful, and vengeful hypermasculinity, Rāma, as noted above, is represented as having his Kṣatriya pride and martial prowess
tempered by compassion and concern for the rules of family and society.
Although it is less given to prescriptive passages than the Mahābhārata and the Dharmaśāstras,
the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa functions like these works also as a sort of treatise on the political constitution
of the early Hindu state. At several points in the narrative it is suggested that kingship is regarded
as partaking of divinity.11 Additionally, much of the narrative revolves around the critical issues of
royal legitimacy and succession. This is true not only in the realm of the Solar dynasty of Kosala but
also among the monkeys of Kiṣkindhā and even the rākṣasas of Laṅkā. The Ayodhyākāṇḍa in particular sheds interesting light on the ancient conception of kingship, illustrating a situation where King
Daśaratha appears to have to engage in at least ceremonial consultation with his citizens and advisors
before naming Rāma as his successor (2.1.34–2.2).
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa for the political life of South Asia
has been its positing of the possibility of a utopian kingdom under the authority of a perfectly righteous ruler for whom Rāma would be the archetype. This conception is brought forward especially in
the Bālakāṇḍa and Uttarakāṇḍa with their descriptions of Rāma’s kingdom as being free from crime,
disease, poverty, natural disasters, social strife, and so on, and is clearly illustrated in the episode of
Rāma’s slaying of the śūdra ascetic mentioned earlier. Such a conception has had significant implications both for the redefinition of the Hindu state in late medieval India and for a powerful vision
of the construction of a post-independence Indian utopia in the modern era. There is some evidence
that Hindu monarchs of the medieval period confronted with the threat of the alien forces of Islam
turned increasingly to the Rāmāyaṇa as a source for the revalorization of a specific notion of divine
Hindu kingship.12
In more modern times, political leaders ranging from Mahātmā Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi and the
ideologues of the resurgent Hindu right have frequently raised the slogan of “Rāmrājya,” the idealized
integral Hindu polity, as a mobilizing strategy. The ideological and emotional force derived from this
aspect of the Rāmāyaṇa is such that it is no accident that the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata party
identified the issue of the “Rāmajanmabhūmi”—the campaign to erect a temple dedicated to Rāma
in place of an existing mosque at the site traditionally believed to be his birthplace—as the one that
would vault them into positions of power.
10The Mahābhārata reference is to the critical edition published in Pune.
11Sheldon Pollock, The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, vol. 3 of 5: Araṇyakāṇḍa (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1991), 15–54.
12Pollock, “Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination.”
102
TRIMĀRGA
The Rāmāyaṇa has also played a role in the area of ethics in traditional India. As the ideal man
and ideal monarch, Rāma is everywhere held up as the paragon of ethical behavior, scrupulously following all the rules put forward by the culture of dharma. In this he is, again, often in contrast with the
parallel epic heroes of the Mahābhārata, who frequently engage in unethical and even vicious behavior in the name of achieving higher goals of righteousness.13 Rāma makes a particularly interesting
and enlightening contrast with his fellow avatāra, Kṛṣṇa, who, as he is represented in texts such as
the Harivaṃśa, Mahābhārata, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and the like, blithely transcends the rules of sexual,
social, and ethical propriety. Rāma is, of course, most starkly to be contrasted with the great antihero
of the Rāmāyaṇa, Rāvaṇa, giving rise to such popular moralizing prescriptions as “You should always
try to behave like Rāma, never like Rāvaṇa.”
Rāma’s ethical conduct is so heavily stressed that those few instances in which it has been called
into question, whether in Vālmīki’s text or by later authors, have tended to loom large in the popular
consciousness. The two episodes most often cited in this regard are Rāma’s killing of the monkey-king
Vālin from ambush in the Kiṣkindhākāṇḍa (4.17–19) and the abandonment and exile of his blameless, pregnant wife Sītā (7.44).14 The former incident is the subject of lively debate between Vālin and
Rāma in the text itself, in which the stricken monkey sharply castigates Rāma for what he sees as a
gross violation of the rules of combat. Rāma rejects Vālin’s criticism on a number of grounds, and his
dharma arguments succeed in satisfying the monkey that he had indeed acted in accordance with dharma.
Nonetheless, the issue has continued to haunt the imagination of Rāmāyaṇa commentators and audiences to the present day, as evidenced in such documents as the popular Rāmāyaṇaśaṅkāvalīs in
which contemporary preachers and authors respond to “doubts” or questions on the part of the faithful.
The ethical issue raised by the abandonment of Sītā is not explicitly engaged in Vālmīki’s text.
The only hint the poet gives us of the controversial nature of Rāma’s decision is the fact that Rāma
forbids his brothers, on pain of suffering dire consequences, from questioning or criticizing it (7.44.18).
Nonetheless, this seemingly cruel and unjust treatment of the devoted and virtuous Sītā has disturbed
readers of the text from ancient times down to the present. The great poet-playwright, Bhavabhūti,
in his eighth-century drama the Uttararāmacarita, has several of his characters, most notably Rāma
himself, roundly condemn the cruelty of his treatment of Sītā.15 Later authors such as the immensely
influential Tulasīdāsa confront the issue with a magisterial silence, excising the entire episode from
their renderings of the Rāma story. This issue grew heated once again during the production of the
popular Indian television serialization of the tale, the Ramayan of Ramanand Sagar. The question
of whether or not to include the epilogue representing the rejection of Sītā led to political conflict,
labor unrest, and litigation that pitted a sweeper caste identifying itself with Vālmīki against high-caste
Hindu groups.16 The controversy was only resolved through a very delicate rendering of the episode
on the part of Sagar, who, treating it from a kind of feminist perspective, makes Sītā, and not Rāma,
the author of her own banishment.17
13Robert P. Goldman, “Eṣa Dharmaḥ Sanātanaḥ: Shifting Moral Values and the Indian Epics,” in Relativism, Suffering,
and Beyond: Essays in Memory of Bimal K. Matilal, ed. P. Bilimoria and J. N. Mohanty (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997),
187–223.
14Ibid.
15Ibid., 201.
16Madhu Jain, “Ramayan: The Second Coming,” India Today, 31 August 1988, 81.
17Mark Tully, No Full Stops in India (London: Viking Penguin, 1991), 132–33.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
103
The Rāmāyaṇa as a religious text
Perhaps the most dramatic impact the Rāmāyaṇa has had on Hindu culture and civilization, particularly in the medieval and modern periods, lies in the area of religion. As noted earlier, the received text
of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa in all versions and recensions identifies Rāma as an avatāra of the supreme
divinity Viṣṇu at various points in the poem. The history of this identification has been, as we shall
discuss next, a matter of some scholarly dispute. However, it is fair to say that for the overwhelming
majority of Hindus, the main thrust of the epic story is the exemplary narrative of god’s birth and career as a man engaged in the central avatāric mission of the salvation of the virtuous, the destruction
of evildoers, and the reestablishment of dharma as the governing principle of the cosmos. The identification of Rāma with Viṣṇu, like that of Kṛṣṇa in the Mahābhārata, is both textually and theologically
complex. The theological complexity derives from the fact that one of the features of the principal
human avatāras is the ambiguity with which the incarnation is represented as both man and god and avatāra
yet neither clearly one nor the other and the fact that the nature of the incarnate divinity is often represented as occluded even to himself.18 The liminal status of the avatāra is particularly pronounced
in the case of Rāma, since by the terms of Rāvaṇa’s boon, the demon cannot be destroyed by a simple
god.19 Although Vālmīki’s poem seems thoroughly suffused with the notion of Rāma’s divinity, the
work only sporadically takes on an intensely devotional tone, focusing more centrally on the narrative, aesthetic, and exemplary aspects of the story. In this, it contrasts with the many later renderings
of the tale, some of which, notably for example, the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulasīdāsa, are deeply and
thoroughly permeated with an intense spirit of Rāma-bhakti or devotion to Rāma as a personal savior.
Although there seems to be only scanty evidence for the large-scale cultic worship of Rāma as a
temple divinity prior to around the ninth century ce20 the practice became widespread in the centuries following that time. Rāma temples sprang up throughout India, and Rāma and Sītā emerged as
the central sectarian divinities of a wide variety of religious traditions, ranging from the Viśiṣṭādvaita
schools of Rāmānuja and his followers based largely on Vālmīki, through the mainstream North Indian devotional tradition textually grounded in Tulasīdāsa, to the esoteric gender-bending beliefs and
praxis of the rasik sādhus of Ayodhya,21 who canonize the obscure and esoteric Bhuśuṇḍi Rāmāyaṇa.
Rāma has, as noted earlier, also become a central icon of Hindu religious and political revivalism,
especially in the north. Certainly by the time of the composition of the early Mahapurāṇas, Rāma
has become virtually universally accepted as one of the standard Vaiṣṇava Purāṇic group of the ten
avatāras of Viṣṇu.22 Some of the later Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas show a more complex sense of the Rāma- purāṇa
avatāra, regarding Daśaratha’s four sons, whom Vālmīki already recognizes as partial incarnations of
Viṣṇu (1.17.6–9), as corresponding to the four manifestations (vyūha) of Viṣṇu as they are represented
in the Pañcarātra school of Vaiṣṇava theology.23
In addition to the towering figure as Rāma as god-become-man, two other major characters in the
epic story have acquired significant religious identities of their own. The first of these, of course, is
18Robert P. Goldman, “Gods in Hiding: The Mahābhārata’s Virāṭa Parvan and the Divinity of Indian Epic Heroes,” in
Modern Evaluation of the Mahābhārata: Prof. R. K. Sharma Felicitation Volume, ed. Satya Pal Narang (Delhi: Nag, 1995), 73–
100.
19Pollock, Rāmāyaṇa: Araṇyakāṇḍa, 15–43.
20Pollock, “Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination.”
21Peter van der Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage
Centre (London: Athlone, 1988).
22Brockington, Righteous Rāma, 233–41.
23Ibid., 236.
104
TRIMĀRGA
Sītā. Since Rāma is generally acknowledged to be one of the principal incarnations of Viṣṇu, it follows
that his wife Sītā must be a corresponding manifestation of Viṣṇu’s consort, the goddess śrī or Lakṣmī,
although this is not made as clearly explicit in Vālmīki’s poem as is Rāma’s identification with Viṣṇu.
As such, Sītā, along with Rāma, becomes a focal object of worship as she is part of the divine couple
central to some forms of Vaiṣṇava temple worship. In some religious traditions, such as those of the
rasik sādhus24 and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, Sītā may be foregrounded as an object of devotion or approached
in her motherly aspect as the principal intercessor between the worshiper and the lord.25 In some
Śākta traditions, particularly in eastern India, Sītā emerges clearly as the dominant member of the
divine couple, and it is her power as the goddess that enables Rāma to defeat his demonic foes. In
some cases, she is actually called upon to rescue him from them.26
The second of these figures is the semidivine monkey-hero Hanumān, the partial incarnation of
the Vedic wind-god Vāyu. This fascinating figure achieves enormous status in the Vaiṣṇava tradition
in his role as the paramarāmabhakta or supreme exemplar of devotion to Lord Rāma. As such, he is
extolled in many versions of the Rāma story and is a regular figure in plastic representations of the story
and its major characters. But the popularity of Hanumān is such that it extends well beyond the cult
of Rāma and the celebration of the Rāmakathā. He is widely worshiped as a divinity in his own right
in connections that are either utterly separate from the Rāmāyaṇa story or at best only tangentially
connected to it. As such, he has taken on many roles as a divine intercessor. He is the patron divinity
of the akhāṛā, the wrestlers’ pit of North and western India, the highest recourse for those afflicted
with spirit possession, a much invoked aid in connection with fertility and even a stalwart defender of
the Republic of India against the perceived threat of Pakistan. Indeed, it has been asserted that of all
the manifold divinities in worship among the diverse communities of Hindu India, Hanumān, whose
shrines seem to appear on every street corner, is the most widely worshiped of all.27
The Rāmāyaṇa in India and beyond
In the more than two thousand years since the composition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, the Rāma story
has undergone a truly extraordinary number of reworkings at the hands of authors composing in every
major language and belonging to every significant indigenous religious tradition of the vast, rich, and
diverse cultural domains throughout Asia. In one form or another, the text has been widely available
and continually in use by countless hundreds of millions of people for as long or longer than virtually
any non-Indian text still known and imbibed by a mass audience.
The almost staggering profusion of Rāmāyaṇa versions in the high literary, folk, and—more recently—popular genres of the region is, first and foremost, a consequence of the tremendous importance that many traditional cultures of Asia have placed upon the story. These versions have been
multiplied many times in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the regional languages of India and beyond at every
24Veer, Gods on Earth.
25Patricia Y. Mumme, “Rāmāyaṇa Exegesis in Teṅkalai Śrīvaiṣṇavism,” in Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative
Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 202–16.
26W.L. Smith, Rāmāyaṇa Traditions in Eastern India: Assam, Bengal, Orissa (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, Department of Indology, 1988).
27Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, “Vālmīki’s Hanumān: Characterization and Occluded Divinity in
the Rāmāyaṇa,” Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies 2, no. 4 (1994): 31–54; Catherine Ludvik, Hanumān in the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki
and the Rāmacaritamānasa of Tulasī Dāsa (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994); Philip Lutgendorf, “Monkey in the Middle: The
Status of Hanuman in Popular Hinduism,” Religion 27, no. 4 (1997): 311–32.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
105
chronological stage in their development. The epic, moreover, along with its characters and central
themes has been appropriated by virtually every religious, philosophical, and sectarian tradition in
the long history of the cultures of South and Southeast Asia. All of this serves as a demonstration that
the text was seen as being of absolutely seminal importance, so much so that regional and sectarian
audiences needed to have versions available to them that they could understand and which adapted
the epic story to the various and changing needs of all segments of the society.
From as far back as the tools of textual criticism can take us, the monumental Sanskrit poem had
already been differentiated into a number of regional recensions and subrecensions written down in
virtually every area and script of India. In addition, the epic story was reworked numerous times for
inclusion into other Sanskrit texts, such as the Mahābhārata, many Purāṇas, and numerous religious
and philosophical texts. Versions of this sort are the Rāmopākhyāna of the Mahābhārata, the Ānandarāmāyaṇa, the Adhyātmarāmāyaṇa, the Yogavāsiṣṭha, and the like.28 The Rāma story, moreover,
became a favorite theme of the poets and playwrights of classical Sanskrit. Numerous Sanskrit literary works explore particular aspects of the complex Rāma story, and although some of these are
now lost or known only as fragments,29 poetic masterpieces, such as the Raghuvaṃśa of Kālidāsa, the
Bhaṭṭikāvya, and the Rāmāyaṇacampū, and important Sanskrit dramas, such as the Pratimānāṭaka of
Bhāsa and the Mahāvīracarita and Uttararāmacarita of Bhavabhūti, are still read and deeply enjoyed
by those conversant with Sanskrit.
Nor are the versions of the Rāmāyaṇa restricted to the cultural universe of Hindu India. Despite,
or perhaps because of, the fact that the epic’s hero, Rāma, came very early onto be regarded as one of
the principal avatāras of the great Hindu divinity Viṣṇu, a central figure of devotional Hinduism, his
story was of such importance and popularity that even non-Hindu groups, such as the Buddhists and
the Jainas, rapidly learned the value of adapting the Rāmāyaṇa to serve the propagation of their own
religious systems.
The Rāma story was appropriated early by the Buddhists. Thus the historical Buddha is often said
to have been born in a branch of the Ikṣvāku dynasty whose greatest hero was Rāma. The Rāma story
in its various parts figures significantly in the important Jātaka tales, which provide a transmigrational
biography of the previous births of the Bodhisattva, the future Buddha. One of them, the Daśaratha
Jātaka, recounts a version of the epic story that completely excises its central avatāric narrative of the
rapacious demon king and his abduction of Sītā, focusing instead on Rāma Paṇḍita’s legendary selfcontrol as an exemplary illustration of this cardinal Buddhist virtue. In another, the Sāma Jātaka, the
Ayodhyākāṇḍa episode in which the banishment of Rāma is attributed to a curse laid upon his father
for having, in his youth, accidentally slain the son of a blind ascetic couple, is reworked with a different
cast of characters. In this reading, Rāma is in fact one of the earlier incarnations of the Bodhisattva.
Moreover, Vālmīki’s poem is known to and admired by the first century ce Buddhist poet Aśvaghoṣa
who not only alludes to the Rāmāyaṇa’s representation of Vālmīki as the first poet but also clearly uses
his creation as the model for his poetic biography of the Buddha, the Buddhacarita.
Jaina authors especially make the Rāma legend their own, regarding Rāma not, of course, as an
avatāra of godhead but as one of the thirty-two śalākāpuruṣas or exemplary Jaina laymen and the hero
of numerous Jaina Rāmāyaṇas such as the Paumacariya in both Sanskrit and Prakrit.30 Here even the
28Brockington, Righteous Rāma, 233–41.
29V. Raghavan, Some Old Lost Rāma Plays (Annamalainagar: Annamalai University, 1961).
30D. L. Narasimhachar, “The Jaina Rāmāyaṇas,” The Indian Historical Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1939): 575–94.
106
TRIMĀRGA
martial character of the epic warrior-hero, the scourge of the demonic rākṣasas, must give way before
the Jaina imperative of ahiṃsā, noninjury, to all living beings. Thus the Hindu avatāra’s central and
most defining act, the slaughter of his ten-headed nemesis, Rāvaṇa, is, in Jaina versions of the tale,
assigned to his loyal younger brother Lakṣmaṇa.
In the regional languages of India, the influence of the Rāmāyaṇa has been even more profound.
In virtually all of the major literary languages of India, there exists a significant and immensely popular
version of the epic that is regarded as marking the very beginning of that language’s literary tradition.
Such, for example, is the popularity and prestige of poems, such as Kṛttibāsa’s Bengali Rāmāyaṇa,
Kampaṉ’s Tamil Irāmāvatāram, and the massively popular devotional rendering of the sixteenthcentury epic in the Old Avadhi dialect of Hindi, the Rāmcaritmānas of the scholar-poet Tulasīdāsa,
widely revered among the three hundred million inhabitants of the “Hindi Belt” of North India.
Even these powerful and hegemonic regional versions of the Rāmāyaṇa do not exhaust the diverNachdichtung: sity of the poem. Each region has, in addition to this kind of major literary Nachdichtung, many other
retelling, versions, performative and literary, oral and written. In this category may be noted the various Rārecreation
malīlās of North India, the Jātra plays of Bengal, and the many folk versions and dance-dramas of the
Rāmāyaṇa story known from every region of the subcontinent. One recent author has noted and described some fifty different literary Rāmāyaṇas from the eastern states of Bengal, Assam, and Orissa
alone, each with a different religious, aesthetic, or ethical thrust.31 In addition, the Rāma story has
virtually saturated the plastic arts of South Asia in innumerable temple sculptures and reliefs, court
paintings and folk painting, and even the ubiquitous commercial “calendar” art.
A text of such massive diffusion that has permeated the “high” and folk traditions of textual composition as well as the visual arts of both pan-Indian and regional cultures for nearly three millennia
can hardly have failed to make a profound impression on the popular culture of modern cosmopolitan India. The nature of this impression can be judged by an examination of the media of popular
culture in both their elite forms and those that are consumed by a mass audience. A survey of modern Indian literature from the time of the nineteenth-century Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt
down to Salman Rushdie reveals that the Rāma story and its themes and characters appear to continually haunt the imagination of the modern writer in the colonial and postcolonial period. A survey
of Indian cinema yields similar results. For not only have the producers of the popular Hindi musicals exploited various aspects of the story but also the story of Rāma has formed a rich source for the
makers of the popular “mythologicals,” such as Homi Wadia’s Hanuman Chalisa and the Telugu Sampoorna Ramayana. Even the art films of such auteurs as Aravindan in his Kancana Sita and the “avant
garde” Akshara Theater’s production of Ramayana have based their works on the epic tale.
Nowhere, perhaps, has the immense popularity of the Rāmāyaṇa been demonstrated more clearly
and dramatically than by the extraordinary success of the lengthy serialization of the epic created for
Doordarshan, the Indian government television network, by the filmmaker Ramanand Sagar. This
production was originally broadcast throughout India in weekly half-hour episodes and has since been
widely marketed there and throughout the world in the form of video cassettes and DVDs. Newspaper
and eyewitness accounts describe how the showings would empty the bustling streets and bāzārs of
the country, leaving an impression of desolation as people, often having bathed and dressed as for
worship, would gather in front of television screens to watch the unfolding of the ancient and wellknown story with rapt attention. The tremendous political and cultural aspects of this phenomenal
31Smith, Rāmāyaṇa Traditions in Eastern India.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
107
success have already been the subject of a considerable body of journalistic and scholarly analysis.
Indeed as recent events—many of them tragic—have demonstrated, the influence of the Rāmāyaṇa
on the hearts and minds of the Indian people—far from waning with time—has grown both more
powerful and more apparent in recent years.
But the cultural saturation of the Rāma story is by no means confined to the Indian subcontinent.
As is well known to students of Southeast Asia, the Rāmāyaṇa has achieved a position of productive
cultural centrality in virtually all of the countries of this far-flung and highly diverse region. In Buddhist Thailand the Rāmakien becomes a sort of foundational epic for the Ayutthayan dynasty (1409–
1767 ce) which names its descendants after the epic hero (Rāma I, II, and so on). At least six or seven
poetic or dramatic versions of the story, many of which are attributed to the various king Rāmas, are
widely known and performed.32 In Laos the Phra Lak Phra Lam and the Gvāy Dvoraabī give eloquent
testimony to the localization and naturalization (to use Sachchidanand Sahai’s phrase) of the epic
in a variety of milieus.33 In Islamic Malaysia and Indonesia, as is well known, the Rāma story in the
form of texts such as the Hikayat Seri Rāma, the Javanese Rāmāyaṇa Kakawin, the widespread and
diverse styles of wayang or shadow puppet theater, and the temple sculptures of such complexes as
Prambanan have established the story of Rāma there regarded as the model of an Islamic prince, as
one of the region’s principal cultural artifacts and acculturative devices.34 The Rāmāyaṇa tradition
is well attested in Burma with the performance tradition of the Yāma-pwe. Moreover, it has deeply
saturated traditional Cambodian culture in a wide variety of forms, including various literary renderings of the Rāma story, such as the Rāmakerti from around the sixteenth century ce,35 and the famous
reliefs at Angkor Wat.36 In Sri Lanka the literary rendering of the story attributed to the sixth-century
ce monarch Kumāradāsa, the Jānakīharaṇa, is thought to be the earliest Sanskrit work to be found
in that country.37 Even as far as the Philippines we find texts such as the Maharadia Lawana, current
among the Maranao ethnic group from perhaps the seventeenth century, which have kept the story,
derived here no doubt from Malay sources, alive.38
But the Rāmāyaṇa story has spread in other directions as well. It has traveled to the West where
there are a number of poorly studied Persian versions of the tale and notably to the North and East.
J. W. de Jong39 and others have studied and translated the Tibetan manuscripts of the Rāmāyaṇa found
at Tun-huang … Khotanese versions have been found at Tun-huang as well. Mongolian versions appear to have come from Tibet, and their influence can in turn be found as far north into Central Asia,
32H. B. Sarkar, “The Ramayana in South-East Asia: A General Survey,” in Asian Variations in Ramayana, ed. K. R. Srinivasa
Iyengar (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1983).
33Sachchidanand Sahai, The Rāmāyaṇa in Laos: A Study in the Gvāy Dvóṟaḥbī (Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 1976).
34P. L. Amin Sweeney, The Rāmāyaṇa and the Malaysian Shadow-Play (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia, 1972); Amin Sweeney, “The Malaysian Rāmāyaṇa in Performance,” in The Ramayana Tradition in Asia, ed. V. Raghavan (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1980), 122–37.
35Saveros Pou, Rāmakerti: XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1977).
36U. Thein Han and U. Khin Zaw, “Rāmāyaṇa in Burmese Literature and Arts,” in The Ramayana Tradition in Asia, ed.
V. Raghavan (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1980), 301–14.
37C.E. Godakumbura, “Rāmāyaṇa in Śrīlaṅkā and Laṅkā of the Rāmāyaṇa,” in The Ramayana Tradition in Asia, ed. V.
Raghavan (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1980), 430–54.
38Juan R. Francisco, “The Ramayana in the Philippines,” in The Ramayana Tradition in Asia, ed. V. Raghavan (New Delhi:
Sahitya Akademi, 1980), 155–77.
39J. W. De Jong, “The Story of Rama in Tibet,” in Asian Variations in Ramayana, ed. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (New Delhi:
Sahitya Akademi, 1983), 163–82.
108
TRIMĀRGA
as a Kalmuk folk version of the epic has been preserved in manuscript form in the Siberian branch of
the Russian Academy of Sciences.40
Although the presence and the destiny of the Rāmāyaṇa story in East Asia is harder to trace than
in some other areas of the continent where its influence is pervasive, it is no less real and may, in some
ways, be more interesting. There can be little doubt that some versions, particularly those found in
the Jātakas and other Buddhist sources, would have been known to Chinese scholars from the early
centuries ce. K’ang-seng-hui, for example, is said to have translated Jātaka tales into Chinese in 251
ce, and other versions followed in the ensuing centuries as the passion for the translation of Indic
Buddhist texts into Chinese grew into a virtual cottage industry. It is also well known, as mentioned
earlier, that Tibetan and Khotanese texts of the Rāmāyaṇa were kept in the cave library at Tun-huang
along with the pien-wen manuscripts of early Chinese literary texts.41 Indeed, it has been a subject of
extensive scholarly debate as to whether, and to what extent, the character of the hero of the famous
sixteenth-century novel Hsi-yu chi (The Divine Monkey), Sun Wu-k’ung, and his antecedents in Chinese literature may have been inspired by Hanumān, the monkey divinity and hero of the Rāmāyaṇa
tradition, who shares many of his characteristics and exploits.
From China, it is hardly surprising to note, versions of the Rāma legend made their way in time to
Japan. The Japanese Sanskrit scholar Minoru Hara has studied two interesting texts derived from Chinese Buddhist sources … In addition to these Buddhist canonical sources, which inspired, it would
seem, popular literary authors, Hara hypothesizes that the Rāma story may have made its way into
popular or courtly circulation directly from the oral versions narrated by Hindu savants, such as Bharadvāja Bodhisena, who were known to have visited Japan from the eighth century onwards.42 In East
Asia, as in the rest of the continent, the Rāmāyaṇa story has been fully localized and naturalized and
is rarely regarded as belonging to an exotic or alien culture.
Literary and scholarly treatment of the Rāmāyaṇa in India and beyond
It is hardly surprising that a text that has had so diverse and profound an impact on the civilization of
India for so long a period should have given rise to numerous additional works and representations
in the spheres of literary and artistic production, the performing arts, folklore, philosophical and religious discourse, and scholarly and commentarial analysis both in India and in the West. No doubt the
oldest and most sustained surviving corpus of scholarly analysis of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa is that contained in the substantial body of Sanskrit commentaries the work inspired in India. These, of which
some forty-five survive in whole or part,43 were composed largely between the twelfth and eighteenth
centuries ce.44 They vary considerably in their density and in the textual and substantive issues they
address, ranging from the very sparse gloss attributed to Rāmānuja, to thoroughgoing analytical treatises like the Dharmākūtam of Tryambakarāya Makhin. However, they collectively present us with a
40Lokesh Chandra, “Rāmāyaṇa: The Epic of Asia,” in The Ramayana Tradition in Asia, ed. V. Raghavan (New Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1980), 651–52.
41Glen Dudbridge, The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 160–61.
42Minoru Hara, “Rama Stories in China and Japan: A Comparison,” in Asian Variations in Ramayana, ed. K. R. Srinivasa
Iyengar (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1983), 340–56.
43Bhatt and Shah, Vālmīki-Ramāyāṇa, 7: 655–56.
44Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa: Bālakāṇḍa, 115–17; Rosalind Lefeber, The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, vol. 4 of
5: Kiṣkindhākāṇḍa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 17–28.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
109
diverse and learned set of readings of the poem by a series of scholars for whom it was of more than
purely intellectual interest and who, one may say, more closely approximate the “intended audience”
of the epic than any other readers who have left us written records of their responses to it. As such,
these commentaries constitute a critical resource for our own understanding of the poem and of its
receptive history. It is a pity that these works have not, for the most part, been taken seriously or even
read in many cases by modern Western and Indian students of the epic.
It must be noted by way of background to the contributions of the Sanskrit commentaries that
they are rarely if ever works of the sort of disinterested or objective scholarship that was unquestioningly associated with European and European-style Orientalism in the pre-Saidian era. Most of the
works—when they are more than mere glosses—are the products of scholars associated with one or
another school of Śrīvaiṣṇavism, for which religious system the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa is the foundational
text. From this it follows that the vast majority of surviving Sanskrit commentaries on the text, and
virtually all of the significantly analytical ones, are associated with one or another of the manuscript
traditions of the southern recension or with the mixed recensional versions recorded in the Devanagari script and affiliated largely with the southern text. As such, several of the surviving commentaries,
notably those of Maheśvaratīrtha, Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa, Govindarāja, Mādhavayogin, and Satyatīrtha, concern themselves to a greater or lesser extent with the numerous theological issues that present themselves during a reading of the poem, particularly from a Vaiṣṇava perspective. These commentators
are by no means in any kind of agreement as to these issues and often debate and quarrel with the interpretations of their predecessors, whom they may quote with approbation or revile in the strongest
possible terms.
But this said, it must be acknowledged that the Sanskrit commentaries are important repositories
of scholarly information and interpretation. Their authors draw on vast, even encyclopedic knowledge of the śāstraic literature to shed considerable light on the innumerable grammatical, lexical,
rhetorical, and textual problems that a work such as the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa inevitably presents. In the
textual area, particularly, it is noteworthy that the commentators pay careful attention to the textual
variants available to them and earlier commentators and make interesting judgments as to the spuriousness and authenticity of individual verses and passages. In addition, they provide much useful
information about the realia, flora, fauna, architecture, technology, and social and religious customs,
which they associate with the epic period. While it must be acknowledged that the commentators
cannot be regarded as a univocal or infallible resource, coming as they do many centuries later than
the composition of the Rāmāyaṇa text and frequently disagreeing among themselves, they are at least
tacitly aware of the speculative nature of much Rāmāyaṇa exegesis and remain an essential source for
contemporary Rāmāyaṇa scholarship.
The antiquity of the Rāmāyaṇa and its centrality to Hindu and larger Indian civilization over the
millennia early on attracted the attention of European savants interested in Sanskrit and the culture
of which it was the principal medium. The text of Vālmīki was edited by William Carey and Joshua
Marshman in the opening years of the nineteenth century (1806–10), and scholarly interest in the text
and its message gained force and momentum steadily through the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Early European scholarship on the Rāmāyaṇa, in many ways like that stimulated by the Mahābhārata,
concerned itself with the issues of the sources and historicity of the story. Some scholars such as Albrecht Weber… viewed the poem as derivative of what he saw as earlier texts,45 notably the Daśaratha
45Albrecht Weber, “On the Râmâyaṇa,” The Indian Antiquary: A Journal of Oriental Research 1 (1872): 120–27, 172–82, 239–
53.
110
TRIMĀRGA
Jātaka and even the Homeric epics. Others saw the work as kind of extended allegory referring to
historical, natural, or mythological events. Thus Christian Lassen… interpreted the epic as a coded
reminiscence of the Āryan subjugation of the Dravidian south, while J. Talboys Wheeler… saw in it
the conquest of the Buddhist civilization of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).46 Victor Henry… read the text as the
reflection of ancient solar mythology,47 while Hermann Jacobi… saw in it a revision of the Ṛg Vedic
myth of Indra and Vṛtra. Albrecht Weber… likewise, additionally read the epic story as a myth alluding
to the cycle of agricultural growth. In fact, the Rāmāyaṇa, like the Mahābhārata, presented itself as a
fertile field for the popular theories of textual interpretation of the nineteenth century.48
Rāmāyaṇa studies in the twentieth century underwent an explosive growth during the course of
which Vālmīki’s epic and the many other retellings the Rāma story from virtually all parts of Asia have
been studied and subjected to analyses that take into account the diverse linguistic, textual, historical,
literary, rhetorical, religious, political, social, and psychological aspects of the Rāmāyaṇa tradition in
its various settings. It would be impossible within the scope of this discussion to even begin to scratch
the surface of the enormous body of Rāmāyaṇa scholarship in dozens of languages that has appeared
in print… However, a few central questions and issues concerning the text of Vālmīki have tended to
stand out in the discussions of scholars and continue to inspire learned debate. These issues center
around the distinction—also important in Mahābhārata studies—between the so-called synthetic
and analytic interpretations of the text. One such issue concerns the textual history of the poem itself.
Jacobi49 argued that the first and last books of the epic as we know it are later additions to a central
core consisting of what are now Books 2 to 6. Similarly, he argued that the central portions of the fifth
book or the Sundarakāṇḍa, the episodes that deal with Hanumān’s exploits in Laṅkā, are later than
the older portions of that book. These assertions have stimulated a lively and still ongoing debate
about the epic’s textual history.50 This discussion has, of course, involved controversy about the date
of the text as well.51
One particularly controversial issue associated with this type of analysis concerns the question of
whether or not earliest strata of Vālmīki’s text recognizes Rāma as an avatāra of the supreme divinity
Viṣṇu. Some early European scholars argued that textual evidence supported the view that the oldest
portions of the poem do not regard the hero in this way,52 while some more recent authorities have
taken an opposite view.53 The issue is still a matter of debate among Rāmāyaṇa scholars.54 Interest in
issues such as these and many others relevant to a deeper understanding of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa has
been reignited in recent years by the completion of the critical edition of the text by scholars at the
Oriental Institute at Baroda55 and by the appearance of a translation of the critical text accompanied
46J. Talboys Wheeler, The History of India from the Earliest Ages (London: N. Trübner, 1867–81).
47Victor Henry, Les littératures de l’Inde: Sanscrit, Pâli, Prâcrit (Paris: Librarie Hachette, 1904).
48Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, 48–52; Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa: Bālakāṇḍa, 14–29.
49Hermann Jacobi, Das Râmâyaṇa: Geschichte und Inhalt, nebst Concordanz der Gedruckten Recensionen (Bonn:
Friedrich Cohen, 1893), 55–59.
50Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, 377–97; Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa: Bālakāṇḍa, 60–81; Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, vol. 5 of 5: Sundarakāṇḍa (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996), 87–91.
51Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, 379–83; Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa: Bālakāṇḍa, 14–23.
52Jacobi, Das Râmâyaṇa, 55–59; J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the People of India, their
Religion and Institutions, 5 vols. (1868; Amsterdam: Oriental, 1967), 4: 441–81.
53Pollock, Rāmāyaṇa: Araṇyakāṇḍa, 15–55.
54Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, 464–72.
55Bhatt and Shah, Vālmīki-Ramāyāṇa.
REQUIRED READING: GOLDMAN AND GOLDMAN
111
by elaborate introductions and copious annotations in which these and other scholarly issues are
discussed.56
Contemporary scholarship on the Rāmāyaṇa ranges widely over the intellectual spectrum with
many interesting studies being undertaken in the field from such diverse disciplinary perspectives as
feminist and gender studies,57 psychological analysis,58 performance studies,59 religious,60 political,61
folkloric62 and so on. The diversity of disciplinary approaches to the study of the Rāmāyaṇa in all its
many manifestations has given rise over the past few decades to numerous monographs and anthologies concerned with the manifold aspects of the tradition.63 So rich is the Rāmāyaṇa in implications
for the study of all aspects of traditional and modern South Asia that it is likely that scholarly interest
in this great textual tradition will continue in the coming decades and develop in as yet unanticipated
dimensions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is safe to say that no full or deeply nuanced understanding of the cultures and societies of South and Southeast Asia can be achieved without at least a basic familiarity with the plot,
characters, and central themes of the Rāma story first introduced to a broad audience by the legendary
poet-sage Vālmīki in his immortal epic, the Rāmāyaṇa. The destiny of this extraordinary work and its
unparalleled influence on the arts, cultures, societies, and religions of the region from the middle of
the first millennium bce down to the present day have amply validated Lord Brahmā’s prophecy concerning the longevity of the poem:
yāvat sthāsyanti girayaa saritaśca mahītale |
tāvat rāmāyaṇa kathā lokeṣu pracariṣyati || 1.2.35
As long as the mountains and rivers shall endure upon the earth,
so long will the story of the Rāmāyaṇa be current throughout the worlds.
56Robert P. Goldman, The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, 5 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984-96).
57Goldman, “Voice of Sītā.”
58Robert P. Goldman, “Fathers, Sons, and Gurus: Oedipal Conflict in the Sanskrit Epics,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 6,
no. 4 (1978): 325–92.
59Blackburn, Inside the Drama-House; Richard Schechner, “Ramlila of Ramnagar,” in Between Theater and Anthropology
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).
60Philip Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991).
61Pollock, “Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination.”
62Ramanujan, “Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas”; K. S. Singh and Birendranath Datta, eds., Rama-Katha in Tribal and Folk
Traditions of India (Calcutta: Seagull, 1993).
63K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Asian Variations in Ramayana (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1983); Richman, Many Rāmāyaṇas:
The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia; Singh and Datta, Rama-Katha; Monika Thiel-Horstmann, Rāmāyaṇa and
Rāmāyaṇas (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991).
Hinduism in Practice
113
3 Hindu Gods and Goddesses
Topic overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
identify the main forms of the great gods, Śiva and Viṣṇu, and goddesses, and
discuss the representations of Śiva in temples in the context of the theology and mythology of
Śiva, and
explain how Hindus understand the relationships between the different gods and goddesses,
including village deities.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
monotheism, polytheism
“great tradition” and “little traditions”
Viṣṇu, Śiva and the Goddess
This unit will introduce the major Hindu gods and goddesses, their mythologies and the movements
focussed on them by examining the nature of Hindu temple worship. The emphasis will be on the
characters of the gods (as revealed in their iconography and mythology) and the ways in which ordinary Hindus interact with them in worship, on a daily basis and on festival occasions. While some
reference is made to historical development in the traditions around the gods, the aim is reveal the
common grammar of devotional practice which links Hindus who worship different gods, rather than
entering into detailed discussion of the complex history of sectarian Hinduism. As we have already
looked in some detail at the stories surrounding Rāma, identified as an avatāra of Viṣṇu, here our focus will be on Śiva and the Hindu goddesses. The reading deals with both Śiva and Viṣṇu, the Goddess,
and the other minor deities.
Hindu temples
Temples are the most visible evidence of the importance of Hinduism in Indian society. Many smaller
Indian settlements are still dominated by the temple standing at their centre, from which the town
115
116
GODS AND GODDESSES
or village will often take its name. In premodern times the physical and economic dominance of the
temple would have been greater still. All but the very smallest settlements will have more than one
temple, and often even fairly small towns will have several large temples, as well as many smaller
sites for public worship, the smallest of which being wayside shrines which can be found on almost
every street. In the absence of a centralised religious authority, temples have played an important role
in structuring the Hindu tradition. Temples were also of great economic and political significance.
Endowments to temples to support rituals and the priests who carried them out made the temples
important landowners and in some cases temple endowments funded large-scale irrigation works on
which the prosperity of a whole region depended. Such endowments were an important means for
kings to establish their legitimacy and to assert their claim to power. Even in modern India temples
continue to be an arena in which political rivalries are played out. In this chapter, however, our focus
will be on the temple as a site of worship.
Each temple is dedicated to one deity in particular—usually a form of Śiva, Viṣṇu or the goddess—
but almost all temples house images of many deities and most worshippers come to view and make
offerings before several of these deities each time they come to the temple. The patterns of their
worship will be explained below, but first we shall introduce some of the deities, describing the characteristic forms in which they appear in the temple.
The iconography of Śiva
A temple dedicated to Śiva will be very likely to have multiple representations of the deity.1 A visitor
to such a temple is in fact likely to encounter images of Śiva even before entering the temple. Larger
temples are usually found at the centre of town and will be surrounded by a busy area where shopkeepers compete to provide offerings for worshippers to take into the temple and all manner of other
goods, including printed posters of Śiva in various forms.
Nandi: Śiva’s mount
On entering the temple itself, one of the first things the worshipper is likely to encounter is an image of
Śiva’s vāhana (mount or vehicle) the bull Vṛṣa, more usually referred to as Nandi. This image, which
in large temples may be a monumental form many times larger than life, will invariably be facing
directly toward the centre of the temple, where the main image of Śiva is enshrined. Nandi means
‘joyful’ and for the devotee the source of Nandi’s joy is his place in front of Śiva, continuously in the
presence of the god to whom he offers devotion. The bull kneels before his lord, legs folded beneath
his body. The bull’s body is usually depicted as decorated, sometimes with a simple garland of bells, at
other times saddled and richly ornamented. The huge mass of these images, which are often carved
in stone, conveys an impression of stillness, suggesting Nandi’s contemplation of his divine master.
The bull’s bulk seems also to have been the reason for his association with dharma. The purāṇas refer
to dharma in the first, golden, age as being firm like a bull walking on all four feet. In the next age as
dharma begins to decline the bull stands on only three feet, in the following age on two, until finally in
our age, the age of greatest degeneration, dharma wobbles unsteadily on only one foot. The impressive
physique and regal bearing of the bull made him a natural symbol for the justice of both human and
divine kings. The image of Nandi in the temple is likely to be garlanded with fresh flowers, the stone
1Images of all the forms of Śiva mentioned in this unit are available on Blackboard.
VIṢṆU, ŚIVA AND THE GODDESS
117
dark from being bathed in oil but marked in different places with bright yellow or red powders. All of
this indicates that the image has been worshipped as a form of Śiva himself. In temples dedicated to
other deities the vāhana of that deity will be found in a similar position. Viṣṇu’s mount, for example,
is Garuḍa—a mythical winged creature, usually depicted as a powerful man with wings and a bird’s
beak or head.
Ganeṣa: Śiva’s son
The main shrine will lie directly ahead, but before proceeding there most worshippers will circumambulate the shrine in a clockwise direction and thereby keeping the main shrine on their right. As
they do so, they will encounter several further forms of the deity, either on the walls of the main temple or in shrines alongside it. Which particular forms of the deity they see will vary according to the
size, age and region of the temple, but within a particular region temple design usually follows a common pattern so that each temple will have a familiar feel to a worshipper from that locality. Many
of the large temples in the south were either first established or greatly expanded during the reign of
a series of powerful kings in the medieval period, and their temples have similar layouts. Like most
Hindu temples, almost all of these temples face east, toward the rising sun, and as worshippers begin
their circumambulation they will pass an image of Ganeṣa on the south-facing wall extending from
the main shrine toward the entrance. Ganeṣa, instantly identifiable by his elephant head, is also referred to as Vināyaka or the ‘remover of obstacles’ and his position here reflects the fact that many
Hindus begin their worship by petitioning him to remove obstacles to the worship they intend to offer. Ganeṣa is said to be one of the two sons of Śiva, but his role as remover of obstacles means that
he has found a place among all Hindu communities. Even in temples dedicated to deities other than
Śiva worshippers will begin by invoking Ganeṣa, making him perhaps the most widely worshipped of
all the Hindu deities.
Dakṣiṇamūrti: Śiva as ascetic
In large Śaiva temples there may be several other forms of Śiva positioned along the south wall, but at
the centre of the southern wall of the main shrine it is usual to find an image of Śiva as Dakṣiṇamūrti.
Dakṣiṇamūrti means ‘southern image’ but although this particular form of Śiva is found almost exclusively in the south of India2 the name refers not to the origin of the image but to the fact that it
represents Śiva, seated in the mountains in the north, facing south as he instructs his devotees (who
may also be depicted). In this form Śiva is usually shown seated, often with his right leg hanging down
and resting on, or crushing, a dwarfish figure. Śiva is here represented as a teacher and although some
Dakṣiṇamūrti images show him holding the vīṇā (lute) or a book, his primary role is as the teacher of
yoga, the path of ascetic practices which leads to release. He is therefore represented as an ascetic,
with long matted hair. According to the texts which prescribe how this form of Śiva should be depicted, his hair should be decorated with poisonous datura flowers, a snake and a crescent moon. In
his locks is also to be found an image of the river goddess Gaṅgā. The texts explain that when the
Ganges, a celestial river identified with the Milky Way, was brought to earth, only Śiva was powerful
enough to break the fall of the river, containing it in his hair before releasing it to flow down from
his Himalayan home and across the plains of north India. His lower right hand is held in a gesture of
2In both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava temples.
118
GODS AND GODDESSES
teaching, the other right hand holds a mālā or rosary which ascetics use as they recite mantras. The
upper left hand holds either fire, a serpent or a lotus, and the lower left hand may either hold a book or
be held in the open-handed gesture (varada mudrā) signifying Śiva’s ability to fulfil the desires of his
devotees. Although Dakṣiṇamūrti is found only in the south, Śiva is widely represented as the master
ascetic or yogi, and many of the elements of his iconography here may be found in other images of
him and the myths to which they refer are also widespread.
The liṅga: Śiva as origin
As the worshipper continues to circle the central shrine, another of the forms of Śiva that he or she
will encounter is the Liṅgodbhavamūrti. In sculptural form this is again most commonly found in
South India, in the centre of the west wall of the main sanctuary, but the incident it depicts is found
in texts across India and introduces also the most widespread of all Śiva’s forms, the liṅga. There are
many versions of the story depicted but according to the Śiva Purāṇa Viṣṇu and Brahmā were arguing
over which of them was greatest when Śiva appeared in the form of a vast column of fire. Viṣṇu and
Brahmā decided to settle their argument by seeing which of them could locate the end of this column.
Viṣṇu, in the form of a boar, burrowed downward for a thousand years while Brahmā in the form a bird
flew upward in search of the summit. Neither succeeded and the Liṅgodbhavamūrti represents the
moment when Śiva bursts forth from flaming column to reveal his superiority to both of them. The
image, and the myth on which it is based, recognises the divinity of both Viṣṇu and Brahmā but asserts
the ultimate supremacy of Śiva. It is not unusual to find images of both Viṣṇu and Brahmā elsewhere
in Śaiva temples and the builders of the great medieval Śaiva temples in the south described here were
in fact known for including images of Viṣṇu and Brahmā in the temples they commissioned. In these
temples the central image on the north wall of the main sanctuary is usually Brahmā.
A variant of this myth also provides the background for a further very common image of Śiva. In
this version Brahmā claims, falsely, to have reached the top of the flaming liṅga. Śiva then appeared in
his terrible form of Bhairava to punish him by cutting off one of his heads. Other myths offer different
accounts of both the reasons why Śiva severed Brahmā’s head and what happened thereafter. Some
versions say that the head became attached to Bhairava’s hand left hand and that he was condemned
to expiate this sin by wandering in the form of a beggar. When he reached Kaśī (Varanasi) the skull fell
from his hand. This myth is represented on the walls of many southern temples by Śiva Bhairava in
the form of Bhikṣāyatana or Bhikṣāṭanamūrti.3 Śiva is depicted as an ascetic, naked except for a snake
coiled around his waist and sandals on his feet. He is accompanied by a dwarf and an antelope, to
which he may be feeding grass. In his hands he holds a drum, a staff and a cup fashioned from a skull.
A group of Śaiva ascetics called Kāpālikas (‘skull-bearers’) took this form of Śiva as the model for their
practice of the Mahāvrata or ‘Great Vow’. This group left no literature of its own, and its practices have
therefore to be reconstructed from what is said of the Kāpālikas in various other sources, including
inscriptions, legal texts and dramas in which they appear as characters.4 Their great vow was to perform the penance for killing a brahman, living as wandering beggars carrying the skull, for a period
of twelve years. The imitation of Śiva, as a sign of devotion to him, may be sufficient explanation in
itself for this practice, but the sources also suggest that the Kāpālika would also attain magical powers
3A related form, Kaṅkālamūrti, derives from a variant of the myth and depicts Śiva bearing the corpse, or skeleton, of a
brahman he has killed.
4David N. Lorenzen, The Kāpālikas and Kālāmukhas: Two Lost Śaivite Sects (New Delhi: Thomson Press, 1972).
VIṢṆU, ŚIVA AND THE GODDESS
119
(siddhi), either through identification with Śiva or through the merit gained by performing strenuous
penance for a crime which had not, in fact, been committed. What evidence there is suggests that
Kāpālikas existed, mainly in the central part of India, from perhaps the fifth or sixth century until
about the fourteenth century. Some of their ideas may have been taken over by other Śaiva ascetic
groups, who continue to model themselves on Śiva as the ideal ascetic.
These three images, Dakṣiṇamūrti on the south wall, Liṅgodbhavamūrti on the west and Brahmā
on the north are the standard pattern in a number of medieval Śaiva temples in Tamil Nadu. In many
such temples the pattern is also for there to be an image of the goddess Dūrga on the north wall as it
extends from the main sanctuary. There are many variations on this pattern. Smaller or less richlyendowed temples may have blank walls, larger temples may have dozens of images and some have
other images in the centre of each wall, relegating the three forms discussed here to other places.
There is much less variation in the image in the main shrine, the garbhagṛha, where the presiding
deity is located.
The garbhagṛha lies at the heart of the temple, on the main axis running from the temple entrance and beneath the vimāna, the central tower. In north Indian temples the vimāna is usually the
highest point of the temple, and is said to represent Mount Meru, the great mountain at the centre
of the universe where Śiva dwells. In south Indian temples the vimāna is often dwarfed by the towering gateways around the sides of temple, but it nevertheless marks the heart of the temple. In Śaiva
temples the image in the garbhagṛha is almost invariably the liṅga, a cylindrical stone shaft with a
rounded top. Images of the liṅga vary greatly in size. The smallest are only a few inches high, most
are a couple of feet, but in the great royal temple at Tanjore the liṅga is over twelve feet tall and 23 feet
in circumference. The liṅga is often described as ‘aniconic’ meaning that it does not depict Śiva in
anthropomorphic form. In its abstract simplicity the liṅga appropriately represents Śiva as the transcendent, formless, unmanifest supreme. The term ‘liṅga’ means ‘mark’ or ‘sign’ and the liṅga in the
temple is the sign of that which is without sign (aliṅga), that is, Śiva as the undifferentiated absolute,
the source of all things.5 In this form Śiva is said to be niṣkala, ‘without parts’. The authoritative texts
of south Indian Śaiva theology, the Āgamas, name this absolute as Paramaśiva.
According to this Śaiva theology, the universe arises as the result of a process of differentiation
within this absolute, which gives rise to the manifest forms of Śiva. The first stage in this process of
differentiation is the emergence of a single androgynous being, neither male nor female but nevertheless beginning to unfold so that male and female elements are distinguishable while remaining a
single entity.6 One of the most basic elements of diversity in the world, sexual difference, here serves
to represent the emergence for the first time of differentiation in what was previously undifferentiated. Later androgynous forms of Śiva, among them Ardhānāriśvara, ‘the Lord who is half woman’,
recall this stage in the creative process, but the aniconic form of the liṅga is the more common representation. The Śiva Purāṇa expands on the basic sense of liṅga as ‘mark’ or ‘sign’, defining it as ‘the
distinctive sign through which it is possible to recognize the nature of someone’.7 In the context of sexual difference, an important element of the symbolism here, liṅga can therefore also refer to the mark
of sexual difference, in this case male genitalia. The chasing or ‘seat’ (pīṭha) in which the liṅga is set
5For a detailed account of this Śaiva theology see Doris Meth Srinivasan, “From Transcendency to Materiality: Para Śiva,
Sadāśiva, and Maheśa in Indian Art,” Artibus Asiae 50, nos. 1-2 (1990): 108–42 and Richard H. Davis, Ritual in an Oscillating
Universe: Worshiping Śiva in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
6Don Handelman and David Shulman, God inside out: Śiva’s Game of Dice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 24.
7Śiva Purāṇa 1.16.106, cited in Alain Daniélou, Hindu Polytheism (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), 222.
120
GODS AND GODDESSES
is called the yoni which refers to the female genitalia. Thus the image as a whole represents the first
stage in creation where difference, here represented by sexual difference, is emergent but still held
together in a unified whole. In some liṅga images, notably the early and in many respects unusual
liṅga at Guḍimallam in Andhra Pradesh, the sculptural form makes this sexual symbolism clear. The
vast majority of images found in temples are much simpler in form however, and for worshippers the
primary referent of the image is simply Śiva. In recent times Hindus have understandably protested
at oversimplified accounts, some dating back to early scandalized missionary and colonial sources, of
worship of Śiva in the form of the liṅga as worship of the penis.8 While the sexual imagery is important
here, it is equally important to realise that it is part of a sophisticated theology of the emergence of
difference in the process of creation. While most ordinary worshippers would not be able to give a
detailed account of this theology, neither would they be in any doubt that what they are worshipping
when they go to the temple is Śiva.
In the next stage of the creative process Śiva emerges in a more clearly differentiated form, referred
to as Sadāśiva or the ‘eternal Śiva’. According to the Śaiva tradition, Sadāśiva is to be represented
in the form of the mukhaliṅga, a liṅga with one or more human faces emerging from it. Sadāśiva
represents the five fundamental activities that Śiva undertakes. Three of these relate to the universe:
creation, maintenance and dissolution, and two to the soul: veiling its true nature, and granting grace
and liberation. While in principle Sadāśiva is five-faced, some texts state that the fifth face (mukha)
should not be represented. When carving in relief it is not easy to represent all four sides of an image
and hence we have a variety of mukhaliṅga forms, usually with one, three or four faces.
Śiva Naṭarāja: the ‘Lord of Dance’
The manifest forms of Śiva are said to be sakala, ‘consisting of parts’, and hence can be represented
in material, mostly anthropomorphic, forms like those of Dakṣiṇamūrti and others described above.
There are dozens of such forms, each of which is connected with a particular aspect of Śaiva theology
and mythology. Perhaps the best known of these is Śiva as Naṭarāja, the ‘Lord of Dance’.9 This form
represents Śiva’s ‘dance of furious bliss’ or Ānanda-tāṇḍava, and hence the image is also referred to
as the Ānandatāṇḍavamūrti. Although found on many temples, this image is particularly connected
with the temple at Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, where it is enshrined in the central sanctuary. It is
unusual for the central image of Śiva not to be a liṅga, but the temple at Chidambaram is unusual
in several respects, and even here the central shrine also includes both a mukhaliṅga and an empty
curtained space which is understood to be an ākāśa liṅga, or liṅga of space.
Śiva Naṭarāja is depicted with four arms, dancing within a circle of fire.10 His right leg is flexed,
and the left is raised and extended across his body. From his waist a sash and from his head loose
braids of hair, entwined with snakes, stream out toward the circle of fire. Several details of this image
are familiar from other depictions of Śiva. As well as snakes, his matted hair contains the goddess
Gaṅgā and a crescent moon, as in his Dakṣiṇamūrti form. One of his earrings is a man’s, the other a
woman’s, recalling his androgynous forms. Many sources connect Śiva with dance. The image of Śiva
Naṭarāja may also owe something to ancient Tamil ideas of warriors, and warrior gods, who dance on
8Padma Kaimal, “Learning to See the Goddess Once Again: Male and Female in Balance at the Kailāsanāth Temple in
Kāñcīpuram,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73, no. 1 (2005): 54.
9In Tamil, Āṭavallān or Kūttaperumānaṭikaḷ.
10See Figure 6 above.
VIṢṆU, ŚIVA AND THE GODDESS
121
the battlefield. The association with victorious warriors may have been one reason why this image of
Śiva was adopted as an emblem by the Chola dynasty and incorporated into many of the temples they
sponsored in Tamil Nadu.11 In later centuries, however, this rich image has accumulated many different interpretations. One prominent interpretation links Śiva’s limbs to the five functions mentioned
above in relation to the five-faced Sadaśiva. This interpretation is perhaps first found in Tirumantiram, although the date of this work is uncertain.12 The drum held in Śiva’s upper right hand represents
his work of creation; his other right hand, which is held out with the palm raised in a gesture meaning
‘have no fear’, represents his maintenance of all things. His upper left hand holds a flame, representing his work of dissolution of the cosmos at the end of each age. His final hand, held out across his
body, gestures downward towards his left foot raised in dance but also, according to many texts which
celebrate it, in granting grace and release to his devotees who seek refuge beneath it. According to
Tirumantiram, Śiva’s right foot ‘planted down is concealment’,13 or the function of veiling the true nature of the soul. Beneath this foot is a dwarfish figure like that on which Dakṣiṇamūrti’s right foot also
rests. Modern interpreters identify this figure as Apasmāra, or Muyalakaṉ, a demon representing ignorance which coheres with the association of this limb with Śiva’s activity of veiling or concealment.
However, although Śiva is sometimes said to crush opponents beneath his feet, the figure represented
here resembles the gaṇas who elsewhere, in both art and text, attend Śiva and are represented as his
servants.14 This may indicate that this particular interpretation of the Śiva Naṭarāja image, although
popular, differs from other, older interpretations. The image is extremely rich in associations, however, and Hindus seem rarely to feel compelled to choose only one interpretation at the expense of
others. The Tirumantiram also refers to the idea that Śiva’s dance, which creates, sustains and finally
dissolves the universe, is a form of play (līlā). Here we have a dual echo of one of the Ṛgvedic accounts
of the creation of the universe out of the dance of the gods. The universe is the līlā of Śiva which, like
dance, serves no higher or ultimate purpose, being simply an end in itself.
The posture Śiva adopts in the Naṭarāja image is by far the best known depiction of his Ānandatāṇḍava or ‘dance of furious bliss’. There is, however, another dance posture which is depicted in
temples, including at Chidambaram. This is the ūrdhvatāṇḍava or ‘high tāṇḍava’ pose, in which Śiva
stands on his left leg while kicking his right leg up above his head. This pose is associated with the story
of his defeat of the goddess in a dance contest. As ever, there are several different versions of the story
to be found.15 What they have in common is the idea that the fierce goddess Kālī challenges Śiva to
a dance contest which ends only when Śiva adopts the ūrdhvatāṇḍava pose, with his right leg raised
directly above his head. At this, Kālī concedes defeat, being unable or unwilling to match his step.
Modern sources explain that it would be immodest for her to adopt this position. An older version
of the story locates the contest at Tiruvālaṅkāṭu, north of Chidambaram, and states only that when
Śiva adopted this position he threatened the stability of the cosmos, and that Kālī was subdued by
this demonstration of his power. At Chidambaram itself, the result of the contest is said to have been
11Padma Kaimal, “Shiva Nataraja: Shifting Meanings of an Icon,” The Art Bulletin 81, no. 3 (1999): 405.
12David Smith, The Dance of Śiva: Religion, Art and Poetry in South India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
17.
13Ibid.
14Smith (Ibid., 15) notes that Śiva’s devotees are referred to in Tamil as aṭiyāṉ, literally ‘one who is at the feet’ and comments ‘To be under Śiva’s foot was a highly desirable condition.’
15Three different versions are reported in David Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South
Indian Śaiva Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 214–220.
122
GODS AND GODDESSES
that Kālī was forced to retreat from the main temple to the northern edge of the town. Historically,
it appears that there were a series of attempts to displace Kālī from the temple perhaps because her
worship, like that of other fierce deities, involved offerings which had come to be considered polluting
(meat and alcohol). In the thirteenth century a temple dedicated to Kālī was constructed about half a
mile north of the main Chidambaram temple.16 In the main temple the goddess is worshipped in her
more peaceful aspect as Śivakāmasundarī, whose name indicates both her beauty and her relationship
with Śiva. While it is Śivakāmasundarī who stands next to the main image of Śiva Naṭarāja watching
his dance, Kālī is not quite excluded, either from the temple or from the hearts of Śiva’s devotees. The
image of Śiva in his ūrdhvatāṇḍava pose is just to the south of the main shrine, and next to it stands a
small image of Kālī, looking north toward the Śiva Naṭarāja image. And most pilgrims to Chidambaram
end their worship by visiting the Tillai Kālī temple.
Kālī/Pārvatī: Śiva’s consort
All Śaiva temples include also multiple images of the goddess. As at Chidambaram, the goddess has
two forms—a peaceful form, in which she is usually said to be married to Śiva, and a fierce form
which exists in a more combative relationship with him. The two forms are related in a series of
myths in which the goddess Pārvatī is either called ‘dark’ (the literal meaning of the name Kālī) by
Śiva or cursed by him to become dark as the consequence of offending him. To win, or to restore,
his favour she performs austerities and loses her dark skin, becoming the beautiful Gaurī (‘the fair’).
From her dark skin emerges Kālī, who embodies the wrath felt by the goddess at her treatment by
Śiva. The founding myths of many temples describe Śiva’s marriage to a local goddess who therefore
is understood to be a form of Pārvatī but has a distinctive name. In a number of these cases, even
where the temple is theoretically dedicated to Śiva, it is the goddess who remains the real focus of
attention. Such is the case at Madurai where Śiva in the form of Sundareśvara (‘the handsome’) is said
to have pacified Mīnākṣī (‘the fish-eyed’), the warrior-queen of Madurai and married her. The temple is
formally named for both gods, and the architectural layout places Śiva’s shrine at the centre,17 but the
complex as a whole is usually referred to as the Mīnākṣī temple and Fuller reports that the placement
of her shrine to the right of Śiva’s is interpreted by temple personnel as indicating her pre-eminence.
Other images
All large temples, and many smaller ones, will contain many other images of Śiva, in some cases hundreds or even thousands. Among these will be depictions of scenes from the rich mythology surrounding Śiva, painted or carved on the temple walls and towers. Each temple will also have portable metal
images representing Śiva, and the other major deities enshrined in the temple. The primary purpose
of these is for use in procession as a part of temple festivals.18
16Paul Younger, The Home of Dancing Śivaṉ: The Traditions of the Hindu Temple in Citamparam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 106.
17Crispin Branfoot, Gods on the Move: Architecture and Ritual in the South Indian Temple (London: British Academy &
Society for South Asian Studies, 2007), 28.
18In some temples, additional portable images are used also for other ritual purposes. See Christopher J. Fuller, “The
Divine Couple’s Relationship in a South Indian Temple: Mīnākṣī and Sundareśvara at Madurai,” History of Religions 19, no. 4
(1980): 321–48.
VIṢṆU, ŚIVA AND THE GODDESS
123
Goddesses
When we come to consider the worship of goddesses, or the Goddess, in Hinduism, many of the same
patterns that we saw in the worship of the gods become apparent. Once again, there is no single
answer to the question of whether there are many goddesses, or only one goddess, whether the goddesses are to be identified with the gods, or whether they are independent deities. There are indeed
many goddesses: Śrī-Lakṣmī, Pārvatī, Sarasvatī, Sītā, Rādhā, Durgā, Kālī are perhaps the most important, but there are many others; Vedic goddesses (Uṣas, Pṛthivī, Aditi, Vāc, Niṛrti); river goddesses,
such as Gaṇgā or Narmada; Tamil goddesses such as Koṟṟavai, goddess of war; and the innumerable
goddesses of the villages, some of whom rise to greater prominence. Māriyammaṉ, for instance, is a
goddess who has become popular in South India and whose cult is showing signs of developing panIndian or pan-Hindu significance. In Guyana, hymns addressed to Māriyammaṉ are being used in
worship in a temple formally dedicated to Kālī. In North America, similar developments have been
observed in the worship of Durgā and other goddesses. This is a similar process to that by which gods
of local or regional importance, have been identified with the high gods of the Vedic tradition, and the
logical outcome of this process is the identification of all goddesses (and indeed all gods) as aspects
of Devī, the great goddess.
Another familiar pattern is the ambivalent character of the goddesses. The goddess, particularly
on the level of village or rural Hinduism, is associated with disease and is represented as a fearsome
deity. She is also, however, a protector of her devotees, and therefore her fierceness is comforting to
them, because she is fierce on their behalf. Would you feel safer being protected by a rottweiler or a
poodle?
The pervasiveness of the divine, the fluidity of the boundary between the divine and the nondivine is also to be seen in relation to the goddesses. Many myths about the origin of the goddesses
show how a human woman becomes deified, as a result of some virtuous action, or through being the
victim of some evil action. The myths concerning the origin of Māriyammaṉ are again good examples
of both these aspects. In one myth:
a young Brahman girl is courted by, and eventually married to an untouchable who has
disguised himself as a Brahman. On discovering the trick, the woman becomes furious
and kills herself [a virtuous act, preventing caste mixing]. She is transformed into a goddess and in her divine form punishes the untouchable.19
The blurring of the boundary between human and divine is also apparent in the phenomenon of possession. Worshippers become possessed by the goddess, go into a trance, and give revelations of the
goddess and dispense healing, and are often said to ‘be’ the goddess while in this state.
To understand the worship of the goddess we also have to consider the relationship between the
Sanskritic tradition derived from the Vedas and Purāṇas and the wide range of other traditions of
popular Hinduism. The goddess is important in both these traditions, and in many cases the study of
individual goddesses can show us how the traditions interact. Although goddess worship goes back
as far as the time of the Vedas, the main development of goddess worship is much later, in the time
of the Purāṇas and later texts, and really only becomes a major feature of Hinduism with the rise of
bhakti movements.
19David R. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997), 200, Kinsley also gives some other accounts of Māriyammaṉ’s origin.
124
GODS AND GODDESSES
The goddesses of the Vedas
Although several goddesses are mentioned in the Vedas, they do not seem to have been anywhere
near as important as the male gods, who themselves were primarily spoken of in the context of their
relation to the sacrifice. The goddesses are mentioned relatively infrequently, and usually only in
relation to a male god. However, they are worth mentioning briefly as they represent qualities that
are later associated with the great goddess or goddesses of Hinduism.
Uṣas is associated or identified with the dawn, and therefore also with the sun-god Surya. She
is invoked in the Vedas to drive away darkness, and that which is associated with darkness. She is
associated with light, and hence with auspicious qualities, prosperity and wealth. She is, however,
also associated with the passage of time and therefore limits the length of life.
Pṛthivī is the earth-goddess, who is almost always spoken of in connection with the male sky-god,
Dyaus (only in the Atharva Veda does she emerge as an independent deity). The universe arises from
their sexual union, hence Dyaus is father, and Pṛthivī mother. She is associated with fertility, and
praised as a source of nourishment and support. She is also however, invoked in a funeral hymn, and
asked to cover the dead as a mother protectively covers her child.
Aditi appears in the Vedas as the mother of the Ādityas, a group of divine beings of lesser importance, and sometimes also as the mother of the great god Indra, a central figure in the Vedas. Her
name means ‘the unbound one’ or ‘the free’, hence she is invoked by those who wish to be freed from
sin, or sickness.
Sarasvatī was originally a river goddess, much like Gaṅgā is now. In the Vedas Sarasvatī has many
of the same qualities as Pṛthivī, a source of fertility and nourishment, and is also, like the Ganges and
other rivers, associated with purification from the defilement and pollution of life in saṃsāra. The
original Sarasvatī river cannot now be identified with any certainty, and probably no longer exists.
However the river Sarasvatī is still said to flow as a spiritual or underground river, and to join the
Ganges at its confluence with the Yāmuna, one reason why bathing at this site is so powerful, especially
at the time of the Kumbh Mela festival. In the assimilation of this vanished ancient river to the visible
modern river, we have here a striking metaphor for the process by which the worship of ancient gods
is assimilated to the worship of newer forms of the divine. The same worship that was once given to
Sarasvatī, is now given to Gaṅga, or to Sarasvatī herself in her new form as a goddess of wisdom, no
longer associated with a river, but with speech, reasoning, the intellect, and the arts and sciences. In
her new form, Sarasvatī becomes one of the wives of Viṣṇu, another old god in a new form. In the way
that modern Hindus see the ancient river Sarasvatī in the modern Ganges, we may see the worship of
the ancient vedic gods, in their more modern counterparts.
In the later Vedic texts, and in her modern form Sarasvatī takes over some of the qualities which,
in the vedic saṃhitās, were associated with the goddess Vāc, or speech. Vāc is above all the sacrificial
utterance, the mantra chanted at every sacrifice, including the primordial sacrifice, in which the universe was formed. Vāc, sound or speech, is thus the very stuff of the universe, but also the origin of
and essence of the Vedas, and therefore of all truth.
Finally we may mention Nirṛti, a counterpart of the Vedic Rudra, a fearsome goddess who is mainly
implored to stay away, and not to do harm. Some of her qualities, and the details of her appearance,
appear later in the fearsome forms of goddesses such as Durgā and Kālī.
VIṢṆU, ŚIVA AND THE GODDESS
125
The great goddesses: Śrī-Lakṣmī
The goddess Śrī, or Lakṣmī is best known as the consort or wife of Viṣṇu. Although she does not herself appear in the Vedas, the term ‘śrī’ does (as is the case with Śiva and the term ‘śiva’). ‘Śrī’ means
power, especially the power of a king or ruler, and its associated qualities of majesty, dominion, lordship. It is also associated with wealth and prosperity. The figure of Śrī-Lakṣmī is the embodiment
of these qualities in divine form, and she has been associated with them from late Vedic times until
the present. She is a goddess of plenty, of abundance of everything good in all forms. Lakṣmī may be
translated as ‘She of the Hundred-Thousands’ and is taken to mean ‘good fortune’. She is associated
with fertility, but also with something more than just that, with spiritual power and, because spiritual
power comes from virtuous living, with purity. Lakṣmī is therefore sometimes said to be the wife of
Dharma, implying that both spiritual and material well-being may result from obeying, or wedding
oneself to one’s dharma.
Like power itself, Śrī-Lakṣmī can be associated with good or evil, she is at times also associated
with demons who gain power, such as the demon Bali, who at one time ruled the world. When Bali
is defeated by Viṣṇu in the form of a dwarf, Śrī-Lakṣmī departs from him, leaving him powerless. Similarly Śrī-Lakṣmī appears to have become associated with Viṣṇu following his rise as a powerful god:
she is said to have emerged from the cosmic ocean when it was churned by the gods, under the direction of Viṣṇu, to obtain the amṛta, the elixir of immortality. Once she becomes associated with Viṣṇu,
Lakṣmī is no longer associated with the power of evil, but only with good. She becomes the ideal wife,
obedient to her royal husband, depicted as smaller than him or sitting at his feet. This is in keeping
with the essentially benevolent character of Viṣṇu, whose śākti, or ‘female energy’ she is said to be.
Śākti is suggestive of dynamic, creative power or energy, and for some Śrī-Lakṣmī is either the creator
herself, or the means through which Viṣṇu creates. She is said to have accompanied him on each of
his descents.
Śrī-Lakṣmī is widely worshipped as a goddess of fertility, good fortune and prosperity. She is associated with the festival of Dīvalī, when she is invoked or praised by farmers for good harvests, and
by businessmen or traders for success. As the ideal wife she is also much invoked in prayers relating
to marriage. Her iconography emphasizes the ideas of regal power, prosperity, purity, chastity and
generosity.
The great goddesses: Kālī
Kālī is a fearsome, terrible goddess, or the terrible aspect of the goddess (sometimes an aspect of
Pārvatī, or of Durgā, in which case she is usually the embodiment of their wrath). One etymological
Kālī myth explains that Pārvatī originally had a dark complexion, and Śiva called her Pārvatī Kālī (‘the
black Pārvatī’). Pārvatī then performed austerities to rid herself of her dark complexion and become
Gaurī, ‘the golden one’. The residue of her dark complexion became Kālī.
Kālī is virtually always represented as black or dark, naked or clothed in animal skins, wild-haired,
with a garland of skulls or freshly severed heads as a necklace, sometimes with a string of severed arms
hanging from her waist, the head of her latest victim in one hand and a sword or cleaver in the other.
Her mouth is bloody, and she is often depicted with sharp teeth and clawlike hands, sitting on a corpse.
She is associated with the cremation ground, with wild animals and with battle. She is sometimes
said to be the consort, or the śakti, the female energy, of that other wild, dangerous god, Lord Śiva.
126
GODS AND GODDESSES
She is often depicted above the prone figure of Śiva, who may appear to be dead, or engaging in sexual
intercourse with Kālī.
Kālī is a dreadful warrior, sometimes fighting with Śiva or the other gods, but more often on her
own. When Durgā becomes enraged in battle with the demon Raktabīja, Kālī emerges as the embodied wrath of Durgā. When Raktabīja is injured, from each drop of his blood that falls to the ground
a clone of the demon appears. Kālī, however, is quite literally bloodthirsty, and defeats the demon
by sucking the blood from his body and consuming the bodies of his clones. Kālī’s destructive power,
although useful on the battlefield, can also become a problem for the gods, when, drunk on the blood
of her victims, she rages on, out of control. Here we find one explanation of the depiction of Kālī on
top of Śiva. Her terrible raging dance threatens to destroy the whole world, and Śiva is called on to
calm her. He lies down on the battlefield, as if he were dead, so that when she dances on his body she
will recognize him as her husband, and stop her destructive dance. Alternatively Śiva calms her by
appearing on the battlefield as a child, crying loudly. Kālī then stops dancing and suckles the child.
Finally he may subdue her by his own terrible dance, the tāṇḍava dance. These myths may be Śaivite
in origin—for devotees who take Kālī to be the great goddess, the highest form of divinity, the image
clearly also represents Kālī’s mastery over the lifeless Śiva.
A village goddess: Māriyammaṉ
Māriyammaṉ is a goddess whose origin seems to be as a grāma devatā or village deity, associated with
both fertility and sickness, especially smallpox, prior to its eradication. Her association with fertility
can be seen in the use of the green leaves of mārgosa tree at festivals and other times of worship. The
leaves are from a tree which remains green even in very dry years. Her name is sometimes explained
to mean ‘rain mother’, and the main festival at her temples is held shortly before the rain season, and
sometimes explicitly linked with it. At this festival children are brought to the goddess for blessing.
Another major aspect of life in relation to which goddesses are often invoked is illness. Before
smallpox was eradicated, plagues of the disease often occurred in the hot, wet, season in which Māriyammaṉ’s festival is held, and she was one of the many goddesses appealed to for protection and/or healing. One of the stories associating her with smallpox says that she was once the wife of a Brahman and
that she had a reputation for being both beautiful and virtuous. Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Śiva learnt of her
reputation and came to see for themselves. Offended by the intrusion into her home, Māriyammaṉ
cursed the three gods to become like little children, and began to mother them. When her husband
arrived he was upset to see the gods treated in this way, and cursed her with smallpox and sent her
out to beg and spread the disease from house to house. She is therefore the cause of the disease, but
also in control of it. Although smallpox has been eradicated she is still associated with disease and
with healing.
Māriyammaṉ has both a fierce and a tender aspect. Like Kālī, she is sometimes pictured with
the severed heads of her enemies, or those of her devotees. One scholar has described a long letter
addressed to the goddess and attached to one of her shrines, in which a young man describes the
enemies he has in his office and pleads with the goddess to intervene on his behalf. Scholars have
also found that some of the myths of destruction of evil-doers related to Kālī are told by devotees of
Māriyammaṉ with her taking Kālī’s place.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
127
Māriyammaṉ’s village origins are still apparent in the forms of her worship. Paul Younger has
described a festival at a major temple devoted to her.20 He highlights the way in which the location of
the temple in undeveloped countryside, and the relatively simple rituals undertaken there, serve as a
reminder of their ancestral villages to the many city-dwellers among the hundred thousand or more
who attend the festival. Most Indians are still aware of their family’s ancestral village—referred to as
their ‘native place’—and in many cases they are still linked to it by family and other ties. However,
Younger also notes how representatives of the Sanskrit ‘great tradition’, in this case Śaiva priests who
have been hired to conduct the rituals, and Vaiṣṇava priests whom the government has given authority
to manage the temple and its revenues, have begun to impose other forms of worship, such as car
processions, which are familiar from their use in the temples of the gods of the Sanskritic tradition.
Younger notes, however, that these additions are barely tolerated by Māriyammaṉ’s devotees, who
continue to focus their attention on the older rituals, such as the ‘dance’ to the temple, the offering of
animals (albeit no longer sacrificed) and the practices of ‘possession’ and heroic self-torture.
Recommended reading
Daniélou, Alain. Hindu Polytheism. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964.
Foulston, Lynn, and Stuart Abbott. Hindu Goddesses: Beliefs and Practices. Brighton: Sussex Academic
Press, 2009.
Huyler, Stephen P. Meeting God: elements of Hindu devotion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Kinsley, David R. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Required Reading
Christopher J. Fuller, “Gods and Goddesses,” in The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in
India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 29–56.
A
s the sun sinks quickly in a blaze of redness below the Indian horizon, women light oil lamps symbolizing the goddess Lakshmi’s presence in their homes and temple priests prepare for evening
worship. At most temples, the crowd of worshipers is thickest after dark, and at Shiva’s temples in
Gujarat it is said that the greatest spiritual merit can be gained then, because all the deities are in
attendance. To gaze on the phallic emblem of Shiva standing in his temple is as beneficial as a vision
of every god and goddess separately, all 330 million of them.1 The ancient sage who first advanced this
figure no doubt thought of it as almost unimaginably large. And even if India’s human population,
now more than twice as numerous, has rather reduced its impact, the proverbial total of 330 million
still conveys to us popular theistic Hinduism’s superabundance of divine beings.
20Paul Younger, “A Temple Festival of Māriyammaṉ,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48, no. 4 (1980): 493–
517.
1Margaret [Mrs Sinclair] Stevenson, The Rites of the Twice-Born (London: Oxford University Press, 1920), 394–95.
128
GODS AND GODDESSES
Giant numbers are invoked too to describe the indescribable dimensions of the gods, of Shiva
shining 10 million times as brightly as the radiant sun in the Indian sky. Above all else, it is the vast
and variously imagined power of the deities that Vishnu’s speech intends to convey, and it is that
power over the world and its inhabitants that is taken for granted by the overwhelming majority of
Hindus. They therefore see ritual communication with the gods and goddesses as imperative.
Hindu Polytheism
Before we can explore the rituals of popular Hinduism, we have to understand the distinctive nature
of its polytheism. The dictionary defines polytheism as “belief in or worship of many gods.” Although
this definition broadly applies to Hinduism, all Hindus sometimes and some Hindus always insist
that there is in reality only one God, of whom all the distinct gods and goddesses are but forms. To
ask if Hindus do or do not believe in more than one god is therefore too simple, for they may say
that there is one god and many in almost the same breath. For example, Hindus often talk about
different deities whom they worship, identify the god or goddess considered to be most powerful or
sympathetic, and simultaneously insist that all deities are ultimately one. This manner of speaking is
not self-contradictory. Conventionally and simply, we can say that the polytheistic Hindu pantheon
comprises a large number of deities, the term I use throughout to refer collectively to both gods and
goddesses. Most deities have numerous forms or manifestations and most have a multitude of names.
Chanting standard lists of their names is itself a common way to praise deities. There is, however, no
sharp opposition between distinct deities or forms of them, on the one hand, and variant names for
the same deity or form, on the other. Thus a single deity with different names may be seen, in another
context or from another perspective, as a set of distinct deities. This fluidity—which means that one
deity can become many and many deities can become one—is a supremely important characteristic
of Hindu polytheism.
