copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2003 Method amp Theory in the Study of Religion 15 329-353

ldquoHINDUISMrdquo AND THE HISTORY OF ldquoRELIGIONrdquoPROTESTANT PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THE CRITIQUE OF

THE CONCEPT OF HINDUISM

Will Sweetman

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion or not a single religion is so oftenrepeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefsand practices of the Hindus were it not typically ignored immediately after havingbeen stated The arguments for this claim in the work of several representativescholars are examined in order to show that they depend implicitly or explicitlyupon a notion of religion which is too much influenced by Christian conceptions ofwhat a religion is a conception which if it has not already been discarded byscholars of religion certainly ought to be Even where such Christian models areexplicitly disavowed the claim that Hinduism is not a religion can be shown todepend upon a particular religious conception of the nature of the world and ourpossible knowledge of it which scholars of religion cannot share

Two claims which I take to have been established by recent work onthe history of the concept ldquoreligionrdquo provide the starting point for myargument here The first is that while the concept emerged from aculture which was still shaped by its Christian history neverthelessthe establishment of the modern sense of the term was the result of ldquoaprocess of extracting the word from its Christian overtonesrdquo (Bossy1982 12)1 The second is that the concept like all abstractions im-plies a categorization of phenomena which is imposed upon ratherthan emergent from them ldquoreligionrdquo is not a natural kind It hasbeen suggested that the rejection by some scholars of the secondclaim is evidence that the term and the discipline for which it servesas the central organizing concept has not yet fully completed theprocess of disengagement from Christian theological presuppositionsThus Timothy Fitzgerald writes

Religion is really the basis of a modern form of theology which I willcall liberal ecumenical theology but some attempt has been made to

1 Bossy refers not only to the term ldquoreligionrdquo but also ldquosocietyrdquo noting that ldquothehistory of the word lsquosocietyrsquo hellip is practically identical with the history of the wordlsquoreligionrsquordquo and several other terms including ldquostate property philosophy charitycommunion conversationrdquo (1982 12)

330 will sweetman

disguise this fact by claiming that religion is a natural andor a super-natural reality in the nature of things that all human individuals have acapacity for regardless of their cultural context This attempt to dis-guise the theological essence of the category and to present it as thoughit were a unique human reality irreducible to either theology or sociol-ogy suggests that it possesses some ideological function hellip that is notfully acknowledged (Fitzgerald 2000a 4-5)2

Fitzgerald gives a number of arguments for this claim and for hisfurther proposal that scholars who do not have a theological agendaought to prefer terms which offer greater analytical precision thanldquoreligionrdquo One such argument considers several works by religionistsand anthropologists on Hinduism in order to show that ldquoreligionrdquofails to pick out anything that can be analytically separated fromother institutionalized aspects of Indian culture that ldquothe categoryreligion does not effectively demarcate any institutions located in aputatively non-religious domain such as Indian societyrdquo in shortthat ldquoHinduism is not a lsquoreligionrsquordquo (Fitzgerald 2000a chap 7 seealso Fitzgerald 1990 and 2000b) The claim is significant and is foundin the work of several other scholars3 While agreeing with much ofFitzgeraldrsquos analysismdashspecifically that religion is not ldquoin the nature ofthingsrdquo or a reality irreducible by other forms of analysis and thatthe study of religion continues to be too much influenced by unac-knowledged Christian theological presuppositionsmdashI will argue thatit is precisely the claim that Hinduism is not a religion which revealslingering Christian and theological influence even in the works of

2 Elsewhere Fitzgerald writes ldquoWhat I am arguing is that theology and what is atpresent called religious studies ought to be two logically separate levels of intellectualactivity but that in actual fact the latter is conceptually and institutionally dominatedby the former This domination is disguised because it is embedded in our a prioricentral analytical category and abandoning that category altogether appears evento scholars who are themselves critically aware of the legacy of phenomenology to bethrowing the baby out with the bathwaterrdquo (1997 97) In more general terms othershave suggested that the claim that religion is a sui generis phenomenon is associatedwith an approach to the study of religion which tends to assume the truth of religionSo Russell McCutcheon notes that ldquoone aspect of the discourse on sui generis reli-gionrdquo is a ldquotheoretically undefended preference for sympathetic and descriptive insid-ersrsquo accountsrdquo and that the ldquothe dominant yet uncritical and theoretically undefend-able conception of religion as sui generis effectively precludes other more socio-politically and historically sensitive methods and theoriesrdquo (1997 122-123) Likewisethe belief that religion because irreducible to anything else is best explained ldquoon itsown termsrdquo is described by Samuel Preus as ldquothe last bastion of theologyrdquo (1987 xvi)

3 See in addition to those discussed below Smith 1987 34 Hardy 1990 145Oberoi 1994 17 Dalmia and Stietencron 1995 20 Larson 1995 31 Frykenberg1997 82

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 331

those who explicitly disclaim such influence Such influence exists ontwo levels the first relatively superficial the other more profoundThe first level will be demonstrated in three authorsmdashR NDandekar Heinrich von Stietencron and S N Balagangadharamdashwho implicitly or explicitly model the concept of religion on Christi-anity This model is disclaimed by two further authors Frits Staaland Timothy Fitzgerald but their arguments against the descriptionof Hinduism as a religion I will argue nevertheless depend upon aProtestant Christian epistemology

1 Religion as implicitly modeled upon Christianity

In his chapter on Hinduism for the Handbook for the History of Religionsa quasi-official document for the International Association for theHistory of Religions R N Dandekar argues that

Hinduism can hardly be called a religion at all in the popularly under-stood sense of the term Unlike most religions Hinduism does notregard the concept of god as being central to it Hinduism is not asystem of theologymdashit does not make any dogmatic affirmation regard-ing the nature of god Similarly Hinduism does not venerate anyparticular person as its sole prophet or as its founder It does not alsorecognize any particular book as its absolutely authoritative scriptureFurther Hinduism does not insist on any particular religious practice asbeing obligatory nor does it accept any doctrine as its dogma Hindu-ism can also not be identified with a specific moral code Hinduism asa religion does not convey any definite or unitary idea There is nodogma or practice which can be said to be either universal or essentialto Hinduism as a whole Indeed those who call themselves Hindus maynot necessarily have much in common as regards faith or worshipWhat is essential for one section of the Hindu community may not benecessarily so for another And yet Hinduism has persisted throughcenturies as a distinct religious entity (Dandekar 1971 237)

The centrality of the concept of god the veneration of a particularperson as the founder of a religion and the recognition of a particu-lar book as an absolutely authoritative scripture are characteristic ofcertain religions (Christianity and Islam in particular) Dandekar ex-trapolates from these characteristics and implicitly defines the ldquopopu-larly understood sense of the termrdquo religion as including these threecharacteristics Had he explicitly defined ldquoreligionrdquo in this way it islikely that his definition would have been attacked as being too nar-row and in particular as too much influenced by particular religions

332 will sweetman

especially certain forms of Christianity Nevertheless whatDandekarrsquos comments amount to is the claim that Hinduism is notlike Christianity or perhaps that Hinduism is not the same sort ofreligion that Christianity is This claim is unobjectionable but isnevertheless quite different from the claim that Hinduism is not areligion Dandekar refers only to the ldquopopularly understood sense ofthe term [religion]rdquo and this allows him to conclude that ldquoHinduismhas persisted through centuries as a distinct religious entityrdquo Otherwriters including S N Balagangadharamdashwho significantly mis-reads Dandekar as referring to the ldquoproperly understood senserdquo ofreligion (1994 15)mdashdraw more radical conclusions from structurallysimilar arguments

One such is Heinrich von Stietencron who argues that Hinduismrefers not to one religion but rather should be taken ldquoto denote asocio-cultural unit or civilization which contains a plurality of distinctreligionsrdquo (1997 33) The idea that Hinduism is a religion derives hesuggests from a fundamental misunderstanding of the termldquoHindurdquo which was originally a Persian term denoting ldquoIndians ingeneralrdquo (Stietencron 1997 33) Following the permanent settlementof Muslims in India Persian authors began to use the term to refer toIndians other than Muslims and identified several different religionsamong the Hindus However Stietencron argues that

when Europeans started to use the term Hindoo they applied it to thenon-Muslim masses of India without those scholarly differentiationsMost people failed to realise that the term ldquoHindurdquo corresponded ex-actly to their own word ldquoIndianrdquo which is derived like the name ldquoIn-diardquo from the same Indus river the indos of the Greek The Hindu theyknew was distinct from the Muslim the Jew the Christian the Parseeand the Jain who were all present in the Indian coastal area known towestern trade Therefore they took the term ldquoHindurdquo to designate thefollower of a particular Indian religion This was a fundamental misun-derstanding of the term And from Hindu the term ldquoHinduismrdquo wasderived by way of abstraction denoting an imagined religion of the vastmajority of the populationmdashsomething that had never existed as a ldquore-ligionrdquo (in the Western sense) in the consciousness of the Indian peoplethemselves (Stietencron1997 33-34 emphasis added)4

4 This brief history of European usage of ldquoHindurdquo or ldquoHindoordquo and ldquoHinduismrdquois vastly oversimplified and represents Stietencronrsquos attempt to reconstruct whatmight have happened rather than being based on examination of the relevant textsA more detailed but still inadequate account of the same process is given byStietencron in two other articles (1988 1995) John Marshall in India from 1668 to1677 knew that ldquothe name Hindoordquo was primarily a geographical not a religious

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 333

Given that as several writers have recently shown the modernsense of ldquoreligionrdquo as a reified entity in which other people are in-volved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth centuryit would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present inthe consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in theWest5 Like Dandekar Stietencron does not make explicit here whathe means by ldquothe Western senserdquo of religion6 We can gain someidea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on whichHinduism is said to fail to be a religion Hinduism fails to be areligion for Stietencron because ldquo[t]here is hardly a single importantteaching in lsquoHinduismrsquo which can be shown to be valid for all Hin-dus much less a comprehensive set of teachingsrdquo (1997 36) HereStietencron perpetuates the idea which he attributes to Christiansthat doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion becauseHinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity it is not a religionIf this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism ldquoneverexisted as a lsquoreligionrsquo (in the Western sense)rdquo then what his claimamounts to is that Hinduism is not or is not like Christianity This

concept (Marshall 1927 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that ldquothe correct deriva-tion (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768rdquo (1997 50) Accounts ofHinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least assophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groupswithin Hinduism The same may not have been true for travelersrsquo tales but it ishardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persianscholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim al-Masdldquo al-Idrldquosldquo and Shahrastˆnldquo)In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality ofreligions among Hindus while at the start of the eighteenth century BartholomaumlusZiegenbalg noted that the Indians ldquohave forged many different religionsrdquo notingthat in addition to the two main religions yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism the Jains and theBuddhists were regarded as separate heterodox religious groups For a more detailedaccount of these authors and critique of Stietencronrsquos discussion of them seeSweetman (2001) Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencronrsquos oversimplification of thehistory of this term noting that he ldquoquite blithely jumps from the sixth century BCto the nineteenth century AD with virtually no discussion whatever of the interven-ing uses of the term lsquoHindursquo either by foreigners or native Indiansrdquo (Lorenzen 1999635)

5 This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have devel-oped independently of Western influence as Michael Pye has suggested in his discus-sion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992 27-28see also Pye 2003) And indeed there is evidence of a reified understanding ofreligion in India in some circumstances See OrsquoConnell 1973 Wagle 1997 Lorenzen1999 Sharma 2002

6 Although he does write that ldquothe term religion hellip can only be applied to corpo-rately shared coherent systems of world explanation and valuesrdquo (Stietencron 1997 45original emphasis)

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

330 will sweetman

disguise this fact by claiming that religion is a natural andor a super-natural reality in the nature of things that all human individuals have acapacity for regardless of their cultural context This attempt to dis-guise the theological essence of the category and to present it as thoughit were a unique human reality irreducible to either theology or sociol-ogy suggests that it possesses some ideological function hellip that is notfully acknowledged (Fitzgerald 2000a 4-5)2

Fitzgerald gives a number of arguments for this claim and for hisfurther proposal that scholars who do not have a theological agendaought to prefer terms which offer greater analytical precision thanldquoreligionrdquo One such argument considers several works by religionistsand anthropologists on Hinduism in order to show that ldquoreligionrdquofails to pick out anything that can be analytically separated fromother institutionalized aspects of Indian culture that ldquothe categoryreligion does not effectively demarcate any institutions located in aputatively non-religious domain such as Indian societyrdquo in shortthat ldquoHinduism is not a lsquoreligionrsquordquo (Fitzgerald 2000a chap 7 seealso Fitzgerald 1990 and 2000b) The claim is significant and is foundin the work of several other scholars3 While agreeing with much ofFitzgeraldrsquos analysismdashspecifically that religion is not ldquoin the nature ofthingsrdquo or a reality irreducible by other forms of analysis and thatthe study of religion continues to be too much influenced by unac-knowledged Christian theological presuppositionsmdashI will argue thatit is precisely the claim that Hinduism is not a religion which revealslingering Christian and theological influence even in the works of

2 Elsewhere Fitzgerald writes ldquoWhat I am arguing is that theology and what is atpresent called religious studies ought to be two logically separate levels of intellectualactivity but that in actual fact the latter is conceptually and institutionally dominatedby the former This domination is disguised because it is embedded in our a prioricentral analytical category and abandoning that category altogether appears evento scholars who are themselves critically aware of the legacy of phenomenology to bethrowing the baby out with the bathwaterrdquo (1997 97) In more general terms othershave suggested that the claim that religion is a sui generis phenomenon is associatedwith an approach to the study of religion which tends to assume the truth of religionSo Russell McCutcheon notes that ldquoone aspect of the discourse on sui generis reli-gionrdquo is a ldquotheoretically undefended preference for sympathetic and descriptive insid-ersrsquo accountsrdquo and that the ldquothe dominant yet uncritical and theoretically undefend-able conception of religion as sui generis effectively precludes other more socio-politically and historically sensitive methods and theoriesrdquo (1997 122-123) Likewisethe belief that religion because irreducible to anything else is best explained ldquoon itsown termsrdquo is described by Samuel Preus as ldquothe last bastion of theologyrdquo (1987 xvi)

3 See in addition to those discussed below Smith 1987 34 Hardy 1990 145Oberoi 1994 17 Dalmia and Stietencron 1995 20 Larson 1995 31 Frykenberg1997 82

