Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 1981"

Death and cosmogony in Kashi

Abstract: Kashi (Kagi) is the pious Hindu’s name for Varanasi and is one of the seven sacred cities (puris) of India. This paper arises from fieldwork which focused primarily on the various groups of sacred specialists who earn their living on or around the burning ghdts of the city (see Parry 1980); and represent a preliminary and tentative attempt to describe certain key aspects of its transcendental identity which the specialists promulgate in their dealings with the pilgrims and mourners they serve. My aim is to show how these sacred characteristics can be seen as a logically interconnected set. More specifically, I consider the relationship between the notions that Kashi is both the origin-point and a microcosm of the universe; that it stands outside space and time yet all space is contained within it; and that it provides for the attainment of all the goals of human existence (the purusarthas): in life for the realisation of dharma, artha, and kama andabove allin death for the realisation of moksa or mukti.

On the rhetoric and semantics of purusārtha

Abstract: one must (be prepared to) abandon a man; for a village, a family; for a country, a village; and for the atman, the (entire) earth’ (V. 127,48).2 It would be unjust to draw an abstract opposition between Montesquieu’s lesson of abnegation and universalism, on the one hand, and the essential egoism of the Indian text, on the other. But as answers to the same type of question, there is sufhcient similarity between the two formulas for a comparison to show up some pertinent differences between them. As far as content goes, the fundamental difference is this: Montesquieu is out to found a political morality on a critique of individuals and groups who have no other horizon than themselves. Thus it is his own person, family, country and Europe that a man must be ready to forfeit in favour of the

The renouncer: his individuality and his community

Abstract: presentations of the word ’individual’. The central conception of the individual is that of a person ’as having universal value, as being a complete manifestation of the essence of man or as embodying so to speak humanity in one biological individuum’. A related value is that the word individual ’can refer to the singularity or irreplaceability of the particular human being, or of the particular being or thing in general’ (Dumont 1965a: 9). Moreover, the modern individual is the subject of such institutions as private property and the state. Whatever their differences, both Rousseau and Locke agreed that one of the aims of any political association was the protection of the person and property of each constituent member. ’The great and chief end, therefore, of Men’s uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property’ : citing these words of Locke, Macpherson comments that ~his proposition clearly requires ’the postulate that men have a natural right prior to

The householder and the renouncer in the Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions

Abstract: In the discussion on the four asramas as theoretical preconditions to the concept of purusartha there has been a tendency to treat the asramas as chronos-free, floating as it were in historical space. The theory has been analysed and its structure viewed essentially from the perspective of belief systems and rituals in a broadly Brahmanical context. It might, however, prove rewarding to consider that the theory has a historical specificity and to view it as an ideology which is pertinent to and is interlinked with a historical situation; that the theory was elaborately formulated long after the idea of asramas was first articulated and in its practice also, historical changes are very noticeable; and that these changes were evident particularly in the institutions which accompanied the theory. Such an analysis requires that the asrama theory be seen not as an iso-

Householder and wanderer

Abstract: Over 20 years ago Louis Dumont published an essay that in the experience of the present writer was a decisive landmark in our studies. This essay, ’World renunciation in Indian religions’, drew attention to ’the central role played by the idea, or, better the institution of renunciation’ (1960:38). More importantly it pointed a way out of the seemingly endless atomisation of Indian studies which thereby became the ideal object for vacuous slogans of the ’unity-in-diversity’ type. For once the unity and inner coherence of Indian religion and society were firmly put forward in the felicit-

The Ideology of the Householder among the Kashmiri Pandits

Abstract: Analyse de la place du chef de famille, grhastha, chez les Brahmanes de la vallee du Cachemire, connus sous le nom de Pandit. Essai de definition des principes de base de l'ideologie Pandit du chef de famille.