Also crucial in Hindu polytheism is the relationship between the deities and humanity. Unlike
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheism, predicated on the otherness of God and either his total
separation from man or his singular incarnation in Christ, Hinduism postulates no absolute distinction between deities and human beings. The idea that all deities are truly one is, moreover, easily
extended to proclaim that all human beings are in reality also forms of one supreme deity—Brahman,
the Absolute of philosophical Hinduism. In practice, this abstract monist doctrine rarely belongs to
an ordinary Hindu’s stated religious beliefs. Yet, examples of permeability between the divine and
human can easily be found in popular Hinduism in many unremarkable contexts.
As we have seen, a wife ideally venerates her husband as a god, but a more forceful and reciprocal
expression of a like idea is that the bride and groom are divine on their wedding day. They are usually
identified as particular deities—the groom as, say, Shiva or Rama, an incarnation of the great god
Vishnu, and his bride as their respective consorts, Parvati or Sita. During the wedding ritual, the couple
are worshiped in much the same way as deities are worshiped before their images in temples, so that
at least once in their lives, almost all Hindus assume a divine form before their family and friends.
There are many other comparable examples. For instance, a priest, particularly in temples dedicated to Vishnu or Shiva, should carry out a ritual to make himself a form of the god during worship.
More generally identification with the deity, so that the human worshiper becomes divine, is a fundamental objective in Hindu worship (puja). Again, a man or woman, or even a child, who becomes
possessed by a deity is, while in this state, regarded as a bodily manifestation of the deity within. A
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
129
more particular instance is the pure virgin girl adored as a goddess in kumari puja, “virgin worship,” a
cult most prevalent in northern and eastern India and Nepal.
The most dramatic cases, however, are certainly the Hindu “holy men” and “god‑men” (gurus,
sadhus, swamis, and so on) who have sometimes found fame and fortune beyond India as well as
within it. All these holy men are in principle ascetic world‑renouncers. Ordinary Hindus are rarely
credulous about their holy men (or occasionally women), many of whom are treated with healthy
skepticism because their complete renunciation is doubted. But those who do command conviction
are often revered and worshiped as divine, even though no one would normally deny that they are also
human beings. Men of this kind include leading monks, such as the Shankaracharyas who head the
monasteries founded by the great philosopher Shankara around A.D. 700–800, as well as the founders
of new religious movements, such as the god‑man Sathya Sai Baba, who claims to be a form of Shiva.
In contemporary India, millions of Hindus worship the Shankaracharyas, Sai Baba, and other similar
personages as deities.
None of this means that Hindus cannot or do not differentiate between deities and people. For
most people most of the time, the difference between divinity and humanity is patent and never dissolves one ineradicable distinction: in the current age anyway, gods and goddesses are immortal, but
human beings must die. Because the religion is premised on the lack of any absolute divide between
them, however, human beings can be divine forms under many and various conditions, and the claim
to divinity is unsensational, even banal, in a way that it could never be in a monotheistic religion lacking 330 million deities. By a western reader in particular, this fundamental point must be understood.
A Hindu claiming to be divine is rarely saying anything extraordinary, let alone heretical, and human
divine forms are no more and no less than a logical corollary of Hinduism’s fluid polytheism.
Most of the principal deities worshiped by Hindus are, however, fully divine and not, at one and
the same time, partly human. The multiplicity of their names does not make it easy for readers unfamiliar with them. But I shall try to simplify by using single names for each deity consistently, overlooking other epithets and regional variants whenever possible. Moreover, the impression of inchoate
abundance given by so many names will be mitigated once the main dimensions of the polytheistic
pantheon have been grasped.
Vishnu and Shiva as great gods
Vishnu and Shiva are preeminent as the two great gods (deva) of Hinduism. They are worshiped by deva/devī
Hindus everywhere and there are thousands upon thousands of temples and shrines dedicated to
them. They are also the leading characters in Hindu mythology and other scriptures, and most accounts of theistic Hinduism, since they are based on textual scholarship, focus on this pair. Because
the place of Vishnu and Shiva in popular Hinduism significantly reflects the textual design, my account partly derives from that scholarship. A third great god, Brahma, has a prominent place in clas- Brahmā
sical mythology and is sometimes important in popular religion as well, although he is not widely
worshiped and normally assumes a subsidiary role in relation to Vishnu, Shiva, and other deities.
Vishnu’s name means “the pervader” and Shiva’s “the auspicious,” usually interpreted as a propitiatory epithet to avert his ferocity. Like all deities, each god has many names—classically 1,000 (or
1,008)—and in fact many Hindus rarely use the names “Vishnu” and “Shiva.” In much of north India,
for example, Shiva is usually known as Mahadeva (or a vernacular synonym), “great god,” and both
130
GODS AND GODDESSES
gods (in common with others) are ordinarily addressed by terms such as bhagavan or swami, translated as “god” or “lord.”
Vishnu and Shiva are sometimes described as celestial, not simply because they inhabit a heavenly
world, but also because they primarily oversee the universe as a whole. Their vast powers are very
general and their stage transcends the world inhabited by human beings. The perennial theme of their
dramas is the tension between order and chaos, creation and destruction, on a cosmic scale. Typically,
this tension is expressed through the eternal opposition between Vishnu and Shiva (allied with other
deities) and the “demons” (asura), who strive to usurp the gods’ place and thereby destroy the proper
dharma order (dharma) of the cosmos. The greatest and most powerful of the demons, however, are normally
devotees of Vishnu and Shiva, who originally gave them their powers as a boon. Their hostility spent
after defeat in battle, demons are often saved by their divine conquerors. Hence deities and demons
are symbiotically linked to each other, and personify respectively the order and chaos that are, in the
Hindu worldview, ultimately inseparable. The narrower moral connotations of good and evil implied
by the English terms are less in evidence.
Let me now look at the two preeminent gods in a little more detail. Vishnu’s consort is the auspicious goddess of fortune, Lakshmi, although in his temples he often has a second, lower-status wife
as well, frequently identified as Bhudevi, goddess of the earth. Although Vishnu is a celestial god, he
avatāra has ten distinct incarnations or avatars (avatara). Nine have successively “descended” into this world
already and the tenth will appear to herald the dissolution of the world at the end of the degenerate
era in which we now live, the kaliyuga. Each incarnation is always contemporaneously present as
well, however, and by far the most important in popular Hinduism are the seventh, Rama, and the
eighth, Krishna. Vishnu himself, in one form or another, is widely worshiped, but he is probably more
frequently adored in his incarnations as Rama or Krishna. There are sizable devotionalist movements
whose members worship Rama or Krishna, and many temples are dedicated to them throughout India. In all their temples, Vishnu or his incarnations are normally represented by anthropomorphic
images. Vishnu in particular is often shown wearing a high crown. On his forehead, the god wears
one of the distinctive “sectmarks” of the Vaishnavas (Vishnu’s devotees)—typically a vertical red line
within a white V‑shape.
Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, was the king of Ayodhya, in north India. Among other feats he
vanquished Ravana, the demon king of (Sri) Lanka, who was a devotee of the gods (Brahma, Shiva).
For most Hindus, Rama is the very model of a just and righteous king and husband to his wife Sita.
Krishna’s story is recounted in various mythological sources and he also appears prominently in
the Mahabharata, particularly in the section known as the Bhagavad Gita—nowadays the most celebrated of all Hindu scriptures—which is believed to have been spoken by Krishna. Krishna, like Rama,
was a king and conqueror of demons, but his cult frequently turns on his exploits as a child and youth,
especially his love affair with the beautiful cowherdess, Radha.
Shiva’s wife is Parvati in classical mythology, but in his temples he has many different consorts.
Unlike Vishnu, Shiva has not descended to earth in a series of incarnations, although he does have a
mūrti huge range of contemporaneously existent forms or manifestations (murti) that include, for example,
Bhairava (the terrible), Bhikshatana (the beggar), Dakshinamurti (the guru), and Nataraja (lord of the
dance).
The principal cubic symbol of Shiva is the aniconic linga, a round-topped pillar that represents
his phallus and stands on a base representing the female sexual organ (yoni). In virtually all his temples, the main shrine houses a linga, which is the object of worship in almost exactly the same way
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
131
as anthropomorphic images of other deities. But Shiva can be represented anthropomorphically as
well. He is commonly shown with a head of matted locks and other distinctive marks of the worldrenouncer, who generates fiery heat (tapas) and hence creative power within himself by practicing
asceticism. On his forehead (or the linga) he wears the mark of the Shaivas (Shiva’s devotees)—three
horizontal stripes of white ash (vibhuti), sometimes surmounting a dot of red powder (kunkuma) or
red lead (sindura) above the bridge of the nose. The ash, which comes from the funeral pyre, is associated with Shiva himself, but the red mark is a symbol of his female consort.
Unlike Vishnu, Shiva has children, normally two sons, Ganesha and Skanda, who figure prominently in their father’s cosmic dramas. In general, Ganesha and Skanda are subject to Shiva’s superior
authority and derive their power from him. Ganesha, the elder son, is the celebrated elephant‑headed
god and as Vighneshwara, “Lord of the obstacles,” he is ubiquitously worshiped before starting any ritual or enterprise. Ganesha is often, but not always, represented as unmarried, whereas the younger
son Skanda has two wives. Ganesha and Skanda are worshiped in association with Shiva, but there
are also many temples independently dedicated to each of them. Ganesha’s cult is especially popular
in Maharashtra and Skanda’s in Tamilnadu, where he is usually called by his Tamil name, Murugan.
The relationship between Vishnu and Shiva is fundamental in Hinduism, as is shown by much of
their mythology, both classical and vernacular, and by the rituals performed for the two gods. In the
Tamil country, the gods’ relationship is conspicuously expressed by portraying Vishnu and Shiva as
brothers‑in‑law, with Vishnu’s sister, the goddess, being Shiva’s wife. In other areas of India, however,
the two gods’ relationship is seldom given such an elemental form, and everywhere it can be partly
obscured by the tendency to ascribe every godly quality to both of them. For several centuries, Vaishnavas have been more inclined to assert the absolute supremacy of Vishnu at the expense of Shiva,
than Shaivas have been to do the same for Shiva in relation to Vishnu. Both sets of devotees, however,
are consistently inclined to claim that each god fully possesses the other’s powers as well. Similarly, in
exact conformity with the premise that many can be one, it is not hard to find Hindus praising Vishnu
as Shiva, Shiva as Vishnu, and Vishnu‑Shiva as the supreme God. Nonetheless, there is an underlying
structural relationship between the two gods defined by their distinctive divine personalities.
To oppose Vishnu “the preserver” to Shiva “the destroyer” (with Brahma as “the creator”), which
used to be common in the literature, is certainly simplistic. Yet in broad terms, Vishnu is principally associated with the preservation of the cosmos and its proper order, over which he is sovereign. Through
his incarnations, it says in one myth, Vishnu “was born among men for the maintenance of Dharma”.2
Hence, Vishnu is also linked to kingship, for the Hindu king must guarantee order in the world. As we
have seen, Vishnu is iconographically distinguished as a monarch wearing a crown. Shiva, by contrast,
is preeminently a lone ascetic—the greatest of them all—who has renounced the world so that he is
outside and beyond its institutional constraints. Shiva’s place is the cremation ground, whence comes
the ash he smears on himself, as well as the forests and mountains, at the margins of the settled realm
over which the king reigns. Describing himself to Parvati, Shiva says: “He is not a normal man. His hair
is unkempt. He is always alone by himself. Above all, he is indifferent to the world”.3 The summit of
Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas is Shiva’s favorite place of meditative repose, so that he is linked with
the exterior and the beyond, whereas Vishnu is sovereign over the civilized center. Vishnu upholds
2Cornelia Dimmitt and J. A. B. van Buitenen, Classical Hindu Mythology: a reader in the Sanskrit Purāṇas (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1978), 67.
3Ibid., 162.
132
GODS AND GODDESSES
the morality of the Hindu social system and its elaborate hierarchical institutions, because the order
of society is intrinsic to and continuous with the order of the cosmos. Shiva, by contrast, rejects and
transcends that order.
Of the two great gods, Vishnu seems more easily comprehensible, at least to the western mind.
As preserver of the sociocosmic order, he is generally perceived as benevolent, as well as a god of
orthodox righteousness. In his various incarnations, he has come into the world to save it, and Rama in
particular is the quintessentially ethical king and husband. Shiva, however, is immediately discerned
as complicated and even paradoxical. A renouncer performing austerities in his mountain fastness,
he is often immoral, violent, or ferociously destructive as well (for example, in his terrible form as
Bhairava). The supreme ascetic is also distinguished by his wanton adultery and unmatched erotic
powers, symbolized by his phallic linga. His myths and rituals celebrate his repetitive transgression of
conventional social and moral codes, so that those who worship Shiva ostensibly adore an antisocial
god indifferently opposed to the order upheld by Vishnu the king.
It is not surprising that foreign observers of Hinduism have often been simultaneously repelled
and fascinated by Shiva and his cult. Certainly Doniger O’Flaherty’s claim that Shiva “is in many ways
the most uniquely Indian god of them all”4 is just. At the same time, in both myth and ritual, the
preservation of the cosmos is shown to depend on Shiva’s involvement with it, as he partly comes out
of his ascetic state, so that the god is not depicted as a willful destroyer of the world. Conversely, the
complex character of Vishnu, who is neither an unambivalent figure of righteousness nor always a
preserver, must not be oversimplified. Thus Krishna for instance—the delightful child and beautiful
lover who plays the trickster’s role—crushes his enemies during the Mahabharata war and proclaims
himself the final destroyer of the universe. Moreover and more subtly, in Hindu cyclical cosmology the
powers to preserve and destroy, which in the end are both fully possessed by Vishnu and Shiva, are but
two sides of the same coin; the world is created out of sacrificial destruction (as the hymn of Purusha’s
sacrifice explains), preserved by destroying the demonic enemies of order, and finally destroyed so
that it can be created and preserved anew.
Lastly, many apparent paradoxes in Shiva’s divine character are, to the Hindu way of thinking,
hardly paradoxes at all. For example, the ascetic austerities practiced by a renouncer generate great
power, not least erotic power. Logically and not paradoxically, therefore, the renouncer possesses far
more sexual potency than ordinary men in the world. Hence Shiva the great ascetic is also the great
lover, able to keep his phallus erect indefinitely without spilling his semen. Many other ostensible
contradictions in the god’s attributes are equally explicable in the light of Hindu ideas about world
renunciation.
Vishnu and Shiva, as great gods with general powers over the cosmos, are normally thought to
distance themselves from mundane problems affecting ordinary people. For this reason, Hindus rarely
ask them for help either with collective afflictions, such as epidemics or drought, or with personal
troubles, such as illness or childlessness. Requests of this sort, as we shall see, are usually addressed
to other deities who are more likely to respond, although it is certainly not uncommon for people to
pray to Rama and Krishna, or to some of Shiva’s forms and his sons Ganesha and Skanda, for divine
aid in this world. Moreover, although celestial Vishnu and Shiva command the universe, they are also
represented here on earth in their temples.
4Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Śiva (London: Oxford University Press, 1973),
1.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
133
Vishnu and Shiva in their temples
Every Hindu temple—from the vast edifices of the great gods to the crude shrines of little deities—is
dedicated to a presiding deity. The temple contains that deity’s image (or linga in Shiva’s case) and
normally bears its name. In a large temple, the image is housed in the main central shrine, which is
surrounded by other shrines containing images of subsidiary deities; in a very small temple or simple
shrine standing by itself, there may be only the one image. Sometimes, a temple has more than one
presiding deity, but this does not materially affect the following discussion.
In principle, each temple (unless designed to be a duplicate of another) is unique, because it is
dedicated to the particular form of the deity whose image is housed within it. In their major temples,
Vishnu and Shiva always bear distinctive names. Vishnu, for instance, is Venkateshwara at Tirupati in
Andhra Pradesh, today the richest temple in India, and Krishna is Jagannatha at Pun, his celebrated
temple in Orissa; Shiva is Vishwanatha in the temple at Benares, which is widely accepted as his holiest site, and Sundareshwara in his great temple at Madurai in Tamilnadu, which is popularly known
by his consort’s name as the Minakshi temple. In their smaller temples, Vishnu and Shiva are commonly distinguished only by a suffix indicating the name of the locality. Nonetheless, all their temples
are in principle dedicated to specific named forms of Vishnu or Shiva, which are distinct from their
counterparts in other Vishnu or Shiva temples, so that the two gods’ temples effectively define a set
of their localized forms.
These localized forms are governed by the same polytheistic logic as other forms of Vishnu and
Shiva appearing in mythology without affiliation to any specific locality. Thus, for instance, Dakshinamurti and Nataraja are normally identified in myths as two different forms of the universal Shiva,
but in some contexts they may be seen as variant names for the one god Shiva. Moreover, there is
no insuperable barrier to treating them as two fully distinct gods, although in practice this is rarely
done by Shaivas. In the same way, two localized temple forms of Shiva, such as Vishwanatha and Sundareshwara, are normally said to be different forms of Shiva: Shiva as the “Lord of all” (Vishwanatha),
who reigns over the city of Kashi (Benares), which is preeminently his own, and Shiva as the “Beautiful lord” (Sundareshwara), who is also the king of Madurai. But because both gods—like all Shiva’s
temple forms—are credited with all his powers, both Vishwanatha and Sundareshwara may also be
regarded as only alternative eponyms for the one, universal Shiva. The same logic, of course, applies
at successive levels not only to forms of Shiva himself but also, for instance, to distinguishable forms
of Nataraja or Sundareshwara.
Since Vishnu and Shiva are celestial great gods with general powers over the cosmos, the existence
of localized temple forms raises the problem of their actual affiliation to sites fixed in space. In fact,
the problem arises for other deities too, but it is sharpest for Vishnu and Shiva precisely because they,
more than others, most fully exercise general, cosmic powers. Every temple, or at least every large one,
has its own legend that, in addition to extolling the benefits of worshiping the deities enshrined there,
purports to solve the problem of “the tension between the limitation implicit in the localization of the
deity and the universalism proclaimed by the god’s devotees”.5 Venkateshwara at Tirupati, for instance,
is Vishnu on Venkata hill. The hill was brought to its site at the command of Vishnu, who decided
to rest there after he—in his third incarnation as the boar—had rescued the earth from the waters
covering the universe after its dissolution. Sundareshwara at Madurai is husband to Minakshi. She
5Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths, 40.
134
GODS AND GODDESSES
was queen of the Pandyan kingdom and her campaign to conquer the world ended in the Himalayas,
when Shiva came down from Mount Kailasa to the battlefield. Afterwards, Shiva came to Madurai to
marry Minakshi and remained there as Sundareshwara, the joint sovereign of the Pandyan kingdom.
Every temple’s legend is different, but each draws on common mythical themes, and each provides an explanation of why Vishnu or Shiva, in a particular form, has chosen to situate himself at
that temple site. David D. Shulman6 has analyzed the Tamil temple myths of Shiva and shows that
they consistently explain the localization of the god’s forms by linking him to a local goddess, as in
the myth of Minakshi and Sundareshwara. Similar analyses of other sets of temple legends would
reveal comparable patterns underlying alternative solutions to the problem posed by the great gods’
localized temple forms.
Vishnu and Shiva as kings and village deities
The king, as we know, plays a central role in Hinduism, and Vishnu and Shiva in their localized temple
forms are widely represented as reigning monarchs. Frequently, these forms of Vishnu and Shiva rule
over lands that are undefined; Marie‑Louise Reiniche,7 for instance, describes the rituals at Shiva’s
temple in a south Indian village where there is considerable emphasis on the god’s sovereignty, but not
in relation to any specific realm. In many cases, though, the temple form is identified as the monarch
of a specific kingdom. Then Vishnu and Shiva are “state deities,” taking on forms that portray them
as eternal, true kings, for whom human rulers act as regents in this world; “The fact that the palace
and the temple constitute two faces of the same centre serves to remind us that the [human] king,
taken in isolation, is nothing”.8 In spite of Vishnu’s primary identification in classical texts as the king
as opposed to Shiva the ascetic renouncer, both gods do in practice assume the royal function. Out of
many examples, four well‑known ones may be cited: Eklinga (Shiva) at Eklingji, for centuries god of
the powerful Rajasthani kingdom of Mewar; Jagannatha at Pun, god of the kingdoms of Orissa from
medieval to modern times; Padmanabha (Vishnu) at Trivandrum, to whom the king of Travancore
(southern Kerala) dedicated his new state in the eighteenth century; and Sundareshwara at Madurai,
the ruler with Minakshi of the ancient Pandyan kingdom and its successor regimes. Pun, Trivandrum,
and Madurai are the capital cities of their respective kingdoms, but the village of Eklingji is some
distance from Udaipur, the Mewar capital since the seventeenth century.
As kings, Vishnu and Shiva’s principal responsibility is protection of the royal house and the kingdom, its people and territory. Thus in their royal forms, the gods’ general powers over the universe
become more specifically deployed within the boundaries of a kingdom situated on earth, whether
or not such a kingdom actually corresponds to an extant polity. However, the Hindu kingdom—the
largest and most perfect ordered system that can exist in the world—is also conceptualized as a microcosm of the universe, and ideally it is coextensive with India (classically Bharatavarsha) and the
whole world. The boundaries of all these spaces should coincide and every Hindu king should strive
to expand his realm until it reaches the outermost limits of the world. Thus the descent of Vishnu and
Shiva to earth as monarchs only partially implies territorial circumscription of their universal powers.
6Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths.
7Marie-Louise Reiniche, Les dieux et les hommes. Étude des cultes d’un village du Tirunelveli, Inde du Sud (Paris: Mouton/
EHESS, 1979), 83–111.
8Madeleine Biardeau, Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 13.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
135
Yet the great gods’ powers are made more limited and specific when they become linked to smaller
localities and social units. Thus, for instance, in many regions of India, the countryside is dotted with
small temples to Shiva, as in central Gujarat, where every village contains one or more, each in principle distinguished by a particular name and legend.9 In some cases, as with the Tamil Pramalai Kallar
caste, Shiva is the principal god of the lineage temples, so that he is the protector of the Kallars’ local
kin units.10 It is difficult to say how commonly Shiva, as such, is the presiding deity in rural shrines
and temples, but we do know that in many regions a particular form of Shiva, the terrible Bhairava, is
the focus of ritual attention. Bhairava (Bhairon, Bheru, etc.) is then a “village deity” (gramadevata),
who may be worshiped as the tutelary deity of a village or another local settlement unit, such as an
urban quarter (despite the term “village deity”). Sometimes, while still classified as a gramadevata,
Bhairava’s protective functions are less clearly identified, although he can also be the protective deity
of a kin group, that is, a “clan (or family) deity” (kuladeva; kuladevata). Two villages in which Bhairava
takes such roles are described later in this chapter. In one region in particular, Maharashtra, another
form of Shiva known as Khandoba frequently replaces Bhairava. The two gods are commonly seen as
forms of each other, although Khandoba is also a regional god of the Maratha people as a whole.
It is significant that Bhairava is also present in many Shiva temples as the fierce watchman, standing near the gateway to guard the temple against evil spirits and human thieves. He plays a similar and
important role in Benares, Shiva’s city, where he is popularly known as its “police chief,” a protector
who punishes transgressors. Almost always, a guardian deity of this kind is inferior and subordinate
to the greater deity, the source of its power, whose temple or domain he watches over. These are the
characteristics of Bhairava generally; he is a form of Shiva, but a subordinate one, who has been given
his specific power to protect a restricted domain or group by the universal Shiva or a higher form of
the god, such as a king. Hence Shiva the great god, particularly as Bhairava, can take his place in the
pantheon alongside other little, village deities, but he then assumes a lower, localized form with narrower and more particularistic powers. Much the same applies to Vishnu when he takes the form of his
fourth incarnation, the “man‑lion” Narasimha (Narasingh), whose role closely resembles Bhairava’s in
some regions, especially Andbra Pradesh and Orissa. Overall, though, Narasimha’s cult is less extensive than Bhairava’s, and Vishnu—as Narasimha or alternative forms—is less closely associated with
other little deities than Shiva/Bhairava. Why this is so will be considered shortly.
I end this section with some brief remarks about Shiva’s sons Ganesha and Skanda, and about
Hanuman. Throughout India, Ganesha is widely worshiped in both towns and villages (for instance,
as a guardian of water sources). He is sometimes a clan deity. But there are few large temples dedicated to Ganesha, even in Maharashtra, where he is an especially popular deity for the entire region,
so that his cult rather lacks the splendor of his father’s or of Vishnu’s. In most of India, Skanda is fairly
unimportant, but in Tamilnadu, as Murugan, he is the presiding deity of large and wealthy temples
in which he is commonly represented as a king. Murugan is almost certainly the most popular deity
among Tamils, and he is firmly identified as their regional deity. Murugan is not a tutelary deity of
villages, but sometimes he is a clan deity. The most prominent Vaishnava deity to take a comparable role is probably Hanuman, the “monkey god,” who is in mythology Rama’s most fervent devotee.
Hanuman is popularly said to possess gigantic physical strength. Across much of central India (where
9David Francis Pocock, Mind, Body, and Wealth: A Study of Belief and Practice in an Indian village (Oxford: Blackwell,
1973), 82–84, 89–90.
10Louis Dumont, A South Indian Subcaste: Social Organization and Religion of the Pramalai Kallar (1957; Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1986), 393–401.
136
GODS AND GODDESSES
he is sometimes seen as a form of Shiva), Hanuman is an important village deity, but he is widely worshiped everywhere, especially by people who believe that his sheer strength can crush the malevolent
agencies afflicting them.
The Goddess and her forms
O Goddess who removes the suffering of your supplicants, have mercy!
O mother of the whole world, be gracious!
O mistress of the universe, protect the world! Have mercy!
You are the mistress of all that moves and moves not!
You alone are the foundation of the world, residing in the form of earth.
O you whose prowess is unsurpassed, you nourish the world in the form of the waters.
In these two verses from an invocation,11 both the awesome majesty and the enfolding protectiveness
of the Hindu goddess are tellingly conveyed.
deva/devī
Devi (feminine form of deva) means “goddess,” but in the vernacular goddesses are more frequently called mata or amman (or cognate terms) in north and south India, respectively. The connotation of the vernacular terms is “mother”—“mother of the whole world” and all who live in it—but
it should be stressed that the goddesses themselves often have no children.
In their temples and shrines, sculptured images of goddesses are invariably anthropomorphic.
Almost all goddesses wear a red mark on the forehead and the red‑white contrast symbolizes the
opposition between female and male deities. Goddesses linked to Shiva commonly wear three stripes
of white ash above the red mark as well.
All goddesses may be regarded as forms of (Maha)devi, the (Great) Goddess, who is praised in
the verses above. The logic of polytheism applies to them, so that different goddesses, whether they
appear in mythological or ritual contexts, can be seen as either distinct deities or diverse forms of the
one goddess who bears a multiplicity of names.
The great gods’ consorts are Lakshmi, Parvati, and Saraswati, the goddess of learning and music,
who is Brahma’s consort and much more widely worshiped than her husband. These three goddesses
are generally conceptualized as distinct beings, but they are also forms of the one goddess. In both
myth and ritual, however, Devi—the Goddess—appears in her own right as well, as “mistress of the
universe” and a celestial deity on a par with Vishnu and Shiva. Like the two great gods, Devi fights
demons across the cosmos, notably in her form as Durga, who slays the gigantically powerful buffalo‑demon Mahishasura in a war celebrated annually in the autumn at Navaratri (“Nine nights”), one
of India’s most popular festivals. But perhaps the most dramatic form of the single goddess is ferocious
Kali, who reveals her supremacy over the gods when she is iconographically portrayed as trampling on
the corpse of Shiva. In her single form, the goddess is also known as Shakti, “power,” and her devotees
are described as “Shaktas.” As a first approximation, we can therefore say that there is an unmarried,
independent, or autonomous goddess, Devi/Shakti, who can also take distinct wifely forms as Lakshmi, Parvati, and Saraswati. Further, when single the goddess’s powers—whether represented as
completely independent of the gods’ or derivative from theirs—are deployed free of male constraint,
whereas a wifely goddess is a subordinate partner lacking powers separate from her husband’s.
11Markandeya Purana 88.2–3, Dimmitt and Buitenen, Hindu Mythology, 219.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
137
Yet there are significant differences in how Lakshmi, Parvati, and Saraswati manifest themselves.
Normally, partly because of Brahma’s subsidiary role in popular Hinduism, Saraswati is represented
in iconography and worshiped by herself (for example, by students who supplicate her before examinations). Lakshmi too is popularly represented and worshiped alone, often as Mahalakshmi, the
goddess of good fortune and wealth; businessmen, for instance, commonly worship her at the start
of the financial year. Lakshmi also appears prominently as Vishnu’s loyal and subordinate wife, his
constant consort in his temples. Parvati, by contrast, is really Shiva’s wife only in classical mythology.
She is not worshiped as a single goddess and in Shiva’s temples, although his different consorts can
be regarded as forms of her, each consort has her own distinct name, and the equation with Parvati
is rarely stressed. Far more often, Shiva’s consorts are simply said to be forms of Devi or Shakti, and
everywhere the pairing ShivaShakti is a prominent one. In other words, Shiva’s consorts—to a far
greater extent than Vishnu’s—are systematically treated as distinctive married forms of Devi/Shakti,
the goddess who otherwise has no active male partner. This in turn is consistent with the widespread
belief that Shiva’s wives were originally single, local goddesses. Thus in popular Hinduism the relationship between the autonomous goddess and Shiva is far more striking than that between her and
Vishnu, for his wife Lakshmi’s identification with Devi/Shakti is played down.
Like Vishnu and Shiva, the goddess can also assume localized temple forms identified as monarchs, so that her powers are more specifically directed to the protection of a kingdom. Minakshi, who
shares the Pandyan throne with Sundareshwara, is one example, but she is exceptional. More commonly, a form of autonomous Devi is the state deity. Unmarried Chamundeshwari (a form of Durga)
is, for example, the state deity of the Mysore kingdom; Taleju played a similar role in the old Malla kingdom of Nepal. In this context, it is notable that the state deity of modern India is a goddess, Bharat
Mata, “Mother India.” The worship of goddesses, particularly Durga and Kali, is especially popular in
Bengal, and it was a prominent Bengali nationalist and novelist, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838–
94), who virtually created Bharat Mata as the protector of the people and land of an embryonic nation.
In effect, he brought into being the first Indian national deity. Bharat Mata now has a modern temple
in Benares where, instead of an image, there is a large map of India. Bharat Mata is not in fact a widely
worshiped goddess, but she was the first Hindu state deity to become sovereign over a secular republic
with boundaries fixed on a map.
The most important category of localized forms, however, comprises the “village goddesses,” female gramadevata, many of whom also serve as clan deities. The vast majority of these goddesses
(mata, amman, and so on in ordinary parlance) stand alone in their temples and shrines, and are represented without any male consort, although they are not necessarily said to be unmarried. The Tamil
village goddess Angalamman, for example, is normally represented as an auspicious married woman
with sons, but she is also a virgin without a husband.12 Angalamman’s ambiguous status is quite typical and the critical feature is not so much that the goddess is unmarried, but that any male consort is
absent.
A significant proportion of village goddesses, although by no means all, are the tutelary deities
of specific social units—villages or other local settlements—whose boundaries define the spatial extent of their powers. Throughout the southern peninsula of India, but not so uniformly in the rest of
the country, virtually every local settlement has its own tutelary goddess(es). Or rather every tutelary
12Eveline Meyer, Aṅkāḷaparamēcuvari: A Goddess of Tamilnadu, Her Myths and Cult (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1986), 50–51, 5458.
138
GODS AND GODDESSES
goddess has her own settlement: “The village topocosm is her domain, its destiny is in her hands, and
its inhabitants are her people”.13 However, in any one region the same goddess—in the sense that she
has the same name and characteristics—commonly serves as the tutelary goddess of many different
villages; in much of Tamilnadu, for instance, this goddess is usually Mariyamman. At another level,
though, Mariyamman is normally regarded as a different goddess in each village: Mariyamman of this
place as opposed to Mariyamman of that place or another. Such differentiation does not prevent people identifying all village Mariyammans as localized forms of the one goddess. Moreover, a village
goddess sometimes transcends her own boundaries and comes to be worshiped by people from farther afield. Nonetheless, tutelary village goddesses are preeminently represented in both ritual and
mythical contexts as distinct deities who belong to different places and are jealous of their power in
relation to neighboring settlements’ goddesses.
This material brings us back to one aspect of the relationship between gods and goddesses. Throughout India, lone village goddesses are more commonly seen as actual or potential consorts of Shiva
rather than Vishnu. As we have seen, the consorts of Shiva’s temple forms are often believed to have
once been local, unmarried goddesses. Even for goddesses who are represented without any husband,
however, a marriage ritual may be held and at it the spouse is typically identified, implicitly or explicitly, as a form of Shiva. Alternatively, such a goddess may be the sister of a great god’s consort, and
again that god is usually Shiva. It is true that in Tamilnadu, for instance, people say that Shiva’s wife
is also Vishnu’s sister and that Bhudevi, Vishnu’s second wife in his temples, was once a local village
goddess. Furthermore, in areas where Vaishnava cults are strong, such as Orissa within the sphere of
Jagannatha’s influence, village goddesses are linked to Vishnu instead of or in addition to Shiva. All
the same, in most of India, Shiva—very often in his form as Bhairava—is more closely connected to
the band of single village goddesses than Vishnu. Shiva’s linkage with them is itself another expression
of the archetypal Shiva‑Shakti pairing, and it is in turn correlated with the fact that Shiva, more often
than Vishnu, assumes the form of a localized village deity with specific powers.
The qualities of the Goddess
One striking aspect of the relationship between male and female deities is the overarching structural
opposition between the great gods’ link to the universe as a celestial space and the goddess’s link
to this world and the earth as both soil and territory. Thus, for example, Bhudevi is the earth (bhu)
divinized, and in the mainly Bengali concept of shakti‑pitha, “seat, bench of Shakti,” goddesses are
affiliated with specific geographical sites. According to myth, Parvati as Sati, the “virtuous wife,” killed
herself when her father insulted Shiva. Her corpse, borne on his shoulders, was cut up by Vishnu to
end Shiva’s dangerously violent grief. The parts of Parvati’s body then fell to earth at the shakti‑pitha
sites. Bhudevi and the “seats of Shakti” both exemplify the way in which the goddess is linked with
the earth and this world, in complementary opposition to transcendent Vishnu and Shiva. Thus the
goddess, when contrasted with the great gods, always retains an earthly aspect; in a significant sense,
Devi ascends from and unites in herself her multiple earthbound forms, particularly the village goddesses, whereas Vishnu and more especially Shiva descend from celestial unity partially to dissolve
into localized forms.
13Richard L. Brubaker, “Barbers, Washermen, and Other Priests: Servants of the South Indian Village and Its Goddess,”
History of Religions 19, no. 2 (1979): 129.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
139
But the goddess also has a more distinctive and vital set of characteristics, signaled by the very
name “Shakti,” which is critical to her relationship with the gods. To describe the power of gods and
goddesses, Sanskrit and vernacular languages have numerous and often polysemous terms, such as
tejas, “fiery splendor, glory, energy, luster,” which is characteristic of all deities, or tapas, “heat of asceticism,” which is particularly but not exclusively associated with Shiva. Shakti, too, denotes divine
power and is probably the most commonly used term among ordinary Hindus to refer to the power
of any deity. However, shakti also specifically labels the power, potency, or activating energy—not
political power of domination—that is incarnated in goddesses and, according to one classical idea
of divinity, goddesses personify the dynamic female principle (prakriti) as opposed to gods who personify the passive male principle (purusha). Shakti, therefore, is the energizing power of deities that is
marked as female and, reflecting the classical idea, in popular Hinduism the gods commonly require
female consorts—their shaktis—in order to act. That is why temple images of Vishnu and Shiva, for
example, frequently show them accompanied by consorts, whereas images of goddesses stand alone.
Goddesses can stand alone because they actually embody power as shakti and can therefore act
by themselves. But when they do they are dangerous. Unmarried goddesses in particular, unlike
wifely goddesses, are ferocious and quickly angered. Durga and Kali, who are especially popular in
Bengal, are the most famous goddesses of this kind. Durga is, above all, the fearsome killer of the
buffalo‑demon; she rides into battle on a lion wielding a score of weapons. Kali likes to dwell in the
cremation ground, and her horrific appearance as a murderous hag garlanded in skulls is devastatingly portrayed in her iconography. The vast multitude of single village goddesses have similar characteristics and many of them, such as Shitala Mata and Mariyamman, are the goddesses of smallpox,
as well as cholera and other epidemic diseases. These diseases are thought to be inflicted by village
goddesses, either to announce their presence or because they have been angered by disrespectful
communities under their protection, although the individual victims are not normally held to be particularly blameworthy. Moreover the victims, especially of smallpox (until the 1970s the most feared
and dreadful epidemic disease), must be revered as forms of the goddess who possesses them, lest her
rage grow to lethal proportions. Consistent with their ferocity, which is sometimes thought to turn
them bloodthirsty, most single goddesses demand animal sacrifices. Epidemic diseases, for example,
are often countered by sacrificing animals to appease the goddesses, but at a few major temples like
Kali’s famous Kalighat temple in Calcutta, animals are slaughtered daily to please her.
Why are single goddesses, especially those who are actually unmarried, more violent and testy
than wifely goddesses? To start to answer this crucial question, we can look at the concept of ritual
“temperature,” whose most salient aspect in everyday Hindu life is related to food and drink classified
as more or less “hot” or “cold,” “heating” or “cooling.” Thus among the Tamils described by Brenda E. F.
Beck,14 a long list of foodstuffs can be classified as heating or cooling, some more extremely than others. For instance, among fruits, mango is heating and papaya strongly so, whereas coconut is cooling
and lime very cooling. In detail, such classifications vary from place to place, but in general Hindus
believe that good health is preserved by maintaining a balance between the heating and cooling foods
consumed, so that illness may be diagnosed as imbalance in the body, which has grown too hot or too
cold. But the body’s thermal state also varies “naturally”; for example, a pregnant woman is hot and
must therefore avoid excessively heating foods, whereas after parturition she is cold and must ensure
that she does not get even colder.
14Brenda E.F. Beck, “Colour and Heat in South Indian Ritual,” Man 4, no. 4 (1969): 553–72.
140
GODS AND GODDESSES
Deities, like human beings, are subject to the regime of hot and cold. Most germane to our present
discussion is the conviction that single goddesses are normally very hot. Their power is symbolically
equated with both heightened sexual energy and a capacity for angry violence. Sexual maturation augments the bodily heat of females, and so too does unsated sexual desire. Although sexual intercourse
is itself a heating activity, release brings about a subsequent cooling. Single goddesses—except for the
minority portrayed as young girls—are represented as sexually mature adults, but because they lack
a partner, they are consistently hotter than wifely goddesses. Rage also typifies the abnormally hot
and in turn raises the heat still farther. Unreleased sexual energy and violence are therefore closely
linked, and both are characteristic qualities of single goddesses.
Consistent with this thermal pattern, the goddesses who control epidemic diseases stand alone,
often being portrayed as unmarried. Their hot anger is manifested in the feverish diseases of people whom they possess. Smallpox—especially associated with Shitala Mata and Mariyamman—also
usually struck during the hottest months (approximately April to June). Cooling rituals are a key part
of the worship of a smallpox victim possessed by the goddess, and propitiatory animal sacrifice—
although it heats those who carry it out—cools the goddess by placating her. Conversely, it is sometimes desirable to heat a hot goddess still further. Durga, for instance, before she sets out to wage war
against the buffalo-demon during the Navaratri festival, is offered hot foods and sacrificial animals to
stimulate her vengeful violence.
If single goddesses are very hot, all goddesses—because they personify an energetic power symbolically equated with female sexuality—are collectively represented as relatively hot compared with
gods, although it must be noted that Shiva’s ascetic power (tapas) is also equated with fiery heat. The
contrast between hot goddesses and cool gods is pervasively and economically symbolized by the red
forehead marks prominent on goddesses, because one connotation of the red‑white contrast is heat as
opposed to cold. Unsurprisingly, the power of goddesses, especially single goddesses, is represented
ambivalently in Hindu myth and ritual because it can be terribly destructive but also, especially as
sexual power, supremely creative. Let me now look more closely at this ambivalence.
The goddesses’ sexual fertility is not a simple matter. Many popular Hindu rituals directly connect women’s fertility with the goddesses’ power, from which it is shown to derive; indeed, such rituals identify women as forms of the goddess and rest on the premise that all mature women share her
power, shakti. Hindu goddesses are “mothers” to their human flock, whom they protect and also punish, but many of them are themselves childless. Unmarried goddesses, who are sometimes explicitly
said to be barren, never have offspring and therefore display the destructive jealousy imputed to all
childless women, who cannot fulfill the supremely valued role of motherhood. Much of the unmarried goddesses’ anger is driven precisely by their childlessness. Yet many married goddesses also lack
children. Lakshmi has none for Vishnu has no offspring, and although Shiva does have sons (Ganesha
and Skanda) the myths say that Parvati (and other forms of his consort) never give birth to them after a
“natural” pregnancy. Children imply replacement of their parents, particularly the father, and a Hindu
son’s principal religious duty is to light his father’s funeral pyre. Were deities to have children born like
humans, it would therefore suggest lost immortality, especially for the gods. It would also raise the
spectre of overpopulation in the divine world, because in Hindu mythology, “death arises only when
sexual increase appears”.15 For the deities, therefore, sexuality is often divorced from procreation and
hence from death; despite their sexual fertility, the goddesses’ divinity tends to preclude them from
15Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 28.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
141
motherhood, the status so deeply desired by most Hindu women, who frequently seek assistance from
their divine childless “mothers” in attaining it.
Connected with their link to the earth, the goddess’s fertility is also identified with the soil’s, which
in turn combines with the notion that rivers are forms of the goddess, “nourishing the world in the
form of the waters.” Thus agricultural production, as well as human reproduction, are predicated upon
the power of the goddess, whose sexual fertility is ritually celebrated to ensure that both processes are
guaranteed. Plainly, if the world and its people are to survive and prosper, the goddess must exercise
her power. But because that power is so potentially dangerous, a basic dilemma ensues: how can the
goddess’s power be active without becoming uncontrollably destructive?
The passive gods, as we have seen, need the energy of the goddesses. But union between a goddess and a god also checks the threat of her power. When united with a god, a goddess inevitably
becomes an inferior wife and relinquishes control of her power to her husband, who acts for both of
them as a married pair. The goddess becomes pacific, sexually restrained, and cool, and largely ceases
to be a potential source of danger. But then she can no longer fully deploy the power that is hers
alone and is still needed in the world. The general resolution to this dilemma—insofar as it can be
resolved—is to let the goddess potentially transform herself from hot independence (her dark form)
into cool wifehood (her light form), and vice versa. Hence the goddess exists in a kind of dynamic
state—sometimes unmarried and able to wield her power with all its attendant hazards, sometimes
united with a god and restrained by the bond of marriage, and sometimes in an intermediate position in which she is married but apart from her husband. Actually, many goddesses largely remain
in one particular state; nonetheless, in both myth and ritual, the same transformative solution to the
ambivalence of the goddess’s power perennially emerges, so that dark and light forms of the goddess
are never truly parted from each other. Black Kali, dancing on Shiva’s corpse, repeatedly transforms
into golden Gauri (an epithet of Parvati), Shiva’s constant consort, and back again. And that in turn
is yet another reason why even unmarried, autonomously powerful goddesses can never be entirely
separated from the gods who could be their consorts.
Finally, we can complete the earlier discussion of Shiva’s special association with village goddesses. Shiva oscillates continually between eroticism and asceticism, between his duties as a husband and householder and his unconcern as a renouncer and adulterous wanderer on the cremation
grounds, so that his character is partly homologous with the goddess’s. When displaying his immorality, violence, and destructiveness, Shiva resembles the dark, unmarried goddesses, and particularly as
Bhairava, he is the village goddesses’ counterpart and is often worshiped with them. Shiva/Bhairava,
even if less consistently than the goddess, also has dark and light forms, and although he does not
cause epidemics, his dark form is vengeful and violent. Dangerous Shiva therefore has a closer affinity with the goddess, especially in her single, village goddess forms, than the generally more equable
Vishnu.
Village gods and other little deities
Of many little, village gods like Thakur Dev in Chhattisgarh (eastern Madhya Pradesh), it can only be
said that “His formal attributes are few, and… he is associated with no iconographic tradition”.16 But if
16Lawrence A. Babb, The Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India (New York: Columbia University Press,
1975), 192.
142
GODS AND GODDESSES
these gods, and many other little deities, are rather shadowy figures in the sense that their distinctive
characteristics are ill defined, they are still vitally important, powerful presences for millions of ordinary Hindus. People worship these deities at their shrines and petty temples, where they are often
represented only by uncarved stones or other simple emblems.
The little village gods commonly lack consorts. The classical idea that a lone god is passive is not
systematically extended to them, so that all little gods tend to share the qualities of fierce Bhairava, as
well as the village goddesses. However, little village gods hardly ever control human epidemic diseases,
the goddesses’ most devastating demonstration of their power.
Many little deities, male and female, are believed to have a nondivine origin. The great deities—
Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi—are and always have been immortal and fully divine. On the other hand,
many localized forms of the goddess are said to have once been women. I shall now look at a sample
of instances of nondivine ancestry among the very large and diverse category of little deities.
Throughout India, many little deities are said to be former malevolent ghostly spirits, a miscellaneous category often referred to as bhuta‑preta and distinguished from asuras, the great demons of
classical mythology, such as Durga’s foe Mahishasura, the buffalo‑demon. Malevolent ghostly spirits,
a major source of misfortune in popular Hinduism, will be discussed in detail [elsewhere], but some
of their features need to be briefly outlined here. The spirit of anyone who meets a “bad” death is likely
to linger on earth to harm the living, instead of passing over to the world of the dead. The causes of bad
deaths are numerous—murder, suicide, accident, epidemic diseases, infant and maternal mortality,
and so on—but the principal defining feature is that the death is premature, so that the victim dies
unfulfilled.
As we shall see later, one of the commonest means of dealing with afflictions caused by malevolent
ghostly spirits is deification. In other words, the ghost is enshrined and worshiped as a deity, so that
its malevolent power can be controlled and even turned to the benefit of the living. Many deified
ghosts are worshiped only by members of their former families, but in principle and sometimes in
practice they can acquire a wider circle of worshipers. Conversely, many a little deity is said to be
a deified ghost, even though no one claims to know its original human identity. Thus, for example,
in Tamilnadu the gods Karuppan and Madan, who are both prominent village gods, are believed to
have originally been pey, the ubiquitous and anonymous evil spirits or malevolent ghosts of the region.
Karuppan and Madan exemplify the general principle involved here; in Louis Dumont’s words: “Often
a spirit is malevolent only as long as it lacks a cult; once the cult is provided, it becomes tutelary.”17
Although such a deity is likely to retain much of its ancestral cussedness and continue to be capricious
and demanding, the danger posed by the presence of a dead person’s harmful spirit can be averted by
transforming it into a god or goddess.
Deification of the dead is not restricted to the victims of bad deaths. Two of the most prominent
kinds of little deity are viras, heroes who died gloriously in battle, and sati matas, heroines who chose
to die on their husbands’ funeral pyres. Everywhere in India, deified heroes and heroines are widely
worshiped as powerful beings, often at stones erected as monuments and treated as their shrines. All
heroes and heroines are particularly favored as clan deities by their descendants, but many of them
also serve as tutelary village deities and some attract a much wider circle of devotees because they
gain a reputation as extraordinarily powerful. In Rajasthan, for instance, countless sati matas are
enshrined in elaborate temples visited by huge numbers of people coming from far afield.
17Dumont, South Indian Subcaste, 449.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
143
One heroic deity with a well‑developed mythology and an extensive cult across Punjab, Haryana,
western Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan is Guga. Guga, whose chief shrine is in Rajasthan, was a Rajput
prince and many north Indian villagers revere him as a powerful protector. But Guga also illustrates
the spectacular eclecticism of popular Hinduism. Some people claim that Guga bir (vira colloquially),
“Guga the hero,” converted to Islam before his death, so that he is really Guga pir, a pir being a Muslim saint. Although Guga pir naturally attracts Muslim devotees, he still attracts Hindus too.18 And
although most pirs are not confused with birs, throughout India Muslim saints are widely worshiped
at their tombs by Hindus who typically present offerings to them as if they were deities’ images. Numerous cases of deified Europeans, often but not always soldiers, are also recorded;19 more than forty
years after the British left India, some of them linger on as little deities.
The catalogue of little deities who have a human origin could be expanded almost indefinitely, but
in closing it, there are several important points to make. First, the existence of these deities is itself an
illustration of the absence of any absolute distinction between divine and human beings. Second, an
ex‑human deity is often thought to be particularly understanding about the needs of ordinary people,
especially members of its former family and neighborhood. For that reason among others, such a
deity may be favored when personal misfortune strikes. Third, the power wielded by little deities
is usually limited and specific. Although some, like Guga, do have wider powers, the majority deal
only with particular problems in particular places for the particular people who choose to worship
them. Fourth, the narrowness of their power is correlated with their human origins, so that they are
often identified as the inferior subordinates of greater, fully divine gods and goddesses, a pattern most
explicitly displayed when they act as guardian deities protecting their superiors’ temples. On the other
hand, all little deities, irrespective of origin, can be associated or merged with other deities to become
forms of them. Thus a deified hero might be identified as a form of Bhairava or a deified heroine as
a form of a village goddess. To this kind of development there is no real limit and a little deity’s cult
may flourish until, like that of the “Old Gentleman”—the deified combined spirit of two Muslims in
an Uttar Pradesh village—it is “but a short distance” from that of an “authenticated” great deity.20
Relationships among village deities: two ethnographic cases
To complement the synoptic discussion in this chapter, I now present some ethnographic material to
illustrate the relationships among village deities as they actually exist in particular rural settlements.
Popular Hinduism in the countryside, as in the towns, is a complex phenomenon. One village of average size commonly contains thirty or more different temples and shrines, and villagers as a whole
often recognize and worship up to a hundred identifiable deities of all kinds. In some, but by no means
all villages, there are a few permanent large temples. Everywhere, however, the majority of shrines
are either crude shelters or amount to no more than a roughly hewn image or painted stone standing
in the open air.
In many villages, especially those with sizable Brahman populations, there are temples dedicated
to Vishnu and Shiva, distinguished as great gods apart from the rest of the village’s deities. In general,
18Elwyn C. Lapoint, “The Epic of Guga: A North Indian Oral Tradition,” in American Studies in the Anthropology of India,
ed. Sylvia Vatuk (New Delhi: Manohar, 1978), 283–86; Oscar Lewis, Village Life in Northern India: Studies in a Delhi Village
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958), 210–13.
19L.S.S. O’Malley, Popular Hinduism: The Religion of the Masses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), 173–79.
20McKim Marriott, “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization,” in Village India: Studies in the Little Community
(1955; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 213.
144
GODS AND GODDESSES
though, Vishnu and Shiva, as great gods protecting the universe, are thought to be less involved than
village deities with the affairs of ordinary people and places, and by some villagers—especially of
lower castes—they are practically ignored.
As no truly typical villages could be selected, I shall choose as case studies one principal example
from north‑central India, to be supplemented by a comparative sketch from the south. Ramkheri
village lies in Malwa, western Madhya Pradesh. It is in the Hindi‑speaking region and its religious style
is, in broad terms, characteristically north Indian. Adrian C. Mayer lists forty‑four shrines in Ramkheri,
most of which are just red‑painted stones.21 They can be classified as follows: two Vishnu temples;
one Shiva temple; eight Mata shrines; three Sati Mata shrines; six Village Lord shrines; thirteen Bheru
(Bhairava) shrines; eight other little deity shrines; and three sites of special significance.
Although Ramkheri’s largest temple, located in the village center, is a Vishnu temple, the most
important shrines for the majority of villagers are those of the Matas, Village Lords, and Bherus. As
always in northern India, the term mata is used for the goddesses; they comprise the village goddess,
Shakti Mata, who protects Ramkheri; Shitala Mata, the smallpox goddess; two other minor goddesses
of smallpox and cholera; four others lacking specific functions; and the three San Matas. Shakti Mata
has a permanent shrine in Ramkheri’s main square, near the Vishnu temple, and people say that she—
with Hanuman Kherapati, Lord of the village, whose shrine is at the southern edge of the settlement,
as well as Bheru—must be installed in a shrine before any house is built in a newly founded village.22
Shakti Mata is specially worshiped at the major annual festivals of Navaratri (in autumn) and Holi (in
spring). If there is drought the village headman should call on Indra, god of the rains, at a ritual held at
her shrine.23 Shitala Mata is not regularly worshiped, but approximately every twenty years all women
with children who have survived smallpox hold a special ritual for her.24 As well as the goddesses with
shrines in the village, the people of Ramkheri do pay some attention to their clan goddesses (kul mata),
who ought to be periodically worshiped by all members of a clan, although in practice this is rarely
done.25 The Sati Mata shrines are memorials to deified local women who died on their husbands’
funeral pyres. Sati Matas are mainly worshiped by members of their deceased husbands’ clans, but
they do attract other worshipers, especially women asking them to cure barrenness.26
Hanuman Kherapati is the principal Lord of the village. The other five are three Lords or Maharajs
(“great kings”) of the village gates and two of the village boundary. Hanuman Kherapati also receives
ritual attention at Navaratri and he may be worshiped in times of danger, such as when village fields
are threatened by locusts.27 Similarly, a sacrifice can be offered to one of the Lords of the village gates
when there is an epidemic among village cattle.28 Hanuman is an important protective village deity
across much of central India, while Kherapati, “Lord of the village,” is clearly a form of Kshetrapala
(Khetrapal, Ketrappa, etc.) who is, in many areas, the principal protector of the village fields and the
site itself. In Ramkheri, the god, standing at the edge of the village, takes this role, complemented by
21Adrian C. Mayer, Caste and Kinship in Central India: A Village and its Region (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960),
17, 101–2.
22Ibid., 17.
23Ibid., 101, 107, 112.
24Ibid., 111, 249.
25Ibid., 184–87.
26Ibid., 193.
27Ibid., 72, 101.
28Ibid., 111–12.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
145
the Lords who guard the gates and boundary, although Ganesha is also said to protect fields and is
invoked before sowing begins.
Bheru is Bhairava and also a protector of the village. Villagers claim that he is a son of Shiva—
another expression of his subordinate position—and they distinguish (as is common in this part of
India) between “light” and “dark” Bherus.29 Unlike Shakti Mata and Hanuman Kherapati, however,
all Bheru’s shrines belong to particular lineages (clan‑segments) of particular castes. Nonetheless, at
Navaratri the headman visits all Ramkheri’s forty‑four shrines, which shows how “all sacred places are
treated as the concern of the entire village, and their propitiation made a prerequisite for its welfare
during the coming year”.30 The “most important function” of a Bheru “is to protect and make prosper
those who acknowledge his power.” He also particularly guards wells.31 A lineage’s Bheru image in
Ramkheri is said to be a copy of the main Bheru image in the ancestral village, so that although Bheru
is a lineage deity, he is always linked with a particular place.32
It is clear that the majority of the major village gods and goddesses in Ramkheri are primarily
conceptualized as localized deities, with specific powers to protect the village and its people, or the kin
groups to which they belong. It is because of these deities that Ramkheri possesses “divine sanctions
for its foundation, and divine protection for its continuance”.33 However, Mayer’s evidence also reveals
a division of divine functions, which is a common feature among village deities. Shakti Mata (with
Shitala Mata) primarily protects the people of the village against disease, Hanuman Kherapati (and
the other Lords) protect its territory, while the Bherus protect the members of different lineages and
the wells. In addition, the clan goddesses (and Sati Matas) protect those who belong to different clans.
Note that Vishnu, even though he stands in the village’s central temple, takes no real role in these
matters. Although not rigidly drawn, the contrast between Shakti Mata at the center and the Lords
at the periphery is striking. Whereas the goddess has an earthly, localized aspect in opposition to
the great gods’ celestial universality, among the tutelary village deities themselves, the goddess’s role
as motherly protector of her people is prominent and the gods—who also stand guard around the
goddess—are complementarily responsible for the territory.
Popular religion in Mel Ceval village in southern Tamilnadu, studied by Reiniche, is distinctively
south Indian in style. Mel Ceval has a sizable population of Brahman landholders and contains a
fairly large temple dedicated to Shiva, who reigns over the village. In a sense, this temple is the fixed
point around which the settlement is organized. Partly owing to Shiva’s prominence, the network of
relationships among deities appears more complicated in Mel Ceval than Ramkheri, and I can only
sketch some of its basic features. In all, there are about thirty-five temples and shrines in Mel Ceval,
mostly dedicated to little village deities.34
One important temple is dedicated to Shasta, who is locally classified as a deva, a great god. In
mythology, Shasta is the son of Shiva by Vishnu in his female form as Mohini. Shasta’s principal function is to protect the territory of Mel Ceval and he particularly guards its boundary, for his temple is
actually outside the village. Shasta is also a clan deity and thus protects the kin groups settled in the
29Ibid., 188–89.
30Ibid., 101.
31Ibid., 189.
32Ibid., 190.
33Ibid., 17.
34Reiniche, Les dieux et les hommes, 19–35.
146
GODS AND GODDESSES
village, although any particular person’s clan deity is always the Shasta enshrined in the ancestral village.35 Owing to his close links with other little deities, Shasta—despite being a great god—is often
viewed as a prototypical village deity like Aiyanar, his near equivalent farther north in Tamilnadu.
At Shasta’s temple in Mel Ceval, there is an image of the little deity Madan who guards the site, as
Karuppan does at Aiyanar temples. Superior Shasta and Aiyanar are said to rule over the subordinate
guardian deities and the relationship between these two categories of deities is an important one in
Tamil popular Hinduism.
A little temple at the northern boundary of Mel Ceval, just beyond the area of habitation, is dedicated to the single goddess Chelliyamman. Linked to the foundation of the village itself, she is also its
main tutelary goddess, protecting all the villagers living in the locality and the social order that embraces them. She is also said to be the elder sister of other local goddesses. Particularly important is
her relationship with two goddesses within the settlement area. The first is Saundari, Shiva’s consort
in his temple, and the second is Muppidariyamman, a single goddess whose little temple lies south of
Shiva’s. Chelliyamman is frequently present in southern Tamil villages and towns, guarding them (and
their Shiva temples) on the northern boundary. She is then a subordinate guardian of Shiva and his
wife, represented as the latter’s sister or as an inferior consort of Shiva himself. Chelliyamman in Mel
Ceval is explicitly described as celibate; she is also superior to her partner or double Muppidariyamman who, unlike Chelliyamman, is offered animal sacrifices. We may note too that Bhairava is present
near Chelliyamman as her devotee and also, further protecting the village, as a subordinate guardian
form of Shiva himself. Like various other goddesses and little deities worshiped there, Mariyamman,
the smallpox goddess, does have shrines in Mel Ceval, but she is particularly linked to one caste rather
than the village population as a whole, so that collective protection against disease, like other dangers,
is mainly assumed by Chelliyamman and Muppidariyamman.36
Comparing Mel Ceval with Ramkheri, several points of similarity and contrast can be seen. Although both gods have temples at the heart of their settlements, Shiva in Mel Ceval plays a more
prominent role than Vishnu in Ramkheri. Shasta in Mel Ceval, rather like Hanuman Kherapati and
the Village Lords in Ramkheri, stands outside the village and protects its territory, although as a clan
deity Shasta plays a role that mainly belongs in Ramkheri to Bheru and the clan goddesses. In Mel
Ceval, Bhairava is not a clan deity. As protectors of the people of the village, Chelliyamman and Muppidariyamman resemble Shakti Mata, but the former appear to have a more general responsibility
for the order of local society than the latter does. Furthermore, whereas Shakti Mata is at the center of Ramkheri, Chelliyamman stands outside the inhabited area, although she is linked to Shiva’s
consort and Muppidariyamman within it. In both places, however, if we leave aside Shiva’s sovereign
role in Mel Ceval, comparable protective functions are exercised by a set of localized village deities.
Their connections with each other are particularly defined by the relationships between gods and
goddesses, and superior deities and subordinate guardians, as well as by the contrast between people
and territory, village and clan, and center and periphery.
Conclusion: continuity and difference among the deities
As I have said, neither Ramkheri nor Mel Ceval is a truly typical village. How protection is provided by
village deities, how they are linked to different social units, and how they are related to each other (as
35Reiniche, Les dieux et les hommes, 30–31, 35–36, chap. 4.
36Ibid., 26–28, chap. 5.
REQUIRED READING: FULLER
147
well as to fellow deities without precise tutelary functions), vary in shape, content, and significance,
especially between regions. On the other hand, ethnography shows that localized little deities who
protect their particular villages and kin groups are very widespread in popular Hinduism, and they
do have many comparable characteristics throughout most of India. Looking at the array of deities as
a whole, one critical dimension is the overarching opposition between the great deities—principally
Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi, the goddess—who have general powers to command and protect the universe, and the localized little village deities with narrower tutelary powers. Moreover, this opposition
partly underpins a hierarchical structure … wherein the little deities are inferior to the great deities, often as subordinate guardians deriving some or all of their power from the great deities who ultimately
control them.
That connection between great and little deities within a hierarchical structure exemplifies the
importance of relationships among them, and it is one reason why I have not been using the terms
“Sanskritic” and “non-Sanskritic” (or “great” and “little tradition”) to classify the deities … these terms—
as often used—can imply that the two categories of deities really are separate or separable from each
other. At one place in his study of the Coorgs, M. N. Srinivas, referring to a folksong about village
deities, observes that “The important point … is that every intelligent and educated Coorg interprets
[the song] as meaning that the various village‑deities are forms of Shiva or his wife Parvati”.37 But this
affiliative “rule” is not, as he implies, an objective one; the rule is not applied by everyone and it is
actually, as the quotation shows, the product of a discourse in which educated Coorgs redefine their
local deities as all‑Indian and Sanskritic, and thereby represent themselves as superior worshipers of
superior deities. The religion’s higher and lower strata, and the allocation of deities to them, are constituted by an ideological discourse of evaluation, which we must not reify as if there actually were
two separate strata with two separate categories of deities.
… I therefore have emphasized relationships and continuities, because they—not misconstructed
separation—are where a study of popular Hinduism’s deities should begin. There is no clear‑cut separation between great and little deities. Shiva, for example, is the superior of his own form as Bhairava,
as Vishnu is of Narasimha, and Devi, the goddess, is of her village goddess forms. Vishnu and Shiva
as such are relatively little worshiped by very large numbers of Hindus, especially in rural areas, but
without taking proper account of the two great gods, it is impossible to make sense of Bhairava, Shitala Mata, or any other little deity, and impossible to comprehend the relationships among different
deities and their forms. These relationships, which define the structure of the whole—the pantheon
of deities in the widest sense—are built on difference, but difference emergent from a polytheistic
logic of fluid continuity. In this logic, one deity can always become many and many become one,
like Shiva at a Gujarati temple who is also the 300 million forms of himself and every other god and
goddess.
37M. N. Srinivas, Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (1952; Bombay: Asia, 1965), 209.
4 Life and Death in Hindu Society
Topic overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
explain the difference between varṇa and jāti,
discuss the relationship between the textual model of varṇa and actual patterns social statification in Hindu society, and
outline the system of the four āśramas, and the rites which mark transitions between them.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
social stratification
doctrine vs. practice
rites of passage
Hindu Society
Hindu society is, at least ideally, an ordered society. As noted above, a concern with classification,
ordering the different types of things in the world, is characteristic of Hinduism. The idea of a natural
order of things (ṛta) is found in the Veda, and the purpose of ritual action (karma) was to sustain this
order. The correct performance of ritual action was called dharma, a word which conveys the idea of
supporting or sustaining something and which is also used in the Vedic accounts of how the order of
things first emerged. Although dharma referred primarily to maintaining the natural order of things
through ritual action, already in the Ṛgveda it is also used to refer to action in accordance with the
moral order, that is, to ethical action. Like karma, the term dharma increasingly took on an ethical
sense, but the idea of an order of things that is at once natural, ritual and moral remains at the heart of
Hindu thinking about society. The term varṇāśramadharma refers to two components of this natural
order: the ordering of different classes (varṇas) and the ordering of different phases (āśramas) in the
life of males born in the upper classes.
In this unit we will begin by examining the ideal ordering of society which is found in a series of
Hindu texts produced from the late Vedic period onward. How far this textual ideal corresponds to
the actual ordering of Indian society which prevailed in this period is difficult to determine. In the
149
150
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
second part of the unit we will consider how this ideal has been combined with and challenged by
other ideals of order, resulting in the complex structure of Hindu societies in different regions and
periods. The next unit will consider the āśrama ideal, and the rituals which accompany transitions
from one stage of life to another.
The dharmaśāstras,1 ‘treatises on dharma’, attempt to codify systematically the natural order of
things and the implications that order holds for human behaviour. Dharma is also the major theme
of the Sanskrit epics, which were composed and elaborated in the same period and often include material taken directly from the dharmaśāstras. The Mahābhārata deals with the dilemmas that arise
when the demands of dharma seem to conflict, and the Rāmāyaṇa exemplifies dharma in the person of its central protagonist, the ideal king Rāma. While the dharmaśāstras attempt to provide an
authoritative statement of how to live in accordance with dharma it is immediately apparent from
any reading of the texts that they do not speak with a single voice. Not only do the dharmaśāstras
differ from one another, but frequently differences of opinion and alternatives to particular prescriptions are recorded within one dharmaśāstra. They also allow for differences according to region, caste
and family. The second chapter of the first book of the dharmasūtra of Baudhāyana begins by noting
five differences in practice between the north and south. It goes on to say that each set of practices
should be followed in their respective regions and then immediately records the view of Gautama, a
seer to whom another dharmasūtra is attributed, that the named practices should be avoided altogether because they are ‘opposed to the tradition of cultured people’.2 These different voices reflect in
part the long history of these texts, which have their roots in the period of debate and change which
produced the Upaniṣads, but also the tendency to particularism in moral thought noted above as an
characteristic of Hinduism.
The four varṇas
One thing which both the dharmaśāstras and the epics are agreed upon, or rather take for granted,
is the division of society into different classes (varṇas). The fourth verse of the dharmasūtra of Āpastamba states simply: “There are four classes: Brahmin, Kṣatriya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra.”3 This division of
society is first found in earlier sections of the Vedic literature, notably in the various cosmogonies
or accounts of creation in the saṃhitās and brāhmaṇas. Some of these cosmogonies state that the
classes were emitted from the body of the creator, Prajāpati: the Brahman from his head or mouth,
the Kṣatriya (or Rājanya) from his arms or chest, the Vaiśya from his belly or penis and the Śūdra from
his feet.4 Others, including a very famous late Ṛgvedic hymn describe the four classes as resulting from
the division of the body of a primordial giant man (puruṣa) in a sacrifice carried out by the gods.
When they divided the Man, into how many parts did they apportion him? What do
they call his mouth, his two arms and thighs and feet? His mouth became the Brahmin;
his arms were made into the Rājanya; his thighs the Vaiśya; and from his feet the Śūdras
were born.5
1The term dharmaśāstra covers two classes of texts; the earlier dharmasūtras, which are mostly in prose, and a later
class of texts in verse, the dharmaśāstras proper. The term is used here to refer to both classes of texts.
2Dharmasūtra of Baudhyāna 1.2.7 translated in Olivelle, Dharmasūtras, 134.
3Dharmasūtra of Āpastamba 1.1.4 translated in ibid., 7.
4See Brian K. Smith, “Classifying the Universe: Ancient Indian Cosmogonies and the Varṇa System,” Contributions to
Indian Sociology 23, no. 2 (1989): for examples and discussion of these cosmogonies.
5RV 10.90.11–12 translated in ibid., 250.
VARṆĀŚRAMADHARMA
151
Both types of cosmogony are closely connected to the idea of sacrifice and the classes are correlated
with other types of division relating to sacrifice, such as the time of day when the sacrifice is carried
out, the types of sacred utterance and the divisions of the Vedas. It is notable that a number of the
cosmogonies of the first type refer only to three classes, excluding the Śūdra, and some of those that do
include a fourth class note that the Śūdra is unable, or unfit, to sacrifice. The dharmaśāstra attributed
to Manu alludes directly both to the account of the sacrifice of the primordial being and to the need to
maintain the order of the world when prescribing the activities appropriate to each of the four classes.
For the protection of this whole creation, that One of dazzling brilliance assigned separate activities for those born from the mouth, arms, thighs, and feet. To Brahmins, he
assigned reciting and teaching the Veda, offering and officiating at sacrifices, and receiving and giving gifts. To the Kṣatriya, he allotted protecting the subjects, giving gifts, offering sacrifices, reciting the Veda, and avoiding attachment to sensory objects; and to
the Vaiśya, looking after animals, giving gifts, offering sacrifices, reciting the Veda, trade,
moneylending, and agriculture. A single activity did the Lord allot to the Śūdra, however:
the ungrudging service of those very social classes.6
Being excluded from sacrifice, the Śūdras were denied the initiation rite which entitled one to study
the Veda. The initiation, called upanayana, is conceived as a second birth and is said to be the real
birth, superior to the first birth which is of the body alone. Men of the first three varṇas who had
undergone initiation were therefore referred to as ‘twice-born’.7
Although presented here as a division of society according to the function of the different classes,
it is clear that for the dharmaśāstras this division is also hierarchical. Having named the four classes
the Dharmasūtra of Āpastamba immediately adds “Among these, each preceding class is superior by
birth to each subsequent.” The nature of this superiority is conceived in a number of ways in the dharmaśāstras but one of the most detailed accounts is given in the twelfth chapter of the dharmaśāstra
attributed to Manu.8 Here superiority is explained as a matter of which of three qualities (guṇas)
predominates in a person.
The theory that all material things are made up of some combination of these three fundamental
qualities is most fully developed in the Sāṃkhya school but similar ideas are found in many Hindu
texts during the period of the dharmaśāstras. The three guṇas, ‘strands’, are sattva, rajas and tamas.
Sattva is associated with purity, lucidity, goodness and thought, rajas with passion, activity, energy and
motion and tamas with darkness, heaviness, restraint and ignorance. Other dharmaśāstras associate
sattva with rebirth as a god, rajas with rebirth as a human and tamas with rebirth as an animal, but
Manu has a more detailed scheme which subdivides each of the qualities into three further categories:
low, middle and high. According to this scheme the first, and lowest, types of rebirth to which sattva
leads include rebirth as an ascetic, a renouncer or a priest. The next includes rebirth as a sacrificer,
6Manu 1.87–91, translated in Patrick Olivelle, The Law Code of Manu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 19. Similar
lists of the duties of the four classes may be found in other dharmaśāstras, e.g. the Dharmasūtra of Baudhāyana 1.18.2–5.
7Although the Dharmaśāstras restrict upanayana to men of the first three classes, women had a key role in many rituals,
and either the temporary ‘girding’ of the sacrificer’s wife (Stephanie W. Jamison, “Roles for Women in Vedic Śrauta Ritual,”
in Goddesses and Women in the Indic Religious Tradition, ed. Arvind Sharma (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 5 during ritual, or marriage
itself (Manu 2.67), can be understood as giving the woman the same status as a man who had undergone upanayana.
8Even here we find what one scholar describes as ‘passages which originally belonged to a variety of sources… and put
together in succession, often without the slightest transition’ (Ludo Rocher, “Karma and Rebirth in the Dharmaśāstras,” in
Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions, ed. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980), 62.
152
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
seer or deva. The highest kind of sattva leads to rebirth as a Brahmā or creator of all things. The lowest
level of rebirths to which a predominance of rajas leads includes wrestlers, dancers, people who make
a living with weapons and those addicted to gambling or drinking. The next includes kings, nobles,
preceptors of kings and those who fight with words. The highest level of rajas leads to rebirth as
one of the many types of celestial beings who figure in early Hindu mythology including gandharvas,
yakṣas and apsarases. Rebirths at the lowest level of tamas are lower and ordinary domestic animals,
at the middle level nobler or more impressive animals (horses, elephants, lions, tigers) or as a Śūdra
or mlecchā (barbarian). The highest level is again a mix of human and non-human rebirths: as an
actor, or a man who cheats, as a bird, or as one of the lower and more fearsome supernatural beings
(rākṣa or piśācā). The text goes on to explain other types of rebirth occasioned by some particularly
serious offences: killing a Brahmin, drinking, theft and adultery with a guru’s wife.9 Special attention
is given to theft, the consequences of which are set out both here and elsewhere by specifying the type
of rebirth or the particular physical affliction which results from the theft of different types of objects.
Similar lists can be found in other dharmaśāstras. While the details differ, the principle that actions have consequences in rebirth is the same, as is the idea that rebirth in another varṇa may be the
consequence of actions in life:
By following the righteous (dharma) path people belonging to a lower class advance in
their subsequent birth to the next higher class, whereas by following an unrighteous (adharma) path people belonging to a higher class descend in their subsequent birth to the
next lower class.10
When discussing the lifestyle of a renouncer, Manu (6.73–74) states that through meditation the renouncer may discern the course of the inner self through higher and lower births, and that by gaining
right understanding, a man will no longer be fettered by his actions and may escape the cycle of rebirth.
The four varṇas also represent a hierarchy of purity. This is implicit in the account of the origin of
the four classes in the parts of the primal man: those who emerge from the mouth are purer than those
who emerge from lower parts of the body. The purity of the Brahman in particular is made explicit in
Manu, in the passage immediately following the description of the activities of the four classes cited
above:
A man is said to be purer above the navel. Therefore, the Self-existent One has declared,
the mouth is his purest part. Because he arose from the loftiest part of the body, because
he is the eldest, and because he retains the Veda, the Brahmin is by Law the lord of this
whole creation.11
Despite this, the purity of the Brahmin is fragile, and vulnerable to loss through contact with impurity.
The dharmaśāstras contain a host of prescriptions covering every aspect of how the higher varṇas
must act in order to maintain their purity. Although they also contain prescriptions for the Vaiśya and
Śūdra, they are overwhelmingly concerned with the highest two varṇas, and especially the Brahmin.12
9These offences are also listed earlier (Chāndogya Up. 5.10.9) where it is said that those who commit them ‘will fall’—
i.e. move downward in the scale of varṇas. On this verse see H. W. Bodewitz, “Sins and vices: their enumerations and
specifications in the Veda,” Indo-Iranian Journal 50, no. 4 (2007): 324–326.
10Dharmasūtra of Āpastamba 2.11.10-11 translated in Olivelle, Manu, 54.
11Manu 1.92, translated in ibid., 19.
12Outlining what he calls the ‘deep structure’ (p. xxii) of the main body of Manu, Olivelle argues that while the account
of the ‘dharma of a Brahmin’ extends over five chapters and the ‘Rules of Action for a King’ occupy most of three chapters,
VARṆĀŚRAMADHARMA
153
Two of the most important areas in which purity must be preserved are in eating and drinking
and in marriage. The dharmaśāstras present different ways of classifying the offspring of ‘mixed’ marriages and come up with a list of names of the groups that supposedly result from such marriages.13 It
is apparent, however, that this attempt to classify the offspring of mixed marriages does not succeed
in providing an explanation for the origins of the named groups, and really only serves to demonstrate
the text’s disapproval of mixed marriages. In practice, as we shall see, the question of whom one might
marry is worked out in relation to jāti, rather than varṇa. There is much disagreement, even in relation to the varṇas, but at least some general principles can be detected. The first is a horror of ‘mixed
marriages’: in the Dharmaśātras we twice find it specified that brahmans, who are normally prohibited from warfare, may fight to prevent the mixture of castes14 and in the Bhagavad-Gītā (23.40f.) one
of the symptoms of a general state of lawlessness is the corruption of women, from which arises ‘class
miscegenation’ which ‘leads to hell’. In general, marriage or sex ‘with the grain’ (anuloma i.e., where
the man is of higher caste than the woman) is better than that ‘against the grain’ (pratiloma i.e., where
the woman is of higher caste). The other thing which all texts are agreed upon is that intermarriage
between śūdras and brahmans produced another group entirely outside the varṇas.
While there are only four varṇas, this fifth major group was also defined by Hindus, and continues to exist in Indian society. They have variously been known as caṇḍālas, outcastes, untouchables,
harijans, dalits, or scheduled castes. ‘Outcaste’ may be considered an English rendering of the term
avarṇa, meaning no-varṇa, but caṇḍāla (‘hot’ or ‘fierce’) is the most common generic way of referring
to this group in the dharmaśāstras. ‘Untouchable’ refers to their polluted, and polluting status—for
Brahmins not only the touch but even the sight of a Caṇḍāla required expiation, according to the dharmaśāstras. In the twentieth century, M. K. Gandhi adopted the term harijan, or “people of God,” as
a way of preserving recognition of their humanity.15 Although Gandhi fought on behalf of those he
called harijans—for example, for their right to enter temples—he did not seek to overthrow the caste
system entirely or reject the principles on which it was based. The term is used by the people to whom
it refers in some regions, but has been rejected by others, including the followers of another leader of
the same period, Dr B.R. Ambedkhar, who sought to eliminate untouchability altogether. Ambedkhar
was himself from an untouchable caste, and was instrumental in the outlawing of untouchability in
the constitution adopted by the Republic of India after Independence in 1947. He referred to those
outside the four varṇas as dalits or ‘the oppressed.’16 Dalit is perhaps the term most widely used in recent academic writing and by some, but by no means all, of those it refers to. The constitution adopted
the term ‘scheduled caste’, first introduced in a law from the late colonial period which reserved seats
in legislative assemblies for “the classes of persons formerly known as the ‘Depressed Classes’.” Scheduled caste, and its abbreviation “SC” has also become a widely-used way to refer to the same groups.
Most of these groups use particular caste names when referring to themselves—hence the difficulty
in finding a single term which correlates to their common position outside the four varṇas.
the ‘Rules of Action for Vaiśyas and Śūdras’ are confined to only ten verses. See “Structure and Composition of the Mānava
Dharmaśāstra,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 30, nos. 5–6 (2002): 535–74.
13See, for example, the Dharmasūtra of Gautama 4.18-21 and Manu 10.
14Dharmasūtra of Baudhyāna 2.4.18 and Dharmasūtra of Vasiṣṭha 3.24 translated in Olivelle, Manu, 177, 258.
15The term has much earlier origins, and was used by Gangasati, a medieval female poet from the region of Gandhi’s
birth (Susie J. Tharu and Ke Lalita, eds., Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Feminist
Press at the City University of New York, 1991), 87–88).
16The term dalit was coined by the nineteenth-century social reformer, Jotirao Govind Phule (1827–1890).