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 331

those who explicitly disclaim such influence Such influence exists ontwo levels the first relatively superficial the other more profoundThe first level will be demonstrated in three authorsmdashR NDandekar Heinrich von Stietencron and S N Balagangadharamdashwho implicitly or explicitly model the concept of religion on Christi-anity This model is disclaimed by two further authors Frits Staaland Timothy Fitzgerald but their arguments against the descriptionof Hinduism as a religion I will argue nevertheless depend upon aProtestant Christian epistemology

1 Religion as implicitly modeled upon Christianity

In his chapter on Hinduism for the Handbook for the History of Religionsa quasi-official document for the International Association for theHistory of Religions R N Dandekar argues that

Hinduism can hardly be called a religion at all in the popularly under-stood sense of the term Unlike most religions Hinduism does notregard the concept of god as being central to it Hinduism is not asystem of theologymdashit does not make any dogmatic affirmation regard-ing the nature of god Similarly Hinduism does not venerate anyparticular person as its sole prophet or as its founder It does not alsorecognize any particular book as its absolutely authoritative scriptureFurther Hinduism does not insist on any particular religious practice asbeing obligatory nor does it accept any doctrine as its dogma Hindu-ism can also not be identified with a specific moral code Hinduism asa religion does not convey any definite or unitary idea There is nodogma or practice which can be said to be either universal or essentialto Hinduism as a whole Indeed those who call themselves Hindus maynot necessarily have much in common as regards faith or worshipWhat is essential for one section of the Hindu community may not benecessarily so for another And yet Hinduism has persisted throughcenturies as a distinct religious entity (Dandekar 1971 237)

The centrality of the concept of god the veneration of a particularperson as the founder of a religion and the recognition of a particu-lar book as an absolutely authoritative scripture are characteristic ofcertain religions (Christianity and Islam in particular) Dandekar ex-trapolates from these characteristics and implicitly defines the ldquopopu-larly understood sense of the termrdquo religion as including these threecharacteristics Had he explicitly defined ldquoreligionrdquo in this way it islikely that his definition would have been attacked as being too nar-row and in particular as too much influenced by particular religions

332 will sweetman

especially certain forms of Christianity Nevertheless whatDandekarrsquos comments amount to is the claim that Hinduism is notlike Christianity or perhaps that Hinduism is not the same sort ofreligion that Christianity is This claim is unobjectionable but isnevertheless quite different from the claim that Hinduism is not areligion Dandekar refers only to the ldquopopularly understood sense ofthe term [religion]rdquo and this allows him to conclude that ldquoHinduismhas persisted through centuries as a distinct religious entityrdquo Otherwriters including S N Balagangadharamdashwho significantly mis-reads Dandekar as referring to the ldquoproperly understood senserdquo ofreligion (1994 15)mdashdraw more radical conclusions from structurallysimilar arguments

One such is Heinrich von Stietencron who argues that Hinduismrefers not to one religion but rather should be taken ldquoto denote asocio-cultural unit or civilization which contains a plurality of distinctreligionsrdquo (1997 33) The idea that Hinduism is a religion derives hesuggests from a fundamental misunderstanding of the termldquoHindurdquo which was originally a Persian term denoting ldquoIndians ingeneralrdquo (Stietencron 1997 33) Following the permanent settlementof Muslims in India Persian authors began to use the term to refer toIndians other than Muslims and identified several different religionsamong the Hindus However Stietencron argues that

when Europeans started to use the term Hindoo they applied it to thenon-Muslim masses of India without those scholarly differentiationsMost people failed to realise that the term ldquoHindurdquo corresponded ex-actly to their own word ldquoIndianrdquo which is derived like the name ldquoIn-diardquo from the same Indus river the indos of the Greek The Hindu theyknew was distinct from the Muslim the Jew the Christian the Parseeand the Jain who were all present in the Indian coastal area known towestern trade Therefore they took the term ldquoHindurdquo to designate thefollower of a particular Indian religion This was a fundamental misun-derstanding of the term And from Hindu the term ldquoHinduismrdquo wasderived by way of abstraction denoting an imagined religion of the vastmajority of the populationmdashsomething that had never existed as a ldquore-ligionrdquo (in the Western sense) in the consciousness of the Indian peoplethemselves (Stietencron1997 33-34 emphasis added)4

4 This brief history of European usage of ldquoHindurdquo or ldquoHindoordquo and ldquoHinduismrdquois vastly oversimplified and represents Stietencronrsquos attempt to reconstruct whatmight have happened rather than being based on examination of the relevant textsA more detailed but still inadequate account of the same process is given byStietencron in two other articles (1988 1995) John Marshall in India from 1668 to1677 knew that ldquothe name Hindoordquo was primarily a geographical not a religious

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 333

Given that as several writers have recently shown the modernsense of ldquoreligionrdquo as a reified entity in which other people are in-volved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth centuryit would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present inthe consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in theWest5 Like Dandekar Stietencron does not make explicit here whathe means by ldquothe Western senserdquo of religion6 We can gain someidea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on whichHinduism is said to fail to be a religion Hinduism fails to be areligion for Stietencron because ldquo[t]here is hardly a single importantteaching in lsquoHinduismrsquo which can be shown to be valid for all Hin-dus much less a comprehensive set of teachingsrdquo (1997 36) HereStietencron perpetuates the idea which he attributes to Christiansthat doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion becauseHinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity it is not a religionIf this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism ldquoneverexisted as a lsquoreligionrsquo (in the Western sense)rdquo then what his claimamounts to is that Hinduism is not or is not like Christianity This

concept (Marshall 1927 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that ldquothe correct deriva-tion (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768rdquo (1997 50) Accounts ofHinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least assophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groupswithin Hinduism The same may not have been true for travelersrsquo tales but it ishardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persianscholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim al-Masdldquo al-Idrldquosldquo and Shahrastˆnldquo)In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality ofreligions among Hindus while at the start of the eighteenth century BartholomaumlusZiegenbalg noted that the Indians ldquohave forged many different religionsrdquo notingthat in addition to the two main religions yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism the Jains and theBuddhists were regarded as separate heterodox religious groups For a more detailedaccount of these authors and critique of Stietencronrsquos discussion of them seeSweetman (2001) Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencronrsquos oversimplification of thehistory of this term noting that he ldquoquite blithely jumps from the sixth century BCto the nineteenth century AD with virtually no discussion whatever of the interven-ing uses of the term lsquoHindursquo either by foreigners or native Indiansrdquo (Lorenzen 1999635)

5 This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have devel-oped independently of Western influence as Michael Pye has suggested in his discus-sion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992 27-28see also Pye 2003) And indeed there is evidence of a reified understanding ofreligion in India in some circumstances See OrsquoConnell 1973 Wagle 1997 Lorenzen1999 Sharma 2002

6 Although he does write that ldquothe term religion hellip can only be applied to corpo-rately shared coherent systems of world explanation and valuesrdquo (Stietencron 1997 45original emphasis)

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 331

those who explicitly disclaim such influence Such influence exists ontwo levels the first relatively superficial the other more profoundThe first level will be demonstrated in three authorsmdashR NDandekar Heinrich von Stietencron and S N Balagangadharamdashwho implicitly or explicitly model the concept of religion on Christi-anity This model is disclaimed by two further authors Frits Staaland Timothy Fitzgerald but their arguments against the descriptionof Hinduism as a religion I will argue nevertheless depend upon aProtestant Christian epistemology

1 Religion as implicitly modeled upon Christianity

In his chapter on Hinduism for the Handbook for the History of Religionsa quasi-official document for the International Association for theHistory of Religions R N Dandekar argues that

Hinduism can hardly be called a religion at all in the popularly under-stood sense of the term Unlike most religions Hinduism does notregard the concept of god as being central to it Hinduism is not asystem of theologymdashit does not make any dogmatic affirmation regard-ing the nature of god Similarly Hinduism does not venerate anyparticular person as its sole prophet or as its founder It does not alsorecognize any particular book as its absolutely authoritative scriptureFurther Hinduism does not insist on any particular religious practice asbeing obligatory nor does it accept any doctrine as its dogma Hindu-ism can also not be identified with a specific moral code Hinduism asa religion does not convey any definite or unitary idea There is nodogma or practice which can be said to be either universal or essentialto Hinduism as a whole Indeed those who call themselves Hindus maynot necessarily have much in common as regards faith or worshipWhat is essential for one section of the Hindu community may not benecessarily so for another And yet Hinduism has persisted throughcenturies as a distinct religious entity (Dandekar 1971 237)

The centrality of the concept of god the veneration of a particularperson as the founder of a religion and the recognition of a particu-lar book as an absolutely authoritative scripture are characteristic ofcertain religions (Christianity and Islam in particular) Dandekar ex-trapolates from these characteristics and implicitly defines the ldquopopu-larly understood sense of the termrdquo religion as including these threecharacteristics Had he explicitly defined ldquoreligionrdquo in this way it islikely that his definition would have been attacked as being too nar-row and in particular as too much influenced by particular religions

332 will sweetman

especially certain forms of Christianity Nevertheless whatDandekarrsquos comments amount to is the claim that Hinduism is notlike Christianity or perhaps that Hinduism is not the same sort ofreligion that Christianity is This claim is unobjectionable but isnevertheless quite different from the claim that Hinduism is not areligion Dandekar refers only to the ldquopopularly understood sense ofthe term [religion]rdquo and this allows him to conclude that ldquoHinduismhas persisted through centuries as a distinct religious entityrdquo Otherwriters including S N Balagangadharamdashwho significantly mis-reads Dandekar as referring to the ldquoproperly understood senserdquo ofreligion (1994 15)mdashdraw more radical conclusions from structurallysimilar arguments

One such is Heinrich von Stietencron who argues that Hinduismrefers not to one religion but rather should be taken ldquoto denote asocio-cultural unit or civilization which contains a plurality of distinctreligionsrdquo (1997 33) The idea that Hinduism is a religion derives hesuggests from a fundamental misunderstanding of the termldquoHindurdquo which was originally a Persian term denoting ldquoIndians ingeneralrdquo (Stietencron 1997 33) Following the permanent settlementof Muslims in India Persian authors began to use the term to refer toIndians other than Muslims and identified several different religionsamong the Hindus However Stietencron argues that

when Europeans started to use the term Hindoo they applied it to thenon-Muslim masses of India without those scholarly differentiationsMost people failed to realise that the term ldquoHindurdquo corresponded ex-actly to their own word ldquoIndianrdquo which is derived like the name ldquoIn-diardquo from the same Indus river the indos of the Greek The Hindu theyknew was distinct from the Muslim the Jew the Christian the Parseeand the Jain who were all present in the Indian coastal area known towestern trade Therefore they took the term ldquoHindurdquo to designate thefollower of a particular Indian religion This was a fundamental misun-derstanding of the term And from Hindu the term ldquoHinduismrdquo wasderived by way of abstraction denoting an imagined religion of the vastmajority of the populationmdashsomething that had never existed as a ldquore-ligionrdquo (in the Western sense) in the consciousness of the Indian peoplethemselves (Stietencron1997 33-34 emphasis added)4

4 This brief history of European usage of ldquoHindurdquo or ldquoHindoordquo and ldquoHinduismrdquois vastly oversimplified and represents Stietencronrsquos attempt to reconstruct whatmight have happened rather than being based on examination of the relevant textsA more detailed but still inadequate account of the same process is given byStietencron in two other articles (1988 1995) John Marshall in India from 1668 to1677 knew that ldquothe name Hindoordquo was primarily a geographical not a religious

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 333

Given that as several writers have recently shown the modernsense of ldquoreligionrdquo as a reified entity in which other people are in-volved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth centuryit would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present inthe consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in theWest5 Like Dandekar Stietencron does not make explicit here whathe means by ldquothe Western senserdquo of religion6 We can gain someidea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on whichHinduism is said to fail to be a religion Hinduism fails to be areligion for Stietencron because ldquo[t]here is hardly a single importantteaching in lsquoHinduismrsquo which can be shown to be valid for all Hin-dus much less a comprehensive set of teachingsrdquo (1997 36) HereStietencron perpetuates the idea which he attributes to Christiansthat doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion becauseHinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity it is not a religionIf this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism ldquoneverexisted as a lsquoreligionrsquo (in the Western sense)rdquo then what his claimamounts to is that Hinduism is not or is not like Christianity This

concept (Marshall 1927 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that ldquothe correct deriva-tion (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768rdquo (1997 50) Accounts ofHinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least assophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groupswithin Hinduism The same may not have been true for travelersrsquo tales but it ishardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persianscholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim al-Masdldquo al-Idrldquosldquo and Shahrastˆnldquo)In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality ofreligions among Hindus while at the start of the eighteenth century BartholomaumlusZiegenbalg noted that the Indians ldquohave forged many different religionsrdquo notingthat in addition to the two main religions yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism the Jains and theBuddhists were regarded as separate heterodox religious groups For a more detailedaccount of these authors and critique of Stietencronrsquos discussion of them seeSweetman (2001) Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencronrsquos oversimplification of thehistory of this term noting that he ldquoquite blithely jumps from the sixth century BCto the nineteenth century AD with virtually no discussion whatever of the interven-ing uses of the term lsquoHindursquo either by foreigners or native Indiansrdquo (Lorenzen 1999635)

5 This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have devel-oped independently of Western influence as Michael Pye has suggested in his discus-sion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992 27-28see also Pye 2003) And indeed there is evidence of a reified understanding ofreligion in India in some circumstances See OrsquoConnell 1973 Wagle 1997 Lorenzen1999 Sharma 2002

6 Although he does write that ldquothe term religion hellip can only be applied to corpo-rately shared coherent systems of world explanation and valuesrdquo (Stietencron 1997 45original emphasis)

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

332 will sweetman

especially certain forms of Christianity Nevertheless whatDandekarrsquos comments amount to is the claim that Hinduism is notlike Christianity or perhaps that Hinduism is not the same sort ofreligion that Christianity is This claim is unobjectionable but isnevertheless quite different from the claim that Hinduism is not areligion Dandekar refers only to the ldquopopularly understood sense ofthe term [religion]rdquo and this allows him to conclude that ldquoHinduismhas persisted through centuries as a distinct religious entityrdquo Otherwriters including S N Balagangadharamdashwho significantly mis-reads Dandekar as referring to the ldquoproperly understood senserdquo ofreligion (1994 15)mdashdraw more radical conclusions from structurallysimilar arguments

