To whom does the discipline and doctrine, or "science", of yoga belong? Now that American entrepreneurial yoga experimenters try to patent their own versions of some yoga techniques, Indian private and public agencies try to counter this trend and retain yoga as a common heritage that, in spite of ancient traditions of private and confidential teaching, is now in the public domain. The debate about these trends and counter-initiatives raises the fundamental question: who invented yoga? Or at least: when and where did it originate?
According to V.K. Gupta, head of the digital library for yoga data set up by the Indian ministries of Health and Science, "Yoga is collective knowledge and is available for use by everybody no matter what the interpretation. It would be very inappropriate if some companies try to prevent others from any yoga practice, even if they call it some other name. So we wanted to ensure that, in the future, nobody will be able to claim that he has created a yoga posture which was actually already created in 2500 B.C. in India."
In a scholarly forum where this was debated the last couple of days, pat came the counter-question: "What I'm wondering is, was yoga actually created in 2500 BCE? Patanjali is dated ca. last century BCE or within first two of CE. Did the texts he compiled go back that far?"
In fact, we know little about the yoga author Patanjali. We know of Patanjali the grammarian and have good reason to date him to the 2nd century BC. Apart from the name, we have no solid reason for assuming that he was the author of the famous Yoga Sûtra as well. Possibly an anonymous author tried to give his own book a wider readership by attributing it to an ancient authority, just as was done with e.g. the Manu Smrti, completed in the early Christian age but attributed to the pre-Vedic patriarch Manu. So, never mind the person Patanjali, let us discuss the chronology of "his" Yoga Sutra instead. Opinions vary, but the final editing of the book may be as late as 500 CE, all while containing much older materials.
A more technical discussion of the book's chronology could lead us pretty far from the original question, and for the present purposes we are fortunate to be justified in foregoing the effort. The reason is that it contains none of the techniques currently claimed by fashionable gurus and yogic entrepreneurs. After all, the yoga being marketed and "developed" in the West nowadays is 99% hatha yoga, which is practically absent from the Yoga Sutra.
What "Patanjali" teaches is a method for stilling the mind, along with the concomitant doctrine of why this practice is desirable and beneficial. His topic is meditation, and accessorily the lifestyle conducive to a fruitful meditation practice. It contains a very general outline of pranayama, breath control, a practice already mentioned prominently but only sketchily in Vedic literature, principally the Upanishads. Pranayama is definitely a very ancient practice and doctrine, though many of the specific breathing techniques now taught in yoga studios seem not have been described in the old scriptures, to the extent that we understand their sometimes cryptic language. The description of these specific techniques is found in the Hatha Yoga classics which do not predate the 13th century: the Gheranda Samhita, the Shiva Samhita and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.
There too, a number of asana-s or postures is described, though important ones now popular in the Western (and westernized-Indian) yoga circuit, particularly standing ones, are still not in evidence even in these more recent texts. In the Yoga Sutra, they are totally absent. Patanjali merely defines Asana, "seat", as "comfortable but stable". In ancient times, a "yogi" might be someone who, as per Patanjali, practised stillness of mind; or he might be someone developing paranormal powers through concentration exercises, hence a magician. But the term "yoga" did not connote physical contortions.
Yet, the claim that yoga dates back to "2500 BC" pertains precisely to the visual depiction of a well-known yogic posture. It very obviously refers to the Harappan "Pashupati seal" showing someone (claimed to be Shiva Pashupati, "Lord of Beasts", as he is surrounded by animals) sitting in siddhâsana, which simply means sitting on the floor with the legs crossed and knees touching the floor. This leg position takes some training for people in a colder climate, and Westerners only encounter it in yoga classes; but it comes naturally to people in a hot climate. In India you constantly come across tailors sitting in that posture for their work. So, though this posture is found to be conducive to keeping the spine straight and freeing the body from stresses hindering meditation, there is nothing exclusively yogic about it.
I don't think any other asana postures except those for simply sitting up straight have been recorded before the late-medieval Gheranda Samhita, Hatha Yoga Pradipika and such. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna calls on Arjuna to "become a yogi", but he gives no instructions in postures or breathing exercises. Libertines practising the whole range of Kama Sutra postures got more exercise in physical strength and agility than the yogis of their age, who merely sat up straight and forgot about their bodies.
