The Hindus- Doniger

Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page PREFACE: CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION: WORKINGWITH AVAILABLE LIGHT CHAPTER 2 - TIME AND SPACE IN INDIA 50 Million to 50,000 BCE CHAPTER 3 - CIVILIZATION IN THE INDUS VALLEY 50,000 to 1500 BCE CHAPTER 4 - BETWEEN THE RUINSAND THE TEXT 2000 to 1500 BCE CHAPTER 5 - HUMANS, ANIMALS, AND GODS IN THE RIG VEDA 1500 to 1000 BCE CHAPTER 6 - SACRIFICE IN THE BRAHMANAS 800 to 500 BCE CHAPTER 7 - RENUNCIATION IN THE UPANISHADS 600 to 200 BCE CHAPTER 8 - THE THREE (OR IS IT FOUR?) AIMS OF LIFE IN THE HINDU IMAGINARY CHAPTER 9 - WOMEN AND OGRESSES IN THE RAMAYANA 400 BCE to 200 CE CHAPTER 10 - VIOLENCE IN THE MAHABHARATA 300 BCE to 300 CE CHAPTER 11 - DHARMA IN THE MAHABHARATA 300 BCE to 300 CE CHAPTER 12 - ESCAPE CLAUSES IN THE SHASTRAS 100 BCE to 400 CE CHAPTER 13 - BHAKTI IN SOUTH INDIA 100 BCE to 900 CE CHAPTER 14 - GODDESSES AND GODS IN THE EARLY PURANAS 300 to 600 CE CHAPTER 15 - SECTS AND SEX IN THE TANTRIC PURANAS AND THE TANTRAS 600 to 900 CE CHAPTER 16 - FUSION AND RIVALRY UNDER THE DELHI SULTANATE 650 to 1500 CE CHAPTER 17 - AVATAR AND ACCIDENTAL GRACE IN THE LATER PURANAS 800 to 1500 CE CHAPTER 18 - PHILOSOPHICAL FEUDS IN SOUTH INDIA AND KASHMIR 800 to 1300 CE CHAPTER 19 - DIALOGUE AND TOLERANCE UNDER THE MUGHALS 1500 to 1700 CE CHAPTER 20 - HINDUISM UNDER THE MUGHALS 1500 to 1700 CE CHAPTER 21 - CASTE, CLASS, AND CONVERSION UNDER THE BRITISH RAJ 1600 to 1900 CE CHAPTER 22 - SUTTEE AND REFORM IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE RAJ 1800 to 1947 CE CHAPTER 23 - HINDUS IN AMERICA 1900 - CHAPTER 24 - THE PAST IN THE PRESENT 1950 - CHAPTER 25 - INCONCLUSION, OR, THE ABUSE OF HISTORY Acknowledgements CHRONOLOGY GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLINGOF WORDS IN SANSKRIT AND OTHERINDIAN LANGUAGES ABBREVIATIONS GLOSSARY OF TERMS IN INDIAN LANGUAGES AND NAMES OF KEY FIGURES NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY: WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED PHOTO CREDITS INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALSO BY WENDY DONIGER Siva, the Erotic Ascetic The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India TRANSLATIONS: The Rig Veda The Laws of Manu and Kamasutra THE PENGUIN PRESS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in 2009 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © Wendy Doniger, 2009 All rights reserved Acknowledgments for permission to reprint copyrighted works appear on page 754. Illustration credits appear on page 754. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus : an alternative history / Wendy Doniger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. eISBN : 978-1-101-02870-4 1. Hinduism—Social aspects—History. 2. Women in Hinduism—History. 3. Pariahs in Hinduism—History. 4. Hinduism—Relations. I. Title. BL1151.3.D66 2009 294.509—dc22 2008041030 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. http://us.penguingroup.com KATHERINE ULRICH—student, friend, editor supreme— and WILL DALRYMPLE—inspiration and comrade in the good fight INDIA’S MAJOR GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES INDIA FROM 2500 BCE TO 600 CE INDIA FROM 600 CE TO 1600 CE INDIA FROM 1600 CE TO THE PRESENT PREFACE: THE MAN OR THE RABBIT IN THE MOON AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY The image of the man in the moon who is also a rabbit in the moon, or the duck who is also a rabbit, will serve as a metaphor for the double visions of the Hindus that this book will strive to present. Since there are so many books about Hinduism, the author of yet another one has a duty to answer the potential reader’s Passover question: Why shouldn’t I pass over this book, or, Why is this book different from all other books? This book is not a brief survey (you noticed that already; I had intended it to be, but it got the bit between its teeth and ran away from me), nor, on the other hand, is it a reference book that covers all the facts and dates about Hinduism or a book about Hinduism as it is lived today. Several books of each of those sorts exist, some of them quite good, which you might read alongside this one.1The Hindus: An Alternative History differs from those books in