Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Read online

  There are different weights and measures to scriptural authority in Hindu tradition. From earliest times in Brahminic Hinduism, the sacred word has been normatively the Veda. The ‘Veda’ is canonical scripture: that which is the accepted norm for saving knowledge. ‘Veda’ comes from the root vid, ‘to know’. Thus ‘Veda’ refers to that normative knowledge which saves the human being from the predicament of purposeless existence. As such, ‘Veda’ is a religious term. There are many different views in Hinduism as to what the saving content of Vedic knowledge is and how it works. In due course we shall inquire into some of these views. But there is broad agreement under the umbrella of traditional Brahminic Hinduism (wideranging as it is) that in theory at least, the Veda is the source of saving knowledge, even though (a) in practice, most Hindus have had no direct access to the Veda, either in written form or aurally, and (b) for all practical purposes many branches of Hinduism resort to alternative scriptures which appear to have little or no direct connection with the Veda. More about this latter point in a later chapter.

  In the fourth and third centuries B.C.E., Vedic authority encountered a serious challenge. This arose from the teaching of Gautama the Buddha (born ca. 450 B.C.E.). Vedic teachers dubbed the Buddhists (and the Jains, who made a lesser impact) nāstikas, i.e. those who declared that ‘there is no such thing’ (na + asti) as the authority of the Veda and the key elements some claimed the Veda posited for the economy of salvation, e.g. a Supreme Reality and a metaphysical soul. Buddhist teaching was regarded as destructive of the whole Vedic established way of life, and its chaotic consequences are emphasized in the story about the ‘Buddhists’ who entered Benares and subverted Divodāsa's rule, related in Chapter 1. The Buddha challenged the rationale of Vedic religion and its caste context. This resulted, on the one hand, in a reaffirmation in ‘orthodox’ Hinduism of the importance of Vedic religion and caste, but also, on the other, in far-reaching concessions by way of new interpretations of these established institutions, so that the course of Hinduism was changed. Pathways to new, more populist religions preaching devotion to a loving God and non-violence towards living beings were opened up.

  The second massive challenge to Vedic authority came in the nineteenth century.1 Whereas the Buddhist challenge came from within, so to speak, from the macrocosm of ‘Hindu’ culture, the challenge of the nineteenth century came from outside – from the West, mediated by British colonial rule. The Ancient Banyan underwent a great upheaval, so much so that it seemed to be shaken to the core of its extensive root system. But the banyan being what it is – a universe of interlocking worlds in which shock waves to the whole are distributed and absorbed through mutual support between the parts – the phenomenon of Hinduism survived, and in some respects was imbued with fresh vitality. In fact Hinduism was undergoing with great intensity what it had successfully weathered on countless occasions before on a smaller scale: it was adapting to new influences and circumstances. This time it seemed that there was a new kind of opposition between religious belief and this-worldly rationality so that the tension between the forces for and against Vedic authority became more fierce. It will be all the more instructive, therefore, to consider the status of the Veda in its nineteenth-century setting if we wish to have an idea of its relevance for modern Hinduism. This we shall consider in Chapter 4. But first we need to know something of the structure and content of the Veda in its original context. This will be the major concern of this and the next chapter.

  The Veda encapsulates the Indo-Aryan religion in the subcontinent, introduced in Chapter 1. Irrespective of where this religious culture originated, it must be understood to have developed in the context of an already-established, indigenous civilization of vast extent, ranging from stretches in the east of present-day Afghanistan, westwards across the Pakistan of today to the land between the Yamunā and the Ganges rivers in India, and south to the latitude of lower Saurashtra, viz. the Kathiawar peninsula (see map). The earliest origins of this civilization have been placed at about 4000 B.C.E.; this was followed by its early phase (ca. 3500 B.C.E.), and then its mature and late periods (ca. 2700 and 2000 B.C.E., respectively), though this civilization continued to peter out for several hundred years subsequently.2 The reader will notice that the time of the decline of this civilization coincides with the ascendancy of the geographically overlapping Vedic culture in the subcontinent. At its fullest extent, this civilization ranged over about a million square miles of territory. Excavations began in the early 1920s, and the main sites excavated were the two urban centres of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, about 400 miles apart, the first towards the south, on the bank of the course of the Indus at the time, and the second, further north, along the Ravi river, a tributary of the Indus. Thus this civilization is known as the Indus or Harappa(n) civilization. Since then, many hundreds of other sites have been discovered, but archaeological penetration of these sites still has a long way to go; even the two locations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have hardly been dealt with comprehensively by archaeologists and other experts. Thus we do not have nearly as much data about this culture as we might desire.3