Geoffrey Samuel (History of Yoga and Tantra, 2008) argues convincingly that kundalini yoga and the whole system of chakra lore, definitely not older than the 5th century CE, is a highly indianized adaptation of Chinese "inner alchemy" including the "small celestial orbit" and some of its sexual techniques. Its core practice is the controlled circulation of energy, and the hatha yoga postures seem to have evolved out of the effort to facilitate this energy circulation through contribed postures. Much of "Tantra" is a Chinese import that has been so thoroughly indianized, e.g. by personifying various energy centres as "gods", that Indians and Westerners haven't even noticed its newness vis-à-vis Vedic or otherwise anciently Indian tradition.
To Samuel's argument, some more data from a comparison of practices may be added, e.g. "negative breathing" (in which the belly is not extended but drawn in during in-breathing, with the breath being drawn up so as to create an upward energy dynamic), and the whole Daoist-originated idea that yoga invigorates and lengthens life. The actual hatha-yogic postures are very different from Daoist exercises in some technical respects, such as Indian muscle-stretching straightness vs. Chinese avoidance of all full stretching, again seemingly traceable to the difference in climate. According to Chinese tradition, daoyin exercises, attested BCE, were devised to make the joints supple in an arthritis-prone cold/wet environment. (These exercises also were an influence on modern Swedish gymnastics.) Maintaining a fixed posture for a length of time, typical of hatha yoga, may seem to contrast with the continuous movement in taijiquan (13th or arguably even 19th cent.), but is in fact also found in qigong postures called an. That Chinese postures are mostly standing, Indian postures mostly on the floor, is again explainable by the difference in climate.
For devotees of antiquity and tradition it may be disappointing that their tradition is so recent. But conversely, one may applaud hatha yoga (and taijiquan etc.) as fruits of a long history of discovery and gradual progress. There is enough evidence by now for the health-enhacing effects of hatha yoga regardless of how old the discipline is. If it is only recent, it means that we now dispose of a system of health unavailable to the ancients. That is called progress, the opposite of "tradition", meaning the preservation of an ancient treasure that can never be bettered.
Likewise, the Chinese "gentle" types of martial arts, also often lauded as very ancient, must logically be younger developments from the natural, primitive "hard" martial arts. This is necessarily so, for they are far more sophisticated, taking a cumulative effort in their development and requiring a greater mastery through training before they become effective in combat. So, the Oriental disciplines that speak to the contemporary Western imagination the most, are necessarily less ancient than cruder practices that don't have the fascinating Oriental aura. By Asian standards of chronology, they are pretty recent.
As late as the 19th century, novelties were added to the array of hatha yoga techniques, partly under the influences of British military drill. Particularly the standing techniques are mostly late additions. Consider hatha yoga a modern innovation.
Read more!
Monday, August 23, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The monkey under Patañjali’s yoke
While numerous Asian philosophical texts remain untranslated, a few suffer from a surplus of translations: the Bhagavad-Gītā, the Yijing, the Daodejing, and also Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra (YS). Why did Christopher Key Chapple, the Doshi professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University and an experienced practitioner of yoga, consider it necessary to add one more presentation of the Pātañjala Yoga system?
Yoga and the Luminous: Patañjali’s Spiritual Path to Freedom, by Christopher Key Chapple, State University of New York Press, Albany 2008, 301 pp.
The most important new service the author renders to yoga practitioners and students of India’s intellectual history is a thorough cross-referencing of Patañjali’s concepts with the Rg-Veda (embryonic), the contemporaneous systems of Sānkhya, Buddhism, Jainism, the younger systems of the Nāth Yogis and Sikhs, and the westernized yoga teachings propagated by travelling Gurus. Patañjali really gets his specific place in the Indian network of ideas here. His was “a masterful contribution, communicated through non-judgmentally presenting diverse practices” and “a methodology rooted in ahimsā” (p.113). He and his commentators pioneered the “thoughtful, probing study of the religion of one’s neighbours” and showed that “syncretism can be an effective tool for societal peace” (p.15). Most centrally, he “compiled a host of techniques to facilitate” the attainment of “the power of pure witnessing”, rooted in the self which “sees change but does not itself change” (p.62). Yet note that Chapple also warns us “not to take the self as a static state”, not to “reify” it: the self is “an experience”, “a state of silent absorption” (p.3).