Hierarchies of kings in early medieval India

Abstract: ’normative’ texts and of historical records represented kings as organised into a single hierarchy. This hierarchy had a paramount ’king of kings’, overlord of the ’entire earth’ at the top, and countless little kings, lords of 10 (or fewer) villages, at the bottom. The period, often dubbed early medieval, lasted between the collapse of the kingdom of the Cdlukyas around AD 750 and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate early in the thirteenth century and was marked by the emergence of temple Hinduism as India’s hegemonic religion. For nearly 150 years the rulers of this dynasty had, from their capital in the Deccan, called themselves the paramount kings of India. This claim was seriously challenged, after the death of Harsa, king of northern India, in 647, only by the Pallavas of Kancipuram, who actually occupied the Calukya capital from 643-654. Northern India, apparently kept in turmoil after Harsa’s demise by the newly risen and expansive kingdom of Tibet, was brought into one kingship again in the second quarter of the eighth century, first by Yagovarman, whose capital was at Kdnyakubja (Kanauj), the premier city of northern India, and then by Lalitaditya Muktapida of Kashmir. Allied with China against the Tibetans, he seems not only to have conquered northern India but also the Deccan. For about 25 years he was, thus, the paramount king of all India. His appearance in the Deccan pro-

Of artha and the Arthaśāstra

Abstract: artha according to dharma?) and others externally (e.g., does it escape being authoritarian and an obstacle to the freedom of the individual? If it does, why is there no mention of rights?). It is my hope that this manysided (though brief) exploration of the structure of thought in the Artlaasdstra will throw some new light on the text and that a study of the text will help us in our inquiry to understand traditional thought. I would like to add that I have taken the thought of the past seriously: i.e., I have allowed it to speak for itself before judging it to be more or less adequate compared to any contemporary understanding ~of the same issues. This approach reveals that the thought under examination is not merely a collection of maxims, but has a structure and focus capable of presenting to us at least one way of realising the values or goals, individual and social, of human life-the purusartha. In brief, our purpose is to present a broad outline of the nature and scope of the thought, and to make a beginning in the dialogue between the past, the present and the future. Pursuantly, I discuss, in the next section, the account of the sciences and their interrelationship as presented in the

Perceptions of princely rule: perspectives from a biography:

Abstract: relation between status and power-a key to Dumont’s approach-can be considered. The problem is examined in the context of the relation between Brahman and Kshatriya, this relation according to Dumont being less the result of historical struggles for supremacy than the expresssion of an enduring and englobing ideological framework in which ’power ... is force made legitimate by being subordinated hierarchically to the brahman and the Brahmans’ (1970: 153). Dumont discusses this view in relation to two sets of data, the indological material on classical Hindu kingship and the contemporary ethnographic data from village systems. What I want to do in this tribute to the power of Dumont’s thought is to contribute evidence from a third source

Kings and wives: the separation of status and royal power

Abstract: Research on the rituals of the devadasis (hereafter I use the word without diacritical marks) of the temple of Jagannatha in Puri, Orissa, has thrown interesting light on the Hindu conceptions of kingship and royal power. Orissa offers a particularly fertile area for the study of kingship since a Hindu king remained as the head of the important temple of Jagannatha until 1955 when the state government took over its administration. Even after that date the king retained a position on the committee looking after the affairs of the temple. Moreover, his presence is indispensable to enact certain rituals during the most important festival of the year which attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Puri. The devadasis are a sign of sovereignty. The manner in which they signify sovereignty will be explored in this paper principally, although not exclusively, through the medium of rituals and myths. Such an endeavour has important implications for Louis Dumont’s thesis of the separation of status and power. In Homo hierarchicus, he has argued that power-which he equates with royal power-is subordinated to or encompassed by the realm of the pure and impure. In his recent preface to the new French edition of the book, Dumont (1979:ix) has identified this thesis as the central one in Homo hierarchicus. The present essay approaches the subject of kingship from the point of view of what Dumont would classify as ’representations’ in a movement inverse to the one followed in Homo hierarchicus. He has characterised the approach in that work as being ’chained to the social forms’: ’As such, it obviously only covers a part of Indian culture, not because we willfully limited it in that aspect, but because we