  However, from architectural remains and artefacts unearthed, it is believed that the Harappans were largely pastoralists, who became highly skilled in urban planning, water management and specialized handicrafts (e.g. the making of beads in various materials including gold, silver and semi-precious stones, and of necklaces and pottery), with a religion that used water for ceremonial washing and/or purification, and whose focuses may well have included rites of fertility, the presence of fire and a form of disciplined meditation. How these elements interacted and whether they were directed towards the worship of some transcendent being(s), we cannot say for sure. The most characteristic artefacts are seals or small tablets, about one inch to one-and-a-half inches in dimension, normally of steatite (i.e. soapstone or another form of talc), numbering many thousands, which have been described by an archaeologist of an earlier generation as ‘little masterpieces of controlled realism’ (Wheeler 1968:101;specimens are scattered in museums around the world). Etched upon these seals is a range of motifs such as composite figures, e.g. a creature with horns and the trunk of an elephant attached to a body with the forepart of a ram/bull and the hind-part of a tiger; and nudes, including a head-dressed and many-bangled figure standing between two branches of a fig tree with a figure to one side also head-dressed and half-squatting seemingly before a decapitated horned head, hands joined in reverence or supplication, and flanked by a composite animal (there is a row of seven, dressed, priest-like figures, all apparently moving in the same direction depicted at the base of the seal). The figure of a long-horned bull is common, often standing in front of a bipartite object mounted on a stand, with its lower and upper parts shaped like a bowl and a rhombus, respectively. A famous seal has a picture of what appears to be a human figure sitting cross-legged on a kind of stool, with a three-horned headdress and surrounded by various domestic and wild animals (ox, rhino, elephant, tiger, etc.). Appliqué terracotta figurines of nearly nude women, some imposingly necklaced and headdressed, have also been found, as have small terracotta clay-carts, etc. The latter seem to be toys or ornaments; did the former have a religious significance or are we reading in too much here? Again, circular and tubular or conical stones have also been unearthed. Could these have been female and male religious and sexual emblems?

  It is important to bear in mind that features of this civilization, such as possibly phallic artefacts, may well have links with earlier phases of culture in the region (and even outside the area of the Harappan culture). The distinguished Cambridge archaeologist, Dilip Chakrabarti, has little doubt about identifying some of these artefacts in terms of cult objects of later Hinduism:

  Some of the stones found at Mohenjodaro are unmistakably phallic stones, although whether they were associated with vulva-like stones as might be expected, is unclear ... What is intriguing is the find of two ‘nicely cut and polished monolithic pillars’ at Dholav
ira [quoting from another source]. One of these two specimens is complete, 1.75 m high, and has a phallic top. Perhaps this was used as a phallic column of worship. Interestingly, a small terracotta representation of what would undoubtedly be considered the replica of a modern Sivalinga [phallic object] has been reported ... from a Harappan context at Kalibangan (p.42) ... The first phase [ca. 3000 B.C.E.] at Daimabad in Maharashtra [outside the area of the Harappan civilization] has also yielded a realistic representation of a phallus in agate. The object was found in a pit (1.6 m in diameter) filled with ash ... A terracotta representation of a phallus was also obtained from the east Indian Chalcolithic site of Mahishdal in West Bengal. Similarly, there is a distinctly Sivalinga type of stone ... in the Malwa culture phase of Daimabad [ca. 1900 B.C.E. – these sites being outside the Harappan civilization area] ... whilst a male figurine of clay (stump head, curved arms, large torso, and short stump legs) from the Nasik-Jorwe culture level of Inamgaon [ca. 1400 B.C.E.] is interesting because of its close similarity with a specimen from the late Harappan context at Lothal.

