HINDU
(Part -1)
The present article aims is an unbiased endeavour of exploring the
philosophy that took its root on this land and on the bases of which a nation
emerged and is in its present form. Its an attempt at looking into from where
we have come from.
Philosophy, probably, starts with
a simple question which grows into a never ending trail of more subtler
inquires. As if a natural growth of plant into a tree, it seems to have always
grown in a similar fashion in all parts of the world. The inquires of Socrates,
Plato or Locke are not much different from those of Indian sages and the
essence of Rigveda and other Upnishad teachings can be found in any
philosophical debate which ever happened on earth.
It becomes pertinent today, therefore,
for our young generation, standing at the first stages of globalization to look
back and see how their identity came to them. So that they can enquire more and
bring about radical changes in their ways of thinking while going ahead in
life, making sure that they do not lose their identity – as what a terrible loss that would be.
Who am I? What is my identity?
What is right for me to do? What will be the consequences of my actions and
inactions? Is there a God? What does He say to me? If I am just a mortal, why
should I work for anything more than my stomach? What kind of life that would
be?
Addressing Chinta Jai
Sankar Prasad askes:
Manan karvayegi tu
kitana us nishchint jaati ka jeev,
Amar marega kya tu
kitani gehri daal rahi hai neev.
-Kamayani
Men could never escape such
questions. Other animals are able to easily escape all such thoughts as they
know one thing above all and that is – stomach. A hungry beast chases a meek
animal in the forest and eats it to fill its appetite. After the killing of a
life, the beast has no guilt. It seeks no pope or church to go an confess its
crime. For it does not know what crime is. It knows one thing and that is if it
does not eat it will die. And everybody must save itself. For, an unnatural
death is something which no living form accepts as right – as it is not natural
and therefore not right.
Why at all men had to enquire
into such realms of intellectual discourse? Reading History (especially ancient
and medieval when battles took place for kingdoms and not for oil and trade,
which is same thing but makes essence that I want to talk about, slightly
hidden), one can conjuncture that when man moves forwards towards a more
civilized way of living, he finds all reasons to fight and save his
civilization in case he is attacked by a less civilized alien population. His
civilization can comprise of a population of men and women of children and old
aged people, of Gods as trees and stone, of language, or scripts, of trade, of
currency or may be a notch less sophisticated and simple of women and children.
Why is he attacked in the first place? Because some groups come forward to attack
him. Why they attack him? Because they need the resources that he proclaims
himself as owner of. Or they see his civilization as a danger to their
existence. Or maybe because they want to show their supremacy. Basically, it a
fight which is based on the jungle law which says – might is right.
When men of opposing sides find
that their opponents are not too weak, they always find co-operative
development more beneficial and less deadly, they go for a truce. Sometimes
they marry their daughters to the princesses of opposing sides to make family
relations. They share revenue profits as gifts and share armies to enhance the
security of each others. But they conspire as well, and there is always a
tendency of one trying to subjugate the other as time passes by.
While all this happens in nation
building, there is something that keeps bother a human mind. That something is
the seed of all philosophical questions. Its a question that says what good am
I amidst such a playground of life where we all are mere players. We come with
nothing and go without taking anything. Why do we fight? Why do we attack so
much importance to a population that we are ready to die to save them? Why at
all do we evolve as a civilization and not life just as a beast of jungle? Then
comes the penultimate question to all knowledge – who is behind all this? The
question that narrows down to the last question – where is God? At this point
starts religion. No matter you believe in God or not, the moment you say I
don’t believe in Him, you create Him (and yes, with a capital ‘h’). He becomes
immanent and yet not involved in your word. He is there in all your battle
fields and yet does not pick a weapon and takes no sides. Try and escape Him
and you find Him the remotest cave of a jungle, in absolute serenity – right
there in you. Such is the nature of life and life force which remains out of
the domains of intellectual or scientific discovery.
Similar was the development in
India. The Harrapan civilization which prospered to such great heights way back
somewhere around 2500 BC, seems to have religious beliefs where people used to
tie threads around trees and worship Shiva. Then came the Aryan in, in most
probability not in one but several waves. They destroyed the whole Harappan
civilization. The Hymns of Rigveda describe the carnage in which fire was used
to burn cities and describes the original inhabitant of this land as dasas or dasyus or mallechhas or nishads. Infact
the first verse of poetry writtenon this land is believed to be a curse given
by an Ayran seer to a nishad hunter
who killed a crane and inflicted great pain and anger in the heart of the seer
who cursed his race to remain backward and uncivilized for the rest of
eternity. The Rigveda is very harsh in its description of the dasas. The Vedas and Upnishads do not
claim to have come here out of no where and as works of God himself. They in
fact do not dwell so much on the importance of the text. They are basically
philosophical enquires made throughout History and discoveries of natural laws
that were well accepted for a long time without refutation. Laws like as you
sow so shall you reap became the basic premise of the karma doctrine. The word Hindu did not belong to any of the
language on this land. It was basically used by the people who lived on the
western banks of River Indus to collectively indentify the people living on the
other side. Indus which is also called Sindh
nadi was pronounced as Hind and so came the word Hindu and later Hindustan.