154
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
Ambedkhar eventually came to believe that Hindus would never grant the dalits the dignity they
deserved and he finally led a movement of mass conversion to Buddhism, arguing that the dalits had
no reason to stay within a religion that refused them the right of entry to its temples. Because of their
low ritual status, dalits perform many of the menial or polluting tasks within Hindu society. In some
cases the polluting nature of the task is obvious, in others it is a ritual pollution that is important, e.g.,
leatherworkers are of very low status, because their job involves animal products. Although untouchability is illegal, about one-fifth of the India’s population are still regarded as ritually polluting in this
way by Hindus for whom the fact of untouchability is a natural phenomenon, not something that can
be outlawed. Like Gandhi, they may regard it as wrong to mistreat dalits, while still regarding them as
less ritually pure than themselves.17
Jāti
Varṇa theory is important as a model, if not as a realistic account, of social organisation and is often
invoked in justification of the differing duties and privileges of particular groups—not only by highercaste people but also by groups who may be regarded as lower-caste but who want to claim that in fact
they are, or were originally, from a higher varṇa. In practice, however, social stratification in Indian
society is worked out in relation not to varṇa identity, but to jāti. Jāti literally means “birth-group,” and
may perhaps best rendered in English as “kind,” or even “species.” If you think of the different ways in
which you might specify the group into which you were born (family, extended family, sex, country,
class), you will get some idea of the flexibility and relativity of the term jāti, and understand why it is
impossible to say how many jātis there are.
Social stratification is not only a matter of religious significance in relation to concerns about
purity and pollution, but is also determined by a range of other divisions along the lines of ethnicity,
language, region, status, and power.18 These divisions are common to every society; but in India they
are intertwined also with religious concerns, which is our primary focus here.
There is no “caste system” in the sense of a single hierarchical ranking of caste groups which is
unanimously accepted by all. Something closer to the contrary is true: every caste group contests,
continuously, the ranking implied by the actions of other castes toward it. As Declan Quigley argues,
“it is always impossible to rank castes unambiguously or without contestation: ambiguity and dispute
are built into the structure of caste relations.”19 Nonetheless, the idea that there is such a hierarchy, is
almost universally accepted:
while no caste is willing to concede that its own members are defiling, they readily allege
that there are other castes that are indeed polluting. This tendency holds even among
the so-called untouchable castes. A leatherworker (traditionally called a Chamar) is convinced that he has wrongly and unjustly been pushed below the pollution barrier, but has
no hesitation in endorsing the low-caste status of other so-called untouchables.20
17Their attitude might by understood by comparison with laws against discrimination on the basis of age, sex, or race.
Such laws ban unfair discrimination on these grounds, but not because they deny that there are differences in age, sex, or
race.
18See Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
19Declan Quigley, “On the Relationship between Caste and Hinduism,” in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed.
Gavin A. Flood (Blackwell, 2003), 500.
20Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society (New Delhi: Penguin,
2000), 1–2.
VARṆĀŚRAMADHARMA
155
To explain why others regard them as polluting, when this should not be the case, low castes typically offer accounts of their caste origin which recount how the caste lost their former, higher, status
through no fault of their own. In the late nineteenth century, a British colonial official and ethnographer reported that some Chamars in Bengal claimed their first ancestor was a Brahmin who was sent
by his brothers to rescue a cow struggling in quicksand. The cow drowned before he could reach it,
but his brothers compelled him to remove its carcass anyway, and then regarded him as polluted, and
gave him the name Chamar.21
The status of any particular group can best be understood by examining its relations with other
groups, in particular through the giving and receiving of marriage partners, and sharing of food. For
the most part a caste will only intermarry with, and accept food from, groups whose status they regard
as similar to or higher than their own. In principle, by examining transactions such as those connected
with food, it ought to be possible to determine how groups in any given region evaluate each others’
status.22 In practice, particular transactions are determined by a wide range of variables affecting the
purity of the food. These include: what the food is, whether it is cooked or raw, how it was cooked,
who cooked it, the order in which it has been cooked, who it has been offered to, the implements
used to cook and serve it, the occasion on which it is served, the means used to acquire it, and so
on. Examples of how each of these variables may affect the acceptability of food offered in exchange
will illustrate the kinds of principles involved. Dairy products, such as yoghurt, may be much more
widely exchanged but, for many castes, beef would never be accepted, regardless of who offered it.
Wild food may be regarded differently than cultivated crops. Raw foods are more readily exchanged
than cooked—thus Brahmins may accept raw food in exchange for performing a ritual for someone
of a lower caste. In some parts of north India, food fried in butter (pakkā) is less likely to pollute
than food boiled in water (kaccā). Members of some castes will only accept certain foods if they are
cooked by a member of the same caste, others will also take the same foods from Brahmins, and some
other groups, including servants, but only if the cook is believed to have been scrupulous about ritual
bathing. Menstruating women traditionally did not cook. Rice basted in ghī (clarified butter) may be
accepted even if it is subsequently boiled in water. However, fried food which is mixed with boiled
food, is no longer more acceptable than boiled food. Anyone’s leftovers are changed by the fact of
having been offered to, and partly eaten, by someone else; but everyone will accept food offered to the
gods, a wife may eat her husband’s leftovers, or a student his teacher’s. Clay pots, wooden implements,
leaf plates are more difficult to purify than steel, glass, or silver, and therefore more readily transmit
impurity. At public functions, notably at marriages, funerals and festivals, the nature of the occasion
means the rules may be different. In hypergamous weddings, the bride’s father may refuse to accept
food from his son-in-law’s family, even though their status may be higher than his, because the bride
should be a freely-given gift which is not reciprocated.
These practices vary by region—the distinction between fried and boiled food does not seem
to obtain in the south of India—and over time. Different castes now eat together at wedding feasts
which were previously restricted to those of the same caste;23 men, especially, often do not observe
21Herbert Hope Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1891, I, 176, cited in ibid., 74.
22For an attempt by one anthropologist to do this for 36 castes present in one district in Uttar Pradesh in northern India
see McKim Marriott, “Caste Ranking and Food Transactions: A Matrix Analysis,” in Structure and Change in Indian Society,
ed. Milton B. Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), 133–78.
23Jonathan P. Parry, “Two Cheers for Reservation: The Satnamis and the Steel Plant,” in Institutions and Inequalities Essays
in Honour of André Béteille, ed. Ramachandra Guha and Jonathan P. Parry (Oxford University Press, 2011), 152.
156
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
restrictions when outside the home, or travelling.24 They may also be deliberately flouted for political
reasons, whether out of solidarity or as a matter of strategy.25 Many restrictions persist, however. One
recent guide to food etiquette regards men eating before women as a practice of “the old days” and eating together as “perfectly acceptable,” but still hesitates to allow women to cook during menstruation
and insists that “invited Brahmins (priests) or guests eat first.”26
Caste identity remains important too in marriage. Although there is some anecdotal evidence of
an increase in intercaste marriages in recent decades, no good statistical evidence is available, in part
because there are different ways to define what exactly counts as an intercaste marriage. There is no
doubt, however, that such marriages are unusual, and that the vast majority of marriages are between
individuals of similar caste.
The names of individual jātis often indicate some link with an occupation, and this has sometimes been taken to mean that occupation is hereditary, and that caste has its basis in a division of
labour. This idea is reinforced by the functional dimensions of the varṇa hierarchy (priests, warriors,
commoners, servants). While it may once have been the case that all potters belonged to the jāti of
potters, it is no longer true—if it ever was—that only those who belonged to the caste of potters made
pots, or that all those belonging to the caste of potters made their living from making pots. In contemporary India, it is no more likely that a member of the blacksmith caste makes a living as a blacksmith
than it is that someone with the surname Smith or Schmidt does any English or German-speaking
country. Nevertheless, they may continue to refer to themselves, and be referred to by others, as potters,27 and their ritual status is often connected to their nominal traditional occupation. Even if this
occupation has been abandoned, members of the caste may still be called upon to perform ritual roles
which were previously the duty of their caste. Potters, for instance, were often required to make pots,
lamps, or even images of the deity on the occasion of a festival, and may still be responsible for providing them. The status of their caste is still connected to their former ritual role, although it is also
dependent upon carefully limiting their interactions with other castes in relation to food and to marriage. In a similar manner, other castes had defined roles to play in festivals or other ritual events,
notably at funerals. Their ritual duties, together with their occupational duties, in turn established
certain rights, to ritual honours on festival occasions and to a share in the harvest.
Caste and change
Because entry to a varṇa or jāti is by birth, in principle an individual cannot change caste, except by
being reborn into a different caste in another lifetime. The dharmaśāstras do include various lists
of actions by which men (mostly) and women can “fall from caste,” but they recognise no means by
which someone can improve their caste. Nevertheless, there is evidence of castes managing to have
a claim to a higher caste status accepted. Prior to the establishment of British colonial rule in India,
24For an overview of Hindu food practices, including how they are changing, see R.S. Khare, “Anna,” in The Hindu World,
ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene R. Thursby (London: Routledge, 2004), 407–28.
25Manuela Ciotti reports an incident which seemed, to the Chamars involved, to mark a shift from the one to the other
(Retro-Modern India: Forging the Low-Caste Self (London: Routledge, 2012), 170).
26Soumya Sitaraman, Follow the Hindu Moon: A Guide to the Festivals of South India (New Delhi: Random House, 2007),
2: 84–87.
27Scholars sometimes mark this distinction is by using upper and lowercase letters, just as we do in English (Smith for
a family name, smith for an occupation).
VARṆĀŚRAMADHARMA
157
the acquisition of political power through military means was often accompanied by a claim to kṣatrīya status. While such claims are often disputed, in other cases they have attained wide acceptance,
so that groups which once had śūdra status are today regarded as genuine kṣatrīyas. A more recent
example is the case of a Goatherd caste in Uttar Pradesh who acquired new wealth in the 1930s as a
result of transactions in land. Their wealth enabled them to refuse food offerings from groups they
had formerly acknowledged as higher in status, and to pay generously to have lower groups perform
ritual services for them which carried an implicit recognition of their new status. They ceased interaction with a Brahmin priest who would not accept pakkā food from them, and instead prevailed upon
impecunious Brahmins from a neighbouring village to eat with them in return for a loan on generous
terms. This initially caused a split among the Brahmins, but over time the Goatherds’ new status was
acknowledged by at least some of the Brahmins in their village agreeing to eat with them.
The Indian sociologist M. N. Srinivas coined the term “Sanskritization” to describe another method
by which castes have sought to raise their status. By reducing activities common among the lowest
status groups, such as eating meat, and adopting where possible the customs of those from higher status groups, a caste could, over time, improve their ranking. The customs adopted may include making
offerings only to the vegetarian deities whose priests are usually Brahmins, preference for early marriage and a ban on widow remarriage, and an increased use of Sanskritic theological vocabulary (terms
like karma, dharma, saṃsāra, mōkṣa). Srinivas argued that it was precisely because caste ranking was
always contested, especially among mid-ranking groups, that change was possible.28 Very low-caste
groups who attempted to improve their status in this way, such as the South Indian Smiths, have succeeded only in provoking disapproval and hostility.
Āśrama
The other major component of varṇāśramadharma is the scheme of four āśramas, or stages of life.
The four stages are the brahmācarya (religious student), gṛhastha (householder), vanaprastha (forest
dweller or hermit) and saṃnyāsa (renouncer). The four āśramas are formally seen as stages through
all of which the twice-born male passes as he moves through life. Like the attempt to classify jātis
as arising from some combination of varṇas, the account of the āśramas which we find in the dharmaśāstras is perhaps best understood as a later attempt to impose a clear structure and order on a
socio-religious reality which refuses to be so neatly confined, particularly in the modern world. However, while this model of the ideal life pattern of the twice-born male is no longer represents the actual
lives of many Hindus (if indeed it ever did) it nevertheless remains important as a model, and is part
of the mental furniture of many Hindus. And the underlying principle—that there are different religious obligations at different stages in one’s life—is both entirely characteristic of Hinduism and a
counterpart to the idea that there are different religious obligations for different varṇas.
The four āśramas are connected also with the idea of the four aims of life: dharma, artha, kāma,
and mokṣa. Having fulfilled his duty (dharma) to religion by learning the Vedas in the first āśrama as
a brahmācarya, he then passes into the next āśrama, gṛhastha, or the householder stage, and fulfills
his duty to society, and to posterity, by fathering children and bringing them to independence. In this
stage he also earns the means to support the sacrifice (artha), fulfilling his ritual duty, and to support
28Srinivas’s developing thought on Sanskritization and responses to his critics can be traced in his Collected Essays (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
158
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
those in the other stages. He is also able to enjoy the fruits of his labour (kāma). As a legitimate goal
of life, artha, would originally have been closely tied to the performance of sacrifice, and kāma would
have referred primarily to the results of sacrifice. Later both come to have wider meaning, of wealth
and enjoyment respectively. Having fulfilled his duty in this way, the twice-born male then retires to
the forest to live a more austere life of mental and physical asceticism. Finally he may leave society
altogether, and become a saṃnyāsin, a renouncer, and devote himself entirely to the quest to consume
his accumulated karma through asceticism. Having fulfilled his dharma, he is now free to pursue the
final goal of mokṣa. Mokṣa appears not to have been one of the original aims, but to have been added
as part of the shift away from the this-worldly religion of the early Veda.
The four stages are described as an ideal, and while recommended to all, it was not expected that
everyone should prove capable of following the pattern. The earliest texts on dharma suggest that on
completion of the stage of brahmācarya, one should choose one of the other āśramas for the rest of
one’s life.
Recommended reading
Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. 1966. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980.
Olivelle, Patrick. Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
. The Law Code of Manu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Quigley, Declan. The Interpretation of Caste. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Required Viewing
David Thompson, dir., The Wages of Action: Religion in a Hindu Village (BBC/Open University, 1987),
47min.
Required Reading
Declan Quigley, “On the Relationship between Caste and Hinduism,” in The Blackwell Companion to
Hinduism, ed. Gavin A. Flood (Blackwell, 2003), 495–508.
E
very serious work on Hinduism emphasizes the extraordinary diversity of that “religion” to the
point where many ask whether it makes a great deal of sense to call Hinduism a religion at all
in the sense of a relatively cohesive or core set of beliefs and ritual practices. On the other hand,
every serious work on caste emphasizes the extraordinary uniformity of the beliefs and ritual practices associated with this institution (or set of institutions). It is a curious fact, then, that there is a
REQUIRED READING: QUIGLEY
159
near-unanimous consensus that caste and Hinduism are inextricably linked. A statement cited in the
opening pages of Lipner’s textbook on Hinduism might well have come from Weber or any of his intellectual descendants whose interpretations of caste have dominated intellectual discussion of the
subject in the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology: “Caste is the Hindu form of social organization. No man can be a Hindu who is not in caste”.1 However, Lipner reminds us that there is
a dissenting, minority view which states that one must be very careful in making this equation: “The
caste system, though closely integrated into the [Hindu] religion, is not essential to it… Even the profession of belief in the authority of the Veda is not essential”2
In this chapter I will support Brockington’s decoupling of caste and Hinduism, though from a
rather different perspective. Those who insist on the connection, it will be argued, invariably select
only certain ideological features of caste as worthy of consideration while dismissing others as if they
simply did not exist. This typically goes hand in hand with an obliviousness to certain historical and
sociological features which characterize caste and which explain its distinctiveness from other forms
of social organization, such as tribe or estate or class.3
What exactly do we mean by caste? What almost everyone can agree on is that wherever there
is caste, certain features are found linked together in a systematic fashion. Perhaps most noticeable,
particularly to Western, (relatively) liberal, egalitarian eyes, is an apparently constant preoccupation
with maintaining differences between groups and expressing these differences through concepts of
pollution and inauspiciousness. These groups are based on lineal kinship, and tightly regulated marriage alliances between households of different lineages. From one perspective, regulating marriage
often appears to be a device on the part of wealthy households for inhibiting the dispersal of land
ownership. But non-landowning lineages, whether wealthy merchants or impoverished groups, also
regulate their marriages just as strictly as members of landowning lineages. The fundamental message being circulated by members of all “castes” (i.e. groups of intermarrying lineages) is invariably
phrased in terms of an encouragement to prevent one’s own “kind” from being contaminated, with
the word for “kind” in most Indian languages being jāti (or some variant thereof), a concept which jāti
might also be translated as “species.”
It is as if members of different groups were saying: “We are different from each other in the same
way that different animal species are. Just as cats and dogs cannot interbreed, neither can we.” Since
some relativist thinkers are reluctant to say that people with other cultural ideas are “wrong,” it needs
perhaps to be stressed (if we are going to explain the ideology that different castes must not miscegenate) that there is, in fact, only one human species and its members are not prevented from interbreeding because of their different origins. The arbitrary, cultural nature of the prohibition on
intermixing is shown more clearly still by the fact that it is not restricted to procreation. Members of
different castes are generally convinced that they should not eat together except on special occasions
(and then should not eat “normal,” everyday food), and that they should abstain from performing
certain rituals together.
1John Nicol Farquhar, The Crown of Hinduism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), 216 cited in Julius J. Lipner, Hindus:
Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 1994), 3.
2John L. Brockington, The Sacred Thread: Hinduism in its Continuity and Diversity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1981), 4 see Lipner, Hindus, 3.
3A much more detailed exposition of the argument that follows can be found in Declan Quigley, The Interpretation of
Caste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
160
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
It is not uncommon for a village to have 20 or more castes all claiming to abjure relations of any
fundamental kind with each other. But why should there be such a proliferation of “kinds” wherever
there is caste? A preliminary clue is that in caste-organized communities normally one kind predominates in every sense—politically, economically, numerically, and as the provider of the main patrons
of rituals. Conventionally referred to as the “dominant” caste4, they are more accurately entitled the
“noble” or “kingly” caste, it being understood that nobility and kingship are refractions of each other,
as will become clearer later. All of the other castes are groups of lineages which have an obligation
to provide people who will perform specialized ritual duties for the noble caste. To default on these
obligations always incurs some kind of sanction, which is frequently underpinned by the threat, if not
the actual use of, violence. Generally, the only people who can escape from these ritual obligations
are those merchants who are not dependent on landowners, or renouncers who live a mendicant life
outside of the sedentary communities organized along caste lines.
While there is a great deal of variation among theorists regarding the alleged underlying mechanisms which generate this phenomenon whereby a multiplicity of groups all fastidiously distinguish
themselves from each other, most people would agree that certain features stand out when caste is
compared to other forms of social organization. Of these perhaps the most striking is the institution
of untouchability whereby members of certain castes are so excluded that they appear on occasion to
be beyond the pale of normal society. One very common, and perfectly acceptable, way to approach
caste is thus by explaining untouchability.5
Crudely, though not inaccurately, there are two main explanations for untouchability, both of
brāhmaṇa which present Untouchables as the “opposites” of Brāhmaṇas (spelled in various ways). Both of these
approaches envisage caste organization as “hierarchical,” in the commonly accepted sense of this
term: a ladder-like system of statuses. In both approaches, Brāhmaṇas are at the “top” and Untouchables are at the “bottom.” According to one approach this is so because Brāhmaṇas are priests and
priests are pure, while Untouchables are polluted because they perform degrading tasks which deal
with the inauspicious facets of life and death. According to the other approach, the superiority of
Brāhmaṇas is fundamentally based on landed wealth and the power which derives from it, while the
wretched condition of Untouchables results from the fact that they are typically landless and dispossessed. According to this latter theory, all talk of purity and pollution, whether by those who practice
caste, or those who analyze it, simply obscures the underlying economic and political reality.
I will show shortly that neither of these theories is sustainable because the underlying assumption
of a stratified, ladder-like series of caste statuses does not match certain crucial features of the known
ethnography. Before elaborating on this, however, it is necessary to consider the most celebrated and
influential (though also the most attacked) theorist of caste, Louis Dumont, who argues against the
idea of caste-as-stratification but then confuses the issue by appearing to employ precisely this concept. Dumont6 attempts to escape from the notion of caste-as-stratification by introducing us to a
second meaning of “hierarchy,” that of the encompassment of the part by the whole, which implies
also the encompassment of something by its contrary. Thus, for example, in traditional societies the
4Following M. N. Srinivas, “The Dominant Caste in Rampura,” American Anthropologist 61, no. 1 (1959): 1–16.
5Robert Deliège, The Untouchables of India, trans. Nora Scott (1995; Oxford: Berg, 1999) provides a comprehensive exploration of writings on untouchability.
6Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications (1966; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980).
REQUIRED READING: QUIGLEY
161
individual is encompassed by society and in caste society, argues Dumont, the pure encompasses the
impure.
Dumont argues that Western theorists and those influenced by them tend to see caste through
modern, individualistic spectacles and to apply a set of judgments which are not applicable in the
“holistic” traditions of caste-organized communities where the individual is subordinated to, encompassed by, the moral claims of the collective. He is perfectly correct to state that caste ideology gives
primacy to the whole community and has no place for the modern Western concept of individualism where people are free to make their own choices about whom they associate with. In connection
with this, everyone will agree with Dumont that caste involves a “heavy” and pervasive use of ritual
for structuring social relations which in many other societies are structured by centralized political
and economic institutions.
In the Indian case, argues Dumont, this holism expresses itself with reference to two ideological
features: the opposition of the pure and the impure, and what he calls the “disjunction between status
and power.” By the latter he means that those who are the most politically powerful defer to the representatives of religious values because the ultimate meaning of the society derives from those values.
This is why, he claims, in everyday life the priest ranks higher than the king, and in the varṇa schema varṇa
of the Vedic texts the Brāhmaṇa ranks higher than the Kṣatriya.
Dumont’s theory has had pervasive and enduring appeal in spite of a torrent of criticism from
every conceivable angle. The reason for this appeal is simple. Hindus themselves often claim that
Brāhmaṇas are the “highest” caste and Untouchables the “lowest” and Dumont’s approach appears to
provide an explanation for this. But this common popular formulation of the order of castes runs into
problems immediately. First, there are thousands of Brāhmaṇa castes whose members daily dispute
each other’s status.3 Evidently, if one Brāhmaṇa caste claims superiority over another Brāhmaṇa caste,
not all of them can be the “highest.” And if some Brāhmaṇas are “higher” than others, then the criterion
of being “higher” obviously must be by virtue of something other than simply being a Brāhmaṇa. But
what? This is one of the trickiest, and most contested, questions in the explanation of caste.
The evidence needed to resolve this question, however, points overwhelmingly in one direction.
The work of some “priests” (i.e. performers of ritual activities on behalf of others) is clearly regarded by
everyone in caste-organized communities as defiling. This seems relatively uncontroversial in relation
to the members of those castes who deal overtly with death or the disposal of liminal substances such
as cut hair and nails, feces, menstrual blood, and afterbirth. Which society does not have to deal with
these by setting them apart? But the work of a number of authors7 suggests a much more radical
view of ritual activity, for it would appear that it is not merely dealing with the physical byproducts of
human life and decay which is dangerous. It is not just castes such as Barbers and Tanners, Washermen
and Sweepers, they argue, whose status is endangered by their ritual activities. So too is the status of
Brāhmaṇa priests who are normally conceived of as the “highest” caste(s) because of their alleged
3Robert I. Levy and Kedar Rāj Rājopādhyāya, Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in
Nepal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) provides an encyclopedic survey of ritual practitioners in one of the
most complex examples of caste organization on the Indian sub-continent. For an extended review of this work see Declan
Quigley, “Kingship and ‘Contrapriests’,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 1, no. 3 (1997): 565–80.
7See especially J. C. Heesterman, “Brahmin, Ritual and Renouncer,” in The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian
Ritual, Kingship, and Society (1964; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Jonathan P. Parry, “Ghosts, Greed and Sin:
The Occupational Identity of the Benares Funeral Priests,” Man 15, no. 1 (1980): 88–111; Jonathan P. Parry, “The Gift, the Indian
Gift and the ‘Indian Gift’,” Man 21, no. 3 (1986): 453–73 and Gloria Goodwin Raheja, The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation
and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
162
consanguineal:
related by blood
affinal: related by
marriage
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
distance from the polluting functions of Untouchable and other “lowly” specialist castes. All priestly
activity is dangerous because it involves the acceptance of “gifts,” commonly referred to as dāṇa, which
act as vessels for the inauspicious qualities which the patron of the ritual is attempting to shed. The
evidence for this is both ethnographic and textual and indicates clearly that members of Brāhmaṇa
castes who function as priests are tainted, or compromised, by their ritual activities. Many members
of Brāhmaṇa castes display their awareness of this problem by their reluctance to take on priestly
duties. These nonpriestly Brāhmaṇas, we are told, “widely despise Brahman priests”.8
This is not to imply that all ritual tasks enjoy equal esteem or lack of it; manifestly this is not
the case. As a rough rule of thumb one might say that those castes whose functions are most closely
associated with death and decay have the lowest status, while those whose functions are more ethereal
enjoy the highest status. However, the relative evaluation of caste statuses is far from being an easy
matter since the paradigmatic ritual which connects members of noble castes to others is sacrifice, and
this is, by its nature, simultaneously ethereal and implicated in violent death. Brāhmaṇas normally
represent themselves as being removed from the violent aspect of sacrifice but this is always relative
and, in the final analysis, something of an illusion (or delusion). This theme cannot be pursued here
without a full-blown exploration of the nature of sacrifice. Suffice it to say that the ambiguity which
is at the heart of this primal ritual of death and rebirth translates into caste relations, as we will see a
little later.
One might object, however, that if it is the actual performance of ritual functions which is hazardous for one’s status, it is curious that the status of other members of the caste is also compromised
even when they do not themselves perform impure tasks. These people are affected because they either come from one’s own lineage (i.e. they are related consanguineally), or they come from other lineages with whom members of one’s own lineage conventionally marry (i.e. they are related affinally).
Caste status cannot therefore be simply “interactional” as Marriott9 argued in a very influential article
which contrasted with the “attributional” theory of Dumont. Kinship and marriage are also primary
determinants of caste status.
Ethnographic reports often fail to make clear that all members of castes do not need to perform
the ritual function from which they derive their status. What is crucial is that one or more members
of the caste in question provide the necessary ritual functionary. Caste is often reported to be a matter
of occupation. This is false: what is at issue is a periodic ritual contribution to the community. All of
the members of one caste may be agricultural labourers yet only some among them may be required
to perform a particular ritual function—say, to play music on the occasion of worshipping a particular
deity. Another caste (i.e. a group with whom the former will not intermarry) may also be agricultural
laborers and have a different ritual function—say, to be pall-bearers for noble castes. Discrimination
of this kind can be endless—as with totemic groups.10 Even among groups where the link between
caste and occupation appears more clear-cut, it is rarely the case that all members of the caste perform
the job in question. Thus, to be a Barber is not to be a hair-cutter, but to be related to others whose
8Christopher J. Fuller, Servants of the Goddess: The Priests of a South Indian Temple (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), see also Arjun Guneratne, “Shaping the Tourist’s Gaze: representing ethnic differences in a Nepali Village,” The
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7, no. 3 (2001): 539.
9McKim Marriott, “Caste Ranking and Food Transactions: A Matrix Analysis,” in Structure and Change in Indian Society,
ed. Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), 133–171.
10See Claude Lévi-Strauss’s interesting comparisons: “The Bear and the Barber,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 93, no. 1 (1963): 1–11; “Totem and Caste,” in The Savage Mind (1962; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966).
REQUIRED READING: QUIGLEY
163
ritual function involves the cutting of hair and other related tasks, such as nail-paring and midwifery,
as elements of purificatory ceremonies. A Barber could, therefore, be a taxi-driver, while the man
cutting hair in the barber’s shop (i.e. as a profession rather than as part of a ritual function) could well
be a member of another caste. Similarly, a Brāhmaṇa need not be a priest, a Farmer may be a rickshaw
driver, and so on.
These three indisputable ethnographic realities—the fundamental nature of lineal affiliation in
providing caste status; the fact that only some members of a caste perform the ritual function which
gives all of the members of the caste their status; and the fact that members of a variety of castes perform ritual functions which are widely regarded as inherently dangerous—mean that there are four
mistakes in the oft-repeated formula that “Brāhmaṇas are the highest caste because they are priests.”11
1. Not all priests are Brāhmaṇas;
2. Many Brāhmaṇas are not priests. They are Brāhmaṇas because they are related to other Brāhmaṇas (who may or may not be priests themselves; if they are assumed to be related to priests
at some point, this may be in the distant, or forgotten, past);
3. At least some priests are degraded by their ritual activities and, according to some authorities,
all of them are;
4. If the performance of ritual functions is degrading or compromising, this implies that only the
renouncer, who is by definition outside caste-organized society, can claim to be “pure.” The
concept of “most pure” cannot then be equated with “highest” since “highest” indicates “inside.”
The most important conclusion one can draw from these observations is that the idea that “Brāhmaṇas are the highest caste” makes no sense (irrespective of the fact that it is very widely held by
Hindus themselves and by commentators on Hinduism). There is no doubt that ritual activity is directed at the ridding of inauspicious qualities, but this does not indicate a capacity to rank groups as
higher and lower. On the contrary, careful study of the ethnographic record shows that it is always
impossible to rank castes unambiguously or without contestation: ambiguity and dispute are built in
to the structure of caste relations. This is seen both in the relations between patrons of rituals and
priests of various kinds, and among patron castes themselves.12
Once these points are admitted, much of Dumont’s theory of caste quickly starts to unravel. For
Dumont, the opposition of the pure and the impure depends on priests monopolizing ritual functions
which were once the preserve of the king: “power in India became secular at a very early date”.13 But
in spite of the fact that his entire theory of caste hangs on this claim, Dumont provides no evidence to
support it—bar his own assertions that Brāhmaṇas are now unambiguously the “highest” caste and
Untouchables the “lowest.” With much textual and ethnographic evidence suggesting otherwise, it
is fortunate that there is an alternative way of approaching the problem which does not depend on
concepts of highest and lowest.
The pollution concepts which are the hallmark of caste are conventionally said to be an expression of “Hinduism,” even though we know perfectly well that this is not a monolithic set of beliefs.
11“In theory, the Brahmins had the most exalted status and were set up as the unattainable model of society in many
respects. This is because, by hereditary occupation, they presided over the most important form of available power: that of
the sacrificial ritual which was the source of temporal and spiritual well-being” (Lipner, Hindus, 89).
12For further references and a more detailed examination of this, see Quigley, Interpretation of Caste, ch. 4.
13Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 76.
164
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
An alternative representation of caste values portrays them as an expression of institutions associated with kingship. This approach, which is often associated with the seminal work of Hocart,14 has
certain advantages over any other explanation of caste. First, it offers an explanation of why caste
organization is found in some parts of the Indian subcontinent but not others. Typically, caste originates in regions which are ecologically capable of sustaining kingdoms: relatively large populations
in a relatively small area. Caste is associated with fertile agriculture, not with barren mountainous
or desert regions. Secondly, it offers an explanation of why caste organization is found among nonHindu communities in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka and why very similar forms of social organization
are found in other monarchical and feudal societies which give ideological stress to what Geertz has
aptly called “the exemplary center.”15
Caste ideology is an expression of the conflicting demands of two different principles of social
organization. On the one hand, there is the hierarchical principle of monarchy, a form of centralization which, of itself, is always very tenuous because it is dependent on personal patronage.16 On the
other hand, there is the relatively egalitarian principle of lineage organization which simultaneously
stresses kinship (sameness) and marriageability (difference, but bridgeable difference). To be a member of a lineage in a caste-organized society is to identify first with one’s lineal kin in opposition to
members of all other lineages, then to identify with that group of lineages inside of which one may
seek spouses in opposition to those lineages which are not acceptable marriage partners.
Hocart brings together these principles of organization in caste society by arguing that castes are
“families” which hereditarily transfer ritual functions in order to ensure that the king and nobles remain in a pure state.17 In contrast to the idea that caste is orientated to a pure–impure axis with Brāhmaṇas and Untouchables at polar ends, Hocart argues that what is at stake is the integrity of kingship,
the institution to which everyone is connected. By implication, it is a very fragile integrity which
can only be maintained by the repeated performance of rituals (sacrifices). The integrity of kingship
provides a model—an exemplary center—for others to emulate by replicating the king’s rituals on a
lesser scale.
Hocart’s approach endorses Dumont’s assertion that the separation of king and priest (as he put
it, the “disjunction between status and power”) is central to the theory of caste. But it shows that Dumont was quite wrong about the dynamic of relations between kings and priests and the underlying
structure they depended on. Nobility and kingship are not a simple matter of material dominance,
but are concerned with the ability to command rituals which bring the community together and expurgate the inauspiciousness which social life habitually generates. Priests are the instruments who
perform this purging function and who therefore make possible kingship and nobility. Caste organization could thus be said to be a division of the community into noble and kingly families on the
one hand and priests on the other, provided it is understood that the primary function of priests is to
cleanse the society of anything which threatens it with death and evil.
In the modern, postcolonial period, the ostensible disappearance of kings from the political scene
has not led to the disappearance of kingship as an organizing principle of ritual and social relations
14Arthur M. Hocart, Caste: A Comparative Study (1938; London: Methuen, 1950).
15Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theater State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
16Nur Yalman, “On Royalty, Caste and Temples in Sri Lanka and South India,” Social Analysis 25 (1989): 142–9 is particularly insightful on the connection between caste and royalty.
17Hocart, Caste, 17, 20.
REQUIRED READING: QUIGLEY
165
though this has often been obscured by modern political realities.18 Even Raheja, whose brilliant
ethnography exposed the faultlines of Dumont’s theory more clearly than any other recent work, muddies the waters somewhat when considering the nature of caste in contemporary India. She writes that
“kingship no longer exists, but it has been, perhaps, replaced by the ritual centrality of the dominant
caste”.19 The word “replaced” is unfortunate because it has always been the function of members of
dominant castes to patronize ritual, replicating on a diminished scale the role of the king. Put differently, members of dominant castes continue to be mini-kings, not just materially, but in terms of
their political/ritual function. They are “at the center of a complex ritual organization that permeates
nearly every aspect of the everyday life of the village”.20 This real-world fact of kingship/patronage sits
uneasily with Dumont’s insistence that the king’s role has been secularized, and much more comfortably with Hocart’s claim that the king/patron is the “principal” of the ritual.21
A phrase which I have elided from the two quotes from Raheja in the previous paragraph further
confuses understanding of both kingship, and relations between patrons of rituals and the priests
who carry them out. In the village of her fieldwork, she says, “as in many of the textual traditions on
kingship, the Brāhmaṇa is hierarchically superior, yet the dominant landholding caste stands at the
center of a complex ritual organization… ”.22 It is difficult to see what the foundation for this alleged
superiority is, other than an engrained idea that Brāhmaṇas must be superior because that is what
everyone else seems to believe these days. In practice, superiority seems to attach to members of the
landholding caste in both ritual and non-ritual domains. If the Brāhmaṇa is “hierarchically superior”
in an ideological sense, it is a Brāhmaṇa who is so idealized that he cannot possibly belong to the
world of caste relations where he would be tainted by the receipt of prestations for performing ritual
services. It cannot be the Brāhmaṇa of the village who is necessarily immersed in caste (i.e. interdependent) relations, and who is therefore, like everyone else, caught up in the web of inauspiciousness
which is the product of the dealings of normal social life. Interestingly, Dumont’s theory predicts just
this eventuality: “In theory, power is ultimately subordinate to priesthood, whereas in fact priesthood
submits to power”.23
One of the problems with any understanding of caste is that the word “caste” itself has been used
to translate two quite different Sanskrit concepts which are assumed, quite wrongly, to have an automatic connection. We have already encountered the concept of jāti and its sense of “kind” or “species.”
Another way of glossing this concept might be to say “the group that one was born into,” the relativity
of this gloss conveying the contextual nature of jāti ascriptions. When asked to name their jāti, people may name their patrilineage, the name of the group of lineages they conventionally marry into,
or even the name of what would now be called an ethnic group. However, even though the concept
is elastic, the idea of origin by birth is constant. There is no mystery about this. If a British person is
asked: “where are you from?,” he or she may give the name of a village, a county, a country, or even a
continent depending on the interpretation given to what the questioner is seeking.
18See also Jean-Claude Galey, “Reconsidering Kingship in India: An Ethnological Perspective,” History and Anthropology
4, no. 1 (1989): 123–87.
19Gloria Goodwin Raheja, “India: Caste, Kingship and Dominance Reconsidered,” Annual Review of Anthropology 17
(1988): 517.
20Ibid.
21Arthur M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors: An Essay in the Comparative Anatomy of Human Society (1936; Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1970), 61.
22Raheja, “Dominance Reconsidered,” 517.
23Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 71–2.
166
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
Scholars approaching caste through the study of Hinduism and comparative religion may be less
acquainted with sociological and anthropological studies of caste on the ground and are more likely
to be familiar with the Vedic concept of varṇa which is also used to translate the word “caste.” The
referent of this concept is rather different from that of jāti since the fundamental idea is less “belonging
to a group by virtue of common birth” than “functions which must be performed if cosmic harmony
and social harmony are to prevail”—it being understood that cosmic harmony and social harmony
are dependent on each other. What the varṇa and jāti concepts share is an idea of “keeping apart”
and it is this which allows them to become conflated in the concept of caste.
In fact the original idea of varṇa does seem to imply differences of origins between the “Vedic Inārya dians, who called themselves “noble ones” (āryas), [and] the other peoples they encountered (chiefly
the Harappans to begin with)”.24 But the idea of separating conquerors from indigenes seems to quickly
become subordinate to an idea of protecting nobility which is independent of any consideration of
ethnic origins. It has been mentioned that rituals performed by priests on behalf of members of patron (noble, kingly) castes are paradigmatically sacrifices. It is no accident that the concept of varṇa is
inextricably tied to a sacrificial theory of human society. The famous verse from Rgveda x, 90 speaks
of four varṇas: Brāhmaṇa, rājanya (later conventionally referred to as the kṣatriya), vaiśya, and śūdra, each of which springs from a different part of the body of Puruṣa—the lord of beings—who is
portrayed as having been sacrificed at the beginning of time.
Note that there is nothing here about lineage or pedigree, and neither is there in the later law book
known as the Code of Manu (ca. 200 bce to ce 200). In this text each varṇa is portrayed as having a
quintessentially different function. These functions revolve around sacrifice: just as the world and
the four varṇas were created through an initial sacrifice, repetitions of this primal act are necessary if
order and harmony are to be maintained. To achieve this, each varṇa has a specific function:
Manu lays down that the duty of the Brāhmaṇa is to study and to teach, to sacrifice, and
to give and receive gifts; the kṣatriya must protect the people, sacrifice and study; the
vaiśya also sacrifices and studies, but his chief function is to breed cattle, to till the earth,
to pursue trade and to lend money; the śūdra’s duty is only to serve the three higher
classes… for each man there was a place in society and a function to fulfil, with its own
duties and rights.25
Note again that there is no mention of any idea that a person performing any specific function must
be born into a particular group. Yet there is a common idea that people who belong to a particular jāti
must automatically have a corresponding varṇa or belong to the residual category of Untouchables
who are not mentioned in the Vedic schema. Unfortunately reality is not so simple.
There is a great deal of dispute about which varṇa a particular jāti should be associated with because everyone wants to be linked with the most noble lineages possible, and to dissociate themselves
from anyone who might threaten their status. Thus, from one perspective, someone may say: “All
those people are landowners and come from the Rājput jāti; their varṇa is kṣatriya.” Yet some of the
people referred to may not go along with this. They may say: “it is true that other people consider
those people over there as Rājputs like us, but in fact they come from different lineages and are not
nobles like us. Our varṇa is kṣatriya, but theirs is śūdra and we would never marry them”.26. Similarly
24Lipner, Hindus, 88.
25A. L. Basham, The Wonder that was India (1954; London: Fontana, 1971), 139.
26See especially Jonathan P. Parry, Caste and Kinship in Kangra (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).
REQUIRED READING: QUIGLEY
167
one group of priests may say that they are the priests of the former kings and nobility and that this is
made clear by the name of their jāti (e.g. Rājopādhyāya in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal). They might
then claim that their varṇa is brāhmaṇa but distinguish themselves from other people in the community who call themselves Brāhmaṇas but who perform rituals for “low caste” households. They might
insist that they would never marry with this other group of soi-disant Brāhmaṇas and might insist that
the latter are “really” śūdra. Considering yet another group of people who also call themselves Brāhmaṇas, they might point out that the ritual role of this other group is restricted to the performance of
funeral rites and that they, the “real” Brāhmaṇas, consider them to have a very low status, indeed to
be “in fact” kinds of Untouchables.27
These kinds of invidious distinctions are part and parcel of how caste works. Contrary to the impression given by some earlier commentators that caste distinctions were rigid and universally agreed
upon, others have always realized that there is a great deal of dispute about status:
By organization and propaganda a caste can change its name and in the course of time
get a new one accepted, and by altering its canons of behaviour in the matter of diet and
marriage can increase the estimation in which it is held… [A number] who claimed to be
some special sort of Kshatriya or Vaishya at the 1921 census claimed to be some peculiar
kind of Brahman in 1931.28
Both varṇa ascription and jāti ascription are subject to claim and counter-claim, though there is a kind
of obvious upper limit in that the more kingly a lineage can present itself, the less will its claims to
kṣatriya status be open to contest. Similarly, the more that a lineage can present itself as the domestic
priests of kings and nobility, the less will its claims to brāhmaṇa status be disputed. One should not,
however, assume that because certain people claim to be of kṣatriya or brāhmaṇa status, that other
people accept this claim. And one should not assume that there is an automatic correspondence between varṇa and jāti any more that one should assume there is any inherent correspondence between
English people called “Smith” and people who are smiths by occupation.
Readers of this book who wish to approach the problem of caste from the perspective of Hindu
religious beliefs may be surprised that I have not referred to either of two indigenous Indian concepts:
karma and dharma. Clearly this results from my comparative approach which seeks to explain the
institution of caste in sociological terms rather than in terms of a regional ideology. Nevertheless, it is
sometimes said that Hindus are fatalistic and accept their caste status because it is ordained by their
karma, i.e. their destiny. No doubt this is sometimes true; but equally, Hindus rebel against their lot
just as frequently as any other people. The idea that all Hindus meekly accept their caste position
runs contrary to a mass of evidence. In modern times the attempts by millions of Untouchables to
redefine themselves, whether as of Śūdra status, or as Christians or Buddhists,29 provide perhaps the
most striking instances of rebellion against the idea that one’s fate is written in the stars.
But there are many other illustrations of refusing to accept the position one was born into which
do not derive from modern conditions. The institution of hypergamy in north India, which is widespread among landowning castes, is a centuries-old competitive marriage strategy the purpose of
soi-disant:
self-styled
karma, karman
dharma
hypergamy:
marriage to a
person of higher
27For ethnographic illustrations of Brāhmaṇas making distinctions among each other in this way, see especially Levy status
and Rājopādhyāya, Mesocosm; Parry, “Ghosts, Greed and Sin,” and Fuller, Servants of the Goddess.
28J. H. Hutton, Caste in India: Its Nature, Function and Origins (1946; Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1963), 98, 113.
29H. R. Isaacs, India’s Ex-Untouchables (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision:
The Movement against Untouchability in 20th Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
168
LIFE AND DEATH IN HINDU SOCIETY
which is to render one’s caste status as noble as possible by allying oneself to the most aristocratic
families who will accept one’s overtures, and distancing oneself from those among one’s kin and caste
fellows who might compromise one’s status. Other common examples of refusing to accept one’s
place include the employment of genealogists to “prove” that one’s family has a glorious pedigree,30
name changing in order to make it appear that one “really” belongs to a higher caste,31 and moving to
another locality in order to assume a new identity.32
The question of dharma is more complicated. Many of the problems which Western interpretations of caste get into derive from a division between the spheres of religion and power which may be
applicable to modern democratic societies, but which is meaningless in all of the complex, preindustrial, “traditional” societies where the arena of politics is always heavily ritualized. In caste-organized
communities, to refer to the arena of kingship as “secular” in order to contrast it with the “religious”
domain of priests is to introduce a division which cannot be sustained. If we translate dharma as “religion,” it will be impossible to understand the character of any of the ritual mechanisms which are
used to maintain caste divisions.
The word “morality” much better conveys the sense of dharma: the idea that all positions carry
with them certain expectations. If, as I have argued, the king’s exemplary centrality provides the key
to the structure of caste relations, one might expect that the dharma of the king would be particularly
onerous, and so it turns out to be:
that brings us to the real nature of rājadharma, the teachers of which (all of them brahmans) regarded kingship as a practical and religious necessity, for they feared nothing
more then chaos… Rājadharma is “the way a king should comport himself in order to be
righteous.”33
The monarch is responsible for rainfall… The monarch is always pure lest his business
be impeded.34
The rāja looks after the spiritual needs of the kingdom by exercising his special priestly
functions, without which fertility and security will be endangered.35
[F]ar from being simply a matter of secular power and force, the role of the king is ritually
central to the life of the kingdom… Kings are enjoined, in the textual traditions, to give
gifts if they wish to wish to enjoy sovereignty;36 and to give is seen as an inherent part of
the royal code-for-conduct, rājadharma.37
A second problem with conceiving of dharma as “religion” is that Hindus (like most other people)
repeatedly contradict each other, and themselves, in relation to core values.38 There is a particular ambiguity surrounding the relations between patrons and priests because they are involved in an endless
30A. M. Shah and R. G. Shroff, “The Vahīvancā Bāroṭs of Gujarat: A Caste of Genealogists and Mythographers,” The Journal
of American Folklore 71, no. 281 (1958): 248–78.
31Colin Rosser, “Social Mobility in the Newar Caste System,” in Caste and Kin in Nepal, India and Ceylon, ed. Christoph
von Fürer-Haimendorf (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966).
32Lionel Caplan, Administration and Politics in a Nepalese Town (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
33Duncan M. Derrett, Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 606.
34Jan Gonda, Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), 7, 16.
35Derrett, Hindu Law, 57.
36Here the work of Jan Gonda, Change and Continuity in Indian Religion (The Hague: Mouton, 1965); Gonda, Ancient
Indian Kingship is cited
37Raheja, “Dominance Reconsidered,” 514–15.
38See also Richard Burghart, “Hierarchical Models of the Hindu Social System,” Man 13, no. 4 (1978): 519–36.
REQUIRED READING: QUIGLEY
169
flow of inauspiciousness and this can be represented in contradictory ways. The widely reported uniformity in the structure of caste relations can hardly be said to derive from adherence to a set of values
in relation to priestly purity when, as we have seen, many Hindus regard all priests as contaminated
by their ritual duties.
The uniformity of caste structure derives rather from a common sociological predicament which is
resolved through the institutions of kingship. This is why it is perfectly possible to call oneself a Hindu
and reject caste practices, but it is generally only possible to do so when one is living outsides the
confines of a monarchical system—whether as a renouncer in the “traditional” world, or as a member
of a more fluid, modern society.
Other Hinduisms
171
5 The Fifth Veda
Topic overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
explain why it is often said that the Hindu view of women is ‘ambivalent’,
outline the characteristic features of South Indian Hinduism, and
discuss how the representation of goddesses and of women in the caṅkam literature affects the
lives of Hindu women.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
gender
“religion” vs. “culture”
Other Hinduisms
W
e noted above the idea of a ‘fifth Veda.’ Here we will examine two dimensions of the Hindu
tradition which are sometimes identified in this way. First, we will examine the distinctive experience of Hindu women, and then look at Hinduism in the south of India. Up to this point, much of
what has been said about Hinduism has been derived from the Sanskrit literary tradition of the Vedas,
Upaniṣads and Dharmaśāstras. Although this tradition has been influential in the south, it developed
primarily in the north. And despite the role of some women as religious teachers in the Upaniṣads,
there can be little doubt that this tradition privileges the position of upper-caste males.
Women in Hinduism
The Hindu view of women is deeply ambivalent… Women in Hinduism are caught up
in a paradoxical view of the female, where the divine can be feminine, yet women are
profoundly mistrusted.1
1Sanjukta Gupta Gombrich, “Divine Mother or Cosmic Destroyer: The Paradox at the Heart of the Ritual Life of Hindu
Women,” in Through the Devil’s Gateway: Women, Religion and Taboo, ed. Alison Joseph (London: SPCK, 1990), 50.
173
174
FIFTH VEDA
It is not difficult to find evidence in the Hindu tradition for views of women which—by the standards
of the post-feminist West—would be judged sexist, or even misogynist. While we may wish to join
with Indian women’s movements in criticising these views, and challenging their tradition to respond
positively to the revolution in attitudes and practices which has changed the lives of women throughout the world in recent times, it is important also that we should seek to understand these views of
women in their full context, and to take account of the ways in which Hindu women themselves evaluate their tradition and their position within it. Richard Shweder and Usha Menon argue that we
should not overlook the values of inner control, service, and deferred gratification which shape the
self-understanding of Hindu women. They write that to presume that these values “amount to subordination and acceptance of oppression, to represent Hindu women in South Asia as either victims or
subversives is not only to dishonor these women—it is to engage in little more than a late-twentieth
century version of cognitive and moral imperialism.”2
In this unit we will begin by what we know of women’s lives in premodern Hinduism. For the
most part our evidence for this is restricted to what is found in the texts of brahminical Hinduism,
but this can be supplemented by the study of inscriptions and other ancient texts.3 By their nature,
these sources tend to represent the views of a literate elite. In the modern period accounts of Hindu
women by outsiders—first, European travellers, missionaries, and colonial officials and, later, professional ethnographers—and accounts by Hindu women themselves (letters, diaries, autobiographies,
books) have multiplied. Together with unwritten texts (songs, oral histories, folktales), these provide
a much richer view of the lives of Hindu women, and demonstrate that we should by no means take
the limited view of the brahminical and other elite early sources as definitive accounts of the lives
of Hindu women in earlier periods. They do nevertheless also suggest the continuing power of the
brahminical view of women and therefore provide another reason for beginning by examining it.
Women in Brahminical Hindu texts
The aims which the brahminical tradition identifies as proper for a life lived in accordance with the
moral order of the universe are undoubtedly seen from the point of view of a male. Only men are
qualified to perform the rituals on which that moral order depends. Male children are important for
the performance of posthumous rituals which will enable a man to safely negotiate a path to the realm
of the “ancestors” (literally, “fathers,” pitṛ).
Nevertheless, women are indispensable for the achievement of these aims: not only are women
obviously necessary for having children, but only a married man is qualified to perform solemn ritual,
and in these rituals his wife must participate.4 She undergoes an initiation which parallels that of
her husband, and is bound with a cord which matches the sacred thread worn by her husband and
thus establishes her ritual equality with him. Although for much of the time it is her presence, rather
2Richard A. Shweder and Usha Menon, “The Return of the “White Man’s Burden” and the Domestic Life of Hindu
Women,” in Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology, ed. Richard A. Shweder (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2003), 275. Geraldine Forbes likewise cautions against writing the history of Indian women as “a slow but progressive
march toward ‘modernity’,” in which the ideas of foreign rulers were adopted by enlightened Indians. (Women in Modern
India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1.
3For an outstanding example of the manner in which they study of inscriptions can transform our understanding of the
lives of pre-colonial Indian women see Leslie Orr’s work on temple women in Chola period Tamil Nadu. (Donors, Devotees,
and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
4For details, see Jamison, “Roles for Women in Vedic Śrauta Ritual.”
OTHER HINDUISMS
175
than her participation, which is important, she participates most actively precisely at the most crucial junctures of the ritual. She is, however, confined to an area of the ritual arena which symbolizes
the household, except when she is led elsewhere for some specific ritual act. In multiple ways, moreover, she is connected to the sexual symbolism which is found throughout Vedic ritual and intimately
connected to the fertility which is its central concern.
The centrality of the married householder in Vedic ritual persisted even after the development of
new religious forms and the shift away from a worldview which celebrated prosperity, longevity and
fertility. Even when mokṣa—liberation from the world—was added to the earlier Vedic aims for life
in the world (dharma, artha, and kāma), achieving mokṣa was, as we have seen, said to be possible
only for those who had already paid the debt to the ancestors by having children. Thus the rise of
(predominantly male) ascetic movements was “domesticated” by being brought within the compass of
the wider Hindu social world as the final stage in the life of a twice-born male which also included life
as a married householder. Moreover, in at least one contemporary Indian temple priests are required
to be married in order that they may have access to feminine power, which can only legitimately be
obtained through sexual relations with their wives.5
Sanjukta Gupta Gombrich argues that the deep ambivalence which she detects in the Hindu view
of women is connected with the value placed upon her sexuality and fertility. Although required for
the extension of a man’s lineage through the birth of sons, a woman’s sexuality also represents a threat
to the purity of his lineage unless her chastity can be guaranteed. Thus while a women’s sexuality is
highly valued, enormous stress is placed upon the need for it to be under male control, especially as
women are often presented as inherently unable to control their own sexuality.6
This ambivalence is expressed in the following sections from Manusmṛti, the dharmaśāstra attributed to Manu.
Fathers, brothers, husbands, and brothers-in-law who wish for great good fortune should
revere these women and adorn them. The deities delight in places where women are
revered, but where women are not revered all rites are fruitless. Where the women of the
family are miserable, the family is soon destroyed, but it always thrives where the women
are not miserable. Homes that are cursed by women of the family who have not been
treated with due reverence are completely destroyed, as if struck down by witchcraft.
Therefore men who wish to prosper should always revere these women with ornaments,
clothes, and food at celebrations and festivals.
I will tell the eternal duties of a man and wife who stay on the path of duty both in union
and in separation. Men must make their women dependent day and night, and keep
under their own control those who are attached to sensory objects. Her father guards
her in childhood, her husband guards her in youth, and her sons guard her in old age. A
woman is not fit for independence. A father who does not give her away at the proper
time should be blamed, and a husband who does not have sex with her at the proper
time should be blamed; and the son who does not guard his mother when her husband
is dead should be blamed. Women should especially be guarded against addictions, even
trifling ones, for unguarded (women) would bring sorrow upon both families. Regarding this as the supreme duty of all the classes, husbands, even weak ones, try to guard
5Fuller, “The Divine Couple’s Relationship in a South Indian Temple: Mīnākṣī and Sundareśvara at Madurai,” 326.
6Gombrich, “Divine Mother or Cosmic Destroyer.”
176
FIFTH VEDA
their wives. For by zealously guarding his wife he guards his own descendants, practices,
family, and himself, as well as his own duty. The husband enters the wife, becomes an
embryo, and is born here on earth. That is why a wife is called a wife (jāyā), because he is
born (jāyate) again in her. The wife brings forth a son who is just like the man she makes
love with; that is why he should guard his wife zealously, in order to keep his progeny
clean. No man is able to guard women entirely by force, but they can be entirely guarded
by using these means: he should keep her busy amassing and spending money, engaging in purification, attending to her duty, cooking food, and looking after the furniture.
Women are not guarded when they are confined in a house by men who can be trusted
to do their jobs well; but women who guard themselves by themselves are well guarded.
Drinking, associating with bad people, being separated from their husbands, wandering about, sleeping, and living in other people’s houses are the six things that corrupt
women. Good looks do not matter to them, nor do they care about youth; ‘A man!’ they
say, and enjoy sex with him, whether he is good-looking or ugly. By running after men
like whores, by their fickle minds, and by their natural lack of affection these women are
unfaithful to their husbands even when they are zealously guarded here. Knowing that
their very own nature is like this, as it was born at the creation by the Lord of Creatures,
a man should make the utmost effort to guard them.7
Women are essential for rebirth in the form of a son, they are therefore highly valued, but their
value is inextricably linked with their reproductive capacity.
This ambivalence toward women shaped and continues to shape the lives of many women. An
early eighteenth-century manual, the Strīdharmapaddhati of Tryambaka,8 demonstrates the continuing importance of this ideology into the modern period. After an invocation, the text baldly states
its essential theme: “Obedient service to one’s husband is the primary religious duty enjoined by sacred tradition for women.”9 Tryambaka’s view of women is unremittingly negative. His chapter on
the inherent nature of women10 cites the text from Manu above together with several others to show
that women are by nature wicked. At the same time, however, he wants to inspire them to the devoted
obedience to their husband which he regards as their only hope of salvation—through rebirth in male
form—so he offers extravagant praise of the life of the ideal wife. For the orthodox brahminical textual
tradition, Tryambaka is unusual only in addressing this problem directly; other texts combine what
Leslie aptly describes as “a tirade of abuse” directed at women with high praise for wives without any
acknowledgment of a contradiction.11 A good example of this is the way in which Sītā’s devotion to
Rāma is praised in the Rāmāyaṇa as far removed from women’s usually fickle character.
It is important not to mistake the ideology for the reality, and to assume that Hindu women everywhere regard their only religious duty as devoted service to their husbands. Not only are many of
the religious acts which Tryambaka forbids women to perform—including religious donations, going
on pilgrimage, temple worship, and vows—often undertaken by women, but as we shall see some of
7Manu 3: 55–59, 9: 1–18, trans. in Doniger and Smith, Manu, 48–9, 197–8.
8Julia Leslie, The Perfect Wife: the orthodox Hindu woman according to the Strīdharmapaddhati of Tryambakayajvan
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).
9Sdhp 1.1. ibid., 29.
10“The Inherent Nature of Women (strīsvabhāvaḥ; Sdhp 21r.3–22r.8), in ibid., 246–72.
11There are isolated exceptions, such as the Bṛhatsaṃhitā of Varāhamihira ibid., 267, but in general Tryambaka is representative of the tradition and is able to cite many texts in support of his view.
OTHER HINDUISMS
177
these acts may even be regarded as typical for women’s religious practice. Even some which might
be regarded as more unusual, such as renunciation and reciting mantras, are reported during Tryambaka’s own lifetime. A German missionary, who lived near Thanjavur during the period Tryambaka
was active, reports female ascetics at the great Vēṅkaṭeśvara temple at Tirupati who remain unmarried, recite mantras, and take disciples.12 In fact, a perceived decline in women’s performance of their
roles as prescribed in dharmaśāstric texts was given as a reason for the commissioning of other works
on strīdharma by Dīpāmbā, the mother of the two kings Tryambaka served as minister.13
Women and goddesses
The ambivalence in the Hindu view of women is also reflected in the two types of Hindu goddesses—
the “cool” goddesses, under the authority of the male deities to whom they are married, and the “hot”
independent deities, whose power is dangerous because it is not restrained. It may be helpful to think
of śakti—the power of women and goddesses—as something like electricity: an enormously beneficial force when properly controlled, but frighteningly destructive when unleashed as lightning. Much
ritual effort in contemporary Hindu temple worship is devoted to “cooling” the goddess, and the sexual
dimension of this process is quite clear in the symbolism employed. In the main temple in Madurai,
dedicated to the goddess Mīnākṣī and her husband Śiva in the form of Sundareśvara, a nightly ritual
ensures that Mīnākṣī’s female sexuality is transferred from her main image to a smaller image in room
understood to be her bedchamber, to which an image of Śiva is brought. Their regular sexual relations
thus cool the heat of sexual desire which would otherwise accumulate in Mīnākṣī, and ensure that she
remains a “cool,” pacific and beneficient goddess.14
The goddess Māriyāmmaṉ offers an example of the other type of goddess. There are several different myths of Māriyāmmaṉ’s origin, but what they have in common is that she has been wronged
by a man. In one of these, significantly, she has been deceived into marriage to a man of much lower
caste. When she discovers the deception, her anger burns so fiercely that it incinerates her husband.
Māriyāmmaṉ’s fiery character—and her independence of male authority—means that she is always
in danger of overheating and causing devastation. She is associated in particular with infectious diseases prevalent during the hot season (smallpox and cholera) which produce heat in the form of fever
in those who contract them. The rituals performed during her festivals are therefore designed either
to cool her (by setting out pots of water in her temple, or adorning her with cooling green leaves), or to
invoke her heat in her devotees as a sign of possession by the goddess (by dancing carrying a fire-pot).
When she is cooled, she also “cools” the country by bringing rain, and hence fertility.15
Women in inscriptions
A very different—if still partial—picture is revealed by the actions of women recorded in inscriptions.
A striking example is provided by the women mentioned in South India temple inscriptions from the
12Willem Caland, Ziegenbalg’s Malabarisches Heidenthum, vol. XXV/3, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Afdeeling Leterkunde. Nieuwe Reeks (Amsterdam: Uitgave van Koninklijke Akademie,
1926), 80.
13Leslie, Perfect Wife, 21.
14Fuller, “The Divine Couple’s Relationship in a South Indian Temple: Mīnākṣī and Sundareśvara at Madurai,” 321–48,
esp. 327.
15Beck, “Colour and Heat in South Indian Ritual”; William Harman, “Taming the Fever Goddess: Transforming a Tradition in Southern India,” Manushi 140 (2004): 2–13; Younger, “Temple Festival.”
178
FIFTH VEDA
medieval period, studied by Leslie Orr.16 The women mentioned include relatives (wives, mothers,
daughters, and sisters) of kings or other rulers, as well as other women associated with the court, most
of whom we can characterise as ladies-in-waiting, or attendants on royalty, and therefore of high social
status. There are also many women who are described similarly by their family relations to men from
other social groups, notably the wives of brahmins, but also relatives of landowners, merchants, and
others. A third group are unmarried women whose social identities were defined primarily through
their relations to temples, rather than with men. These women are described as devotees or daughters
of a particular deity, or as “temple women”—the general term which Orr uses to refer to them.17 These
titles do not appear to have been associated with any specific role in the temple, but rather to be a mark
of status in relation to the temple. Because inscriptions are mostly records of gifts to temples, it is not
surprising that the women in these inscriptions are usually mentioned as donors or relatives of donors.
Beyond their primary role as donor, however, the inscriptions reveal a great deal about the religious
lives of women, and show how they depart significantly from the prescriptions of the dharmaśāstras.
One such inscription records the gift of a temple woman to the great temple at Chidambaram.18
The woman, who is named as Piḷḷaiyār Ciṟṟiṭai Arivai, had purchased five plots of land, the income or
produce of which was to be used to support the offering of flowers to the goddess in the temple. Some
of the land was allocated for the support of the men who would tend to the gardens and others who
would weave the flowers into garlands. Although one of the plots of land was purchased through a
male intermediary, it is Piḷḷaiyār Ciṟṟiṭai Arivai who owns the land and the donation to the temple is
made in her name alone. Moreover, the inscription records that one of the plots of land was bought
from a Brahmin woman, named only as the wife of one Kulottuṅkacoḻa Piramārāyaṉ of Caṇṭeśuranallūr. Orr notes that, in many cases, the property received by a woman at the time of her marriage
(strīdhana) was not truly under her control, but rather represented the transmission of land from her
father to his son-in-law. It seems possible that the land of the Brahmin woman mentioned here may
be property of this sort, but equally it is clear that Piḷḷaiyār Ciṟṟiṭai Arivai independently controlled
significant resources, and the same is true of many other women whose donations are recorded in
these inscriptions.
Inscriptions are official, public records and therefore indicate women’s acknowledged public roles
in religious affairs. The women whose gifts are recorded in these inscriptions are wealthy, and their
donations are offered to public institutions. Private, domestic religion and the religion of those not
wealthy enough to make permanent endowments to temples, are excluded. There is therefore likely
to be much more to women’s religious activity that has escaped the historical record. For evidence of
what this might have been, we must turn to more recent and contemporary reports of women’s lives,
recorded by ethnographers and others.
Women’s lives
In most regions of India, descent is patrilineal (through the male line). Girls are therefore only visitors
in their natal family, and following marriage—or more precisely, following the birth of a son—will
16Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God.
17These women are often subsumed under the term devadāsi, but Orr shows that there are significant differences between the medieval temple women she is concerned with and those later called devadāsīs, even though the literal meaning
of one of the key Tamil terms for these women (tēvaraṭiyāḷ) is the same as that of the Sanskrit devadāsī, i.e., servant or slave
of the god.
18The full text of the inscription is translated in Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God, 70.
OTHER HINDUISMS
179
become part of the lineage of her husband’s family. A son will support his parents and is necessary for
ritual, but the daughter will leave her natal family, and in most cases it will be necessary to provide a
dowry for her husband. The result is a strong preference for male children, and a birth ratio heavily
skewed toward males. This is especially so for the birth of a second child where the first was female,19
even though ultrasound testing to determine the sex of a foetus has been banned in India.
Despite the preference for male children, a girl is relatively free of restrictions in her childhood
(pre-pubertal) years. The Oriya women (from Orissa, in eastern India) interviewed by Shweder and
Menon often reported childhood years as a period in which they held high rank in their family and had
few troubles. In some regions, particularly the north, virgin girls are regarded as manifestations of the
goddess and sometimes worshipped as such. Fuller argues that this emphasis on purity is connected
with marriage patterns. In the north, the higher castes seek hypergamous marriages in which the
daughter is given away to higher-ranking castes, and as a result wives are often regarded as inferior by
the families they marry into. Daughters and sisters are therefore more highly valued than wives. In
the south, the preference is for cross-cousin marriage where the status of the families is more likely
to be equal, and hence “the wife’s position is less ambiguous and elaborate cults of virgin worship are
rare.”20
After puberty, woman’s sexuality becomes a potential problem, and the ideal is to marry as soon
as possible thereafter. There are many Hindu women still alive who were married before or within
a month or so of their first menstruation, although they would not necessarily co-habit with their
husband immediately. This practice has now disappeared, but marriage is still regarded as the ideal
condition for a woman, and some marriage ceremonies include a ritual which atones for the failure to
marry before puberty. Marriage is also generally incumbent upon a man, but an unmarried, sexually
mature woman—while by no means unknown—is much more of an anomaly than her male equivalent. Brahminical texts expect a married couple to be sexually active: “If a man does not have sexual
intercourse for three years with his wife who menstruates, he incurs a guilt equal to that of performing
an abortion… If a man does not have sexual intercourse with his virtuous and disciplined wife after
she has taken the bath that concludes her menstrual period, for that transgression he should control
his breath one hundred times.”21
On marriage a woman will move into the home of her husband’s family rather than the couple setting up home on their own, and a young bride may therefore be regarded as an outsider. Gupta Gombrich suggests that “she is considered a potential source of danger, because her sexuality remains still
incompletely controlled and its beneficiality as yet not proven through child-bearing.”22 It is important for her to be veiled in the presence of her father-in-law or her husband’s elder brothers, or even
the whole village. She may be restricted to the women’s quarters within the domestic compound.
Smith notes that “In North India, where stress is placed on the bride’s family giving her as a free gift
to her husband, her natal family cannot receive any hospitality in her marital home, and therefore
19One study, published in The Lancet in 2006, found a ratio of 759 girls for every 1000 boys for the second child, where
the first child was female. This figure has been challenged, but the Indian national census reports overall ratios as low as
818 girls for every 1000 boys in some regions of India, and a national average of 940, against a global average of 984.
20Christopher J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 202.
21Dharmasūtra of Baudhāyana 4.1.17, 21, trans. in Olivelle, Manu, 229.
22Gombrich, “Divine Mother or Cosmic Destroyer,” 52–3.
180
FIFTH VEDA
cannot visit her at all.”23 New wives are often poorly treated, and are often thought to be possessed
or afflicted by malignant forces. Several scholars argue that possession and exorcism rituals serve to
provide a culturally approved way for women to express and manage their dissatisfaction in their new
lives. Others, noting the force applied in exorcism rituals to women thought to be possessed, regard
it as a powerful way of silencing them and enforcing conformity in the role expected of them.24
Only by giving birth to a son does a woman become a full member of the family—she has assured the continuance of the family line, and thereby also her place in the family. As a result of his
importance to her status, women typically have very close, emotional relationships with their sons.
Breast-feeding until the age of four is common, until eight is not unknown. As they will continue to
live with their son even after he marries, this in turn has an impact in turn on the son’s relationship
with his wife. Young wives among Shweder and Menon’s informants who reported a low sense of wellbeing often complained about their mothers-in-law. Nevertheless the married mother is celebrated
within Hindu society as the embodiment of prosperity, well-being, health and happiness. She is referred to as “auspicious” (maṅkala). This status remains dependent on her husband, however, and
if he predeceases her her life may change quite dramatically. A widow is inauspicious, and a young
widow who is still fertile and whose sexuality is therefore thought to be in need of control is often
regarded with suspicion.
Menstruation
Menstruation is valued as a physical sign of female sexual maturity and a girl’s first menses is celebrated, or at the very least ritually marked, in most Hindu communities. Nevertheless menstrual
blood, like any human effluvia (urine, faeces, saliva, hair, etc.) is regarded as polluting, and this had
important consequences for the lifestyle of a traditional Hindu woman. For the first three days of
her monthly period a woman was regarded as polluted, and as a result contact with her family was
restricted. There are variations in exactly how these restrictions were enacted, but the account by
Edward B. Harper of a rural south Indian Havik brahmin community in the 1950s is likely to be representative of how many high-caste Hindu women lived in traditional contexts.25 Harper reported that
a period of seclusion during menstruation was very widely observed, and it was well-known within the
community which women were menstruating at any particular time. Women were excluded from the
house, being confined to the backyard and the verandahs. During this period they would not bathe,
enter a temple, or draw water from a well. While they would continue to perform some of their work
in the household, they would not cook. They would eat separately from the family, and only from
a plate set aside for them. Their touch and even their gaze was regarded as polluting. Another person polluted by the touch of a menstruating woman would also become polluted, and be polluting to
others (but to a lesser degree) and have to undergo a demanding purificatory ritual.
Only substances (milk) or persons (children under three) that would not conduct pollution could
be touched by both a menstruating woman and others. Even here restrictions were observed: the
23David Smith, Hinduism and Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 113. Only for younger brothers is this restriction relaxed.
24Isabelle Nabokov, “Expel the Lover, Recover the Wife: Symbolic Analysis of a South Indian Exorcism,” The Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute 3, no. 2 (1997): 297–316.
25Edward B. Harper, “Ritual Pollution as an Integrator of Caste and Religion,” The Journal of Asian Studies 23, no. Special
Issue: Aspects of Religion in South Asia (1964): 151–97.
OTHER HINDUISMS
181
milk could not be mixed with water, and the child must be naked while being transferred from the
woman to others. The water and the child’s clothes (unless made of silk or synthetics) would conduct
the menstruating’s woman impurity.
At the end of the three days of separation, a woman would be returned to her usual status through
a process of gradual purification over two days involving several baths. The impurity at stake here
more ritual than physical, so that after the final bath on the fifth day, a woman is is ritually pure, even
if physically still menstruating, and she is impure before then even if no longer actually menstruating.
While Harper reports that this period was sometimes jokingly spoken of as a vacation from her
usual household work, and a time when a woman could enjoy talking to other women among her
neighbours and relatives, it was often a woman’s female relatives who would add the menstruating
woman’s work to their own, and this would be reciprocated. In 1964—the same year Harper’s account
was published—Helen Ullrich began what is now a very longterm (45-year) study of the same brahmin community which adds a great deal to our understanding of how menstrual exclusion was experienced by women. In her first period of fieldwork, women reported being embarrassed by the public
attention at their first menses, and depressed and bored (the term used carries both these meanings
in Kannada, their mother tongue) during their monthly exclusion. While some women became used
to the exclusion and no longer felt depressed by it each month, all eagerly anticipated menopause and
an end to the “indignity” of their low ritual status and exclusion.26
A survey of 1255 women from a wide range of backgrounds, carried out in Tamil Nadu in the early
1970s by Gabriella Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, found virtually all still observed ritual restrictions on entering the temple during their period, and 80% did not cook and observed other restrictions on contact
with others. Of those who did not, most blamed economic necessity, and many stressed that they
tried in other ways (through ritual bathing) to limit their impurity.27 Ferro-Luzzi suggested that this
shift to partial observance marked the beginning of the end of restrictions on menstruating women.
By 1987, Ullrich found significant changes underway among Havik Brahmins. Women from the community who had moved to urban areas no longer underwent a period of exclusion, and one woman
who was still living in the village made a monthly visit to her daughter in town precisely in order to
avoid exclusion. Even for those in the village, the restrictions on them during their exclusion were
relaxed—some chose to bathe, continued to touch the water supply, and to eat from plates used also
by others. Women now slept in the dining room, rather than outside the house, and children dressed
in cotton clothes could pass freely between their menstruating mothers and other family members.
The rituals of purification were also less stringent. Both male and female attitudes to menstruation,
and to women’s roles more broadly, had changed. Significantly, mothers-in-law no longer insisted
on their daughters-in-law following the rituals in the way that they themselves had been taught, and
allowed the younger women to determine for themselves the extent to which they would abide by
the exclusions.28 Although several families were still living in joint households, they now regarded
smaller, nuclear families as the ideal family structure.
26Helen E. Ullrich, “Menstrual Taboos among Havik Brahmin Women: A Study of Ritual Change,” Sex Roles 26, nos. 1/2
(1992): 30.
27Gabriella Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, “Women’s Pollution Periods in Tamilnad (India),” Anthropos 69, nos. 1/2 (1974): 128–33.
There were variations in observance between different castes, between those living in rural and urban areas, and between
different regions (although the last is mostly due to the distribution of castes in the regions studied).
28Ullrich, “Menstrual Taboos,” 35–8.
182
FIFTH VEDA
Similar changes are apparent in the lives of women from another Brahmin community, the Vattima in the Kaveri river delta in Tamil Nadu, studied by Harapriya Narasimhan in 2005–2006.29 While
there have been dramatic changes in attitudes to menstruation and the form which ritual exclusion
takes, Narasimhan found observance of ritual pollution remained a crucial aspect of their self-understanding as Brahmins. While many women have adapted either the time or the manner in which they
observe menstrual taboos, they continue to insist on some form of observance, even if that be limited
to ritual exclusion during only part of the day.
Women’s religious roles
Despite their subordinate place in many religious texts, Hindu women are often regarded, and regard themselves, as primarily responsible for domestic religious observances. Some of the religious
practices most commonly undertaken by women are vows to perform rituals (e.g., lighting lamps) or
undergo austerities (most often fasting) in the hope of obtaining benefits (typically good health and
fertility) for their family. While these kinds of practices might appear to Westerners as simply another way in which women are restricted to the domestic sphere, Shweder and Menon try to indicate
how these roles are perceived by Hindu women. They report that the “domestic space is understood
as a kind of sacred, uncontaminating space and is contrasted with public, or outside contaminating
space. Men spend time outside the home and, therefore, are always at risk of becoming coarse and
uncivilized. It is by virtue of being able to remain indoors that Oriyas, both men and women, believe
that women are more refined than men, more capable of experiencing civilizing dispositions … and
less likely to display crude emotions.”30 Moreover they find that women’s sense of well-being is at its
peak when they are regarded as primarily responsible for the material and spiritual prosperity of the
household. They write:
Because women control and manage all household activities, whether what men earn
is used effectively depends on the sagacity and capability of the women of the household, particularly the senior-most woman… The popular Oriya recognition of the worth
of women’s work and widespread acknowledgement of greater female effectiveness is
not a local idiomatic Oriya expression for a feminist viewpoint—for, quite emphatically,
neither men nor women in Orissa believe that women and men are equal. Indeed, most
Oriya women and men find the notion that one should be indifferent to gender or treat
the genders as though they were the same as either incomprehensible, amusing, or immature.31
29Haripriya Narasimhan, “Adjusting distances: menstrual pollution among Tamil Brahmins,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 45, no. 2 (2011): 243–268.
30Shweder and Menon, “The Return of the “White Man’s Burden” and the Domestic Life of Hindu Women,” 228.
31Ibid., 240–41.
OTHER HINDUISMS
183
South Indian Hinduism
“Yes, but not in the South,” with slight adjustments,
will do for any argument about any place.
Stephen Potter, Lifemanship (1950)
W
e have already identified the Dravidian culture of south India as one important source of the diverse Hindu tradition. Some scholars, for example George Hart, have attempted to specify which
aspects of the Hindu tradition are derived from the Dravidian culture. The efforts of these scholars
are, however, limited by the nature of the evidence that we have for Dravidian culture. The fact is that
the earliest extant written records that we have from the south already show Dravidian culture to be
influenced by ideas from the Sanskritic tradition. Moreover this has never been a one-way process; for
thousands of years Dravidian culture has exerted an influence on the wider Hindu tradition. There
are some small groups of people speaking Dravidian languages in the north, and this has led some
to believe that Dravidian culture was not confined to the south, but was once the dominant culture
of India. There have, for example, been numerous attempts to show that the language of the Indus
valley civilization is Dravidian. While all of this makes it difficult to isolate a ‘pure’ Dravidian culture
or religion, the Hindu tradition in the south is distinctive and there is clear evidence of its distinctive
contribution to the development of the Hindu tradition in the last two thousand years.
There are four major languages in the Dravidian language group, which is not related to the other
Indo-European languages (the group which includes Sanskrit, Greek and Latin). The major languages
are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam and they are the dominant languages in the four southernmost Indian states (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala respectively). Most of what I
will say here reflects the Tamil-speaking part of the region, in part because it has the longest literary
tradition, but mainly because it is the region of India I know best.
The caṅkam age (first centuries ce)
The Tamil literary tradition begins with the so-called caṅkam literature. This is a collection of poetry,
divided into two categories: akam ‘interior’ and puṟam ‘exterior’. About 80% of the extant poems are
classified as akam and deal with the domestic sphere, specifically the different phases of a relationship
between a man and a woman. The remaining puṟam poetry deals with the public sphere, the main
topics being praise of kings and their exploits on the battlefield. Although all of the poems have been
assigned to one category or the other, many poems have elements of both in them (e.g. the heroine
in an akam poem may lament the absence of her lover, who is at war, or a puṟam poem may describe
the magnificence of a warrior from the point of view of a woman who is in love with him). The poetry
relies for its effect on a highly developed series of conventions, which in the hands of the best poets
results not in a mechanical, paint-by-numbers style, but in the ability to convey a huge amount of
information with great economy and elegance.
An akam poem: Kuṟuntokai 25
Except for the thief, there was no one.
And if he lies, what shall I do?
184
FIFTH VEDA
A heron too was there,
its thin legs yellow as millet stalks,
looking out for sand eels in the running water
the day he took me.
Kapilar, Kuṟuntokai 25
The translator, R. Parthasarathy comments on this poem as follows:
A woman confides in her friend, and we overhear their conversation. The memory of
past intimacies overwhelms the present, now threatened by the fear of betrayal. Of all
the elements that compose this scene, it is the heron with its rapacious appetite that
stands out in the woman’s mind. The heron is oblivious of the world around it in its
pursuit of food. The woman’s lover is the heron, and she is the helpless eel in its beak.
The heron is the only witness to their lovemaking—an indifferent witness at that. The
world is also indifferent to the private woes of individuals. The heron presides over the
woman’s life as a bird of ill omen foreboding a lonely future for her, though it does not
utter a sound. The stillness of the heron is in contrast to the flowing water. This contributes to its ominousness. The heron is totally absorbed in itself. So is the lover. Hence
the danger and threat. The epithet “thief”, referring to her lover, further reinforces the
idea: he stole her innocence, and what is worse, from her point of view, he may even
deny the whole thing, and then abandon her. And if he does so, she will not be able to
call him to account. She is obviously in desperate straits.