  (2001:42,48)

  Reverting to the Indus civilization, from the point of view of urban design and architecture, there seems to have been a general plan during the developed phase. There is a so-called ‘citadel’ on higher ground to the west, with features such as tall embankments of brick, a large brick tank to hold water (seemingly for religious or ceremonial purposes) and storage facilities for grain, and to the east of this mound, on lower ground, lie the brick-built dwellings of the population at large (generally two storeys in height with flat, terraced roofs), neatly laid out in a grid-like pattern with running drainage and connecting streets and lanes. Though there is evidence of some weaponry – shields, spears, baked clay sling-stones – this is hardly of the kind to indicate that these were a particularly martial people. Of course, since this civilization endured for millennia, the archaeological evidence shows different levels of habitation and development.

  To make sense of ‘Indo-Aryan’ culture, it must be placed in the context of this ancient and established civilization. Do not forget evidence in the early strands of the Veda of Indo-Aryan sites along the banks of the Sarasvatī river, identified with the now dried-up bed of a great river that used to flow a little to the south of the Indus riverine system. Was Indo-Aryan an intruder-culture, however gradual this process may have been, or did it develop in the fold of the Harappan civilization in some way? Further, was the hierarchical caste system (attested to in the Veda, and to be discussed later) a distinctive feature of Indo-Aryan culture which evolved in the subcontinent through a process of integration with local peoples, or was it the product of some subcontinental development in the first place? Is the cross-legged figure surrounded by animals on the little seal mentioned earlier a precursor of later, developed techniques of meditation and yoga in Hinduism and/or a prototype of God Śiva as Paśupati (‘Lord of Animals under [Śiva's] control’)? Are the circular and tubular stones forerunners of later Hindu Śaiva symbols of fertility (the liga and yoni), or indicators of a defunct local cult or pastime? And the female terracotta figurines, not to mention some of the figures on the seals, are they early representations of the Goddess, who became so central to later Hinduism at large? It is commonplace for scholars to surmise that the Indus and Vedic cultures are linked in the ways hinted at above, but firm evidence to establish such connections is lacking.4 But to argue that Vedic culture originally came from outside – a view to which I incline, based on data assessed cumulatively – does not imply, of course, that such connections did not develop later.

  The reader will doubtless have noticed that I have remained silent so far about a key feature of the Harappan way of life – its language and script. We do have what appears to be a uniform script, etched on the seals and elsewhere, but it only adds to the mystery of it all. This is because, in spite of relentless attempts to decipher it (some ingenious, others rather entertaining), we still have no consensus as to what it means. There is still no accepted interpretation of the Harappan script. The script is pictographic, with a not very large range of symbols/representations available (about 400), but it occurs to date in relatively short inscriptions and not in extended narrative form.5 A crucial question now emerges: does the Harappan script represent an Indo-Aryan language so that linguistic continuities exist with Vedic Sanskrit, or does it belong to a completely different family of languages, sometimes called ‘Dravidian’. The migrationists tend to opt for the latter alternative, the indigenists for the former.

  The Dravidian languages include the south Indian languages of Tamil, Kannada, Telegu and Malayalam, as well as Brahui, the language of a hill people in Pakistan. The presence of these languages is strong evidence for there being a pan-Indian Dravidian presence, before the predominance of the Indo-Iranian language group, itself a part of the Indo-European family. The Indo-European languages include Greek, Latin, and the Indo-Iranian languages which comprise Avestan (the sacred language of the Zoroastrians), Sanskrit, and the north Indian vernaculars of Gujurati, Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Oriya and Bengali.

  (Flood 1996:27)

  Unless we discover a bilingual source with the Indus script as one of the languages used and a deciphered script as the other, we are unlikely to make progress. What we do know is that the Indus civilization was in decline by about 1700 B.C.E., and Vedic culture with Sanskrit as its normative language in the ascendant at about that time. Thus, it is with a sense of puzzlement as to the cultural connections between Indus civilization and Vedic religion that we must now inquire further into the latter.