One such is Heinrich von Stietencron who argues that Hinduismrefers not to one religion but rather should be taken ldquoto denote asocio-cultural unit or civilization which contains a plurality of distinctreligionsrdquo (1997 33) The idea that Hinduism is a religion derives hesuggests from a fundamental misunderstanding of the termldquoHindurdquo which was originally a Persian term denoting ldquoIndians ingeneralrdquo (Stietencron 1997 33) Following the permanent settlementof Muslims in India Persian authors began to use the term to refer toIndians other than Muslims and identified several different religionsamong the Hindus However Stietencron argues that

when Europeans started to use the term Hindoo they applied it to thenon-Muslim masses of India without those scholarly differentiationsMost people failed to realise that the term ldquoHindurdquo corresponded ex-actly to their own word ldquoIndianrdquo which is derived like the name ldquoIn-diardquo from the same Indus river the indos of the Greek The Hindu theyknew was distinct from the Muslim the Jew the Christian the Parseeand the Jain who were all present in the Indian coastal area known towestern trade Therefore they took the term ldquoHindurdquo to designate thefollower of a particular Indian religion This was a fundamental misun-derstanding of the term And from Hindu the term ldquoHinduismrdquo wasderived by way of abstraction denoting an imagined religion of the vastmajority of the populationmdashsomething that had never existed as a ldquore-ligionrdquo (in the Western sense) in the consciousness of the Indian peoplethemselves (Stietencron1997 33-34 emphasis added)4

4 This brief history of European usage of ldquoHindurdquo or ldquoHindoordquo and ldquoHinduismrdquois vastly oversimplified and represents Stietencronrsquos attempt to reconstruct whatmight have happened rather than being based on examination of the relevant textsA more detailed but still inadequate account of the same process is given byStietencron in two other articles (1988 1995) John Marshall in India from 1668 to1677 knew that ldquothe name Hindoordquo was primarily a geographical not a religious

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 333

Given that as several writers have recently shown the modernsense of ldquoreligionrdquo as a reified entity in which other people are in-volved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth centuryit would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present inthe consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in theWest5 Like Dandekar Stietencron does not make explicit here whathe means by ldquothe Western senserdquo of religion6 We can gain someidea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on whichHinduism is said to fail to be a religion Hinduism fails to be areligion for Stietencron because ldquo[t]here is hardly a single importantteaching in lsquoHinduismrsquo which can be shown to be valid for all Hin-dus much less a comprehensive set of teachingsrdquo (1997 36) HereStietencron perpetuates the idea which he attributes to Christiansthat doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion becauseHinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity it is not a religionIf this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism ldquoneverexisted as a lsquoreligionrsquo (in the Western sense)rdquo then what his claimamounts to is that Hinduism is not or is not like Christianity This

concept (Marshall 1927 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that ldquothe correct deriva-tion (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768rdquo (1997 50) Accounts ofHinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least assophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groupswithin Hinduism The same may not have been true for travelersrsquo tales but it ishardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persianscholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim al-Masdldquo al-Idrldquosldquo and Shahrastˆnldquo)In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality ofreligions among Hindus while at the start of the eighteenth century BartholomaumlusZiegenbalg noted that the Indians ldquohave forged many different religionsrdquo notingthat in addition to the two main religions yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism the Jains and theBuddhists were regarded as separate heterodox religious groups For a more detailedaccount of these authors and critique of Stietencronrsquos discussion of them seeSweetman (2001) Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencronrsquos oversimplification of thehistory of this term noting that he ldquoquite blithely jumps from the sixth century BCto the nineteenth century AD with virtually no discussion whatever of the interven-ing uses of the term lsquoHindursquo either by foreigners or native Indiansrdquo (Lorenzen 1999635)

5 This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have devel-oped independently of Western influence as Michael Pye has suggested in his discus-sion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992 27-28see also Pye 2003) And indeed there is evidence of a reified understanding ofreligion in India in some circumstances See OrsquoConnell 1973 Wagle 1997 Lorenzen1999 Sharma 2002

6 Although he does write that ldquothe term religion hellip can only be applied to corpo-rately shared coherent systems of world explanation and valuesrdquo (Stietencron 1997 45original emphasis)

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 333

Given that as several writers have recently shown the modernsense of ldquoreligionrdquo as a reified entity in which other people are in-volved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth centuryit would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present inthe consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in theWest5 Like Dandekar Stietencron does not make explicit here whathe means by ldquothe Western senserdquo of religion6 We can gain someidea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on whichHinduism is said to fail to be a religion Hinduism fails to be areligion for Stietencron because ldquo[t]here is hardly a single importantteaching in lsquoHinduismrsquo which can be shown to be valid for all Hin-dus much less a comprehensive set of teachingsrdquo (1997 36) HereStietencron perpetuates the idea which he attributes to Christiansthat doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion becauseHinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity it is not a religionIf this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism ldquoneverexisted as a lsquoreligionrsquo (in the Western sense)rdquo then what his claimamounts to is that Hinduism is not or is not like Christianity This

concept (Marshall 1927 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that ldquothe correct deriva-tion (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768rdquo (1997 50) Accounts ofHinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least assophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groupswithin Hinduism The same may not have been true for travelersrsquo tales but it ishardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persianscholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim al-Masdldquo al-Idrldquosldquo and Shahrastˆnldquo)In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality ofreligions among Hindus while at the start of the eighteenth century BartholomaumlusZiegenbalg noted that the Indians ldquohave forged many different religionsrdquo notingthat in addition to the two main religions yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism the Jains and theBuddhists were regarded as separate heterodox religious groups For a more detailedaccount of these authors and critique of Stietencronrsquos discussion of them seeSweetman (2001) Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencronrsquos oversimplification of thehistory of this term noting that he ldquoquite blithely jumps from the sixth century BCto the nineteenth century AD with virtually no discussion whatever of the interven-ing uses of the term lsquoHindursquo either by foreigners or native Indiansrdquo (Lorenzen 1999635)

5 This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have devel-oped independently of Western influence as Michael Pye has suggested in his discus-sion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992 27-28see also Pye 2003) And indeed there is evidence of a reified understanding ofreligion in India in some circumstances See OrsquoConnell 1973 Wagle 1997 Lorenzen1999 Sharma 2002

6 Although he does write that ldquothe term religion hellip can only be applied to corpo-rately shared coherent systems of world explanation and valuesrdquo (Stietencron 1997 45original emphasis)

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 335

VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 337

examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 339

are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 341

spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 343

and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 345

unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 347

Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 349

edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 351

they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 353

Nobili Roberto (1971 [1619]) Narratio Fundamentorum quibus Madurensis MissionisInstitutum caeptum est et hucusque consisit S Rajamanickam (ed) and J Pujo (trans)as Adaptation Palayamkottai De Nobili Research Institute

Oberoi Harjot (1994) The Construction of Religious Boundaries Culture Identity and Diver-sity in the Sikh Tradition Chicago University of Chicago Press

OrsquoConnell Joseph (1973) The word ldquoHindurdquo in Gauparaldquoya VaisectEgraveava texts Journal ofthe American Oriental Society 93 340-344

Preus J Samuel (1987) Explaining Religion Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud NewHaven Yale University Press

Pye Michael (1992) An Asian starting point for the study of religion In MiroslawNowaczyk and Zbigniew Stachowski (eds) LanguagemdashReligionmdashCulture InMemory of Professor Witold Tyloch 27-35 Warsaw Polish Society for the Study ofReligionsInternational Association for the History of Religions

mdash (2003) Modern Japan and the science of religions Method amp Theory in the Study ofReligion 15 1-27

Sharma Arvind (2002) On Hindu Hindustˆn Hinduism and Hindutva Numen 491-36

Smart Ninian (1974) Truth and religions In John Hick (ed) Truth and DialogueTtheRelationship Between World Religions 45-58 London Sheldon

Smith Brian K (1987) Exorcising the transcendent Strategies for defining Hindu-ism and Buddhism History of Religions 27 32-55

Smith Jonathan Z (1990) Drudgery Divine On the Comparison of Early Christianities andthe Religions of Late Antiquity Chicago University of Chicago Press

Smith Wilfred Cantwell (1991 [1962]) The Meaning and End of Religion A RevolutionaryApproach to the Great Religious Traditions Minneapolis Fortress

Staal Frits (1982) The Himalayas and the fall of religion In Deborah E Klimberg-Salter (ed) The Silk Route and the Diamond Path Esoteric Buddhist Art on the Trans-Himalayan Trade Routes 38-51 Los Angeles UCLA Art Council

mdash (1989) Rules Without Meaning Ritual Mantra and the Human Sciences New YorkPeter Lang

Stietencron Heinrich von (1988) Voraussetzungen westlicher Hinduismusforschungund ihre Folgen In Eberhard Muumlller (ed) ldquo aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeitrdquo123-153 Tuumlbinger Studien zum 18 Jahrhundert Dietrich Geyer zum 60Geburtstag Tuumlbingen Attempto

mdash (1995) Religious configurations in pre-Muslim India and the modern concept ofHinduism In Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) RepresentingHinduism The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity 51-81 Lon-don Sage

mdash (1997) Hinduism On the proper use of a deceptive term In Guumlnther-DietzSontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 32-53 DelhiManohar

Sweetman Will (2001) Unity and plurality Hinduism and the religions of India inearly European scholarship Religion 31 209-224

Wagle N K (1997) Hindu-Muslim interactions in medieval Maharashtra InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered134-152 Delhi Manohar

Wilson Horace Hayman (1846 [1828]) Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus Cal-cutta Bishoprsquos College Press

Hindu Festivals andmiddot the Christian Calendar

R D IMMANUEL

(A paper read at the Conference on Christian Worship held at Matheran in April 1957)

The average Hindu feels at home in the atmosphere of festivities feasts and festivals enable him to give his religious experience a social expression ~n other words popular Hindu religion has a large element of social thinking and social feeling and feasts and festivals are only concrete expressions of this feature of Hinduism The Indian Christian has the same cultural background rinless he has been made to forgo it by urban or foreign influences But since most of our Christians live middotin rural surroundings the question of our attitude towards Hindu festivals is a matter for serious study and consideration The principles underlying these festivals must be made clear if we are to make any progress at all

THE THEOLOGY OF HINDU FESTIVALS

middot When a particular day is set apart as sacred it means that certain moments or periods of time can become instnlnients of deeper or richer religious experience by association with events of religious importance or with the lives of spiritual leaders If this were the only principle there would be nothing against adapting and incorporating Hindu festivals into our calendar But along with this is a deeper and non-Christian idea namely pantheism according to which there is not an object in heaven or on earth or underneath the earth whi~h the Hindu is not preshy pared to worship This is a rather serious matter for the Christian since one of the cardinal doctrines of our faith is that there is an eternal difference middot between the Creator and the creature and that worship honour and glory belong to God alone The modem Hindu can easily explain away the crudity of some of these facts philosophically but the impression on the rural Christian will not be anything less than gross idolatry So the greatest care must be taken to see that any festival that has in it any trace of worship of anyone other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be rejected utterly and uncompromisingly

Ill

When we study the evolution of festivals we find that some are magical in character or at the best originated in nature or vegetation myths During centuries of evolution they have been _transformed and in many cases new ceremonies have been grafted on to old There is nothing new fu this for the Church In the past the Church has taken non-Christian festivals and baptized them with Christian names given them Christian meanings and included them in the Christian calendar

In the middotfestivals connected with sowing and reaping there are quite a number of magical elements But agricultural festivals should not be discarded just because some elements in them are unworthy Religion should pervade every aspect of life and consecrate it for the glory of God If the Church does not care to exercise this important function of religion secularism and materialism will invade So the better way will be to take over the agricultural cults purge them of all linworthy elements and give them good Christian concepts Instead of the unwholeshysome myths the Christian doctrine of God as the supreme giver of life and man as the steward responsible to his Maker for all that he possesses should be taught - From the point of view of theology this is one of the most important features of festivals Feasts and festivals enable religion to pervade every aspect (secular social or private) of human life Church Histltgtry and Theology can be taught in a very elementary but nevertheless unforgettable way by the wholesome use of festivals directed and co~trolled by the Church

THEmiddot PsYCHOLOGY OF Hrnnu FESTIVALS

Our Master compared His religion to a wedding feast and so showed that there is no greater merit in that type of asceticism which makes suppression of the flesh an end in itself Most of the festivals in Hinduism are occasions for joy Any institution that helps people to be cheerful and happy has a rightful place in bur religion It is very right and proper that our days of joy and merriment should be consecrated to God and integrated with religion Such are festivals like Divali and the Pmigal But there are other festivals which are connected with regulating or controlling the natural appetites of man The popular faith of Hinduism is that piety and devotion are strengthened by fastings vigils worship and ablutions It also recommendsmiddot gifts to holy persons practice of austerities and physical hardships for the benefit of the spirit within So we find that there are a number of festivals that recommend these For instance fastiilg is the rule during Vaikuntha Ekiidasi people are enjoined to keep a vigil throughout the night of Sivtiitri The principles undershylying such festivals deserve our consideration and careful study The Roman Catholic Church advocates fastings and vigils and according to certain texts our Lord made the statement this kind (of demons) can eomeforth by nothing but by prayer and fastingmiddot~

112 IB

A large number of Protestants have given up the practice of vigils and fastings because when ~ey are enforced in_ a mechanical way (as they would be if a date 1s fixed on the calendar and everyone everywhere is asked to fast) they become somewhat formal So also is alms-giving Our Master told us definitely Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them othershywise ye have no reward of your Father who is in heaven Howshyever since the cultural background is helpful the Church leaders with great caution may reinforce the practice of vigils fastirigs and ahns-giving middot

So fasting vigil and alms-giving oil certain days especially set apart by the Church have to be considered as aids to worship As Evelyn Underhill points out

It is surely mere arrogance to insist that with angels and archangels we laud and magnify the Holy N arne whilst disdaining the shaggy ~mpanions who come with us to the altar of faith having alieady ind~ed discerned that altar in a darkness which we have left behind and given costly offerings to the unknown God whom middot we coldly_ serve The primitive sensitive to the mysterious quality of life worshipping by gift and gesture and devising ritual patterns whereby all the faculties of his nature and all the members of his group can be united in common action towards God still remains _a better model for human worship than the speculative philosopher or the solitary quietist for he accepts his situation humbly instead of trying to retreat from it (Worship p 21) Whether we like it or not we are body and mind only when our body is given a chance to participate in such things as vigils and fasts will our worship experience be complete