Another obvious merit of his book Yoga and the Luminous is the core part, the detailed translation with grammatical analysis of the text (reproduced in Devanagari and transcription), indologically impeccable but pleasantly readable for the educated layman. It is always a reviewer’s pleasure if he can sincerely and wholeheartedly recommend the book he just read, and that is the case here. There is one point, though, where I want to take issue with Chapple’s understanding of the YS, and it is at the conceptual centre, though in the text it is at the very beginning.
In Laozi’s Daodejing, the most controversial line among competent translators is the very first, Dao ke dao fei chang dao, popularly rendered as “The way that can be said, is not the eternal way”. This is grammatically untenable but appeals greatly to the anti-intellectual slant which Western readers tend to read into Daoism. The misreading had a history in China ever since the word dao acquired the extra meaning of “addressing thus, saying”. A similar slant bedevils the usual interpretation of the Yoga Sūtra’s key term yoga. In this case too, the misreading appeals to intellectual fashions in the West, but started in the country of origin, where it won the day, so that most modern Hindus accept it.
The proper and intended meaning of yoga in Patañjali’s system is the one suggested by its English cognate “yoke”, viz. “subjection, disciplining, control, restraint”. His definition of yoga as citta-vrtti-nirodhah, “the restraint of the fluctuations of the mind” (YS 1:2, tra. p.143) concerns the subjection of the mind’s tendency to monkey around and get attached to its objects. Silencing the mind is presented as a psycho-technical discipline, without direct metaphysical claims.
Unfortunately, in his word-for-word explanation, Chapple forgets his own translation of this definition and explains yoga as “union, connection, joining” (p.143), without problematizing this common interpretation. With this, I must find fault, even if it is the majority view by far. What “union” is this, between what and what? Modern Hindus will say: “between ātman and paramātman”, or more colloquially, “between the soul and God”. That would approximately be the right answer in the case of Bhakti or Sufi mysticism, but is Patañjali’s yoga system a similar theistic mysticism? I think not. Nor does Chapple say it is, but he could have addressed the question more explicitly, and his mere use of the word “union” will confirm Hindus in their theistic understanding.
Patañjali wrote when theism was at a low ebb. In modern self-presentations of Hinduism, you would not know that it was ever anything else than devotional-theistic. At some point, a theistic coup d’état has eclipsed the godless schools of thought and written them out of the record. The Gītā is a blatant instance, with Krishna imposing his presence as object of devotion on chapters named after (and giving an otherwise fair summary of) godless philosophies like Sānkhya. Some have argued that the YS started with a godless core and had theistic elements added later on, to the point that Hindus came to call it Seśvara Sānkhya, i.e. “Sānkhya-with-God”. This is plausible, but the reconstruction of a text’s editorial history is notoriously susceptible to speculative excess, so let us cautiously focus on another and unmistakably operative method of theistic incorporation, viz. leaving the text intact but reinterpreting key terms.
Thus, “Īśvara” is defined merely as “a distinct purusa untouched by afflictions, actions, fruitions or their residue” in YS 1:24, but has been assigned the exclusive meaning of “God/Shiva”, nowadays assumed in the expression “Īśvarapranidhāna” (YS 1:23, 2:1, 2:32, 2:45). It is on the basis of little else than this expression’s repeated appearance that the YS is classified among the theistic systems. Even if it means “devotion to God”, that still does not make Yoga theistic, for God still plays no role in the definition and structure of the system, only the devotion itself is credited with playing a helpful role in the yogi’s progress. Nowhere does Patañjali say that “union” is sought with God nor with anything else. On the contrary, the stated goal of his system is kaivalya, “isolation, separation”, the very opposite of “union”, and equivalent with the notion kevala of the atheistic Jaina system. Patañjali accommodates the devotee yet avoids burdening the unbeliever with a requirement to believe.