  We find in the early Veda a religious tradition that centred on a sacrificial ritual in which various ‘deities’ – devas (masculine) and devīs (feminine) – or personified focuses of a transcendent power as I shall refer to them, were invoked in collections of hymns (ṛks). We know that there was more than one such collection, but it is the Śākala recension of these hymns, called the Ŗk Saṃhitā (saṃhitā means ‘collection’) or g Veda (Ŗk/Ŗg is sometimes, less precisely, written as Rik/Rig6) that has come down to us. There are 1028 verse compositions in the Ŗk Saṃhitā, the overwhelming majority of which are invocatory. Before we inquire into whom these hymns invoke, let us ask where the bulk of these hymns were composed. One does not need to be an indigenist to argue that most of the hymns were composed within the subcontinent. A leading migrationist pronounces as follows:

  It is known from internal evidence that the Vedic texts were orally composed in northern India, at first in the Greater Punjab and later on also in more eastern areas, including northern Bihar, between ca. 1500 B.C.E. and ca. 500–400 B.C.E. ... However, there is still no absolute dating of any Vedic text. Pertinent parameters include the first use of iron (in a post Ŗg vedic text, the Atharvaveda, at ca. 1200/1000 B.C.E.) and the lifetime of the Buddha (at 500 or perhaps rather 400 B.C.E.) who postdates almost all Vedic texts.

  (Witzel 2003:68)

  We have seen how controversial Vedic dating can be. Another migrationist declares that ‘the Vedas were put in their final shape almost certainly in the Punjab, or in the region between the Sutlej and the Jumna ... Thus it would seem that the image of the Vedic Ushas [Dawn] was brought into India by the Aryans from a region [outside the Punjab] where such mornings are a visible climatic phenomenon’ (Chaudhuri 1979:71). Unlike Witzel, Chaudhuri seems to be speculating on the grounds of external evidence here, somewhat fancifully it must be admitted, for such subjective star-gazing is hardly the firm evidence we need to bring assurance in such matters. But the point is that there is scope for quite a lot of speculation not only in dating but also in locating the hymns.

  The Ŗg Vedic Vhymns are divided into ten ‘books’ or maṇḍalas. ‘Maṇḍala’ more precisely came to mean a ring or cycle of space or time set apart for a purpose. This meaning indicates that the purpose of the hymns was to serve what lay at the heart of Vedic religion: the priestly sacrificial ritual, which in time was called the yajña. We shall come to the yajñ
a in due course, but let us continue now with the divisions of the Veda. It seems that the Ŗk Saṃhitā was compiled to act as a record of the sacred hymns available;as noted earlier, we have one such record, the Śākala recension (there were others which are no longer extant). It is thought that the hymns were composed by wandering male poets, most of whom would have come from families or clans where their expertise would have been passed down from father to son or teacher to student7; this was done under the patronage of leaders of various tribes of the Indo-Aryans (hence the possibility of there being several collections of these hymns). Later Hindu traditions, which we shall see set great store by the power of these hymns, called these poets ṛṣis (‘Rishis’, i.e. ‘seers’, ‘sages’).

  The Vedic poets composed in an early, stylized form of Sanskrit, sometimes known as Vedic Sanskrit, and would have vied with each other to produce the most beautiful and evocative hymns, redolent with ancient myth, metaphor and current aspirations. This was a competitive occupation, not only to ensure a successful career under patronage, but also to make the words, when implemented through the sacrificial ritual, more effective. Thus the hymns were composed in a range of metres, each with its own rhythm(s);to express and actualize their potency, their utterance was accompanied by stylized bodily gestures. As Laurie Patton notes: ‘To this day, when one attends a performance of a Vedic sacrifice, one sees students sitting near the Vedic fires, learning the kramapāṭha system [the ways in which each syllable was to be memorized and repeated in a regular pattern] and moving their heads and hands and wrists in accordance with the rhythm’ (in Mittal & Thursby 2004:39). Such implementation required huge feats of memory, emphasizing again the importance of orality for Vedic religion, an orality that resonates throughout Hindu tradition up to the present day. In time, the memorization required by Vedic orality led to the preservation of the hymns in three forms, with (i) their words in euphonic combination (saṃhitā-pāṭha), (ii) the words separated without this euphonic combination (pada-pāṭha) and (iii) syllabic separation (krama-pāṭha; for an explanation see quotation above). This ensured ‘an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures;it is, in fact, something like a tape-recording of ca. 1500–500 B.C.E. Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent ... has been preserved up to the present’ (Witzel 2003:68–9). Later in this chapter and in the next, we shall inquire into the philosophy underlying this emphasis on Vedic orality. But let us say a little more now about the development, referents and arrangement of the hymns of the Ŗg Veda.