THE SOCIAL AsPECT oF FEsnv ALS

Religion is an ambivalent affaiJ It is an individual as well as a social phenomenon In the past centuries the Protestant churches as a whole and in a general way emphasized the individual aspect of religion It ismiddot only recently that more and more emphasis is being laid on the social nature of religion Feasts festivals and fairs form a part of the indigenous technique

to produce a middotcorporate religioUs experience in the community Social experience of religion is a natural and innate craving put in the heart of man by his Creator and feasts and festivals provide a congeilial atmosphere for such a social expression~ Let tis take as an instance the car festival at Puri in Orissa A hundred thousand or more pilgrims flock tomiddot this small town Every year three Rathas or cars_ are constructed anew for the threemiddot deities The one draped in blue cloth is for J aganath the one in red for Subhadra and the one in white for Balariimari middotEach onemiddot is adorned with flags floral wreaths and festoons They are middot dragged over the broad path with thick ropes by pilgrims of both sexes and of all stations_ in life The Raja of Puri sweeps the road before the car A replica of the same can be seen at

113

Riimeswaraxn M~durai Conjeevaraxn irunelveli etc Here is an exa~ple of a social expression of religion which can be a matter of careful study Whether we like it or not sqci~ plJenomena condition individual feelings and emotions So if we have projects to work out (as for instance evangelism) it is much easier to accomplish it by organizing it around a yearly festival Of course there are very grave disadvantages FUst and foremost these outbursts of activity are not steady Secondly they are not based upon reason Thirdly there are likely to be reactions In spite of all these shortcomings the Church leaders as wise stewards ought to devise means and ways of making use of feasts and festivals by incorporating them in the Christian calendar Thus it is much easier to participate in evangelistic work when everyone is doing it on a specific day Similarly it is much easier to fast or go to Church or sing when the whole comshymunity does so when many participate in religion~ festivals emotions that lie dormant in the heart are naturally roused and one member helps every other member

In dealing with the social aspect of religion due consideration should be given to festivals like Ashtabhandan and AraiJya Shashthi and Vijiiya DaSmi Ashtabhandan is a social institution that is intended to promote the growth of genuine love and affecshytion between brothers and sisters V ijiiya Dafmi is the tenth day of the waxing moon of Octoper and the purpose of its rituals is to promote reunion and reconciliation obeisance to superiors lov~ and- embrace to equals and blessings to juniors If there are quarrels they are made up on this day AraiJya Shashthi might be called the picnic festival On this day women go in parties outside the village to a banyan tree in the neighbouring jungle and hold a sort of picl)ic as a part of the function The sons-in-law are invited and entertained with food and new clothes Such indigenous festivals that emphasize healthy social relationships deserve to be considered for adaptation and inclusion ip the Christian calendar

THE EcoNoMic-AsPEcT OF FEsTIVALs Communisms one-sided emphasis on the economic and material aspect of life is a great danger to the Church However communism has taught the Church a lesson that she forgot to learn from our Master He fed the five thousand and told His disciples give ye them to eat In these days when labour awl capital are tending to divide into two great camps of mutual lnmity the Church should take advantage of opportunities to bring about a reconciliation between labour and capital One of these ways is to organize festivals to reconcile the parties The sacredness of labour mans stewardship of the soil Gods mercy and grace and His wonderful providence to man all these and a score of other important doctrines are emphasized in the agrishycultural festivals The trouble about them is that they are full of magic and ypeQifying myths and legends

114

The followlng ate sortle important festivals of this kfud -1 Akshayya Trtiyii This occurs in the month of VaiSiikha

or May-June Tradesmen begin theU year this day especially when they want to start a new venture As an advertisement they give sweets and sea~onal fruits as presents to customers

2 Ayutha Puja All those who work with tools set them apart and offer worship to their patron deity ViSvakarmii It is the artisans holiday Women too do not cook on this day fried rice and confectionery are suqstituted for meals

3 Poizgal especially Miittu Poizgal is an agricultural festival The boiling of milk and sugared rice is only a magical way of insuring plenty and prosperity

Agricultural and labour festivals have great religious value because they help religion to invade every sphere of human activity They help us to see that earth is crammed with haven and that trust in God our Creator and faith in His providence is a fundamental necessity for our very living The joy of reaping the harvest should be linked to a religious festival and be transshyformed into a joyous thankoffering festival as is done now in many churches middot

THE HrNnu CALENDAR

The Hindu calendar was adjusted to the ancient Hindu way of life-a life of agriculture The weather was another factor that was taken into consideration But in modem days when we have air-conditioned third class coaches in railway trains we canshynot and need not follow the Hindu calendar strictly However the principles should be studied and all non-Christian factors should be eschewed All Hindu festivals are movable because they depend upon the apparent journey of the sun the star conshystellations the phases of the moon and its relative position to other bodies On account of a pantheistic theology the sun moon and stars are objects of worship for Hindus So they are given primary importance In the Christian calendar such can never be the case But at certain seasons the Indian farmer is extremely busy while at other seasons he has little or nothing to do If the Church does not fill the idle moments of the farmer the devil has plenty of means and ways to poundill them Evangelistic campaigns membership crusades financial appeals that require long and steady work should be fixed at this time Generally speaking our policy should be to gear consistently the Christian festivals into the recurring changes of weather occupation and the energy as well as the leisure of th~ population

ALTERNATIVES BEFORE THE CHtJRCH

Such in brief are some of the features of Hindu festivals What is the Church to do with them Three alternatives at least lie before us -

115

1 middotTo exclude- completely any _trace of Hinduism in festivals

2 To take some festivals of the Church from the West and observe them in ways which are typcally Indian

3 To take some Hindu festivals purge them of nonshyChristian elements and give them Christian mean-ing and content middot

Let us examine each of these Tomiddot exclude completely any trace of Hindu culture This has been more or less the policy of the early Church _leaders In their anxiety to be uncomproshymisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their favpur However from the point ofmiddot religious experience the Indian Christian who has not some festival or other like the Hindu is deprived of something which is his birthright Indian Davids can slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the brook than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian content This would mean inventing new festivals which would suit the temperament of the people and their practices The following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals shyprocessiqns singing bands ablutions community gathershymgs corpor~te undertakings for some special causes pilgrimshyages melas conventions vigils fasts continuous reading aloud of fhe Scriptures offerings at a shrine use of flowers in a special way use of kathas or kaletchepams

However a note of caution must be sounded Our Masters religion is a universal religion It exalts above national needs the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities So if India is not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World Christian Church it should not give up its connection with the World Church That is why we cannot change the date of Easter or Christmas There must be something that is common in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughshyout the world So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals our aim should bull be only to enrich olir religious experience -

The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India If the Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals

The second alternative is to take some festivals of themiddot Church and observe them in typically Indian ways For instance we can observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman Qatholics) during the season of Lent One or more of the twelve practices mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great festivals viz Christmas Good Friday Easter Day and Whit

116

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

When we study the evolution of festivals we find that some are magical in character or at the best originated in nature or vegetation myths During centuries of evolution they have been _transformed and in many cases new ceremonies have been grafted on to old There is nothing new fu this for the Church In the past the Church has taken non-Christian festivals and baptized them with Christian names given them Christian meanings and included them in the Christian calendar

In the middotfestivals connected with sowing and reaping there are quite a number of magical elements But agricultural festivals should not be discarded just because some elements in them are unworthy Religion should pervade every aspect of life and consecrate it for the glory of God If the Church does not care to exercise this important function of religion secularism and materialism will invade So the better way will be to take over the agricultural cults purge them of all linworthy elements and give them good Christian concepts Instead of the unwholeshysome myths the Christian doctrine of God as the supreme giver of life and man as the steward responsible to his Maker for all that he possesses should be taught - From the point of view of theology this is one of the most important features of festivals Feasts and festivals enable religion to pervade every aspect (secular social or private) of human life Church Histltgtry and Theology can be taught in a very elementary but nevertheless unforgettable way by the wholesome use of festivals directed and co~trolled by the Church

THEmiddot PsYCHOLOGY OF Hrnnu FESTIVALS

Our Master compared His religion to a wedding feast and so showed that there is no greater merit in that type of asceticism which makes suppression of the flesh an end in itself Most of the festivals in Hinduism are occasions for joy Any institution that helps people to be cheerful and happy has a rightful place in bur religion It is very right and proper that our days of joy and merriment should be consecrated to God and integrated with religion Such are festivals like Divali and the Pmigal But there are other festivals which are connected with regulating or controlling the natural appetites of man The popular faith of Hinduism is that piety and devotion are strengthened by fastings vigils worship and ablutions It also recommendsmiddot gifts to holy persons practice of austerities and physical hardships for the benefit of the spirit within So we find that there are a number of festivals that recommend these For instance fastiilg is the rule during Vaikuntha Ekiidasi people are enjoined to keep a vigil throughout the night of Sivtiitri The principles undershylying such festivals deserve our consideration and careful study The Roman Catholic Church advocates fastings and vigils and according to certain texts our Lord made the statement this kind (of demons) can eomeforth by nothing but by prayer and fastingmiddot~

112 IB

A large number of Protestants have given up the practice of vigils and fastings because when ~ey are enforced in_ a mechanical way (as they would be if a date 1s fixed on the calendar and everyone everywhere is asked to fast) they become somewhat formal So also is alms-giving Our Master told us definitely Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them othershywise ye have no reward of your Father who is in heaven Howshyever since the cultural background is helpful the Church leaders with great caution may reinforce the practice of vigils fastirigs and ahns-giving middot

So fasting vigil and alms-giving oil certain days especially set apart by the Church have to be considered as aids to worship As Evelyn Underhill points out

It is surely mere arrogance to insist that with angels and archangels we laud and magnify the Holy N arne whilst disdaining the shaggy ~mpanions who come with us to the altar of faith having alieady ind~ed discerned that altar in a darkness which we have left behind and given costly offerings to the unknown God whom middot we coldly_ serve The primitive sensitive to the mysterious quality of life worshipping by gift and gesture and devising ritual patterns whereby all the faculties of his nature and all the members of his group can be united in common action towards God still remains _a better model for human worship than the speculative philosopher or the solitary quietist for he accepts his situation humbly instead of trying to retreat from it (Worship p 21) Whether we like it or not we are body and mind only when our body is given a chance to participate in such things as vigils and fasts will our worship experience be complete

THE SOCIAL AsPECT oF FEsnv ALS

Religion is an ambivalent affaiJ It is an individual as well as a social phenomenon In the past centuries the Protestant churches as a whole and in a general way emphasized the individual aspect of religion It ismiddot only recently that more and more emphasis is being laid on the social nature of religion Feasts festivals and fairs form a part of the indigenous technique

to produce a middotcorporate religioUs experience in the community Social experience of religion is a natural and innate craving put in the heart of man by his Creator and feasts and festivals provide a congeilial atmosphere for such a social expression~ Let tis take as an instance the car festival at Puri in Orissa A hundred thousand or more pilgrims flock tomiddot this small town Every year three Rathas or cars_ are constructed anew for the threemiddot deities The one draped in blue cloth is for J aganath the one in red for Subhadra and the one in white for Balariimari middotEach onemiddot is adorned with flags floral wreaths and festoons They are middot dragged over the broad path with thick ropes by pilgrims of both sexes and of all stations_ in life The Raja of Puri sweeps the road before the car A replica of the same can be seen at

113

Riimeswaraxn M~durai Conjeevaraxn irunelveli etc Here is an exa~ple of a social expression of religion which can be a matter of careful study Whether we like it or not sqci~ plJenomena condition individual feelings and emotions So if we have projects to work out (as for instance evangelism) it is much easier to accomplish it by organizing it around a yearly festival Of course there are very grave disadvantages FUst and foremost these outbursts of activity are not steady Secondly they are not based upon reason Thirdly there are likely to be reactions In spite of all these shortcomings the Church leaders as wise stewards ought to devise means and ways of making use of feasts and festivals by incorporating them in the Christian calendar Thus it is much easier to participate in evangelistic work when everyone is doing it on a specific day Similarly it is much easier to fast or go to Church or sing when the whole comshymunity does so when many participate in religion~ festivals emotions that lie dormant in the heart are naturally roused and one member helps every other member

In dealing with the social aspect of religion due consideration should be given to festivals like Ashtabhandan and AraiJya Shashthi and Vijiiya DaSmi Ashtabhandan is a social institution that is intended to promote the growth of genuine love and affecshytion between brothers and sisters V ijiiya Dafmi is the tenth day of the waxing moon of Octoper and the purpose of its rituals is to promote reunion and reconciliation obeisance to superiors lov~ and- embrace to equals and blessings to juniors If there are quarrels they are made up on this day AraiJya Shashthi might be called the picnic festival On this day women go in parties outside the village to a banyan tree in the neighbouring jungle and hold a sort of picl)ic as a part of the function The sons-in-law are invited and entertained with food and new clothes Such indigenous festivals that emphasize healthy social relationships deserve to be considered for adaptation and inclusion ip the Christian calendar

THE EcoNoMic-AsPEcT OF FEsTIVALs Communisms one-sided emphasis on the economic and material aspect of life is a great danger to the Church However communism has taught the Church a lesson that she forgot to learn from our Master He fed the five thousand and told His disciples give ye them to eat In these days when labour awl capital are tending to divide into two great camps of mutual lnmity the Church should take advantage of opportunities to bring about a reconciliation between labour and capital One of these ways is to organize festivals to reconcile the parties The sacredness of labour mans stewardship of the soil Gods mercy and grace and His wonderful providence to man all these and a score of other important doctrines are emphasized in the agrishycultural festivals The trouble about them is that they are full of magic and ypeQifying myths and legends

114

The followlng ate sortle important festivals of this kfud -1 Akshayya Trtiyii This occurs in the month of VaiSiikha

or May-June Tradesmen begin theU year this day especially when they want to start a new venture As an advertisement they give sweets and sea~onal fruits as presents to customers

2 Ayutha Puja All those who work with tools set them apart and offer worship to their patron deity ViSvakarmii It is the artisans holiday Women too do not cook on this day fried rice and confectionery are suqstituted for meals

3 Poizgal especially Miittu Poizgal is an agricultural festival The boiling of milk and sugared rice is only a magical way of insuring plenty and prosperity

Agricultural and labour festivals have great religious value because they help religion to invade every sphere of human activity They help us to see that earth is crammed with haven and that trust in God our Creator and faith in His providence is a fundamental necessity for our very living The joy of reaping the harvest should be linked to a religious festival and be transshyformed into a joyous thankoffering festival as is done now in many churches middot