Read more!
Yoga and the Luminous: Patañjali’s Spiritual Path to Freedom, by Christopher Key Chapple, State University of New York Press, Albany 2008, 301 pp.
The most important new service the author renders to yoga practitioners and students of India’s intellectual history is a thorough cross-referencing of Patañjali’s concepts with the Rg-Veda (embryonic), the contemporaneous systems of Sānkhya, Buddhism, Jainism, the younger systems of the Nāth Yogis and Sikhs, and the westernized yoga teachings propagated by travelling Gurus. Patañjali really gets his specific place in the Indian network of ideas here. His was “a masterful contribution, communicated through non-judgmentally presenting diverse practices” and “a methodology rooted in ahimsā” (p.113). He and his commentators pioneered the “thoughtful, probing study of the religion of one’s neighbours” and showed that “syncretism can be an effective tool for societal peace” (p.15). Most centrally, he “compiled a host of techniques to facilitate” the attainment of “the power of pure witnessing”, rooted in the self which “sees change but does not itself change” (p.62). Yet note that Chapple also warns us “not to take the self as a static state”, not to “reify” it: the self is “an experience”, “a state of silent absorption” (p.3).
Another obvious merit of his book Yoga and the Luminous is the core part, the detailed translation with grammatical analysis of the text (reproduced in Devanagari and transcription), indologically impeccable but pleasantly readable for the educated layman. It is always a reviewer’s pleasure if he can sincerely and wholeheartedly recommend the book he just read, and that is the case here. There is one point, though, where I want to take issue with Chapple’s understanding of the YS, and it is at the conceptual centre, though in the text it is at the very beginning.
In Laozi’s Daodejing, the most controversial line among competent translators is the very first, Dao ke dao fei chang dao, popularly rendered as “The way that can be said, is not the eternal way”. This is grammatically untenable but appeals greatly to the anti-intellectual slant which Western readers tend to read into Daoism. The misreading had a history in China ever since the word dao acquired the extra meaning of “addressing thus, saying”. A similar slant bedevils the usual interpretation of the Yoga Sūtra’s key term yoga. In this case too, the misreading appeals to intellectual fashions in the West, but started in the country of origin, where it won the day, so that most modern Hindus accept it.
The proper and intended meaning of yoga in Patañjali’s system is the one suggested by its English cognate “yoke”, viz. “subjection, disciplining, control, restraint”. His definition of yoga as citta-vrtti-nirodhah, “the restraint of the fluctuations of the mind” (YS 1:2, tra. p.143) concerns the subjection of the mind’s tendency to monkey around and get attached to its objects. Silencing the mind is presented as a psycho-technical discipline, without direct metaphysical claims.
Unfortunately, in his word-for-word explanation, Chapple forgets his own translation of this definition and explains yoga as “union, connection, joining” (p.143), without problematizing this common interpretation. With this, I must find fault, even if it is the majority view by far. What “union” is this, between what and what? Modern Hindus will say: “between ātman and paramātman”, or more colloquially, “between the soul and God”. That would approximately be the right answer in the case of Bhakti or Sufi mysticism, but is Patañjali’s yoga system a similar theistic mysticism? I think not. Nor does Chapple say it is, but he could have addressed the question more explicitly, and his mere use of the word “union” will confirm Hindus in their theistic understanding.
Patañjali wrote when theism was at a low ebb. In modern self-presentations of Hinduism, you would not know that it was ever anything else than devotional-theistic. At some point, a theistic coup d’état has eclipsed the godless schools of thought and written them out of the record. The Gītā is a blatant instance, with Krishna imposing his presence as object of devotion on chapters named after (and giving an otherwise fair summary of) godless philosophies like Sānkhya. Some have argued that the YS started with a godless core and had theistic elements added later on, to the point that Hindus came to call it Seśvara Sānkhya, i.e. “Sānkhya-with-God”. This is plausible, but the reconstruction of a text’s editorial history is notoriously susceptible to speculative excess, so let us cautiously focus on another and unmistakably operative method of theistic incorporation, viz. leaving the text intact but reinterpreting key terms.