The woman does not, however, openly accuse her lover of possible betrayal. To do so
would be discourteous and in bad taste. She only hints at the possibility, obliquely,
through her references to the heron and the thief who are both predatory by nature.
We are offered evidence of this in the heron’s behaviour towards its prey. A thief, it is
implied, behaves in the same fashion. He takes what belongs to another, without any
right to do so. Also implied is the notion of acting secretly or unseen. The figure of the
heron, “looking out for sand eels in the running water,” dominates the scene. The figure
is not simply decorative; it is functional. It discreetly alludes to her lover’s behavior and
its implication for the future of their relationship.
[Tamil poetics] refers to this device as “indirect suggestion”. Only the object of comparison (the heron) is explicitly described. Readers are offered the barest of hints to establish
relationships (the heron and her lover) and to discover the subject (the fear of her lover’s
betrayal) on their own.32
Akam conventions
To discuss the conventions of akam poetry in detail would take us too far afield, but we will examine
one motif in akam poetry to show how the same ideas are taken up later in the devotional poetry
which remains the core of Tamil religion. The motif of the onset of the rainy season is used to refer
obliquely to the absence of the woman’s lover, and his failure to return before the rains make travel
impossible.
32R. Parthasarathy, The Cilappatikāram: The Tale of an Anklet (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 280.
OTHER HINDUISMS
185
Evening has come.
The big rains have come in season,
reaching the mountainsides
ornamented with clouds,
where sturdy bull elephants
caress their mates with their trunks
and a buck hides himself
in a forest thicket
and mounts a virginal doe,
confusing her.
But that man who wrecked the good virtues
of my golden body
has not yet come.
What will befall my sweet life, O friend?
Kuṟuntokai 31933
Look:
The toads are peeping
in every single marsh,
and everywhere above me,
flocks of birds are singing
with their rousing voices.
And so the rains have started.
Because of it, my large eyes
have begun to water,
for his chariot has not yet begun
to move an inch in my direction.
Aiṅkuṟunūṟu 45334
In other poems the woman denies that the rains have come, and claims it is only her tears that make it
look as though it is raining. The voices of women predominate in the akam poems—usually a woman
speaking to herself or her friend. Her mother, or foster-mother, may also scold or comfort her. Akam
poems sometimes take a male voice, as in the next example, but note here the inclusion of puṟam
elements:
In the morning
as the drum sounded
with its resonant voice,
the furious king met his task
and the season too,
did its work with its drops pattering down
33Martha Ann Selby, The Circle of Six Seasons: A Selection from Old Tamil, Prākrit and Sanskrit Poetry (New Delhi: Penguin,
2003), 61.
34Ibid., 62.
186
FIFTH VEDA
from swelling clouds
as jasmine opened
on the slopes of the loamy hollows.
And each time I think
of that girl with the fine, beautiful hair,
I take on the work of grieving
and cannot sleep.
Aiṅkuṟunūṟu 44835
A puṟam poem: Puṟanāṉūṟu 278
When she heard the many voices saying, “That aged woman with dry,
veined arms where the soft flesh hangs down, she whose belly
is wrinkled like a lotus leaf—her son was afraid of the enemy army
and he showed them his back and ran!” then rage overcame her and she said,
“If he fled in the furious battle, I will cut off the breast
at which he sucked!” and she snatched up a sword and she
turned over every body lying there on the blood-soaked field.
And when she found her son who was scattered
in pieces, she felt happier than she had been the day she bore him.
Kākkaipaṭiṉiyār Nacceḷḷaiyār, Puṟanāṉūṟu 27836
Parthasarathy comments on this poem: ‘A woman, incensed by the rumor that her son had lost heart in
battle and fled, rejoices on discovering that he had died heroically on the battlefield, his body hacked
to bits. It is dishonorable to perish with wounds in one’s back. In Puṟanāṉūṟu 65, we learn of King
Cēramāṉ Peruṅcēralātaṉ facing north and ritually starving himself to death to atone for the spear
wounds in his back. Here the battlefield, soaked in blood and burdened with the dead, is the object
of the poet’s praise. It is contrasted with the shriveled old woman whose breasts and womb can no
longer support life. She vows to renounce that emblem of femininity, her breasts, should her son prove
to be a coward. The poem oscillates between the akam and puṟam worlds, between a mother’s love
for her son and his heroic death on the battlefield. In case of a conflict between the two, as is evident
here, puṟam takes precedence over akam, war over love, death on the battlefield over death at home.
The poem represents, in microcosm, the values of a heroic age, when the sword was mightier than the
plow, and a good name was cherished above life itself.’37
Religion in the caṅkam literature
The gods are rarely the subject of these poems, the themes are secular and the settings and imagery are
from the natural world. The poems do give occasional insights into the religion of the culture which
produced the poems.
35Selby, Circle of Six Seasons, 63.
36George L. Hart and Hank Heifetz, The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical
Tamil: The Puṟanāṉūṟu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 165.
37Parthasarathy, Cilappatikāram, 283–5.
OTHER HINDUISMS
187
Murukaṉ,
The red one,
his elephant red-tusked,
his arrows red-shafted,
crushes demons
as he kills
so the field grows red
and his anklets whirl.
This is his hill
and it is thick
with blood bunches
of your kāntaḷ.
Kuṟuntokai 11938
Hart explains the background to this poem, which has to be inferred from a knowledge of the conventions of the literature, as follows: ‘the girl’s friend refuses the love token offered by the lover, a bunch
of red kāntaḷ flowers, sacred to Murukaṉ’.39 Despite this ferocious depiction of Murukaṉ, elsewhere
he is said to be beautiful, and Hart notes that his name means ‘tenderness, tender age, youth, beauty.’
The cruelty of the beautiful god is also implicitly compared with that of the man who is offering the
kāntaḷ flower to the girl. Hart adds that in akam poems the ‘girl’s despondency at being in love with
an unsuitable man is mistaken for possession by the god’,40 and so the priest of the god is summoned.
As well as providing early evidence for the belief in possession by the gods which remains a prominent feature of Tamil religion, some details of worship can be gleaned from these poems, such as the
implements associated with Murukaṉ, e.g. his spear.
There are also strong parallels between the god and the king in puṟam poetry, most importantly
their shared prowess in battle. The most important goddess of the period is Koṟṟavai, who is also
associated with war and victory. Already at the time the poems were compiled into anthologies she
is identified with the goddess known in north India as Durgā, but she seems in origin to have been a
deity indigenous to south India, and thus an early example of the association of south Indian deities
with the pan-Indian deities. Another god mentioned in the poems is Kūṟṟuvaṉ, death: ‘Many poems
compare the king on the battlefield to Death, or scold Death for being so stupid as to take the king, who
is doing his work for him by killing in battle.’41 These parallels extend throughout later Tamil religion;
for example, the ordinary word for a temple in Tamil is kōyil, literally meaning ‘the place of the king’
and also used to refer to a palace. In general the deities of the caṅkam literature are fearsome lot—Hart
notes that many of the words for god are derived from those for fear [cūr], affliction [aṇaṅku] and debt
or sacrifice [kaṭavuḷ]. Anything that afflicts may be the result of a god’s activity, e.g. in Aiṅkuṟunūṟu
363, the hero says to his beloved, ‘You think that there are spots [a sign of puberty] on your afflicting
38George L. Hart, The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1975), 22.
39Ibid., 23.
40Ibid., 22.
41Ibid., 24.
188
FIFTH VEDA
[aṇaṅku] breasts, but my heart thinks they contain a god [aṇaṅku]’.42 Fierce gods remain a prominent
feature of Tamil religion.43
The rise of bhakti: the Nāyaṉmārs and Āḻvārs (6th–9th centuries)
The conventions of passionate love, love and longing in separation and the fear of betrayal or abandonment by the beloved were easily extended to religious devotion, longing to be with god, and utter
dependence upon god in the slightly later poetry of the Nāyaṉmārs and Āḻvārs. A.K. Ramanujan, a
noted scholar and translator of both caṅkam and bhakti literature writes: ‘Early bhakti movements,
whether devoted to Śiva or to Viṣṇu, used whatever they found at hand, and changed whatever they
used. Vedic and Upaniṣadic notions, Buddhist and Jaina concepts, conventions of Tamil and Sanskrit poetry, early Tamil conceptions of love, service, women, and kings, mythology or folk religion
and folksong, the play of contrasts between Sanskrit and the mother tongue: all these elements were
reworked and transformed in bhakti.’44
There are sixty-three major Śaiva bhakti poets, called the Nāyaṉmār (singular: Nāyaṉār, ‘leader’).
Their lives are recorded in the Periya Purāṇam (‘the Great Purāṇa’), which is the last of the twelve
books in the Tirumuṟai, the Tamil Śaiva canon. The Tirumuṟai does not include the works of all 63
Nāyaṉmār, and includes the work of other writers as well. The most important parts of the Tirumuṟai
are the first seven books, called the Tēvāram, composed by Appar (1–3), Campantar (4–6), Cuntarar
(7). Although not included among the Nāyaṉmār, the poet Māṇikkavācakar is also highly regarded in
Tamil Śaivism and his works (Tiruvācakam and Tirukkōvaiyār) form the eighth book of the Tirumuṟai.
Only four of the other 63 Nāyaṉmār have works in the Tirumuṟai, two of these are kings, and one is a
woman.
The twelve Āḻvārs (‘immersed [in God]’) were Vaiṣṇava bhaktas; their poems were collected in
the tenth century in the Nālāyira Tiviyappirapantam (‘The Collection of the Four Thousand Divine
[Hymns]’)—known in the south simply as the Prabandham. The most important of the works contained in the Prabandham is the Tiruvāymoḻi (‘Divine utterance’) of Nammāḻvār (‘Our Āḻvār’), which
constitutes the last of the four sections (‘thousands’) into which the Prabandham is divided. For
Śrīvaiṣṇavas—the main Vaiṣṇava group in the south—the works of Nammāḻvār are considered equal
to the Veda, and to constitute a ‘Dravidian [i.e. Tamil] Veda’ (tirāviṭavētam). Of the twelve, three are
brahmans (one a woman), others are described as chieftains or landholders, one is said to have been
an untouchable.
The time of the Nāyaṉmārs and the Āḻvārs, the sixth to ninth centuries, represents a new era in
south Indian political history, the rise of the first kingdoms of real consequence, notably the Pallavas
of Kanchipuram, and the Pandyas of Madurai. The Pallavas seem to have turned away from Jainism
and Buddhism, to Hinduism. The first great Pallava, Mahendra-varman I (600-630), is said to have
been converted by Appar, and one of his successors, Narasimha-varman II, or Rajasimha, built the
Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram, marking a turning point in what had formerly been a religious
centre dominated by Buddhists. The building of stone temples became an important part of a king’s
prestige. The Pallavas were also already using Sanskritic rituals to establish their prestige; Thapar
42Hart, Poems of Ancient Tamil, 21.
43See Diane P. Mines, Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual, and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2005).
44A. K. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning (New York: Penguin, 1993), 104.
OTHER HINDUISMS
189
describes an early inscription which records ‘the Pallava king perform[ing] various Vedic sacrifices,
including the ashvamedha’,45 the horse sacrifice which is the rite performed by a king to demonstrate
his sovereignty. However they were also closely connected with Tamil Śaivism and the Nāyaṉmār, and
there is a shift in the language of their later inscriptions from Sanskrit to Tamil. Pallava power began
to decline in the mid-eighth century, but it was not until the latter part of the following century that
their successors, the Chola dynasty based in Thanjavur, eclipsed both the Pallavas and the Pandyas.
The first great Chola, Rajaraja I (985–1014) built the Brhadesvara temple, many of the other great south
Indian temples were established or enlarged in this period. The bronze images of gods, poets and kings
produced in this period are widely regarded as the finest ever made in India, or indeed the world.
Roughly speaking the period of the Pallavas and, in the south, the Pandyas, is the period of the lives of
the saints, but the canonization of their works took place under the Cholas.
Cuntarar: the ‘harsh’ devotee
A body of mythology has grown up around each of the Nāyaṉmār, and especially the three whose
works appear in the Tirumuṟai (Appar, Campantar and Cuntarar) and Māṇikkavācakar. Their different
characters are also expressed in their way of relating to Śiva in their poetry. Cuntarar’s name means
‘handsome, beautiful’, and his relationship with Śiva is said to be that of a friend, but he is also known
as the harsh devotee because of the scolding tone his poems often adopt. The following poem in praise
of Śiva in the temple at Tiruvārūr—a town especially sacred for Cuntarar—demonstrates both this,
and the Nāyaṉmārs’ use of caṅkam conventions:
Herons,
their legs bright as millet stalks,
come to Tiruvārūr
where you are
with your fine twisted hair
and the gold-like garland of koṉṟai
that adorns you.
Your devotees grow more emaciated each day—
though not for want of money!
They cannot see with their eyes.
And if they become dejected
in their hearts—
we wish you luck: please
go away!
Cuntarar, Tēvāram, patikam 9546
Campantar
By contrast, Campantar’s relationship with Śiva is said to be that of a son to his father, and his poems
have a more respectful tone. In the following poem, addressed to Śiva in Cīrkāḻi, a temple town in
45Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (Berkeley: Berkeley, 2002), 329.
46David Dean Shulman, Songs of the Harsh Devotee: The Tēvāram of Cuntaramūrttināyaṉār (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1990), 596.
190
FIFTH VEDA
Tamil Nadu here referred to as ‘Piramapuram’ or ‘the town of Brahmā’, he adopts the voice of a woman:
He wears a woman’s earring on one ear;
riding on his bull,
crowned with the pure white crescent moon,
his body smeared with ash from the burning-ground,
he is the thief who stole my heart.
He is the Lord who lives in fine Piramapuram,
where he once blessed with his grace
Brahmā of the lotus seat
who worshipped him.
He bears the white crescent moon
on long, matted red hair
on which the river flows.
He who makes the noisy white shell bracelets
slip from my thin wrist,
is the thief who stole my heart.
He is the Lord who lives in Piramapuram,
famed as the firstborn city in this wide world.
Campantar I 1.1,3 Piramapuram (Cīrkāḻi)47
The image of bracelets slipping from a woman’s wrists is again an akam convention referring to the
heroine pining for her absent lover, longing for his presence.
Āṇṭāḷ: the bride of God
Āṇṭāḷ (‘the lady’), a brahman, is the only female Āḻvār. The legend of her life records that her devotion
to Viṣṇu eventually won her the prize she sought—she was brought to the temple at Śrīraṅkam to
be married to Viṣṇu and disappeared on entering the innermost sanctuary of the temple. Like the
other Āḻvārs, Āṇṭāḷ most commonly refers to Viṣṇu as Māl (‘the great’), but here she also calls him the
Lord from Vēṇkaṭa (a temple in southern Andhra Pradesh, and one of the most important in India)
and Govinda (‘protector of cattle’) a name usually associated with Kṛṣṇa. Viṣṇu is often depicted with
deep blue-black colouring, which strengthens the association with the motif of dark rain-clouds which
is taken over from the caṅkam conventions.
O clouds that form a vast canopy,
did my Tirumāl
come with you?
that Lord from Vēṇkaṭa
where clear streams flow?
The tears spill
between my breasts
47Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989).
OTHER HINDUISMS
191
like waterfalls,
saddening me,
consuming my womanhood.
Will this bring him honour?
The glow of youth and colour,
the bangles on my hand,
sleep and peace of mind,
all have gone
leaving me empty.
O kind and compassionate clouds,
forlorn I sing the praises of Govinda
who dwells in Vēṇkaṭa
of cool waterfalls—
can that keep me alive?
Āṇṭāḷ, Nācciyār Tirumoḻi48
The hymns in religious practice
In the period after the lifetime of the Nāyaṉmār and the Āḻvārs, their works were compiled into anthologies and became the primary source for Tamil religion. On a philosophical level, attempts were
made to systematize the theology expressed in the poems. The most important movements in this respect are the Śaiva Siddhānta (‘fully completed’ Śaivism) and Śrī Vaiṣṇava movements, which claimed
the poems of the Nāyaṉmārs and Āḻvārs respectively as a ‘Tamil Veda’. They continue to be the dominant schools of thought in south Indian Hinduism. However the hymns of the Nāyaṉmār and the
Āḻvārs also have an importance place in popular religious practice.
One such practice is pilgrimage. The hymns typically sing of the god of a particular place, and
they have helped to enhance the prestige of those temples, and to encourage pilgrimage to them.
Norman Cutler writes that ‘the era of the saints was a time when the worship directed toward images
in temples was becoming the dominant form of religious practice in Tamilnadu, and not a few of the
saints contributed to the growing role of temples in Tamil religious life.’49 The hymns have also given
rise to festivals where the focus is their recitation. The most famous of these is the Adyayanōtsava
(‘recitation festival’) in Śrīraṅkam, where the entire Nālāyira Tiviyappirapantam is recited over the
course of 21 days.50 There is no direct Śaiva equivalent, but both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava hymns are recited
as part of other festivals.
The hymns are also recited daily as part of temple worship. In most large Vaiṣṇava temples parts of
the Prabandham would be recited daily, in some the entire text is recited over the course of a month.
In some cases the hymn is chosen for its appropriateness to the ritual activity it accompanies: e.g. at
Āḻvārtirunakari ten verses from Periyāḻvār’s Tirumoḻi describing Yaśodā bathing Kṛṣṇa are sung while
48Vidya Dehejia, Āṇṭāḷ and Her Path of Love: Poems of a Woman Saint from South India (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1990), 103.
49Norman Cutler, Songs of Experience: The Poetics of Tamil Devotion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 8.
50Paul Younger, “Singing the Tamiḻ Hymnbook in the Tradition of Rāmānuja: The Adyayanōtsava Festival in Śrīraṅkam,”
History of Religions 21, no. 3 (1982): 272–93.
192
FIFTH VEDA
the image of the deity is being bathed and anointed.51 In Śaiva temples a special class of non-Brahman
functionaries (ōtuvar) is employed to sing the hymns. In Vaiṣṇava temples, the hymns are sung by
Brahmans. Many temples also include shrines with images of the Nāyaṉmārs and Āḻvārs and hymns
in praise of them are sung. The saints are often regarded as avatāras of the deity. Āṇṭāḷ, for example,
is worshipped as the goddess and her birthday is celebrated as a temple festival.
The theistic trend which emerges in some later Upaniṣads and continues to develop in later Sanskrit works such as the Bhagavad Gītā, reaches its full flowering in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (10th cent.)
Whether or not the tradition of passionate devotion to deities has its origins in the south, there is little doubt that the south had a significant influence on the development of bhakti within the Sanskrit
tradition, and some scholars regard the Bhāgavata Purāṇa itself as based on the Āḻvārs’ hymns.52
Recommended reading
Bose, Mandakranta. Women in the Hindu Tradition: Rules, Roles and Exceptions. London: Routledge,
2009.
Dehejia, Vidya. Slaves of the Lord: The Path of the Tamil Saints. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1988.
. The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India. New York: American Federation
of Arts, 2002.
Gunn, Janet. “Women’s Experiences of Hindu Traditions: A State of the Field Review.” Religion Compass
2, no. 1 (2008): 53–65.
Harlan, Lindsey, and Paul B. Courtright. From the Margins of Hindu Marriage: Essays on Gender, Religion, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Hart, George L. “Some indigenous elements in the religion of the ancient Tamils.” In The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts, 21–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975.
Mines, Diane P. “The Hindu Gods in a South Indian Village.” In Everyday Life in South Asia, edited by
Diane P. Mines and Sarah Lamb, 236–248. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
Pauwels, Heidi R.M. The Goddess as Role Model: Sita and Radha in Scripture and on Screen. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008.
Required Viewing
Gillian Goslinga-Roy, dir., The Poojari’s Daughter (Watertown: Documentary Educational Resources,
2010), 66 min., http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/2069627.
51Cutler, Songs of Experience, 189.
52Friedhelm Hardy, Virahabhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1983).
REQUIRED READING: HESS
193
Required Reading
Linda Hess, “Rejecting Sita: Indian Responses to the Ideal Man’s Cruel Treatment of His Ideal Wife,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 1 (1999): 1–32.
T
his article could also be called “The Mysteries of Normative Texts.” Who decides what’s normative? Who decide who’s normal? Who benefits and who suffers from declarations of normality?
In the inevitable flow of time and change, how do people manage both to cling to norms and to alter
them?
Pardon me if I sound monolithic, but for 2,000 years the god-king Rama1 has been way in front of all
contenders for the title of Official Ideal Man in Hindu India. In the opening lines of the Sanskrit poem
that is fountainhead to all later Rāmāyaṇa textual traditions, sage and soon-to-be First Poet Valmiki
questions sage Narada: “Is there a man in the world today who is truly virtuous? Who is there who is
mighty and yet knows both what is right and how to act upon it? Who always speaks the truth and
holds firmly to his vows? Who exemplifies proper conduct and is benevolent to all creatures? Who is
learned, capable, and a pleasure to behold? Who is self-controlled, having subdued his anger? Who
is both judicious and free from envy? Who, when his fury is aroused in battle, is feared even by the
gods?”.2 Narada replies: “The many virtues you have named are hard to find. Let me think a moment,
sage, before I speak. Hear now of a man who has them all. His name is Rama… ” Narada catalogues
Rama’s chief virtues for the next twelve verses.
Since then, most Rāmāyaṇa composers and commentators have not had to stop and think for a
moment. They knew right away who the ideal man was, and the ideal woman, the ideal kingdom,
the ideal set of brothers, and so forth.3 One example can be taken as emblematic of thousands of
opening statements in books and speeches. Inaugurating an international conference on the Rāmāyaṇa in Delhi in 1981, Supreme Court Justice Hidayatullah quotes a Hindu scholar: “The Rāmāyaṇa
is a mirror of the highest ideals of Hindu culture and civilisation. Herein is described the ideal hero
Sri Ramachandra who is not only the exemplar for all living and dutiful sons, but who is the ideal
husband and king… Sita is the noblest flower of Indian womanhood, devoted to her lord in thought,
word and deed… There can be no better text-book of morals which can be safely placed in the hands
of youths to inspire them to higher and nobler ideals of conduct and character”.4
Speaking for himself, then, Justice Hidayatullah, a Muslim, says: “Rama and Sita… are exemplifiers
of right thought, right speech and right action under all circumstances. Sita represents compassion
and grace. She suffers most but preserves herself with heroism, love and devotion. She is the ideal
wife and is the model for our womanhood… Rāmāyaṇa, one of our classics, gives to our youth the
fundamentals of our culture”.5
1For simplicity’s sake, I use the spelling “Rama” throughout, though “Ram” reflects vernacular usage better. Diacritical
marks are not used with names of people and places; in most cases spelling reflects actual English pronunciation (thus
Kamban, not Kampan; parīksha, not parīkśa; Rāmcharitmānas, not Rāmcaritmānas; chhāyā, not chāyā).
2Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa: Bālakāṇḍa, 121; Verse numbers have been omitted here.
3One reader has suggested to me that Rama is not held up as an ideal equally in all parts of India and that my generalizations may be more applicable to north India than to the southern and eastern regions.
4Iyengar, Variations in Ramayana, 27.
5Ibid., 28.
194
FIFTH VEDA
But in another welcoming address to that same conference, Umashankar Joshi remarks: “If the
Rāmāyaṇa moves one to the depths of one’s being, it is perhaps due to the raw deal meted out to
Sita”.6
This juxtaposition of ideal and raw deal provides the irritation that moves us, like oysters, to create
something here. Sita’s raw deal is dramatized primarily in three episodes that have remained controversial over the centuries. First is the agni parīksha or fire ordeal in which Sita, at the end of the great
war between Rama and the demons, must undergo a test of chastity that requires her to throw herself into a blazing fire. Second is the abandonment of Sita, recounted in the final book of the Valmiki
Rāmāyaṇa. Some years after returning to his capital, Ayodhya, Rama decides that—despite her having
passed the fire test with flying colors, despite his personal certainty that she is innocent, and despite
her being in an advanced state of pregnancy—Sita must be banished from the kingdom because suspicions about her chastity are proliferating in the countryside. Not only banished, she is deceptively
taken to the forest by Lakshman and abandoned without a word of farewell or explanation from her
husband. The third moment of rejection, a reprise of the agni parīksha with a variation, occurs at the
end of the Valmiki Rāmāyaṇa. Rama makes a final attempt to bring Sita back after she has lived for
years in the forest, raising their sons to young manhood without him. He suggests that she endure
one more fire ordeal before being allowed to stay with him in Ayodhya. Sita rejects this offer and calls
upon mother earth to open and receive her. Earth opens, Sita enters, earth closes. Sita is gone.
These episodes have disturbed Indian poets and audiences for many centuries. How do I know
that? For one thing, many devotional Rāmāyaṇas from the twelfth century on eliminate the episode of
Sita’s abandonment. Kamban and Tulsidas, for example, end the story with rāmrājya, the golden age
of Rama’s reign, iconized in the image of Rama and Sita sitting together on the throne with gods, family, and loving devotees all around. Those who have reason to attack the Rāmāyaṇa are likely to single
out these episodes to prove that Rama is no hero and the story’s messages are pernicious.7 Creative
alterations of the fire ordeal in textual traditions reflect anxious discomfort with the scene… I have
often heard people suggest that the abandonment episode is inauthentic, a later addition to the text
“Rama couldn’t have done that,” some have said to me, or more poignantly, “My Rama couldn’t have
done that.” An elderly Brahmin priest, interviewed in a documentary film, eloquently conveyed by his
sparse words and strained expression the difficulty that these episodes cause to religious Rāmāyaṇa
enthusiasts. When asked why Rama spoke cruelly to Sita and made her undergo the fire ordeal, he
replied (in Hindi): “It was only for show. Do you understand? There are some episodes about which
answers can’t be given. It’s best if you don’t ask about them. It is very… [using the English word] objectionable. There are two or three things that cast dark spots on the ideal man [maryādā purushottama].
Please don’t ask about these… ”.8
6Iyengar, Variations in Ramayana, 24.
7B.R. Ambedkar’s Riddles in Hinduism, vol. 4, contains an article, “The Riddle of Rama and Krishna,” that sharply criticizes these popular deified figures as they appear in the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata. The posthumous publication of the
volume by the Maharashthra government in 1988 caused a furor and protracted political struggle. An example of Ambedkar’s criticisms as reported in a 1988 article: “Rama was not an ideal husband. His treatment of Sita was in fact extremely
cruel. He even puts her through an agni parīksha and later abandons her in the forest, with no thought of the fact that she
is pregnant.” Gunvanthi Balarama, “Casting Aspersions: Ambedkar’s Riddle,” Bombay, 1988, 28. The author notes: “Interestingly, Ambedkar is not the first social reformer to make such a critical appraisal of the Hindu epics and scriptures. In
Maharashtra itself Mahatma Jyothibhai Phule, Bhaskarrao Jadhav, Prabodhankar Thackeray (father of Bal Thackeray) and
leaders of the Satyashodhak and Lokhitwadi movements, were no less critical of these works than Ambedkar.”
8Dev Benegal, Field of Shadows, South Productions for Channel 4 TV, in association with SBS Australia, 1993.
REQUIRED READING: HESS
195
In this article I will examine reception of the agni parīksha, mainly by Indian audiences, over
a long period. I can only touch on some landmark moments and a few vivid examples. From the
completion of the Valmiki Rāmāyaṇa, there issues an endless stream of literary Rāmāyaṇas, in poetic
and dramatic forms, in Sanskrit and vernacular languages. They creatively engage with the tradition,
altering plot points, shifting emphases, adding and dropping episodes, bearing the marks of regional
cultures and historical developments.
As our scholarly studies have widened in recent years, we have gone beyond attending merely
to literary history and and regional diversity. We have also begun to document the vibrancy of performance traditions as well as noticing class, gender, and ethnic differences in the treatment of this
inexhaustible narrative.9 We can’t interview people in the first, twelfth, or sixteenth century. But
the literary record itself gives evidence of reception; changes in plot and emphasis show changes in
comfort levels, values, imaginings of the characters.
Studying reception in our own time through interviews and fieldwork is possible but difficult It
is difficult to know whom to interview and what claims to make about the representativeness of the
voices we bring forth. It is difficult to frame questions and to listen in a way that will evoke personal
thoughts, feelings, and experiences as they relate to texts and religious figures. The best work I have
seen on current reception of Sita and Rama is Madhu Kishwar’s “Yes to Sita, No to Ram! The Continuing Popularity of Sita in India.” A short version of the essay was published in the journal Manushi
(1997); a longer version includes extensive interviews with women and men of diverse classes and
communities.10 These interviews and the author’s analysis are very revealing. Revealing in another
way are Steve Derné’s interviews with middle class men in Banaras.11 Both sets of interviews will be
discussed below. My survey of reception gives glimpses of five moments in the history of Sita’s fire
ordeal, touching on the following examples:
1. Valmiki’s version, roughly 2,000 years old.
2. The approximately twelfth-century devotional Rāmāyaṇa of Kamban, one of the greatest and
most popular works of Tamil literature.
3. The devotional Hindi Rāmāyaṇa of Tulsidas, written in the 1570s and still immensely popular
and influential.
4. The serialized television Rāmāyaṇa produced by Ramanand Sagar on Doordarshan, India’s
government-owned television network, in 1987–89.
5. A set of “protesting” examples—mostly but not entirely from the twentieth century—including
folk, feminist, low-caste, and other materials.
Woman in flames
At the end of the war in Lanka, when the long battle between Rama’s army and the demons culminates
with Rama’s killing of the demon-king Ravana, Sita is finally informed by Hanuman of her liberation.
9For example…
10Madhu Kishwar, “Yes to Sita, No to Ram: The Continuing Hold of Sita on Popular Imagination in India,” in Questioning
Rāmāyaṇas: A South Asian Tradition, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 285–308.
11Steve Derné, Culture in Action: Family Life, Emotion, and Male Dominance in Banaras, India (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1995).
196
FIFTH VEDA
Throughout the ordeal of abduction, attempts at seduction, imprisonment, terror, and threats to her
life, she has fearlessly defied the demon-king and fixed her attention on her husband-lord, to whom
she bears unwavering devotion. Now all she wants is to be united with him again. In Valmiki’s poem
she wonders why he has sent Hanuman instead of coming himself. Every moment’s delay is a new
agony for her. Rama has ordered that she be bathed, perfumed, decked out in beautiful clothing and
jewelry, and even that her hair be curled, before she is presented to him. This dismays her, but she
complies. When finally she is brought before him, a stunning display of cruelty is enacted by the ideal
man.
Showing affection for his clamoring soldiers but none for his wife, he orders, against custom and
expectation, that they all be allowed to look at her face. She approaches him “confused and shrinking
within herself” but still open and vulnerable, casting aside anxiety and gazing at him with undisguised
love. Rama now gives a long blustering speech, celebrating his own valor and prowess, proclaiming
that he has won her back and defeated his enemy, expunged the stain and avenged the insult caused by
the abduction. He dwells on the achievements of his leading generals and repeatedly refers to winning
her back in terms of wiping out an insult and preserving his own honor. In case she misses any part
of the message, he specifies: “Let it be known that this arduous campaign, so gloriously completed
through the support of my friends, was not undertaken wholly for your sake.” But the worst is still to
come:
A suspicion has arisen with regard to your conduct, and your presence is as painful to
me as a lamp to one whose eye is diseased. Henceforth, go where you like, I give you
leave, oh Janaki. Beautiful one, the ten directions are at your disposal. I’ll have nothing
more to do with you. What man of honor would indulge his passion so far as to take
back a woman who has dwelled in the house of another? You have been taken into Ravana’s lap, and he has looked lustfully at you. How can I, who boast of belonging to an
illustrious lineage, reclaim you? My goal in reconquering you has been achieved. I no
longer have any attachment to you. Go where you like… Go to Lakshmana or Bharata,
Shatrughna, Sugriva, or the demon Vibhishana. Make your choice, whoever pleases you
most. Surely Ravana, seeing your ravishing, celestial beauty, did not respect your body
when you dwelled in his house.12
Sita weeps bitterly, then wipes her face and gives a spirited speech. It includes a passionate rebuke
of his cruelty and a rational analysis of where moral responsibility lies in the case of violence against
women. Not mincing words, she says, “Why do you talk to me like that, oh hero, like a common man
talking to an ordinary woman?… You, lion among men, by giving way to wrath and passing premature
judgment on a woman, have acted like a worthless man.”
She shows a healthy sense of her own worth, even at a moment of such crushing injury: “I received my name from Janaka but am the daughter of the earth. You have failed to appreciate fully the
nobility of my conduct… You have no reverence for the joining of our hands in my girlhood and my
affectionate nature. All this you have cast away.” Then in a voice “strangled with sobs,” she demands
that Lakshman raise a pyre for her. “These unjust reproaches have destroyed me, I cannot go on living.
12Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa of Valmiki, trans. Hari Prasad Shastri, vol. 3 (Shanti Sadan, 1959), 335-336. This episode occurs in
sargas 115-120 of the Yuddhakāṇḍa. The new translation, vol. 6 in the Princeton Rāmāyaṇa, is not yet available, so I rely on
the Shastri translation. I have taken the liberty of slightly modernizing the language, especially changing “thee/thy/thou” to
forms of “you.”.
REQUIRED READING: HESS
197
Publicly renounced by my husband, who is insensible to my virtue, there is only one recourse—the
ordeal by fire.”
A pile of wood is assembled and set ablaze. Circumambulating her husband and then the fire,
declaring her innocence and purity, calling on the “witness of all beings” to protect her, likened to “gold
that has been melted in the crucible” and “a stream of butter hallowed by the recitation of mantras,”
she throws herself into the flames. Rama remains silent.
The fact that the fire god himself steps forth to save Sita from being burned is rather beside the
point. That deus ex machina is irrelevant to the human drama, which is all that can be normative
for the human audience of the text. In the human drama a living woman’s body is consigned to the
flames, as culmination of her career of perfect devotion to her husband and as final test of her sexual
and psychological purity.
Modern pictorial representations of Sita’s fire ordeal always call to my mind the other (in)famous
example of woman-burning described in certain prestigious Sanskrit texts: the sati—literally, true
woman or good woman; in social history, usually understood as a widow immolated on her husband’s
funeral pyre. In both cases the key markers of the woman’s character are purity and extreme devotion
to husband. In both cases they are iconized as resting with divine serenity in the blaze, smiling as the
flames envelop them.13
From the sixth century, bhakti, or fervent devotionalism focused on a personal form of God, flourished in south India and beyond. When Kamban composed the first great vernacular Rāmāyaṇa in
Tamil around the twelfth century, Rama was a fullblown incarnation of Vishnu, Sita was taken to incarnate Vishnu’s consort Lakshmi, and the text was soaked from beginning to end in devotional feelings
and exhortations. Bhakti Rāmāyaṇas came forth in many languages in the centuries that followed,
and, while presenting an intriguing array of differences, they all had one tendency in common: as the
whole point of life was to love Rama, Rama had to be made as lovable as possible. If there was anything problematic about his character or actions, that thing tended to be muted, explained, or made
to disappear. Bhakti Rāmāyaṇas should be so composed as to invite the audience in, encourage their
emotional identification with the story, and build to a crescendo of love and fulfillment in the triumph
of Rama and rāmrājya, his ideal reign over the ideal kingdom.
Having generalized in this way, I have to say that Kamban’s treatment of the fire ordeal does not
prove my point. It is true that the poem constantly celebrates the divinity of Rama, affirming love as his
essential nature and as the inevitable response he calls forth in others, showing Rama and Sita sharing
many moments of idyllic mutual love. But when the time for the fire ordeal comes, Kamban does not
soften the harshness of Valmiki’s version. In fact, he makes it worse. Amazingly, Kamban’s Rama
accuses Sita of abandoning him. He twists her miraculous birth in a furrow of earth into the nasty
remark that she was born like a worm from the soil rather than from a decent family line. He inverts
the universal assessment of Sita as the embodiment of chastity and perfect womanhood, hurling this
condemnation:
13Sati as widow-immolation is not a common occurrence, but Satimātās—goddesses believed to have been human
satis, apotheosized after their heroic self-sacrifice—are widely worshiped… See Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and
the Hindu Nationalist Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), plate 17, for a photo of a recently established,
politically charged Sati icon. An unforgettable visual image is available in Anand Patwardhan’s 1994 film Father, Son and
Holy War, in which a woman domestic worker comments on her understanding of a devotional poster representing the 1987
immolation of a young widow, Roop Kanwar, in Rajasthan… In a slide lecture at the Sita Symposium, Columbia University,
May 1, 1998, Vishakha Desai showed that paintings of the agni parīksha prior to this century tended to show Sita in a much
more active position, striding toward the fire and standing in it rather than sitting on a pyre in sati-fashion.
deus ex machina:
lit. “god from the
machine,” in
classical drama, a
character—
usually a
god—who
appears in order
to resolve
complexities in the
plot
bhakti
198
FIFTH VEDA
Womanhood, greatness,
high birth, the power
known as chastity,
right conduct,
clarity and splendor
and truth:
all have perished by the mere birth
of a single creature such as you.
Finally, he says plainly that she should die—
or, if you won’t do that,
then go somewhere,
anywhere,
away.
This has, as David Shulman observes, and as Kamban himself suggests, the taste of madness.14 At the
end of this exercise Rama does not even say, as he does in Valmiki, that he had to go ahead with the
fire ordeal for the sake of public appearances, though he always knew that Sita was pure. Rama says
nothing.
Shulman’s analysis of the episode is profound and subtle. It opens to those who do not read Tamil
some of the astounding beauties of Kamban’s poetry, the complexity of Kamban’s study of love and
of relations between the human and divine, the continuity over a millennium of classical Tamil representations of love and passion in poetry. It also provides a lucid comparison of the agni parīksha
in Valmiki and Kamban. But Shulman finally is content to focus his attention on “Kamban’s protagonist… a god who discovers repeatedly, often to his own amazement, the painful cognitive and emotional consequences of being human”.15 It is not that Shulman fails to note the insanely cruel injustice
of Rama’s behavior and the passionate integrity of Sita’s response (articulating her devotion, suffering,
fury, and despair, Shulman feels, “the poet is largely speaking for himself through her mouth”).16 But
Shulman is not interested in picking up the gender theme. Sita is a token for the devotee in the conventions of bhakti religion. She is a lover/victim of God with whom it is convenient for any devotee,
male or female, to identify; in fact, she is used as a mouthpiece for Kamban, who positions himself as
a mad-fool lover of Rama in his poem.17 Shulman doesn’t seem to mind her being used this way. The
specificity of the husband-wife relationship, the relentless reminders of the husband’s superiority, the
horrifying abuse inherent in the model of the husband-lord and the worshipful wife who lives only to
guard her purity and surrender to his will, the sacralizing of the whole arrangement by making the
perpetrator an incarnation of God—none of this becomes noteworthy in Shulman’s essay.18
14The translations, and in fact everything I know about the the Kamban episode, come from Shulman’s fine article.
15David Shulman, “Fire and Flood: The Testing of Sītā in Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram,” in Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of
a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 109.
16Ibid., 103.
17Similarly the gopis in the stories of Krishna bhakti are female characters emblematic of all devotees. Men not only
feel free to identify with them as lovers of Krishna but, in fact, tend to take over the territory, enjoying the intimacies of
feminization in their religious life, maintaining male power and status in their ordinary life, and not hesitating to exclude
and subordinate women in both religious and worldly activities and institutions.
18In 1972 R. K. Narayan, the well-known English-language Indian novelist, published a “shortened modern prose version”
of the Rāmāyaṇa based mainly on Kamban. It is intriguing to me that Narayan pointedly excluded Kamban’s version of the
REQUIRED READING: HESS
199
If Kamban in the twelfth century did not feel any compulsion to mitigate Rama’s cruelty in the agni
parīksha scene, Tulsidas in sixteenth-century north India did. In his Rāmcharitmānas the scene is still
there, but an elaborate plot device explains it away. Tulsidas got the idea for this device (along with a
number of other ideas) from a fifteenth-century devotional Rāmāyaṇa in Sanskrit called the Adhyātma
Rāmāyaṇa.19 In the third of the epic’s seven books—Āranyakāṇḍa, the book of forest exile— the train
of events that will lead to full-scale war with the demons gets rolling. A violent encounter between
Lakshman and Ravana’s sister (initially an erotic advance on her part) brings her two brothers and a
host of demon warriors to attack Rama and Lakshman. Just before this battle starts Rama takes Sita
aside and secretly tells her that she is going to go away for a time, while he acts out a charming human
līlā (“play,” the divine drama and sport). Rama summons Agni, the Vedic god of fire, and asks him
to protect Sita during this sequence of events. Fire takes her in, and from fire emerges a false Sita,
called in the text chhāyā Sita (chhāyā = reflection or shadow).20 She looks and acts exactly like the
real Sita. But she is not the real Sita. Tulsidas makes a point of saying that even Lakshman had no idea
this was going on. Three books later, when the agni parīksha is prepared, it looks as if Sita’s purity is
being tested in the fire. But this is not the case. All that is really happening is that the chhāyā Sita is
re-entering the fire whence she came, and the fire god is showing up to restore the real Sita, who has
been under his protection for a year or so.
This device seems transparently to reflect the discomfort that has built up around the episode
in a devotional environment where everyone knows that the Sita of the story is innocent and longsuffering, and everyone is supposed to love Rama in a rising tide of fervor and surrender in which all
resistances are dissolved. The fire ordeal is shockingly unjust; it sticks in the heart. As if the mere
spectacle of Sita’s body entering the fire were not enough, Rama’s cruel speech in the older texts jacks
up the level of pain almost incredibly. Tulsidas omits the cruel speech entirely, though buried in one
verse is a fleeting reference to some “harsh words” that Rama spoke. As there is no cruel speech by
Rama, there is no outraged rejoinder by Sita. She has become more silent.
The scene proceeds quietly and concludes quickly. Sita speaks minimally. First, after the mention
of harsh words, she orders Lakshman to build a fire. When the fire is lit, she is said to rejoice inwardly
and feel no fear. She either thinks or says (the text is ambiguous): “If in thought, word, and deed I have
never allowed anyone but Rama to enter my heart, then let this fire, which knows everyone’s true state,
be like cool sandalwood paste to me.” Finally she enters the fire, concentrating on the Lord and crying
out, “Victory to the Lord of Kosala, whose feet are adored with pure devotion by Shiva!” Thus, the poet
comments, both the false Sita and the worldly stain (of her abduction) were burned in the fierce fire,
but no one really perceived what the Lord had done.21
fire ordeal, though he did not efface the episode entirely. He entitles his chap. 13 “Interlude,” suggesting that it is not integral
to the story. Beneath the title is this heading: “To Link Up the Narrative, an Extract from Valmiki.” Narayan gives a very mild
one-page summary of the Valmiki version (compared to seven pages in the Shastri translation). He also dismisses the story
of the abandonment of Sita, saying at the end of his ”Epilogue”: ”I am omitting a sequel which describes a second parting
between Rama and Sita, with the latter delivering twins in a forest… This part of the story is not popular, nor is it considered
to be authentic, but a latter-day addition to Valmiki’s version.” (R. K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose
Version of the Indian Epic Suggested by the Tamil Version of Kamban (New York: Viking, 1972), 171).
19W. L. Smith informs us that the tradition of a false Sita created by Agni goes back to the Kurmapurāṇa and is also
featured in the Brahmavaivartapurāṇa (Rāmāyaṇa Traditions in Eastern India, 92). Smith’s section “The Problem of Sita”
(91–99) brings together much interesting information.
20Tulsidas, Āranyakāṇḍa, dohā 23 to following chhanda 5. Chhāyā Sita is sometimes called māyā (illusory) Sita.
21The lines are in Lankākāṇḍa, from dohā 108 through the following chhanda 1.
200
FIFTH VEDA
Tulsidas has it both ways: he has the appearance of a fire ordeal to remove the worldly stain, and he
has an alibi protecting Rama from accusations of cruelty and injustice, Sita from the pain of rejection
and public trial. Unfortunately, Rama doesn’t bother to tell the public about the deep mystery of his
doings. So to their eyes it is just a fire ordeal. What would be the point of concealing this important
information? If there is a problem about throwing a good woman into the fire, wouldn’t the great
exemplar of moral perfection want to communicate this? Here, as in many other places, poets and
commentators assure us that the Lord’s mysterious ways are beyond our comprehension.
While Rama’s cruel speech on the occasion of the agni parīksha was excluded in Tulsidas, it was
not forgotten. Evidence that it was very much present in the minds of nineteenth-century Tulsi Rāmāyaṇa enthusiasts is available in the script of the Ramlila of Ramnagar, the month-long annual performance in Banaras that has been abundantly studied by scholars in the last two decades.22 The Ramlila
is a North Indian peformance tradition whose origin is popularly traced back to Tulsidas himself, in
the sixteenth century. Ramlilas are closely identified with Tulsi’s text, and the monumental annual
production sponsored by the Maharajas of Banaras since the early nineteenth century meticulously
represents the Tulsidas version of the epic in verbal and visual detail. The entire epic poem of Tulsidas
is sung out by a group of reciters in the course of the thirty-day outdoor performance; each passage
of sung text alternates with actors performing the scene and speaking in a prose that closely parallels
the original poetry.
The script of the Ramnagar Ramlila underwent revision in the late nineteenth century, new speeches
and songs being added under the direction of the famous writer Harishchandra and a distinguished
court guru, poet, and scholar, Kashthajihvasvami.23 It is not clear when various elements of the
present script were written, but we can say with reasonable certainty that everything was in place
by 1885, the year of Harishchandra’s death. A short but hard-hitting version of Rama’s harsh speech
is written back into the Ramlila script, even though it is not present in Tulsidas: “I have undertaken
these deeds so that you would be liberated and returned to me, your husband, and would not grow old
in the house of the demons. This is why I destroyed the demons. Now you can go wherever you please.
Who would accept a woman who had been in the hands of another for even a moment? Certainly not
a man of dharma like myself! Whether you are righteous or unrighteous [dharm se, adharm se], hear
me oh Janaki, I have no desire to be with you.”24
Why did the writers reinsert this problematic speech? No doubt because they felt it was dramatically necessary: otherwise, how would Sita’s call for a fire be motivated? In a number of other cases
22Linda Hess, “Ram Lila: The Audience Experience,” in Bhakti in Current Research 1979-82, ed. Monika Thiel-Horstmann
(Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1983), 171–194; Anuradha Kapur, Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar (Calcutta: Seagull, 1988); Lutgendorf, Life of a Text; Schechner, “Ramlila of Ramnagar”; Richard Schechner, “Crossing the Water:
Pilgrimage, Movement, and Environmental Scenography of the Ramlila of Ramnagar,” in Living Banaras: Hindu Religion
in Cultural Context, ed. Bradley R. Hertel and Cynthia A. Humes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 19–72;
Richard Schechner and Linda Hess, “The Ramlila of Ramnagar,” The Drama Review 21, no. 3 (1977): 51–82.
23Lutgendorf, Life of a Text, 266–267 and Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
Harischandra and the Ninteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 79, 82 give brief accounts of this
revision. They differ on the nature of the Ramlila before the revision. Lutgendorf says that earlier dialogues in Bhojpuri
were modernized “into a modified Khari Bholi, the dialect of Delhi that [Harishchandra] had adopted for prose writing.”
Dalmia assumes that the actors had previously mimed their performance to the recitation of Tulsidas’s poem and that in
Harishchandra’s time prose dialogues were composed for the first time.
24In 1976, when Richard Scheduler and I were doing fieldwork together in the Ramalila, the Maharaja graciously arranged
at our request to have a copy of the Ramlila dialogues made for us. They were written out by hand in small copybooks that
are the source for this translation.
REQUIRED READING: HESS
201
the Ramlila scriptwriters composed dialogue where Tulsidas only indicated vaguely that something
had been said. We can observe that, however problematic, they still felt it was acceptable to use the
speech.
It was not so with the TV Rāmāyaṇa. There was anticipatory controversy in 1988 as the serial
approached the agni parīksha episode. How would director-writer Ramanand Sagar handle it? Would
he show Sita entering the fire? More pointedly than ever before, the very presence of this scene was
understood to be provocative, sensitive, likely to arouse protest.
Sagar handles it, as he handles other potentially controversial points in the epic, with extreme
kindness to Rama. There is no hint of a harsh word or thought from him. As the scene approaches
he is brooding, troubled. He elicits sympathy. The order to build a pyre is issued privately, just before
Sita’s arrival, inside a hut where Rama is alone with Lakshman. It is Rama, not Sita, who orders the
fire. In this, as in other matters, Sagar feels compelled to rewrite the scene radically, making up events
and words that are unprecedented in previous Rāmāyaṇa texts.
Tulsidas states explicitly in Āranyakāṇḍa that Lakshman did not know about the chhāyā Sita,
never suggesting that the secret was later revealed to him. Sagar, in contrast, has Rama tell his brother
the whole story just before the agni parīksha, complete with flashback. Building on the traditional
portrayal of Lakshman as angry and pained but helplessly obedient in the face of Rama’s orders regarding Sita in the last two books, Sagar puts into Lakshman’s mouth words that have never appeared
in any previous Rāmāyaṇa. Lakshman voices the outrage that might come from a conglomeration of
modern speakers. I seem to hear in his protests bits of nineteenth-century British moral legislators,
Hindu reformists, and Hindu revivalists, and, in one or two lines, bits that might be associated with
feminists and other political activists of the present time.25
L: Brother! Why are you so troubled? Bhabhi’s coming is delayed—is that it? But why
didn’t you send me to bring Bhabhi? You couldn’t go into the city, but I could. [Bhabhi =
elder brother’s wife]
R: Lakshman! Arrangements must be made for a fire.
L: Arrangements for a fire? Why?
R: Won’t Sita have to arrive by passing through the gate of fire?
L: Bhabhi? Arrive by passing through a gate of fire?
R: Yes.
L: Mother? Mother Sita? No, brother! This is an atrocity, an injustice.
R: Lakshman!
L: Brother! I’ve understood what you mean. You mean that Mother Sita will be forced to
go through a trial by fire to prove her purity.
R: Lakshman!
L: [his voice breaking] That sati26 who, cleaving to die dharma of devotion to her husband
[pativratadharma], refused the splendid, luxurious palaces of Ravana, conqueror of the
three worlds, and chose to sit under the open sky, enduring cold and heat, suffering from
sun and rain?
25For instance, the use of the word “atrocity” (atyāchār) and the rhetorical question as to whether women who are
victims of male violence should be called criminals.
26The broad meaning is a perfect woman, a woman embodying truth (sat), an ideal wife; the common specific meaning,
and probable association for most listeners, is a widow who sacrifices herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.
202
FIFTH VEDA
R: Lakshman!
L: A king’s daughter, an emperor’s daughter-in-law, who wandered barefoot behind her
husband through the forest—instead of worshiping her, you put her dirough a trial? For
what fault, brother? For what fault?
R: Lakshman! Listen to me.
L: No, brother! I won’t listen to anything on this subject. If a powerless woman with no
one to help her is taken away by force, has she become a criminal? I am the criminal,
who got angry at what she said, and against your command left her alone. Because of
me, that goddess had to suffer so much pain. I am the one who should be punished. She
is no criminal, I am a criminal, I who failed to protect her. And is that faultless woman to
be burned in the fire? There can be no greater injustice against all womankind. Will you
do this injustice? Remember, I regard Bhabhi as my mother, and being related to her as
a son, I can even fight against you.
Rama then also gives a speech that has no precedent in Valmiki, Kamban, or Tulsidas:
What ever gave you the idea that I am testing Sita, or that I have any doubt about her?
Sita, who is never out of my heart even for an instant, whom I am watching every moment with my divine eyes. Can anyone else give me proof of her purity and sati-hood?
Lakshman! If a man doesn’t trust a woman in his heart, can he attain full trust from any
exterior proofs? And when were Rama and Sita ever two separate beings? They are one.
If I test her, it means I am testing myself. What I am doing has nothing to do with doubt
or testing. You don’t know—if Ravana had laid a hand on the real Sita, his hand would
have been burned up by that supreme sati’s glory.27
Now Lakshman is confused. She’s going to pass through the gate of fire, but it’s not a test? Rama
speaks to him in intimately affectionate tones, explaining the profound mystery of the chhāyā Sita.
Here in Book 6 of the Rāmāyaṇa there is a full flashback on screen to these events that took place in
Book 3. Rama tells Sita about the upcoming līlā with the demons and calls upon the fire god Agni
to hold her in his protection until demonkind is destroyed. Agni appears and takes her in; the false
Sita emerges. None of this was shown when the TV serial was presenting Book 3. It was saved for this
flashback in order to maximize its power to explain the fire ordeal.
Now we have reached the charged moment when Sita (or the false Sita, who exactly resembles the
real Sita) must actually enter the fire. The situation has already been substantially defused by Lakshman’s impassioned speech on the intolerable injustice to Sita and to all womankind, capped by his
readiness to fight with Rama; by Rama’s tender expression of eternal love for, oneness with, and trust
of Sita; and by the flashback from Āranyakāṇḍa. Still, depicting the woman in flames is a sensitive
matter. Sagar slides through the scene, as he later does in the case of Sita’s abandonment, by means
of a long musical bridge. The fire itself is depicted as an unrealistic circle of small flames on the flat
ground—no pile of wood, no roaring blaze.28 The entry into fire, the appearance of Agni, the restoration of Sita, all occur as alternating male and female voices, with instrumental accompaniment, sing
27Smith cites a Rāmāyana in which Sita is literally transformed into fire. Agni assures her that Ravana will not be able
to touch her: “(Ravana) will not be able to seat you upon his lap… he will be killed by the heat of the fire; if he grasps your
hand he will be burnt” (Smith, Rāmāyaṇa Traditions in Eastern India, 93). Smith also mentions other texts in which Sita’s
blazing heat or light prevents Ravana from touching her.
28This stylized circle of flames is very similar to the presentation in the Ramnagar Ramlila—another example of Lutgendorf’s thesis that Ramlila conventions strongly influenced Sagar (Philip Lutgendorf, “All in the (Raghu) Family: A Video Epic
REQUIRED READING: HESS
203
lines from Tulsidas. The tunes are familiar, the music soothing and sweet. The poetry of Tulsidas has
an enfolding and completing effect. It raises the sense of sacredness, of Tightness. It is comfortable.
Commentaries on Tulsidas
In a half-dozen nineteenth and twentieth-century commentaries that I checked there is virtually no
sign that traditional exegetes were troubled by the agni parīksha.29 In Shankāvalīs, collections of
“doubts” where particular lines or issues are singled out as rich or problematic, this episode is never
discussed.30 In standard commentaries that go over every line this section is handled like any other.
The expounders (all male) speak unhesitatingly in the voice of brahmanical orthodoxy, praising Sita
as a perfect embodiment of pativratya, pure devotion to her husband-lord. Thus the Mānas-pīyūsh:
The attractive (ramanīyā) quality of women is shown here. Even when the mother of the
universe is in anguish over the lord of the universe’s extreme statement, she does not say
a single sharp word to her husband. Through her dutiful action, she shows that doing
her lord’s will is dearer than life for a woman… For a woman husband is god, husband
is friend, husband is guru… See, even in this calamity, even after hearing her husband’s
bitter words, she does not forget to do obeisance to him and reverently concentrate on
him [before entering the fire]. [Never for an instant wavering from utter devotion to
her lord in thought, word and deed]—beyond this, there is really no other purpose for a
woman to take on a body…31
In Valmiki, Sita answered Rama. Understanding that this conflicts with pativratadharma
and is harmful to the education of the people, the Mānas poet did not include it. The
speech was put there [in Valmiki] for literary reasons.32
Notice that the commentators here pay no attention to the difference between the illusory Sita
and the real Sita. They treat the chhāyā Sita as fully exemplary. I have learned over years of watching the Ramlila and later the TV Rāmāyaṇa with audiences in Banaras that the story of the chhāyā
Sita, buried in a few lines of verse in Tulsidas’s Āranyakāṇḍa, is little known and easily forgotten.
When Ramanand Sagar inflated its prominence by showing it as a flashback just before the fire ordeal, many people in the audience were amazed. They didn’t know about Tulsidas’s chhāyā Sita, and
some thought that Sagar had made up the whole thing.33 Steve Derné reports that middle-class men
in Cultural Context,” in Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, ed. Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 217–253).
29The Mānas-pīyūsh is a seven-volume anthology of excerpts from prestigious nineteenth and early twentieth-century
commentaries. In nine pages devoted to the agni parīksha episode, only three lines suggest doubt about the authenticity of
Rama’s harsh speech as found in Valmiki and the Mahābhārata: ”What harsh words he spoke—this has never been revealed
by the Mānas poet… See Valmiki 115 and Mahābhārata Vanaparva. The reader should know that there is doubt connected
to these words… ”(Anjaninandan Sharan, Mānas pīyūsh, 3rd ed., vol. 6 (Ayodhya: Mānas pīyūsh kāryālay, 1958), 548).
30See Linda Hess, “Lovers’ Doubts: Questioning the Tulsi Rāmāyaṇ,” in Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition,
ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 25–47.
31Sharan, Mānas pīyūsh, 552.
32Ibid., 549.
33The Indian Express said that the māyā Sita story was “a revelation to most viewers… While many felt this was a palpable bit of fiction added to Sagar’s multiple-source myth, others, vigilant women’s groups among them, who had keyed
themselves up for the agni parīksha episode, felt that the producer had chosen this device to avoid getting into any sati-type
controversy… ‘How can you show Ramāyān without showing Sita’s agni parīksha?’ asks Sonal Shukla of the Forum Against
204
FIFTH VEDA
in Banaras, like the commentators of the Mānas-pīyūsh, are likely to construe the fire ordeal literally
as a model of how the ideal wife should behave: “Gopal Mishra, who says that he always undertakes a
ritual bath before watching the TV Rāmāyaṇa, says that Rama gave Sita the test of fire ‘to show people
that Sita had remained virtuous… If Sita had been unpure… she would have burned instantly in the
fire. But Sita didn’t burn. She was saved, proving the rightness of her character”’34.
Derné also reports that his interviewees regularly appeal to the Rāmāyaṇa as a model of husbandwife relations:
Men can easily marshal evidence from [Tulsidas’s] Rāmcharitmānas, to justify arranged
marriages, restrictions on women’s movements outside the home, and the imperative
that a wife obey her husband. The men I interviewed respect the Rāmcharitmānas as a
source of moral directives… As Ashok Mitra says, “when it comes to marriage, it is important that we follow the example of him whom we call bhagwan [God] Rama.” … Nathuram Mishra quotes a verse from the epic to suggest that chaos is the result of granting
women freedom35 … Gopal Mishra says… that Sita… is the ideal woman because “she
doesn’t try to do anything other than what her husband has ordered… the customs and
traditions [of India] are based on the relationship of bhagwan Rama and Sita. Because
Sita always obeyed… Rama’s orders, all wives of Hindustan must do what their husbands
tell them to do.”36
Oppression of Women… ‘The māyā Sita destroys the character of Sita as we know it and weakens the story. It is plainly an
escape device used by the producer”’(Bharati Sadasivam, “Sagar’s Own Trial by Fire,” Indian Express, 1988, no. July 31). The
article then explains that the māyā Sita, unbeknownst to most viewers, is based on Tulsidas and the Adhyātmā Rāmāyana.
Even with this explanation viewers interviewed for the article dismiss the device as absurd, illogical, an interpolation. “How
does a māyā Sita convey the concept of purity?… Why would Rama take that trouble to recover a māyā Sita?” Sagar’s elaborate speechwriting efforts did not quite take away the sting of the visual image. According to one woman, “Although the
sequence was not verbally offensive, it was visually very much so. Sita’s unquestioning attitude, her folded hands, her beatific smile as she entered and emerged from the flames—all this bothered me.”
34Derné, Culture in Action, 192, n.3.
35Derné does not cite the verse, but I know what it is because my own female research assistant, Nita Pandey, told me in
1989 that her mother had frequently quoted it to her as a warning not to aspire to independence. I was amazed at the time
that a half-line that seemed utterly obscure to to me could actually be a potent weapon of socialization. Derné’s reference
confirms that my assistant’s experience was not idiosyncratic but that the verse is widely cited with proverbial force. It
occurs in a long lyrical set piece in Kishkindhakāṇḍa, where Rama describes the rainy season. In a repetitive structure, the
first half-line gives a descriptive detail, and the second half-line provides a moralizing simile related to the first. The line in
question says: “Great torrents smash embankments [in the farmers fields]/ just as independence ruins a woman”… (4.14.7).
36Derné, Culture in Action, 129. In chap. 2, “Making Gender Culture: Men Talk About Controlling Women” (22–23),
men state unabashedly that it is normal and in their own self-interest to enforce obedience, subservience, confinement,
self-effacement, and denial of their own experience in women, particularly wives. Examples:
“My wife will have to mold herself into my form. She has to make her daily routine as mine is. I will not have
to make my routine to conform to her.”
“The most important quality of an ideal wife is that she obey her husband. She should do whatever the husband says.”
“The biggest thing for the ideal wife is that she accept whatever her husband wants… She should always wear
red clothes if that is what pleases him. If the husband wants her to wear jeans and T-shirts, then she should
dress that way.”
“Some wives start to complain as soon as they come to their [husband’s] house. The parents will tell them
two things and they will tell their husbands four things. There are some wives, however, whose fathers-in-law
and mothers-in-law may even beat them and they will not say anything. The woman who remains silent is
the ideal wife.”
REQUIRED READING: HESS
205
Rejecting Sita, rejecting Rama
“No More Sitas”: this headline introduces a letter published in a 1983 issue of Manushi: A Journal about
Women and Society. The writer is Saroj Visaria, a Banaras woman whose letter has been translated from
Hindi:
The ideals, ethics and morality heaped on women since time immemorial are suffocating
and killing. The adjectives used to praise us have become oppressive. Calling us loving,
they have locked us in the closed room of culture, calling us gentle, they have reflected
us in a mirror of helplessness, calling us kind they have tied us in cowardice, they have
handcuffed us with modesty and chained our feet with loyalty… Now we must refuse to
be Sitas. By becoming a Sita and submitting to the fire ordeal, woman loses her identity.
This fire ordeal is imposed on women today in every city, every home. Our exclusion
from the scriptures, from temples, from smritis, is also our strength. We can be fearless
since we have no models… Today we are not Sitas but Saritas [rivers], flowing, free, able
to cross rocks, capable of generating electricity…37
Visaria’s declaration shows one extreme of a nascent attitude toward the Sita of brahmanical tradition:
we don’t want her. No more Sitas, no more rigid, male-fashioned ideals. Feminists, political activists,
artists, and writers have increasingly found ways to say “no thank you” to the orthodox model.38
But many responses to the tradition have been more complex than straightforward rejection.
Research has uncovered counter-traditions, subversive, ironic, and critical treatments of Rāmāyaṇa
themes in women’s, folk, low-caste, and dissenting literary cultures.39 New poems, plays, and dances
have sought to imagine a Sita who was not robbed of her voice and personhood by patriarchal tradition.40 There are enough hints of Sita’s power, passion, and courage in the traditional texts to stimulate
imaginings of a very different kind of heroine. Bina Agarwal’s 1985 poem begins, “Sita speak your side
of the story. We know the other side too well… ” She highlights injustices to Sita in the conventional
narrative, including the agni parīksha:
With your husband you chose exile;
suffered privation, abduction
and then the rejection
the chastity test on the scorching flames
“Even if there are difficulties, the women of India will not say anything to anybody. In the sāsural [husbands
house], whatever happens is right. Even if it is dirt, she understands it as gold. [This] is the most wonderful
tradition.”
See also Steve Derné, “Market Forces at Work: Religious Themes in Commercial Hindi Films,” in Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, ed. Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1995), 191–216 for a discussion of Hindi movies set in modern times but modeling their leading characters on Sita and Rama.
37Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita, In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi (London: Zed Books, 1984),
298–299.
38There are many examples of such rejection in the twentieth century; the more one looks, the more one finds…
39Richman, Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia; Paula Richman, ed., Questioning
Rāmāyaṇas: A South Asian Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann G.
Gold, Listen to the Heron’s Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994).
40Many classical dancers have reinterpreted Sita in recent years. The most high-profile example is Mallika Sarabhai’s
Sita’s Daughters, which toured in India and North America in the mid-1990s.
206
FIFTH VEDA
the victim twice victimised.
Could those flames turn to flowers
without searing the soul?
Agarwal concludes:
The poets who wrote your story
said a woman is not worthy of hearing
the Ramayana: like a beast she is fit
for being beaten.
Could such poetry ever bring you glory?
Yet they spoke their verses without challenge
and got away with such falsehoods.
Sita speak!
You who could lift the magic bow in play
with one hand,
who could command the earth with a word,
how did they silence you?
In 1919 a male Malayalam poet, Kumaran Aasan, published The Brooding Sita. “Aasan shows her
criticising Rama for his injustice towards her, and demolishing all the justifications put forward in his
defence. When she thinks of the possibility of returning to her husband, she cries out: ‘What? Does
the emperor think that I should once more go into his… presence and once again prove myself… ? Do
you think I am a mere doll?… my mind and soul revolt at the very thought… ’ Aasan’s poem generated
a fierce controversy because it showed Sita asserting her selfhood, not perishing in despair”41
Snehalata Reddy’s one-act play Sita, written in 1973, radically revises the fire ordeal scene, allowing
an angry Sita to reject Rama, his dharma, and his trial by fire.
SITA: I am not afraid of death, Lakshmana, but I’m afraid of the fraud that will be perpetuated in the name of Ramarajya! In the name of dharma! I’m afraid of this awesome male
domination and the helpless, pathetic and unblievable martyrdom of women… This king
you all worship is a cruel, heartless tyrant. For the sake of his glory, he wants to sacrifice
your queen (turning to the audience) I beg all of you to fight this injustice and not submit to it. We women have been kept under the yoke for centuries in the name of dharma.
Please remember my pain, my rejection, my humiliation—for they will bury it all in silence. Remember me not as a goddess of virtue, but as a defenceless woman, fighting for
her self-respect. History has never recorded the whole truth… never the downtrodden—
always the powerful… They will gloss over my suffering and camouflage their sins with
my submissiveness and devotion… I know that the world will not change overnight… if
I dare now, more women will dare… I hope and pray that, by exposing your masculine
pomposity, absurdity and injustice, who knows, I may be able to sow the first seed of
revolution.
RAMA:… Come to your senses!… My word is law!… I cannot take it back!… If you do not
do your duty, I must reject you!
SITA: (fiercely) How dare you! It is I who reject you! 42
41K. S. Shreekala, “A New Sita,” Manushi, November 1983, 7.
42Snehalata Reddy, “Sita,” The OtherSide, September 1985, 40–41. Reddy was a woman who put her body on the line when
it came to protesting against injustice. Locked up by the Indira Gandhi government for her protests against the totalitarian
REQUIRED READING: HESS
207
… Is it only highly educated, English-speaking, urban feminists… who put forth such radical critiques
and reinterpretations of the traditional Sita? The most direct and blunt critiques do seem to come
from such sources. But as we learn to dig deeper, to look and listen more inclusively, we continue to
find evidence of revision, subversion, and protest in disparate social, ethnic, and economic groups. A
few examples follow.
In 1981 Manushi published a folk song from Uttar Pradesh in which Rama, hearing that his sons
are living in the forest, sends Lakshman to bring them and Sita back to Ayodhya. Sita refuses to go.
When Guru Vashishtha asks if she has taken leave of her senses, she replies:
Guru, you who know each one’s state, how is it you speak
As if you know nothing?
Guru, that Rama who caused me such sorrow, how can I see his face?
The Rama who put me in the fire, who threw me out of the house,
Guru, how shall I see his face?
Guru… I will walk with Lakshman a step or twain
But I will never go back to Ayodhya,
And may fate never cause us to meet again43
A documentary film presents a performance by a Maharashtrian Dalit singer who rejects the entire
Rāmāyaṇa. In his song Rama represents India’s worst ideologies of domination and oppression on the
basis of caste, ethnicity, gender, and religion. He begins:
The rulers who control all knowledge claimed the Rāmāyaṇa to be India’s history and
called us many names—demons, low castes, untouchables. But we were the aborigines
of this land. Listen to our story. Today we are called Dalits—the oppressed. Once the
Aryans on their horses invaded this land. Then we who are the natives became the displaced. Oh Rama, oh Rama, you became the God and we the demons. You portrayed our
Hanuman as a monkey, oh Rama, you representative of die Aryans. You enslaved us to
form a monkey army. Those you could not subjugate you calledrakshasa—demon. But
we are the forest rakshak—protectors. You invented the hierarchy of caste through your
laws of Manu, the first man, oh Rama, you representative of Aryans. And you trampled
on the rights of women. You made your wife Sita undergo the fire ordeal to prove her
chastity. Such were your male laws, oh Rama, oh Rama, you representative of Aryans.44
A third example…
As researchers increasingly shed the assumption that brahmanical male discourses must obviously and naturally represent Hinduism and as they turn their attention to previously dark spaces,
previously silent voices, a stunning reality presents itself. Those spaces were never really dark, those
voices never silent. It is we, the scholarly caste, who have had our eyes and ears covered, just like the
“Emergency” imposed in 1975, she died in prison. This reprint of Sita mentions that it was first published in Enact, the Delhi
Drama Monthly.
43Manushi was far ahead of academic scholars in recognizing the liberating potential of oral traditions and the diverse
possibilities of representing old heroes and narratives…
44Anand Patwardhan, We’re Not Your Monkeys, South Productions for Channel 4 TV, in association with SBS Australia,
1993. In a conversation with the filmmaker, Anand Patwardhan, in October 1998, I learned that the words to the song had
been composed collaboratively by the Dalit singer, the well-known Dalit poet Daya Pawar, and Patwardhan.
208
FIFTH VEDA
professional male Rāmāyaṇa singer who was questioned by Sen in Bangladesh: “I asked… whether he
would use such words in connection with Rama. He bit his tongue, touched his ears and shut his eyes,
saying only illiterate, ignorant women could utter such blasphemous words”45
Reflections on Reception
How do we measure reception and influence? The short answer is—very inexactly and inconclusively.
How important and representative are the protesting versions of Sita cited here? There is plenty of
evidence that the oppressive, patriarchal view of Sita isn’t going away. Steve Derné’s interviews vividly
illustrate the unabashed promotion by men in the 1980s of old-fashioned male dominance and wifely
submission consciously modeled on Rama and Sita. Michael Allen cites a 1966 booklet published by
the Ramakrishna Mission called The Indian Ideal of Womanhood. Setting forth motherhood as the
highest goal of the Hindu woman, it glorifies woman’s divine talent for “self-effacing love” and points
out that “the culture of the Hindu trains him to look upon all women, nay, to look upon the female of
all species, as forms of the one Divine Mother,” revering mothers more than fathers and gurus.46 …
Some claim that there is still a powerful consensus promoting and enforcing the self-sacrificing
pativrata model for Indian womanhood. Others protest that such a claim wrongly assumes “that
women are the passive assimilators of a monolithic set of cultural discourses on gender, in terms of
which their own lives are either unambiguously morally exemplary in the manner of Sita… or morally
flawed and reprehensible”.47 Both sides at this point can probably agree that women and men relate
to the idealized figure of Sita in many ways on many levels, accepting, negotiating, manipulating, reinterpreting, or rejecting the ideals—sometimes doing all of these at different moments.
Burning Women
I close with some thought-provoking recent examples of reception. Earlier I associated Sita’s image in
the fire with the icon of the sati, the widow who burns herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, afterwards
to be elevated to goddesshood.48 Would it be an unfair stretch to associate both with the brideburning
incidents that have been increasing in north India in the last thirty years? We have grown used to
seeing news stories that describe a consistent sequence of events: harrassment of a young wife begins
soon after marriage, her family is pressured to contribute more money and goods for “dowry,” and
when demands are not fulfilled the young woman is found burned to death. The husband’s family
explains that it was a cooking accident. In a variation on this scenario, a wife of some years’ standing
may be burnt—because she did or didn’t do something, or simply because the husband wanted to
be rid of her. Prosecutions are rare and convictions rarer. In most cases the man can easily secure
another wife and another dowry.
Some readers will object that it doesn’t make sense to associate the paradigm of Sita’s trial by fire
with the current phenomenon of brideburning. If the latter has become prominent in recent decades,
45Nabaneeta Dev Sen, “Rewriting the Ramayana: Chandrabati and Molla,” Crossing Boundaries, 1997, 173–174.
46Michael Allen and S. N. Mukherjee, eds., Women in India and Nepal (Canberra: Australian National University, 1982),
10 (emphasis added).
47Raheja and Gold, Listen to the Heron’s Words, 142.
48It is evident from examples given above that Indians in the present time also use the word sati for Sita. Lakshman and
Rama use it several times in the television epic’s agni parīksha episode; Sita uses the word satītva, translated here as “purity”
in the Strī kathā tape cited above.
REQUIRED READING: HESS
209
then we must look at current social, political, economic, and legal conditions, not ancient texts, to
explain it. This is certainly true. Yet I would argue that the hallowed image of Sita entering the flames
under the conditions set forth in the texts, kept alive century after century in version after version, still
vibrant in popular performances today from Ramlila to the TV serial, lingers deep in consciousness
and may be taken to give a kind of permission for wifeburning.
Not long after the agni parīksha was shown on television, a short item appeared in Sunday Magazine: “Taking his cue from the epic Ramayan, an educated man forced his wife to test her chastity by
burning camphor in her palm. The man threw his wife out of the house when her palm was burnt”.49 Is
this just a weird story, a bad joke, an aberration, having nothing to do with norms or with mainstream
understandings of the Rāmāyaṇa’s message?…
Madhu Kishwar, co-founder and long-time editor of Manushi, has written on how she became
gradually aware of an obsession with Sita, above all with the agni parīksha, among literate women in
India:
Sita forced herself on my consciousness only after I began working on Manushi. The
articles and poems that came to us, especially those for the Hindi edition, showed an
obsessive involvement with Sita and her fire ordeal…
My impression is that 80-90% of the poems that came to us for Hindi Manushi, and at
least half of those for English Manushi, revolved around the mythological Sita, or the
writer as a contemporary Sita, with a focus on her steadfast resolve, her suffering, or her
rebellion. Sita loomed large in the lives of these women, whether they were asserting
their moral strength or rebelling against what they had come to see as the unreasonable demands of society or family. Either way Sita was the point of reference—an idea
they emulated or rejected. I was very puzzled by this obsession, and even began to get
impatient with the harangues of our modern day Sitas.
And then came the biggest surprise of all. The first (and hopefully the last) poem I ever
wrote was in Hindi and was entitled Agnipariksha…
Not just me, even my colleague, Ruth Vanita, who is from a Christian family, wrote many
a poem around the Sita theme.50
Kishwar was jolted into realizing that the intense preoccupation with Sita needed “to be understood more sensitively” than she had previously thought. Over a period of years she interviewed
women and men of diverse classes, castes, and religions about their ideal figures. As Sita and Rama
came up constantly, she recorded detailed statements about them, arriving at a nuanced appreciation
of how these figures live in and are interpreted by Indians in real life. Among her conclusions we read:
It has taken me a long time to understand that Indian women are not endorsing female
slavery when they mention Sita as their ideal. Sita is not perceived as being a mindless
creature who meekly suffers maltreatment at the hands of her husband without complaining. Nor does accepting Sita as an ideal mean endorsing a husband’s right to behave
unreasonably and a wife’s duty to bear insults graciously. She is seen as a person whose
sense of dharm is superior to and more awe inspiring than that of Rama —someone who
dharma
(Hindi: dharm)
puts even maryada purushottam Rama—the most perfect of men—to shame.51
49“This India,” Sunday Magazine Dec. 11-17, 1988: 84.
50Kishwar, “Yes to Sita, No to Ram,” Quotations are from a manuscript version of Kishwar’s essay.
51Ibid.
210
FIFTH VEDA
Kishwar presents a range of vivid individual voices that, together, give a nuanced impression of
how different people construe the meanings of Sita and Rama. We see how the meanings are woven
into their lives, and their lives are woven into the meanings. The collection of interviews, with Kishwar’s perceptive analyses, comprise one of the great strengths of the essay. Another strength is the
author’s inclusion of her own process of learning. For most of her life she harbored the “liberated”
woman’s stereotyped view of Sita as a slavish and oppressive ideal, which she rejected utterly. She
shows how her view gradually shifted as she realized the omnipresence and multiple meanings of
Sita in the consciousness of Indians. Then—following the advice in her own memorable 1990 article,
“Learning to Take People Seriously”—she spent a long time listening. Her article on Sita presents the
results of that listening.
These strengths also point to a problem I see in the essay. Kishwar aims to overturn the stereotype, showing the flexibility, intelligence, and practicality of women’s understandings of Sita. But in
accomplishing her aim, in redressing the imbalance of insensitive feminist dismissals of Sita, at times
Kishwar leans so far in the other direction that she almost supports patriarchal rationalizations of
all that happens in the story. On the agni parīksha, she says popular perception sees it as “an act of
supreme defiance on [Sita’s] part which shows her husband to be unjust and foolish in doubting a
woman like her.” There is no mention of how this interpretation would play into the maintenance of
patriarchy in its most destructive forms. If a woman’s throwing herself into the fire in response to her
husband’s false accusations can be interpreted as an act of supreme defiance, then God save women
from defiance.
Kishwar’s essay demonstrates the value of learning from ordinary women about their real-life
choices and circumstances; appreciating the fullness and dignity of their lives; sympathetically shedding light on their intelligent strategies in the midst of oppressive structures; and noticing the distance
between the limited range of choices experienced by less privileged women and the wide range enjoyed by many writers, scholars, and theorists. All of us who comment on oppression from a position
of relative privilege should continually keep these things in mind. But we walk a razor’s edge, as the
Katha Upanishad puts it. In appreciating the “weapons of the weak,” we should be careful not to valorize institutionalized weakness. In stepping back from a certain aggressive feminist mode that seems
to attack women for not fitting some prescribed “feminist” model, we shouldn’t step right back into
the backlash.
One evening, after a draft of this article was completed, I went to the movies in Berkeley. I knew
that the director was an Indian woman and that the plot involved two sisters-in-law whose rotten marriages drove them to discover love and passion with each other. I had no expectation that it would
be relevant to what I was writing. But something clicked when I saw the name of the film production company: Trial by Fire. As it turned out, the film—called Fire—was shot through with images of
the Rāmāyaṇa, The younger, more independent and passionately combustible of the two women was
named Sita. Scenes from the television Rāmāyaṇa entered the plot at crucial moments. A melodramatic and comic urban Ramlila was shown. The husband of the older woman listened to a recitation
of Tulsidas with his guru. And always it was the same episode: the agni parīksha. Here, in a middle
class Delhi milieu, was a fleshing out of Snehalata Reddy’s defiant Sita who rejects the fire ordeal and
the dharma that ordains it, rejects Rama’s rejection. Here was a full imagining of one scenario that
might unfold in the 1990s… if Sita spoke with her true voice after so many years of silence. And here
also was the brideburning theme. Not only I, not only the poet M. Geetha, but also the filmmaker
REQUIRED READING: HESS
211
Deepa Mehta, saw a direct connection between the endless, obsessive replays of Sita entering the fire
and the inspiration a man might feel to set fire to a wife who didn’t fulfill his needs and expectations.