THE HrNnu CALENDAR

The Hindu calendar was adjusted to the ancient Hindu way of life-a life of agriculture The weather was another factor that was taken into consideration But in modem days when we have air-conditioned third class coaches in railway trains we canshynot and need not follow the Hindu calendar strictly However the principles should be studied and all non-Christian factors should be eschewed All Hindu festivals are movable because they depend upon the apparent journey of the sun the star conshystellations the phases of the moon and its relative position to other bodies On account of a pantheistic theology the sun moon and stars are objects of worship for Hindus So they are given primary importance In the Christian calendar such can never be the case But at certain seasons the Indian farmer is extremely busy while at other seasons he has little or nothing to do If the Church does not fill the idle moments of the farmer the devil has plenty of means and ways to poundill them Evangelistic campaigns membership crusades financial appeals that require long and steady work should be fixed at this time Generally speaking our policy should be to gear consistently the Christian festivals into the recurring changes of weather occupation and the energy as well as the leisure of th~ population

ALTERNATIVES BEFORE THE CHtJRCH

Such in brief are some of the features of Hindu festivals What is the Church to do with them Three alternatives at least lie before us -

115

1 middotTo exclude- completely any _trace of Hinduism in festivals

2 To take some festivals of the Church from the West and observe them in ways which are typcally Indian

3 To take some Hindu festivals purge them of nonshyChristian elements and give them Christian mean-ing and content middot

Let us examine each of these Tomiddot exclude completely any trace of Hindu culture This has been more or less the policy of the early Church _leaders In their anxiety to be uncomproshymisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their favpur However from the point ofmiddot religious experience the Indian Christian who has not some festival or other like the Hindu is deprived of something which is his birthright Indian Davids can slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the brook than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian content This would mean inventing new festivals which would suit the temperament of the people and their practices The following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals shyprocessiqns singing bands ablutions community gathershymgs corpor~te undertakings for some special causes pilgrimshyages melas conventions vigils fasts continuous reading aloud of fhe Scriptures offerings at a shrine use of flowers in a special way use of kathas or kaletchepams

However a note of caution must be sounded Our Masters religion is a universal religion It exalts above national needs the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities So if India is not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World Christian Church it should not give up its connection with the World Church That is why we cannot change the date of Easter or Christmas There must be something that is common in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughshyout the world So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals our aim should bull be only to enrich olir religious experience -

The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India If the Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals

The second alternative is to take some festivals of themiddot Church and observe them in typically Indian ways For instance we can observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman Qatholics) during the season of Lent One or more of the twelve practices mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great festivals viz Christmas Good Friday Easter Day and Whit

116

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

A large number of Protestants have given up the practice of vigils and fastings because when ~ey are enforced in_ a mechanical way (as they would be if a date 1s fixed on the calendar and everyone everywhere is asked to fast) they become somewhat formal So also is alms-giving Our Master told us definitely Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them othershywise ye have no reward of your Father who is in heaven Howshyever since the cultural background is helpful the Church leaders with great caution may reinforce the practice of vigils fastirigs and ahns-giving middot

So fasting vigil and alms-giving oil certain days especially set apart by the Church have to be considered as aids to worship As Evelyn Underhill points out

It is surely mere arrogance to insist that with angels and archangels we laud and magnify the Holy N arne whilst disdaining the shaggy ~mpanions who come with us to the altar of faith having alieady ind~ed discerned that altar in a darkness which we have left behind and given costly offerings to the unknown God whom middot we coldly_ serve The primitive sensitive to the mysterious quality of life worshipping by gift and gesture and devising ritual patterns whereby all the faculties of his nature and all the members of his group can be united in common action towards God still remains _a better model for human worship than the speculative philosopher or the solitary quietist for he accepts his situation humbly instead of trying to retreat from it (Worship p 21) Whether we like it or not we are body and mind only when our body is given a chance to participate in such things as vigils and fasts will our worship experience be complete

THE SOCIAL AsPECT oF FEsnv ALS

Religion is an ambivalent affaiJ It is an individual as well as a social phenomenon In the past centuries the Protestant churches as a whole and in a general way emphasized the individual aspect of religion It ismiddot only recently that more and more emphasis is being laid on the social nature of religion Feasts festivals and fairs form a part of the indigenous technique

to produce a middotcorporate religioUs experience in the community Social experience of religion is a natural and innate craving put in the heart of man by his Creator and feasts and festivals provide a congeilial atmosphere for such a social expression~ Let tis take as an instance the car festival at Puri in Orissa A hundred thousand or more pilgrims flock tomiddot this small town Every year three Rathas or cars_ are constructed anew for the threemiddot deities The one draped in blue cloth is for J aganath the one in red for Subhadra and the one in white for Balariimari middotEach onemiddot is adorned with flags floral wreaths and festoons They are middot dragged over the broad path with thick ropes by pilgrims of both sexes and of all stations_ in life The Raja of Puri sweeps the road before the car A replica of the same can be seen at

113

Riimeswaraxn M~durai Conjeevaraxn irunelveli etc Here is an exa~ple of a social expression of religion which can be a matter of careful study Whether we like it or not sqci~ plJenomena condition individual feelings and emotions So if we have projects to work out (as for instance evangelism) it is much easier to accomplish it by organizing it around a yearly festival Of course there are very grave disadvantages FUst and foremost these outbursts of activity are not steady Secondly they are not based upon reason Thirdly there are likely to be reactions In spite of all these shortcomings the Church leaders as wise stewards ought to devise means and ways of making use of feasts and festivals by incorporating them in the Christian calendar Thus it is much easier to participate in evangelistic work when everyone is doing it on a specific day Similarly it is much easier to fast or go to Church or sing when the whole comshymunity does so when many participate in religion~ festivals emotions that lie dormant in the heart are naturally roused and one member helps every other member

In dealing with the social aspect of religion due consideration should be given to festivals like Ashtabhandan and AraiJya Shashthi and Vijiiya DaSmi Ashtabhandan is a social institution that is intended to promote the growth of genuine love and affecshytion between brothers and sisters V ijiiya Dafmi is the tenth day of the waxing moon of Octoper and the purpose of its rituals is to promote reunion and reconciliation obeisance to superiors lov~ and- embrace to equals and blessings to juniors If there are quarrels they are made up on this day AraiJya Shashthi might be called the picnic festival On this day women go in parties outside the village to a banyan tree in the neighbouring jungle and hold a sort of picl)ic as a part of the function The sons-in-law are invited and entertained with food and new clothes Such indigenous festivals that emphasize healthy social relationships deserve to be considered for adaptation and inclusion ip the Christian calendar

THE EcoNoMic-AsPEcT OF FEsTIVALs Communisms one-sided emphasis on the economic and material aspect of life is a great danger to the Church However communism has taught the Church a lesson that she forgot to learn from our Master He fed the five thousand and told His disciples give ye them to eat In these days when labour awl capital are tending to divide into two great camps of mutual lnmity the Church should take advantage of opportunities to bring about a reconciliation between labour and capital One of these ways is to organize festivals to reconcile the parties The sacredness of labour mans stewardship of the soil Gods mercy and grace and His wonderful providence to man all these and a score of other important doctrines are emphasized in the agrishycultural festivals The trouble about them is that they are full of magic and ypeQifying myths and legends

114

The followlng ate sortle important festivals of this kfud -1 Akshayya Trtiyii This occurs in the month of VaiSiikha

or May-June Tradesmen begin theU year this day especially when they want to start a new venture As an advertisement they give sweets and sea~onal fruits as presents to customers

2 Ayutha Puja All those who work with tools set them apart and offer worship to their patron deity ViSvakarmii It is the artisans holiday Women too do not cook on this day fried rice and confectionery are suqstituted for meals

3 Poizgal especially Miittu Poizgal is an agricultural festival The boiling of milk and sugared rice is only a magical way of insuring plenty and prosperity

Agricultural and labour festivals have great religious value because they help religion to invade every sphere of human activity They help us to see that earth is crammed with haven and that trust in God our Creator and faith in His providence is a fundamental necessity for our very living The joy of reaping the harvest should be linked to a religious festival and be transshyformed into a joyous thankoffering festival as is done now in many churches middot

THE HrNnu CALENDAR

The Hindu calendar was adjusted to the ancient Hindu way of life-a life of agriculture The weather was another factor that was taken into consideration But in modem days when we have air-conditioned third class coaches in railway trains we canshynot and need not follow the Hindu calendar strictly However the principles should be studied and all non-Christian factors should be eschewed All Hindu festivals are movable because they depend upon the apparent journey of the sun the star conshystellations the phases of the moon and its relative position to other bodies On account of a pantheistic theology the sun moon and stars are objects of worship for Hindus So they are given primary importance In the Christian calendar such can never be the case But at certain seasons the Indian farmer is extremely busy while at other seasons he has little or nothing to do If the Church does not fill the idle moments of the farmer the devil has plenty of means and ways to poundill them Evangelistic campaigns membership crusades financial appeals that require long and steady work should be fixed at this time Generally speaking our policy should be to gear consistently the Christian festivals into the recurring changes of weather occupation and the energy as well as the leisure of th~ population

ALTERNATIVES BEFORE THE CHtJRCH

Such in brief are some of the features of Hindu festivals What is the Church to do with them Three alternatives at least lie before us -

115

1 middotTo exclude- completely any _trace of Hinduism in festivals

2 To take some festivals of the Church from the West and observe them in ways which are typcally Indian

3 To take some Hindu festivals purge them of nonshyChristian elements and give them Christian mean-ing and content middot

Let us examine each of these Tomiddot exclude completely any trace of Hindu culture This has been more or less the policy of the early Church _leaders In their anxiety to be uncomproshymisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their favpur However from the point ofmiddot religious experience the Indian Christian who has not some festival or other like the Hindu is deprived of something which is his birthright Indian Davids can slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the brook than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian content This would mean inventing new festivals which would suit the temperament of the people and their practices The following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals shyprocessiqns singing bands ablutions community gathershymgs corpor~te undertakings for some special causes pilgrimshyages melas conventions vigils fasts continuous reading aloud of fhe Scriptures offerings at a shrine use of flowers in a special way use of kathas or kaletchepams

However a note of caution must be sounded Our Masters religion is a universal religion It exalts above national needs the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities So if India is not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World Christian Church it should not give up its connection with the World Church That is why we cannot change the date of Easter or Christmas There must be something that is common in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughshyout the world So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals our aim should bull be only to enrich olir religious experience -

The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India If the Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals

The second alternative is to take some festivals of themiddot Church and observe them in typically Indian ways For instance we can observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman Qatholics) during the season of Lent One or more of the twelve practices mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great festivals viz Christmas Good Friday Easter Day and Whit

116

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Riimeswaraxn M~durai Conjeevaraxn irunelveli etc Here is an exa~ple of a social expression of religion which can be a matter of careful study Whether we like it or not sqci~ plJenomena condition individual feelings and emotions So if we have projects to work out (as for instance evangelism) it is much easier to accomplish it by organizing it around a yearly festival Of course there are very grave disadvantages FUst and foremost these outbursts of activity are not steady Secondly they are not based upon reason Thirdly there are likely to be reactions In spite of all these shortcomings the Church leaders as wise stewards ought to devise means and ways of making use of feasts and festivals by incorporating them in the Christian calendar Thus it is much easier to participate in evangelistic work when everyone is doing it on a specific day Similarly it is much easier to fast or go to Church or sing when the whole comshymunity does so when many participate in religion~ festivals emotions that lie dormant in the heart are naturally roused and one member helps every other member

In dealing with the social aspect of religion due consideration should be given to festivals like Ashtabhandan and AraiJya Shashthi and Vijiiya DaSmi Ashtabhandan is a social institution that is intended to promote the growth of genuine love and affecshytion between brothers and sisters V ijiiya Dafmi is the tenth day of the waxing moon of Octoper and the purpose of its rituals is to promote reunion and reconciliation obeisance to superiors lov~ and- embrace to equals and blessings to juniors If there are quarrels they are made up on this day AraiJya Shashthi might be called the picnic festival On this day women go in parties outside the village to a banyan tree in the neighbouring jungle and hold a sort of picl)ic as a part of the function The sons-in-law are invited and entertained with food and new clothes Such indigenous festivals that emphasize healthy social relationships deserve to be considered for adaptation and inclusion ip the Christian calendar

THE EcoNoMic-AsPEcT OF FEsTIVALs Communisms one-sided emphasis on the economic and material aspect of life is a great danger to the Church However communism has taught the Church a lesson that she forgot to learn from our Master He fed the five thousand and told His disciples give ye them to eat In these days when labour awl capital are tending to divide into two great camps of mutual lnmity the Church should take advantage of opportunities to bring about a reconciliation between labour and capital One of these ways is to organize festivals to reconcile the parties The sacredness of labour mans stewardship of the soil Gods mercy and grace and His wonderful providence to man all these and a score of other important doctrines are emphasized in the agrishycultural festivals The trouble about them is that they are full of magic and ypeQifying myths and legends

114

The followlng ate sortle important festivals of this kfud -1 Akshayya Trtiyii This occurs in the month of VaiSiikha

or May-June Tradesmen begin theU year this day especially when they want to start a new venture As an advertisement they give sweets and sea~onal fruits as presents to customers

2 Ayutha Puja All those who work with tools set them apart and offer worship to their patron deity ViSvakarmii It is the artisans holiday Women too do not cook on this day fried rice and confectionery are suqstituted for meals

3 Poizgal especially Miittu Poizgal is an agricultural festival The boiling of milk and sugared rice is only a magical way of insuring plenty and prosperity

Agricultural and labour festivals have great religious value because they help religion to invade every sphere of human activity They help us to see that earth is crammed with haven and that trust in God our Creator and faith in His providence is a fundamental necessity for our very living The joy of reaping the harvest should be linked to a religious festival and be transshyformed into a joyous thankoffering festival as is done now in many churches middot