Today its accepted as a religion
of the people who believe in the philosophy that existed here before the coming
of Muslims rulers with some expectations of Jain and Buddhist, which itself
found it difficult to find a space totally delinked from the Hindu ideology and
are still believe by many as just religious reform movements and offshoots of
Hinduism only. Vivekananda explained the demise of Buddhism in the land of its
birth behind the fact that it was not a radically new philosophy but very much
Hindu in all its convictions. There are surely views in opposition to such one
sided views of Brahmins who saw both these religions as threat to the supremacy
they enjoyed in the society in the guise of the varna system and see all such
views as covert attempts at trying to shroud a truth as bright as sun with
their brutal attacks on its premises). Sikhism came too late, and after enough
struggle became established and is seen as a faith which has elements of both
Hinduism and Islam and yet very original in itself at the same time.
Religion has grown with politics
and nations. Gandhiji say in his autobiography by saying: “Those who say
religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion”. He could
have ended that with the word ‘politics’ and still have managed to save the
essence he wanted to talk about. But he probably wanted to point at the
difficulty in understanding religion which is more subtle that the seemingly
complex realm of politics. In fact most of the philosophy that developed on
this land developed after the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism (almost
contemporary) and the embracement they started getting from the emperors.
Ashoka converted to Buddhism and did not remain the only one to do that. The
Stupas at Sanchi and Bharhut or the monasteries made are standing proofs of the
impact these religions had in India and the strong emperors. The Brahmins had
to revise the annuls of the Vedas and come up with answers to the questions
presented to them by these new thinkers, who came from Khsatriya families and
were actually a threat to the varna system, that was the licence to prove that
a Brahmin was superior to all men.
New ideas came up. Old ideas grew
bigger and subtler. Religious Einsteins were born to back up the Newtons who
had missed the bigger pictures. Religion got stringer in its foundations and
new texts started emerging. Meanwhile, the rulers kept fighting for bigger
empires and making better cities where life prospered. Courts of emperors were
replete with great intellectuals. At the time Harshavardhan some of the best poetry
and plays were written. Classical music emerged in great length and breadth. So
did religion and around it everything got saffronised. Ragas became
heavenly, Kings became Godly, life
became a projection of the cosmic truth that cannot be understood by mind as
its just an organ. How can a man pull a bucket in which he himself is sitting?
The theory of Adwaita or non-duality came forward to explain everything.
Mauryan empire saw its fall after Ashoka and so did Buddhism, a little more
gradually though. The Mathura School or art and the Gandhara artists made
statues of Buddha and Buddha was never a proponent of idolatry and never
accepted that he was anything more than a human being, got cast into a deity
and became a God for the later generations. In some ways, this brought Buddhism
closer to Hinduism and the later pulled it closer till the former lost itself
in it. The debate can go longer but what I wanted to bring about is the
background against which religion emerged in India.
Religion was important as it told
what is right and what is wrong. It was important because it told the Kind what
were his responsibilities and made the subjects obedient towards the Kings,
thereby restoring order. The subjects were important for the kind and thus he
had to build stupas and monasteries to show his benevolence. The Brahmins
should not be seen as villains who wanted power. They in fact observed great
discipline and assumed a role of a teacher. Not all of them were as enlightened
though to see the bigger picture of what role they actually play in making the
society. And thus the evil practices were existent as well. There were
practices in the society which provoked Buddha or Mahavira to dwell over the
possible solutions and they came up with new doctrines and showed the way to
salvation. Salvation remains a key word in India even today. At Kumbha mela three million people came
together to take bath in Allahabad this year. The mela finds its reference in the Vedas as well. Such is the power of
an idea. And on such ideas a society is made. These ideas are of religious
importance and thus political as well.