Today more than ever before, Sita is a site of contestation. The Sita who clung to the dharma of
worshiping her husband and bowing to his will, even when he repeatedly and cruelly rejected her, is
still embraced as the ideal woman by many Hindus of both sexes. But others, increasingly, are describing that ideal as concocted by and serving the interests of dominant males from ancient times to the
present. What is it that they are rejecting? In a cultural environment where Rama and Sita are widely
and fervently believed to be real, both historical and divine figures, we can say that most of them are
not claiming to reject the “real” Sita. Swimming in an ocean of texts, knowing that all textual Sitas are
chhāyā Sitas, rising and disappearing between the covers of a book or the opening and closing of a
performance, they are rejecting the Sita of patriarchy.
6 Guru Movements
Topic overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
outline the place of the guru in traditional and modern Hinduism,
explain what it means to ‘convert’ to Hinduism,
comment on some of the debates which have emerged as Hindu NRMs have developed.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
new religious movements
“charisma”
Guru Movements
In addition to the migration of Hindus themselves, the transplantation of Hinduism to the West has
made available to a much greater degree than ever before, a range of ideas drawn from Indian religious
thought, packaged in the new form of dozens of different Hindu-related new religious movements
(NRMs). These movements range from the very obviously religious, and very clearly Hindu-related,
such as the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement (whose proper title is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness or ISKCON) to the apparently secular and not obviously Hindu-related, such as the School
of Economic Science, whose courses in ‘philosophy and economics’ (which are widely advertised) lead
on to courses in meditation having much in common with the Transcendental Meditation taught by
the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—best known for having been the Beatles’ guru. In between there is a
proliferation of groups, usually drawing on either some form of the non-dualist Indian philosophical
tradition of Advaita Vedānta, or the more devotionally-orientated bhakti traditions which emphasize
submission to the will of the Lord or the guru. These include groups such as the Divine Light Mission,
Ananda Marga Yoga, the Brahma Kumaris Spiritual University, Integral Yoga, Osho, Self-Realization
Fellowship, Sai Baba and the Vedanta Society, to name only some of the best-known. Many of these
groups also have large numbers of followers in India.
Although several of these groups have been in existence and attracting Western devotees since
the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, it was not until the rise of the counter-culture of the
213
214
GURU MOVEMENTS
sixties and seventies that they really caught the public imagination in the West, through their attraction of celebrity followers such as John Lennon and George Harrison. Although they do not have the
profile now that they did then, to some extent this simply reflects the fact that they are now a more
established part of modern Western culture than ever. Some groups have also gained a different sort
of acceptance, that is acceptance by the mainstream of more traditional Hindu religious traditions.
Thus the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple at Bhaktivedanta manor, a country house in the south of England, given
to ISKCON by George Harrison, is visited by many Hindus of South Asian origin or extraction. They
worship Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa through the images there and respect the western devotees of the movement as people leading lives of genuine spiritual devotion and service. In the 1970s, ethnically Indian
Hindus came to outnumber Western converts in most ISKCON temples in the USA.1 This is perhaps
because ISKCON is somewhat more traditional than many other groups which have accepted Western disciples. Although not entirely typical of a Hindu NRM, ISKCON is by far the best-studied of such
movements, and for that reason will be examined in more detail here.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded by Swami Prabhupada in 1966, but
it traces its roots back through the Swami’s own guru, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami, a spiritual teacher within the Gauḍiya Vaiṣṇava movement whose most important figure is the sixteenthcentury renouncer and worshipper of Kṛṣṇa, Caitanya (1486–1533). Caitanya in turn drew on longestablished traditions of Kṛṣṇa worship, of which we have literary evidence from the fifth or sixth
century textscbce, that is, more than 2500 years ago. Hare Kṛṣṇas themselves believe Kṛṣṇa to have
lived on earth some 5000 years ago.
Devotion to Kṛṣṇa in Bengal had developed from the eleventh or twelfth centuries. The Gītagovinda,
a Sanskrit poem celebrating the love between Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā was composed around 1170 by Jayadeva,
and sets the tone for the nature of Bengali devotion to Kṛṣṇa. Two other poets whose works were
known by, and influenced, Caitanya were Vidyāpati (end of the fourteenth century) and Caṇḍīdās
(fourteenth to fifteenth century). In the poetry of these authors the erotic nature of the love of Rādhā
for Kṛṣṇa is emphasized. Caitanya may also have been influenced by tantric thought, which sees in
the sexual union between man and woman the final overcoming of duality, and the symbolising of
unity.
Caitanya received a traditional Sanskrit education and was initially contemptuous of popular
bhakti movements. However he met a south Indian ascetic who initiated him into the worship of
Kṛṣṇa. He joined a group of devotees who met nightly to sing songs of praise to Kṛṣṇa and he began to experience ecstatic possession by Kṛṣṇa. Caitanya began to attract followers and appointed
six of them as Gosvāmins, who formulated the official theology of the sect. Caitanya did not fulfil
the traditional role of an acārya, by writing a commentary on the Brahmasūtra, and the movement
therefore claimed descent from Madhva, an early teacher and the greatest dualist theologian. In the
official theology of the Gosvāmins, brahman, the absolute of the Upaniṣads, is regarded as only a partial manifestation of the higher, personal reality, Bhagavat or the Lord Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa is not an avatāra
of Viṣṇu, but the Lord himself. Caitanya is taken by his followers to be an avatāra of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā,
1Nurir Zaidman, “The Integration of Indian Immigrants to Temples Run by North Americans,” Social Compass 47, no. 2
(2000): 205–219.
GURU MOVEMENTS
215
experiencing in one body the bliss of Kṛṣṇa’s union with his śākti, Rādhā. The devotee pictures him
or herself as a gopī, full of longing for the bliss of union with Lord Kṛṣṇa. The distinctive practice of
the Gauḍiya Vaiṣṇavas, is the repetition of Kṛṣṇa’s names; the name Kṛṣṇa is a manifestation of his
essence, and the devotee invokes the presence of the deity by chanting it. Caitanya led processions
of his followers through the streets chanting the ‘maha mantra’ - hare kṛṣṇa, hare kṛṣṇa, kṛṣṇa, kṛṣṇa,
hare hare, hare rāma, hare rāma, rāma, rāma, hare, hare. The mantra may be familiar to you from its
use by ISKCON.
Caitanya’s movement was also distinctive for its inclusiveness of all, regardless of caste, and this
is taken to its furthest extreme by the Hare Kṛṣṇas who initiate even non-Hindus into the worship
of Kṛṣṇa. Despite this, the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement is regarded by all but the strictest Hindus as an
orthodox movement. The Hare Kṛṣṇa movement is, then, both very old and very new. The movement
is focussed on the worship of Kṛṣṇa through the chanting or singing of the names of God, among which
the most commonly used, in addition to Kṛṣṇa are Hare and Rama. Hence the mantra ‘Hare Kṛṣṇa,
Hare Ram’ etc. Caitanya and his followers processed through the streets, singing the praises of Kṛṣṇa,
a tradition which can regularly be seen in action in city streets around the world, particularly during
the Rath Yatra festival.
The more immediate roots of ISKCON lie in the Gauḍiya Math, a movement founded in 1918 by
Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati to revive the Caitanya tradition of Kṛṣṇa bhakti. One of the disciples of
Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati was A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. The future Prabhupada was
born in Calcutta in 1896, the son of a Vaiṣṇava family, and named Abhay Charan De. He first met
Saraswati in 1922 and 10 years later received initiation from him. During the years before and after the
war he was active in Calcutta, and produced a magazine called Back to Godhead which is still published
by ISKCON. In 1956 he left Calcutta and moved to Vrindaban, where he was initiated as a sannyasin,
and took the name by which he is now usually known—devotees refer to him as Srila Prabhupad. He
undertook to translate, comment on, and publish the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the main compendium of
Kṛṣṇa mythology. He also subsequently translated and commented on the Bhagavadgītā. Book-selling
remains a major means of both support and recruitment for the movement.
As a child Prabhupada had had a prophecy that at the age of 70 he would cross the ocean. In 1965 a
supporter paid his fare to New York on a cargo ship. There he founded ISKCON and began lecturing on
the Gītā. He found a ready audience in the counter-culture of 1960s New York. One of the first events
which brought ISKCON, and Prabhupada, to wide public attention took place in 1967 at a rock concert
in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg introduced Prabhupada, and the mantra was sung. One of the
slogans used by ISKCON at the time to appeal to drug users was ‘Stay high forever! No more coming
down. Practice Krishna Consciousness. Expand your consciousness by practicing the Transcendental
Sound Vibration’. In 1968 Prabhupada succeeded in making contact with George Harrison, of the
Beatles, who had already been involved with another Hindu guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the
teacher of Transcendental Meditation). Harrison became a devotee and recorded ‘My sweet Lord’, and
remained an important supporter of the movement. In 1969 the movement attracted wide publicity
in Europe, when Prabhupada visited. By the time of Prabhupada’s death in 1977, Britain had become
the centre of the movement’s operations. Before his death Prabhupada selected some of his disciples
to become ‘initiating gurus’, in effect his successors, and these have so far enabled the movement to
survive the death of its charismatic and founding figure. Despite the departure from the movement in
1982 of the guru responsible for Britain, Jayatirtha dasa, the movement remains important in Britain,
although increasingly it is supported by ethnic Indians.
216
GURU MOVEMENTS
Kṛṣṇa is said by ISKCON to be ‘the supreme personality of the Godhead’. Although the movement
acknowledges the value of other religious paths, Kṛṣṇa is understood to be both the final truth of God
and the most attractive form of the divine, therefore inspiring the greatest devotion. Chanting the
names of god (Hare ‘O energy of the Lord’, Rama, Kṛṣṇa) is not only a way of bringing god to mind but
also has other desirable effects, changing one’s karma, bringing peace of mind and freedom from fear.
The mantra is chanted while counting off on a kind of rosary, consisting of 108 ‘japa beads’. Initiates
are supposed to chant 16 rounds each day, repeating the mantra 1728 times in all, which takes about
2 hours (Prabhupada had initially recommended 64 rounds). Initiates also vow 1) to avoid meat, fish
and eggs, 2) not to take intoxicants or stimulants, 3) not to have illicit sex (although not all initiates
are celibate, sex is only licit when procreation is likely), 4) not to gamble.
The death of Prabhupada and the ‘routinization of charisma’
A key moment in the history of any new religious movement comes with the death of its founder.
Max Weber, an important early-twentieth-century sociologist of religion distinguished three types of
authority: traditional, rational-legal, charismatic. Where a new religious movement depends entirely
on the charismatic authority of its founder, it may not outlive him or her very long. Weber identified
a process he called ‘routinization of charisma’ and ‘institutionalization’ which enable new religious
movements to make the transition to life without their founders. Chryssides argues that in the case of
ISKCON, Prabhupada’s authority did not depend on charisma alone, but also on his position within
a longer line of teachers that he was initiated into by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. Moreover prior to
his death Prabhupada had already begun the process of instutionalizing his authority through the
establishment of a 20-member Governing Body Commission (GBC) for ISKCON, and later the choice
of 11 members of the GBC as initiating gurus, able to continue his role of initiating new devotees into
Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
There have been some debates over authority, succession and other issues in the years since Prabhupada’s death,2 but ISKCON remains a successful movement and now has branches throughout the
world, including New Zealand.3 It has also had an effect in India itself, and in some ways is even
more successful there. Zaidman reports that not all ethnic Indian visitors to ISKCON temples in the
US regard non-Indian brahmacaris and sanyasis resident in the temples as able to perform the traditional duties of a brahman priest, although they are widely regarded as such at the major centre
of Kṛṣṇa devotion in Vrindaban where ‘they are eating with brahmins who refuse to eat with nonbrahmins; brahmin fathers have inquired about the possibility of marriage between their daughters
and ISKCON men; Vrindaban residents have accepted ISKCON devotees as gurus; devotees have acted
as family priests and are approached for spiritual advice’.4 Even in India, however, there are limits to
their acceptance in India; Gavin Flood wrote that (as of 1995) ISKCON devotees were not admitted to
the temple of Lord Jagannatha, an important Kṛṣṇa temple in Orissa.5
2For details of these see Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand, The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate
of a Religious Transplant (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
3The main centre in New Zealand is the Sri-Sri Radha Giridhari Temple in Kumeu on the north-west outskirts of Auckland. See http://www.iskconnz.com
4Zaidman, “The Integration of Indian Immigrants to Temples Run by North Americans,” 218.
5See Gavin A. Flood, “Hinduism, Vaisnavism and ISKCON: Authentic Traditions or Scholarly Constructions,” ISKCON
Communications Journal 3, no. 2 (1995).
GURU MOVEMENTS
217
A new religious movement?
‘New Religious Movement’ or NRM is a term coined by scholars to refer to the religious groups sometimes labelled ‘cults’ while avoiding the pejorative associations of the term ‘cult’. Although older scholarly works—and a few newer ones—continue to use the term ‘cult’, NRM has become the standard
term in scholarly writing, and ISKCON is most often discussed under this rubric.6 Some aspects of
ISKCON are clearly ‘new’ to Hinduism, most notably their acceptance of those not born Hindu. Nevertheless ISKCON devotees reject the idea that ISKCON is a new religious movement as they not only
regard themselves as part of a five thousand year-old tradition stretching back to the time of the Vedas
but, like other Hindus, regard the Vedas themselves as timeless. For them, far from being new, Kṛṣṇa
consciousness is eternal. Thus Mukunda Goswami, who rejects the term NRM as a label, writes that
‘ISKCON systematically teaches people how to develop love for God, using a method as old as time
itself.’7 Gavin Flood acknowledges that in many ways, ISKCON is a traditional Hindu movement; it
accepts the Vedas as authoritative and Prabhupada was initiated in the traditional manner into a
longstanding lineage of teachers and pupils. He notes that there are even precedents for Hindu movements which ‘which have rejected caste and maintained that salvation is open to all’ and he adds that
‘ISKCON needs to be understood in the context of such caste-transcending groups.’8 Nevertheless he
notes that in other respects, for example the establishment of the Governing Body Commission and
the mindset of many of its Western members, ISKCON is non-traditional.
Recommended reading
Bryant, Edwin F., and Maria L. Ekstrand. The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a
Religious Transplant. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Urban, Hugh B. “Avatar for Our Age: Sathya Sai Baba and the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism.” Religion 33, no. 1 (2003): 73–94.
Warrier, Maya. Hindu Selves in a Modern World: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission.
London: Routledge, 2005.
6Note that ‘cult’ continues to be used by scholars in a different, and non-pejorative, sense to refer especially to the
rituals and ceremonies associated with any religious group. In this sense ‘the cult of Kṛṣṇa’ refers simply to the (mainstream)
tradition of worship and devotion associated with Kṛṣṇa and carries none of the negative connotations the word has when
used to refer to minority religious groups regarded with suspicion.
7Mukunda Goswami, “NRM Is A Four-letter Word: The Language of Oppression,” ISKCON Communications Journal 3,
no. 2 (1995).
8Flood, “Hinduism, Vaisnavism and ISKCON: Authentic Traditions or Scholarly Constructions.”
218
GURU MOVEMENTS
Required Reading
Michael J. Spurr, “Modern Hindu Guru Movements,” in Handbook of Hinduism in Asia, ed. Aditya Malik and Will Sweetman, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Sage, 2015).
G
urus have played a major role Hindu religious life since Vedic times, but the modern era has
more than its share of prominent examples of what some scholars have termed ‘great gurus—the
mahagurus.’1 Facilitated by rapid transport, telecommunications and the ever broadening Indian diaspora, these figures have garnered India-wide and even pan-global followings. Often, they are also
controversial figures; to their critics, they are megalomaniacs, hypocrites, charlatans, and even felons.
But this is at least partly in the nature of the role. The dichotomy of enthusiasm and scorn in accounts
of gurus dates back to at least seventh century India,2 and even modern scholars, while not usually
extreme in their views, tend to have been divided between these two camps. Attraction and aversion
are both powerful motivating factors, and in my own case at least, had I not been a follower of contemporary South Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba, I would have struggled to find the motivation necessary
to complete my recent doctoral thesis on him.
David Smith laments that there is ‘no extensive academic survey of gurus,’3 suggesting that scholars sympathetic to the notion of the guru tend to be drawn to one particular guru, producing studies
focussed on that guru to the exclusion of the wider phenomenon, and that unsympathetic scholars
have a natural tendency to avoid the phenomenon altogether. Smith himself produces a good, if brief
overview, referencing most of the previous scholarship, but in general his observation seems to hold
true. Certainly even the years since 2003 have seen the production of several detailed studies of individual guru movements as well as a number of volumes of collected studies of individual gurus, but
no comprehensive comparative analysis.
That said, the various collected volumes usually do contain some sort of introductory or concluding synthesis,4 and there are some genuine exceptions to Smith’s rule. Kenneth Jones contributes
a reasonably comprehensive and often overlooked volume on Socio-Religious Reform Movements In
British India.5 Srinivas Aravamudan, while not presenting the type of synoptic survey idealised by
Smith, extensively references a significant number of modern gurus, cleverly explicating them via the
episteme of Guru English.6 In shorter works, Shandip Saha surveys the influence of many Hindu gurus
in the west and Angela Rudert, while undertaking doctoral research on one particular guru, has truly
1Daniel Gold, “Epilogue: Elevated Gurus, Concrete Traditions and the Problems of Western Devotees,” in Gurus in America, ed. Thomas A. Forsthoefel and Cynthia A. Humes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 220.
2Smith, Hinduism and Modernity, 168.
3Ibid.
4Antony Copley, ed., Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2000), The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), Forsthoefel and Humes, Gurus in America.
5Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
6S. Aravamudan, Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2006).
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
219
broken Smith’s mould in publishing an overview of recent scholarship on a broad set of modern Indian gurus who she classifies as “New-Age.”7 Now, in my own case, having focused my doctorate upon
one guru, I have an opportunity to branch out in addressing the wider topic. An extensive survey is,
however, beyond the scope of this chapter. There is in fact a sense in which, as Wilhelm Halbfass puts
it in relation to the many and diverse persons who significantly influenced the formation and various
formulations of modern Hinduism, it would be ‘preposterous to attempt a complete or even representative account.’8 And Halbfass is only referring to historical figures; he does not even consider the
many thousands of living gurus. In a recent popular account, M. L. Ahuja, fills two volumes with brief
overviews of forty-odd high-profile nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indian gurus, and a thorough
analysis of even these figures would be a much bigger undertaking.9 Partiality is not the only reason
that scholars generally choose to focus on only one guru.
What I can aim to do here … is to identify some key conclusions, broad themes and contrasts from
the various approaches that scholars have taken in studies of modern Hindu guru movements, and
attempt to point to some gaps or possible directions for future research. This in itself is no easy task,
as scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have addressed the topic in a wide variety of ways. Jones
lists amongst his sources works on ‘history, political science, anthropology, sociology, comparative
religion, and the history of religion,’10 and I would add a multi-disciplinary dimension to this, variously
incorporating additional elements from such diverse fields as economics,11 literary criticism,12 urban
studies,13 cognitive science,14, psychology,15 and even parapsychology.16 Again, it will be impossible
for me to do justice to all or even most of the elements of these works (and there are many others
also), but I at least hope to reference enough major examples to facilitate further investigations by
interested readers and researchers.
Hindu Gurus
Traditional folk etymologies usually present the Sanskrit term guru as if it were an acronym of its
two constituent syllables. The most popular variant associates “gu” with darkness (ignorance) and
“ru” with removal of the same, producing the meaning “spiritual teacher.”17 Modern scholars tend to
prefer derivations from the more literal meaning, “heavy”, invoking the weight of authority vested in
7Shandip Saha, “Hinduism, Gurus, and Globalization,” in Religion, Globalization and Culture, ed. Peter Beyer and Lori
Beaman (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 485–502; Angela Rudert, “Research on Contemporary Indian Gurus: What’s New about New
Age Gurus?,” Religion Compass 4, no. 10 (2010): 629–642.
8Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 218.
9M. L. Ahuja, Indian Spiritual Gurus, vol. 2 vols. (New Delhi: Icon Publications, 2006).
10Jones, Reform Movements, 234.
11McKean, Divine Enterprise; Hugh B. Urban, “Avatar for Our Age: Sathya Sai Baba and the Cultural Contradictions of
Late Capitalism,” Religion 33, no. 1 (2003): 73–94.
12Aravamudan, Guru English, Brian A. Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
13Smriti Srinivas, In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
14Kimmo Ketola, The Founder of the Hare Krishnas as Seen by Devotees: A Cognitive Study of Religious Charisma (Leiden:
Brill, 2008).
15Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
16Erlendur Haraldsson, Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sri Sathya Sai
Baba (Mamaroneck: Hastings House, 1997).
17Scriptural touch-points for these etymologies include the purāṇic Gurugītā, the yogic Advayatārakopaniṣad, and the
Pāṇini sūtras (see, e.g., Helen Ralston, “The Construction of Authority in the Christian Ashram Movement,” Archives des
220
GURU MOVEMENTS
such teachers. There is also possibly a connection in this regard with the traditional ‘belief that mighty
or holy persons have a spiritual attribute which is measured in quantity,’18 something which is taken
to an extreme in the theories and practices of tantric alchemy.19
The term guru has also been used for many centuries in India in a more general sense as descriptive of well-regarded authorities in a variety of fields of learning.20 Its current widespread international usage in this sense, however, owes more to the impact on the modern imagination of the stereotypically flamboyant modern Hindu spiritual teachers typified by the by the narrower sense of the
term. Something of the aura of self-proclaimed expertise radiated by these figures obviously resonates
with popular perceptions of high-profile experts on all manner of modern subjects, and it is likely that
there are some genuine similarities in the psychodynamics underlying both phenomena. Anthony
Storr presents a psychological study of a number of high-profile Western spiritual and psychological
“gurus”, and it would be interesting to expand this to include contemporary self-improvement, newage healing, management, financial and information technology gurus.
It is, however, the explicitly spiritual or religious and specifically Hindu dimensions of this phenomenon that form the subject of this chapter, and in this regard there is a gulf between these last
figures and modern Hindu spiritual gurus, in that the latter are usually considered by their followers
avatāra to literally be “descents” (avatāra) of one or more traditional deities. Gurus themselves may not always encourage this identification; their positions on the issue range from outright denial to forceful
affirmation.21 But to their followers the idea that the guru is more than just an exceptional human
being is the rule rather than the exception. Such views might be dismissed as wishful thinking on the
part of the followers or self-aggrandisement on the part of the gurus, but it should be noted that in
the advaita (non-dualistic) traditions upon which most modern gurus draw, there is a strong sense in
which categories such as avatāra or even guru are not accorded genuine ontological status, but are
ultimately seen as dualistic constructs that must be transcended in order to comprehend the nondual reality. Modern gurus of this persuasion often seem to use these concepts as vehicles for abstract
philosophical or theological doctrine, rather than as simple identity statements, and in this sense,
even when they sometimes choose to reject the term guru as inadequately descriptive of their spiritual self-understanding, they can justifiably be categorised as gurus nonetheless.22
Likewise, though they exhibit a range of beliefs in relation to their “Hindu” identity, and sometimes explicitly reject this also, they can, despite some inevitable cross-fertilisation, generally be distinguished from non-Hindu Indian religious leaders.23 While similar figures are found in Buddhism,
Sciences Sociales des Religions 67, no. 1 (1989): 54, Joel D. Mlecko, “The Guru in Hindu Tradition,” Numen 29, no. 1 (1982): 33–
34, Antonio Rigopoulos, “The Guru-Gītā or “Song of the Master” as Incorporated in the Guru-caritra of Sarasvatī Gangadhar:
Obsevations on its Teaching and the Guru Institute,” in Theory And Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson,
ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 237–292, and with due caution the Wikipedia article “Guru”).
18Ralston, “Christian Ashram Movement,” 54.
19David Gordon White, “Why Gurus Are Heavy,” Numen 31, no. 1 (1984): 40–73.
20Martial gurus, and gurus for music and other performing arts are probably the most common examples of this and,
while there may be explicit spiritual elements to these disciplines, at a more popular level the term is also used of school
teachers, parents, and other elders or seniors (Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus, xi).
21Daniel E. Bassuk, Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity: The Myth of the God-Man (London: Macmillan, 1987);
Michael James Spurr, “Sathya Sai Baba as Avatar: “His Story” and the History of an Idea” (PhD diss., 2007).
22Arvind Sharma, “Rajneesh and the Guru Tradition in India,” in The Rajneesh Papers, ed. Susan J. Palmer and Arvind
Sharma (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993), 3; cf. Rudert, “Contemporary Indian Gurus,” 640.
23ibid., 630, 635; Daniel Gold, The Lord as Guru: Hindi Sants in North Indian Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press,
1987), 173–99; Marianne E. Warren, Unravelling the Enigma: Shirdi Sai Baba in the Light of Sufism (New Delhi: Sterling, 1999).
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
221
Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity,24 these have their own distinctive features. This is not to
deny that there is a good deal of diversity within modern Hindu movements. Smith notes that ‘there
are said to be tens of thousands of gurus’ and ‘gurus are in fact difficult to summarize.’25 But he is able
to identify a number of common ‘general characteristics’ nonetheless, and a number of other scholars
have done the same. Lawrence Babb, for example, focusing on just three modern Hindu guru movements, writes that “if there is common ground between them, it is not a matter of ‘beliefs’ … [nor] a
matter of what is sometimes called ‘worldview’,” but he points out that ‘extreme diversity gives us the
clearest possible contrast between varying externals and the constant inner core,’ and he proceeds
to articulate a social psychology of common ‘loosely floating images’ that embody definitively Hindu
cultural and religious themes.26
Modern Movements
The term “movement” also bears some consideration in this connection, especially since, unlike the
terms guru and “Hinduism”, it has rarely itself been adopted by Hindu groups. In the present context,
“movement” obviously refers to any guru or lineage of gurus with attendant teachings and followers,
but its literal implication of an agenda for change—a movement—is also significant. As is often the
case, an orientation towards ‘change’ may simply be a fundamentalist desire to return to what are
imagined to be earlier and more traditional means or standards of religiosity,27 or it may be a move
to propagate genuinely traditional teachings to new audiences. But it is a change nonetheless. There
is an alignment here with the broader category of ‘new religious movements’ that scholars generally
apply to groups that are either new to their geographic locale or that ‘rework older historical traditions with novel conceptual and ritual frameworks.’28 In the present case, such “movements” could be
contrasted with the followings of numerous, usually hereditary, family- or caste-specific gurus who
are content to facilitate the status quo, or who primarily adapt to change rather than actively promoting it. In addition to these, there are guru-led groups that represent continuities (albeit with some
inevitable reinterpretation) of institutionalised pre-modern guru movements founded by the likes of
Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, Madhva, Vallabha and Caitanya.29
The question of the meaning and scope of the term “modern” also arises in this regard. Some
scholars find a convenient analogy with standard definitions of “modern” Western history (i.e. that
since approximately 1500 CE) in the fact that some features of the guru movements of this era, arising
from the milieu of Hindu-Muslim encounter, parallel aspects of undeniably modern guru movements
arising from the later Indian-European encounter. At the opposite extreme is a focus on just the last
50 years, as the profile of gurus in the West was raised via the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the
24Sharma, “Rajneesh,” 3; Fredrik Barth, “The Guru and the Conjurer: Transactions in Knowledge and the Shaping of
Culture in Southeast Asia and Melanesia,” Man 25, no. 4 (1990): 640–53; Ralston, “Christian Ashram Movement.”
25Smith, Hinduism and Modernity, 167–180.
26Lawrence A. Babb, Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 206, 5.
27Jones, Reform Movements, 2.
28Srinivas, Sai Baba, 338.
29Shandip Saha (“Hinduism, Gurus, and Globalization,” 493–94) refers to a couple of good examples of such movements,
further observing that because the gurus are orthodox Brahmans, they observe traditional scriptural injunctions forbidding
travel across the oceans, but are still able to maintain significant diasporic followings through the use of television and the
internet. On the “electronic presence” of gurus see, also, Srinivas, Sai Baba, 104–8.
222
GURU MOVEMENTS
intensification of the Indian diaspora to America and Europe.30 But scholars most often seem to date
the modern period in India from the time of the ‘full establishment of British rule in the late eighteenth
century,’31 and there seems to be reasonable justification for this.32
As Jones points out, the ‘colonial milieu’ included such elements as the influence of British bureaucracy, which was reflected in Hindu ‘religious societies fully equipped with elected officials, weekly
meetings, annual published reports, bank accounts, sophisticated systems of fundraising, annual meetings, executive committees, subcommittees, bye-laws, and constitutions.’ The introduction of printing presses lead to rapid ‘protestantization’ as the ‘availability of the printed text encouraged the creation of creeds that summarized a complex set of teachings’, the vernaculars stole the foreground
from Sanskrit as media for religious expression, and religious truth was seen to reside in the resultant
printed texts, depriving the brahmans of their traditional monopoly in this area.33
More controversial are claims that the substantial social service undertaken by the new Hindu
movements was a response to Christian ideals,34 but certainly the institutionalisation of such service
was a colonial-influenced novelty, and Christian missionary views undoubtedly drew responses and
had influence in other areas. Antony Copley writes that Neo-Hindu movements ‘began to imitate
the corporate life of Christianity, its communal prayer, its monasticism,… its concepts of sin, guilt,
the need for repentance and grace.’35 The influence of eighteenth-century European spiritualism as
manifest especially in the Theosophy movement, of Unitarian Christian views, of English education
and of the English language itself, along with the rise of romantic nationalism, further contribute to
the distinctiveness of this time period.36
Dating the modern period in India from the late eighteenth century also makes it roughly contemporaneous with the advent of academic scholarship on Indian religions. This itself is a distinctive
element, as the works produced by these scholars directly influenced a number of modern gurus as
well as promoting a broader ‘Oriental renaissance’ in the West, as ‘writers, poets, and philosophers
found inspiration in the Oriental classics and modelled some of their work on the new forms.’37 The
close temporal connection between scholar and guru also provides opportunities for contextualising
studies in ways that are impossible in relation to pre-modern movements. Mass media and popular
culture references to gurus can be adduced for context,38 as can census data and other government
documents, and anthropological fieldwork often is invaluable.39 Members of guru movements can
themselves even be asked to make a direct contribution, either by way of critical writing,40 or by contributing information. In one of the earliest scholarly accounts to focus exclusively on a modern guru,
30Rudert, “Contemporary Indian Gurus,” 635, 639.
31Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2000).
32Aravamudan presents a more sophisticated variant of this periodization (Aravamudan, Guru English, 17).
33Jones, Reform Movements, 1, 212–15.
34Gwilym Beckerlegge, The Ramakrishna Mission: The Making of a Modern Hindu Movement (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Srinivas, Sai Baba, 143–44.
35Copley, Gurus, 9.
36Aravamudan, Guru English.
37Milton B. Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization (London: Pall
Mall Press, 1972), 24–26.
38E.g., Smith, Hinduism and Modernity; Aravamudan, Guru English.
39Babb, Redemptive Encounters, Srinivas, Sai Baba.
40For example, Bryant and Ekstrand, Hare Krishna Movement.
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
223
Friedrich Max Müller prefaces his translation of some of the sayings of the then recently deceased Ramakrishna (1836–1886) with a biographical sketch requested directly from Swami Vivekananda (1863–
1902), Ramakrishna’s most prominent disciple.41
Further to this, scholars may themselves be followers of gurus, or may engage in debate with the
objects of their study. Müller’s writing on Ramakrishna was partly a rejoinder to views aired by the
likes of the Theosophical Society (see below), and Charles White (also cited below) was himself a
Theosophist. More recently, a number of scholars have attempted to write in ‘discursive modes that
are at once “insider” and “scholarly”’. Care needs to be taken in this regard, but this at least provides
a corrective to an unconscious propensity for ‘an implicit denigration of the Other … a denial of the
fact that criticality, theory, and self-awareness are also concerns for religion(s) in general.’42 It also provides a number of other advantages,43 and my experience agrees with that of Lisa Hallstrom when she
writes: ‘my personal immersion in the philosophy and practices of the Hindu tradition has enhanced,
rather than limited, my critical abilities as a scholar.’44 …
Smith criticises Weber’s ‘decision to concentrate on the literate strata, on brahmans and monks,’45
but this is again perhaps overly dismissive. While there certainly is much to be learned from subaltern strata and other means of study,46 there surely remains at least some value in consideration of
the textual antecedents of modern guru movements. As Sumit Sarkar observes, there has been some
scholarly interest in ‘ways in which elements of high textual culture could sink into and intermix with
predominantly oral practices.’47 He notes, for example, that, though illiterate, Ramakrishna:
could have relatively easy access to ‘high’ knowledge, despite poverty and lack of formal
education, as he happened to be of Brahman birth … [and] could imbibe mainstream
Hindu traditions through watching folk theatre performances of epic and puranic tales.
At least the latter part of this applies to most modern gurus, many of whom are not Brahmans. The
textual outputs of the literate strata are in any case hard to ignore, and Smith goes on to cite in his
chapter on gurus both Weber and one of his principal literate strata sources, J. N. Bhattacharyya (1850–
1899), president of the brahman council of Bengal, author of one of the first modern appraisals of sects
and guru movements.… Bhattacharyya’s study is a valuable source of factual information, but it is
inhibited by a distinct air of distain for gurus. The ‘meaningless’ mantras and phallic idols promoted
by tantric gurus and the repetitive recitations and erotic scriptures of their Vaiṣṇava counterparts
evidently offend his Victorian and modernist sensibilities. He sees the modern guru phenomenon as
something of an aberration, driven by greed, and finds ‘no mention of it in the ancient scriptures.’48
Clearly, from his perspective, there is little continuity between the earliest traditions and modern
movements. But, however much his views may be coloured by his Vedic Brahman background and
41Friedrich Max Müller, Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings (London: Longmans, Green, / Co., 1898), 60—61
42José Ignacio Cabezón, “The Discipline and Its Other: The Dialectic of Alterity in the Study of Religion,” Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 74, no. 1 (2006): 32–34, 28–29.
43Spurr, “Sai Baba,” 27–29.
44Lisa L. Hallstrom, Mother of Bliss: Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12.
45Smith, Hinduism and Modernity, 78–80.
46E.g. Srinivas analyses “Architecture as Rhetoric” and “Encrypted Spaces” in the Sathya Sai Baba movement; H. Daniel
Smith critiques idiosyncratic gestures of Ramakrishna and Sathya Sai Baba (“Hindu “desika”-figures: Some Notes on a Minor
Iconographic Tradition,” Religion 8, no. 1 (1978): 40–67).
47Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 317—18
48J. N. Bhattacharyya, Hindu Castes and Sects (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, 1896), 25–29.
224
GURU MOVEMENTS
other prejudices, the question of the extent of continuity is an important one, and one which many
subsequent scholars have addressed.
Categories of Continuity
Weber, partly following Bhattacharyya, identifies the roots of modern guru movements in what he
sees as a decline of earlier traditional (Sanskritic), hereditary and sectarian forms of guru leadership,
the rise of emotionalistic bhakti, and earlier bhakti displacement of the traditional role of the Brahmans, which paved the way for charismatic religious leadership to emerge from the middle classes in
conjunction with their enhanced economic prospects under British rule.49 Joel Mlecko, traces a more
detailed text-based history of Hindu guru concepts from ancient to modern times, and comes to a
similar conclusion.50
Some scholars have explicitly theorized this question. Jones divides modern movements into
‘transitional’ and ‘acculturative’:
Transitional movements had their origins in the pre-colonial world and arose from indigenous forms of socio-religious dissent, with little or no influence from the colonial
milieu … [and] made limited adjustments to that environment.… The emergence of acculturative movements within the colonial milieu was both a continuation of socioreligious dissent, and a modification of this tradition. The context was new as South
Asians, who came into direct contact with the English … adjusted to the realities of
British dominance. Those, who could not ignore these new rulers but who depended
on them for their social and economic position, found ways to restructure their own cultural heritage in order to retain a place within that heritage.51
Similarly, Halbfass reiterates the ideas of Paul Hacker, who ‘divided modern Indian thought … into
“Neo-Hinduism” and “surviving traditional Hinduism”,’ the main distinction between which was not
‘any particular teachings,’ but, rather:
the different ways in which they appeal to the tradition, the structures which they employ to interrelate the indigenous and the foreign, and the degree of their receptivity visà-vis the West.… “Neo-Hinduism … always implies re-interpretation.” … [Neo-Hindus]
first adopt Western values and means of orientation and then attempt to find the foreign
in the indigenous: “… afterwards they connect these values with and claim them as part
of the Hindu tradition.”52
A major focus of such ‘reinterpretation’ is often identified in attempts to reconcile Hindu ideas with
the modern theories of evolution that were a hot topic at the time.53
Other scholarly theorizations draw analogies with Western history in writing of a modern “Hindu
Renaissance” or “Reformation.”54 Gwilym Beckerlegge cites Sarkar’s view that the ‘Hindu Renaissance’
is largely a retrospectively applied intellectual construct, and problematic for that reason, but he does
49Max Weber, The Religion of India, trans. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (1921; New York: Free Press, 1958), 323–28.
50Mlecko, “Guru in Hindu Tradition.”
51Jones, Reform Movements, 3, 211–212.
52Halbfass, India and Europe, 219–22.
53Mark Bevir, “Theosophy as a Political Movement,” in Copley, Gurus, 163.
54E.g., Agehananda Bharati, “The Hindu Renaissance and its Apologetic Patterns,” The Journal of Asian Studies 29, no. 2
(1970): 272; K. Choudhary, Modern Indian Mysticism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981), 79).
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
225
note that “reference was popularly made in nineteenth-century Bengal to a ‘new age’ or ‘awakening’.”55 And while “Neo-Hinduism” is also an academic construct, Halbfass notes that the term ‘NeoVedantism’ did have some currency in India at the time.56 The difference between these last two terms
is not without significance, however, for the underlying theology of the vast majority of acculturative, Neo-Hindu, Hindu Renaissance movements is extrapolated from the canons of advaita vedānta,
which, while influential, is but one of the major traditional philosophical schools.
One reason for this emphasis rests on the obvious suitability of non-dualism for the task of countering Christian derision of Hindu polytheism. The most commonly adopted position in this regard
is one that seminal Neo-Hindu Rammohun Roy (1772–1833) derived directly from traditional advaita,
whereby polytheistic image worship is seen as an acceptable preliminary practice for those unable to
comprehend the non-dual truth.57 Ironically, advaita was also encouraged by Christian missionaries
as an “easy ‘monistic’ target” over and against which to promote ‘the moral superiority of Christianity’.
And more politically motivated British Orientalists, by whose works Rammohun was influenced, may
have promoted it as an antidote to the advance of French Jacobinism (it-self a potential prelude to
French political expansion in India) or as a suitably quietist ‘indigenous ideological bulwark against
social activism.’58 Rammohun’s significant monotheistic Sufi and Unitarian influences also perhaps
made advaita an attractive choice. But, in any case, despite having almost no presence traditionally, advaita soon became equated with Vedanta in his Bengali milieu, and this milieu also gave rise
to several other influential Neo-Hindu gurus. Beckerlegge notes that ‘in nineteenth-century Bengal,
Vedanta was widely held to be synonymous with Advaita, and, by 1896, Vivekananda had come to
identify “Vedantist” with “Hindu”.’59
Vivekananda’s guru Ramakrishna, however, was not so much of this persuasion, and this indicates
a problem with attempts to differentiate two types of modern Hindu movement. As Copley points out,
‘Jones speculates that quite often the leaders were transitional and the followers acculturative.’60 But
the fact of such anomalies would not be apparent without drawing a distinction in the first place, and
it is often, as Halbfass puts it, ‘useful and convenient’ to do so.61 Without resorting to such categories,
scholars would be forced always to deal in particular instances, and, while some would no doubt argue that this would be a good thing, it would put a limit on possibilities for creative and illuminating
conjunctions. Jones’s work is actually very conservative in this respect, consisting primarily of historical narratives constructed mostly from primary sources and broken down by religious movement and
geographical location. Other scholars have revelled in being much less cautious.
One of the most creative scholarly works to reflect on gurus is Aravamudan’s Guru English, in
which he connects figures as diverse as Ramakrishna, Mother Teresa, and Salman Rushdie, skilfully
situating them within a common linguistic milieu. He presents “Guru English” as, amongst other
things, ‘a theolinguistics, generating new religious meanings … [and] a literary discourse … [using]
multilingual puns, parody, and syncretism’. He cites, for example, the ‘lame pun … by Sai Baba’, which
55Gwilym Beckerlegge, “The Hindu Renaissance and Notions of Universal Religion,” in Religion in History: Conflict, Conversion and Coexistence, ed. John Wolffe (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 140.
56Halbfass, India and Europe, 219–22.
57Aravamudan, Guru English, 43, cf. Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic
East’ (London: Routledge, 1999), 132.
58Ibid., 120–31.
59Beckerlegge, “The Hindu Renaissance and Notions of Universal Religion,” 309.
60Copley, Gurus, xiii.
61Halbfass, India and Europe, 221.
226
GURU MOVEMENTS
‘suggests that bābā (colloquially, “father”) … is literally the Lamb of God, because lambs when they
bleat, say “baa-baa”.’62 But while these are new religious meanings, and while there is far more to Aravamudan’s ‘Guru English’ than mere punning, the phenomenon of folk etymology is obviously far
from new (recall the definition of guru cited earlier). Similarly, while Aravamudan cites influential
Neo-Hindu Keshab Chandra Sen’s criticisms of traditional theologies in which ‘the disjunctive Or
reigns supreme; the copulative And finds no place’ as exemplifying ‘the closest example of a grammatical rule for Guru English, a theo-linguisitc prefiguration of E. M. Forster’s liberal philosophy of
“only connect”,’63 other scholars have suggested that ‘Neo-Hindu thinkers merely exploited the same
“inclusivism” found within traditional Hinduism.’64
Inclusivism is defined as ‘claiming for, and thus including in, one’s own religion what really belongs to an alien sect.’65 As Halbfass notes, Hacker ‘suggests a deep affinity between non-dualism and
inclusivism,’66 and while there are some problems with applying this consistently to ancient advaita,
the two certainly work together in Neo-Hindu movements. More generally speaking also, ‘inclusivistic
arguments characterize the attitude of new and younger religious traditions vis-à-vis older and more
established ones.’67 And something of this is certainly evident amongst a number of gurus popularly
and academically identified as belonging to the ‘Indian New Age’, with their penchant for ‘adopting
old, often foreign and ‘other’ traditions, …co-opting, re-shaping, re-packaging and commodifying ancient ideas from diverse sources for the current era.’68
This “diversity” of sources should not, however, be overemphasized. Thomas Forsthoefel and Cynthia Humes contrast ‘egalitarian inclusivism’, in which: ‘All [religions] go to the same goal’, and ‘an
inclusivism (all religions have value) with an exclusivist subtext (while all religions have value, all find
their ultimate meaning and value in Hinduism).’69 And the latter is by far the more prominent in the
Indian New Age. Norris Palmer writes, for example, that: ‘While one may mistakenly gather that Satya
Sai Baba is sharing a message of universal acceptance, he is, in essence, calling for a return to Vedic
religion.’70 This is, nevertheless, somewhat complicated by a sense in which some of the ‘Hindu texts
and traditions’ cited by many Hindu gurus are themselves “foreign and other”.
Agehananda Bharati famously framed this as a ‘pizza-effect’—so named after the ‘new tastes’
acquired by the pizza (originally a simple baked bread with no trimmings) in America, which contributed to a ‘new status’ for it upon its return to Italy with Italian-Americans.71 The implication here
is that the version of “Hinduism” expounded by many Neo-Hindu thinkers never really existed in its
fully fledged sense until it was objectified via the Western Oriental Renaissance and provided with
62Aravamudan, Guru English, 6, 36.
63Ibid., 50.
64Beckerlegge, “The Hindu Renaissance and Notions of Universal Religion,” 308; Hatcher discusses this at length in a
broader critical context and under the broader heading of “eclecticism” (Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse).
65Patrick Olivelle, “Review of Inklusivismus: Eine indische Denkform edited by Gerhard Oberhammer,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 106, no. 4 (1986): 867, citing Hacker, the first scholar to apply this concept to Indian traditions.
66Halbfass, India and Europe, 411.
67Olivelle, “Review of Inklusivismus: Eine indische Denkform edited by Gerhard Oberhammer,” 867, citing Albrecht Wezler.
68Rudert, “Contemporary Indian Gurus,” 629–30.
69Forsthoefel and Humes, Gurus in America, 8.
70Norris Palmer, “Baba’s World: A Global Guru and His Movement,” in Forsthoefel and Humes, Gurus in America, 105–6.
71Agehananda Bharati, Hindu Views and Ways and the Hindu-Muslim Interface (New Delhi: Munshiram Manohar Lal,
1981), 273–74
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
227
new status as it reimpacted on India. Bharati saw the beginnings of this “effect” with the emulation
by Indian scholars of the early European Indologists, extending to include an unprecedented Hindu
Renaissance emphasis on the Bhagavadgītā due to its popularity in the West.
Charles White, perhaps influenced by his own inclusivistic Theosophical ideals, disagreed with
this last point, arguing that the Bhagavadgītā was ‘important in ancient times, as exemplified by the
commentary on it of Śaṃkara and other philosophers’.72 And subsequent scholarship has questioned
Bharati’s more general conclusions.73 But the category of “Hindu Renaissance”, which Bharati opposes
to ‘grassroots’ Hinduism, and other similar distinctions at least provide a vocabulary by which scholarly debate can proceed, even if (like the preliminary idols of traditional advaita) they must ultimately
be transcended. Interestingly, White also took Bharati to task for presuming that a reputation for “miracles” garnered by Sathya Sai Baba is merely a testament to ‘the seemingly boundless gullibility of the
modern devotee’. Again, whatever the ultimate conclusion may be, the idea of miracles is so prominent amongst modern gurus that it is deserving of at least some scholarly consideration.
Miracles and Mischief
Something of a “pizza effect” is evident in the case of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 by
Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), and operating to this day from its headquarters in
Chennai. Initially basing its teachings based on Western esoterism, Theosophy adopted a number
of Buddhist and Hindu ideas via their representations in the products of the Oriental Renaissance. It
formed an early alliance in India with the Neo-Hindu Arya Samaj, founded by Dayananda Saraswati
(1824–1883), finding resonance in his ideas of Vedic Hinduism as a comprehensive and universal religion, but Blavatsky and other Theosophy leaders soon struck out on their own, being unable to accept
Dayananda’s personalistic conceptions of the Godhead, intolerance of Buddhism and aspirations to
supreme guru status. They attracted large numbers of both Indian and European followers with their
occult practices and syncretic appropriation of Hindu ideas.74
Not all were enamoured of this new flavour of Hinduism however. Vivekananda, for example,
was adamant that ‘Hindus… do not stand in need of dead ghosts of Russians and Americans’, and he
lamented the prominence of the Theosophical Society in representing Indian culture to the West.75
And the Theosophists themselves were soon struck by internal controversy, with accusations of faked
miracles, and an investigation by the London Society for Psychical Research concluding Blavatsky to
be ‘one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors of history.’76 Blavatsky and
other Theosophists claimed to receive remote guidance from spiritual masters, often referred to in a
type of reverse Guru English (“Spiritualist Sanskrit” perhaps) by the Sanskrit term mahātmā (“greatsouled”). If nothing else, this provoked a response from Max Müller, who chided them and others
‘whose powers of admiration are in excess of their knowledge and discretion’ for their credulity in
72Charles S.J. White, “The Sai Baba Movement: Approaches to the Study of Indian Saints,” The Journal of Asian Studies
31, no. 4 (1972): 878.
73Hatcher, Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse.
74K. Paul Johnson, The Masters Revealed: Madam Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1994); Bevir, “Theosophy as a Political Movement.”
75Herman De Tollenaere, “The Theosophical Society in the Dutch East Indies,” in Hinduism in Modern Indonesia: A Minority Religion, ed. Martin Ramstedt (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 40.
76Aravamudan, Guru English, 108.
228
GURU MOVEMENTS
being swayed by ‘very silly miracles.’77 Müller presented Ramakrishna by way of contrast as “A Real
Mahâtman”.
Not that Ramakrishna was without his own share of miraculous folklore, and Müller, in his request for a biographical account from Vivekananda, ‘warned him repeatedly’ away from what he saw
as the ‘mere fables’ about Ramakrishna that he had read in other sources.78 Vivekananda, sympathetic
to modern standards of objectivity, was only too happy to oblige, albeit that he finally fell short of the
mark in Müller’s estimation due to ‘a natural unwillingness, nay, an incapability, to believe or to repeat anything that might place his master in an unfavourable light’. ‘Fortunately’, Müller could refer
to other contemporary sources more ‘aloof from the propaganda carried on by Râmakrishna’s disciples’, although the worst he was able to come up with were frownings upon Ramakrishna’s sometimes
‘abominably filthy’ language and his ‘neglect’ of his wife in favour of spiritual pursuits.
Many scholars would at least agree with Müller’s ideal of attempting to penetrate beneath the
layers of hagiographical reverence and tales of miracle-working that permeate popular accounts of
modern gurus. In the case of living gurus, however, it is much more difficult to simply dismiss these
as products of retrospectively applied devotional fancy. Indeed, they have attracted attention from
academic parapsychologists. Erlendur Haraldsson studied Sathya Sai Baba’s famous ‘miracles’ over the
course of a decade, repeatedly interviewing him and many eyewitnesses, and ‘in spite of a longlasting
and painstaking effort … found no direct evidence of fraud.’79 More aggressive, if less well-qualified
skeptics have since come to the opposite conclusion, flooding the internet with much direct evidence,
but it is difficult to generalise on the basis of either of these conclusions.80 For those versed in the
appropriate methods and willing to undertake the necessary fieldwork, this remains an interesting
and potentially fertile area for future research.
When focus shifts from the guru to the movement as a whole, issues of the true biography of the
guru and veracity of miracles become less important. Babb observes that ‘at this level, the extravagances of hagiography are not an impediment, but an important aid to discovery.’81 His point is that it
is primarily the persona of the guru and the meaning of purported miracles, rather than the question
of their being miraculous, that animates devotees’ beliefs and behaviours. He notes that many people
who are neutral to Sathya Sai Baba and even many of his severest critics do not doubt the veracity
of his supposed ability to perform miracles, but simply disagree with his followers that such miracles
are valid evidence of spiritual great-ness. Aravamudan goes a step further, glossing the Theosophical
Society miracles as being akin to ‘special effects’ in modern movies, i.e. retaining some power and
attraction even if revealed to be non-miraculous in nature.82
At issue here is Weber’s view that progress towards modernity is characterised by a progressive
“disenchantment of the world”; Babb suggests that, in the case of Sathya Sai Baba at least, miracles
present ‘something of a Weberian reversal, an example of the reenchantment of the world.’83 Lise
McKean puts this even more strongly: ‘Sathya Sai Baba’s miracles offer India’s monied consumers a
self-indulgent, guilt-free experience of the magicality of objects.’84 But Hugh Urban points out that:
77Müller, Râmakrishna, 1.
78Ibid., 60–61.
79Haraldsson, Modern Miracles, 222.
80Spurr, “Sai Baba,” 41–54.
81Babb, Redemptive Encounters, 162.
82Aravamudan, Guru English, 109.
83Babb, Redemptive Encounters, 200.
84McKean, Divine Enterprise, 20–23.
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
229
If Sai Baba appears on the one hand to be a kind of icon of materialism and consumerism—
the magic and fetishism of the commodity incarnate—he is also quite strikingly on the
other hand one of the greatest critics of Western materialism and consumerism.85
And my own research indicates that, far from promoting commodity fetishism, Sathya Sai Baba’s “miracles” are usually angled at instilling in his followers a sense of the impermanence and worthlessness
of worldly objects, as contrasted to the need for perpetual remembrance of the transcendent divine.
In addition to claims of faked miracles, accusations of sexual impropriety are also commonly levelled at gurus, and responses from followers range from outright denial to tantric rationalizations.
Some scholars have addressed, and also failed to sufficiently address, this issue. Hugh Urban criticizes a number of scholarly practitioners of Siddha Yoga for ignoring in their collected volume on
the movement ‘the intense controversy and scandal’ involving the ‘alleged sexual practices’ of Siddha Yoga guru Swami Muktananda (1908–1982), ‘which, many claim, drew naïve young women into
esoteric Tantric rituals.’86 Rudert notes that “the Siddha scholars’ agenda to write a ‘theology’ of the
movement in which they were a part was entirely transparent”, but at least some of the scholars involved have expressed regret at their omissions.87 What is clear, is that scholars who are also devotees
tread a fine line in their writing when they combine their two identities. Srinivas, for example, a follower of Sathya Sai Baba, invokes the ‘ethics of studying a community of living believers’ as setting
‘some limits’ on the scope of her study, choosing to make no mention of the fact that Sathya Sai Baba
too is accused of (homo)sexual abuse, but admitting the existence of lesser allegations of fake miracles
and ‘textual inconsistencies.’88
Reverent silence on such issues is perhaps less than ideal, but the opposite extreme, when scholars
become the instigators of allegations, also has its problems. Srinivas alludes to scholarly portrayals of
Ramakrishna as a latent homosexual89 as having ‘driven a wedge between outsiders and those within’
the movement. The more serious issue for followers and scholars alike, however, seems to be with Kripal’s questionable translations and neo-Orientalist approach.90 Nevertheless, sex scandals surrounding modern Hindu gurus are the rule rather than the exception, and there is a role for scholarship to
play in elucidating some of the traditional paradigms that are sometimes invoked by guru movements
and their critics in this regard.91 More could also perhaps be done on the sociology and psychology
of followers’ reactions to scandals, including perhaps a comparative study of anti-guru movements
started by former followers of scandalised gurus. A lot has already been done on the more general
socio-dynamics of guru movements.
85Urban, “Avatar for Our Age: Sathya Sai Baba and the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism,” 85.
86Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2003), 244-248.
87Rudert, “Contemporary Indian Gurus,” 640. Who Speaks for Siddha Yoga? A Book Review of Meditation Revolution
(31 Dec 99) http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/book_review.htm.
88Srinivas, Sai Baba, 333–35.
89Jeffrey J. Kripal, Kālī’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1995).
90Hugh B. Urban, “Review of Kālī’s Child, by Jeffrey J. Kripal,” The Journal of Religion 78, no. 2 (1998): 318–20.
91John Stratton Hawley, “The Damage of Separation: Krishna’s Loves and Kali’s Child,” Journal of the American Academy
of Religion 72, no. 2 (2004): 369–93.
230
GURU MOVEMENTS
Charisma
Central to much debate in this area is the idea of “charisma” much popularised by Weber, who defined ‘charismatic authority’ as being ‘based on the exemplary character, sanctity, and heroism of an
individual person.’92 Heinrich von Stietencron (2001: 18-20) questions how applicable Weber’s formulation of charisma may be to Indian traditions, in which:
the notion of charisma is first and primarily linked to the king … charisma was conceived
of as a kind of subtle, luminous substance that could be conferred on a deserving person by a God or by ritual action.… Later Indian mythology also sees royal charisma as a
property of the divine, particularly of Viṣṇu.93
But the two conceptions of charisma are not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor does the latter fall
completely outside of Weber’s scope,94 and indeed both resonate with aspects of modern guru movements.
Smith observes that the guru often ‘may behave like a king’, be ‘addressed as ‘Maharaj’ (‘Great
King’)’, may ‘sit on a throne, and spend extravagantly.’95 And von Stietencron notes the relevance of the
traditional ‘concept of prādurbhāva or avatāra, according to which the God Viṣṇu himself ‘becomes
manifest’ or ‘descends’ and incorporates himself, or part of himself, on earth.’96 Most modern Hindu
gurus are regarded by their followers as avatāras, and there is a significant traditional overlap between
the paradigms of king and avatāra.97 To Smith’s observations, I would also especially add those of
Gonda, that the daily audiences granted by ancient Indian (divine) kings in some sense prefigure the
daily darśan (lit. “viewing”) given by many Hindu gurus,98 by which they are believed to optically
bestow their grace upon their followers99 Also perhaps significant is the phenomenon traditionally
and popularly referred to as śaktipāt(a), a “descent of spiritual energy” via the touch of a guru, this
being reasonably common within modern guru movements, and sometimes reported by followers as
an experience of an influx of light. There is some scholarship on this phenomenon,100 but room also
for further investigation, especially in a contemporary comparative context.
While śaktipāt may in some sense be a direct transfer of charisma, the more general display of
paranormal powers by a guru is seen by some scholars as ‘a secondary rather than a primary sign of
charisma; it serves to validate and support a religious role, but cannot initiate it.’101 Charles Keyes sees
religious leaders’ possession of intuitive religious knowledge as being more important than miracles
in this regard, and he notes, further to this, that “the actions of a person working against extraordinary
odds to achieve some desirable social goal have from time to time been taken as signifying that the
92Ketola, Founder, 26.
93Heinrich von Stietencron, “Charisma and Canon: The Dynamics of Legitmization and Innovation in Indian Religions,”
in Charisma and Canon: Essays on the Religious History of the Indian Subcontinent, ed. Vasudha Dalmia, Angelika Malinar,
and Martin Christof (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 18–20.
94Martin Riesebrodt, “Charisma in Max Weber’s Sociology of Religion,” Religion 29, no. 1 (1999): 2.
95Smith, Hinduism and Modernity, 172.
96Stietencron, “Charisma and Canon,” 18–20.
97Spurr, “Sai Baba.”
98Selected Studies, vol. IV. History of Ancient Indian Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 77–78
99See, e.g., Catherine Cornille, “Mother Meera, Avatar,” in Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 136-138.
100Charles White, “Swāmi Muktānanda and the Enlightenment Through Śakti-pāt,” History of Religions 13, no. 4 (1974):
306–22; Lola Williamson, “The Perfectibility of Perfection: Siddha Yoga as a Global Movement,” in Forsthoefel and Humes,
Gurus in America, 147–68…
101June McDaniel, The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal (University of Chicago Press, 1989), 262.
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
231
person is charismatic.”102 Both of these apply to most modern gurus, many of whom have undertaken
significant social, educational and health projects. But “miracles” are also important, and certainly in
the case of Sathya Sai Baba they served to initiate his religious role.
Also controversial is the common position articulated by Keyes that it is only ‘in the context of a
crisis situation, [that] people are motivated to turn toward those who appear to embody a conjunction of the sacred and the worldly’. As Warrier notes, in the case of India’s ‘urban middle class’—from
whom Neo-Hindu gurus are usually considered to draw the bulk of their following—scholars ‘invariably point to a perceived lack of one kind or another in their lives which they purportedly seek to
compensate [for] by participating in a guru faith.’ She gives various examples of this, including the
suggestion that ‘by invoking the certitudes and simplicities of an idealized past, religion bolsters the
individual’s capacity to face up to the uncertainties of fast-paced city life’. She concludes, however,
that any suggestions of a “lack” on the part of devotees are ‘sweeping generalizations’, and do not
apply to the followers of contemporary guru Mata Amritanandamayi that she inter-viewed. Their
quest, rather, is for deeper religious ‘meaning’, beyond the “‘mechanical’ and ‘ritualistic’ religious observances and ‘blind faith’ of their parents.’103
Furthermore, rather than experiencing the fast-paced changes of modernization as stressful, Warrier’s informants testified to ‘the hope of increasing possibilities and multiplying opportunities … a
growing awareness of multiple choices in every sphere of life, including that of religion’.104 The spiritual crisis model proposed by Keyes is not at all in evidence here—Warrier concludes that ‘the appeal
of popular gurus like the Mata lies in their ability to facilitate, rather than restrict, this process of individual creativity and innovation.’105
A recent study of a number of prominent contemporary Hindu gurus with followings in America
divides them into two basic types:
those taken to be basically an exceptionally wise human being, a respected teacher of
age-old traditions, and those considered first of all to be an instance of the embodied
divine, somehow superhuman and distinct from ordinary mortals.106
This more or less parallels a distinction made by Weber between “traditional” and “charismatic” authority, the former being ‘based on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions.’107
Charismatic authority is by far the more prevalent in modern Hindu guru movements, but Weber
never intended his ideal types to be mutually exclusive, and indeed some sort of mixture is usual.
Kimmo Ketola, for example, observes in relation to the founder of the Hare Krishna movement:
Prabhupāda did not exemplify pure charismatic leadership. His authority rested to a
great extent on his being properly initiated into the tradition of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.
He regarded himself as a missionary of a venerable tradition, not as a founder of a new
102Charles F. Keyes, “Charisma: From Social Life to Sacred Biography,” in Charisma and Sacred Biography, ed. Michael
Williams (Chico: Scholars Press, 1982), 4–8.
103Maya Warrier, “Processes of Secularization in Contemporary India: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission,”
Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (2003): 222–29.
104Ibid., 231.
105Maya Warrier, Hindu Selves in a Modern World: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission (London: Routledge,
2005), 118. Babb suggests something very similar in relation to Sathya Sai Baba (“Sathya Sai Baba’s Saintly Play,” in Saints and
Virtues, ed. John S. Hawley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 186).
106Gold, “Epilogue: Elevated Gurus, Concrete Traditions and the Problems of Western Devotees,” 220–21.
107Ketola, Founder, 26.
232
GURU MOVEMENTS
religion.… Yet in the eyes of his western followers, Prabhupāda did not gain legitimacy
so much on the basis of tradition, but on the basis of his personal qualities. The new
cultural context turned him into a charismatic leader… He was not even a typical Hindu
guru, since he rejected the monistic Advaita Vedānta taught by most of them.108
In this last regard, Prabhupāda lined his commentaries on traditional scriptures with a plethora of
rejoinders to Neo-Hindu advaitic “impersonalism”, while at the same time, ironically, heavily plagiarising Neo-Hindu influenced English translations of the texts of traditional scriptures.109 Weber often
characterised charismatic authority with words attributed to Jesus: ‘It is written … but I say unto you
… ’,110 but Prabhupāda’s discourse was more often of the form: “Worldly people or scientists or impersonalists think … but it is written in the canons of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism … ”. As Ketola puts it, ‘in
the midst of a techno-logical race to conquer space, Prabhupāda believed in Purāṇic cosmology with
absolute certainty.’111 Either way, it is the fact that the guru often seems to be a ‘counterintuitive being’ that is attractive to followers, along with the air of ‘unshakeable conviction’ with which gurus are
invariably imbued.112 In Prabhupāda’s case, the pizza effect is also significant, as his Indian followers
are often drawn by ‘his success in bringing the Hindu tradition to the world.’113
Ketola summarises previous scholarly explanations of charisma as being of four kinds: ‘1) those
that put primary emphasis on the social situation or context of crisis; 2) those that emphasise the mental states of potential followers; 3) those that emphasise the message, and lastly; 4) those that emphasise the leader.’114 To this he adds his own approach, drawing on principles of cognitive science that operate independently of cultural conditioning. Gurus produce “frame violations”, ex-posing followers’
“deeply and unconsciously held expectations”. They also evoke from their followers spontaneous essentialist conceptualizations of agency, as well as associations with ritual activities that produce “basic
emotional responses and even more unusual forms of neural activity, resulting in some religious experience”. While Ketola concludes that there is ultimately something ineffable about charisma, there
is certainly more room for analysis in this area; cognitive science is a young and rapidly evolving field,
and may yet produce more insights that add to our understanding of guru movements.
There are also opportunities here to shed some light on broader religious phenomena. Aravamudan observes that ‘if some religions are personality cults with centuries of institutional history,
gurus are living instances of religions-in-the-making’.115 Weber ultimately viewed charisma as ‘inherently unstable’ and saw an inevitable tendency for new religious movements to become ‘institutionalized or routinized’. This has already taken place to a large degree in some modern guru movements,
prompted especially by the demise of the guru, but occurring also to some extent while the guru is
alive.116 Modern guru movements thus provide an opportunity for comparative studies of the ways
108Ketola, Founder, 6.
109Ekkehard Lorenz, “The Guru, Mayavadins and Women: Tracing the Origins of Selected Polemical Statements in the
Work of AC Bhaktivedanta Swami,” in Bryant and Ekstrand, Hare Krishna Movement, 117–19.
110Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, vol. I (1922;
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 243.
111Ketola, Founder, 139.
112Copley, Gurus, 6.
113E. Burke Jr. Rochford, “Airports, Conflict, and Change in the Hare Krishna Movement,” in Bryant and Ekstrand, Hare
Krishna Movement, 188.
114Ketola, Founder, 30, 211–212.
115Aravamudan, Guru English, 225.
116Irvin H. Collins, “The ”Routinization of Charisma” and the Charismatic: The Confrontation Between ISKCON and
Narayana Maharaja,” in Bryant and Ekstrand, Hare Krishna Movement, 215–16.
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
233
in which this transition is made, and how this may reflect on or contrast with what we know of the
history of older religious movements. One significant difference lies in the awareness that the new
movements may themselves have of the progression outlined by Weber, prompting them to deliberately seek ways of avoiding the negative aspects of institutionalization.117 Another area in which it is
likely that there will be significant differences, is in the treatment of gender, and this further presents
its own opportunities for insight and study.
Gender
It is notable, if hardly surprising given their strongly patriarchal cultural history, that most modern
Hindu gurus are male. Some, such as Prabhupāda, are also overtly chauvinistic. Lorenz concludes
from a quantitative analysis of references to women in his works that:
56% of all statements concern women as sex objects
8% are statements about women’s class, status or position
9% are restrictions that state that women should not be given any freedom
7% are statements about women having bad qualities.118
This of course needs to be balanced by attention to practical realities; Kathleen Erndl notes that Prabhupāda’s ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) does not currently recognise
women as gurus, but in response to a growing feminist voice within the movement now appoints
women to its governing board and as temple presidents.’119 Nevertheless, Lorenz’s figures are representative of wider cultural prejudices, and Prabhupāda’s views may generally be classified as traditionalist.
While there are some traditional precedents for a more elevated status for women and in particular for female gurus, the emergence into the public domain in the twentieth century of a significant
number of influential female gurus was a genuinely new development—even ‘the word guru does not
accept a feminine form.’120 Western influenced Neo-Hindu gurus like Dayananda, Vivekananda and
the Theosophists, strongly promoted women’s welfare, perhaps paving the way for this development,
and Sarada Devi and ‘the Mother’, wives of Ramakrishna and Aurobindo respectively, took on prominent roles as guru figures for the movements that initially formed around their husbands.121 Karen
Pechilis writes in the introduction to her edited volume on modern Hindu female gurus that many of
them ‘participate in the classical guru tradition by taking instruction and initiation from a male guru.’
While some had female gurus or were self-initiated, ‘as a general rule female gurus follow established,
male behavioral modes for guruhood, even if they did not take initiation from a male guru.’ What is
most challenging for female gurus, she says, is often not the fact that they choose to become gurus but
117E.g., Jan Brzezinski, “Charismatic Renewal and Institutionalization in the History of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and the
Gaudiya Math,” in Bryant and Ekstrand, Hare Krishna Movement, 73–96; Peter Heehs, who notes that Neo-Hindu guru Sri
Auro-bindo (1872–1950) sought to avoid ‘the error of all “Churches”’ with the suggestion that his followers ‘remain open to
‘new outpourings’ of the founders’ spirit’ (“The Error of All “Churches”‘: Religion and Spirituality in Communities Founded
or ‘Inspired’ by Sri Aurobindo,” in Copley, Gurus, 209–24).
118Lorenz, “The Guru, Mayavadins and Women: Tracing the Origins of Selected Polemical Statements in the Work of AC
Bhaktivedanta Swami,” 122–23.
119Kathleen M. Erndl, “Afterword,” in Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 248.
120Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 6.
121Hiltrud Rüstau, “The Ramakrishna Mission: Its Female Aspect,” in Copley, Gurus, 83–106.
234
GURU MOVEMENTS
rather the fact that they may not live up to ‘received social expectations … the Hindu social norms of
womanhood, which are marriage and bearing children.’122
One way in which this is overcome is through identification of the guru with the Goddess, or a
specific goddess, and, even when not encouraged by the guru herself, such identifications are almost
invariably made. Alternatively, a guru may be understood to be a reincarnation of an earlier female
guru—contemporary guru Sree Maa is believed to be Sarada Devi reincarnate.123 Received social expectations die hard, however, and even when a female guru or ascetic successfully rebels in creating
śāstra a religious role for herself, she may promote to others ‘the dharmashastra ideal for women that her
life contradicts.’124 And most of this also applies to males; it should not be forgotten that, especially
in urban contexts with the rise of capitalism in the modern era, the dominant received social expectations for young men also point to career and family rather than guruhood. Sathya Sai Baba often
encourages his male followers to marry and pursue worldly careers rather than following the path of
early renunciation that he himself took, even when they express aspirations to renounce.
In any case, despite following predominantly male paradigms, some Hindu female gurus do fulfil
a unique role in that, due to traditional cultural predilections for segregation of the sexes, they are
more accessible to women than are male gurus.125 They may establish women’s ashrams and schools
for girls, minister to widows, and generally promote welfare for women, albeit usually retaining some
traditional feminine ideals and restrictions.126 In spiritual matters, guru’s themselves may sometimes
themselves disregard such restrictions; Selva Raj reports that Mata Amritanandamayi (Ammachi) ‘embraces, hugs, strokes, and kisses her devotees with total disregard to their gender, moral condition,
and physical purity,’ although this may partly be a reflection of her own low-caste status.127 Raj nevertheless sees Ammachi’s darśan guidelines as restrictive, in that they ‘require women “to cover their
shoulders and to wear dresses or skirts [and] not wear see-through dresses or tight dresses that reveal
the shape of the body”. But I would note that equivalent and often more extreme restrictions apply to
the male followers of gurus who place an emphasis on the virtues of celibacy.128 This is not so much
a case of restricting the freedom of one gender more than the other, as a case of seeking to minimise
opportunities for sexual desire to manifest, and this in the interests of promoting focus on spiritual
pursuits. Taken to an extreme, problems can arise in this regard,129 but these affect both males and
females.
Another key issue facing female guru movements, and indeed guru movements in general, is that
of succession. Erndl postulates a typology of modes of succession for female gurus, and this again
could apply equally to males: ‘succession from guru to disciple, what is in Sanskrit called a parampara, an unbroken lineage’; ‘sideways succession … a disciple becomes a guru of a lineage that is an
offshoot’; ‘ambiguous succession … a disciple has received training from a recognized guru and may
function informally, though not officially, as a guru’; ‘spontaneous succession … the guru has no human guru … divinity is revealed to her, and subsequently to others, spontaneously’; and the often
122Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 5–9.
123Loriliai Biernacki, “Shree Maa of Kamakkhya,” in Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 181.
124Lisa L. Hallstrom, “Anandamayi Ma, the Bliss-Filled Divine Mother,” in Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 104.
125Ibid., 92–96.
126Carol S. Anderson, “The Life of Gauri Ma,” in Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 73–78.
127Selva J. Raj, “Ammachi, the Mother of Compassion,” in Pechilis, Graceful Guru, 214–16.
128Joseph S. Alter, “Seminal Truth: A Modern Science of Male Celibacy in North India,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly
11, no. 3 (1997): 275–98.
129Bryant and Ekstrand, Hare Krishna Movement, 352, 398.
REQUIRED READING: SPURR
235
overlapping category of ‘posthumous visionary succession … the disciple is initiated and given transmission in a vision by his or her guru after the guru’s death.’ She also suggests that a number of other
typologies be investigated as possibilities for future research: the international and ethnic makeup of
the movement, ‘the degree to which feminine images of the sacred are privileged, and the degree to
which feminist values and practices are emphasized.’130
Conclusion
The number of modern Hindu guru movements is large and constantly increasing, presenting ongoing
opportunities for novel scholarship. While modern Hindu gurus may not necessarily identify themselves as “Hindu” or as “gurus”, they can usually be distinguished from non-Hindu religious leaders,
and can usually be analysed as taking on the role of a spiritual teacher. While they may not consider
themselves to be “modern”, or to found new religious “movements”, they share a number of features
that first appeared in India with the dawn of colonial rule, and they usually present an agenda of religious change—even if this is only an imagined fundamentalism. Scholars have approached this topic
from a wide variety of disciplines and in a wide variety of manners, and there are unique opportunities in studying such a modern religious phenomenon. Scholars may contextualise their works with
reference to popular culture, mass media, official statistics, and fieldwork. Or they may themselves
even be followers of gurus, something that may both limit and enhance their studies.
Various typologies and characterisations of modern guru movements are proposed by scholars.
Traditional, transitional, or grassroots gurus, are opposed to Neo-Hindu, acculturative, or Hindu Renaissance movements, exemplifying Weber’s ideal types of traditional and charismatic authority respectively. An ‘Indian New Age’ is posited, alongside a ‘theolinguistic’ episteme of ‘Guru English’, and
the idea of a ‘pizza effect’, by which Hinduism became established and embellished in the West, enhancing its status back in India. True to their advaita underpinnings, modern movements may be
strongly eclectic and ‘inclusivistic’, adopting religious forms from diverse sources, yet may retain a
privileged place for Hinduism amongst the world’s religions. Common guru scandals involve allegations of faked miracles and sexual abuse, and scholars have been criticised for both avoiding and
advancing issues in these areas. Properly considered, there is a role for scholarship to play in this
regard, and there are opportunities in this for further study.
Ideas of “charisma” are perhaps the most theorised aspect of the study of modern guru movements, but even here there are opportunities for novel contributions—from advances in cognitive
science to the simple fact that guru movements are proto-typical ‘religions in the making’. Similarly, while there has been a significant amount of recent scholarship, primarily undertaken by female
scholars, focusing on female gurus and gender issues, there are opportunities to expand this to better categorize degrees of international and ethnic variety, feminine content, and feminist practices.
Other opportunities in this and indeed all areas of our topic lie in more detailed quantification of the
extent and spread of guru movements and in quantitative analysis of their textual outputs. As Srinivas
and Lorenz show, these can provide some interesting characterisations and insights. Given that most
modern movements keep membership records and that the literature produced by such movements is
extremely prolific and often readily available on the internet in easily searchable digital format, these
are very promising means of future research.
130Erndl, “Afterword,” 247–49.
II. Buddhism
The Triple Gem: Buddha, Dhamma and
Sangha
239
7 The Buddha and Buddhism
Topic Overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
explain how Buddhism builds upon and alters Vedic Hinduism, and
describe the distinguishing features of Theravāda Buddhism (as opposed to Mahayana Buddhism)
give an account of some the Buddha’s previous lives, and
his final rebirth as Siddhārtha Gautama, and
comment on the role of these accounts of the Buddha’s lives in instructing and inspiring Buddhists.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
sects/schools of a religion (e.g., Theravāda)
cosmology
myth (vs. history)
Buddhism
Looking at our course outline, you might think that this represents some kind of clean break in topics:
we studied Hinduism, now we’re studying Buddhism. However, the break is far from clean. There are
continuities and discontinuities between the two religions. And to fully know one, it helps to know
the other.
First, let me mention the continuities. Most obviously, there is a historical continuity. Buddhism
and Hinduism emerged alongside each other in ancient India. Buddhism grew in the late Vedic period,
during the era of the Upanisads. The earliest Buddhists were wandering renouncers (Skt: śramaṇas), śramaṇa
very similar to the saṃyāsins or sadhus of the Hindu tradition. Although early Buddhists were critics
of Hinduism—and offered an alternative to it—they nonetheless drew freely upon Hindu ideas and
words, such as dharma, ātman and karma. Buddhist teachings are filled with words taken from (or
shared with) Hinduism; although Buddhists often gave these words a new spin or definition. In the
241
242
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
Soṇadaṇḍa Sutta, early Buddhists even tried to redefine what a Brahmin was! Most importantly, early
Buddhists shared with Hinduism a concern with the problem of saṃsāra. Yet, they offered a new
solution: not mōkṣa (liberation), but nibbāna/nirvāṇa (extinguishing).
There are discontinuities too. Hinduism has no founding figure, whereas Buddhism takes as
its starting point the teachings of a single person. Hinduism emphasizes the importance of deities,
whereas Buddhism (in many parts of the tradition, if not always in practice1 ) treats the propitiation of
deities as secondary to self-cultivation. Where Hinduism tends to be institutionally diffused and decentered (with individual temples largely governing their own affairs), Buddhism emerged as a somewhat more centralized, vertically-structured religion, organized around a hierarchy of full-time monks
called bhikkhus.
Types of Buddhism
By most accounts, Buddhists make up nearly 8% of the world’s population. Most Buddhists live in
Asia, but increasingly Buddhism is enjoying popularity outside of Asia, in Australia, New Zealand,
Europe and North America. More than three million Buddhists live in the US, and Buddhism remains
one of the fastest growing religions in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
There are many different types of Buddhism in the world, and the variations in doctrine, aesthetic,
ritual, cosmology and mythology can be enormous. (If you were to visit a Tibetan Buddhist monastery
and a Zen Buddhist monastery, you might be forgiven for thinking that the two places housed entirely
different religions!) In general, scholars (and many Buddhists themselves) divide Buddhism into two
Theravāda general types: Theravāda and Mahāyāna. Theravāda Buddhism is the main type of Buddhism pracMahāyāna ticed in Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Mahāyāna is the main type of Buddhism
practiced in most of Northern and Eastern Asia: Tibet, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam. The
word Theravāda can be translated literally as the “teaching of the elders.” Those who practice Theravāda Buddhism tend to think of it as the oldest, most traditional form of Buddhism, the variety of
Buddhism closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. Mahāyāna means “the greater way” and
practitioners of this form of Buddhism sometimes describe themselves as following a more advanced
practice, one that has roots in Theravāda doctrines but supersedes Theravāda in wisdom and profundity.
It should be noted that the term Theravāda Buddhism refers to a much more uniform tradition
than does Mahāyāna Buddhism. A look at history helps to explain why. Theravādins (the term for
those who observe Theravāda Buddhism) trace their origins to a particular moment in the history of
early Buddhism. After the Buddha died, his monastic followers held a number of councils to discuss
and standardize his teachings. As is common in religious histories throughout the world, attempts to
codify the teachings of a deceased charismatic figure led to disagreements over matters of doctrine.
In the centuries after the Buddha’s death, these disagreements gave rise to schisms and the creation
of many different schools (nikāya), each proposing its own variation on the correct teachings of the
Buddha. Among these competing nikāya, two dominant groupings emerged: the sthāviras (the ‘elders’) and the mahāsaṃghikas (the ‘great community’). Theravādins trace their origins to the sthāvira
sthāviravāda group. In fact, the term Theravāda is simply a translation into Pāli of the Sanskrit word sthāviravāda.