THE HrNnu CALENDAR

The Hindu calendar was adjusted to the ancient Hindu way of life-a life of agriculture The weather was another factor that was taken into consideration But in modem days when we have air-conditioned third class coaches in railway trains we canshynot and need not follow the Hindu calendar strictly However the principles should be studied and all non-Christian factors should be eschewed All Hindu festivals are movable because they depend upon the apparent journey of the sun the star conshystellations the phases of the moon and its relative position to other bodies On account of a pantheistic theology the sun moon and stars are objects of worship for Hindus So they are given primary importance In the Christian calendar such can never be the case But at certain seasons the Indian farmer is extremely busy while at other seasons he has little or nothing to do If the Church does not fill the idle moments of the farmer the devil has plenty of means and ways to poundill them Evangelistic campaigns membership crusades financial appeals that require long and steady work should be fixed at this time Generally speaking our policy should be to gear consistently the Christian festivals into the recurring changes of weather occupation and the energy as well as the leisure of th~ population

ALTERNATIVES BEFORE THE CHtJRCH

Such in brief are some of the features of Hindu festivals What is the Church to do with them Three alternatives at least lie before us -

115

1 middotTo exclude- completely any _trace of Hinduism in festivals

2 To take some festivals of the Church from the West and observe them in ways which are typcally Indian

3 To take some Hindu festivals purge them of nonshyChristian elements and give them Christian mean-ing and content middot

Let us examine each of these Tomiddot exclude completely any trace of Hindu culture This has been more or less the policy of the early Church _leaders In their anxiety to be uncomproshymisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their favpur However from the point ofmiddot religious experience the Indian Christian who has not some festival or other like the Hindu is deprived of something which is his birthright Indian Davids can slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the brook than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian content This would mean inventing new festivals which would suit the temperament of the people and their practices The following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals shyprocessiqns singing bands ablutions community gathershymgs corpor~te undertakings for some special causes pilgrimshyages melas conventions vigils fasts continuous reading aloud of fhe Scriptures offerings at a shrine use of flowers in a special way use of kathas or kaletchepams

However a note of caution must be sounded Our Masters religion is a universal religion It exalts above national needs the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities So if India is not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World Christian Church it should not give up its connection with the World Church That is why we cannot change the date of Easter or Christmas There must be something that is common in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughshyout the world So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals our aim should bull be only to enrich olir religious experience -

The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India If the Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals

The second alternative is to take some festivals of themiddot Church and observe them in typically Indian ways For instance we can observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman Qatholics) during the season of Lent One or more of the twelve practices mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great festivals viz Christmas Good Friday Easter Day and Whit

116

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

The followlng ate sortle important festivals of this kfud -1 Akshayya Trtiyii This occurs in the month of VaiSiikha

or May-June Tradesmen begin theU year this day especially when they want to start a new venture As an advertisement they give sweets and sea~onal fruits as presents to customers

2 Ayutha Puja All those who work with tools set them apart and offer worship to their patron deity ViSvakarmii It is the artisans holiday Women too do not cook on this day fried rice and confectionery are suqstituted for meals

3 Poizgal especially Miittu Poizgal is an agricultural festival The boiling of milk and sugared rice is only a magical way of insuring plenty and prosperity

Agricultural and labour festivals have great religious value because they help religion to invade every sphere of human activity They help us to see that earth is crammed with haven and that trust in God our Creator and faith in His providence is a fundamental necessity for our very living The joy of reaping the harvest should be linked to a religious festival and be transshyformed into a joyous thankoffering festival as is done now in many churches middot

THE HrNnu CALENDAR

The Hindu calendar was adjusted to the ancient Hindu way of life-a life of agriculture The weather was another factor that was taken into consideration But in modem days when we have air-conditioned third class coaches in railway trains we canshynot and need not follow the Hindu calendar strictly However the principles should be studied and all non-Christian factors should be eschewed All Hindu festivals are movable because they depend upon the apparent journey of the sun the star conshystellations the phases of the moon and its relative position to other bodies On account of a pantheistic theology the sun moon and stars are objects of worship for Hindus So they are given primary importance In the Christian calendar such can never be the case But at certain seasons the Indian farmer is extremely busy while at other seasons he has little or nothing to do If the Church does not fill the idle moments of the farmer the devil has plenty of means and ways to poundill them Evangelistic campaigns membership crusades financial appeals that require long and steady work should be fixed at this time Generally speaking our policy should be to gear consistently the Christian festivals into the recurring changes of weather occupation and the energy as well as the leisure of th~ population

ALTERNATIVES BEFORE THE CHtJRCH

Such in brief are some of the features of Hindu festivals What is the Church to do with them Three alternatives at least lie before us -

115

1 middotTo exclude- completely any _trace of Hinduism in festivals

2 To take some festivals of the Church from the West and observe them in ways which are typcally Indian

3 To take some Hindu festivals purge them of nonshyChristian elements and give them Christian mean-ing and content middot

Let us examine each of these Tomiddot exclude completely any trace of Hindu culture This has been more or less the policy of the early Church _leaders In their anxiety to be uncomproshymisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their favpur However from the point ofmiddot religious experience the Indian Christian who has not some festival or other like the Hindu is deprived of something which is his birthright Indian Davids can slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the brook than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian content This would mean inventing new festivals which would suit the temperament of the people and their practices The following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals shyprocessiqns singing bands ablutions community gathershymgs corpor~te undertakings for some special causes pilgrimshyages melas conventions vigils fasts continuous reading aloud of fhe Scriptures offerings at a shrine use of flowers in a special way use of kathas or kaletchepams

However a note of caution must be sounded Our Masters religion is a universal religion It exalts above national needs the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities So if India is not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World Christian Church it should not give up its connection with the World Church That is why we cannot change the date of Easter or Christmas There must be something that is common in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughshyout the world So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals our aim should bull be only to enrich olir religious experience -

The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India If the Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals

The second alternative is to take some festivals of themiddot Church and observe them in typically Indian ways For instance we can observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman Qatholics) during the season of Lent One or more of the twelve practices mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great festivals viz Christmas Good Friday Easter Day and Whit

116

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

1 middotTo exclude- completely any _trace of Hinduism in festivals

2 To take some festivals of the Church from the West and observe them in ways which are typcally Indian

3 To take some Hindu festivals purge them of nonshyChristian elements and give them Christian mean-ing and content middot

Let us examine each of these Tomiddot exclude completely any trace of Hindu culture This has been more or less the policy of the early Church _leaders In their anxiety to be uncomproshymisingly pure in their doctrine and Christian conduct they took a very hostile attitude and there is much to be said in their favpur However from the point ofmiddot religious experience the Indian Christian who has not some festival or other like the Hindu is deprived of something which is his birthright Indian Davids can slay much better the Goliaths of irreligion when they are equipped with slings and smooth stones taken from the brook than when they are clad in the foreign armour of Saul Indian Christianity will be expressed best when the Hindu culture is purged of its non-Christian elements and given Christian content This would mean inventing new festivals which would suit the temperament of the people and their practices The following are some of the usual features of Hindu festivals shyprocessiqns singing bands ablutions community gathershymgs corpor~te undertakings for some special causes pilgrimshyages melas conventions vigils fasts continuous reading aloud of fhe Scriptures offerings at a shrine use of flowers in a special way use of kathas or kaletchepams

However a note of caution must be sounded Our Masters religion is a universal religion It exalts above national needs the claims of the brotherhood of all nationalities So if India is not to become a dead branch in the growing tree of the World Christian Church it should not give up its connection with the World Church That is why we cannot change the date of Easter or Christmas There must be something that is common in the observance of at least the most important festivals throughshyout the world So if we are to invent and introduce new festivals our aim should bull be only to enrich olir religious experience -

The mpnths of May and June are specially suitable for gatherings at nigpt in the open air in most parts of India If the Church is to introduce new festivals at that time most of the elements mentioned abo~e could be integrated into those festivals

The second alternative is to take some festivals of themiddot Church and observe them in typically Indian ways For instance we can observe feasts and hold vigils (as is done often by the Roman Qatholics) during the season of Lent One or more of the twelve practices mentioned can be easily inserted in any of our great festivals viz Christmas Good Friday Easter Day and Whit

116

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Sunday Care of course must be taken to see that the camel of cultural practice does not enter into the tent and drive away the master ie the spirit of religion from the tent

The third alternative is to take some Hindu festivals purge theni of non-Christian elernents and give them Christian meaning or content If this method is adopted the present Christian calendar will remain as it is and the Indian Church will follow with the rest of the world the regular Christian calendar but in addition to it it will observe a few Hindu festivals after purifying and transforming them Here we are on delicate ground and the utmost caution should be observed For instance Divali might be transformed into the festival of Christ the Light of the world suitable collects might be written and appropriate candle lightshying rituals might be inserted A Church service where this ritual takes place with an appropriate sermon will be an enrichshyment of our Christian experience Besides this we might have processions singing bands katha etc middot

Ayutha Puja is another festival that is pregnant with possibishylities The Hfudu worships his tools But middotthe Church can use this as an occasion for teaching the sacredness of work and for consecrating tools as well as hands and heart to thehonour and glory of God The importance lies in teaching that man receives from God everything he has his tools as well as his skill middot Special services have to be worked out for this

Poizgal is another festival which can be transformed into a festival of first fruits That is exactly what Hindus are doing But while they worship the sun we bow down with-reverence and heartily thank our God from whom all blessings flow middot These three alternatives need not be hard and fast watershy

tight compartments Through the ages slowly but surely cultural practices are bound to get through the process of spiritual osmosis But it is the task of our leaders to see that the true religion of our Master is not diluted or compromised

We live in India Our background is predominantly Hindu This environment we cannot eradicate but we can change it we cannot eradicate the pantheistic and non-Christian influences of our middotculture but we can bring theni under the orbit of the Church and make our weaknesses by His grace a means middotof grace for the glory of His holy name

117

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

introduction

indian Christian theology has a rich varied and ancient history dating back to the apostle thomas according to legend many hindus have thought acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths ram mohan roy Keshab Chandra sen nehemiah goreh and sri ramakrishna are among the earliest hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective in the early twentieth century sadhu sundar singh famously characterised by the anglican priest Charles andrews drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition however through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics Very rarely has conventional indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse manilal C Parekh as we shall discover is an unusual and extreme example however the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken indian theology in a new direction By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own However it is yet to be sufficiently self-critical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots

the context of the emergence of indian liberation theology or Dalit theology is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church most notably in latin america however the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough but is heading in the right direction to be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers ndash the formation of the liberal democratic nation state ndash is rarely mentioned or challenged the formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology herein lays the problem yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view not uncritically the nation state In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor another invention of the statistic colonisers ndash the Vedic reformers

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 1 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism2

Dalit theologian Peniel rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline1 he brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churchesrsquo responses to the Dalit situation First he argues there is a lsquolacuna between theology and actionrsquo2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of indian Christians second Dalit Christology and soteriology popularly expressed by the exodus motif in liberation theologies has proved inadequate for Dalit theology Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor ndash passive servant or violent revolutionary the motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest3 the exodus motif also supports the unhelpful lsquopolemic binarismrsquo4 that is rajkumarrsquos third criticism he writes of a lsquofailure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and ldquonon-Dalitsrdquorsquo5 in the need for liberation Fourth Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a lsquoperformative and embodied hermeneutics to take placersquo6 in other words the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them

this book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that rajkumar makes that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against hindu or other sources this book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before during and after the British administrationrsquos control anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free rajkumar in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up7 this book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology

Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary indian context an understanding of

1 Peniel rajkumar Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham ashgate 2010)

2 ibid p 603 ibid pp 62ndash5 4 ibid p 64 5 ibid p 69 6 ibid p 71 7 ibid pp 145ndash67

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 2 4272011 121918 PM

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Introduction 3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance the hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology literature missiology and political ideology this is because postcolonial theology which is what indian theology must be has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony this chapter asks why the state or colony has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create leo tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding indiarsquos sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West

Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology Namely we identify mother india as the god of states the missionary god as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church and the Vedic god as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism statism and coercive violence

Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension violence and competing truth claims here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled gujarat state north india over the past decade We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be indian and Christian We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in india as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing

Chapter 4 reveals that missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist some missionaries listening carefully to high caste reformers like gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined but in a distinctively indian way We also look at roman Catholic mission by returning to present day gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression

Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse Bhimrao ramji ambedkar and mohandas Karamchand gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors Neither figure is as he would first appear according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 3 4272011 121918 PM

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism4

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by gandhi to indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkarrsquos role as one of a lsquoMoses-likersquo figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position

Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement from the 1960s to the present day along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology has shaped indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways

in Chapter 7 we see that indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movementrsquos symbology or literature While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation especially am arulraja and sathianathan Clarke there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of lsquoforeignnessrsquo

Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance this chapter as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism Instead they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of mother india more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism in taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed lsquoindianrsquo and creating new paradigms for transforming indian life

978-1-4094-2439-0 Hebdenindb 4 4272011 121918 PM

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Science in Ancient India

Subhash C KakLouisiana State University

Baton Rouge LA 70803-5901 USA

November 15 2005

In Ananya A portrait of India SR Sridhar and NK Mattoo (eds) AIA New York1997 pages 399-420

1

lsquoVedarsquo means knowledge Since we call our earliest period Vedic this is suggestive of theimportance of knowledge and science as a means of acquiring that knowledge to that periodof Indian history For quite some time scholars believed that this knowledge amounted to nomore than speculations regarding the self this is what we are still told in some schoolbookaccounts New insights in archaeology astronomy history of science and Vedic scholarshiphave shown that such a view is wrong We now know that Vedic knowledge embraced physicsmathematics astronomy logic cognition and other disciplines We find that Vedic scienceis the earliest science that has come down to us This has significant implications in ourunderstanding of the history of ideas and the evolution of early civilizations

The reconstructions of our earliest science are based not only on the Vedas but also ontheir appendicies called the Vedangas The six Vedangas deal with kalpa performance ofritual with its basis of geometry mathematics and calendrics shiksha phonetics chhandasmetrical structures nirukta etymology vyakarana grammar and jyotisha astronomy andother cyclical phenomena Then there are naturalistic descriptions in the various Vedic booksthat tell us a lot about scientific ideas of those times

Briefly the Vedic texts present a tripartite and recursive world view The universe isviewed as three regions of earth space and sky with the corresponding entities of AgniIndra and Vishve Devah (all gods) Counting separately the joining regions leads to atotal of five categories where as we see in Figure 1 water separates earth and fire and airseparates fire and ether

In Vedic ritual the three regions are assigned different fire altars Furthermore thefive categories are represented in terms of altars of five layers The great altars were builtof a thousand bricks to a variety of dimensions The discovery that the details of thealtar constructions code astronomical knowledge is a fascinating chapter in the history ofastronomy (Kak 1994a 1995ab)