Somewhere in these passages Hindu
was born. I knowingly did not stop and elaborated the birth as I do not think
it was possible. Who is a Hindu? Probably remains the most enigmatic and
motivating question to me. Enigmatic because, the religion has shown such
dynamism and has included so many believe in its womb that it becomes hard to
find out where it starts and where it ends. Motivating because if a religion
can hold a nation of such diverse populace for so long and still inspire them
to take holy baths in Ganges every twelve year even in the 21st
century when people are talking about environment pollution (pun intended)
amongst other things, then we can hope that the nation can move ahead with
great confidence tackling the myriad challenges that await her path head being
rest assured about the unity of her people.
I intend to dwell over the
philosophy of Hinduism in greater details in next article.
-ckh
HINDU
(Part 2)
Moving ahead from the previous article, I intend to briefly discuss the
Philosophy underlying Hinduism. Before we proceed it’s important that we know
about the origin of various texts and their relevance as form the theory of the
philosophy. I have used the word philosophy and religion interchangeably as I
have taken out the theistic aspect of religion for the time being to bring
about the philosophical premise of Hinduism in the present article (I have
liberally used Wikipedia for the first part of the present article).
Section A:
The Vedas
(Sanskrit वेदाः véda,
"knowledge") are a large body of texts originating in ancient India.
Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit
literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. The Vedas are apauruṣeya ("not of human
agency"). They are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are
called śruti ("what is heard"), distinguishing them from other
religious texts, which are called smṛti
("what is remembered"). The Vedic texts or śruti are organized around
four canonical collections of metrical material known as Saṃhitās, of which the first
three are related to the performance of yajna (sacrifice) in historical Vedic
religion:
1. The
Rigveda, containing hymns to be recited by the hotṛ;
2. The
Yajurveda, containing formulas to be recited by the adhvaryu or officiating
priest;
3. The
Samaveda, containing formulas to be sung by the udgātṛ.
4. The
fourth is the Atharvaveda, a collection of spells and incantations, apotropaic
charms and speculative hymns.
The individual verses contained in these
compilations are known as mantras. Some selected Vedic mantras are still
recited at prayers, religious functions and other auspicious occasions in
contemporary Hinduism.
The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas (meaning Code) date
to roughly 1500–1000 BCE, and the "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as
the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000-500 BCE, resulting in a Vedic
period, spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE, or the Late Bronze Age
and the Iron Age. The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition
of the mantra texts, with the establishment of the various shakhas all over
Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of
their meaning, and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rise
of the Mahajanapadas.
Michael Witzel gives 150 BCE (Patañjali)
as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature, and 1200 BCE (the
early Iron Age) as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda.
Rigveda
The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text. It is a
collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized
into ten books (Sanskrit: mandalas). The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic
deities.
The books were composed by poets from different priestly groups over a
period of several centuries, commonly dated to the period of roughly the second
half of the 2nd millennium BCE (the early Vedic period) in the Punjab (Sapta
Sindhu) region of the Indian subcontinent.
There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities between the
Rigveda and the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian
times, often associated with the Andronovo culture; the earliest horse-drawn
chariots were found at Andronovo sites in the Sintashta-Petrovka cultural area
near the Ural Mountains and date to ca. 2000 BCE.
Yajurveda
The Yajurveda Samhita consists of archaic prose mantras and also in
part of verses borrowed and adapted from the Rigveda. Its purpose was
practical, in that each mantra must accompany an action in sacrifice but,
unlike the Samaveda, it was compiled to apply to all sacrificial rites, not
merely the Somayajna. There are two major groups of recensions of this Veda,
known as the "Black" (Krishna) and "White" (Shukla)
Yajurveda (Krishna and Shukla Yajurveda respectively). While White Yajurveda
separates the Samhita from its Brahmana (the Shatapatha Brahmana), the Black
Yajurveda intersperses the Samhita with Brahmana commentary. Of the Black
Yajurveda four major recensions survive (Maitrayani, Katha, Kapisthala-Katha,
Taittiriya).
Samaveda
The Samaveda Samhita (from sāman, the term for a melody applied to
metrical hymn or song of praise) consists of 1549 stanzas, taken almost
entirely (except for 78 stanzas) from the Rigveda. Like the Rigvedic stanzas in
the Yajurveda, the Samans have been changed and adapted for use in singing.
Some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated more than once. Including repetitions,
there are a total of 1875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated
by Griffith. Two major recensions remain today, the Kauthuma/Ranayaniya and the
Jaiminiya. Its purpose was liturgical, as the repertoire of the udgātṛ or "singer"
priests who took part in the sacrifice.