So contemporary Theravāda purports to come from a single school within early Buddhism.
1We will address this in Units 10 and 11, below.
BUDDHISM
243
In contrast, Mahāyāna Buddhism did not develop out of one school of early Buddhism. Rather it
originated as a loosely organized reform movement that cut across a number of early Buddhist groups.
(We might perhaps compare it to the charismatic movements in Christianity, which can be found in
many different denominations, but is stronger in some than in others.) The Mahāyāna was the name
given to a broad collection of new idea, new texts, new teachings, new styles of ritual and new conceptions of the Buddha, which promised to be a “greater” and more effective way to attain enlightenment.
In naming these innovations Mahāyāna, writers had a polemical intent: they were comparing their
“greater” teachings to the “lesser way” (Hīnayāna) practiced by the sthāviras/Theravādins. Both then Hīnayāna
and now, Mahāyāna Buddhism refers to a much looser and more variegated amalgam of Buddhist
practices; both then and now, some Mahāyānists refer to Theravāda Buddhism as the “lesser way,” or
Hīnayāna.
For reasons for time, this class focuses only on Theravāda Buddhism. (The Department offers
a number of other courses on Mahāyāna Buddhism; please look at our website and/or ask us about
them). Yet, how do we define Theravāda for the purposes of this paper? The answers to this question
can be found in the paragraphs above: Therāvada Buddhism is defined by its locations (in southern
Asia), its historical development (from sthāviravāda) and, perhaps most of all, by the language in
which it preserves its texts. Theravāda can be distinguished both from Hinduism and from Mahāyāna
Buddhism in that it treats Pāli as the preeminent religious language.2 In fact, Theravāda is often referred to as Pāli Buddhism.
Pāli, although it is a separate language, derives from Sanskrit. Pāli words look astoundingly similar
to Sanskrit words: kamma in Pāli is karma in Sanskrit; dhamma is dharma; magga is mārga. While
never a spoken language, many scholars believe that Pāli represents a more vernacularized language
than Sanskrit, a liturgical language that is somewhat closer to the North Indian dialects spoken in time
of the Buddha. So Theravāda Buddhism is relatively uniform, geographically defined, linked to early
Buddhism and prizes a collection of religious texts written in Pāli.
A Brief Word on Pāli Texts
We will look at Pāli texts (in translation) in this part of the class. Pāli texts will also be referred to in
the topic overviews and secondary sources. To make sense of this, it helps to know a few basic things
about Pāli Buddhist texts. There are many Buddhist texts written in Pāli. However, the ones treated
as most authoritative come from what most people call the “Pāli Canon.” Like the Vedas, this is a Pāli Canon
huge collection of texts that were initially transmitted orally and later written down. The first written
version is thought to have emerged in the first century BCE in Sri Lanka (three centuries after the
Buddha). However, the boundaries of the canon were fluid until the fifth century CE (nine centuries
after the Buddha).3
Composers of the Pāli canon divided it into three ‘baskets’, or pitakas4: the basket of teachings
or stories (the Sutta Pitaka), the basket of monastic discipline (the Vinaya Pitaka) and the basket of
advanced teachings (the Abhidhamma Pitaka). In this course we will look at passages from the first
2Hindus generally tend to save this distinction for Sanskrit, although bhakti movements also prize Tamil, Kannada and
other vernacular languages. Mahāyānists record their sacred texts in Sanskrit, but also in Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese and
other vernacular and literary languages.
3It is in the 5th century CE that we have the first commentaries on the Pāli canon.
4Thus the Pāli canon is also referred to as the ‘three baskets’ or Tipitaka.
244
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
two baskets. The third basket, although it is uniquely important in Theravāda Buddhism, deals with
arcane points of Buddhist philosophy. Most of our readings will come from the Sutta Pitaka, a huge
collection of stories (40 volumes or so), most of which were translated into English. Rather than organized chronologically, the stories are organized primarily by length, a fact that often frustrates new
students to Buddhism because there’s no Bible-like master-narrative linking together the otherwise
disparate stories. You’ll probably notice that when scholars describe the Buddha’s life they often draw
upon multiple, distinct stories taken from different parts of the Sutta Pitaka. What links the Sutta
Pitaka stories is their format. Almost all of them begin with the phase ‘Thus have I heard,’ which indiAnanda cates that the story that follows was reported second-hand. The ‘I’ in question is Ananda, one of the
chief disciples of the Buddha. Ananda then goes on to tell a story about one of the Buddha’s sermons.
He describes the context in which the Buddha gave the sermon (often fantastic events), the content
of the sermon and the effects that sermon had on the listeners. (Spoiler alert: in most cases the listeners either become followers of the Buddha, progress on the path to enlightenment and/or become
enlightened at that moment!) You’ll see this when you read the Kūṭadanta Sutta.
What is Buddha?
Gautama Buddha
Śākyamuṇi
Buddha
sāvaka-buddha
pacceka-buddha
‘Buddha’ is a title, not a name, meaning ‘enlightened being’ or ‘awakened one’. Although often used as
if it were a name, and as if there were only one Buddha, Buddhist doctrine in fact identifies different
types of Buddhas, and insists that there have been multiple Buddhas in the past, and will be multiple
Buddhas in the future. When we speak of ‘the Buddha’ however, we usually mean the Buddha who
lived roughly 2500 years ago, who is referred to by Buddhists also as Gautama Buddha, or Śākyamuṇi
Buddha, and by scholars as the historical Buddha.5
Theravāda Buddhism recognizes three types of Buddha, or enlightened beings. Gautama is a
sammā-sambuddha (Pāli term), a ‘perfect Buddha,’ or ‘perfectly awakened one’. A perfect Buddha
is one who has found the path to enlightenment on his own (and it is his, I’m afraid6), and not by
following the teaching of another Buddha. Later Theravādin tradition also identifies a second type of
Buddha, one who attains enlightenment by hearing the teaching of a sammā-sambuddha. This type of
Buddha is called a sāvaka-buddha (Skt: śrāvaka-buddha) meaning ‘a Buddha who hears.’ A third type
of Buddha is also acknowledged, namely a ‘solitary Buddha’, pacceka-buddha (Skt. pratyeka-buddha),
meaning one who attains enlightenment by his own efforts, but decides not to teach others. Gautama Buddha is said initially to have thought of remaining a Buddha of this type, but subsequently to
have been persuaded to share his discovery. Other titles are also used for a Buddha: among the more
commonly used are tathāgata, (a ‘thus-come’ or ‘thus-gone’ one) and jina (‘victor’).
Theravādin Buddhists acknowledge that, aside from Gautama Buddha, there have been other Buddhas before him and there will be other Buddhas after him. (There are slight differences among Buddhist groups when it comes to the question of precisely how many Buddhas came before Gautama.
See below.) There is one more-or-less firm rule about the number of Buddhas in the universe for
Theravāda Buddhists: There can only be one Buddha in any world-system at any one time. In order
to explain this rule, however, we need to say a word, first, about how Buddhists view the universe.
5Buddhists living in South and Southeast Asia will often use the phrase “Lord Buddha” when referring to the Buddha
of our age.
6For more on the issue of gender in Buddhism, see our Unit on the sangha, below.
ŚĀKYAMUNI BUDDHA
245
Buddhist cosmology
Judging from the accounts of his lives, the Buddha was consistently pragmatic rather than theoretical
and speculative in his concerns. Thus rather than describing the cosmos as a geo-space, he mentioned
five possible destinies, i.e. ‘kinds of rebirth’7: as a god, a human being, an animal, a hungry ghost or in
hell. Only the destiny ‘in hell’ is specified in terms of a location; human beings, animals and ghosts live
in our world, the gods by implication live somewhere else. Sometimes a sixth type of rebirth is added,
rebirth as a ‘jealous god’ or ‘titan’ (āsura), which is treated as a subdivision of either the gods or the
hungry ghosts. Two of the destinies are said to be ‘happy’ (human, god), the remainder are ‘unhappy’
(animals, ghosts, hell and titans). These destinies are mapped on the ‘Wheel of life’ (Fig. 1).
Based on these and other comments, later Buddhist authors sought to lay out a coherent map
of the cosmos. These later maps identify 31 levels on which any being may be reborn. The 31 levels
are, however, divided into three realms: the realm of sensuality or desire (kāmadhātu or kāmaloka);
the realm of pure form (rūpadhātu/loka) and the formless realm (arūpadhātu/loka). None of these
worlds are permanent, all repeatedly arise and disappear in the course of vast periods of time. Over
the course of an eon (P: kappa, Skt: kalpa) the worlds are created, sustained and eventually destroyed
by a great fire. The length of such an eon is expressed in the following simile:
Suppose there was a great mountain of rock, seven miles across and seven miles high, a
solid mass without any cracks. At the end of every hundred years a man might brush it
just once with a fine Benares cloth. That great mountain of rock would decay and come
to an end sooner than even the eon. So long is an eon. And of eons of this length not just
one has passed, not just a hundred, not just a thousand, not just a hundred thousand.8
Buddhist cosmology accepts the reality of multiple—in fact, innumerable—worlds. Some texts
speak of our world as part of a system of one billion worlds which appear and are destroyed at the
same time, but there are still further worlds. According to most Theravādin traditions, in our present
eon there will be five Buddhas, of whom Gautama was the fourth and one, Maitreya, is yet to come. Maitreya
The idea that there could not be more than one Buddha in one world system at one time is based upon
the idea of the Buddha as the best of all beings (not a god, but superior even to the gods). The moral
of these cosmological tales is to encourage Buddhists to be grateful that they have been born in a time
when a Buddha’s teaching is known, and to inspire them to follow it. For our purposes the details
of Buddhist cosmology are less important than the sheer scale—in terms of both time and space—
which the Buddhist universes occupy. This is important in indicating the exceptional qualities of a
Buddha—a perfect, fully awakened one—given the rarity with which such a Buddha arises.
Life and Legend of Śākyamuni Buddha
There is substantial agreement among Buddhists of all schools on the main details of the Buddha’s
life. Although some scholars would argue that there is little historical evidence for the details of this
traditional account, we are here concerned less with whether the events recounted actually took place,
and more with the meaning of the traditional account for Buddhists themselves.
7Richard F. Gombrich, “Ancient Indian Cosmologies,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. Carmen Blacker and Michael Loewe
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), 133.
8Saṃyutta-Nikāya ii, 181–182, quoted in Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998), 185.
246
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
Figure 1: A Tibetan representation of the kinds of rebirth
ŚĀKYAMUNI BUDDHA
247
The lives of the Buddha
Sumedha’s vow to the Buddha Dīpankara
When we speak of the life, or lives, of the Buddha, it is difficult to know where to begin. For Buddhists,
the life of the Buddha begins not in the fifth or even the sixth or eighth century bce, but much, much
earlier; a ‘hundred thousand eons ago’ when an ascetic named Sumedha met Dīpankara, a previous
Buddha, and vowed to become a Buddha himself. He then went on to live innumerable lives, some
of which are described in the Buddhist texts called jātakas or ‘birth-tales’. In these stories the Buddha
often appears as a king or prince (reflecting the noble qualities he demonstrated in his last rebirth as
Siddhārtha Gautama), or as an ascetic, but he also appears in more humble forms—as a forester or
a gardener, a robber, an elephant-trainer—or even in animal forms—very often birds, also monkeys,
lions, snakes, fish and once as a frog.
The Hungry Tigress
The Buddha gave this account of one of his previous lives to Ānanda: Three princes were walking in a
park when they came across a tigress with five cubs, exhausted by giving birth and too weak to feed.
One of the princes thought to himself:
‘Now the time has come for me to sacrifice myself! For a long time I have served this
putrid body and given it beds and clothes, food and drink, and conveyances of all kinds.
Yet it is doomed to perish and fall down, and in the end it will break up and be destroyed.
How much better to leave this ungrateful body of one’s own accord in good time! It cannot subsist for ever, because it is like urine which must come out. Today I will use it for a
sublime deed. Then it will act for me as a boat which helps me to cross the ocean of birth
and death. When I have renounced this futile body, a mere ulcer, tied to countless becomings, burdened with urine and excrement, unsubstantial like foam, full of hundreds
of parasites—then I shall win the perfectly pure Dharma-body, endowed with hundreds
of virtues, full of such qualities as trance and wisdom, immaculate, free from all substrata,
changeless and without sorrow… For the weal of the world I wish to win enlightenment,
incomparably wonderful. From deep compassion I now give away my body, so hard to
quit, unshaken in my mind. That enlightenment I shall now gain, in which nothing hurts
and nothing harms, and which the Jina’s sons have praised. Thus shall I cross to the Beyond of the fearful ocean of becoming which fills the triple world!’9
Then he throws himself down in front of the tigress, but she still does nothing, being too weak even to
move. So he cuts his throat with a piece of bamboo and when he is thus covered in blood the tigress
finally devours him. The story concludes with the Buddha telling Ānanda that he was the prince.
There are 547 such birth stories collected in the jātakas—some of the stories occur elsewhere in
the canon, but many are evidently local folk-tales which have been little altered except for the identification of one of the characters as the Buddha in a previous rebirth. The stories serve to demonstrate
the virtues required of someone who seeks to become a Buddha, and to inculcate respect for those
virtues in the audience. Despite their number, these are not all of his previous lives—we have all
been born countless times in different forms, and the Buddha had thousands of rebirths during the
9Suvarnaprabhasa 206-14 in Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), 25–6.
248
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
period when he was cultivating the qualities which eventually enabled him to be reborn as a Buddha.
Not all of the jātaka tales are well-known, but some, for example the story of Prince Vessantara is as
well known as the life of Gautama himself.10
The last life: Siddhārtha Gautama, the Śākyamuni Buddha
Siddhārtha
Gautama
Finally the Buddha was born in northern India as a prince named Siddhārtha Gautama. Siddhārtha
(‘he who has accomplished his aim’) was born to the Gautama clan, in the land of the Śākyas.11 Buddhist texts also refer to Siddhārtha as ‘the Buddha Śākyamuni’ or ‘Śākyamuni Buddha,’ which means
the sage (muṇi) of the Śākya people. Although there can be little doubt that there was an ‘historical
Buddha’ who probably lived sometime in the fifth century BCE, we are unable to give an account of
his life without relying on the Buddhist texts themselves, which do not read like history textbooks,
as you’ve no doubt seen by now. Rather they invariably mix together elements that we might recognize as documentary history with elements that us moderns would call ‘myth’ or what Conze calls ‘the
legend of the Buddha Śākyamuni’.12
Siddhārtha’s father was named Śuddhodana, which means ‘he who grows pure rice’ (rice farming
was probably the principal livelihood of the Śākyas). It is likely that Siddhārtha had what we might
call a comfortable upbringing, but when we read that his father ensured that he was brought up only
within a palace, and never exposed to the sight of aging, sickness or death, we should be appropriately skeptical. I suspect you will have little difficulty in being likewise appropriately skeptical when
encountering the various events which are said to have accompanied the events of his life. But our
concern should be to determine what meaning those events hold for Buddhists. We will begin, then,
with the conception and birth of Siddhārtha.
I won’t provide the details of Siddhārtha’s life here. Harvey and Silk cover those well in their articles. Instead, I will just underscore the importance of a few episodes:
Conception
Śuddhodana’s wife, Māyā, had a dream in which a white elephant entered her right side. She reported
this to Śuddhodana, who invited the priests to interpret the dream. They replied that the dream meant
that Māyā had conceived a son who would follow one of two paths. If he remained a householder, he
would become a cakravartin (Pāli: cakkavatti), a powerful, universal emperor. If, on the other hand,
he renounced the householder life (as a śramaṇa) he would become an enlightened one, a Buddha.13
10In his penultimate rebirth, the Buddha was born as Prince Vessantara who was renowned for his excessive giving. He
gave away his kingdom’s magic white elephant, which guaranteed rainfall. He then gave up his kingdom and went into exile
with his children and wife. In exile, he even gave up his children! The story ends well, with Vessantara being restored to
his kingdom. But, it’s nevertheless a very unconventional moral tale, one which provokes a number of difficult questions
about the ethical limits of selflessness. Margaret Cone and Richard F. Gombrich, The Perfect Generosity of Prince Vessantara:
a Buddhist epic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
11These names are frequently cited in Sanskrit, as they are above. However, in Pāli they are Siddhattha, Gotama and
Sakka.
12Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, Ch. 2.
13Other versions of the story have this prophecy occurring after the birth of Siddhārtha.
ŚĀKYAMUNI BUDDHA
249
The four sights
According to many biographies of the Buddha, Siddhārtha’s decision to leave palace life was the result
of four encounters with ‘sights’ of the world: an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an ascetic
renouncer. These sights help him to recognize the problems of ageing, sickness and death which
attend life, and the possibility of ascetic retreat from the world to contemplate life. Some Buddhist
traditions treat these sights as a kind of magical show. After all, would a being on the verge of full
enlightenment need to learn these very basic lessons? Silk suggests an alternative explanation. He
speculates that there are two models of the Buddha’s life: the first explains his life in the context of
his extended development over many lives; the second is concerned with his life as Gautama. The
two models allow Buddhists both to identify with the Buddha—the shock of discovering the realities
of aging, sickness and death (the short life), but also ensure that they do not despair of being able to
overcome them (the many rebirths of the Buddha as long preparation for his final life).
The great renunciation and going-forth
Leaving his life of luxury, his parents, his wife and his son, he became a śramaṇa (see Harvey article), practicing austerities and learning meditation from two teachers. He mastered the meditational
techniques which they taught so quickly that each in turn invited him to become a teacher. However, Siddhārtha remained unsatisfied, for on emerging from meditation he found his mind became
troubled again. He therefore continued his quest for a solution to the problems of life, this time by
practicing extreme asceticism in company with five companions. After six years, perceiving that this
path would not bring him any closer to his goal, he abandoned it, accepting rice and milk from a young
woman. At this his fellow ascetics rejected him, and he continued to pursue enlightenment alone.
The Struggle against Māra
Siddhārtha, pursuing enlightenment by himself under a bodhi tree, suffers one final assault by Māra, Māra
a powerful supernatural being whose name means death. Mara is often described as a demon, but he
lives in heaven with other gods and is imagined as a supernatural embodiment of ignorance, greed
and delusion. In Buddhist stories, Māra acts as one of the regular baddies, who consistently tries
prevent humans from progressing towards enlightenment. Māra tempts Siddhārtha in various ways,
but Siddhārtha prevails and becomes a fully awakened being, a Buddha.
Nirvāṇa/Nibbāna and After
So what happened to the Siddhārtha when he awakened? The phrase ‘attain enlightenment’ is a rather Nirvāṇa/Nibbāna
recent gloss for nibbāna and collapses two distinct concepts: Buddha and nibbāna. What is the relationship between the two? A Buddha is someone who has experienced nibbāna. As alluded to above,
the term nibbāna comes from a verbal root meaning ‘to extinguish.’ As you’ll see in the coming units,
the imagery of extinguishing refers, among other things, to the extinguishing of future rebirths in
saṃsāra. With this in mind, one might define a Buddha as an awakened one is one who is extinguished. We’ll look more closely at the notion of nibbāna in the coming units, but for the moment,
just make sure you’re clear on this distinction.
250
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
Teaching and Arahants
Following his enlightenment, texts describe the Buddha as remaining in meditation under the Bodhitree for a period of several weeks. Initially the Buddha is said to have been hesitant to teach others
the truth he had realized, fearing that it was too profound, too difficult for those who were still caught
up in attachment. Texts describe the god Brahmā as persuading the Buddha to teach by saying that
there were people in the world who were ready for his teaching. Brāhma’s imploring succeeds and the
Buddha agrees to teach out of compassion for his fellow human beings. The Buddha’s first pupils were
the five śramaṇas with whom he had undertaken austerities. Texts describe them as congregating in
a deer- park near Benares (modern-day Varanasi), in a place called Sārnāth. By giving his teaching the
Buddha is said to have ‘set in motion the wheel of dharma (teaching)’, and his discourse is recorded in
the setting-in-motion-of-the-dharma-wheel story, or Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (or DCP S). This
sutra is generally regarded as the cornerstone of Buddhist teaching. Therefore the DCP Sutta is an
important title to remember in the coming weeks.
The DCP Sutta describes the transformative effects of the Buddha’s sermon on his audience. On
hearing the teaching, one of the five ascetics is said to have understood the basic ideas of the Buddha’s
teaching (an experience of realization referred to as ‘entering the stream’ of the dhamma), and to have
started progress towards enlightenment. Eventually, after hearing the Buddha’s second teaching on
the doctrine of no-self (see following units), all the ascetics attained nibbāna.
Buddhist texts are full of tales of people awakening by listening to sermons. Remember Śakyamuni Buddha is a samma-sambuddha, and therefore teaches people. Those people become śrāvakabuddhas.14 The confusing part is that in most cases, the Pāli texts don’t refer to these taught-awakenedarahant ones as śrāvaka-buddhas, but as arahants (Skt. arhat), ‘Worthy Ones.’ Buddhist texts portray arahants/śrāvaka-buddhas as having realized similar insights as those of the Buddha, but having lesser
powers to teach others and fewer supernatural abilities. E.g., a sammā-sambuddha can remember all
his previous rebirths, whereas an arahant can only remember some of the previous rebirths.15 You
should be aware of what an arahant is, as you’ll encounter it a lot in Buddhist texts.
Parinibbāna
Finally, then, we come to the death of the Buddha, or rather, according to the Buddhist point of view,
his parinibbāna, that is, nibbāna without remainder.16 The Buddha was 80, and had been ill for several
months, suffering diarrhoea and haemorrhaging. The passing of the Buddha is described in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta – another very important text—as being like that of ‘a flame which goes out through
lack of fuel.’17
14If you’re confused look at the previous unit.
15On the differences see: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/arahantsbodhisattvas.html.
16People can continue living after attaining nibbāna, but they won’t be reborn; when a person who has attained nibbāna
dies, it’s called parinibbāna.
17Whereas heat is something of a positive symbol in other Indian religious traditions, something to be cultivated, for
Buddhism the three internal fires of hate, greed and delusion are to be extinguished, by removing their fuel, which is craving
or attachment. Nibbāna is not the extinguishing out of the self, rather the extinguishing of the triple fire which keeps us
trapped in the illusion that we have a self at all. This Buddhist doctrine will be dealt with in detail in the next unit.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
251
Key Terms for Unit 7
Pāli Canon; piṭaka; arhat/arahant; Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (DCP Sutta); buddha; paccekabuddha; sammāsambuddha; Śakyamuṇi; Siddhārtha; Gautama; nirvāṇa/nibbāna; parinirvāṇa/parinibbāna;
kalpa/kappa; Māra; Theravāda; Mahāyāna; Four Sights
Recommended reading
Bailey, Greg, and Ian W. Mabbett. The Sociology of Early Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
Keown, Damien, and Charles Hallisey. “Nikāya Buddhism.” In Encylopedia of Buddhism, edited by
Damien Keown and Charles S. Prebish, 549–558. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Lopez, Donald S. “Buddha.” In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez, 13–
36. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Reynolds, Frank E. “The Many Lives of Buddha: A Study of Sacred Biography and Theravāda Tradition.”
In The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion, edited by Frank E.
Reynolds and Donald Capps, 37–61. The Hague: Mouton, 1976.
Shaw, Sarah. The Jātakas: Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta. New York: Penguin, 2006.
Silk, Jonathan A. “The Fruits of Paradox: On the Religious Architecture of the Buddha’s Life Story.”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71, no. 4 (2003): 863–81.
Required reading
Peter Harvey, “The Buddha and his Indian Context,” in An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History
and Practices, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 9–31.
I
ndian culture has not been as concerned with recording precise dates as have Chinese or GraecoRoman cultures, so datings cannot always be arrived at with accuracy. All sources agree that Gotama
was eighty when he died (e.g. D.ii.100), and the Pali sources of Theravāda Buddhism say that this was
‘218’ years before the inauguration of the reign of the Buddhist emperor Asoka (Skt Aśoka): the ‘long
chronology’. Sanskrit sources preserved in East Asia have a ‘short chronology’, with his death ‘100’
years or so before Asoka’s inauguration. Based on a traditional date of the inauguration, Pali sources
see Gotama’s dates as 623–543 bce. However, references in Asokan edicts to named Hellenistic kings
have meant that modern scholars have put the inauguration at c. 268 bce (giving c. 566–486 bce
for Gotama) or, more recently, anywhere between 267 and 280 bce. Richard Gombrich1 has argued
that ‘218’ and ‘100’ are best seen as approximate numbers, and sees 136 as more likely, based on figures
associated with a lineage of Buddhist teachers in the Dīpavaṃsa, a chronicle of Sri Lanka—with the
‘218’ in this text (6.1) as from its misunderstanding of figures in its earlier part. With various margins
1Gombrich 1991–1992 and 2000, cf. Cousins, 1996c, Harvey, 2007d: 105b–107a.
252
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
of error, Gombrich sees Gotama’s death as between 422 and 399 bce, with c. 404 as most likely, giving
his dates as c. 484–404 bce.
Background to the Life of the Buddha
The Buddha taught in the region of the Ganges basin in north-east India, where the dominant religion
was Brahmanism, administered by priests known as Brahmins (Brāhmaṇas).2 Later, around 200 bce,
this tradition began to develop into the religion now known as Hinduism. Brahmanism had entered
the north-west of the Indian sub-continent from around 1500 bce, brought by a nomadic people who
seem to have come from an area now in eastern Turkey, southern Russia and northern Iran. In this
area, people spoke a postulated Aryan (Skt Ārya) language—the basis of a number of ‘Indo-European’
languages spread by migration from there to India, Iran, Greece, Italy and other parts of Western Europe. The form of the language spoken in India was Sanskrit (from which Pali is derived), which is thus
linked, through Greek and Latin, to modern European languages. The influx of the Aryans seems to
have overlapped with the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization, a sophisticated city-based culture
which had existed in the region of Pakistan since around 2500 bce. The religion of the Aryans was
based on the Veda, a body of ‘revealed’ oral teachings and hymns: the Ṛg Veda Saṃhītā (c. 1500–1200
bce), three other Veda Saṃhītās, and later compositions known as Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads. The
Aryans worshipped ‘thirty-three’ mostly male gods known as devas, or ‘illustrious ones’: anthropomorphized principles seen as active in nature, the cosmos and human life. The central rite of the religion
was one in which the priests sang the praises of a particular deva and offered him sacrifices by placing
them in a sacrificial fire. In return, they hoped for such boons as health, increase in cattle, and immortality in the afterlife with the devas. In the Brāhmaṇas (c. 1000–800 bce), animal sacrifices came
to be added to the earlier offerings, such as grain and milk. The enunciation of the sacred sacrificial
verses, known as mantras, was also seen as manipulating a sacred power called Brahman, so that the
ritual was regarded as actually coercing the devas into sustaining the order of the cosmos and giving
what was wanted. The great responsibility of the priests in this regard was reflected in them placing
themselves at the head of what was regarded as a divinely ordained hierarchy of four social classes,
the others being those of the Kṣatriyas (Pali Khattiyas) or warrior-leaders of society in peace or war,
the Vaiśyas (Pali Vessas), or cattle-rearers and cultivators, and the Śūdras (Pali Suddas), or servants.
A person’s membership of one of these four varṇas, or ‘complexions’ of humanity, was seen as determined by birth; in later Hinduism the system incorporated thousands of lesser social groupings and
became known as the jāti, or caste, system. Members of the top three varṇas were seen as āryans, or
‘noble ones’, and seen as socially superior due to the claimed purity of their descent.
Brahmins learnt of yogic techniques of meditation, physical isolation, fasting, celibacy and asceticism from ascetics whose traditions may have gone back to the Indus Valley Civilization. Such techniques were found to be useful as spiritual preparations for performing the sacrifice. Some Brahmins
then retired to the forest and used them as a way of actually carrying out the sacrifice in an internalized, visualized form. The Upaniṣads were composed out of the teachings of the more orthodox
of these forest dwellers. Of these, the pre-Buddhist ones are the Bṛhadāranyaka and Chāndogya (seventh to sixth centuries bce) and probably the Taittirīya, Aitareya and Kauṣītaki (sixth to fifth centuries
bce). In these, Brahman is seen as the substance underlying the whole cosmos, and as identical with
2For early Indian religion, see: Basham, 2005: 234–58, 289–300; Flood, 1996: 30–102; and Olivelle,1996.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
253
the Ātman, the universal Self which the yogic element of the Indian tradition had sought deep within
the mind. By true knowledge of this identity, it was held that a person could attain liberation from
reincarnation after death, and merge back into Brahman. The idea of reincarnation seems to have
developed as an extension of the idea, found in the Brāhmaṇas, that the power of a person’s sacrificial
action might be insufficient to lead to an afterlife that did not end in another death. The Upaniṣads,
perhaps due to some non-Aryan influence, saw such a death as being followed by reincarnation as a
human or animal. Non-Aryan influence was probably more certain in developing the idea that it was
the quality of a person’s karma, or ‘action’, that determined the nature of their reincarnation in an
insecure earthly form; previously, ‘karma’ had only referred to sacrificial action. Nevertheless, Brahmanism continued to see karma in largely ritual terms, and actions were judged relative to a person’s
varṇa, their station in society. Gombrich argues that the Buddha’s central teachings came in response
to those of the early Upaniṣads, notably the Bṛhadāranyaka, especially its ideas on Ātman (1996: 31).
Moreover, in Buddhism the ethical quality of the impulse behind an action was the key to its being
good or bad, rather than its conformity with ritual norms (2006: 67–70; 2009: 19–44).
A key term of Brahmanical thought was Dharma, seen as the divinely ordained order of the universe and human society, as seen in the specific duties (dharmas) assigned to each varṇa. Dharma
includes both how things are (cf. a ‘law’ of physics) and how they should be (cf. a legal ‘law’); it is the
existent ideal standard (cf. the standard metre rule in Paris). In Buddhism, Dharma (Pali Dhamma)
is also a central term. Here, the emphasis is not on fixed social duties, but primarily on the nature of
reality, practices aiding understanding of this and practices informed by an understanding of this, all
aiding a person to live a happier life and to move closer to liberation. Interest in the Dharma of things,
their basic pattern or order, is also seen in the early Indian concern with enumerating the various elements of a person and the cosmos. In Buddhism, one sees this in various analytical lists, such as the
six elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space and consciousness), or five rebirth realms.
At the time of the Buddha, most Brahmins aimed at attaining the heaven of the creator god Brahmā (also known as Prajāpati) by means of truthfulness, study of the Vedic teachings, and either sacrifice or austerities. Some were saintly, but others seem to have been haughty and wealthy, supporting
themselves by putting on large, expensive and bloody sacrifices, often paid for by kings. At its popular level, Brahmanism incorporated practices based on protective magic spells, and pre-Brahmanical
spirit-worship no doubt continued.
The Samaṇas
The time of the Buddha was one of changing social conditions, where the traditions of small kin-based
communities were being undermined as these were swallowed up by expanding kingdoms, such as
those of Magadha and Kosala (Gombrich, 2006: 49–60). A number of cities had developed which were
the centres of administration and of developing organized trade, based on a money economy. The
ideas expressed in the Upaniṣads were starting to filter out into the wider intellectual community and
were being hotly debated, both by Brahmins and by Samaṇas (Skt Śramanas), wandering ‘renunciant’
thinkers who were somewhat akin to the early Greek philosophers and mystics. The Samaṇas rejected
the Vedic tradition and wandered free of family ties, living by alms, in order to think, debate and
investigate. Many came from the new urban centres, where old certainties were being questioned, and
increasing disease from population-concentration may have posed the universal problem of human
254
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
Figure 2: The region where the Buddha lived and taught.
suffering in a relatively stark form. They therefore sought to find a basis of true and lasting happiness
beyond change and insecurity.
In its origin, Buddhism was a Samaṇa-movement. Its description and assessment of the other
Samaṇa groups are contained in the Sāmaññaphala Sutta (D.i.47–86 (SB.5–36)).One of the major
Samaṇa groups comprised the Jains. Jainism was founded, or at least led in the Buddha’s day, by
Vardhamāna the Mahāvīra, or ‘Great Hero’. It teaches that all things, even stones, are alive, each containing a Jīva, or ‘Life-principle’. These are seen as individually distinct, rather like the Western idea
of a ‘soul’ but unlike the universal Ātman of the Upaniṣads, and to be naturally bright, omniscient and
blissful. The aim of Jainism is to liberate one’s Jīva from the round of rebirths by freeing it from being
weighed down by an encrustation of karma, seen as a kind of subtle matter. The methods of doing so
are primarily austerities such as fasting, going unwashed and pulling out the hair, so as to wear out the
results of previous karma, and self-restraint, total non-violence to any form of life, and vegetarianism,
so as to avoid the generation of new karma. The free-will of the Jīva is emphasized, though even actions such as unintentionally killing an insect are held to generate karma. While the Buddha agreed
with the Jains on such matters as rebirth and non-violence, he saw their theory of karma as somewhat
mechanical and inflexible, and opposed their asceticism as too extreme.3
A group of Samaṇas that rivalled the Buddhists and Jains in their early centuries was that of the
Ājīvikas (Basham, 1981). Their founder was Makkhali Gosāla (Skt Maskarin Gośāla), but according to
the Pali tradition they also drew on ideas from Pūrana Kassapa (Skt Purna Kāśyapa) and Pakuddha
Kaccāyana (Skt Kakuda Kātyāyana). Gosāla’s key doctrine was that niyati, or impersonal ‘destiny’,
3Gombrich, 2009: 45–60 discusses Jain antecedents to some Buddhist ideas.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
255
governed all, such that humans had no ability to affect their future lives by their karma: actions were
not freely done, but were determined by niyati. Gosāla thus believed in rebirth, but not in the principle
of karma as that which regulates the level of a person’s rebirth. The ‘Life-principles’ of living beings
are driven by niyati alone through a fixed progression of types of rebirths, from a low form of animal
to an advanced human who becomes an Ājīvika ascetic. The Ājīvikas practised rigorous asceticism
such as fasting, nakedness and perhaps also disfiguring initiations, and aimed to die by self-starvation
(as Vardhamāna in fact did), as a fitting way to end their last rebirth. Both Vardhamāna, who had
originally been on good terms with Gosāla, and the Buddha criticized Ājīvika fatalism as a pernicious
denial of human potential and responsibility.
Two other small groups of Samaṇas were the Materialists and the Skeptics. According to the Pali
tradition, in the Buddha’s day their main spokesmen were, respectively, Ajita Kesa-Kambalī (Skt Ajita
Keśa-kambalin) and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta (Skt Sañjayī Vairaṭiputra). The Materialists’ aim was to
lead an abstemious, balanced life which enjoyed simple pleasures and the satisfaction of human relationships. They denied any kind of self other than one which could be directly perceived, and held
that this was annihilated at death. They therefore denied the idea of rebirth, and also those of karma
and niyati. Each act was seen as a spontaneous event without karmic effects, and spiritual progression
was not seen as possible. The Buddha characterized the Materialists’ theory as the extreme view of
‘annihilationism’, and saw most other views of the day as some form of the opposite extreme, ‘eternalism’, which says that what survives death is some eternal Self or Life-principle. The Skeptics responded
to the welter of conflicting theories on religious and philosophical issues, and the consequent arguments, by avoiding commitment to any point of view, so as to preserve peace of mind. They held
that knowledge on such matters was impossible, and would not even commit themselves to saying
that other people’s views were wrong. The Buddha saw this evasive stance as ‘eel-wriggling’, though
he shared the wish to step aside from the ‘jungle’ of conflicting views, and avoid dogmatic assertions
built on flimsy grounds. This common emphasis is perhaps reflected in the fact that the Buddha’s two
chief disciples, Sāriputta (Skt Śāriputra) and Moggallāna (Skt Maudgalyāyana), were originally Skeptics. The Buddha also shared the Materialists’ emphasis on experience as the source of knowledge,
and thus shared a critical evaluation of current beliefs on rebirth, karma and Self. He saw the Materialists and Skeptics as going too far, however, in denying or doubting the principles of karma and
rebirth, which he held were shown to be true by (meditative) experience (M.i.402). Buddhism, then,
did not uncritically absorb belief in karma and rebirth from existing Indian culture, as is sometimes
held. These ideas were very much up for debate at the time.
The Life of the Buddha
We know that Gotama was born in the small republic of the Sakka (Skt Śākya) people, which straddles
the present border with Nepal and had Kapilavatthu (Skt Kapilavastu) as its capital. From his birth
among these people, Gotama is known in Mahāyāna tradition as Śākya-muni, ‘the Śākyan sage’. The
republic was not Brahmanized, and rule was by a council of household-heads, perhaps qualified by age
or social standing. Gotama was born to one of these rulers, so that he described himself as a Kṣatriya
when talking to Brahmins, and later tradition saw him as the son of a king.4
In the early Buddhist texts, there is no continuous life of the Buddha, as these concentrated on
his teachings. Only later, between 200 bce and 200 ce, did a growing interest in the Buddha’s person
4On the life of the Buddha, see: Ñānamoli, 2003; Ray, 1994: 44–78; Strong, 2001; Thomas, 1949.
256
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
lead to various schools producing continuous ‘biographies’, which drew on scattered accounts in the
existing Sutta and Vinaya collections, and floating oral traditions. These ‘biographies’ include the
Lokattaravādin Mahāvastu (Mvs.; first century ce), the Mahāyānized Sarvāstivādin Lalitavistara (Bays,
1983; from the first century ce), Aśvaghoṣa’s poem, the Buddhacarita (Johnston, 1972, (BS1.34–66);
second century ce), and the Theravādin Nidānakathā (Ndk.; second or third century ce). The details
of these are in general agreement, but while they must clearly be based around historical facts, they
also contain legendary and mythological embellishments, and it is often not possible to sort out one
from the other. While the bare historical basis of the traditional biography will never be known, as it
stands it gives a great insight into Buddhism by enabling us to see what the meaning of the Buddha’s
life is to Buddhists: what lessons it is held to contain.
The traditional biography does not begin with Gotama’s birth, but with what went before it, in
his many lives as a Bodhisatta, a being (Pali satta) who is dedicated to attaining bodhi: ‘enlightenment’, ‘awakening’, buddhahood. At bodhi, there arises ‘vision, knowledge, wisdom, true knowledge,
and light’ (S.v.422) and ‘bodhi’ is related to ‘bujjhati’, ‘understands’, in the sense of ‘rising from the
slumber of the continuum of the (moral and spiritual) defilements’ (Asl.217). As an ‘awakening’, bodhi
is not the awakening of something, that is, a beginning of something, but a final awakening from
delusion etc. ‘Bodhi-satta’ was originally equivalent to Sanskrit ‘bodhi-sakta’, meaning ‘one bound
for/seeking/directed towards awakening’, though in time it came to be Sanskritized as ‘Bodhi-sattva’,
a ‘being (for) awakening’.
It is held that a ‘hundred thousand eons and four incalculable periods ago’, in one of his past lives,
Gotama was an ascetic named Sumedha (or Megha) who met and was inspired by a previous Buddha,
Dīpankara.5 He therefore resolved to strive for Buddhahood, by becoming a Bodhisatta. Sumedha
knew that, while he could become an enlightened disciple of Dīpankara, an Arahat, the path he had
chosen instead would take many lives to complete. It would, however, culminate in his becoming a
perfect Buddha, one who would bring benefit to countless beings by rediscovering and teaching the
timeless truths of Dhamma in a period when they had been forgotten by the human race (Bvms.2A.56).
He then spent many lives, as a human, animal and god, building up the moral and spiritual perfections
necessary for Buddhahood. These lives are described in what are known as Jātaka stories (Jat., e.g.
BS1.24–30). Over the eons, he also met other past Buddhas (Collins, 2010: 126–71; Harvey, 2007d: 161a–
165a); the Dīgha Nikāya names six (D.ii.2–9), and the Buddhavaṃsa, twenty-three. In his penultimate
life he was born in the Tusita (Skt Tuṣita) heaven, the realm of the ‘delighted’ gods. This is said to be
the realm where the Bodhisatta Metteyya (Skt Maitreya) now lives, ready for a future period in human
history when Buddhism will have become extinct, and he can become the next Buddha.6
It is said that Gotama chose the time in human history in which to be reborn for the last time
(Ndk.48–9), with the Suttas saying that he was ‘mindful and fully aware’ when he was conceived in his
mother’s womb (M.iii.119 (BW.50–4)).
The early texts clearly see the conception and the other key events of Gotama’s life, such as his
birth, awakening, first sermon and death, as events of cosmic importance; for at all of them they say
that light spread throughout the world and the earth shook. Ndk.50 relates that at the time of the conception, Mahāmāyā, his mother, dreamt that she was transported to the Himālayas where a being in
the form of an auspicious white elephant entered her right side. On recounting this dream to her husband, Suddhodana (Skt Śuddhodana), he had it interpreted by sixty-four Brahmins. They explained
5Bvms. ch. 2; Ndk.1–19 (BTTA.72); Mvs. i.231–9 (BS1.19–24); Divyāvadāna 246–53 (EB.1.4.1).
6D.iii.76; BTTA.22; BS1.238–42; BS2.12; EB.1.9.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
257
that it indicated that his wife had conceived a son with a great destiny ahead of him. Either he would
stay at home with his father and go on to become a Cakkavattin (Skt Cakravartin), a compassionate
Universal Emperor—which the Suttas say that he had been in many previous lives (A.iv.89)—or he
would leave home and become a great religious teacher, a Buddha.
This paralleling of a Cakkavattin7 and a Buddha is also made in relation to other events of Gotama’s
life, and indicates the idea of a Buddha having universal spiritual ‘sovereignty’—i.e. influence—over
humans and gods. It also indicates that Gotama renounced the option of political power in becoming a
Buddha. He certainly had no political pretensions, as Muhammad had, and was not seen as a political
threat by the rulers of his day, as was Jesus. He did, however, teach kings and give teachings on how
best to govern a realm.
Ndk.52–3 relates that, near the end of her pregnancy, Mahāmāyā journeyed from Kapilavatthu to
the home of her relatives to give birth, as was the custom. On the way, she and her party passed the
pleasant Lumbinī grove, where she stopped to enjoy the flowers and birdsong. Here she went into
labour and, holding on to a Sāl tree, gave birth standing up. The birth of Gotama under a tree fits
the pattern of the other key events in his life: attaining awakening under another tree, giving his first
sermon in an animal (perhaps deer) park, and dying between two trees. This suggests his liking for
simple natural environments where he could be in harmony with all forms of life. The Sutta accounts
say that the baby was set down on the ground by four gods, and that a warm and cool stream of water
appeared from the sky as a water-libation for mother and child. He immediately stood, walked seven
paces, scanned in all directions, and said in a noble voice that he was the foremost being in the world,
and that this would be his last rebirth (M.iii.123).
As his mother had died a week after giving birth (M.iii.122), Gotama was brought up by his father’s second wife, Mahāmāya’s sister, Mahāpajāpatī (Skt Mahāprajāpatī). The Suttas say little on his
early life, except that it was one of lily pools, fine clothes and fragrances, with female musicians as
attendants in his three mansions (A.i.145). The later biographies portray him as having been an eager,
intelligent and compassionate youth. They relate that his father was keen that he should stay at home
to become a great king, and so surrounded him with luxuries to ensure that he remained attached to
the worldly life. At sixteen, he was married, and at twenty-nine had a son named Rāhula. In Theravāda
texts, his wife is generally called ‘Mother of Rāhula’ (Rāhula-mātā, Ndk.58), but other names used in
these and other texts are Bhaddakaccā, Bimbā-devī, Yaśodharā and Gopā.8
The renunciation and quest for awakening
It was from a pleasant and wealthy background, then, that Gotama renounced the worldly life and set
out on his religious quest. The lead-up to this crucial transition is described in different ways in the
early and later texts. The Suttas portray it as the result of a long consideration. Even from his sheltered
existence, he became aware of the facts of ageing, sickness and death. Realizing that even he was not
immune from these, the ‘vanities’ of youth, health and life left him (A.i.145–6). He therefore set out
to find the ‘unborn, unageing, undecaying, deathless, sorrowless, undefiled, uttermost security from
bondage—Nirvāṇa’ (M.i.163). He realized, though, that:
Household life is crowded and dusty; going forth [into the life of a wandering Samaṇa] is
wide open. It is not easy, living life in a household, to lead a holy-life as utterly perfect as
7For example at D.ii.142, 169–99 (SB.98–115), iii.142–79; A.i.109–10 (BW.115–16); Harvey, 2007d: 153a–155a.
8Harvey, 2007d: 117a–121a; for a nineteenth-century Thai text ‘Bimbā’s Lament’, see BP.43.
258
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
a polished shell. Suppose I were to shave off my hair and beard, put on saffron garments,
and go forth from home into homelessness? (M.i.240)
The later texts say that the transition occurred at the age of twenty-nine, just after the birth of
his son (Ndk.61–3),9 portraying it as arising from a sudden realization rather than from a gradual reflection. In this, they follow the model of a Sutta story of a previous Buddha (D.ii.22–9), which sees
the lives of all Buddhas as following a recurring pattern (dhammatā). Ndk.58–9 relates that, on three
consecutive days, Gotama visited one of his parks in his chariot. His father had had the streets cleared
of unpleasant sights, but the gods ensured that he saw an age-worn man, a sick man and a corpse. He
was amazed at these new sights, and his charioteer explained to him that ageing, sickness and death
came to all people, thus putting him in a state of agitation at the nature of life. In this way, the texts
portray an example of the human confrontation with frailty and mortality; for while these facts are
‘known’ to us all, a clear realization and acceptance of them often does come as a novel and disturbing
insight. On a fourth trip to his park, Gotama saw a saffron-robed Samaṇa with a shaven head and a
calm demeanour, the sight of whom inspired him to adopt such a life-style. That night, he left his
palace, taking a long last look at his son, who lay in his sleeping wife’s arms, knowing it would be difficult for him to leave if she awoke. His renunciation of family life stands as a symbolic precedent for
the monastic life of Buddhist monks and nuns.
The Buddhist tradition sees his leaving of his family as done for the benefit of all beings; moreover,
after he became a Buddha, he is said to have returned to his home town and taught his family, with his
son ordaining under him as a novice monk, and his father becoming a ‘non-returner’ (Ndk.91–2): one
with liberating insight just less than that of the Arahat (Skt Arhat; see p. 86). After his father’s death,
his stepmother, Mahāpajāpatī becomes a nun who goes on to become an Arahat, and whose death is
compared to that of the Buddha (BP.9). It is also said in the Theravāda commentaries that his ex-wife
ordained as a nun ( Jat.ii.392–3), and she may be identical with the nun known as Bhaddakaccānā,
seen as the nun who was pre-eminent in ‘higher knowledges’ (such as memory of past lives; A.i .25).
The Suttas say that Gotama sought out teachers from whom he could learn spiritual techniques,
going first to Āḷāra Kālāma (Skt Arāḍa Kālāma).10 Gotama soon mastered his teachings and then enquired after the meditational state on which they were based. This was the ‘sphere of nothingness’, a
mystical trance probably attained by yogic concentration, in which the mind goes beyond any apparent object and dwells on the remaining ‘nothingness’. After Gotama quickly learnt to enter this state,
Āl.āra offered him joint leadership of his group of disciples, but he turned down the offer as he felt
that, while he had attained a refined inner calmness, he had not yet attained awakening and the end
of suffering.
He then went to another yoga teacher, Uddaka Rāmaputta (Skt Udraka Rāmaputra), and again
quickly grasped his doctrine and entered the meditational state on which it was based, the ‘sphere
of neither-perception-nor-non-perception’. This went beyond the previous state to a level of mental
stilling where consciousness is so attenuated as to hardly exist. In response, Uddaka acknowledged
him as even his own teacher, for only his dead father, Rāma, had previously attained this state. Again
Gotama passed up a chance of leadership and influence on the grounds that he had not yet reached his
goal. Nevertheless, he later incorporated both the mystical states he had attained into his own meditational system, as possible ways to calm and purify the mind in preparation for developing liberating
9Though the Sarvāstivāda tradition (EB.1.3) has Rāhula being conceived on the night of the renunciation, thus ensuring
Gotama’s family line is continued.
10M.i.160–75 (BW.54–9, 69–75; BS2.14); see also M.ii.91–7 (SB.173–94).
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
259
insight. He in fact taught a great variety of meditational methods, adapting some from the existing
yogic tradition, and can be seen as having been one of India’s greatest practitioners of meditation.
After having experimented with one of the methods of religious practice current in his day, Gotama went on to try another: ascetic selfmortification. The Suttas tell that he settled in a woodland
grove at Uruvelā (Skt Uruvilvā) and resolved to strive earnestly to overcome attachment to sensual
pleasures by intense effort, trying to dominate such tendencies by force of will (M.i.240–6). He practised non-breathing meditations, though they produced fierce headaches, stomach pains, and burning
heat all over his body. He reduced his food intake to a few drops of bean soup a day, till he became
so emaciated that he could hardly stand and his body hair fell out. At this point, he felt that it was
not possible for anyone to go further on the path of asceticism and still live. Nevertheless, though he
had developed clarity of mind and energy, his body and mind were pained and untranquil, so that he
could not carry on with his quest. He therefore abandoned his practice of harsh asceticism, which the
later texts (Ndk.67) say lasted for six years.
At this point, he might have abandoned his quest as hopeless, but he thought ‘might there be
another path to awakening?’ (M.i.246). He then remembered a meditative state that he had once
spontaneously entered, sitting at the foot of a tree while his father was working (the commentary
says: ceremonially ploughing). He recollected that this state, known as the ‘first jhāna’ (Skt dhyāna),
was beyond involvement in sense-pleasures, which he had been attempting to conquer by painful
asceticism, but was accompanied by deep calm, blissful joy and tranquil happiness. He remembered
having wondered whether it was a path to awakening, and as he now saw that it was, he resolved to
use it. The above sequence, of course, implies that the two mystical states he had earlier attained were
not entered via the jhānas, although this became the route to them in the Buddhist meditative system,
where they are the top two of four ‘formless’ (arūpa) attainments.
When Gotama took sustaining food to prepare himself for attaining jhāna, his five companions in
asceticism shunned him in disgust, seeing him as having abandoned their shared quest and taken to
luxurious living. One Sutta (Sn.425–49) outlines a temptation sequence which the later texts (Ndk.72–
4) put at this juncture. It refers to a Satan-like figure known as Māra, a deity who has won his place by
previous good works, but who uses his power to entrap people in sensual desire and attachment, so
as to stay within his realm of influence (Ling, 1962). This is the round of rebirth and repeated death,
so that Māra is seen as the embodiment of both sense-desire and death. Māra came to the emaciated
ascetic with honeyed words. He urged him to abandon his quest and take up a more conventional
religious life of sacrifice and good works, so as to generate good karma. In response, Gotama replied
that he had no need of more good karma, and scorned the ‘squadrons’ of Māra: sense-desire, jealousy,
hunger and thirst, craving, dullness and lethargy, cowardice, fear of commitment, belittling others,
obstinate insensitivity and self-praise. Māra then retreated in defeat.
This account, clearly portraying the final inner struggle of Gotama, gains dramatic colour in the
later texts, where Māra’s ‘army’ of spiritual faults bore witness to the fact that he had done many charitable acts in previous lives. Taunting Gotama that he had no-one to bear witness to his good deeds,
Māra tried to use the power derived from his own good karma to throw Gotama off the spot where
he was sitting. Gotama did not move, however, but meditated on the spiritual perfections that he
had developed over many previous lives, knowing that he had a right to the spot where he sat. He
then touched the earth for it to bear witness to the good karma he had generated in past lives. The
earth quaked, and the earth goddess appeared, wringing from her hair a flood of water, accumulated
in the past when Gotama had formalized good deeds by a simple ritual of waterpouring (Strong, 2001:
260
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
72). At the quaking and flood, Māra and his army fled. This ‘conquest of Māra’ is commemorated as
a victory over evil by countless images and paintings. These show Gotama, as in Plate 1, seated crosslegged in meditation with his right hand touching the earth: the ‘conquest of Māra’ (Pali māra-vijaya)
or ‘earth-witness’ (Skt bhūmi-sparśa) gesture.
The idea of the earth goddess acting as witness to Gotama’s perfections is suggestive of the spiritual need to be mindfully ‘earthed’. Indeed in his spiritual quest, it is notable that Gotama turned to
a path of mindful awareness of the body, especially breathing, to induce joyful jhāna, rather than not
attending to the physical in formless states or trying to forcefully repress the body and its needs in the
painful ascetic way.
The awakening and after
Free of spiritual hindrances, Gotama then developed deep meditations as a prelude to his awakening, seated under a species of tree which later became known as the Bodhi, or ‘Awakening’ tree. The
Sutta account (M.i.247–9 (BW.64–7)) describes how he entered the first jhāna, and then gradually
deepened his state of concentrated calm till he reached the fourth jhāna, a state of great equanimity,
mental brightness and purity. Based on this state, he went on to develop, in the course of the three
watches of the moonlit night, the ‘threefold knowledge’: memory of many of his countless previous
lives, seeing the rebirth of others according to their karma, and knowing the destruction of the āsavas
(Skt āśravas)—spiritual ‘taints’ or ‘cankers’ which fester in the mind and keep it unawakened. The
third knowledge, completed at dawn, brought the perfect awakening he had been seeking, so that
he was now, at the age of thirty-five, a Buddha, with joyful direct experience of the unconditioned
Nirvāṇa, beyond ageing, sickness and death.
The Canonical account (Vin.i.1–8; M.I.167–70) then says that the new Buddha stayed under or near
the Bodhi-tree for four or more weeks, at the place now called Bodh-Gayā. After meditatively reflecting on his awakening, he pondered the possibility of teaching others, but thought that the Dhamma
he had experienced was so profound, subtle and ‘beyond the sphere of reason’, that others would
be too subject to attachment to be able to understand it. At this, the compassionate god Brahmā
Sahampati—whom the Buddhist tradition saw as a long-lived ‘non-returner’ who had been taught by
a previous Buddha (S.v.232–3; Sn-a.476)—became alarmed at the thought that a fully awakened person had arisen in the world, but that he might not share his rare and precious wisdom with others.
He therefore appeared before the Buddha and respectfully asked him to teach, for ‘there are beings
with little dust in their eyes who, not hearing the Dhamma, are decaying’. The Buddha then used his
mind-reading powers to survey the world and determine that some people were spiritually mature
enough to understand his message, and so decided to teach. The entreaty of the compassionate Brahmā is seen by Buddhists as the stimulus for the unfolding of the Buddha’s compassion, the necessary
complement to his awakened wisdom for his role as a perfect Buddha, a ‘teacher of gods and humans’.
The words attributed to Sahampati are now used as a Theravāda chant to formally request a monk to
teach.
Gotama wished to teach his two yoga teachers first of all, but gods informed him that they were
now dead, a fact which he then confirmed by his meditative awareness. He therefore decided to teach
his former companions in asceticism. Intuiting that they were currently in the animal park at Isipatana (Skt R.s.ipatana; now called Sārnāth) near Varanasi (Benares), he set out to walk there, a journey of about one hundred miles.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
261
The first sermon and the spread of the teachings
The Canonical account (Vin.i.8–21) relates that, on arriving at the animal park, his five former companions saw him in the distance, and resolved to snub him as a spiritual failure. As he approached,
however, they saw that a great change had come over him and, in spite of themselves, respectfully
greeted him and washed his feet. At first they addressed him as an equal, but the Buddha insisted
that he was a Tathāgata, a ‘Thus-gone’ or ‘One-attuned-to-reality’ (cf. A.ii.23–4 (BW.421–3)), who had
found the Deathless and could therefore be their teacher. After he twice repeated his affirmation, to
overcome their hesitation, the ascetics acknowledged that he had a new-found assurance and were
willing to be taught by him.
Gotama, usually referred to as the ‘Lord’ or ‘Blessed One’ (Bhagavat) in the Suttas, then gave his
first sermon. This commenced with the idea that there is a ‘middle way’ for those who have gone forth
from the home life, a way which avoids both the extremes of devotion to mere sense-pleasures and
devotion to ascetic self-torment. Gotama had himself previously experienced both of these spiritual
dead-ends. The middle way which he had found to lead to awakening was the Ariya (Skt Ārya), or
Noble, Eight-factored Path (Magga, Skt Mārga). He then continued with the kernel of his message, on
the four True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled (generally translated as ‘Noble Truths’), which are
four crucial dimensions of existence: the painful aspects of life; craving as the key cause of rebirth and
these associated mental and physical pains; the cessation of these from the cessation of craving; and
the way of practice leading to this cessation, the Noble Eight-factored Path. He then emphasized the
liberating effect on him of his full insight into and appropriate responses to these realities, such that
he was now a Buddha.
As a result of this instruction, one member of Gotama’s audience, Koṇḍañña (Skt Kauṇḍinya),
gained experiential insight into the four True Realities, so that Gotama joyfully affirmed his understanding. This insight is described as the gaining of the stainless ‘Dhamma-eye’, by which Koṇḍañña
‘sees’, ‘attains’ and ‘plunges into’ the Dhamma, free from all doubt in the Buddha’s teachings. This is
a person’s first spiritual breakthrough, involving the first glimpse of Nirvāṇa. In most cases, as with
Koṇḍañña, it makes a person a ‘stream-enterer’: one who has entered the path that will ensure the full
attainment of Nirvāṇa within seven lives at most. Koṇḍañña’s gaining of the Dhamma-eye is clearly
seen as the climax of the first sermon, for as soon as it occurs, the exultant message is rapidly transmitted up through various levels of gods that ‘the supreme Dhamma-wheel’ had been set in motion
by the ‘Blessed One’, and could not be stopped by any power: an era of the spiritual influence of the
Dhamma had begun. The ‘Setting in motion of the Dhamma-wheel’ (Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana, Skt
Dharma-cakra-pavartana) thus became the title of the Sutta of the first sermon (S.v.420–4).
After Koṇḍañña was ordained, thus becoming the first member of the monastic Saṅgha, the Buddha gave more extensive explanations of his teachings to the other four ascetics, so that, one by one,
they attained the Dhamma-eye and were then ordained. Later the Buddha gave his ‘second’ sermon
(see p. 58), at which his disciples all attained the full experience of Nirvāṇa—as he himself had done
at his awakening—so as to become Arahats.
Other disciples, monastic and lay, followed, so that soon there were sixty- one Arahats, including
the Buddha. Having such a body of awakened monk-disciples, the Buddha sent them out on a mission
to spread the Dhamma: ‘Walk, monks, on tour for the blessing of the manyfolk, for the happiness of
the manyfolk, out of compassion for the world, for the welfare, the blessing, the happiness of gods and
humans’ (Vin.i.21 (BTTA.7)). As the teaching spread, Gotama in time gained his two chief disciples:
262
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
Sāriputta, famed for his wisdom and ability to teach, and Moggallāna, famed for his psychic powers
developed by meditation.11 At some point during his life, Gotama initiated an order of nuns (see pp.
298–9), this being said to be in response to the repeated requests of his stepmother Mahāpajāpatī, and
the suggestion of his faithful attendant monk Ānanda (Vin.ii.253–83 (BTTA.3)).
The Canon gives only incidental reference to events between the sending out of the sixty Arahats
and the last year of the Buddha’s life. The general picture conveyed is that he spent his long teaching
career wandering on foot, with few possessions, around the Ganges basin region. Though he was of a
contemplative nature, loving the solitude of natural surroundings, he was generally accompanied by
many disciples and spent much of his time in or near the new towns and cities, especially Sāvatthī,
Rājagaha and Vesālī (Skt Śrāvastī, Rājagṛha, Vāiśalī). Here, there were many people of a questioning
nature looking for a new spiritual outlook. The commentary to the Thera-gāthā and Therī-gāthā describes the background of 328 monks and nuns (Gombrich, 2006: 56; Gokhale, 1994: 61) and indicates
that over two-thirds came from urban areas. It also indicates that, as to their social backgrounds, 41 per
cent were Brahmin, 23 per cent Kṣatriya, 30 per cent Vaiśya, 3 per cent Śūdra, and 3 per cent ‘outcaste’
(below the Śūdras in the Brahmanical hierarchy). Of these, the Brahmins do not generally appear
to have been traditional village priests, but urban dwellers perhaps employed as state officials. State
officials and merchants were the dominant groups in urban society, but neither had an established
niche in the varṇa system (though merchants later came to be seen as Vaiśyas). These groups, whose
achievements depended on personal effort, seem to have been particularly attracted to the Buddha’s
message, which addressed people as individuals in charge of their own moral and spiritual destiny,
rather than as members of the varṇa system (Gombrich 2006: 79–83); respect should be based on
moral and spiritual worth, not birth: it had to be earned (Sn.136). The Buddha taught all who came to
him without distinction: men, women, rich merchants, servants, Brahmins, craftsmen, ascetics, kings
and courtesans, and made a point of insisting that social background was irrelevant to the position of
individuals within the Saṅgha (A.iv.202). He also urged his disciples to teach in the local languages or
dialects of their hearers (Vin. ii.139). In contrast, the Brahmins taught in Sanskrit, which had by now
become unintelligible to those who had not studied it, and only made the Vedic teachings available
to males of the top three varṇas.
The Buddha’s charisma and powers
The early texts portray the Buddha as a charismatic, humanitarian teacher who inspired many people.
He even elicited a response from animals: for it is said that an elephant once looked after him by
bringing him water when he was spending a period alone in the forest (Vin.i.352). A person who bore
enmity towards him, however, was his cousin Devadatta, one of his monks. Jealous of his influence,
Devadatta once suggested that the ageing Buddha should let him lead the Saṅgha, and then plotted
to kill him when the request was turned down (Vin.ii.191–5). In one attempt on his life, Devadatta
asked his friend, Prince Ajātasattu (Skt Ajātaśatru), to send soldiers to waylay and assassinate the
Buddha. Sixteen soldiers in turn went to do this, but all were too afraid to do so, and became the
Buddha’s disciples instead. In another attempt, the fierce man-killing elephant Nālāgiri was let loose
on the road on which the Buddha was travelling. As the elephant charged, the Buddha calmly stood
his ground and suffused the elephant with the power of his lovingkindness, so that it stopped and
bowed its head, letting the Buddha stroke and tame it.
11For stories of his converting some key disciples, see BTTA.1; EB.2.1.1/3/5/6.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
263
In gaining hearers for his message, the Buddha did not always rely on his charisma, reputation
and powers of persuasion. Occasionally he had recourse to his psychic powers, though he forbade the
mere display of these by his disciples (Vin.ii.112). The results of such powers are not seen as supernatural miracles, but as the supernormal products of the great inner power of certain meditations. A
late Canonical passage (Patis.i.125) describes his ‘marvel of the pairs’, which later legendary material
ascribes to the Buddha while staying at Sāvatthī (Dhp-a.iii.204–16): he rose into the air and produced
both fire and water from different parts of his body. Occasionally, he used his powers to heal one of his
devout supporters physically, such as bringing a long and very painful childbirth to an end (Ud.15–16),
or curing a wound without leaving even a scar (Vin.i.216–18). The Buddha generally regarded psychic
powers as dangerous, however, as they could encourage attachment and self-glorification. In a strange
parallel to the temptation of Jesus in the desert, it is said that he rebuffed Māra’s temptation to turn
the Himālayas into gold (S.i.116).
The passing away of the Buddha
The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta12 deals with the last year of the Buddha’s life. During this period, he suffered an illness, and Ānanda asked about the fate of the Saṅgha after his death, clearly wondering who
would lead it. In reply, the Buddha said that he had taught the Dhamma without holding anything
back, and that the Saṅgha depended on the Dhamma, not on any leader, even himself.13 Members of
the Saṅgha should look to their own self-reliant practice, with the clearly taught Dhamma as guide:
with themselves and the Dhamma as ‘island’ and ‘refuge’ (D.ii.100). Later the Buddha specified that,
after his death, the Saṅgha should take both the Dhamma and monastic discipline (Vinaya) as their
‘teacher’ (D.ii.154).
Though unwell for the last three months of his life, the Buddha continued to wander on foot,
his journey ending in the small village of Kusinārā (Skt Kuśunagarī). When asked what his funeral
arrangements should be, he said that this was the concern of the laity, not the Saṅgha, but that his
body should be treated like that of a Cakkavattin emperor. It should be wrapped in cloth, placed in
a coffin and cremated. The relics remaining should then be placed in a Stūpa (Pali Thūpa), or burial
mound, at a place where four roads meet. He then said, ‘When people place a garland, fragrance or
paste there, or make respectful salutations, or bring peace to their hearts, that will contribute to their
long-lasting welfare and happiness’ (D.ii.142). After his cremation, the Buddha’s relics were placed
in eight Stūpas (EB.1.1), with the bowl used to collect the relics and the ashes of the funeral fire in
two more. Such Stūpas, which could alternatively contain relics of Arahats, later became the focus of
much devotion.
Even on his death-bed, the Buddha continued to teach. A wanderer asked whether other Samaṇa
leaders had attained true knowledge. Rather than say that their religious systems were wrong and
his right, the Buddha simply indicated that the crucial ingredient of any such system was the Noble
Eight-factored Path: only then could it lead to full Arahatship. He saw such a Path as absent from
other teachings that he knew of.
Not long after this, the Buddha asked his monks if any had final questions that they wanted answering before he died. When they were silent, he sensitively said that, if they were silent simply out
12D.ii.72–167 (SB.37–97); EB.1.7 is from a parallel Sanskrit text.
13Though several texts of north-west India came to talk of Mahākāśyapa (Pali Mahākassapa) as having been the Budda’s
successor (Ray, 1994: 105–18).
264
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
of reverence for him, they should have a friend ask their question. They remained silent. Seeing that
they all had a good understanding of his teachings, he therefore gave his final words: ‘It is the nature
of conditioned things to decay, but if you are attentive, you will succeed!’ (D.ii.156). He then made his
exit from the world, in the fearless, calm and self-controlled state of meditation. He passed into the
first jhāna, and then by degrees through the three other jhānas, the four ‘formless’ mystical states, and
then the ‘cessation of perception and feeling’ (see pp. 331–2). He then gradually descended back to
the first jhāna, moved back up to the fourth jhāna, and passed away from there (D.ii.156). Buddhists
see this event not so much as a ‘death’ as a passing into the Deathless, Nirvāṇa.
The Nature and Role of the Buddha
The Suttas contain some very ‘human’ information on the Buddha, such as getting backache after a
long teaching session (D.iii.209). In the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, we find the eighty-year-old Buddha
expressing ‘weariness’ at the prospect of being asked about the rebirth-destiny of every person who
has died in a locality (D.ii.93); saying he was old and worn out and only knowing comfort when in a
deep meditation (D.ii.100); in his final illness, being extremely thirsty, and insisting on immediately
being given water (D.ii.128–9). However, elsewhere in the same text the Buddha crosses the Ganges
by means of his psychic power (D.ii.89); he says that, if he asked, he could have lived on ‘for a kappa,
or the remainder of one’ (D.ii.103), with kappa (Skt kalpa) generally meaning ‘eon’, but possibly here
the maximum human life-span of around 100 years; when he lies down between two Sāl trees, where
he will die, these burst into unseasonal blossom in homage to him, and divine music is heard in the
sky (D.ii.137–8); gods from ten regions of the universe assemble to witness the great event of a Buddha’s passing into final Nirvāṇa at death (parinibbāna, Skt parinirvāṇa;14 D.ii.138–9); gods prevent his
funeral pyre from igniting until the senior disciple Mahākassapa (Skt Mahākāśyapa) arrives at the site
(D.ii.163).
Thus, while modern Theravādins sometimes say that the Buddha was ‘a human being, pure and
simple’ (Rahula, 1974: 1), such remarks have to be taken in context. They are usually intended to contrast the Buddha with Jesus, seen as the ‘Son of God’, and to counter the Mahāyāna view of the Buddha’s nature, which sees it as far above the human. These remarks may also be due to a modernist,
somewhat demythologized view of the Buddha. In the Pali Canon, Gotama was seen as born a human,
though one with extraordinary abilities due to the perfections built up in his long Bodhisatta career.
Once he had attained awakening, though, he could no longer be called a ‘human’, as he had perfected
and transcended his humanness. This idea is reflected in a Sutta passage where the Buddha is asked
whether he is (literally ‘will be’) a god (deva) or a human (A.ii.37–9 (BTTA.105)). In reply, he said that
he had gone beyond the deep-rooted unconscious traits that would make him a god or human, and
was therefore to be seen as a Buddha, one who had grown up in the world but who had now gone
beyond it, as a lotus grows from the water but blossoms above it, unsoiled.
The mysterious nature of a Buddha is indicated by the Buddha’s chiding of a monk who had too
much uncritical faith in him, so as to be always following him round: ‘Hush, Vakkali! What is there for
you in seeking this vile visible body? Vakkali, whoever sees Dhamma, sees me; whoever sees me, sees
Dhamma’ (S.iii.120). This close link between the Buddha and Dhamma is reinforced by another Sutta
14The term parinibbāna/parinirvāna is sometimes also used for the attaining of Nirvāṇa in life (the verbal equivalent
parinibbāyati is often used this way), but has more typically, and especially in modern usage, come to refer particularly to
an Arahat’s or Buddha’s attaining final Nirvāṇa at death.
REQUIRED READING: HARVEY
265
passage, which says that a Tathāgata can be designated as ‘one having Dhamma as body’ (Dhammakāya; Harrison, 1992: 50) and who is ‘Dhamma-become’ (Dhamma-bhūta; D.iii.84). These terms indicate that a Buddha has fully exemplified the Dhamma, in the sense of the Path, in his personality or
‘body’. Moreover, he has fully realized Dhamma in the supreme sense by his experience of Nirvāṇa, the
equivalent of the supreme Dhamma (A.i.156 and 158). The Arahat is no different in these respects, for
he is described as ‘become the supreme’ (brahma-bhūta, S.iii.83), a term which is used as an equivalent
to ‘Dhamma-become’ in the above passage. Any awakened person is one who is ‘deep, immeasurable,
hard-to-fathom as is the great ocean’ (M.i.487). Having ‘become Dhamma’, their awakened nature
can only really be fathomed by one who has ‘seen’ Dhamma with the ‘Dhamma-eye’ of stream-entry.
While Christians see Jesus as God-become-human, then, Buddhists see the Buddha (and Arahats) as
human-become-Dhamma.
In the early Buddhist texts, the Buddha is himself said to be an Arahat, and to be in most respects
like other Arahats. Any Arahat’s experience of Nirvāṇa is the same; however, a perfect Buddha is
seen as having more extensive knowledge than other Arahats. While not omniscient in the sense of
continuously and uninterruptedly knowing everything (M.ii.126–7), it is said that he could remember
as far back into his countless previous lives as he wished, and know how any being was reborn, in
accordance with their karma (M.i.482). Other Arahats had limitations on such powers, or may not
even have developed them (S.ii.122–3; M.i.477). A perfect Buddha is seen as one who can come to
know anything knowable (A.ii.25); he just needs to turn his mind to it (Miln.102, 106). What he teaches
is just a small portion of his huge knowledge (S.v.438 (BW.360–1)), for he only teaches what is both true
and spiritually useful (M.i.395; Harvey, 1995b).
A second key difference between a Buddha and an Arahat is that a Buddha is someone who, by
his own efforts, rediscovers the Path after it has been lost to human society (S.ii.105–7 (BW.69)). Having discovered it for himself, he skilfully makes it known to others so that they can fully practise it for
themselves and so become Arahats (S.iii.64–5 (BW.413–14)). He is a rediscoverer and teacher of timeless realities (A.i.286–7). As founder of a monastic Saṅgha, and propounder of the rules of conduct
binding on its members, a Buddha also fulfils a role akin to that of ‘law-giver’.
The Nature and Style of the Buddha’s Teaching
The Buddha’s style of teaching was generally one of skilful adaptation to the mood and concerns of
his hearers, responding to the questions and even the non-verbalized thoughts of his audience and
taking cues from events (Gombrich, 2009: 161–79). By means of a dialogue with his questioners, he
gradually moved them towards sharing something of his own insight into reality. When Brahmins
asked him about how to attain union with the god Brahmā after death, he said this could be attained
by meditative development of deep lovingkindness and compassion, rather than by bloody Vedic sacrifices (D.i.235–52). He often gave old terms new meanings, for example talking of the Arahat as the
‘true Brahmin’ (Dhp.383–423), and using the term ariya, equivalent to the Sanskrit term for the ‘noble’
Aryan people, in the sense of spiritually noble or ennobled.
The Buddha treated questions in a careful, analytic way. Some he answered directly, others he
answered after first analysing them so as to clarify the nature of the question. Some he answered
with a counter-question, to reveal concealed motives and presuppositions; others again he ‘set aside’
as question-begging and fraught with misconceptions (A.ii.46). He did not mind if others disagreed
with him, but censured misinterpretations of what he taught. He showed even-mindedness when
266
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
gaining disciples. A general, Sīha (Skt Sim ha), who was a great supporter of Jain monks, once decided
to become a lay disciple, but the Buddha advised him that such a prominent person as himself should
carefully consider before changing his religious allegiances (Vin.i.236 (BTTA.2)). When he still wished
to do so, and wanted to support Buddhist monks, the Buddha advised him that he should still support
Jain monks, too.
The Buddha emphasized that one should not mistake belief for knowledge,15 and the importance
of self-reliance and the experiential testing-out of all teachings, including his own (M.i.317–20 (BW.93–
6)). Only occasionally, for example before his first sermon, did he use his authority, but this was not to
force people to agree with him, but to get them to listen so that they could then gain understanding. He
also advised his disciples not to react emotionally when they heard people speaking in blame or praise
of him, but to assess calmly the degree to which what was said was true or false (D.i.3). He was well
aware of the many conflicting doctrines of his day, a time of intellectual ferment. Rejecting teachings
based on authoritative tradition, or mere rational speculation, he emphasized the examination and
analysis of actual experience. When he spoke to the confused Kālāma people,16 after many teachers
had visited them praising their own teachings and disparaging those of others, he said:
you should not go along with something because of what you have been told, because
of authority, because of tradition, because of accordance with a transmitted text, on the
grounds of reason, on the grounds of logic, because of analytic thought, because of abstract theoretic pondering, because of the appearance of the speaker, or because some
ascetic is your teacher. When you know for yourselves that particular qualities are unwholesome, blameworthy, censured by the wise, and lead to harm and suffering when
taken on and pursued, then you should give them up. (A.i.189 (SB.252))
Accordingly, they should see that greed, hatred and delusion (lack of mental clarity), which lead to
behaviour that harms others, are to be avoided, and non-greed (generosity and renunciation), nonhatred (lovingkindness and compassion) and non-delusion (clarity of mind and wisdom) are to be
engaged in. By implication, teachings which discourage the former and encourage the latter are worth
following.
The Buddha emphasized that his teachings had a practical purpose, and should not be blindly
clung to. He likened the Dhamma to a raft made by a man seeking to cross from the dangerous hither
shore of a river, representing the conditioned world, to the peaceful further shore, representing Nirvāṇa (M.i.134–5 (BTTA.77; SB.160–1)). He then rhetorically asked whether such a man, on reaching the
other shore, should lift up the raft and carry it around with him there. He therefore said, ‘Dhamma is
for crossing over, not for retaining’. That is, a follower should not grasp at Buddhist ideas and practices, but use them for their intended purpose, and should know that a person who has accomplished
their goal does not carry them as an identity to defend. Many ordinary Buddhists, though, do have a
strong attachment to Buddhism.
While the Buddha was critical of blind faith, he did not deny a role for soundly based faith or ‘trustful confidence’ (saddhā, Skt śraddhā); for to test out his teachings, a person has to have at least some
initial trust in them. The early texts envisage a process of listening, which arouses saddhā, leading
to practice, and thus to partial confirmation of the teachings, and thus to deeper saddhā and deeper
practice until the heart of the teachings is directly experienced (M.ii.171–6). A person then becomes
15M.ii.168–77 (BW.96–103; Harvey 2009b: 179–81).
16Kālāma Sutta, A.i.188–93 (BW.88–9; SB.251–6; Harvey 2009b: 176–8).
REQUIRED READING: KŪṬADANTA SUTTA
267
an Arahat, one whose confidence is rooted in insight. Even in Theravāda Buddhism, which often
has a rather rational, unemotional image, a very deep faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Saṅgha is
common. Ideally, this is based on the fact that some part of the Buddha’s path has been found to be
uplifting, thus inspiring confidence in the rest. Many people, though, simply have a calm and joyful
faith (pasāda, Skt prasāda) inspired by the example of those who are well established on the Path.
Required reading
Kūṭadanta Sutta, DN 5 (=fifth sutta, or story, in the Dīgha Nikāya, or Long Discourses of the Buddha).
Translated from Pāli in Maurice Walshe, The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha
Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), 133–41.
T
hus have i heard. Once the Lord was travelling through Magadha with a large company of some
five hundred monks, and he arrived at a Brahmin village called Khānumata. And there he stayed at
the Ambalaṭṭhikā park. Now at that time the Brahmin Kūṭadanta was living at Khānumata, a populous
place, full of grass, timber, water and corn, which had been given to him by King Seniya Bimbisāra of
Magadha as a royal gift and with royal powers.
And Kūṭadanta planned a great sacrifice: seven hundred bulls, seven hundred bullocks, seven
hundred heifers, seven hundred he-goats and seven hundred rams were all tied up to the sacrificial
posts.
2. And the Brahmins and householders of Khānumata heard: “The ascetic Gotama… is staying at
Ambalaṭṭhikā. And concerning that Blessed Lord Gotama a good report has been spread about: “This
Blessed Lord is an Arahant, a fully-enlightened Buddha, perfected in knowledge and conduct, a WellFarer, Knower of the worlds, unequalled Trainer of men to be tamed, Teacher of gods and humans,
a Buddha, a Blessed Lord.” He proclaims this world with its gods, māras and Brahmās, the world of
ascetics and Brahmins with its princes and people, having come to know it by his own knowledge. He
teaches a Dhamma that is lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle and lovely in its ending, in the
spirit and in the letter, and he displays the fully-perfected, thoroughly purified holy life. And indeed
it is good to see such Arahants.’ And at that the Brahmins and householders, leaving Khānumata in
great numbers, went to Ambalaṭṭhikā.
3. Just then, Kūṭadanta had gone up to his verandah for his midday rest. Seeing all the Brahmins
and householders making for Ambalaṭṭhikā, he asked his steward the reason. The steward replied:
‘Sir, it is the ascetic Gotama, concerning whom a good report has been spread about: “This Blessed
Lord is an Arahant,… a Buddha, a Blessed Lord”. That is why they are going to see him.’