1

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Vishve Devah Sky

Space

Earth

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Indra

Sound

Touch

Form

Taste

Smell

Emotion

Intellect

Mind

Prana

Body

Agni

Figure 1 From the tripartite model to five categories of analysis

In the Vedic world view the processes in the sky on earth and within the mind aretaken to be connected The Vedic rishis were aware that all descriptions of the universelead to logical paradox The one category transcending all oppositions was termed brahmanUnderstanding the nature of consciousness was of paramount importance in this view butthis did not mean that other sciences were ignored Vedic ritual was a symbolic retelling ofthis world view

Chronology

To place Vedic science in context it is necessary to have a proper understanding of thechronology of the Vedic literature There are astronomical references in the Vedas whichrecall events in the third or the fourth millennium BCE and earlier The recent discovery(eg Feuerstein 1995) that Sarasvati the preeminent river of the Rigvedic times went dryaround 1900 BCE due to tectonic upheavels implies that the Rigveda is to be dated priorto this epoch perhaps prior to 2000 BCE since the literature that immediately followedthe Rigveda does not speak of any geological catastrophe But we cannot be very preciseabout our estimates There exist traditional accounts in the Puranas that assign greaterantiquity to the Rigveda for example the Kaliyuga tradition speaks of 3100 BCE andthe Varahamihira tradition mentions 2400 BCE According to Henri-Paul Francfort (1992)of the Indo-French team that surveyed this area the Sarasvati river had ceased to be aperennial river by the third millennium BCE this supports those who argue for the olderdates But in the absence of conclusive evidence it is prudent to take the most conservativeof these dates namely 2000 BCE as the latest period to be associated with the Rigveda

The textbook accounts of the past century or so were based on the now disproven sup-position that the Rigveda is to be dated to about 1500-1000 BCE and therefore thequestion of the dates assigned to the Brahmanas Sutras and other literature remains openThe detailed chronology of the literature that followed Rigveda has not yet been workedout A chronology of this literature was attempted based solely on the internal astronomical

2

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

evidence in the important book ldquoAncient Indian Chronologyrdquo by the historian of sciencePC Sengupta in 1947 Although Senguptarsquos dates have the virtue of inner consistency theyhave neither been examined carefully by other scholars nor checked against archaeologicalevidence

This means that we can only speak in the most generalities regarding the chronology ofthe texts assign Rigveda to the third millennium BCE and earlier and the Brahmanas tothe second millennium This also implies that the archaeological finds of the Indus-Sarasvatiperiod which are coeval with Rigveda literature can be used to cross-check textual evidence

No comprehensive studies of ancient Indian science exist The textbook accounts like theone to be found in Bashamrsquos ldquoThe Wonder that was Indiardquo are hopelessly out of date Butthere are some excellent surveys of selected material The task of putting it all together intoa comprehensive whole will be a major task for historians of science

This essay presents an assortment of topics from ancient Indian science We begin withan outline of the models used in the Vedic cognitive science these models parallel thoseused in ancient Indian physics We also review mathematics astronomy grammar logic andmedicine

1 Vedic cognitive science

The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order It is assumed that there exist equivalences of variouskinds between the outer and the inner worlds It is these connections that make it possiblefor our minds to comprehend the universe It is noteworthy that the analytical methods areused both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world This allowedthe Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge Suchparadoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches ofinquiry (Kak 1986)

In the Vedic view the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world is offundamental significance Knowledge is classified in two ways the lower or dual and thehigher or unified What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxicalbut at a deeper level it has a unity The Vedic view claims that the material and the consciousare aspects of the same transcendental reality

The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophictraditions as well so that complementary approaches were paired together We have thegroups of logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika) cosmology (sankhya) and psychology(yoga) and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta) Although these philosophical schoolswere formalized in the post-Vedic age we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts

In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of IndraAshvins or Agni and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mindThe same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad andthe Bhagavad Gita this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses representingsenses which are yoked to it The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses butnext to the mind sits the true observer the self who represents a universal unity Withoutthis self no coherent behaviour is possible

3

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

The Five Levels

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the individual is represented in terms of five different sheathsor levels that enclose the individualrsquos self These levels shown in an ascending order are

bull The physical body (annamaya kosha)

bull Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha)

bull Mental sheath (manomaya kosha)

bull Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha)

bull Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha )

These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels At the highest level above theemotion sheath is the self It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellectThis is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associationswhich are influenced by the emotional state

The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana One may lookat an individual in three different levels At the lowest level is the physical body at the nexthigher level is the energy systems at work and at the next higher level are the thoughtsSince the three levels are interrelated the energy situation may be changed by inputs eitherat the physical level or at the mental level When the energy state is agitated and restlessit is characterized by rajas when it is dull and lethargic it is characterized by tamas thestate of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva

The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergenton the ground of the previous level In this theory mind is an emergent entity but thisemergence requires the presence of the self

The Structure of the Mind

The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components manas ahankarachitta buddhi and atman Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1

Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions Its perceptions shift frommoment to moment This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearingtouch sight taste and smell Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separateagent

Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective andpersonal experience

Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara their evaluation andresulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi the intellect Manas ahankara and buddhi arecollectively called the internal instruments of the mind

Next we come to chitta which is the memory bank of the mind These memories con-stitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates But chitta is not merelya passive instrument The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual orprimitive urges which creates different emotional states

4

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is calledatman the self brahman or jiva Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration ofcategories

All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual The traditions of yoga andtantra have been based on such analysis No wonder this model has continued to inspirepeople around the world to this day

2 Mathematical and physical sciences

Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which showthat the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner

Geometry and mathematics

Seidenberg by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana showed that Indiangeometry predates Greek geometry by centuries Seidenberg argues that the birth of ge-ometry and mathematics had a ritual origin For example the earth was represented by acircular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consistedof converting the circle into a square of an identical area There we see the beginnings ofgeometry

In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics Seidenberg (1978) concluded ldquoOld-Babylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babyloniaand India got it from a third source Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a dateso far back as 1700 BC Therefore I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (ie pre-1700 BC)source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras or at least forthe mathematics involved in these ritualsrdquo That was before archaeological finds disprovedthe earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium BCEit was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earliersource Now with our new knowledge Seidenbergrsquos conclusion of India being the sourceof the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the newchronology of the texts

Astronomy

Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices an astronomy ofthe third millennium BCE has been discovered (Kak 1994a 1995ab) Here the altarssymbolized different parts of the year In one ritual pebbles were placed around the altarsfor the earth the atmosphere and the sky The number of these pebbles were 21 78 and261 respectively These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year There were otherfeatures related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were awarethat the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days

The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code Togive just one simple example the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20358 which

5

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Earth Moon

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Figure 2 The Vedic planetary model

equals 261 times 78 a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers The Vedic ritual followedthe seasons hence the importance of astronomy

The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical as-tronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon This markedthe beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies

Planetary knowledge

The Vedic planetary model is given in Figure 2 The sun was taken to be midway in theskies A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demonsand the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars (Frawley 1994)

The famous myth of Vishnursquos three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligiblewhen we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury The myth appears to celebratethe first measurement of the period of Mercury (Kak 1996a) since three periods equals thenumber assigned in altar ritual to the heavens Other arguments suggest that the Vedicpeople knew the periods of the five classical planets

Writing

Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved outof the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script The Sarasvati script was perhaps the firsttrue alphabetic script The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers thedevelopment of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati river It also appears that the symbol

6

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for ldquotenrdquo in Brahmi and this occurredaround 50 BCE-50 CE (Kak 1994b)

Binary numbers

Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pin-galarsquos Chhandahshastra Pingala who lived around the early first century BCE usedbinary numbers to classify Vedic meters The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deepunderstanding of arithmetic A binary representation requires the use of only two symbolsrather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation and it has now become thebasis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers

Music

Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth McClain argues thatthe connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth Theinvariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the developmentof the earliest astronomy The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search ofsimilar invariances in the heavenly phenomena

The Samaveda where the hymns were supposed to be sung was compared to the skyApparently this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy The Vedichymns are according to a variety of meters but what purpose if any lay behind a specificchoice is unknown

Grammar

Paninirsquos grammar (6th century BCE or earlier) provides 4000 rules that describe theSanskrit of his day completely This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatestintellectual achievements of all time The great variety of language mirrors in many waysthe complexity of nature What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entiregrammar in terms of a finite number of rules Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammarof Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system From this perspectiveit anticipates the logical framework of modern computers (Kak 1987)

Medicine

There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine For example the idea of breath(prana in Sanskrit and pneuma in Greek) is central to both Jean Filliozat (1970) has arguedthat the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind the gall andthe phlegm which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine appears to be derived fromthe earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurredvia the Persian empire

These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian sciencebut also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas

7

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

3 Rhythms of life

We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the externaland the internal worlds The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets These aresometimes the luminaries in the sky or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes orboth

To the question on how can the motions of an object millions of miles away have anyinfluence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnectedIn this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directlyRather the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the pe-riodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings andplants

It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response but an internalclock governed by the genes We know this because in some mutant organisms the internalclock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis So these cyclescan be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the bodyrsquos inner ldquoplanetsrdquo In thelanguage of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the geneticinheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years thatthey must have provided for survival

The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon Itis reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendarthe ancients had discovered many of the biological periods This would include the 24-hour-50-minute circadian rhythm the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motionsof the moon the life cycles of various plants and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep thethree-week cycles of cattle and pigs and the six-month cycle of dogs

The moon (Soma) is called the ldquolord of speechrdquo (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda It is alsotaken to awaken eager thoughts Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic timesthe moon was taken to be connected with the mind

This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta the Cosmic Man hymn ofthe Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brah-mana where we have ldquothe mind is the moonrdquo Considering the fact that the relationshipsbetween the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities doubtlessthis slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon

Fire having become speech entered the mouth

Air becoming scent entered the nostrils

The sun becoming sight entered the eyes

The regions becoming hearing entered the ears

The plants becoming hairs entered the skin

The moon having become mind entered the heart

mdashAitreya Aranyaka 2424

This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels At the literal level thereis an association of the elements with various cognitive centers At another level the verseconnects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center

8

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm Air representsseasons so here the rhythm is longer The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle The regionsdenote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to theplanets The plants have daily and annual periods the hairs of the body have an annualperiod The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon

What are the seats of these cycles According to tantra the chakras of the body arethe centers of the different elements as well as cognitive capacities and rhythms related toldquointernal planetsrdquo The knowledge of these rhythms appears to have led to astrology

4 Cosmology

We have seen how the logical apparatus that was brought to bear on the outer world wasapplied to the analysis of the mind But the question remains How does inanimate mattercome to have awareness This metaphysical question was answered by postulating entitiesfor smell taste form touch and sound as in Figure 1 In the Sankhya system a total oftwenty-four such categories are assumed These categories are supposed to emerge at theend of a long chain of evolution and they may be considered to be material The breath oflife into the instruments of sight touch hearing and so on is provided by the twenty-fifthcategory which is purusha the soul

The recursive Vedic world-view requires that the universe itself go through cycles ofcreation and destruction This view became a part of the astronomical framework andultimately very long cycles of billions of years were assumed The Sankhya evolution takesthe life forms to evolve into an increasingly complex system until the end of the cycle

The categories of Sankhya operate at the level of the individual as well Life mirrorsthe entire creation cycle and cognition mirrors a life-history Surprisingly similar are themodern slogan ontogeny is phylogeny and microgeny (the cognitive process) is a speeded-up ontogeny (Brown 1994)

5 Concluding Remarks

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of Vedic science and cosmologyWe now know that measurement astronomy is to be dated to at least the third millenniumBCE which is more than a thousand years earlier than was believed only a decade ago andmathematics and geometry date to at least the beginning of the second millennium BCEIndian mythology is being interpreted in terms of its underlying astronomy orand cognitivescience We find that many Indians dates are much earlier than the corresponding dateselsewhere What does it all mean for our understanding of the Indian civilization and itsinteractions with Mesopotamia Egypt China and Greece Was Indian knowledge carriedto the other nations or do we have a case here for independent discovery in different places

Contemporary science has begun to examine Vedic theories on the nature of the ldquoselfrdquoand see if they might be of value in the search for a science of consciousness (eg Kak 1996b)Man has mastered the outer world and Vedic science formed the basis for that enterprise it

9

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

is now possible that the exploration of the inner world which is the heart of modern sciencewill also be along paths long heralded by Vedic rishis

2

In the earliest period of Indian science it is exceptional when we know the authorship of atext or an idea For example although Lagadha (c 1400 BCE) is the author of VedangaJyotisha we do not know if its astronomy was developed by him or if he merely summarizedwhat was then well known Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in theShulba Sutras of Baudhayana Apastamba and other authors which describe geometryor Pingalarsquos Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner The majorexception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical traditionstarting with Panini This tradition is a wonderful application of the scientific methodwhere the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number ofrules

With Aryabhata of Kusumapura (born 476) we enter a new phase in which it becomeseasier to trace the authorship of specific ideas But even here there remain other aspectswhich are not so well understood For example the evolution of Indian medicine is not aswell documented as that of Indian mathematics Neither do we understand well the mannerin which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and spacemdashabstract concepts that de-veloped in the scientific context just a hundred years ago The Puranas speak of countlessuniverses time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each be-coming after maturation in a separate pot a healthy baby this is how the Kaurava brothersare born There is also mention of an embryo conceived in one womb being transferred tothe womb of another woman from where it is born the transferred embryo is Balarama andthis is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki

There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Ma-habharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction According to thewell-known Sanskritist JAB van Buitenen in the accounts in Book 3 called ldquoThe Razingof Saubhardquo and ldquoThe War of the Yakshasrdquo

the aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thunderingcannon no doubt a spaceship The name of the demons is also revealing theywere Nivatakavacas ldquoclad in airtight armorrdquo which can hardly be anything butspace suits (van Buitenen 1975 page 202)

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the antsin Brahmavaivarta Purana Here Vishnu in the guise of a boy explains to Indra thatthe ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems indifferent times These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforwardgeneralization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe They must be viewed in

10

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought(see eg Staal 1988 Kak 1994)

The context of modern science fiction books is clear it is the liberation of the earliermodes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technol-ogy But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary traditiontwo thousand years ago What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticatedideas arose