Atharvaveda
The Artharvaveda Samhita is the text 'belonging to the Atharvan and
Angirasa poets. It has 760 hymns, and about 160 of the hymns are in common with
the Rigveda. Most of the verses are metrical, but some sections are in prose.
It was compiled around 900 BCE, although some of its material may go back to
the time of the Rigveda, and some parts of the Atharva-Veda are older than the
Rig-Veda though not in linguistic form.
The Atharvaveda is preserved in two recensions, the Paippalāda and
Śaunaka. According to Apte it had nine schools (shakhas). The Paippalada text,
which exists in a Kashmir and an Orissa version, is longer than the Saunaka
one; it is only partially printed in its two versions and remains largely untranslated.
Unlike the other three Vedas, the Atharvanaveda has less connection
with sacrifice. Its first part consists chiefly of spells and incantations,
concerned with protection against demons and disaster, spells for the healing
of diseases, for long life and for various desires or aims in life.
The second part of the text contains speculative and philosophical
hymns.
The Atharvaveda is a comparatively late extension of the "Three
Vedas" connected to priestly sacrifice to a canon of "Four
Vedas". This may be connected to an extension of the sacrificial rite from
involving three types of priest to the inclusion of the Brahman overseeing the
ritual.
The Atharvaveda is concerned with the material world or world of man
and in this respect differs from the other three vedas. Atharvaveda also
sanctions the use of force, in particular circumstances and similarly this
point is a departure from the three other vedas.
Vedanta
While contemporary traditions continued to maintain Vedic ritualism
(Śrauta, Mimamsa), Vedanta renounced all ritualism and radically re-interpreted
the notion of "Veda" in purely philosophical terms. The association
of the three Vedas with the bhūr bhuvaḥ
svaḥ mantra is found
in the Aitareya Aranyaka: "Bhūḥ
is the Rigveda, bhuvaḥ
is the Yajurveda, svaḥ
is the Samaveda" (1.3.2). The Upanishads reduce the "essence of the
Vedas" further, to the syllable Aum (ॐ).
Thus, the Katha Upanishad has:
"The goal, which all Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at,
and which humans desire when they live a life of continence, I will tell you
briefly it is Aum" (1.2.15)
In post-Vedic literature
Upaveda
The term upaveda ("applied knowledge") is used in
traditional literature to designate the subjects of certain technical works.
Lists of what subjects are included in this class differ among sources. The
Charanavyuha mentions four Upavedas:
1.
Medicine (Āyurveda), associated with the Rigveda
2.
Archery (Dhanurveda), associated with the
Yajurveda
3.
Music and sacred dance (Gāndharvaveda),
associated with the Samaveda
4.
Military science (Shastrashastra), associated
with the Atharvaveda
But Sushruta and Bhavaprakasha mention Ayurveda as an upaveda of the
Atharvaveda. Sthapatyaveda (architecture), Shilpa Shastras (arts and crafts)
are mentioned as fourth upaveda according to later sources.
Puranas:
The Puranas (Sanskrit: पुराण purāṇa, "of ancient times") are ancient
Hindu Vedic texts eulogizing various deities, primarily the divine Trimurti God
in Hinduism through divine stories. Puranas may also be described as a genre of
important Hindu religious texts alongside some Jain and Buddhist religious
texts, notably consisting of narratives of the history of the universe from
creation to destruction, genealogies of kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, and
descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography. Hindu Puranas have
been classified in accordance with the three gunas or qualities as Sattva
(Truth and Purity), Rajas (Dimness and Passion) and Tamas (Darkness and
Ignorance), or according the three aspects of the divine Trimurti as Vaishnava,
Brahma and Shaiva Puranas.
Puranas usually give prominence to a
particular deity, employing an abundance of religious and philosophical
concepts. They are usually written in the form of stories related by one person
to another. The Puranas are available in vernacular translations and are disseminated
by Brahmin scholars, who read from them and tell their stories, usually in
Katha sessions (in which a traveling Brahmin settles for a few weeks in a
temple and narrates parts of a Purana, usually with a Bhakti perspective).
Vyasa, the narrator of the Mahabharata, is
traditionally considered the compiler of the Puranas.
Section B:
The Hindu Philosophy can be divided into three pairs:
Shankhya – Yoga
Nyaya – Vaisheshika
Mimamsa – Uttara Mimamsa (or Vedanta)
The basic premise is:
God is a depository of all sources of powers and forces of nature.
From whom nature with its manifold living creatures has emanated and by whom it
is sustained.
There is one fundamental reality in which all duality ceases. The
highest truth is thus the highest being who is both immanent in the world and
transcendent as well. He holds the world within himself and yet does not
exhaust himself in the world.