several ways. [TOP] The Mark on the Moon, [MIDDLE] Wittgenstein’s Duck/ Rabbit, and [BOTTOM] The Rabbit in the Moon First, it highlights a narrative alternative to the one constituted by the most famous texts in Sanskrit (the literary language of ancient India) and represented in most surveys in English. It tells a story that incorporates the narratives of and about alternative people—people who, from the standpoint of most high-caste Hindu males, are alternative in the sense of otherness, people of other religions, or cultures, or castes, or species (animals), or gender (women). Part of my agenda in writing an alternative history is to show how much the groups that conventional wisdom says were oppressed and silenced and played no part in the development of the tradition—women, Pariahs (oppressed castes, sometimes called Untouchables)—did actually contribute to Hinduism. My hope is not to reverse or misrepresent the hierarchies, which remain stubbornly hierarchical, or to deny that Sanskrit texts were almost always subject to a final filter in the hands of the male Brahmins (the highest of the four social classes, the class from which priests were drawn) who usually composed and preserved them. But I hope to bring in more actors, and more stories, upon the stage, to show the presence of brilliant and creative thinkers entirely off the track beaten by Brahmin Sanskritists and of diverse voices that slipped through the filter, and, indeed, to show that the filter itself was quite diverse, for there were many different sorts of Brahmins; some whispered into the ears of kings, but others were dirt poor and begged for their food every day. Moreover, the privileged male who recorded the text always had access to oral texts as well as to the Sanskrit that was his professional language. Most people who knew Sanskrit must have been bilingual; the etymology of “Sanskrit” (“perfected, artificial”) is based upon an implicit comparison with “Prakrit” (“primordial, natural”), the language actually spoken. This gives me a double agenda: first to point out the places where the Sanskrit sources themselves include vernacular, female, and lower-class voices and then to include, wherever possible, non-Sanskrit sources. The (Sanskrit) medium is not always the message;a it’s not all about Brahmins, Sanskrit, the Gita. I will concentrate on those moments within the tradition that resist forces that would standardize or establish a canon, moments that forged bridges between factions, the times of the “mixing of classes” (varna-samkara) that the Brahmins always tried—inevitably in vain—to prevent. Second, in addition to focusing on a special group of actors, I have concentrated on a few important actions, several of which are also important to us today: nonviolence toward humans (particularly religious tolerance) and toward animals (particularly vegetarianism and objections to animal sacrifice) and the tensions between the householder life and renunciation, and between addiction and the control of sensuality. More specific images too (such as the transposition of heads onto bodies or the flooding of cities) thread their way through the entire historical fabric of the book. I have traced these themes through the chapters and across the centuries to provide some continuity in the midst of all the flux,2 even at the expense of what some might regard as more basic matters. Third, this book attempts to set the narrative of religion within the narrative of history, as a linga (an emblem of the god Shiva, often representing his erect phallus) is set in a yoni (the symbol of Shiva’s consort, or the female sexual organ), or any statue of a Hindu god in its base or plinth (pitha). I have organized the topics historically in order to show not only how each idea is a reaction to ideas that came before (as any good old-fashioned philological approach would do) but also, wherever possible, how those ideas were inspired or configured by the events of the times, how Hinduism, always context sensitive,3 responds to what is happening, at roughly the same moment, not only on the political and economic scene but within Buddhism or Islam in India or among people from other cultures entering India.

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