I do not answer these questions directly My goal is to provide a survey so that the readercan form his or her own conclusions I begin with an account of Indian mathematics andastronomy from the time of Aryabhata until the period of the Kerala school of astronomyThen I consider material from one randomly chosen early text Yoga-Vasishtha to conveybasic Indian notions about time space and matter Yoga-Vasishtha has been dated variouslyas early as the sixth century and as late as the 14th century It claims to be book regardingconsciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time space matter and the nature ofexperience We present a random selection that has parallels with some recent speculationsin physics Lastly I take up the question of the conceptions behind the Shri Yantra whoseorigins some scholars believe go back to the age of Atharvaveda

6 Mathematics and astronomy

One would expect that the development of early Indian mathematics and astronomy wentthrough several phases but we donrsquot have sufficient data to reconstruct these phases Acertain astronomy has been inferred from the Vedic books but there existed additionalsources which have not survived For example there were early astronomical siddhantas ofwhich we know now only from late commentaries written during the Gupta period (320-600)this period provided a long period of stability and prosperity that saw a great flowering ofart literature and the sciences

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now Perhapsone reason that the earlier texts were lost is because their theories were superseded by themore accurate later works In addition to these siddhantas practical manuals astronomicaltables description of instruments and other miscellaneous writings have also come down tous (Sarma 1985) The Puranas also have some material on astronomy

Aryabhata

Aryabhata is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam whichsketches his mathematical planetary and cosmic theories This book is divided into fourchapters (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required forcomputations (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets usingeccentrics and epicycles (iv) the armillary sphere rules relating to problems of trigonometryand the computation of eclipses

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have as their origin the commencement of Kaliyugaon Friday 18th February 3102 BCE He wrote another book where the epoch is a bitdifferent

11

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis this idea appears to have been his innovationHe also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 432 billion years here hewent with an older tradition but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within thisgreat cycle According to the historian Hugh Thurston ldquoNot only did Aryabhata believethat the earth rotates but there are glimmerings in his system (and other similar systems)of a possible underlying theory in which the earth (and the planets) orbits the sun ratherthan the sun orbiting the earth The evidence is that the basic planetary periods are relativeto the sunrdquo

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in hisbookldquoJust as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction soan observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the westrdquo

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books Panchasiddhan-tika Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka The first is a summary of five early astronomicalsystems including the Surya Siddhanta (Incidently the modern Surya Siddhanta is differentin many details from this ancient one) Another system described by him the PaitamahaSiddhanta appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interestingdetails of the beliefs of those times Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears tobe considerably influenced by Greek astrology

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan who was born in 598 wrote his masterpieceBrahmasphuta Siddhanta in 628 His school which was a rival to that of Aryabhata hasbeen very influential in western and northern India Brahmaguptarsquos work was translated intoArabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind

One of Brahmaguptarsquos chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order inde-terminate equation which is of great significance in number theory

Another of his books the Khandakhadyaka remained a popular handbook for astronom-ical computations for centuries

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114) who was from the Karnataka region was an outstanding mathemati-cian and astronomer Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentialsHe was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani a book in four parts (i) Lilavati on arithmetic(ii) Bijaganita on algebra (iii) Ganitadhyaya (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomyin Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata We know of the

12

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

contributions of very many scholars in this tradition of whom we will speak only of twobelow

Madhava

Madhava (c 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every36 minutes He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets He gave powerseries expansions for trigonometric functions and for pi correct to eleven decimal places

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomyIt appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center ofthe planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar systemHe also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the Europeanmathematics of the day

7 Concepts of space time and matter

Yoga-Vasishtha (YV) is an ancient Indian text over 29000 verses long traditionally at-tributed to Valmiki author of the epic Ramayana which is over two thousand years old Butthe internal evidence of the text indicates that it was authored or compiled later It hasbeen dated variously as early as the sixth century AD or as late as the 13th or the 14thcentury (Chapple 1984) Dasgupta (1975) dated it about the sixth century AD on the basisthat one of its verses appears to be copied from one of Kalidasarsquos plays considering Kalidasato have lived around the fifth century The traditional date of of Kalidasa is 50 BC and newarguments (Kak 1990) support this earlier date so that the estimates regarding the age ofYV are further muddled

YV may be viewed as a book of philosophy or as a philosophical novel It describesthe instruction given by Vasishtha to Rama the hero of the epic Ramayana Its premisemay be termed radical idealism and it is couched in a fashion that has many parallels withthe notion of a participatory universe argued by modern philosophers Its most interestingpassages from the scientific point of view relate to the description of the nature of spacetime matter and consciousness It should be emphasized that the YV ideas do not standin isolation Similar ideas are to be found in the Vedic texts At its deepest level the Vedicconception is to view reality in a monist manner at the next level one may speak of thedichotomy of mind and matter Ideas similar to those found in YV are also encountered inPuranas and Tantric literature

We provide a random selection of these passages taken from the abridged translation ofthe book done by Venkatesananda (1984)

13

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Time

bull Time cannot be analyzed Time uses two balls known as the sun and the moon forits pastime [16]

bull The world is like a potterrsquos wheel the wheel looks as if it stands still though it revolvesat a terrific speed [18]

bull Just as space does not have a fixed span time does not have a fixed span either Justas the world and its creation are mere appearances a moment and an epoch are alsoimaginary [55]

bull Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionthof the twinkling of an eye and from this evolved the time-scale right upto an epochconsisting of several revolutions of the four ages which is the life-span of one cosmiccreation Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these for it is devoid of risingand setting (which are essential to all time-scales) and it devoid of a beginning middleand end [72]

Space

bull There are three types of spacemdashthe psychological space the physical space and theinfinite space of consciousness [52]

The infinite space of individed consciousness is that which exists in all inside andoutside The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions oftime which pervades all beings The physical space is that in which the elementsexist The latter two are not independent of the first [96]

bull Other universes On the slopes of a far-distant mountain range there is a solid rockwithin which I dwell The world within this rock is just like yours it has its owninhabitants the sun and the moon and all the rest of it I have been in it forcountless aeons [402]

bull The entire universe is contained in a subatomic partice and the three worlds existwithin one strand of hair [404]

Matter

bull In every atom there are worlds within worlds [55]

bull (There are) countless universes diverse in composition and space-time structure Inevery one of them there are continents and mountains villages and cities inhabited bypeople who have their time-space and life-span [401-2]

14

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Experience

bull Direct experience alone is the basis for all proofs That substratum is the experiencingintelligence which itself becomes the experiencer the act of experiencing and theexperience [36]

bull Everyone has two bodies the one physical and the other mental The physical bodyis insentient and seeks its own destruction the mind is finite but orderly [124]

bull I have carefully investigated I have observed everything from the tips of my toes to thetop of my head and I have not found anything of which I could say lsquoThis I amrsquo Whois lsquoIrsquo I am the all-pervading consciousness which is itself not an object of knowledge orknowing and is free from self-hood I am that which is indivisible which has no namewhich does not undergo change which is beyond all concepts of unity and diversitywhich is beyond measure [214]

bull I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth neither trees andplants nor even mountains For a period of eleven thousand years the earth wascovered by lava In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar regionfor in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone Only one half of thepolar region was illumined

Then demons ruled the earth They were deluded powerful and prosperous and theearth was their playground

Apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water And thenfor a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests except the polar regionThen there arose great mountains but without any human inhabitants For a periodof ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the demons [280]

Mind

bull The same infinite self conceives within itself the duality of oneself and the other [39]

bull Thought is mind there is no distinction between the two [41]

bull The body can neither enjoy nor suffer It is the mind alone that experiences [109-110]

bull The mind has no body no support and no form yet by this mind is everything con-sumed in this world This is indeed a great mystery He who says that he is destroyedby the mind which has no substantiality at all says in effect that his head was smashedby the lotus petal The hero who is able to destroy a real enemy standing in front ofhim is himself destroyed by this mind which is [non-material]

bull The intelligence which is other than self-knowledge is what constitutes the mind [175]

15

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

Complementarity

bull The absolute alone exists now and for ever When one thinks of it as a void it isbecause of the feeling one has that it is not void when one thinks of it as not-void itis because there is a feeling that it is void [46]

bull All fundamental elements continued to act on one anothermdashas experiencer and experiencemdashand the entire creation came into being like ripples on the surface of the ocean Andthey are interwoven and mixed up so effectively that they cannot be extricated fromone another till the cosmic dissolution [48]

Consciousness

bull The entire universe is forever the same as the consciousness that dwells in every atom[41]

bull The five elements are the seed fo which the world is the tree and the eternal conscious-ness if the seed of the elements [48]

bull Cosmic consciousness alone exists now and ever in it are no worlds no created beingsThat consciousness reflected in itself appears to be creation [49]

bull This consciousness is not knowable when it wishes to become the knowable it is knownas the universe Mind intellect egotism the five great elements and the worldmdashallthese innumerable names and forms are all consciousness alone [50]

bull The world exists because consciousness is and the world is the body of consciousnessThere is no division no difference no distinction Hence the universe can be said

to be both real and unreal real because of the reality of consciousness which is its

own reality and unreal because the universe does not exist as universe independent of

consciousness [50]

bull Consciousness is pure eternal and infinite it does not arise nor cease to be It is everthere in the moving and unmoving creatures in the sky on the mountain and in fireand air [67]

bull Millions of universes appear in the infinite consciousness like specks of dust in a beamof light In one small atom all the three worlds appear to be with all their componentslike space time action substance day and night [120]

bull The universe exists in infinte consciousness Infinite consciousness is unmanifestthough omnipresent even as space though existing everywhere is manifest [141]

bull The manifestation of the omnipotence of infinite consciousness enters into an alliancewith time space and causation Thence arise infinite names and forms [145]

bull The Lord who is infinite consciousness is the silent but alert witness of this cosmicdance He is not different from the dancer (the cosmic natural order) and the dance(the happenings) [296]

16

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

The YV model of knowledge

YV is not written as a systematic text But the above descriptions may be used to reconstructits system of knowledge

YV appears to accept the idea that laws are intrinsic to the universe In other words thelaws of nature in an unfolding universe will also evolve According to YV new informationdoes not emerge out the inanimate world but it is a result of the exchange between mindand matter

It also appears to accept consciousness as a kind of fundamental field that pervades thewhole universe

One might speculate that the parallels between YV and some recent ideas of physics area result of the inherent structure of the mind

8 The Shri Yantra

Although our immediate information on the Shri Yantra (SY) comes from medieval sourcessome scholars have seen the antecedents of the yantra in Book 10 of the Atharvaveda TheShri Yantra consists of nine triangles inscribed within a circle which leads to the formationof 43 little triangles (Figure 1) (Kulaichev 1984) Whatever the antiquity of the idea of thisdesign it is certain that the yantra was made both on flat and curved surfaces during themiddle ages The drawing of the triangles on the curved surface implies the knowledge thatsum of the angles of such triangles exceeds 180 degrees

The question that the physicist and historian of science John Barrow (1992) has askedis whether these shapes intimate a knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry in India centuriesbefore its systematic study in Europe

It is possible that the yantras were made by craftsmen who had no appreciation of itsmathematical properties But scholars have argued that the intricacies of the constructionof this yantra requires mathematica knowledge

9 Concluding Remarks

This has been a survey of some topics that have interested me in the past decade If therevisions in our understanding required for these topics are indicative of other subjects alsothen we are in for a most radical rewriting of the history of science in India

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that setsit apart from that of most other nations viz the belief that thought by itself can lead toobjective knowledge Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science thisaspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as beingirrational and mystical Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself onewould expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas We can hope to address issuessuch as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not ap-pear in any rational manner Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that

17

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri This claim sopersistently made by Ramanujan has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see forexample Kanigel 1991) Were Ramanujanrsquos astonishing discoveries instrumented by theautonomously creative potential of consciousness represented by him by the image of Na-magiri If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha andother Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend

References

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

Barrow J 1992 Pi in the Sky Oxford Oxford University Press

Brown JW 1994 Morphogenesis and mental process Development and Psychopathology

6551-563

van Buitenen JAB 1975 The Mahabharata vol 2 Chicago University of ChicagoPress

Chapple C 1984 Introduction and bibliography in Venkatesananda (1984)

Dasgupta S 1975 (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy Delhi Motilal Banarsidass

Feuerstein G S Kak and D Frawley 1995 In Search of the Cradle of Civilization

Wheaton Quest Books

Filliozat J 1970 The expansion of Indian medicine abroad In Lokesh Chandra (ed)Indiarsquos Contributions to World Thought and Culture Madras Vivekananda MemorialCommittee 67-70

Francfort H-P 1992 Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and RajasthanEastern Anthropologist 4587-103

Frawley D 1994 Planets in the Vedic literature Indian Journal of History of Science

29495-506

Kak S 1986 The Nature of Physical Reality New York Peter Lang

1987 The Paninian approach to natural language processing Intl Journal of

Approximate Reasoning 1117-130

1990 Kalidasa and the Agnimitra problem Journal of the Oriental Institute 4051-54

18

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19

1994a The Astronomical Code of the R gveda New Delhi Aditya

1994b The evolution of writing in India Indian Journal of History of Science

28375-388

1994c India at Centuryrsquos End New Delhi VOI

1995a The astronomy of the age of geometric altars Quarterly Journal of the Royal

Astronomical Society 36385-396

1995b From Vedic science to Vedanta The Adyar Library Bulletin 591-36

1996a Knowledge of planets in the third millennium BC Quarterly Journal of the

Royal Astronomical Society 37709-715

1996b Reflections in clouded mirrors selfhood in animals and machines In Pri-bram KH and J King (eds) Learning as Self-Organization Mahwah NJ LawrenceErlbaum

Kanigel R 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity A Life of the Mathematical Genius

Ramanujan New York C Scribnerrsquos

Kulaichev AP 1984 Sriyantra and its mathematical properties Indian Journal of History

of Science 19279-292

McClain EG 1978 The Myth of Invariance Boulder Shambhala

Sarma KV 1985 A survey of source materials Indian Journal of History of Science

201-20

Seidenberg A 1978 The origin of mathematics Archive for History of Exact Sciences

18301-342

Sengupta PC 1947 Ancient Indian Chronology Calcutta University of Calcutta Press

Staal F 1988 Universals Chicago University of Chicago Press

van Nooten B 1993 Binary numbers in Indian antiquity Journal of Indian Philosophy

2131-50

Venkatesananda S (tr) 1984 The Concise Yoga Vasistha Albany State University ofNew York Press

19