The truth reveals itself only in our hearts through sublime purity,
absolute self-control, self-abnegation and creation of mundane desires.
Meditation is all about transcending the limitations of a biological
body and coming closer to Atma or self. The moment you start to see your ‘self’
as a guardian and your mind as a child playing with the toys of thought, you have
reached the first stage of mediation. Next is to know that you are not the
child and his toys. You need to relax and sit as if a mother sitting in a
garden while the child plays around. The moment you try to stop the child
forcefully, the meditation is broken. So just let go. Don’t try to do anything.
You will not know when the child will come and sleep silently besides you. It’s
this stage where the thoughts of the mind stop bothering you and mediation
starts. The more the knowledge sinks into your heart that the body, its name,
its identity, all the worldly possessions, its sexual orientation etc belong to
the plane of perceptible universe which only the child in you perceives, the
more you get closer to bliss. Now from here on there is nothing which any text
can tell you about what you will see or what you will find as no body knows the
way to express it. It’s a blissful realm where such things are not important.
Hinduism talks about transmigration of soul. It says that a soul is a
spark of God and takes several different forms to express it through those
forms. Many a times the environment may not be conducive for best expression so
the soul leaves that form and enters another. This goes on till the best is not
realised.
What is the purpose of life then? This can be understood by asking
what is not the purpose of life? Well, all those who forget the self and start
to see their body as everything lose sight of the bigger picture and for such
people the question has no relevance thus. The question has any relevance only
for those who know that the self is different from the body and body is just a
brush that the self uses to paint a picture on the canvas given by God. The
self constantly wants the body to meditate and ask for motivation from God. But
if the mind becomes the master and the body goes unruly, the mission of life
gets lost and remains incomplete. Therefore the soul enters a different body
after leaving the present one.
Somewhere around 250 BCE,
Kapila is believe to have presented Shankhya
philosophy that branched into Atheist and Theist beliefs under Ishwara Krishna
and Patanjali respectively. The philosophy believes that every thing that we
see has a causation behind its being the way it is. Such causation is called guna (or inner potential). There are
three gunas: Sattva (truth and purity), Rajas (Passion and desire) and Tamas
(inaction). Prakriti iis a hypothetical state of pure potential conditions of
these gunas. Purusha is pure consciousness, whose last metaphysical function is
self-annulment.
Bringing the scattered bits together: guna expresses as five tatva:
sky, water, earth, wind and fire.
From these everything is formed and everything is part of prakriti. The purusha is
state of consciousness. There are as many purusha as many physic planes. The highest purpose is self-annulment and losing the self to
the Brahma.
Shankhya: The inherent potentials
sufficient to explain the present order. The existence of God is both
unwarranted and unnecessary.
Yoga teaches that avidya (lack of knowledge) grows into
many cementing principles of the mind, ego-consciousness, attachment,
self-preservation tendency. Avidya can
be shattered by dhyana and dhaarana. Yoga asks for supreme ethical
purity in thought, word and deed. It is the will of God because of which the gunas manifest themselves in such forms.
Nyaya: It is a school of
logic.
Vaisheshya: Its based on
the system of atomism, explaining the cosmic process in which the soul was
involved. It sees universe as atomic structure.
Mimamsa: It is a Vedic
exegesis. Sankara, a South Indian Brahmin gave the doctrine of non-duality –
Advaita or monoism. It talks about the final stage of knowledge as a stage of
being sat-chit-ananda = to be–conscious-blissful.
Ramanuja provided the philosophy for Bhakti.
.
Madhava spread the idea of Lokayata
(popular). These were ideas of no God or Naastik. They denied the existence of
any soul or pure consciousness.
Ajivika School of Makkhali
Gosala denied the law of Karma.
Section C:
One can see each developed to answer same basic question and developed
in distinct ways. Probably to answer the people of different backgrounds facing
different challenges. Each tried to explain the prevailing order and the reason
behind all pain and showed a way out. Meanwhile several superstitious beliefs
prevailed and derogatory practices like sati, jauhar, child marriage, animal
sacrifice, dowry ect. also became the part of the civilization.
Several reform movements where started during the British rule in
India and the reformers faced several hurdles in abolishing such practices.
Dowry remains a present day problem, female infanticide too has become a
glaring problem.
There is a need to revisit all such lines of thoughts and from thesis and
their anti-thesis, see if something new comes up as synthesis.
Pitakas: The baskets of the Law, is what Buddhism have to depend
on. They represet what the early Buddhists believed to be the sayings and doings
of their master.