4. Then Kūṭadanta thought: ‘I have heard that the ascetic Gotama understands how to conduct
successfully the triple sacrifice with its sixteen requisites. Now I do not understand all this, but I want
to make a big sacrifice. Suppose I were to go to the ascetic Gotama and ask him about the matter.’ So
he sent his steward to the Brahmins and householders of Khānumata to ask them to wait for him.
5. And at that time several hundred Brahmins were staying at Khānumata intending to take part
in Kūṭadanta’s sacrifice. Hearing of his intention to visit the ascetic Gotama, they went and asked him
if this were true. ‘So it is, gentlemen, I am going to visit the ascetic Gotama.’
268
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
6. ‘Sir, do not visit the ascetic Gotama, it is not fitting that you should do so! If the Reverend
Kūṭadanta goes to visit the ascetic Gotama, his reputation will decrease, and that of the ascetic Gotama will increase. This being so, it is not proper that the Reverend Kūṭadanta should visit the ascetic
Gotama, but rather the ascetic Gotama should visit him.’
7. Then Kūṭadanta said to the Brahmins: ‘Now listen, gentlemen, as to why it is fitting for us to
visit the Reverend Gotama, and why it is not fitting for him to visit us. The ascetic Gotama is wellborn on both sides of pure descent to the seventh generations, unbroken, of irreproachable birth…
Therefore it is fitting for us to visit him. He went forth, leaving a great body of kinsmen. In fact he gave
up much gold and wealth to go forth, both hidden away and openly displayed. The ascetic Gotama,
while youthful, a black-haired youth, in the prime of his young days, in the first stage of life went forth
from the household life into homelessness. Leaving his grieving parents weeping with tear-stained
faces, having cut off his hair and beard and put on yellow robes, he went forth into homelessness. He
is handsome,… virtuous,… well-spoken,… the teacher’s teacher of many. He has abandoned sensuality
and dispelled vanity. He teaches action and the results of action, honouring the blameless Brahmin
way of life. He is a wanderer of high birth, of a leading Khattiya family. He is a wanderer from a
wealthy family, of great wealth and possessions. People come to consult him from foreign kingdoms
and foreign lands. Many thousands of devas have taken refuge in him.
‘This good report has been spread about him: “This Blessed Lord is an Arahant, a fully-enlightened
Buddha, perfected in knowledge and conduct, a Well-Farer, Knower of the worlds, unequalled Trainer
of men to be tamed, Teacher of gods and humans, a Buddha, a Blessed Lord.” He bears the thirtytwo marks of a Great Man. He is welcoming, kindly of speech, courteous, genial, clear and ready of
speech. He is attended by four assemblies, revered, honoured, esteemed and worshipped by them.
Many devas and humans are devoted to him. Whenever he stays in any town or village, that place is
not troubled by non-human beings. He has a crowed, a multitude of followers, is a teacher of many,
he is consulted by the chief of the various leaders of sects. It is not the way with the ascetic Gotama’s
reputation, as it is with that of some ascetics and Brahmins, about whom this or that is reported—the
ascetic Gotama’s fame is based on his achievement of unsurpassed wisdom and conduct. Indeed King
Seniya Bimmbisāra of Magadha has gone for refuge to him together with his son, his wife, his followers
and his ministers. He is revered, honoured, esteemed and worshipped by them. The ascetic Gotama
has arrived in Khānumata and is staying at Ambalaṭṭhikā. And whatever ascetics or Brahmins come
to our territory are our guests… He is beyond all praise.’
8. On hearing this, the Brahmins said: ‘Sir, since you praise the ascetic Gotama so much, then even
if he were to live a hundred yojanas from here, it would be fitting for a believing clansman to go with a
shoulder-bag to visit him. And, sir, we shall all go to visit the ascetic Gotama.’ And so Kūṭadanta went
with a large company of Brahmins to Ambalaṭṭhikā. He approached the Lord, exchanged courtesies
with him, and sat down to one side. Some of the Brahmins and householders of Khānumata made
obeisance to the Lord, some exchanged courtesies with him, some saluted him with joined palms,
some announced their name and clan, and some sat down to one side in silence.
9. Sitting to one side, Kūṭadanta addressed the Lord: ‘Reverend Gotama, I have heard that you
understand how to conduct successfully the triple sacrifice with its sixteen requisites. Now I do not
understand all this, but I want to make a big sacrifice. It would be well if the ascetic Gotama were
to explain this to me.’ ‘Then listen, Brahmin, pay proper attention, and I will explain.’ ‘Yes, sir’, said
Kūṭadanta, and the Lord said:
REQUIRED READING: KŪṬADANTA SUTTA
269
10. ‘Brahmin, once upon a time there was a king called Mahāvijita. He was rich, of great wealth and
resources, with an abundance of gold and silver, of possessions and requisites, of money and money’s
worth, with a full treasury and granary. And when King Mahāvijita was musing in private, the thought
came to him: “I have acquired extensive wealth in human terms, I occupy a wide extent of land which
I have conquered. Suppose now I were to make a great sacrifice which would be to my benefit and
happiness for a long time?” And calling his minister-chaplain, he told him his thought. “I want to
make a big sacrifice. Instruct me, Reverend Sir, how this may be to my lasting benefit and happiness.”
11. “The chaplain replied: “Your Majesty’s country is beset by thieves, it is ravaged, villages and
towns are being destroyed, the countryside is infested with brigands. If Your Majesty were to tax this
region, that would be the wrong thing to do. Suppose Your Majesty were to think: ‘I will get rid of
this plague of robbers by executions and imprisonment, or by confiscation, threats and banishment’,
the plague would not be properly ended. Those who survived would later harm Your Majesty’s realm.
However, with this plan you can completely eliminate the plague. To those in the kingdom who are
engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle, let Your Majesty distribute grain and fodder; to those
in trade, give capital; to those in government service assign proper living wages. Then those people,
being intent on their own occupations, will not harm the kingdom. Your Majesty’s revenues will be
great, the land will be tranquil and not beset by thieves, and the people, with joy in their hearts, will
play with their children, and will dwell in open houses.”
‘And saying: “So be it!”, the king accepted the chaplain’s advice: he gave grain and fodder, capital to
those in trade,… proper living wages… and the people with joy in their hearts… dwelt in open houses.
12. ‘Then King Mahāvijita sent for the chaplain and said: “I have got rid of the plague of robbers;
following your plan my revenue has grown, the land is tranquil and not beset by thieves, and the people
with joy in their hearts play with their children and dwell in open houses. Now I wish to make a great
sacrifice. Instruct me as to how this may be done to my lasting benefit and happiness.” “For this, Sire,
you should send for your Khattiyas from town and country, your advisers and counsellors, the most
influential Brahmins and the wealthy householders of your realm, and say to them: 1 wish to make a
great sacrifice. Assist me in this, gentlemen, that it may be to my lasting benefit and happiness.’”
‘The King agreed, and did so. “Sire, let the sacrifice begin, now is the time, Your Majesty. These
four assenting groups will be the accessories for the sacrifice.
13. “‘King Mahāvijita is endowed with eight things. He is well-born on both sides,… of irreproachable birth. He is handsome,… of no mean appearance. He is rich… with a full treasury and granary.
He is powerful, having a four-branched army that is loyal, dependable, making bright his reputation
among his enemies. He is a faithful giver and host, not shutting his door against ascetics, Brahmins
and wayfarers, beggars and the needy—a fountain of goodness. He is very learned in what should be
learnt. He knows the meaning of whatever is said, saying: “This is what that means.’ He is a scholar,
accomplished, wise, competent to perceive advantage in the past, the future or the present. King
Mahāvijita is endowed with these eight things. These constitute the accessories for the sacrifice.
14. ‘“The Brahmin chaplain is endowed with four things. He is well-born… He is a scholar, versed
in the mantras… He is virtuous, of increasing virtue, endowed with increasing virtue. He is learned, accomplished and wise, and is the first or second to hold the sacrificial ladle. He has these four qualities.
These constitute the accessories to the sacrifice.”
15. “Then, prior to the sacrifice, the Brahmin chaplain taught the King the three modes. “It might
be that Your Majesty might have some regrets about the intended sacrifice: ‘I am going to lose a lot
270
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
of wealth’, or during the sacrifice: ‘I am losing a lot of wealth’, or after the sacrifice: ‘I have lost a lot of
wealth.’ In such cases, Your Majesty should not entertain such regrets.”
16. “Then, prior to the sacrifice, the chaplain dispelled the King’s qualms with ten conditions for
the recipient: “Sire, there will come to the sacrifice those who take life and those who abstain from
taking life. To those who take life, so will it be to them; but those who abstain from taking life will have
a successful sacrifice and will rejoice in it, and their hearts may be calmed within. There will come
those who take what is not given and those who refrain… those who indulge in sexual misconduct
and those who refrain… those who tell lies… indulge in calumny, harsh and frivolous speech… those
who are covetous and those who are not, those who harbour ill-will and those who do not, those who
have wrong views and those who have right views. To those who have wrong views it will turn out
accordingly, but those who have right views will have a successful sacrifice and will rejoice in it, and
their hearts may be calmed within.” So the chaplain dispelled the King’s doubts with ten conditions.
17. ‘So the chaplain instructed the King who was making the great sacrifice with sixteen reasons,
urged him, inspired him and gladdened his heart. “Someone might say: ‘King Mahāvijita is making a
great sacrifice, but he has not invited his Khattiyas… his advisers and counsellors, the most influential
Brahmins and wealthy householders… ‘ But such words would not be in accordance with the truth,
since the King has invited them. Thus the King may know that he will have a successful sacrifice and
rejoice in it, and his heart will be calmed within. Or someone might say: ‘King Mahāvijita is making
a great sacrifice, but he is not well-born on both sides… ‘ But such words would not be in accordance
with the truth… Or someone might say: ‘His chaplain is not well-born… ‘ But such words would not
be in accordance with the truth.” Thus the chaplain instructed the King with sixteen reasons…
18. ‘In this sacrifice, Brahmin, no bulls were slain, no goats or sheep, no cocks and pigs, nor were
various living beings subjected to slaughter, nor were trees cut down for sacrificial posts, nor were
grasses mown for the sacrificial grass, and those who are called slaves or servants or workmen did not
perform their tasks for fear of blows or threats, weeping and in tears. But those who wanted to do
something did it, those who did not wish to did not: they did what they wanted to do, and not what
they did not want to do. The sacrifice was carried out with ghee, oil, butter, curds, honey and molasses.
19. ‘Then, Brahmin, the Khattiyas… the ministers and counsellors, the influential Brahmins, the
wealthy householders of town and country, having received a sufficient income, came to King Mahāvijita and said: “We have brought sufficient wealth, Your Majesty, please accept it.” “But, gentlemen, I
have collected together sufficient wealth. Whatever is left over, you take away.”
‘At the King’s refusal, they went away to one side and consulted together: “It is not right for us
to take this wealth back to our own homes. The King is making a great sacrifice. Let us follow his
example.”
20. ‘Then the Khattiyas put their gifts to the east of the sacrificial pit, the advisers and counsellors
set out theirs to the south, the Brahmins to the west and the wealthy householders to the north. And in
this sacrifice no bulls were slain,… nor were living beings subjected to slaughter… Those who wanted
to do something did it, those who did not wish to did not… The sacrifice was carried out with ghee, oil,
butter, curds, honey and molasses. Thus there were the four assenting groups, and King Mahāvijita
was endowed with eight things, and the chaplain with four things in three modes. This, Brahmin, is
called the sixteenfold successful sacrifice in three modes.’
21. At this the Brahmins shouted loudly and noisily: ‘What a splendid sacrifice! What a splendid
way to perform a sacrifice!’ But Kūṭadanta sat in silence. And the Brahmins asked him why he did not
applaud the ascetic Gotama’s fine words. He replied: ‘It is not that I do not applaud them. My head
REQUIRED READING: KŪṬADANTA SUTTA
271
would split open if I did not. But it strikes me that the ascetic Gotama does not say: “I have heard
this”, or “It must have been like this”, but he says: “It was like this or like that at the time.” And so,
gentlemen, it seems to me that the ascetic Gotama must have been at that time either King Mahāvijita,
the lord of the sacrifice, or else the Brahmin chaplain who conducted the sacrifice for him. Does the
Reverend Gotama acknowledge that he performed, or caused to be performed, such a sacrifice, and
that in consequence at death, after the breaking-up of the body, he was reborn in a good sphere, a
heavenly state?’ ‘I do, Brahmin. I was the Brahmin chaplain who conducted that sacrifice.’
22. ‘And, Reverend Gotama, is there any other sacrifice that is simpler, less difficult, more fruitful
and profitable than this threefold sacrifice with its sixteen attributes?’ ‘There is, Brahmin.’
‘What is it, Reverend Gotama?’ ‘Wherever regular family gifts are given to virtuous ascetics, these
constitute a sacrifice more fruitful and profitable than that.’
23. ‘Why, Reverend Gotama, and for what reason is this better?’ ‘Brahmin, no Arahants or those
who have attained the Arahant path will attend such a sacrifice. Why? Because there they see beatings
and throttlings, so they do not attend. But they will attend the sacrifice at which regular family gifts
are given to virtuous ascetics, because there there are no beatings or throttlings. That is why this kind
of sacrifice is more fruitful and profitable.’
24. ‘But, Reverend Gotama, is there any other sacrifice that is more profitable than either of these?’
‘There is, Brahmin.’
‘What is it, Reverend Gotama?’ ‘Brahmin, if anyone provides shelter for the Sangha coming from
the four quarters, that constitutes a more profitable sacrifice.’
25. ‘But, Reverend Gotama, is there any sacrifice that is more profitable than these three?’ ‘There
is, Brahmin.’
‘What is it, Reverend Gotama?’ ‘Brahmin, if anyone with a pure heart goes for refuge to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, that constitutes a sacrifice more profitable than any of these three.’
26. ‘But, Reverend Gotama, is there any sacrifice that is more profitable than these four?’ ‘There
is, Brahmin.’
‘What is it, Reverend Gotama?’ ‘Brahmin, if anyone with a pure heart undertakes the precepts—
to refrain from taking life, from taking what is not given, from sexual immorality, from lying speech
and from taking strong drink and sloth-producing drugs—that constitutes a sacrifice more profitable
than any of these four.’
27. ‘But, Reverend Gotama, is there any sacrifice that is more profitable than these five?’ ‘There is,
Brahmin.’
‘What is it, Reverend Gotama?’ ‘Brahmin, a Tathagata arises in this world, an Arahant, fully-enlightened Buddha, endowed with wisdom and conduct, Well-Farer, Knower of the worlds, incomparable Trainer of men to be tamed, Teacher of gods and humans, enlightened and blessed. He, having
realised it by his own super-knowledge, proclaims this world with its devas, māras and Brahmās, its
princes and people. He preaches the Dhamma which is lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle,
lovely in its ending, in the spirit and in the letter, and displays the fully-perfected and purified holy life.
A disciple goes forth and practises the moralities, etc. (Sutta 2, verses 41—74). Thus a monk is perfected
in morality. He attains the four jhanas (Sutta 2, verses 75—82). That, Brahmin, is a sacrifice … more
profitable. He attains various insights (Sutta 2, verse 83—95), and the cessation of the corruptions (Sutta
2, verse 97). He knows: “There is nothing further in this world.” That, Brahmin, is a sacrifice that is
simpler, less difficult, more fruitful and more profitable than all the others. And beyond this there is
no sacrifice that is greater and more perfect.’
272
THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM
28. ‘Excellent, Reverend Gotama, excellent! It is as if someone were to set up what had been
knocked down, or to point out the way to one who had got lost, or to bring an oil-lamp into a dark
place, so that those with eyes could see what was there. Just so the Reverend Gotama has expounded
the Dhamma in various ways, May the Reverend Gotama accept me as a lay-follower from this day
forth as long as life shall last! And, Reverend Gotama, I set free the seven hundred bulls, seven hundred
bullocks, seven hundred heifers, seven hundred he-goats and seven hundred rams. I grant them life,
let them be fed with green grass and given cool water to drink, and let cool breezes play upon them.’’
29. Then the Lord delivered a graduated discourse to Kūṭadanta, on generosity, on morality and
on heaven, showing the danger, degradation and corruption of sense-desires, and the profit of renunciation. And when the Lord knew that ‘s mind was ready, pliable, free from the hindrances, joyful and
calm, then he preached a sermon on Dhamma in brief: on suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the
path. And just as a clean cloth from which all stains have been removed receives the dye perfectly,
so in the Brahmin Kūṭadanta, as he sat there, there arose the pure and spotless Dhamma-eye, and he
knew: ‘Whatever things have an origin must come to cessation.’
30. Then Kūṭadanta, having seen, attained, experienced and penetrated the Dhamma, having
passed beyond doubt, transcended uncertainty, having gained perfect confidence in the Teacher’s
doctrine without relying on others, said: ‘May the Reverend Gotama and his order of monks accept a
meal from me tomorrow!’
The Lord assented by silence. Then Kūṭadanta, seeing his consent, rose, saluted the Lord, passed
by to his right and departed. As day was breaking, he caused hard and soft food to be prepared at
his place of sacrifice, and when it was ready he announced: ‘Reverend Gotama, it is time; the meal is
ready.’
And the Lord, having risen early, went with robe and bowl and attended by his monks to Kūṭadanta’s
place of sacrifice and sat down on the prepared seat. And Kūṭadanta served the Buddha and his monks
with the finest foods with his own hands until they were satisfied. And when the Lord had eaten and
taken his hand away from the bowl, Kūṭadanta took a low stool and sat down to one side.
Then the Lord, having instructed Kūṭadanta with a talk on Dhamma, inspired him, fired him with
enthusiasm and delighted him, rose from his seat and departed.
8 The Dhamma
Topic Overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
describe the basic teaching of the Buddha as outlined in the Four Noble Truths
outline the doctrine of anattā,
explain how the doctrine is reconciled with the idea of rebirth, and
discuss some of the examples used to help resolve the issue.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
religious doctrine
soteriology = the ultimate goals of a religion
notions of ‘self’ in religious traditions
Understanding Buddhism
The Buddha classified people who hear his teaching into four types. The first two types of people
understand the teaching on their own, without assistance: the first type immediately, and the second
type after they’ve thought about it for a while. The third type are ‘leadable’; they understand once they
have worked at it in the company of ‘cultivated wise friends’, or have asked ‘one of the wise monks’.
The fourth type are called ‘pada-parama’, ‘putting the words first’; they remember all the words but
never understand them.1 I have never met anyone of the first type—so I recommend you have a look
at a couple of different accounts of the Buddha’s teaching (every introduction to Buddhism will have
one) and discuss it—whether online or in tutorial groups—with the ‘cultivated wise friends’ who are
taking this paper alongside you. If you’re on campus, I strongly suggest you come to class this week.
(You should always come to class, but especially this week.) If you’re studying by distance, make sure
to listen to these lectures online. (You should always listen to the lectures online, but especially this
week.)
1Richard F. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings (London: Athlone, 1996),
22.
273
274
THE DHAMMA
The ‘turning of the wheel of Dhamma’: Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
Buddhist philosophy is vast and could fill up dozens of classes. However, for most Buddhists, the core
of ideas of Buddhism can be found in the Buddha’s first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta.
Here it is, only slightly abbreviated to avoid repetition:
Thus I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Benares in the Deer
Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers). There he addressed the bhikkhus of the group of
five.
“Bhikkhus, these two extremes ought not to be cultivated by one gone forth from the
house-life. What are the two? There is devotion to indulgence of pleasure in the objects
of sensual desire, which is inferior, low, vulgar, ignoble, and leads to no good; and there
is devotion to self-torment, which is painful, ignoble and leads to no good.
“The middle way discovered by a Perfect One avoids both these extremes; it gives
vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to peace, to direct acquaintance, to discovery, to
nibbana. And what is that middle way? It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is to
say, right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort,
right mindfulness, right concentration. That is the middle way discovered by a Perfect
One, which gives vision, which gives knowledge, and which leads to peace, to direct acquaintance, to discovery, to nibbana.
“Suffering, as a noble truth, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is
suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not
to get what one wants is suffering—in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging
objects.
“The origin of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is the craving that produces renewal of being accompanied by enjoyment and lust, and enjoying this and that; in other
words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being.
“Cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is remainderless fading and ceasing,
giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting, of that same craving.
“The way leading to cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is simply the
noble eightfold path, that is to say, right view, right intention; right speech, right action,
right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.” … That is what the
Blessed One said. The bhikkhus of the group of five were glad, and they approved his
words.2
Unpacking the DCP S
Pretty short and pithy, ehh? The DCP is not self-explanatory. Instead it is a summary text, one that
refers to the teaching, rather than stating what the teaching is. This is partly what makes it possible for
different schools of Buddhism to hold this text in common. It goes without saying that this is unlikely
to be what the Buddha actually said (even if we could recover that). Rather, the DCP S appears to be
2SN 56.11, Translated by Ñāṇamoli and available freely at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.
than.html.
UNDERSTANDING BUDDHISM
275
a later attempt to capture the essence of that teaching. In order to understand it, we need to do some
work filling out the ideas and concepts in the text.
The sutta begins with a critique of the two extremes of a life given up to sensual pleasure, and
a life of given up to asceticism. The first extreme, according to the teaching, is degrading, inferior,
low, vulgar and unprofitable. It might seem that no religious person would think a life given over to
pleasure could be a suitable life for a religious person. But, remember that in the Indian religious
context, pleasure (kāma) was one of the legitimate aims of life in the householder stage along with
prosperity (artha). In general we may say that older religions, including Indian religions, were less
world-denying, less interested in the afterlife and more in ensuring prosperity and posterity in this
life than many people today acknowledge.
It is noticeable however that there is no element of moral condemnation here. The key term is
‘unprofitable’ or ‘not leading to the goal’ (anatthasaṃhito3). I point this out because it is worth noticing now that Buddhism tends not to lay down moral commands on the basis that things are wrong
in an absolute sense. Attachment to such absolutes would be a fetter, a chain preventing one from
freeing oneself from saṃsāra. Thus, unprofitable things are to be avoided because they will result in
harm to oneself. Anything that does not help toward enlightenment is unprofitable. Elsewhere in the
Pāli Canon, the distinction between profitable and unprofitable actions is described as a distinction
between kusala and akusala kamma. Kusala (skillful) kamma (actions) are those that put one on the kusala and
track to nibbāna. A-kusala kamma (un4-skillful actions) are those that obstruct one’s path to nibbāna. akusala kamma
Buddhist morality is therefore based on a kind of enlightened self-interest, rather than the commands
of a divine or quasi-divine lawgiver.
The Buddha next criticizes the life of extreme asceticism because it is painful, ignoble and (again)
unprofitable/leading to no good. This was the life that the Buddha himself had followed, and he therefore knew from experience that it was unprofitable, it did not lead (except indirectly) to enlightenment. The Buddha offers his teaching as a ‘middle way’ between these two extremes.
The Buddha then outlines the middle path, known as the eightfold path because it identifies middle path
eight qualities which give vision and knowledge, lead to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, to nirvāṇa
(Skt.)/nibbāna (Pāli). The eight qualities of the noble eightfold path (right view, right thought, right
speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration) form the last
of the four noble truths, and we will discuss below.
Of Dhamma 1 and Dhamma 2: The ‘Truth’ of the The Four Noble Truths
Before getting to the content of the Four Noble Truths, it’s worthwhile to pause to consider the meanings of dhamma in Buddhism. Dharma, you’ll recall from your Hinduism weeks, has its own range of dhamma
meanings in the Hindu tradition, which I will not go into here. In Buddhism, the term refers to two
different things, which relate to each other in important ways. In its first sense, dhamma refers to ultimate truth, the way the universe works. Not unlike laws of physics, e.g. gravity, dhamma consists in
the irresistible laws of the cosmos that determine life, whether we like it or not. The law of kamma is kamma
one of these laws: the law of kamma in Buddhism amounts to a recognition that all human actions that
3In this compound word, artha (in Pāli, attha) is used to refer to a goal rather than material prosperity. This being said,
the punning with the artha of the Arthaśastra could be intentional.
4The prefix ‘a’ (or ‘an’ before a vowel) in Sanskrit and Pāli acts as a negation marker. Thus, ‘akusala’ translates to ‘nonor not- skillful.’
276
THE DHAMMA
are committed with intention (cetana) generate consequences (called fruits, phala) that correspond
to the nature of that intention. Put simply, good intentions generate good consequences, either in
this life or in one’s future rebirths. This system doesn’t work ‘through’ a rewarding and punishing god;
it works in the same way that gravity works, inevitably and naturally. In its second sense, dhamma
refers to the teaching of the Buddha, the ‘truths’ communicated by the Buddha to his disciples.
A key aspect of early Buddhist philosophy derives from the relationship between the two meandhamma 1 ings of dhamma—dhamma-as-cosmic-law (let’s call it dhamma 1) and dhamma-as-teachings (dhamma
dhamma 2 2). When the Buddha awakened he understood dhamma 1. After some hesitation, he then decided to
try to communicate that to the world. His attempts at communicating subtle cosmic law into practical teachings constitute dhamma 2. Therefore, the Four Noble Truths represent in part a description
of reality, an imperfect and abridged understanding of dhamma 1, and in part a set of instructions for
living one’s life in harmony with cosmic law, even if one doesn’t have a perfect understanding of it.
cetana
First Noble Truth: Dukkha (Skt. Duḥkha): the Truth of Suffering
Birth is suffering; old-age is suffering; disease is suffering; death is suffering; union with
what one dislikes is suffering; separation from what one likes is suffering, not obtaining one’s wish is suffering—in brief, the five aggregates (khandhas) of attachment are
suffering.
duḥkha The term translated here as suffering is duḥkha. Suffering is a conventional translation for the term.
However, as the readings from Rahula (himself a Sri Lanka Buddhist monk) show, duḥkha has a much
wider range of meanings. Suffering suggests an acute, conscious experience. But duḥkha refers to
whatever is unsatisfying and unsatisfactory in any sense. The Buddha is not saying that all our experiences are of suffering, that we never experience happiness or joy, only that these experiences never
leave us entirely satisfied. They are impermanent. With these qualifications in mind, we will continue
to use the conventional translation ‘suffering’.
Already in the first truth the condensed, formulaic nature of the sutta is evident. The Buddha
merely refers to the five aggregates, he does not explain what they are. The term translated as aggrekhandha gates is khandha (Skt. skandha). The five types of khandhas are:
1. rūpa: physical form
2. vedanā: feelings
3. saññā (Skt. saṃjñā) (literally, ‘known with’): apperceptions
4. sankhāras (Skt. saṃskāras): volitions
5. viññāṇa (Skt. vijñāna): consciousness
Harvey calls them the ‘five factors of the personality’. However, this may be misleading, as ‘personality’
is close in meaning to what we understand the self to be; and the five khandhas are not-self. The self,
the soul, the ego is not found among them, nor is it their sum. The khandhas form part of a Buddhist
psychology or analysis of being human which reached an extraordinary level of complexity, and which
is not readily translatable into modern Western terms.5 It is important here that you understand the
reason why this analysis is undertaken. The Buddha is probing our ordinary experience in order to
understand the roots of suffering. To attempt to make sense of the results of this analysis would take
us deep into Buddhist psychology, and beyond the scope of this course. For our purposes it is more
important to understand what khandhas are not, than to attempt to grasp what they are.
5For details, see Maha Thera Nārada, A Manual of Abhidhamma: being Abhidhammattha saṅgaha of Anurudhācariya
(Colombo: Vajirarama, 1956), but note that this is a difficult text, and far beyond the level required for this paper.
UNDERSTANDING BUDDHISM
277
A Brief Detour into dhamma 3
The literal meaning of khandha is heap. But what are the heaps of? Confusing though it is, Buddhist
philosophers describe them as ‘heaps’ of dhammas. In addition to referring to cosmic law (dhamma 1)
and the teaching of the Buddha (dhamma 2), dhammas (often in the plural) can refer to the smallest,
basic constituents of existence.6 In this sense (usually signified in Roman characters by the use of
a lower case ‘d’), a dhamma appears to be something akin to an atom. This is the third meaning of
dhamma, dhamma 3. The analysis of the universe as constituted by dhammas gave rise to a series of
obscure debates about what exactly these dhammas are, how many of them there are. Differences of
opinion over how many dhammas there were, and in what sense they can be said to exist, were some
of the issues that divided the earliest schools of Buddhism.
Everything is made up of dhammas, including nibbāna, which is itself a dhamma of a special sort,
namely an unconditioned dhamma. (There are further arguments about whether it is the only unconditioned dhammas, or whether there are also others, e.g., space and time). Individuals are not
dhammas, nor is a self a dhamma. Individuals are, however, made up of heaps (khandhas) of dhammas. Look at Walpola for more on how the khandas work. (We will also talk about this in class.)
Again, grasping the precise details of this analysis (which is carried much further in other texts)
is less important than understanding its purpose. The purpose of this analysis is to break down our
experience into its component parts in order to understand the origin of the suffering which, the first
noble truth proclaims, is characteristic of all our experience.
One thing is important to remember. These five khandhas, together with their constituents—in
other words, everything in saṃsāra—are said to be marked with ‘three characteristics’ (tilakkhaṇa):
1. dukkha: ‘suffering’
2. anicca: impermanence
3. anattā (Skt. an-ātman): no-self
Thus all our experience, or what we take to be experience (for our ordinary sense of a self which
‘experiences’ is illusory), is marked by these three characteristics. The most radical of these claims,
and perhaps the most difficult to grasp fully, is the third, the lack of self, which we will discuss in the
next unit.
Noble Truth 2: the origin of suffering
The Noble Truth of the origin of suffering is this: It is the craving (thirst) which leads
from rebirth to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure and attachment. It finds fresh delight
now here and now there—craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and craving
for non-existence.
Thirst, or craving (Pāli: taṇhā) is the origin of suffering. This idea, that craving gives rise to suffering,
can be understood on a relatively mundane level: desire, when unsatisfied, gives rise to frustration.
6Dhamma comes from the Sanskrit root dhṛ meaning ‘to bear.’ (It is related to the Greek thronos, and the Latin firmus and thus to the English words, ‘throne’ and ‘firm’). From this root the term came to mean ‘that which bears’, i.e. that
which supports and holds up the cosmos. It was thus applied by Hindus to the notions of cosmic order and the norms that
maintained that order (e.g., varṇāśramadharma). While Buddhists seem to have used dhamma as a borrowed term from
Hindus, and not necessarily in its etymological sense, one might speculate creatively a similar link between the Buddhist
use of dhamma and the root dhṛ. E.g. in the case of dhamma 2, although there are many Buddhas, their teaching is always
the same—thus the teaching of a Buddha, his dhamma, supports the world.
dhamma 3
tilakkhaṇa
dukkha
anicca
anattā
278
THE DHAMMA
However, for the Buddha, desire always gives rise to suffering. That is because craving attaches us to
things, it makes us preoccupied with gratification. Even when gratified, one craving quickly leads to
the next, like an alcoholic having ‘just one drink’ or trying to ignore a desire for booze by compulsively
smoking cigarettes. Cravings spread like wildfire and they can never be satisfied once-and-for-all. The
more one wants the more suffering one opens oneself up to. As Biggy said, ‘Mo money, mo problems.’
There are three types of thirst identified in the DCP S: thirst for sense-pleasures, such as tastes,
feelings or sounds; thirst for existence, to make things present the things one likes or to extend one’s
own lifespan; and the thirst for non-existence to be rid of the things one dislikes.
Noble Truth 3: the cessation of suffering
The Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering is this: it is the complete cessation of that
very thirst, giving it up, renouncing it, emancipating oneself from it, detaching oneself
from it.
The third noble truth is not merely a reversal of the second, or drawing a logical consequence from
it. It is, rather, the affirmation that a cessation of suffering is possible. The structure of the DCP Sutta
is that of the established medical procedure of the Buddha’s contemporaries: identify the disease
(diagnosis), specify the origin of the disease (etiology), determine the possibility of a cure (prognosis)
and specify how the disease may be cured (prescription). The four noble truths follow this pattern
and the Buddha is therefore described as a physician, curing the disease of dukkha. So the third truth
is the truth that there is a cessation of suffering, there is a way to cease craving. We are not forever
nibbāna trapped in saṃsāra, there is an alternative: nibbāna. Nibbāna is described or expounded in various
ways, but its description is most often apophatic. That is, it is described by reference to what it is not.
Above all, it is the ‘extinguishing’ of suffering (thus the third truth is often described as nibbāna); it is
the ‘extinguishing’ of the three fires (hate, greed and delusion) and the extinguishing of the spiritual
faults of kāma (sensual desire), bhava (thirst for existence, clinging to life), avidyā (ignorance) and
dṛṣṭi (wrong views). Nibbāna is similarly described by a series of ‘un-’ terms: it is un-born, un-arisen,
un-created, un-conditioned. It is also not heaven, because the heavens (plural) and hells (or rather
paradises and purgatories) of Buddhist cosmology are part of the conditioned, phenomenal world
and therefore impermanent. Occasionally nibbāna is also described positively, as supreme bliss, and
as ‘cool’, in contrast to the ‘burning’ of saṃsāric existence described in the Buddha’s third discourse.
The third truth affirms that it is possible to bring suffering to an end, that there is a way to the
cessation of suffering; what that way is, is the subject of the fourth noble truth.
Noble Truth 4: the path to the cessation of suffering
Noble Eightfold
Path
The Noble Truth of the Path leading to the cessation of suffering is this: It is simply the
Noble Eightfold Path, namely right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right
livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
The eight limbs of the path are divided into three groups as they pertain to wisdom, morality, and
meditation. The path does not move from one constituent to the next, in the sense that one part is
left behind as you progress, rather it consists of the practice of all eight ‘limbs’ simultaneously. But the
eight elements are seen as being logically connected. The foundation is right view, which is the direct
opposite of avidyā, the spiritual ignorance which is the first link of the chain of dependent origination,
READING
279
Wisdom
prajñā (Pāli: paññā)
right view
right resolve
‘seeing things as they are’
i.e. impermanent, lacking self, suffering
Morality
śīla (Pāli: sīla)
right speech
right action
right livelihood
to refrain from taking life
to refrain from taking what is not given
to refrain from sexual misconduct
to refrain from lies
to refrain from intoxicants
Meditation
samādhi
right effort
right mindfulness
right concentration
mental quietude–śamatha (Pāli: samatha)
insight–vipaśyanā (Pāli: vipassanā)
or conditioned arising (to be discussed further below). But this is also the final link to be destroyed,
so in a sense right view is the culmination of the path. Because the achievement of enlightenment is
conceived as a form of knowledge, ‘seeing things as they really are’ as well as an ethical state (having
blown out the fires of hate, greed and delusion), wisdom is (in a sense) both the beginning and the
end of the path. Thus at some points in the canon the path of the ‘adept’ (by contrast to that of the
‘learner’) is said to consist of ten limbs, the additional two being ‘right knowledge’ and ‘right release’.
There is a sense in which the limbs of the path are seen as building on one another, in that moral
life is understood to be a prerequisite for successful meditation (not clouding one’s vision by lying,
lust or drinking, or having a mind sufficiently clouded by anger). Meditation itself is a prerequisite
for attaining right knowledge in the sense of enlightenment, seeing things as they really are. (We will
discuss meditation in more detail in the next unit). But the elements of the path can be practiced at
two levels—a sort of continuous, conscious striving (to keep to the moral precepts, for example) or
at a higher level, where right action emerges spontaneously from a right understanding of the ways
things are—one ceases to take intoxicants, for example, not because the rule states that one should
not (attachment to rules is itself a fetter) but because one understands that intoxicants cloud the
mind and prevent the development of insight, holding one back on the path. For the same reason one
refrains from murder. Right view on an ordinary level might be what you will gain from reading this
text; on a transcendent level, it means enlightenment.
Reading
Before continuing to read the section on anattā below, please read the first required reading (Walpola,
The First Noble Truth: Dukkha).
Anattā
The doctrine of anattā, or no-self, is one of the most difficult doctrines in Buddhism.7 Yet it is also
one of the most essential. The keen students among you will note that anattā is the equivalent of notātman, the term used so heavily late Vedic and post-Vedic Hinduism. As you’ll see, the anattā doctrine
7This topic overview draws heavily on a wonderful book written by Steven Collins called Selfless Persons.
280
THE DHAMMA
is a explicit rejection of this ideal. The anattā doctrine is expressed most succinctly in the ‘teaching on
the characteristic/mark of no-self’, the Anattā-lakkhaṇa Sutta. As with many other Buddhist doctrines,
the doctrine of no-self relies on a number of numbered lists. Key among these are the five khandhas
(rūpa, vedanā, etc. which you saw in the last unit) and the marks (lakkhaṇa) of existence in saṃsāra
(dukkha, anicca and anattā).
The Anattālakkhaṇa Sutta
“Bhikkhus, material form (rūpa) is not self (anātman/anattā). If material form were self, this material
form would not lead to affliction, and it could be had of material form: ‘Let my material form be thus;
let my material form be not thus.’ And it is because material form is not self that it therefore leads to
affliction, and that it cannot be had of material form: ‘Let my material form be thus; let my material
form be not thus.’
‘Feeling (vedanā) is not self… Perception (saṃjñā/saññā) is not self… Formations (saṃskāra/
sankhāras) are not self…
Consciousness (vijñāna/viññāṇa) is not self. If consciousness were self, this consciousness would
not lead to affliction, and it could be had of consciousness: ‘Let my consciousness be thus; let my consciousness be not thus.’ And it is because consciousness is not self that it therefore leads to affliction,
and that it cannot be had of consciousness: ‘Let my consciousness be thus; let my consciousness be
not thus.”’
“How do you conceive this, bhikkhus, is material form permanent or impermanent?” —“Impermanent, Lord.” —“But is what is impermanent unpleasant or pleasant?” —“Unpleasant, Lord.” —“But
is it fitting to regard what is impermanent, unpleasant and subject to change as: ‘This is mine, this is
what I am, this is my self?’ —“No, Lord.”
“How do you conceive this, is feeling permanent… “How do you conceive this, is perception permanent… “How do you conceive this, are formations permanent…
“How do you conceive this, is consciousness permanent or impermanent?” —“Impermanent,
Lord.” —“But is what is impermanent unpleasant or pleasant?” —“Unpleasant, Lord.” —“But is it
fitting to regard what is impermanent, unpleasant and subject to change as: ‘This is mine, this is what
I am, this is my self?’ —“No, Lord.”
“Therefore, bhikkhus, any material form whatsoever, whether past, future or present, in oneself
or external, coarse or fine, inferior or superior, far or near, should all be regarded as it actually is by
right understanding thus: ‘This is not mine, this is not what I am, this is not my self.’
“Any feeling whatsoever… “Any perception whatsoever… “Any formations whatsoever…
“Any consciousness whatsoever, whether past, future or present, in oneself or external, coarse or
fine, inferior or superior, far or near, should all be regarded as it actually is by right understanding thus:
‘This is not mine, this is not what I am, this is not my self.’
“Seeing thus, bhikkhus, a wise noble disciple becomes dispassionate towards material form, …towards feeling, …towards perception, …towards formations, becomes dispassionate towards consciousness. Becoming dispassionate, his lust fades away; with the fading away of lust his heart is liberated;
when his heart is liberated, there comes the knowledge: ‘It is liberated.’ He understands: ‘Birth is
exhausted, the holy life has been lived out, what was to be done is done, there is no more of this to
come.’”
ANATTĀ
281
That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus of the group of five were glad, and they delighted
in his words. Now while this discourse was being delivered the hearts of the bhikkhus of the group
of five were liberated from taints through not clinging. And there were then six Arahants, six accomplished ones, in the world.
Analysis
The primary focus of this discourse is the not-self characteristic. The discourse offers two arguments
in support of the claim that all of the khandhas are not-self (that is, oppositely, none of the khandhas
have self, ātman): the first is the argument from lack of control, and the second is the argument that
what is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change cannot be regarded as self.
The first argument is expressed in the rather awkwardly-phrased claim that if the khandhas were
self they would not lead to affliction, and it could be had of [each khandha]: ‘Let my body… consciousness be thus; let my material form be not thus.’8
To appreciate the full force of the argument we have to recall what was said of the self in brahmanical thought. Remember that the ātman is ultimately identified in the Upaniṣads with brahman,
the power which lay behind the universe. Through sacred knowledge (jñāna) of the ātman-brahman
equation, one attained power over the self. The Buddha argues that we do not have such power over
any of the khandhas. Therefore none of them can be properly described as having ātman.
As Richard Gombrich notes, the ātman of the Upaniṣads is not the same thing as the western
concept of a soul derived from Plato which regards the soul as some kind of ‘disembodied mental,
and above all, moral, agent which survives the body at death’. By contrast: ‘In the Upaniṣads the
soul, ātman, is opposed to both the body and the mind; for example, it cannot exercise such mental
functions as memory or volition. It is an essence, and by definition an essence does not change.’ He
continues:
Once we see what the Buddha was arguing against, we realise that it was something very
few westerners have ever believed in and most have never even heard of. He was refusing
to accept that a person had an unchanging essence. Moreover, since he was interested
in how rather than what, he was not so much saying that people are made of such and
such components, and the soul is not among them, as that people function in such and
such ways, and to explain their functioning there is no need to posit a soul.9
The Buddha also diagnosed another sort of error about the self—not the view of the Upaniṣads
but of the ‘ordinary man’ who is said to regard his body ‘as a self’, to be ‘obsessed by the ideas “I am
body” or “body is mine”’. When ‘the body changes and becomes otherwise, owing to the inherently
changeable nature of the body, [the ordinary man feels] distress, grief, suffering, sorrow, and unrest’.10
The second argument begins from introspection, examination of the five khandha which reveal
that they do not fit the description of an ātman either. They are impermanent, and therefore unsatisfactory, and not fit to be regarded as ‘This is mine, this is what I am, this is my self.’11
8The extremely repetitious character of Buddhist texts is the result of their initially being preserved orally. In most
modern translations, repeated sections are replaced by ellipses (“…”).
9Gombrich, How Buddhism Began, 15–16.
10Ibid.
11The three false claims here are explained by the commentaries on this phrase, which appears in many contexts, as
three forms of grasping: through desire (‘this is mine’), conceit (‘this is what I am’) and the [mistaken] view (‘this is my
self’).
282
THE DHAMMA
In the not-self teaching the Buddha does not directly deny that there is, or could be, an ātman,
merely that none of the five khandhas fit the description. It remains possible that the ātman is not
to be identified with any of the five khandhas but is something apart from them, in relation to which
they exist. This the Buddha denies elsewhere in the context of a discussion of the number of ways in
which one can regard the self.
The Buddha asks Ānanda ‘how many ways are there in which (a man can) regard self?’ and Ānanda
answers that there are three:
feeling is regarded as identical with self, in the words ‘feeling is my self’
or the self is regarded as without feeling ‘my self is insentient’
or neither of these things is the case but ‘my self feels, my self has the attribute of feeling’
The Buddha denies the first of these on similar grounds to those given in the not-self discourse.
Feeling is either pleasant, painful or neutral. With which is the self to be identified, since only one type
can occur at a given time? Each type is impermanent, and thus the self would also be impermanent,
which is not how the ātman is described. Where there is no feeling at all (second claim) there is
no reason to postulate a self either. The third claim is perhaps the one closest to our commonsense
understanding of the self (although note that this is not what the Buddha meant by the ātman): that
feeling is an attribute of the self, something the self does. The Buddha asks what reason we have to
postulate a self when feeling ceases: ‘where feeling is completely absent... might one be able to say
“This (is what) I am”?’ This, says the Buddha, is not possible, and hence the view that the self feels is
‘not fitting’. The argument is that when there’s feeling, there’s feeling, when there’s not, there’s not;
there is no reason to postulate an entity beyond what we know to be the case. Thus the Buddha would
respond to Descartes’ proof of the existence of his self (‘I think therefore I am’) by saying ‘thinking
therefore thinking (and nothing more)’.
Dependent origination paṭicca-samupppāda (Skt. prātītyasamutpāda)
This passage is perhaps best understood as the claim that it is not necessary to postulate a self to
explain our experience. That is, one can give a complete account of our experience without needing
to postulate any essential thing underlying it. Perhaps experience emerges as a result of a cycle of
causes and effects, one leading to the other—with no starting point and no ending point, just endless
causation. Perhaps we should think of our lives as events unfolding without selves willing them along.
This is precisely the image conjured in the very important Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination paṭicca-samupppāda (Skt. prātītyasamutpāda). The basic idea of this doctrine is that experience in saṃsāra can be seen as a ceaseless series of events each of which is dependent one what came
before it and shapes what comes after it. The doctrine holds as a general principle (i.e. all experience
is dependent on other things), but Buddhist texts also specify twelve, specific links (nidāna) in the
cycle. These links are described in a number of suttas, as follows:
With ignorance as condition there arise formations; with formations as condition there
arises consciousness; with consciousness as condition there arises mind-and-body; with
mind-and-body as condition there arise the six senses; with the six senses as condition
there arises sense-contact; with sense-contact as condition there arises feeling; with feeling as condition there arises craving; with craving as condition there arises grasping; with
grasping as condition there arises becoming; with becoming as condition there arises
ANATTĀ
283
birth; with birth as condition there arises old age and death, grief, lamentation, pain,
sorrow and despair. Such is the arising of this whole mass of suffering.12
Visually, the twelve links are often depicted in the outer rim of the wheel of life, e.g. a blind man
for ignorance, a potter for formations, a man and woman embracing for sense-contact, a man being
offered a drink for craving (‘thirst’) and so on.
Thus the Buddha explains the origin of our whole experience, our physical and mental existence,
‘this whole mass of suffering’, without needing to make reference to the idea of a self. Paṭicca-samupppāda
is so central to Buddhist philosophy that it’s often described as the Buddha’s key realization. The Buddha famously remarked that ‘Whoever sees dependent origination sees the dhamma, and whoever
sees the dhamma sees dependent origination.’13
Not-self and rebirth
There is a problem here. If there is absolutely no-self in Buddhism, how are we to understand the
process of rebirth? Recall, however, that for Hinduism it is precisely the ātman which is reborn—in
the words of the Gītā the ātman is that which repeatedly takes on embodiment in the way that a man
puts on and takes off clothes. How then can there be rebirth, if there is nothing (there’s no ātman) to
be reborn? This is one of the questions which King Milinda put to the Buddhist monk Nāgasena in
a non-canonical but extremely influential Buddhist text called the Milindapañha, ‘The Questions of
King Milinda’ :
“Reverend Nāgasena”, said the King, “is it true that nothing transmigrates, and yet there
is rebirth?’’
“Yes, your Majesty.’’
“How can this be?”
Nāgasena’s answers to the king are also underpinned by the doctrine of dependent origination, but
they are explained differently, by the uses of similes and examples. It is the simplicity of its style that
accounts for the popularity and influence of this text. A number of similes help to explain things: the
simile of the chariot, of a baby, of the lamp, and even of dairy foods (curious?!?). There is also a final
simile which explains the ways in which good and bad karma apply to the process of transmigration.
That is the simile of the mango thief. Have a read!
Key Terms for Unit 8
Kusala; akusala; dhamma/dharma (1, 2 and 3); kamma/karma; cetana; Four Noble Truths; Noble Eightfold Path; dukkha; anicca; anattā; khandha; tilakkhaṇa; taṇhā; Milindapañha; paṭiccasamuppāda; Nāgasena
Recommended reading
Collins, Steven. Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982.
12Mahātaṇhāsaṅkhaya sutta.
13MN I. 191.
284
THE DHAMMA
Gombrich, Richard F. How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. London:
Athlone, 1996.
Walters, Jonathan S. “Suttas as History: Four Approaches to the Sermon on the Noble Quest (Ariyapariyesanasutta).” History of Religions 38, no. 3 (1999): 247–84.
Williams, Paul. “Mainstream Buddhism: the basic thought of the Buddha.” In Buddhist thought: a complete introduction to the Indian tradition, edited by Paul Williams and Anthony Tribe, 41–95. London: Routledge, 2000.
Ariyapariyesana Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.026.than.html
Required reading
Ven. Rahula Walpola, “The Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth: Dukkha,” in What the Buddha
Taught (New York: Random House, 1974), 16–28.
T
he heart of Buddha’s teaching lies in the Four Noble Truths (Cattāri Ariyasaccāni) which he expounded in his very first sermon to his old colleagues, the five ascetics, at Isipatana (modern Sarnath) near Benares. In this sermon, as we have it in the original texts, these four Truths are given
briefly. But there are innumerable places in the early buddhist scriptures where they are explained
again and again, with greater detail and in different ways. If we study the Four Noble Truths with the
help of these references and explanations, we get a fairly good and accurate account of the essential
teachings of the Buddha according to the original texts. The Four Noble Truths are:
1. Dukkha1
2. Samudaya, the arising or origin of dukkha
3. Nirodha, the cessation of dukkha
4. Magga, the way leading to the cessation of dukkha
The First Noble Truth: Dukkha
The First Noble Truth (Dukkha-ariyasacca) is generally translated by almost all scholars as ” The Noble Truth of Suffering”, and it is interpreted to mean that life according to Buddhism is nothing but
suffering and pain. Both translation and interpretation are highly unsatisfactory and misleading. It is
because of this limited, free easy translation, and its superficial interpretation, that many people have
been misled into regarding Buddhism as pessimistic.
First of all, Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it
takes a realistic view of life and of the world. It looks at things objectively (yathābhūtaṃ). It does not
falsely lull you into living in a fool’s paradise, nor does not frighten and agonize you with all kinds of
imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around
you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness.
1I do not wish to give an equivalent in English for this term for reasons given below.
REQUIRED READING: WALPOLA
285
One physician may gravely exaggerate an illness and give up hope altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no illness and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the patient
with false consolation. You may call the first one pessimistic and the second optimistic. Both are
equally dangerous. But a third physician diagnose the symptoms correctly, understands the cause
and the nature of the illness, see clearly that it can be cured, and courageously administers a course of
treatment, thus saving his patient. The Buddha is like the last physician. He is the wise and scientific
doctor for the ills of the world (Bhisakka or Bhaiṣajya-guru).
It is true that the Pali word dukkha (or Sanskrit duḥkha) in ordinary usage means ‘suffering’, ‘pain’,
‘sorrow’ or ‘misery’, as opposed to the word sukha meaning ‘happiness’, ‘comfort’ or ‘ease’. But the term
dukkha as the First Noble Truth, which represents the Buddha’s view of life and the world, has a deeper
philosophical meaning and connotes enormously wider senses. It is admitted that the term dukkha
in the First Noble Truth contains, quite obviously, the ordinary meaning of ‘suffering’, but in addition
it also includes deeper ideas such as ‘imperfection’, ‘impermanence’, ‘emptiness’, insubstantiality’. It is
difficult therefore to find one word to embrace the whole conception of the term dukkha as the First
Noble Truth, and so, it is better to leave it untranslated, than to give an inadequate and wrong idea of
it by conveniently translating it as ‘suffering’ or ‘pain’.
The Buddha does not deny happiness in life when he says there is suffering. On the contrary
he admits different forms of happiness, both material and spiritual, for layman and monks. In the
Aṅguttara-nikāya, one of the five original Collections in Pali containing the Buddha’s discourses, there
is a list of happinesses (sukhāni), such as the happiness of family and the happiness of the life of
recluse, the happiness of sense pleasures and the happiness of renunciation, the happiness of attachment and the happiness of detachment, physical happiness and mental happiness, etc. But all these
are included in dukkha. Even the very pure spiritual states of dhyāna (recueillement or trance) attained
by the practice of higher meditation, free from even a shadow of suffering in the accepted sense of the
word, states which may be described as unmixed happiness, as well as the state of dhyāna which is
free from sensations both pleasant (sukha) and unpleasant (dukkha) and is only pure equanimity and
awareness—even these very high spiritual states are included in dukkha. In one of the suttas of the
Majjhima-nikāya, (again one of the five original Collections), after praising the spiritual happiness of
these dhyānas, the Buddha says that they are ‘impermanent, dukkha, and subject to change’. Notice
that the word dukkha is explicitly used. It is dukkha, not because there is ‘suffering’ in ordinary sense
of the word, but because ‘whatever is impermanent is dukkha.’
The Buddha was realistic and objective. He says, with regard to life and the enjoyment of sensepleasures, that one should clearly understand three things: (1) attraction or enjoyment (assāda), (2)
evil consequence or danger or unsatisfactoriness (ādīnava), and (3) freedom or liberation (nissaraṇa).
When you see a pleasant, charming and beautiful person, you like him (or her), you are attracted, you
enjoy seeing that person again and again, you derive pleasure and satisfaction from that person. This
is enjoyment (assāda). It is fact of experience. But this enjoyment is not permanent, just as that person and his (or her) attractions are not permanent either. When the situation changes, when you
cannot see that person, when you are deprived of this enjoyment, you become sad, you may become
unreasonable and unbalanced, you may even behave foolishly. This is evil, unsatisfactory and dangerous side of the picture (ādīnava). This, too, is a fact of experience. Now if you have no attachment to
the person, if you are completely detached, that is freedom, liberation (nissarana). These three things
are true with regard to all enjoyment in life.
286
THE DHAMMA
From this it is evident that it is no question of pessimism or optimism, but that we must take
account of the pleasure of life as well as of its pains and sorrows, and also of freedom from them, in
order to understand life completely and objectively. Only then is true liberation is possible.
Regarding this question the Buddha says:
O bhikkhus, if any recluses or brāhmaṇas do not understand objectively in this way that
the enjoyment of sense-pleasures is enjoyment, that their unsatifactoriness is unsatisfactoriness, that liberation from them is liberation, then it is not possible that they themselves will certainly understand the desire for sense- pleasures completely, or that they
will be able to instruct another person to that end, or that person following their instruction will completely understand the desire for sense-pleasures. But, O bhikkhus, if any
recluses, or brāhmaṇas understand objectively in this way that the enjoyment of sensepleasures is enjoyment, that their unsatisfactoriness is unsatisfactoriness, that liberation
from them is liberation, that it is possible that they themselves will certainly understand
the desire for sense-pleasures completely, and that they will be able to instruct another
person to that end, and that the person following their instruction will completely understand the desire of sense-pleasures.2
The conception of dukkha may be viewed from three aspects: (1) dukkha as ordinary suffering
(dukkha-dukkha), (2) dukkha as produced by change (vipariṇāma-dukkha) and (3) dukkha as conditioned states (saṃkhāra-dukkha). All kinds of suffering in life like births, old age, sickness, death,
association with unpleasant persons and conditions, separation from beloved ones and pleasant conditions, not getting what one desires, grief, lamentation, distress—all such forms of physical and mental suffering, which are universally accepted as suffering or pain, are included in dukkha as ordinary
suffering (dukkha-dukkha).
A happy feeling, a happy condition in life, is not permanent, not everlasting. It changes sooner
or later. When it changes, it produces pain, suffering produced by change (vipariṇāma-dukkha) mentioned above. No one will dispute them. This aspect of the First Noble Truth is more popularly known
because it is easy to understand. It is common experience in our daily life.
But the third form of dukkha as conditioned states (saṃkhāra-dukkha) is the most important
philosophical aspect of the First Noble Truth, and it requires some analytical explanation of what
we consider as a ‘being’, as an ‘individual’, or as ‘I’. What we call a ‘being’, or an ‘individual’, or ‘I’, according to Buddhist philosophy, is only a combination of ever-changing physical and mental forces of
energies, which may be divided into five groups or aggregates (pañcakkhandha). The Buddha says: ‘In
short these five aggregates of attachment are dukkha’. Elsewhere he distinctly defines dukkha as the
five aggregates: ‘O bhikkhus, what is dukkha? It should be said that it is the five aggregates of attachment’. Here it should be clearly understood that dukkha and the five aggregates are not two different
things; the five aggregates themselves are dukkha. We will understand this point better when we have
some notion of the five aggregates which constitute the so-called ‘being’. Now, what are these five?
The Five Aggregates
The first is the Aggregate of Matter (Rūpakkhandha). In this term ‘Aggregate of Matter’ are included the
traditional Four Great Elements, namely, solidity, fluidity, heat and motion, and also the Derivatives
2MN I.
REQUIRED READING: WALPOLA
287
of the Four Great Elements. In the term ‘Derivatives of Four Great Elements’ are included our five
material sense-organs, i.e., the faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body, and their corresponding
objects in the external world, i.e., visible form, sound, odour, taste, and tangible things, and also some
thoughts or ideas or conceptions which are in the sphere of mind-objects (dharmāyatana). Thus the
whole realm of matter, both internal and external, is included in the Aggregate of Matter.
The second is the Aggregate of Sensations (Vedanākkhandha). In this group are included all our
sensation, pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, experienced through the contact of physical and mental
organs with the external world. They are of six kinds: the sensations experienced through the contact
of the eye with visible forms, ear with sounds, nose with odour, tongue with taste, body with tangible
objects, and mind (which is the sixth faculty in Buddhist Philosophy) with mind-objects or thoughts
or ideas. All our physical and mental sensations are included in this group.
A word about what is meant by the term ‘Mind’ (manas) in Buddhist philosophy may be useful
here. It should clearly be understood that mind is not spirit as opposed to matter. It should always
be remembered that Buddhism does not recognize a spirit opposed to matter, as is accepted by most
other systems of philosophies and religions. Mind is only a faculty or organ (indriya) like the eye or
the ear. It can be controlled and developed like any other faculty, and the Buddha speaks quite often
of the value of controlling and disciplining these six faculties. The difference between the eye and
the mind as faculties is that the former senses the world of colours and visible forms, while the latter
senses the world of ideas and thoughts and mental objects.
We experience different fields of the world with different senses. We cannot hear colours, but
we can see them. Nor can we see sounds, but we can hear them. Thus with our five physical senseorgans—eye, ear, nose, tongue, body—we experience only the world of visible forms, sounds, odours,
tastes and tangible objects. But these represent only a part of the world, not the whole world. What of
ideas and thoughts? They are also a part of the world. But they cannot be sensed, they cannot be conceived by the faculty of the eye, ear, nose, tongue or body. Yet they can be conceived by another faculty,
which is mind. Now ideas and thoughts are not independent of the world experienced by these five
physical sense faculties. In fact they depend on, and are conditioned by, physical experiences. Hence
a person born blind cannot have ideas of colour, experienced through his other faculties. Ideas and
thoughts which form a part of the world are thus produced and conditioned by physical experiences
and are conceived by the mind. Hence mind (manas) is considered a sense faculty or organ (indriya),
like the eye or the ear.
The third is the Aggregate of Perceptions (Saññākkhandha). Like sensations, perceptions also
are of six kinds, in relation to six internal faculties and the corresponding six external objects. Like
sensations, they are produced through the contact of our six faculties with the external world. It is the
perception that recognize objects whether physical or mental.
The fourth is the Aggregate of Mental Formations3 (Saṃkhārakkhandha). In this group are included all volitional activities both good and bad. What is generally known as karma (or kamma)
comes under this group. The Buddha’s own definition of karma should be remembered here: ‘O
bhikkhus, it is volition (cetanā) that I call karma. Having willed, one acts through body, speech and
mind.’ Volition is ‘mental construction, mental activity. Its function is to direct the mind in the sphere
3‘Mental Formations’ is a term now generally used to represent the wide meaning of the word saṃkhāra in the list of
Five Aggregates. Saṃkhāra in other contexts may mean anything conditioned, anything in the world, in which sense all the
Five Aggregates are saṃkhāra.
288
THE DHAMMA
of good, bad or neutral activities.’ Just like sensations and perceptions, volition is of six kinds, connected with the six internal faculties and the corresponding six objects (both physical and mental)
in the external world. Sensations and perceptions are not volitional actions. They do not produce
karmic effects. It is the only volitional actions- such as attention, will, determination, confidence,
concentration, wisdom, energy, desire, repugnance or hate, ignorance, conceit, idea of self, etc.—that
can produce karmic effects. There are 52 such mental activities which constitute the Aggregate of
Mental Formation.
The fifth is the Aggregate of Consciousness (Viññāṇakkhandha). Consciousness is a reaction or
response which has one of the six faculties (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) as its basis, and one
of the six corresponding external phenomena (visible form, sound, odour, taste, tangible things and
mind-objects, i.e., an idea or thought) as its object. For instance, visual consciousness has the eye as
its basis and a visible form as its object. Mental consciousness has the mind as its basis and a mental
object, i.e., an idea or thought as its object. So consciousness is connected with other faculties. Thus,
like sensation, perception and volition, consciousness also is of six kinds, in relation to six internal
faculties and corresponding six external objects.
It should be clearly understood that consciousness does not recognize an object. It is only a sort
of awareness—awareness of the presence of an object. When the eye comes in contact with a colour,
for instance blue, visual consciousness arises which simply is awareness of the presence of a colour:
but it does not recognize that it is blue. There is no recognition at this stage. It is perception (the
third Aggregate discussed above) that recognizes that it is blue. The term ‘visual consciousness’ is a
philosophical expression denoting the same idea as is conveyed by the ordinary word ‘seeing’. Seeing
does not mean recognizing. So are the other forms of consciousness.
It must be repeated here that according to Buddhist philosophy there is no permanent, unchanging spirit which can be considered ‘Self’, or ‘Soul’, or ‘Ego’, as opposed to matter, and that consciousness (viññāṇa) should not be taken as ‘spirit’ in opposition to matter. This point has to be particularly
emphasized, because a wrong notion that consciousness is a sort of Self or Soul that continues as a
permanent substance through life, has persisted from the earliest time to present day.
One of the Buddha’s own disciples, Sāti by name, held that the Master taught: ‘It is the same
consciousness that transmigrates and wanders about.’ The Buddha asked him what he meant by ‘consciousness’. Sāti’s reply is classical: ‘It is that which expresses, which feels, which experiences the
results of good and bad deeds here and there’. ‘To whomever, you stupid one’, remonstrated the Master, ‘have you heard me expounding the doctrine in this manner? Haven’t I in many ways explained
consciousness as arising out of conditions: that there is no arising of consciousness without conditions.’
Then the Buddha went on to explain consciousness in detail: ‘Consciousness is named according
to whatever condition through which it arises: on account of the eye and visible forms arises a consciousness, and it is called visual consciousness; on account of ear and sounds arises a consciousness,
and it is called auditory consciousness; on account of nose and odour arises a consciousness, and it
is called olfactory consciousness; on account of tongue and tastes arises a consciousness, and it is
called gustatory consciousness; on account of body and tangible objects arises a consciousness, and it
is called tactile consciousness; on account of the mind and mind-objects (ideas and thoughts) arises
a consciousness, and it is called mental consciousness.’ Then the Buddha explained it further by an
illustration: A fire is named according to the material on account of which it burns. A fire may burn
REQUIRED READING: WALPOLA
289
on account of wood, and it is called wood-fire. It may burn on account of straw, and then it is called
straw-fire. So consciousness is named according to the condition through which it arises.
Dwelling on this point, Buddhaghosa, the great commentator, explains: ‘a fire that burns on account of wood burns only when there is a supply, but dies down in the very place when it (the supply)
is no longer there, because then the condition has changed, but (the fire) does not cross over to splinters, etc., and become a splinter-fire and so on; even so the consciousness that arises on account of
the eye and visible forms arises in that gate of sense organ (i.e., in the eye), only when there is the
condition of the eye, visible forms, light and attention, but ceases then and there when it (the condition) has changed, but (the consciousness) does not cross over to the ear, etc., and become auditory
consciousness and so on.’
The Buddha declared in unequivocal terms that consciousness depends on matter, sensation, perception and mental formations, and that it cannot exist independently from them. He says:
‘Consciousness may exist having matter as it means, matter as its object, matter as its
support, and seeking delight it may grow, increase and develop; or consciousness may
exist having sensation as it means… or perception as it means… or mental formation as
it means, mental formation as its object, mental formation as its support, and seeking
delight it may grow, increase and develop.
‘Were a man to say: I shall show the coming, the going, the passing away, the arising, the
growth, the increase or the development of consciousness apart from matter, sensation,
perception and mental formations, he would be speaking of something that does not
exist.4
Very briefly these are the five Aggregates. What we call a ‘being’ or an ‘individual’, or ‘I’ is only a
convenient name or a label given to the combination of these five groups. They are all impermanent,
all constantly changing. ”Whatever is impermanent is dukkha. This is the true meaning of the Buddha’s words: ‘In brief the five Aggregates of Attachment are dukkha.’ They are not the same for two
consecutive moments. Here A is not equal to A. They are in flux of momentary arising and disappearing.
’O Brāhmaṇa, it is just like a mountain river, flowing far and swift, taking everything with
it; there is no moment, no instant, no second when it stops flowing, but it goes on flowing
and continuing. So Brāhmaṇa, is human life, like a mountain river.’
As the Buddha told Raṭṭhapāla: ‘The world is in continuous flux and is impermanent.’ One thing disappears, conditioning the appearance of the next in a series of cause and effect. There is no unchanging substance in them. There is nothing behind them that can be called a permanent Self (Ātman),
individuality, or anything that can in reality be called ‘I’.
Every one will agree that neither matter, nor sensation, nor perception, nor any of those mental
activities, nor consciousness can be really called ‘I’. But when these five physical and mental aggregates
which are independent are working together in combination as a physio-psychological machine, we
get the idea of ‘I’. But this is only a false idea, a mental formation, which is nothing but one of those 52
mental formations of the fourth Aggregate which we have just discussed, namely, it is the idea of self.
These five Aggregates together, which we popularly call a ‘being’ are dukkha itself. There is no
other ‘being’ or ‘I’ standing behind these five aggregates, who experiences dukkha. As Buddhaghosa
says:
4S III.
290
THE DHAMMA
‘Mere suffering exists, but no sufferer is found;
The deed are, but no doer is found.’5
There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to
say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things.
In other words there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove
the thought, there is no thinker to be found. Here we cannot fail to notice how this Buddhist view is
diametrically opposed to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum: ‘I think, therefore I am.’
Now a question may be raised whether life has a beginning. According to the Buddha’s teaching
the beginning of the lifestream of living beings is unthinkable. The believer in the creation of life by
God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him ‘What is the beginning of God?’ he
would answer without hesitation ‘God has no beginning’, and he is not astonished at his own reply.
The Buddha says: ‘O bikkhus, this cycle of continuity (saṃsāra) is without a visible end, and the first
beginning of beings wandering and running round, enveloped in ignorance (avijjā) and bound down
by the fetters of thirst (desire, taṇhā) is not to be perceived. And further, referring to ignorance which
is the main cause of the continuity of life, the Buddha states: ‘The first beginning of ignorance is not to
be perceived in such a way as to postulate that there was no ignorance beyond a certain point.’ Thus
it is not possible to say that there was no life beyond a certain definite point.
This in short is the meaning of the Noble Truth of Dukkha. It is extremely important to understand
this First Noble Truth clearly because, as the Buddha says, ‘he who sees dukkha sees also the arising of
dukkha, sees also the cessation of dukkha, and sees also the path leading to the cessation of dukkha.’6
This does not at all make the life of a Buddhist melancholy or sorrowful, as some people wrongly
imagine. On the contrary, a true Buddhist is the happiest of beings. He has no fears or anxieties.
He is always calm and serene, and cannot be upset or dismayed by changes or calamities, because
he sees things as they are. The Buddha was never melancholy or gloomy. He was described by his
contemporaries as ever-smiling’. In Buddhist painting and sculpture the Buddha is always represented
with a countenance happy, serene, contented and compassionate. Never a trace of suffering or agony
or pain is to be seen.7 Buddhist art and architecture, Buddhist temples never give the impression
of gloom or sorrow, but produce an atmosphere of calm and serene joy. Although there is suffering
in life, a Buddhist should not be gloomy over it, should not be angry or impatient at it. One of the
principal evils in life, according to Buddhism, is ‘repugnance’ or hatred. Repugnance is expained as
‘ill-will with regard to living beings, with regard to suffering and with regard to things pertaining to
suffering. Its function is to produce a basis for unhappy states and bad conduct.’ Thus it is wrong to
be impatient at suffering. Being impatient or angry at suffering does not remove it. On the contrary, it
adds a little more to one’s troubles, and aggravates and exacerbates a situation already disagreeable.
What is necessary is not anger or impatience, but the understanding of the question of suffering, how
it comes about, and how to get rid of it, and then to work accordingly with patience, intelligence,
determination and energy.
5In fact Buddhaghosa compares a ‘being’ to a wooden mechanism.
6In fact the Buddha says that he who sees any one of the Four Noble Truths sees the other three as well. These Four
Noble Truths are interconnected.
7There is a statue from Gandbara, and also one from Fou-Kien, China, depicting Gotama as an ascetic, emaciated, with
all his ribs showing. But this was before his Enlightenment, when he was submitting himself to the rigorous ascetic practices
which he condemned after he became Buddha.
REQUIRED READING: WALPOLA
291
There are two ancient Buddhist texts called the Theragāthā and Therīgāthā which are full of the
joyful utterances of the Buddha’s disciples, both male and female, who found peace and happiness in
life through his teaching. The king of Kosala once told the Buddha that unlike many a disciple of other
religious systems who looked haggard, coarse, pale, emaciated and unprepossessing, his disciples were
‘joyful and elated, jubilant and exultant, enjoying the spiritual life, with faculties pleased, free from
anxiety, serene, peaceful and living with a gazelle’s mind, i.e., light-hearted.’ The king added that he
believed that this healthy disposition was due to the fact that ‘these venerable ones had certainly
realized the great and full significance of the Blessed One’s teaching.’
Buddhism is quite opposed to the melancholic, sorrowful, penitent and gloomy attitude of mind
which is considered a hindrance to the realization of Truth. On the other hand, it is interesting to remember here that joy is one of the seven Bojjhaṃgas or ‘Factors of Enlightment’, the essential qualities
to be cultivated for the realization of Nirvāṇā.
292
THE DHAMMA
Required reading
W. T. de Bary, A.T. Embree, and S. N. Hay, eds., “The Questions of King Milinda (25–28, 40, 71),” in
Sources of Indian Tradition (1958; New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), vol. 1: 105–108 and Milindapañha 46 Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 151.
The Simile of the Chariot
This passage from the Questions of King Menander (Milindapañha) is among the best known arguments in favor of the composite nature of the individual. The Greek king Milinda, or Menander, ruled
in northwestern India about the middle of the second century bce. According to the text he was conNāgasena verted to Buddhism by Nāgasena, and the wheel that appears on some of his numerous coins would
suggest that he was in fact influenced by the Indian religion. The style of the Questions is in some
measure reminiscent of the Upanishads, but some authorities have thought to find traces of the influence of Plato and have suggested that the author or authors knew Greek. Though in its present form
the work may be some centuries later, its kernel may go back to before the Christian era.8
Milindapañha
The King Menander went up to the Venerable Nāgasena, greeted him respectfully, and sat down. Nāgasena replied to the greeting, and the King was pleased at heart. Then King Menander asked: “How
is your reverence known, and what is your name?”
“I’m known as Nāgasena, your Majesty, that’s what my fellow monks call me. But though my parents
may have given me such a name… it’s only a generally understood term, a practical designation. There
is no question of a permanent individual implied in the use of the word.”
“Listen, you five hundred Greeks and eighty thousand monks!” said King Menander. “This Nāgasena
has just declared that there’s no permanent individuality implied in his name!” Then, turning to Nāgasena, “If, Reverend Nāgasena, there is no permanent individuality, who gives you monks your robes
and food, lodging and medicines? And who makes use of them? Who lives a life of righteousness,
meditates, and reaches Nirvana? Who destroys living beings, steals, fornicates, tells lies, or drinks
spirits?… If what you say is true there’s neither merit nor demerit, and no fruit or result of good or evil
deeds. If someone were to kill you there would be no question of murder. And there would be no masters or teachers in the [Buddhist] Order and no ordinations. If your fellow monks call you Nāgasena,
what then is Nāgasena? Would you say that your hair is Nāgasena?” “No, your Majesty.”
“Or your nails, teeth, skin, or other parts of your body, or the outward form, or sensation, or perception, or the psychic constructions, or consciousness? Are any of these Nāgasena?” “No, your Majesty.”
“Then are all these taken together Nāgasena?” “No, your Majesty.”
“Or anything other than they?” “No, your Majesty.”
“Then for all my asking I find no Nāgasena. Nāgasena is a mere sound! Surely what your Reverence
has said is false!”
Then the Venerable Nāgasena addressed the King.
“Your Majesty, how did you come here-on foot, or in a vehicle?”
“In a chariot.”
“Then tell me what is the chariot? Is the pole the chariot?” “No, your Reverence.”
8Milindapañha, 25-28 trans. in Vilhelm Trenckner, The Milindapañho: being dialogues between King Milinda and the
Buddhist sage Nāgasena (London: Williams & Norgate, 1880).
REQUIRED READING: MILINDAPAÑHA
293
“Or the axle, wheels, frame, reins, yoke, spokes, or goad?” “None of these things is the chariot.”
“Then all these separate parts taken together are the chariot?” “No, your Reverence.”
“Then is the chariot something other than the separate parts? “ “No, your Reverence.”
“Then for all my asking, your Majesty, I can find no chariot. The chariot is a mere sound. What then
is the chariot? Surely what your Majesty has said is false! There is no chariot!…’́
When he had spoken the five hundred Greeks cried “Well done!” and said to the King, “Now, your
Majesty, get out of that dilemma if you can!”
“What I said was not false,” replied the King. “It’s on account of all these various components, the
pole, axle, wheels, and so on, that the vehicle is called a chariot. It’s just a generally understood term,
a practical designation.”
“Well said, your Majesty! You know what the word ‘chariot’ means! And it’s just the same with me. It’s
on account of the various components of my being that I’m known by the generally understood term,
the practical designation Nāgasena.”
Change and Identity
After convincing Menander of the composite nature of the personality by the simile of the chariot,
Nāgasena shows him by another simile how it is continually changing with the passage of time but
possesses a specious unity through the continuity of the body.9
“Reverend Nāgasena,” said the King, “when a man is born does he remain the same [being] or become another?”
“He neither remains the same nor becomes another.”
“Give me an example!”
“What do you think, your Majesty? You were once a baby lying on your back, tender and small and
weak. Was that baby you, who are now grown up?”
“No, your Reverence, the baby was one being and I am another.”
“If that’s the case, your Majesty, you had no mother or father, and no teachers in learning, manners,
or wisdom… Is the boy who goes to school one [being] and the young man who has finished his education another? Does one person commit a crime and another suffer mutilation for it?”
“Of course not, your Reverence! But what do you say on the question?”
“I am the being I was when I was a baby,” said the Elder… “for through the continuity of the body all
stages of life are included in a pragmatic unity.”
“Give me an illustration.”
“Suppose a man were to light a lamp, would it burn all through the night?” “Yes, it might.”
“Now is the flame which burns in the middle watch the same as that which burned in the first?” “No,
your Reverence.”
“Or is that which burns in the last watch the same as that which burned in the middle?” “No, your
Reverence.”
“So is there one lamp in the first watch, another in the middle, and yet another in the last?”
“No. The same lamp gives light all through the night. “
“Similarly, your Majesty, the continuity of phenomena is kept up. One person comes into existence,
9Milindapañha, 40 trans. in ibid.
294
THE DHAMMA
another passes away, and the sequence runs continuously without self-conscious existence, neither
the same nor yet another.”
“Well said, Reverend Nāgasena!’
The Process of Rebirth
In this little passage Nāgasena presses the analogy of the lamp further, and shows Menander how rebirth is possible without any soul, substratum of personality, or other hypothetical entity that passes
from the one body to the other.10
“Reverend Nāgasena, “ said the King, “is it true that nothing transmigrates, and yet there is rebirth?”
“Yes, your Majesty.” “How can this be?… Give me an illustration.”
“Suppose, your Majesty, a man lights one lamp from another-does the one lamp transmigrate to the
other?” “No, your Reverence. “
“So there is rebirth without anything transmigrating!”
Personal identity and Karma
The king asked: ‘Is there, Nāgasena, any being which passes on from this body to another body?’ —
‘No, your majesty!’ — ‘If there were no passing on from this body to another, would not one then in
one’s next life be freed from the evil deeds committed in the past?’ — ‘Yes, that would be so if one were
not linked once again with a new organism. But since, your majesty, one is linked once again with a
new organism, therefore one is not freed from one’s evil deeds.’ — ‘Give me a simile!’ — ‘If a man
should steal another man’s mangoes, would he deserve a thrashing for that?’ — ‘Yes, of course!’ —
‘But he would not have stolen the very same mangoes as the other one had planted. Why then should
he deserve a thrashing?’ — ‘For the reason that the stolen mangoes had grown because of those that
were planted.’ — ‘just so, your majesty, it is because of the deeds one does, whether pure or impure, by
means of this psycho-physical organism, that, one is once again linked with another psycho-physical
organism, and is not freed from one’s evil deeds.’ — ‘Very good, Nāgasena!’11
10Milindapañha, 71 trans. in Trenckner, Milindapañho.
11Milindapañha 46, trans. in Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 151.
9.1 The Dhamma Lab?: Buddhist Meditation
Topic Overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
discuss the links between meditation and Buddhist doctrine,
describe the differences between samatha and vipassanā meditation, as well as some of their
forms and features, and
express your own feelings about your experience trying vipassanā meditation.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
meditation
states of consciousness
mental cultivation as a religious practice
Meditation in the Buddhist tradition
There is perhaps no more iconic practice associated with Buddhism than meditation. Statues of the
Buddha often depict him meditating (perhaps en route to his ‘awakening’ under the Bodhi tree) and
we often imagine Buddhist monks spending hours in meditation. Meditation does have a long history in Buddhism.1 Meditation is an essential element in the eightfold path. There are a number of
early Pāli texts that describe the processes and benefits of meditating. We’re reading one of the most
important ones this week, the Satipatthāna Sutta, or the teaching on the foundations of mindfulness.
Another large and very influential text is the Visudhimagga (The Path to Purification), a large manual
on meditation written by the famous monk Buddhaghosa in the fifth century in Sri Lanka. We turn
to meditation now for a specific reason: it’s through meditation that Buddhists aim to experience directly the philosophical truths described above. That is, meditation is seen by many as the laboratory
in which Buddhists test or encounter firsthand the doctrines of anattā, dukkha, anicca and others.
1See, for example, Erik Braun, The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
295
296
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
All of this sounds very exciting and heady, and indeed it is. Those who meditate often speak highly
of the benefits of regular ‘sitting.’ Moreover, the spiritual attainments of monks and other Buddhists
are often attributed to advanced accomplishments in meditation. However, I do not want to mislead
you. While meditation is part of contemporary Theravāda Buddhist practice, it is not the only or
even the dominant feature of practice. Many Buddhist monks meditate, but often not extensively or
with the rigor assumed by Westerners. Until the 1950s, it was very uncommon to find lay Buddhists
meditating. In fact, the significant attention paid to meditation today is in large part the product
of the success of meditation centers that, while inspired by Buddhism, are not formally associated
with Buddhist monasteries. Joseph Goldstein, whose guided meditation you will listen to this week,
runs a meditation center in America, but neither he nor his style of meditation would be considered
traditional by Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka.