Śrāddha, impurity, and relations between the living and the dead:

Abstract: . The impetus given by the work of Louis Dumont to the study of the Hindu categories of purity and impurity hardly needs to be mentioned, since these form the cornerstone of his famous treatment of caste in Homo hierarchicus. However, we still await publication of the major study of death and mourning based upon his ethnographic work in northern India., Nevertheless, the relationship between death (as well as birth) and impurity has been clear in Dumont’s publications since his ethnography of the Pramalai Kallar (1957:233-38, 246-56) and the long review (Dumont and Pocock 1959), devoted mainly to Srinivas’s Religion and society among the Coorgs of south India. In Homo hierarchicus (1970:50), where he has given his most general and comprehensive treatment of purity and impurity, Dumont says:

The salvation of the king in the Mahābhārata

Abstract: The relation between brahman and ksatra has been a moot point ever since Western indology started interpreting Indian data; in point of fact, the question has never been an easy one and has raised many problems in the Hindu minds as well, though not in the same way as among the Westerners. Instead of contributing to the general discussion on the subject, I just want to focus my attention on the Mahiibhiirata (MBh) and see what

For a sociology of India

Abstract: From a comparative point of view, modern thought is exceptional in that, starting from Kant, it separates ’is’ and ’ought to be’, fact and value. The fact has two consequences: on the one hand, this specific feature requires to be respected in its domain, and one cannot without serious consequences presume to transcend it within modern culture; on the other hand, there is no need to impose this complication or distinction on cultures which do not recognise it: in the comparative study one will be considering value-ideas. -Louis Dumont (1979: 814)

The spirit of apprenticeship in a master craftsman

Abstract: Louis Dumont’s contribution to social sciences has been largely perceived through his essays on the caste system of India and on the emergence of values characteristic of western societies through their national variants. This perception in my view, remains quite incomplete for it generally bypasses two major ethnographic monographs, misses the central opposition between ’traditional’ and ’modern’ universes, and omits a constant preoccupation which is to situate the social scientist in his analytical endea-

The vocation and the avocations of the Guggali Brahmans of Dvaraka

Abstract: some independent of it. On the nearby island, Beyt Dvaraka, are the temples of Krsna’s wives and this island together with other localities along the coast associated with Krsna form part of the sacred complex of Dvaraka. Although the dominant tone of the complex is Vaisnavite, visits to Sivalinga are included in the itinerary of any assiduous pilgrim. More particularly Dvaraka is the seat of the western Safikardc5rya whose matt, Saradapitha, was established there by the Adisankaracarya. Although the present incumbent formally denies sectarian interests some Saivites in western India regard him as their head. The Guggali Brahmans are the panda of Dvaraka, a general term which covers both temple priests and those who attend on pilgrims to a sacred

Kāma in the scheme of puru⊡ārthas: the story of Rāma

Abstract: mation of structuralist concepts and his attempt to shift the centre of gravity in structural analysis from symmetrical binary oppositions to hierarchical ones. It is in this vein that he suggested that the scheme of purusdrthas may be seen as hierarchically ordered, with moksa (release from the bonds of the world) being opposed to the trivarga scheme of thiswordly ends (dharma, artha, kama), and within the latter each preceding term encompassing the subsequent ones. I hope, therefore, that an exploration of the meaning of kama in the story of Rdma, both from the point of view of the method that Dumont sought to develop and the themes that he explored, may be considered as an appropriate homage to his scholarship. The story of Rama forms a part of the living tradition for the Hindus. Whether recited at home, heard in the temple, or made the subject of the yearly Rdmalild in which the actors are thought to be animated by the divinities themselves, the characters and episodes of this story are intimately known and are readily available as analogies to a Hindu for think-