For the purposes of this class, I will not try to draw a bright line between ‘traditional,’ Theravāda
meditation and the many new meditation centers that have sprung up throughout the world. Rather,
I want you to think about the practice of mental cultivation and to help you imagine how exercises involving concentrating one’s mind, breathing, sitting, etc.—exercises that are both bodily and mental—
work to make palpable and plausible some of the arcane ideas discussed above. As such, I want you
to read about meditation in this topic overview and in the Satipatthāna Sutta and to experience meditation for yourself by listening to Goldstein and by trying a short meditation exercise in class.
Meditation and its forms
calming
(samatha)
insight
(vipassanā)
There are many Buddhist terms which might be translated as meditation, but the broadest of them
is bhāvanā, which literally means ‘bringing into being’. Cultivation (of wholesome states of mind,
and ultimately of wisdom) is perhaps a more literal translation than meditation. Another term often
translated as meditation is dhyāna (Pāli: jhāna); in Chinese this is ch’an, in Japanese zen) although the
real sense of the term is closer to ‘absorption’, or ‘trance’.
If you go looking for meditation in Buddhist texts you may be surprised at what you find. While
there are some texts, like the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, that focus on the technique of meditation, many
more take the form of extended and highly technical discussions about the subtle differences between
mental states, differences which are not comprehensible to someone who has not experienced them.
Like other Buddhist texts, these texts are characterized by long numbered lists that purport to analyse
what happens in meditation. Thus we find specified the four foundations of mindfulness, the five
hindrances, the eight knowledges, the 37 factors (literally, ‘wings’) of enlightenment and so on.
In general, Theravāda sources distinguish two basic methods of meditation: calming (samatha)
and insight (vipassanā). Calming aims at stilling the mind and the mastery of highly-focused (‘onepointed’) concentration. Insight is the application of that concentration in order to see the world in
terms of the Buddhist analysis of it, that is as characterised by the three marks (the tilakkhaṇa). A
metaphor often used for the first method is to compare the mind to a pool of water—when calmed,
it is possible to see to the bottom of the pool, but when the water is agitated it is not. Developing
concentration can be compared to narrowing a beam of light so that it shines more intensely in one
direction; insight meditation is then the application of that intense, bright light to some object in
order to see what it really is.
Ultimately these two styles of meditation are regarded as complementary. Traditionally, Buddhists insisted that all forms of meditation were to be undertaken only under the supervision of a
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
297
meditation teacher. These were not DIY self-help techniques. Perhaps the majority view in Theravāda Buddhism has been to see calming meditation as a preparation for insight, but there are ancient
sources and an important modern school of meditation which argues that insight should be cultivated
virtually from the beginning.
Calming meditation: samatha
The basis for calm meditation is mindfulness, or sati. Sati is the Pāli equivalent of the Sanskrit smṛti, sati
meaning remembering (in constrast to śruti or hearing), but in Pāli meditation tracts sati only occasionally refers to awareness of past events; its usual sense is ‘attention’ or ‘awareness’, particularly
good, skillful or right awareness—for which in English the term ‘mindfulness’ is often used. The cultivation of mindfulness is not something restricted to meditation, rather the whole of one’s life should
contribute to this goal. The cultivation of mindfulness results in increasingly deep stages of concentration, or absorption (jhāna).
As the aim of calming meditation is simply to develop the powers of concentration so that one can
maintain concentration on one mental object at will, it is in some sense irrelevant what one chooses
to concentrate upon. However, Buddhist meditation manuals have identified lists of appropriate objects, based upon and systematizing lists found in different places in the canon. Buddhaghosa identified forty such objects (see Figure 1), categorizing them according to the jhānas one could attain by
meditating upon them and the personality types they were especially suited for.
Mindfulness of breathing is one form of calm meditation which is highly praised in the canon—it
has a whole sutta, the Ānāpāna-sati sutta (included below) devoted to it2—and is widely used as the
first meditative technique. Mindfulness of breathing is also said to be the chief meditative practice.3
The four foundations of mindfulness are observing the body as body, feelings as feelings, mental
states as mental states, and mental objects as mental objects. These overlap with some of the other
subjects of calm meditation, notably mindfulness of the body. The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta compares the
meditating monk who is aware of the body as body to a skilled woodturner who, ‘when making a long
turn, knows that he is making a long turn, and when making a short turn, knows that he is making a
short turn. In the same way, the monk, when breathing in a long breath, knows that he is breathing in
a long breath…’4 Gethin draws a similar parallel, comparing the monk’s awareness to that of an experienced pianist who, having gone beyond the beginner’s need to concentrate on where to place each
finger, is nevertheless aware of exactly how much pressure is required to give the sound the required
quality.
Mindfulness of the body includes mindfulness of bodily postures and movements and much of the
monastic code is directed toward the cultivation of this kind of mindfulness on the part of the monk
or nun (for more, see next Unit). The repulsiveness of the body is another dimension of mindfulness
of the body. This may be cultivated through meditation on the ten uglinesses, that is, the ten stages
that the body passes through in the course of its decomposition. Monks were encouraged to witness the decomposition of bodies in cremation or charnel grounds, and in some modern Theravādin
2Trans. in Rod Bucknell and Chris Kang, eds., The Meditative Way: Readings in the Theory and Practice of Buddhist
Meditation (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997), 26–8.
3Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 43.
4Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta trans. in Bucknell and Kang, Meditative Way, 20.
298
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
Figure 1: The subjects of calm meditation (from Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998))
countries monks seek permission to meditate in mortuaries, or during autopsies. The nine cemetery
meditations were of course intended to promote reflection upon the similarity of the monk’s body to
the bodies he saw decomposing, and hence to discourage attachment to the body. These meditations
were recommended for the greedy, or those tempted to break the monk’s vow of celibacy, but they
only allow one to achieve the first of the four jhānas.
Other meditations have a more positive character, for example the six recollections: of the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, good conduct, generosity, the gods. Also important are meditations on four
key Buddhist virtues called the ‘divine abidings’ or brahma-vihāras (translated in Gethin’s figure as
mettā ‘Immeasurables’). The first, loving-kindness (mettā) is the desire that ‘all beings may be well’ and is
compared by the Buddha to the feelings of a mother toward her child. One technique recommended
for accomplishing this is to reflect on the fact that given that we have all already been reborn an incalculable numbers of times (for saṃsāra is without beginning), at some time we have all been reborn as
each others’ child or mother. Recollection of the fact that someone was once your mother, and cared
for you, or a child for which you cared, is supposed to promote the feeling of mettā. Likewise compaskaruṇā sion (karuṇā) is the desire that the sufferings of others should cease and is compared to the feelings
of a mother toward her ill child. Sympathetic joy (muditā) is taking pleasure in the good fortunes of
others and is compared to the feelings of a mother toward the successes of her child. The highest of
the divine abidings, however, is equanimity (upekkhā)—often a synonym for awakening. This is compared to the attitude of a mother to a child that is busy with its own affairs. It is not indifference, one
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
299
retains a consciousness of the suffering of all beings, but also has the knowledge that only they can
save themselves.
The 10 kasinas are much less obvious as objects of meditation. In general kasina meditation involves the physical construction of meditation objects (a round mound of sticks) and the repetition
of certain phrases.
The four jhānas
As you can from the passages above, Buddhists saw meditation, particularly samatha meditation, as
leading to elevated states of consciousness, called jhānas.5 The attainment of the first jhāna is the
result of developing the five limbs of jhāna: ‘application of thought’ (knowing what you are doing),
‘examining’ (the quality or quiddity of what you are doing), joy, happiness, one-pointed awareness.
Progress through the first four jhānas is successively removing the limbs—which can perhaps be compared to removing training wheels on a bicycle one by one. The second jhāna is instinctive rather than
deliberate awareness, as in the example of Gethin’s concert pianist who doesn’t cease to be aware of
the fingers, but doesn’t have to consciously place them either. The joy which accompanies the second
jhāna carries the danger of attachment and is thus a hindrance—the third jhāna is the letting go of
joy, and the fourth the letting go of happiness so that only one-pointed awareness remains (riding a
unicycle?).
Buddhist texts on meditation have much to say about supernatural powers that are thereby attained. Sometimes these are useful for further progress, or for helping others, but they are not an aim
in themselves, and ultimately can become a hindrance if one develops attachment to them.
Vipassanā
Buddhaghosa and other classical meditation manuals suggest one must fully master the jhānas before
turning to vipassanā. However, in the modern period, three are many who see vipassanā as an entrylevel meditation possibility in its own right. Many non-Buddhists who have undertaken meditation
courses engage in one of the many forms of vipassanā meditation out there—forms which have their
origins in places like Burma or Thailand, but which have been altered and adopted to fit new cultural
contexts. (It’s this type of meditation that Goldstein teaches.) Vipassanā meditation is described in
the Pāli Canon and elsewhere. In addition to its characteristic aim (to see through reality, or see things
as they really are), vipassanā distinguishes itself from samatha meditation in its technique. Rather
than focusing on an object per se, vipassanā meditators try to observe the mechanics of the mind as
they unfold, watching the coming and going of thoughts and, in so doing, observing directly how the
mind works. Through this process observation one comes to ‘see’ the essential nature of experience as
marked by dukkha, anicca and anattā. See if you can get a sense for this when you listen to Goldstein’s
guided meditation: see if you can identify what might be ‘traditional’ and what might be peculiar to
vipassanā in the West.
5Some Buddhist texts correlate these mental states to cosmological realms, such that advanced meditators were imagined to have access to different levels of the cosmos. Kate Crosby, Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity and Identity
(Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 153.
300
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
Appendix (read if you want): Ānāpāna-sati sutta
Mindfulness of breathing, monks, if cultivated and much practised, is of great benefit, of great advantage. Mindfulness of breathing, if cultivated and much practised, brings to perfection the four foundations of mindfulness; the four foundations of mindfulness, if cultivated and much practised, bring
to perfection the seven factors of enlightenment; the seven factors of enlightenment, if cultivated and
much practised, bring to perfection liberation through insight.
And how is mindfulness of breathing cultivated? In this case a monk, having gone into the forest, or to the base of a tree, or to a deserted place, sits down with legs crossed and body erect, and
establishes mindfulness in the present. Mindfully he breathes in; mindfully he breathes out.
1. When breathing in a long breath, he knows he is breathing in a long breath; and when breathing
out a long breath, he knows he is breathing out a long breath.
2. When breathing in a short breath, he knows he is breathing in a short breath; and when breathing out a short breath, he knows he is breathing out a short breath.
3. He practises experiencing the whole body while breathing in… while breathing out.
4. He practises calming the bodily activities while breathing in… while breathing out.
5. He practises experiencing joy while breathing in… while breathing out.
6. He practises experiencing pleasure while breathing in… while breathing out.
7. He practises experiencing the mental activities while breathing in… while breathing out.
8. He practises calming the mental activities while breathing in… while breathing out.
9. He practises experiencing the mind while breathing in… while breathing out.
10. He practises gladdening the mind while breathing in… while breathing out.
11. He practises concentrating the mind while breathing in… while breathing out.
12. He practises liberating the mind while breathing in… while breathing out.
13. He practises observing impermanence while breathing in… while breathing out.
14. He practises observing fading away [of hate, greed and delusion] while breathing in… while
breathing out.
15. He practises observing cessation while breathing in… while breathing out.
16. He practises observing relinquishment while breathing in… while breathing out.
And how does mindfulness of breathing, if cultivated and much practised, bring to perfection the four
foundations of mindfulness? At any time that the monk, when breathing in or out or a long or a short
breath, knows that he is breathing in or out or a long or a short breath; and at the time that he practises
experiencing the whole body or calming the bodily activities, while breathing in or while breathing
out—at such a time he is observing the body as body, resolute, aware and mindful, having put aside
worldly desire and sadness; because, I say, in- and out-breathing is one of the activities of the body.
At any time that the monk practises experiencing joy, or experiencing pleasure, or experiencing
the mental activities, or calming the mental activities, while breathing in or while breathing out—at
such time he is observing feelings as feelings, resolute, aware and mindful, having put aside worldly
desire and sadness; because, I say, full attention to in- and out-breathing is one of the feelings.
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
301
At any time that the monk practises experiencing the mind, or gladdening the mind, or concentrating the mind, or liberating the mind, while breathing in or while breathing out—at such a time he
is observing mental states as mental states, resolute, aware and mindful, having put aside worldly desire and sadness; because, I say, without mindfulness and awareness one cannot cultivate mindfulness
of in- and out-breathing.
At any time that the monk practises observing impermanence, or fading away, or cessation, or
relinquishment, while breathing in or while breathing out—at such a time he is observing mental
objects as mental objects, resolute, aware and mindful, having put aside worldly desire and sadness;
because, I say, having seen with insight the giving up of desire and sadness, he becomes one who looks
on with perfect equanimity.
In this way mindfulness of breathing, if cultivated and much practised, brings to perfection the
four foundations of mindfulness.
Key Terms for Units 9.1
bhāvanā; jhāna; samatha; vipassanā, mettā; karuṇā; upekkhā; sati; Joseph Goldstein
Recommended reading
Bond, George D. “The Contemporary Lay Meditation Movement and Lay Gurus in Sri Lanka.” Religion
33, no. 1 (2003): 23–56.
Cook, Joanna. Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Jordt, Ingrid. Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007.
Sharf, Robert H. “Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience.” Numen 42, no. 3
(1995): 228–83.
Tiyavanich, Kamala. Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth Century Thailand. Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997.
Required listening
Listening: Guided Meditation on Anatta (No-Self ) with Joseph Goldstein—http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=PECB_U4abWE and on Blackboard.
302
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
Optional reading
Satipatthāna Sutta, MN 10, (=tenth sutta in the Majjjima Nikāya, or Middle Length Discourses of the
Buddha). Translated from Pāli in Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli, trans., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, 2nd ed., revised by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom, 2001),
145–55.
T
hus have i heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living in the Kuru country where there
was a town of the Kurus named Kammāsadhamma. There he addressed the bhikkhus thus:
“Bhikkhus.”—“Venerable sir,” they replied. The Blessed One said this:
2. “Bhikkhus, this is the direct path for the purification of Beings, for the surmounting of sorrow
and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the
realisation of Nibbāna—namely, the four foundations of mindfulness.
3. “What are the four? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body, ardent,
fully aware, and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief for the world. He abides contemplating feelings as feelings, ardent, fully aware, and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief
for the world. He abides contemplating mind as mind, Spent, fully aware, and mindful, having put
away covetousness and grief for the world. He abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects,
ardent, fully aware, and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief for the world.
(contemplation of the body)
(1. Mindfulness of Breathing)
4. “And how, bhikkhus, does a bhikkhu abide contemplating the body as a body? Here a bhikkhu, gone
to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty hut, sits down; having folded his legs crosswise, set
his body erect, and established mindfulness in front of him, ever mindful he breathes in, mindful
he breathes out. Breathing in long, he understands: ‘I breathe in long’; or breathing out long, he
understands: ‘I breathe out long.’ Breathing in short, he understands: ‘I breathe in short’; or breathing
out short, he understands: I breathe out short.’ He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the
whole body’; he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body.’ He trains thus: ‘I shall
breathe in tranquillising the bodily formation’; he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out tranquillising the
bodily formation.’ Just as a skilled turner or his apprentice, when making a long turn, understands: ‘I
make a long turn’; or, when making a short turn, understands: ‘I make a short turn’; so too, breathing
in long, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I breathe in long’ … he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out tranquillising
the bodily formation.’
(insight)
5. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, or he abides contemplating the
body as a body externally, or he abides contemplating the body as a body both internally and externally. Or else he abides contemplating in the body its nature of arising, or he abides contemplating
in the body its nature of vanishing, or he abides contemplating in the body its nature of both arising
and vanishing. Or else mindfulness that ‘there is a body’ is simply established in him to the extent
REQUIRED READING: SATIPATTHĀNA SUTTA
303
necessary for bare knowledge and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything
in the world. That is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
(2. The Four Postures)
6. “Again, bhikkhus, when walking, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I am walking’; when standing, he understands: ‘I am standing’; when sitting, he understands: ‘I am sitting’; when lying down, he understands:
‘I am lying down’; or he understands accordingly however his body is disposed.
7. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally
and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That too is how a
bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
(3. Full Awareness)
8. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu is one who acts in full awareness when going forward and returning;
who acts in full awareness when looking ahead and looking away; who acts in full awareness when
flexing and extending his limbs; who acts in full awareness when wearing his robes and carrying his
outer robe and bowl; who acts in full awareness when eating, drinking, consuming food, and tasting;
who acts in full awareness when defecating and urinating; who acts in full awareness when walking,
standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent.
9. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally
and externally… and he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That too is how a
bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
(4. Foulness—The Bodily Parts)
10. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu reviews this same body up from the soles of the feet and down from
the top of the hair, bounded by skin, as full of many kinds of impurity thus: ‘In this body there are
head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, contents of the stomach, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood,
sweat, fat, tears, grease, spittle, pot, oil of the joints, and urine.’ Just as though there were a bag with
an opening at both ends full of many sorts of grain, such as hill rice, red rice, beans, peas, millet, and
white rice, and a man with good eyes were to open it and review it thus: ‘This is hill rice, this is red
rice, these are beans, these are peas, this is millet, this is white rice’; so too, a bhikkhu reviews this
same body… as full of many kinds of impurity thus: ‘In this body there are head-hairs… and urine.’
11. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally
and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the World. That too is how a
bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
(5. Elements)
12. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu reviews this same body, however it is placed, however disposed, as
consisting of elements thus: ‘In this body there are the earth element, the water element, the fire
element, and the air element.’ Just as though a skilled butcher or his apprentice had killed a cow and
was seated at the crossroads with it cut up into pieces; so too, a bhikkhu reviews this same body…
304
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
as consisting of elements thus: ‘In this body there are the earth element, the water element, the fire
element, and the air element.’
13. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally
and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That too is how a
bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
(6–14. The Nine Charnel Ground Contemplations)
14. “Again, bhikkhus, as though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, one, two, or
three days dead, bloated, livid, and oozing matter, a bhikkhu compares this same body with it thus:
“This body too is of the same nature, it will be like that, it is not exempt from that fate.’
15. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally
and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That too is how a
bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
16. “Again, as though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, being devoured by
crows, hawks, vultures, dogs, jackals, or various kinds of worms, a bhikkhu compares this same body
with it thus: ‘This body too is of the same nature, it will be like that, it is not exempt from that fate.’
17. “… That too is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
18–24. “Again, as though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, a skeleton with
flesh and blood, held together with sinews… a fleshless skeleton smeared with blood, held together
with sinews… a skeleton without flesh and blood, held together with sinews… disconnected bones
scattered in all directions—here a hand-bone, there a foot-bone, here a shin-bone, there a thigh-bone,
here a hip-bone, there a back-bone, here a rib-bone, there a breast-bone, here an arm-bone, there a
shoulder-bone, here a neck-bone, there a jaw-bone, here a tooth, there the skull—a bhikkhu compares
this same body with it thus: ‘This body too is of the same nature, it will be like that, it is not exempt
from that fate.’
25. “… That too is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
26–30. “Again, as though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, bones bleached
white, the colour of shells… bones heaped up, more than a year old… bones rotted and crumbled to
dust, a bhikkhu compares this same body with it thus: ‘This body too is of the same nature, it will be
like that, it is not exempt from that fate.’
(insight)
31. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, or he abides contemplating the
body as a body externally, or he abides contemplating the body as a body both internally and externally. Or else he abides contemplating in the body its nature of arising, or he abides contemplating
in the body its nature of vanishing, or he abides contemplating in the body its nature of both arising
and vanishing. Or else mindfulness that ‘there is a body’ is simply established in him to the extent
necessary for bare knowledge and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything
in the world. That too is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body.
REQUIRED READING: SATIPATTHĀNA SUTTA
305
(contemplation of feeling)
32. “And how, bhikkhus, does a bhikkhu abide contemplating feelings as feelings? Here, when feeling
a pleasant feeling, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I feel a pleasant feeling’; when feeling a painful feeling,
he understands: ‘I feel a painful feeling’; when feeling a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, he understands: ‘I feel a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling.’ When feeling a worldly pleasant feeling, he
understands: ‘I feel a worldly pleasant feeling’; when feeling an unworldly pleasant feeling, he understands: ‘I feel an unworldly pleasant feeling’; when feeling a worldly painful feeling, he understands: ‘I
feel a worldly painful feeling’; when feeling an unworldly painful feeling, he understands: ‘I feel an unworldly painful feeling’; when feeling a worldly neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, he understands:
‘I feel a worldly neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling’; when feeling an unworldly neither-painful-norpleasant feeling, he understands: ‘I feel an unworldly neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling.’
(insight)
33. “In this way he abides contemplating feelings as feelings internally, or he abides contemplating
feelings as feelings externally, or he abides contemplating feelings as feelings both internally and externally. Or else he abides contemplating in feelings their nature of arising, or he abides contemplating in feelings their nature of vanishing, or he abides contemplating in feelings their nature of both
arising and vanishing. Or else mindfulness that ‘there is feeling’ is simply established in him to the
extent necessary for bare knowledge and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to
anything in the world. That is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating feelings as feelings.
(contemplation of mind)
34. “And how, bhikkhus, does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind as mind?Here a bhikkhu understands mind affected by lust as mind affected by lust, and mind unaffected by lust as mind unaffected
by lust. He understands mind affected by hate as mind affected by hate, and mind unaffected by hate
as mind unaffected by hate. He understands mind affected by delusion as mind affected by delusion,
and mind unaffected by delusion as mind unaffected by delusion. He understands contracted mind
as contracted mind, and distracted mind as distracted mind. He understands exalted mind as exalted
mind, and unexalted mind as unexalted mind. He understands surpassed mind as surpassed mind,
and unsurpassed mind as unsurpassed mind. He understands concentrated mind as concentrated
mind, and unconcentrated mind as unconcentrated mind. He understands liberated mind as liberated mind, and unliberated mind as unliberated mind.
(insight)
35. “In this way he abides contemplating mind as mind internally, or he abides contemplating mind as
mind externally, or he abides contemplating mind as mind both internally and externally. Or else he
abides contemplating in mind its nature of arising, or he abides contemplating in mind its nature of
vanishing, or he abides contemplating in mind its nature of both arising and vanishing. Or else mindfulness that ‘there is mind’ is simply established in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge
and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is how a
bhikkhu abides contemplating mind as mind.
306
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
(contemplation of mind-objects)
(1. The Five Hindrances)
36. “And how, bhikkhus, does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects? Here a
bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the five hindrances. And how
does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the five hindrances?
Here, there being sensual desire in him, a bhikkhu understands: ‘There is sensual desire in me’; or
there being no sensual desire in him, he understands: “There is no sensual desire in me’; and he also
understands how there comes to be the arising of unarisen sensual desire, and how there comes to be
the abandoning of arisen sensual desire, and how there comes to be the future non-arising of abandoned sensual desire.’
“There being ill will in him… There being sloth and torpor in him… There being restlessness and
remorse in him… There being doubt in him, a bhikkhu understands: ‘There is doubt in me’; or there
being no doubt in him, he understands: ‘There is no doubt in me’; and he understands how there
comes to be the arising of unarisen doubt, and how there comes to be the abandoning of arisen doubt,
and how there comes to be the future non-arising of abandoned doubt.
(insight)
37. “In this way he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects internally, or he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects externally, or he abides contemplating mind-objects as mindobjects both internally and externally. Or else he abides contemplating in mind-objects their nature
of arising, or he abides contemplating in mind-objects their nature of vanishing, or he abides contemplating in mind-objects their nature of both arising and vanishing. Or else mindfulness that ‘there are
mind-objects’ is simply established in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is how a bhikkhu abides
contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the five hindrances.
(2. The Five Aggregates)
38. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the
five aggregates affected by clinging. And how does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind-objects as
mind-objects in terms of the five aggregates affected by clinging? Here a bhikkhu understands: ‘Such
is material form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is perception, such its origin, such its disappearance; such are the formations, such
their origin, such their disappearance; such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance.”
39. “In this way he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects internally, externally, and both
internally and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is
how a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the five aggregates
affected by clinging.
REQUIRED READING: SATIPATTHĀNA SUTTA
307
(3. The Six Bases)
40. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the
six internal and external bases. And how does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind-objects as mindobjects in terms of the six internal and external bases? Here a bhikkhu understands the eye, he understands forms, and he understands the fetter that arises dependent on both; and he also understands
how there comes to be the arising of the unarisen fetter, and how there comes to be the abandoning
of the arisen fetter, and how there comes to be the future non-arising of the abandoned fetter.
“He understands the ear, he understands sounds… He understands the nose, he understands
odours… He understands the tongue, he understands flavours… He understands the body, he understands tangibles… He understands the mind, he understands mind-objects, and he understands the
fetter that arises dependent on both; and he also understands how there comes to be the arising of the
unarisen fetter, and how there comes to be the abandoning of the arisen fetter, and how there comes
to be the future non-arising of the abandoned fetter.
41. “In this way he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects internally, externally, and both
internally and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is
how a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the six internal and
external bases.
(4. The Seven Enlightenment Factors)
42. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the
seven enlightenment factors. And how does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind-objects as mindobjects in terms of the seven enlightenment factors? Here, there being the mindfulness enlightenment factor in him, a bhikkhu understands: ‘There is the mindfulness enlightenment factor in me’;
or there being no mindfulness enlightenment factor in him, he understands: ‘There is no mindfulness enlightenment factor in me’; and he also understands how there comes to be the arising of the
unarisen mindfulness enlightenment factor, and how the arisen mindfulness enlightenment factor
comes to fulfilment by development.
“There being the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor in him… There being the energy
enlightenment factor in him… There being the rapture enlightenment factor in him… There being
the tranquillity enlightenment factor in him… There being the concentration enlightenment factor in
him… There being the equanimity enlightenment factor in him, a bhikkhu understands: ‘There is the
equanimity enlightenment factor in me’; or there being no equanimity enlightenment factor in him,
he understands: ‘There is no equanimity enlightenment factor in me’; and he also understands how
there comes to be the arising of the unarisen equanimity enlightenment factor, and how the arisen
equanimity enlightenment factor comes to fulfilment by development.
43. “In this way he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects internally, externally, and both
internally and externally… And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is
how a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the seven enlightenment factors.
308
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
(5. The Four Noble Truths)
44. “Again, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the
Four Noble Truths. And how does a bhikkhu abide contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in
terms of the Four Noble Truths? Here a bhikkhu understands as it actually is: ‘This is suffering’; he
understands as it actually is: “This is the origin of suffering’; he understands as it actually is: ‘This is
the cessation of suffering’; he understands as it actually is: ‘This is the way leading to the cessation of
suffering.’
(insight)
45. “In this way he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects internally, or he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects externally, or he abides contemplating mind-objects as mindobjects both internally and externally. Or else he abides contemplating in mind-objects their nature
of arising, or he abides contemplating in mind-objects their nature of vanishing, or he abides contemplating in mind-objects their nature of both arising and vanishing. Or else mindfulness that ‘there are
mind-objects’ is simply established in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is how a bhikkhu abides
contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the Four Noble Truths.
(conclusion)
46. “Bhikkhus, if anyone should develop these four foundations of mindfulness in such a way for seven
years, one of two fruits could be expected for him: either final knowledge here and now, or if there is
a trace of clinging left, non-return.
“Let alone seven years, bhikkhus. If anyone should develop these four foundations of mindfulness
in such a way for six years…for five years…for four years…for three years…for two years…for one year,
one of two fruits could be expected for him: either final knowledge here and now, or if there is a trace
of clinging left, non-return.
“Let alone one year, bhikkhus. If anyone should develop these four foundations of mindfulness in
such a way for seven months…for six months…for five months…for four months…for three months…for
two months…for one month…for half a month, one of two fruits could be expected for him: either final
knowledge here and now, or if there is a trace of clinging left, non-return.
“Let alone half a month, bhikkhus. If anyone should develop these four foundations of mindfulness in such a way for seven days, one of two fruits could be expected for him: either final knowledge
here and now, or if there is a trace of clinging left, non-return.
47. “So it was with reference to this that it was said: ‘Bhikkhus, this is the direct path for the purification
of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief,
for the attainment of the true way, for the realisation of Nibbāna—namely, the four foundations of
mindfulness.’”
That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One’s
words.
9.2 Sangha: The Buddhist Community
Topic Overview
Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
describe the differences among lay men and women (upāsakas and upāsakās), monks and nuns
(bhikkhus, bhikkhunīs), forest monks and novices (sāmaneras) as it relates to their experiences
in the Buddhist religion,
describe the monastic life as described in the Vinaya and explain the relationship among the
various groups that are mentioned above, and
express your own feelings about the situation of Buddhist nuns and whether you think there is
reason to accuse certain Theravāda Buddhist doctrines, texts or communities of being misogynistic or not.
General themes/terms in the study of religion
clerics vs. laypeople
gender dynamics in religion
asceticism and religious discipline
rites of passage
The Sangha
If Buddhists idealize meditation as a way to experience the Buddha’s dhamma, they often idealize the
community of Buddhist monks, the sangha, as the human embodiments of that dhamma. As eulogized in Buddhist texts and popular discourse, the sangha are imagined as ‘sons of the Buddha,’ the
heirs to his knowledge, purity and virtue. Monks are charged with preserving the dhamma, through
studying, chanting and copying it down on palm leaf manuscripts. They are also charged with disseminating the Buddha’s teachings by preaching to the laity. In their comportment—and in their rituals
of initiation—they should appear to emulate the Buddha, acting as visible links to the manner and
appearance of the Buddha. For those in the sangha, monastic life may provide an ideal context in sangha
309
310
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
which to pursue the noble path in a much more focused, rigorous way. Most Buddhists assume that
monks are the most likely to approach (if not attain) the ultimate aim of nibbāna.
As in other religious traditions, the realities of monastic life don’t always match up with the ideals.
For every group of forest monks in northern Thailand (depicted in the film you watched for this week,
The Mindful Way), there are other groups of monks who appear much less disciplined, less scrupulous
and less austere in their behaviors. Travelers to South and Southeast Asia are often scandalized when
they see monks smoking or talking to women. It’s important to bear in mind that monks are, like the
rest of us, fallible human beings and those who enter robes aren’t always able to live up to the full set
of standards set out by the Pāli code of monastic discipline, the Vinaya. But, for that matter, neither
are all priests, imams and rabbis.
In many parts of the Theravāda world, Buddhist monks and laity (non-monks) live together in
an important relationship characterized by mutual dependence and service. Buddhist monks teach
dhamma to the laity, they help the laity generate merit and minister at important ritual events such
as funerals and the building of new homes. Buddhist laymen and women give food to the monks
and provide for their material existence. Remember: monks are, by definition, not self-sufficient they
dependent upon others for food, clothing and shelter. As they’re celibate, they also depend on nonbhikkhu monks for the perpetuation of the monastic community. The word bhikkhu means literally a beggar.
They are religious beggars, similar to the other religious mendicants living in ancient India in the late
Vedic period. Lay Buddhists are called upāsakas (for men) and upāsakās (for women) which literally
means ‘ones who serve.’ Serve whom? The monks yo!! So essential is the relationship between laity
and monks that the sometimes the term sangha (which literally means a group) is extended to encompass the entire ‘Fourfold community’ of monks (bhikkhu-s), nuns (bhikkhunī-s), laymen (upāsaka-s)
and laywomen (upāsakā-s). This reciprocity between monks and laity is a key feature of Theravāda
Buddhism and we will explore it in the following lectures too. However, this week I want to focus
more closely on the rules and rituals associated with monastic life.
The Development of the Sangha: bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs
If one looks at stories of the Buddha’s life in the Pāli canon, one sees a common motif: the Buddha
arrives somewhere new, he preaches, and he illuminates the dhamma to his audience (often setting
them on a path to nibbāna). Most of the audience then chooses to become a follower of the great man.
In these conversion stories, followers join the Buddha’s merry crew in one of two ways. Many choose to
become monastics along with the Buddha, dressing in robes, shaving their heads and obeying a strict
code of conduct, hoping that they too will become fully awakened. The term used to describe these
early monks and nuns—yes, there were women too (see below)—are bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs, terms
that are still used today and which literally mean (male and female) beggars. As I said, those who do
not take up robes become financial backers of the Buddha, giving the Buddha and his group of monks
food, shelter and supplies to sustain them. In fact, the first two official converts to the Buddha’s path
were two merchants whom the Buddha met, post-Bodhi-tree experience, on the way to Sarnath—
where, as you know, he delivered the DCP Sutta to his old ascetic pals. And, so the story goes, the
five ascetics who heard the DCP Sutta at Sarnath became the first bhikkhus, while the two merchants
became the first two upāsakas.
THE SANGHA
311
As indicated above, the Pāli Canon includes stories of women joining Team Buddha (it would be a
bit premature to imagine full-blown Buddhism during the early lifetime of the Buddha). There are stories of women who join up as lay followers.1 There are also stories about women joining as bhikkhunīs,
although these stories seem a bit sexist when one reads them today: as seen in the Berkwitz reading,
the Buddha admits the first bhikkhunīs only reluctantly after his disciple Ananda implores him. Forget the fact that Ananda was making the request on behalf of Buddha’s aunt, who had raised him from
a boy! Having joined up with the sangha, bhikkhunīs were still required to follow eight extra “heavy”
monastic rules, the consequences of which one Buddhist scholar summarizes as follows:
Any nun, even of great seniority, must always honour, rise for, and bow to each and every
monk, even if newly ordained. The nuns must spend the rainy season retreat in a location where they can be supervised by monks. Monks were to determine the dates for
the twice-monthly confessional meetings of the order. Monks would participate in the
interrogation of nuns who were accused of breaking rules, but the reverse did not apply.
Monks would also help to determine a nun’s penalty for infractions, but the reverse did
not apply. Monks must participate in the nun’s ordination, but the reverse did not apply.
Nuns could not, under any circumstances, reprimand or criticize a monk. Finally, nuns
were not allowed to officially admonish monks, though monks could admonish women.2
Clearly the burden on nuns remained greater than the burden on monks. Despite this, there is evidence that a community of Buddhist nuns persisted in Sri Lanka into the early first millennium. After
this, there is little direct evidence, although stories of female Buddhist virtuoso do appear in vernacular literature and folk stories.
One can see female Buddhist renunciants today throughout the Theravāda world. They shave
their heads, observe ten core precepts (as opposed to the five of a lay woman) and even wear the
robes of a monk (only in white rather than the traditional saffron color). Because there is no modern
lineage of bhikkhunī ordination which is universally considered as valid (see next paragraph), these
female renunciants go by the names of ‘precept mothers’ (dasa sil matavo in Sri Lanka, mae chii in
Thailand, or thila shin in Myanmar). In some cases they live in or near monasteries and participate in
monastic practices, including going on alms rounds (which you saw in the film).
In the last two decades, there have been a number of attempts to revive the bhikkhunī order in
the Theravāda world.3 The ‘technical’ problem faced by such attempts is that according to the Pāli
Canon, a full monastic ordination ritual requires the presence of five validly ordained monks and, in
the case of the nuns’ ordination, five properly ordained nuns.4 It seems trivial, but the presence of
these properly ordained monastics is thought to preserve the felt continuity between the Buddha and
the contemporary sangha. Because there are no group of bhikkhunīs that are accepted as properly
ordained by all monks in the Theravāda world, there can be no proper ordination ceremony to make
such an order! This said, since the 1990s there have been attempts to resurrect the bhikkhunī order
1The earliest lay follower of the Buddha is, interestingly, Sujata. You know Sujata? Come on! Think about it… She’s the
one that offered milk rice to the Buddha just before the big awakening event.
2Rita M. Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993), 36.
3On this generally, see http://www.bhikkhuni.net/
4http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2013/09/Analayo-Legality-final.pdf
312
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
by including nuns from East Asian Buddhist traditions, where the nun-ordination tradition has continued to exist. Since 1998, joint Theravāda-Mahāyāna nun-ordination ceremonies have been taking
place in Sri Lanka; and today there seems to be some momentum towards a bhikkhunī renaissance.5
It is a great regret that I cannot spend more time here looking at the question of bhikkhunīs in
contemporary Theravāda Buddhism. A whole paper could be taught on the debates over the bhikkhunī
revival and/or the status of women in Buddhist thought. These topics are covered in some more details
on other Religion Programme papers. If you’re interested please come and see us about further reading
and coursework.
Living as a Monk or Nun: then and now
Living like a Buddhist monk or nun is the exact opposite of life as a university student. Hopefully the
film for this week gave you some sense of that. As you’ll see in your reading and viewing, monastic
life is highly ordered and rule governed. It is designed to shape one’s body and behavior in particular
kusala ways—ways that will expedite the path towards nibbāna. To this extent, one could look at
Buddhist monks as similar to hyper-religious laypersons. They study more dhamma, they live more
simply, they dress like the Buddha. Buddhist lay people are supposed to observe five basic precepts:
Not to destroy living creatures
Not to take what is not given
Not to engage in illicit sexual activity (generally interpreted as adultery)
Not to engage in false or misleading speech
Not to take drugs or drinks which lead to carelessness (not interpreted as abstinence)
Monks also observe these five precepts, but add to them five more (for a total of ten)
Not to eat at a forbidden time (i.e., after 12pm)
Not to dance, sing or go to entertainment shows
Not to wear garlands, perfumes or cosmetics
Not to use a high or luxurious bed
Not accept gold or silver.
These ten precepts form the baseline rules for monastic life. Anyone who wears monastic robes must
obey them.
Ordination
There are two levels of monkhood in Theravāda Buddhism, a junior level and a senior level.6 The junior
level monks are called sāmaṇeras (literally, little śramaṇas). They consist of monks below the age of
20, but above the age of 7 or 8. (Pāli texts mandate that potential sāmaṇeras must be old enough to
‘scare away crows.’) Strictly speaking, sāmaṇeras are not seen as full-fledged monks. That is, Buddhist
monks and nuns are careful not to call them bhikkhus, a term reserved for the second level. Sāmaṇeras
pabbajjā join the order by undergoing a ceremony called pabbajjā or ‘going forth’ (the term refers to the act of
ascetics going forth from home into homelessness). The ceremony takes different forms in different
sāmaṇera
5Susanne Mrozik, “A Robed Revolution: The Contemporary Buddhist Nun’s (Bhikṣuṇī) Movement,” Religion Compass
3, no. 3 (2009): 360–378; Nirmala S. Salgado, Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renunciant (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Tessa Bartholomeusz, Women under the Bo Tree (Cambridge: Cambridge University
THE SANGHA
313
countries, and some are more elaborate than others. The core of the ceremony involves shaving the
boy’s head, dressing him in robes, taking the ten precepts and soliciting the formal acceptance of a
senior monk who agrees to act as the boy’s mentor or ‘preceptor’. On Blackboard we’ve included a
short video of pabbajjā ceremony in Sri Lanka. Have a look.
Lower ordination, as pabbajjā ceremonies are frequently called, is seen as a long-term commitment in Sri Lanka, and there are a variety of reasons why families would choose to ‘give’ their boys
to the monastery. Parents, particularly rural parents, might see Buddhist temples as places which
would give their children a more stable life, better education, regular nourishment, a caring mentor,
not to mention the advantages of generating merit for the boy and the parents (see next unit).7 In
other countries, such as Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a great number (perhaps even a majority) of
Buddhist boys will undergo ordination ceremonies at least once in their lifetime. This is because the
practice of ‘temporary ordination’ is common: boys will ordain temporarily, usually a period of three
months, in order to bring them closer to Buddhism as well as generate merit for their families.
The serious business is higher ordination, known as upasampadā (‘acceptance’). One must be
20 years old to undergo this ceremony and the ritual is somewhat more involved. The essence of
the ceremony involves the sangha formally accepting the man or women into the order. A greater
quorum of monks is needed (as mentioned above), the prospective bhikkhu/unī is asked a number of
questions about his/her preparedness, health, financial history, even about his/her human-ness (as
seen in Strong). One summary list looks this this:
Have you diseases like this: leprosy, boils, eczema, consumption, epilepsy? Are you a
human being? Are you a man? Are you a freeman? Are you without debts? Are you not
in the royal service? Have you your parents’ consent? Are you full twenty years of age?
Are you complete as to bowl and robes? What is your name? What is the name of your
preceptor?
We will talk about why these questions might be significant in class. However, assuming the monks
answers correctly, the preceptor running the ceremony will then ask the larger community of monks
if they accept the new member. Consent is signified by remaining silent. A senior monk will then say:
“So and so is being ordained by the Order by means of the preceptor so and so. It is pleasing to the
Order, therefore it is silent. Thus do I understand this.”8 The date and time of the declaration will then
be recorded.
Bhikkhu, Vinaya, Patimokkha
In the process of becoming a monk, a person undergoes a significant rite of passage, a ceremony in
which they are ritually transformed from one thing into another and from one identity into another.
Through rites of passage, people ceremonially leave one state (laity, youth, non-salvation) and enter
another (monkhood, adulthood, salvation). These sorts of ceremonies are very common in religions
Press, 1994); Alice Collett, ed., Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
6I will default to the masculine pronoun in this section for the sake of simplicity.
7Jeffrey Samuels, Attracting the Heart: Social Relations and the Aesthetics of Emotion in Sri Lankan Monastic Culture
(Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010).
8Mahāvagga I. 76 trans. I. B. Horner, The Book of the Discipline (Vinaya-Piṭaka), 6 vols. (London: Pali Text Society, 1982),
IV: 120–2.
314
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
around the world (think of Christenings, bar mitzvahs or, if you like, 21st birthday parties). Ordination
ceremonies are rites of passage in this way. During novice ordination, the initiate first renounces his
previous identities: he shaves his hair (a very potent symbol), casts off his normal clothes, leaves his
home and gives up his family name. The initiate then takes on a new identity as a monk: he wears
orange robes, settles in the monastery and is given a new, Buddhist religious name. At this point he
officially becomes a ‘son of the Buddha’. The monk is said to be ‘born of dhamma’, that is, born a second
time of the Buddha’s teaching. His possessions are now limited to the ‘four requisites’: food, clothing,
lodging and medicine, later spelt out as eight objects: three robes, an alms-bowl, a razor, a needle, a
belt and a water-strainer.
When a novice becomes a fully ordained bhikkhu, another slightly less dramatic rite of passage
occurs. The key difference is that, as bhikkhus, they must formally accept an even more strict regimen of rules. Those who take the higher ordination and become full members of the Sangha, are
subject to the full discipline of the Vinaya. This means following not just the ten basic precepts of
monastic life, but 227 rules (311 for nuns) as listed in the Theravāda Vinaya code. (There are other nonTheravāda Vinaya codes with slightly different numbers of rules—thus the potential problem about
non-Theravāda bhikkhunīs ordaining Theravāda nuns). The rules list different types of offences, of
varying degrees of seriousness, four being so serious that by committing them a monk ought to be
removed from the saṅgha. Note that the language suggests that he is not removed by others, but removes himself by demonstrating that he is not strong enough to be able to keep the precepts. These
four grave offenses are sexual intercourse, taking something not given (of more than trivial value),
killing or causing to kill (e.g. by inciting to suicide) or falsely claiming to have attained miraculous
powers (possibly as a way of attracting donations). For nuns there are eight of these rules, two of the
extra four being concerned with sexual offences, and the other two with offences which, while not
themselves involving sex, are explained in the canon as arising from sexual misconduct.
Thirteen other offences (17 or 19 for nuns) are serious enough that a monk may be suspended for
a certain period of time from membership of the saṅgha, still others require only confession—not
in order to receive forgiveness (there is no-one to do this)—but merely to make him mindful, and
thereby less likely to offend again. Through these sanctions the good reputation of the saṅgha, and
ultimately the good reputation of the Buddha’s teaching, is preserved.
Then come other offences we might describe as un-monkish behavior. These relate to the use,
acquisition and repair of monks’ robes and other possessions, the proper ways to speak and the appropriate ways and things one may eat. Least serious are the 75 offences against decorum—things that
might not be especially wrong in themselves, but which might bring the order into disrepute among
the laity. They concern etiquette in regard to dressing, begging, eating and teaching. There are also
some rules about resolving disputes in the order. Looking at the full list of monastic rules is surprisingly fascinating. Fortunately for you, they are all available online now (http://www.accesstoinsight.
org/tipitaka/vin/sv/bhikkhu-pati.html). Looking at these, you get a real sense for what it must have
been like to live in ancient India as a monk: you had real concerns about rubbish disposal, you hoped
like crazy that lay donors would give you bean curry, and you vexed somewhat over the whole naked
ascetic thing.
So how do monks and nuns negotiate this complex life with all these rules? Certain key institutions help. Fortnightly, on lunar quarters, all the monastics in a given temple will gather to recite
THE SANGHA
315
together the Patimokkha, or the verse list of the 227 (or 331) rules. In some cases, guilty monks will confess their violation of some of these offenses. Of course, voluntary confessions aren’t always forthcoming. So the Vinaya also lists all kinds of other ‘legal’ procedures for resolving disputes and determining
culpability. In contemporary sanghas, one often finds a dedicated sangha court or disciplinary tribunal staffed by senior monks and tasked with the administration and enforcement of monastic law.
Monasteries, Temples and ‘Forest Monks’
Most bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs live in temple-monasteries complexes called vihāra, literally dwellings.
The monastery-temple complexes can be large, lavish compounds housing hundreds of monks, but
they can also be small village temples where the monks sleep in main hall. A typical medium-size
vihāra in Buddhist southern Asia will have the following things:
1. sleeping quarters for the monks
2. a main assembly hall, usually at the center of the compound, containing a Buddha image (this
is the ‘temple’ that people go to)
3. one or more stūpa (round, peaked domes thought to contain a relic of the Buddha [see units
below])
4. a Bodhi tree (variety of ficus, similar to that under which the Buddha was thought to have awakened)
5. a special hall where monks chant the Patimokkha and engage in other rituals.
Larger vihāras will have much more: libraries, museums, even canteens for visitors. Small vihāras
tend to be close to local towns and villages and tend to serve local communities. Larger vihāras tend
to be seen as ‘national’ centers. One key difference with, e.g., Protestant Christian churches is that
Buddhists are less inclined think of a vihāra as the centerpoint of a stable congregation, and more
as a holy center that anyone may visit. Local Buddhists may attend the same temple and have close
personal links with the monks there, but the idea that vihāra would have a single set of parishioners
is not common outside of rural areas. (In rural areas, the vihāra-monk-laity constellation remains
relatively stable, less by design than be default: there’s nowhere else to go.)
Since the earliest periods of Buddhism, there have also been monks who live away from the vihāra
in very rustic isolated residences (in caves, or huts in the jungle). Sometimes they live alone, sometimes with others. The monastic community portrayed in the film The Mindful Way started like this.
Buddhists tend to think of these monks, called forest monks, as particularly advanced in their spiri- forest monks
tual practice. However, the forest monk tradition hasn’t always been encouraged for two reasons: (1)
forest monks are less able to help the laity and (2) accomplished forest monks, who gain a reputation,
may pose a threat to (in some cases directly challenge) the established, settled sangha authorities.
For example, Achan Chah, the elder monk in the film was sometimes seen as a threat to the towndwelling sangha in Thailand because he gathered so much notoriety and support—another reason
why the depiction of sangha life in the film is more disciplined and austere than is normal.9
9On Forest Monks see: Michael Carrithers, The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983); Kamala
Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth Century Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,
1997); James L. Taylor, Forest Monks and Nation‑State: An Anthropological and Historical Study in Northeastern Thailand (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993).
316
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
Key Terms for Units 9.2
sangha; Bhikkhu; bhikkhunī; upāsaka; upāsakā; Vinaya; sāmaṇera; upasampadā; Patimokkha; vihāra;
forest monks
Recommended reading
Bartholomeusz, Tessa. Women under the Bo Tree. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Mrozik, Susanne. ““We Love Our Nuns”: Affective Dimensions of the Sri Lankan Bhikkhunī Revival.”
Journal of Buddhist Ethics 21 (2014): 57–95.
Schopen, Gregory. Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy,
and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997.
Wijayaratna, Mohan. Buddhist Monastic Life: According to the Texts of the Theravāda Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Wilson, Liz. “Buddhism and Gender.” In Buddhism in the Modern World, edited by David L. McMahan,
257–72. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Required Viewing
David M. Thompson and Michael Flynn, The Mindful Way, 1978, 20 minutes.
Required reading
John Strong, “The Experience of the Sangha,” in The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and Interpretations (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995), 60–75.
Rites of Passage
The word sangha, as we have seen, means, in its broadest sense, a community that includes monks,
nuns, laymen, and laywomen. The word is most commonly used, however, to refer simply to the
monastic community, especially the community of monks. At first, becoming a monk in India seems
to have been a relatively simple affair; monks were ”chosen” by the Buddha, who simply said to them,
”Come, monk,” in somewhat the same way, perhaps, that Jesus ”made” his disciples by saying, ”Follow
me.” In time, however, ordination rituals became more complex; the distinctions between monks and
laypersons hardened, rules and regulations and rituals were worked out, and within the sangha itself
hierarchical distinctions developed.
REQUIRED READING: STRONG
317
Passage Denied: The Nāga Who Tried to Become a Monk
As the tradition evolved, a number of prerequisites for ordination were established. Buddhists seeking
to enter the sangha needed to be of a certain age; to have the permission of their parents; to be free
from certain diseases and physical deficiencies; not to be debtors, runaway slaves, or army deserters;
and not to have committed certain heinous crimes. They also needed to have sponsors within the
monastic community who would agree to act as their preceptor (upādhyāya) and teacher (ācārya).
All of these criteria are readily understandable as measures meant to ensure the good reputation of
the community. According to the Vinaya, however, there was one other, perhaps more perplexing,
criterion: candidates for ordination had to be humans.
In ancient India, where belief in the ability of deities, dead spirits, and supernatural beings of
various sorts to take on human form was widespread, this rule made good sense, and to this day, in
South and Southeast Asia, candidates are routinely asked, as part of the ritual preliminaries for higher
ordination, the intriguing question “Are you a human being?” In the following story, the legendary
reason for that question is set out: it is the tale of a nāga (snake divinity) who managed to join the
monastic order and live as a monk until it was discovered that he was not a human being. He was
then expelled from the community. Ironically and interestingly, in commemoration of this snake’s
intense desire to become a monk, and perhaps also to symbolize their liminal status, candidates for
ordination are still today referred to as nāgas.
At that time, there was a naga who was distressed that he had been born as a naga; he was
ashamed of his state and loathed it. He reflected, “How can I quickly free myself from being
a naga and regain human status?” And it occurred to him: “Truly these renunciants, these
followers of the Buddha, practitioners of the Dharma, lead peaceful, chaste lives. They speak
the truth and practice morality and virtue. If I were to be initiated into their community,
surely I would quickly free myself from being a naga and regain human status.”
Then that naga, taking on the form of a young brahmin went to the monks and requested
initiation. The monks initiated him and granted him full ordination, and he came to live
together with another monk in a cell at the edge of the monastery.
Then one day, that other monk got up at night, toward dawn, and stepped outside to
practice walking meditation. The nāga, feeling certain that his cellmate had gone off, fell
asleep, and in his sleep he took on his natural form. His snake’s body filled the whole room,
and his coils came out through the windows. Then, his roommate, thinking he would go
back inside the cell, opened the door and saw the whole room filled with snake.… Terrified
at the sight, he screamed.
The other monks came running and said: “Brother, why did you cry out?”
“This whole room is filled with a snake whose coils are coming out the windows!”
Then, because of the noise, the naga woke up, resumed his human form, and sat down
on his own seat.
The monks said to him: “Brother, who are you?” ”Reverend sirs, I am a nāga.”
“But why, brother, have you acted in this manner?”
Then the nāga related the whole matter to the monks, and the monks told it to the
Buddha. The Buddha, with reference to this case, convened the community of monks and
318
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
said this to the nāga: “You nāgas cannot advance in the practice of the Dharma and the
Vinaya; but go and observe the uposatha twice each fortnight, and in this way you will
quickly be freed from being a nāga and will regain human status.”
Then the nāga thought, “Apparently I cannot advance in the practice of the Dharma and
the discipline.” Saddened, anguished, and sobbing, he cried out and went away.
The Blessed One spoke to the monks: “Monks, there are two conditions in which the true
nature of a nāga becomes manifest: when he indulges in sexual intercourse with a female
of his kind and when he falls asleep feeling certain he is safe.… Monks, an animal who is
not ordained should not be ordained, and one who is ordained by mistake should be expelled
from the community.”
Source: Translated from The Vinaya Piṭakam, ed. Hermann Oldenberg (London: Williams and Norgate, 1879),
1:86–7.
Passage Achieved: Joining the Order
Assuming that one is not a nāga and that one has met the other criteria for wandering forth, there
are several ritual stages in the process of becoming a fully ordained monk. First, of course, one has to
be a Buddhist layperson (upāsaka). This can be accomplished by the simple rite of pronouncing the
threefold refuge formula and vowing to uphold the five precepts.
A more decisive step is the initiation rite called wandering forth (pravrajyā), by which one is accepted into the order as a novice (śrāmaṇera). This rite involves acquiring the robes and bowl of a
monk and taking upon oneself five additional precepts, for a total of ten. The next step, for which
one has to be at least twenty years old, involves higher ordination (upasampadā). By this ritual one
becomes a full mendicant (bhikṣu), and one commits oneself to observing over two hundred precepts, which are codified in a listing called the Prātimokṣa. The date of one’s ordination thereafter
determines one’s seniority within the sangha, but here again there are distinct stages. The most noteworthy of these, occurring ten years after one’s ordination, is when one becomes an elder (sthavira),
a status that allows one, in turn, to become a preceptor to younger monks.
The rules and ritual formulas for all of these stages are set forth in the Buddhist disciplinary code
(Vinaya) and in various ordination manuals that are commonly used to this day. A more concise
account, however, can be found in the following description of Indian ordination practices by the
Chinese monk l-ching, who spent twenty-four years traveling and living in India and Southeast Asia
in the seventh century CE.
In India, the rules concerning the wandering forth of monks into the homeless life are spelled
out in detail. I shall only briefly point out some of them here. All those whose faith has been
awakened and who wish to be initiated into the Buddhist order approach a preceptor of their
own choosing and tell him of their intention. The preceptor, by use of good means, finds out
whether they have any impediment that would disqualify them from the monkhood, such as
a record of patricide, matricide, or the like. If he discovers no such disqualification, he agrees
to their request and accepts them. After accepting a candidate, the preceptor tells him to
wait until ten days or a month have passed and then confers on him the five precepts.
REQUIRED READING: STRONG
319
The candidate is now called an upāsaka.… This marks his entry into the basic teaching of
the Buddha. Then the preceptor prepares for the candidate a set of robes, a begging bowl,
and a cloth for filtering water, and communicates to the community of monks the candidate’s
desire to wander forth. With the sangha’s consent, he then requests the candidate’s teacher
(ācārya) to conduct the ceremony.
The candidate is taken to a place apart, where his hair and beard are shaved off by a
barber and where he is instructed to take a cold or a warm bath, depending on the season.
His preceptor then dresses him in his underrobe and, by the use of good means, verifies
whether he is a eunuch or has some other physical disqualification. He is then given his
upper garment, which he accepts, touching it reverently with his head. Once he is dressed in
his monastic robes, he is presented with his bowl and is now called “one who has wandered
forth.” Then, in the presence of his preceptor, the acarya confers on him the ten precepts,
either by reciting or by reading them. After he has been instructed in the precepts, he is
called a novice (śramaṇera). […]
Once a novice wishing to receive full ordination has become familiar with the religious
rituals and has reached the requisite age of twenty, his preceptor, having seen his intention
and resolve, prepares for him the six requisites of a monk [three robes, a bowl, a mat,
and a water strainer] and asks at least nine other monks to take part in the ceremony.
The ordination may be held on a small platform, in a larger demarcated area, or within a
naturally bounded area. In the ritual area, the mats belonging to the community may be
used, or people may bring their own seats. No cost is spared in preparing incense and flowers.
Then the novice is instructed to pay respect three times to each of the monks present.…
The preceptor hands him his bowl, and he takes it and shows it to all the assembled
monks. If it is a suitable bowl, they give it their approval.… Thereupon, the candidate is to
accept his bowl according to the Dharma. Then the acarya who is conducting the ceremony
reads or recites … the precepts of the Pratimoksa. When the candidate has received these, he
is called “one who is ordained.”… As soon as the ritual is finished, a measure should quickly
be taken of the shadow of the sun [in order to determine the exact time of ordination], and
it should be written down…
Source: Translated from I-ching, Nan hai chi kuei nei fa chuan (Taishō shin-shū daizōkyō, ed. J. Takakusu and K.
Watanabe [Tokyo, 1924–29], no. 2125, 54:219a-c).
The Regulation of the Sangha
From the time of its first establishment by the Buddha, the community of monks and nuns in India was
ordered by rules and regulations. These are said to have grown in number over the years, as the Buddha
himself promulgated new rules for dealing with various situations as the need arose. Eventually, these
rules came to be recorded in the Vinaya and codified in the list known as the Prātimokṣa. In the
Theravada tradition (the number of rules varies from one Buddhist sect to another), this list comprises
227 rules for fully ordained monks and 311 rules for fully ordained nuns.
The Prātimokṣa rules are supposed to govern monastic life. They prescribe not only general principles of ethical conduct but also specific modes of behavior with regard to dress, eating, sleeping,
320
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
cleanliness, and so on. Thus, alongside rules against murder and other felonious crimes, we find regulations governing what kind of robes, bowls, seats, beds, and lodgings are acceptable; restrictions on
dealing with members of the opposite sex or with the laity; and injunctions against bad table manners,
bad bathroom behavior, and bad study habits.
The rules of the Prātimokṣa (or Pāṭimokkha, as in the Pali text below) are arranged in different
categories, according to the type of punishment that their violation entails. At the top of the list are
those offenses that may result in expulsion from the community. These are followed by violations
requiring judgment by a formal meeting of the sangha, which can then decide to put the guilty party on
probation or suspend some of their privileges. Next are offenses concerning disallowed possessions,
which may require forfeiture of the article in question; offenses requiring confession only; and finally,
minor offenses deemed to be simply breaches of polite, proper behavior.
The entirety of the Prātimokṣa, category by category, was intended to be recited twice a month at
ceremonies that fully ordained members of the sangha were required to attend and where they were
expected to confess any infractions. It is not possible to give all of the rules here, so the following
selection will limit itself to the ritual prelude to the recitation of the list and to the rules figuring in
the first of the categories mentioned above, those involving expulsion. For monks there were four of
these, for nuns, eight. (These eight should not to be confused with the eight cardinal rules imposed
on nuns.)
[A.] Honorable sirs, may the sangha listen to me. Today is an Uposatha day, falling on the
fifteenth day of the fortnight. If it suits the sangha, let the Uposatha ceremony be carried
out and the Pāṭimokkha recited. Before we begin, let the Venerable Ones communicate the
declarations of purity [made by any sick monks who are absent].
I will now recite the Pāṭimokkha. Everyone should listen to it and pay close attention.
Anyone who has committed an infraction of the rules should disclose it. Those who are
without infractions should remain silent. I will recognize your purity, Venerable Ones, by
your silence. When the question is put to the assembly three times, you should divulge any
infraction as though you were being interrogated personally. A monk who remembers an
infraction but does not disclose it, after the question has been put three times, is guilty of
a deliberate lie. And, Venerable Ones, deliberate lying has been declared by the Blessed
One to be an impediment to progress on the path. Therefore, a monk who remembers an
infraction and is desirous of purification should disclose it. Disclosing it will be beneficial to
him.
These are the four cases involving expulsion:
1. A monk who has undertaken to live his life according to the moral precepts of monks
and who has not renounced those moral precepts, or formally announced his inability
to follow them, if he indulges in sexual intercourse with another human being, or with
an animal, he is expelled and no longer allowed to be a part of the community.
2. A monk who stealthily takes something that was not given to him, in a village or in the
forest—if his theft was such that it would merit his being arrested by the king as a thief
and executed, jailed, or exiled, and his being told, “You are a thief, a fool, an aberrant,
a sneak!”—he is expelled and no longer allowed to be a part of the community.
REQUIRED READING: STRONG
321
3. A monk who intentionally takes the life of another human being, who finds a weapon
for someone else and extols the beauty of death, or who incites them to kill themselves
by planting thoughts in their minds with words such as these: “Ho, friend, of what use
to you is this life of suffering and sin? You would be better off dead!”—such a monk
is expelled and no longer allowed to be a part of the community.
4. A monk who lets it be known that he has superhuman attainments, though he has
none, or that he has knowledge and insight like those of enlightened persons and
who says, “I know this, I see that,”— unless he was mistakenly overestimating his
achievements—such a monk is expelled and no longer allowed to be a part of the
community, even if later on,… wishing to purify himself, he should admit that he was
lying, engaging in vain and idle talk, claiming to know when he did not know, claiming
to see when he did not see.
Venerable Ones, the four cases involving expulsion have been recited. Any monk who admits
to any one of these can no longer reside with the monks.…
Venerable Ones, I ask you: “Are you completely pure on these points?”
A second time, I ask you: “Are you completely pure on these points?” A third time, I
ask you: “Are you completely pure on these points?” The Venerable Ones are completely
pure on these points, and therefore they are silent. Of this, I am taking note.
[B.] [When the Patimokkha is recited in the community of nuns, the following extra cases liable to
punishment by expulsion are added to the four that apply to monks. These are part of the numerous
additional rules imposed on nuns]:
5. A nun who, moved by desire, touches, strokes, takes hold of, or presses up against
a man,… anywhere between his neck and his knees,— she is expelled and no longer
allowed to be a part of the community.
6. A nun who knows that another nun is guilty of an infraction meriting expulsion but
who does not reprimand her personally or communicate that fact to others, or does so
only after the nun in question has died or been ejected or left—… she is expelled and
no longer allowed to be a part of the community.
7. A nun who continues to be a follower of a monk who has had some of his privileges
suspended by the community, who does not regret his infractions, and who is disrespectful and unfriendly towards the Master’s teaching,… she should be told by the other
nuns, “Sister, this monk has had some of his privileges suspended by the sangha, …
do not follow him.” And if after being so warned, she continues to be associated with
that monk, the other nuns should further urge her, up to three times, to renounce her
ways. If she relents by the third reprimand, that is fine, but if she does not relent, she
is expelled and no longer allowed to be a part of the community.
8. A nun who, moved by desire, agrees to take the hand of a man, who is similarly so
moved or who agrees to hold the corner of his robe, to stand together with him, to
converse with him, to go to meet him at an appointed place, to have him come to her,
to wait for him in a secluded spot, or to dispose her body for the purpose of indulging
in non-Dharmic behavior—she is expelled and no longer allowed to be a part of the
community.
322
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
Sources: [A.] Translated from The Pāṭimokkha—227 Fundamental Rules of Bhikkhus, ed. Ñāṇamoli Thera (Bangkok:
Social Science Association Press of Thailand, 1966), pp. 19, 21. [B.] Translated from The Vinaya piṭakaṃ, ed. Hermann Oldenberg (London: Williams and Norgate, 1879), 4:213–21.
The Ongoing Interpretation of the Rules
In the Prātimokṣa, we can find certain specifications of some of the particular circumstances in which
the monastic rules are to be applied. As time went on, however, new situations arose requiring new
refinements of the rules and new applications of them. For example, as various forms of currency developed, questions arose about the rule forbidding the acceptance of “gold and silver”—something requiring confession and forfeiture. Should it be applied to copper coins? to paper money? to checks? to
credit cards? Alternatively, should the rule (requiring confession) against the consumption of alcohol
or fermented liquor be extended to addictive substances such coffee, tea, or tobacco? to mind-altering
substances such as marijuana, cocaine, LSD? to painkillers such as morphine? Some of the principles
governing such cases are contained already in the Book of the Discipline, but in time Vinaya experts
were to develop commentaries and sub-commentaries trying to make things as clear as possible. This,
in fact, is a process that still goes on today as new questions arise. An example of a recent attempt to
spell out the applications of the Theravada rules for monks on the basis of the texts and commentaries is a work by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, from which the following discussion of the rule against killing
animals is taken.
[Rule:] Should any bhikkhu knowingly deprive an animal of life, it is to be confessed.
There are five factors for the full offense here.
1. Object: a living animal.
2. Perception: One perceives it to be a living animal.
3. Intention: One knowingly, consciously, deliberately, and purposefully wants to cause
its death.
4. Effort: whatever one does with the purpose of causing it to die.
5. Result: It dies as a result of one’s action.
Object. Animal here covers all common animals. As the Commentary notes, whether
the animal is large or small makes no difference in terms of the penalty, although the size of
the animal is one of the factors determining the moral gravity of the act.
Apparently, this factor does not include beings too small to be seen with the naked eye,
inasmuch as the classes of medicine allowed in Mahavagga VI include a number of antibacterial and anti-viral substances—some mineral salts and the decoctions made from the
leaves of some trees, for example, can be antibiotic. The Commentary’s example of the
smallest extreme to which this rule extends is a bed bug egg. The four “Things Not to Be
Done,” taught to every bhikkhu immediately after his ordination (Mahavagga 1.78.4), say
that one should not deprive an animal of life, “even if it is only an ant.”
On the other end of the spectrum, there is a parajika [offense entailing expulsion] for
deliberately killing a human being, and a thullaccaya [grave offense] for deliberately killing a
peta [hungry ghost], yakkha [demon], or nāga.
REQUIRED READING: STRONG
323
Perception. If this factor is not fulfilled, there is no offense. For example, if one steps
on bed bug eggs, thinking them to be spots of dirt, there is no penalty.
Intention, in the Vibhanga, is described as “having made the decision knowingly, consciously, and purposefully.” According to the Commentary, “having made the decision” refers
to the moment when one ”crushes” one’s indecisiveness by taking an act. Knowingly means
that one knows that “This is a living being.” Consciously means that one is aware that one’s
action is depriving the animal of life. Purposefully means that one’s purpose in acting is to
kill the animal.
All of this indicates that this factor is fulfilled only when one acts on a clear and consciously made decision to deprive the animal of life. Thus, for example, if one is sweeping
a walk, trying carefully not to kill any insects, and yet some ants happen to die, one does
not commit an offense even if one knew that there was the possibility that some might die,
since one’s purpose in acting was not to cause their death.
Effort. The act of taking life may take the form of any of the six types of action listed
under Parajika 3:
using one’s own person (e.g., hitting with the hand, kicking, using a knife or a club);
throwing (hurling a stone, shooting an arrow or a gun);
using a stationary device (setting a trap, placing poison in food);
using magical formulae;
using psychic powers;
commanding.
A passage in the Mahavagga (V.10.10) deals with a case of this last instance, in which a
depraved bhikkhu tells a layman that he has use for a certain calf’s hide, and the layman
kills the calf for him. Since the bhikkhu did not give a specific command that the calf be
killed, and yet the Buddha said that this action did come under this rule, this shows that
there is no room for kappiyavohara [allowable practice] in this context. Whatever one says
in hopes of inciting someone else to kill an animal would fulfill this factor.
Result. Only if the animal dies does one incur the pacittiya [offense to be confessed]
here. The Commentary to Pacittiya 74 imposes a dukkata [offense] on the simple act of
striking an animal.
Non-offenses. There is no offense in killing an animal
unintentionally—e.g., accidentally dropping a load that crushes a cat to death;
unthinkingly—e.g., absent-mindedly rubbing one’s arm while it is being bitten
by mosquitoes;
unknowingly—e.g., walking into a dark room and, without realizing it, stepping
on an insect; or
when one’s action is motivated by a purpose other than that of causing death—
e.g., giving medicine to a sick dog whose system, it turns out, cannot withstand
the dosage.
Still, the Commentary states that if one notices even bed bug eggs while cleaning a bed, one
should be careful not to damage them. Thus, “out of compassion, one’s duties are to be
done carefully.” Or, in the words of the Subcommentary: “One’s duties in looking after one’s
324
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
dwelling are to be done with mindfulness well-established so that such creatures do not die.”
Source: Reprinted by permission of the author from Thanissaro Bhikkhu [Geoffrey DeGraff], The Buddhist
Monastic Code (Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 1994), pp. 420–22.
Rules and Right Attitudes
The recitation of the Prātimokṣa was primarily aimed at ensuring the purity and unity of a local community, that is, of all monks or nuns living within the bounds of a particular monastery. But it could
also cause a considerable amount of soul searching on the part of an individual. Failure to confess an
infraction was itself a punishable violation of the rules that could, moreover, be denounced by others.
And resentment at being denounced by others only compounded the transgression.
The rules thus were not the only thing that governed monastic life; attitude was equally important.
Members of the community were expected to have an attitude of humility, of acceptance of their
position in the hierarchy of the sangha and in the day-to-day order of things. Jealousy of others and
attempts at self-aggrandizement were seen as “blemishes” on one’s behavior and detrimental not only
to community life but also to spiritual progress. The following text, taken not from the Vinaya but
from a sermon attributed to one of the Buddha’s disciples, warns monks against slippage into vain
hopes and false expectations, an all-too-human pattern of petty egocentricities.
Honorable sirs, when a monk commits an infraction of the rules, it may well happen that he
should have the following wish: “May the other monks not find out about it!” But then they
do find out about it, and when they do, that monk gets irritated and is distressed, and that
irritation and distress are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when a monk commits an infraction, it may well happen that he
should have the following wish: “May the other monks reprimand me in private and not in
the midst of the sangha.” But then they reprimand him in the midst of the sangha and not
in private, and when that happens, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and
distress are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when a monk commits an infraction, it may well happen that he
should have the following wish: “May I be reprimanded by one of my companions and not
by someone else.” But then he is reprimanded by someone who is not one of his companions,
and when that happens, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and distress
are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when the Master is teaching the Dharma to the monks, it may well
happen that a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may he put his questions to,me
only and not to some other monk!” But then he does not put his questions to him at all
but to someone else, and when that happens, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that
irritation and distress are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when the monks go out on their begging rounds, it may well happen
that a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may I, and not some other monk, be at
the head of the line!” But then it so happens that he is not at the head of the line, and when
REQUIRED READING: BERKWITZ
325
that occurs, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and distress are themselves
both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when the monks are being served a meal… it may well happen that
a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may I, and not some other monk, be given the
best seat, the best food and the best drink!” But then he is not given the best seat or the
best food and drink, and when that happens, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that
irritation and distress are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when the meal to the monks has been served, it may well happen
that a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may I, and not some other monk, be
asked to say the word of thanks. But then he is not asked to say the word of thanks, and
when that happens, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and distress are
themselves both blemishes.…
Then, honorable sirs, when the monks have gone into the monastery it may well happen
that a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may I, and not some other monk, be the
one to preach the Dharma!” But then it so happens that he is not the one to preach the
Dharma, and when that occurs, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and
distress are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when the nuns have come to the monastery, it may well happen
that a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may I, and not some other monk, be
the one to preach to the nuns!” But then it so happens that he is not the one to preach to
the nuns, and when that occurs, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and
distress are themselves both blemishes.
Then, honorable sirs, when the laity have come to the monastery, it may well happen
that a monk should have the following wish: “Oh, may I, and not some other monk, be
the one to preach to the laity!” But then it so happens that he is not the one to preach to
the laity, and when that occurs, he gets irritated and is distressed, and that irritation and
distress are themselves both blemishes… Source: Translated from Majjhima Nikaya, ed. V. Trenckner
(London: Pali Text Society, 1888), l:27-30.9
Required reading
Stephen C. Berkwitz, “Founding the Bhikṣuṇi order,” in South Asian Buddhism: A Survey (London: Routledge, 2010), 38–42.
Founding the Bhiksuni order
The story of how an order of Buddhist nuns or bhikṣuṇī (P: bhikkhunīs) was established illustrates the
patriarchal subordination of female renunciants to the male order of monks. In early Pali texts this
event occurred when the Buddha’s maternal aunt and stepmother Mahāpajāpati Gotamī approached
him to request ordination as a female renunciant. The Buddha is said to have thrice refused her request. Subsequently, Mahāpajāpati and five hundred noblewomen shaved their heads and dressed
326
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
themselves in robes before approaching the Buddha and again requesting his consent to ordain them.
At this point, the monk Ananda intervened on behalf of the women and asked the still reluctant Buddha whether women were capable of attaining the higher fruits of practicing the Buddhist path. The
Buddha acknowledged that women can attain nirvāṇa and allowed for their ordination as bhikṣuṇīs,
in part since the previous Buddhas had allegedly done the same.
Women were permitted to join the Saṅgha as “nuns” provided that they accept eight special conditions or “heavy rules” (aṭṭhagarudharmā). These additional rules that appear specifically for bhikṣuṇīs
alone requires that any given bhikṣuṇī: (1) must rise and pay respect to any and all monks, including
those who are junior to her in terms of length of ordination; (2) must not spend the rains retreat in
an area where there is no monk; (3) must request instruction from the monks twice each month; (4)
must declare any fault seen or suspected in her order to the monks; (5) must be disciplined for any
suspension before both orders of monks and nuns; (6) must be ordained by both orders; (7) must not
abuse or revile any monk; and (8) must not admonish a monk, although the latter may admonish her.
These eight rules effectively place the order of nuns under the supervision and control of the monks.
But even after allowing for female ordination, the Buddha is depicted in accounts as ruefully commenting that the presence of women in the Saṅgha will eventually hasten the disappearance of the
Dharma.
Attempts by scholars and practitioners to explain the Buddha’s apparent reluctance to found an
order of Buddhist nuns often cite the patriarchal social system of ancient India and either the Buddha’s
inability or hesitation to deviate from conventional views about women’s participation in the ascetic
life. In general, women in ancient South Asian culture were required to be under the control of men
throughout their lives, with their fathers, to prevent them from offending social norms (Kloppenborg
1995: 151). In this perspective the Buddha’s apparent reluctance to ordain women could utlect an anxiety about transgressing cultural norms about a woman’s place in society. Another hypothesis holds
that the Buddha was merely concerned to assist the monks in upholding the demands of celibacy, and
thus he wished to avoid bringing monks into more contact with women—including nuns (Dhirasekera 1982: 141). A wholly different approach favored by some suggests it is unlikely that these rules were
imposed by the Buddha himself, but rather they were the results of efforts undertaken by later writers
to subordinate nuns to monks.
Whatever the circumstances behind the founding of the bhikṣuṇī order, once female renunciants
were accepted into the Saṅgha, they flourished in large numbers in ancient South Asia. Many of these
women became renowned for their spiritual attainments and for their donations of Buddha images
and monastic dwellings. The idea that bhikṣuṇīs could achieve the same degree of spiritual accomplishment as the bhikṣus—developing abilities to meditate, adhering to the disciplinary code, performing supernormal powers, and obtaining nirvāṇa—is supported by the literature. The text called
the Therīgāthā is particularly noteworthy in this regard, since it apparently preserves the ancient utterances of several dozen or more elder nuns (therīs) in verse. Although it is impossible to know whether
these poems Were actually composed by the therīs themselves, the text does purport to convey the religious goals and experiences of women, and it is likely that portions of it are quite old and were orally
transmitted with the help of conventional expressions and stock formula beginning around the third
century BCE. Therein, Buddhist nuns express the joys of living a life of renunciation and experiencing
the blissful state of liberation. Many of them also draw contrasts between these positive experiences
and the negative ones they suffered as female laypersons living in a patriarchal society.
REQUIRED READING: BERKWITZ
327
It was precisely this social environment that imposed restrictions and stereotypes on women in
ancient South Asian Buddhism. Numerous scholars have noted that early Buddhist views of women
were often ambiguous and contradictory. In the ancient literature, certain women are occasionally
celebrated for their moral discipline and their attainment of nirvāṇa on par with any other revered
monk. But in other places, women are reviled as sensual beings whose desire outweighs their intellect. In an oft-cited essay, Alan Sponberg has identified four distinct attitudes toward women in early
Buddhist texts. The first attitude is called “soteriological inclusiveness,” and it refers to the Buddha’s
expressed acknowledgement that women are fully capable of following the path and attaining the
highest fruits of Dharma and attain liberation from saṃsāra just like men. It is this attitude that supporters of the religion cite as evidence of the Buddhist religion’s comparatively progressive attitude
towards women in ancient South Asia. Because, according to the Buddha, gender differences are insignificant for realizing Awakening, women and men are instructed to follow the same path toward
liberation.
At the same time, however, Sponberg notes another attitude in early Buddhism called “institutional androcentrism” that places restrictions on women to bring them under the control of men.
The eight special conditions (aṭṭhagarudharmā) that women must accept to become ordained as
bhikṣuṇīs illustrates this view. Since the various Bhikṣuṇī Prātimokṣas contain many more rules of
conduct than the codes for monks contain, it stands to reason that over time the tradition devised
additional disciplinary rules to control the women in the Saṅgha and to establish them in a clearly inferior position under male authority. Sponberg believes that institutional androcentrism developed
later as female membership in the Saṅgha grew and as Buddhist monastics increasingly came to reside in permanent dwellings (Sponberg 1992: 13). In such a view, the reliance of the Buddhist Saṅgha
on public acceptance and lay support compelled its members to establish various methods to control
women and to prevent them from challenging broader social norms.
The third attitude towards women found in early Buddhism is “ascetic misogyny.” This position
was not unique to Buddhism, as there is evidence in other South Asian ascetic traditions of deep
suspicion and fear of women. Indeed, any religious system that extolled celibate renunciation could
be expected to develop teachings to discourage male practitioners from sexual activity. For example,
disturbing images of disfigured, dead, or sleeping women frequently appear in ancient South Asian
Buddhist literature to inspire disgust among male monks and to aid them in abandoning their desire
for physical pleasures (Wilson 1996). But in case the images of decaying or snoring women are not
sufficient to dispel a monk’s lust, numerous Buddhist texts contain admonitions in which women are
portrayed as wicked temptresses with uncontrolled sexual appetites, ready to impede a man’s spiritual
progress (Harris 1999: 50). The common portrayal of women as primarily sensual beings who are illsuited for spiritual pursuits can be found across a wide range of Buddhist texts with different sectarian
allegiances. Diana Paul’s translation of the following excerpts from the Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra, an early
collection of Mahāyāna sūtras, illustrates this view quite well:
Women can ruin
The precepts of purity.
They can also ignore
Honor and virtue.
Causing one to go to hell
They prevent rebirth in heaven
Why should the wise delight in them?
328
BUDDHIST COMMUNITY
...Ornaments on women
Show off their beauty.
But within them there is great evil
As in the body there is air.
… As the filth and decay
Of a dead dog or dead snake
Are burned away,
So all men should burn filth
And detest evil.
The dead snake and dog
Are detestable,
But women are even more
Detestable than they are.
(Paul 1985: 31, 41–2)
Such misogynistic