Thus, “Īśvara” is defined merely as “a distinct purusa untouched by afflictions, actions, fruitions or their residue” in YS 1:24, but has been assigned the exclusive meaning of “God/Shiva”, nowadays assumed in the expression “Īśvarapranidhāna” (YS 1:23, 2:1, 2:32, 2:45). It is on the basis of little else than this expression’s repeated appearance that the YS is classified among the theistic systems. Even if it means “devotion to God”, that still does not make Yoga theistic, for God still plays no role in the definition and structure of the system, only the devotion itself is credited with playing a helpful role in the yogi’s progress. Nowhere does Patañjali say that “union” is sought with God nor with anything else. On the contrary, the stated goal of his system is kaivalya, “isolation, separation”, the very opposite of “union”, and equivalent with the notion kevala of the atheistic Jaina system. Patañjali accommodates the devotee yet avoids burdening the unbeliever with a requirement to believe.
Read more!
Friday, July 2, 2010
Guru Nanak was a Hindu
In contemporary devotional pictures and posters of Guru Nanak (1469-1539), as seen in taxis and shops, the Guru is invariably shown as wearing a pagari or turban, like his pupils (Sikh-s) today. But this is a recently-imposed convention, not followed in his own day and in subsequent centuries.
In traditional paintings, the Gurus never wore turbans, a custom that even according to Sikh teaching itself was only instituted by the tenth and last Guru, Govind Singh, in 1699. All the Gurus are typically shown as wearing a topi (Hindu-style cap) and patka (sash). We discuss one instance.
K.C. Aryan (born 11 August 1919, died 2002), a Partition refugee from West Panjab, was an accomplished painter. He founded the Museum for Tribal and Folk Art in Gurgaon, still functioning today. He saved plenty of old paintings, sculptures and other arts & crafts objects for posterity by collecting them in his museum or donating them to more established institutions.
In 1970, he presented to the publishing unit of Punjabi University Patiala a manuscript with illustrations for a book, 100 Years Survey of Panjab Painting (1841-1941). It was eventually published by the PUP in 1975, but only in mutilated form. The Senate Board of the University objected to the inclusion of one particular painting, and threatened that if it were published, the grant for the whole publishing unit would be stopped.
The contentious painting, executed by a Pahari painter in the mid-19th century (whose name, as often in folk art, remains unknown), shows a topi-wearing Guru Nanak praying to Lord Vishnu. The Board took the Sikh-separatist line that that Sikhism has nothing to do with Hinduism, and that the Gurus are above the “Brahminical” gods. It is the same line that keeps the Sikh establishment from calling their central shrine, the Hari Mandir (“Vishnu temple”), by its proper name, hiding it behind the superficial designation “Golden Temple” or the Moghul term “Darbar Sahib”. It is also why in 1922 they threw out from the Hari Mandir the murti-s that had been worshipped there ever since Arjan Dev inaugurated it in 1604. Sikh identity as a separate religion, rather than as one of the many panth-s in the Hindu commonwealth, is based on a denial of history, and this requires a constant censoring of unwilling historical data: names changed, scriptures doctored, murti-s thrown away, the publication of a painting suppressed.
K.C. Aryan donated the painting in ca. 1982 to the Himachal State Museum in Shimla. There, it is significantly not on display but kept in storage. That is, if it has not been lost or illegally sold by some babu unconcerned with art and heritage; or somehow eliminated by one with Khalistani.leanings eager to destroy the evidence for an inconvenient fact: that Guru Nanak was every inch a Hindu.
Read more!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The incurable Hindu fondness for PN Oak
Countless Hindus nowadays swear by the historical and linguistic theses of journalist and self-styled historian PN Oak. Twenty years ago, I expected his star to wane and get eclipsed by more sensible voices of Hindu historical revisionism, but the opposite has happened. In NRI/PIO circles, at least, he seems to enjoy a lasting popularity. What a pity.
Purushottam Nagesh Oak (1917-2007) was a soldier in Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. That much should endear him to Hindus, fair enough. But he is better known and revered for his theories on history and etymology. And these are best put aside and forgotten, instead of being parroted by Hindus on ever larger forums.
In the main, three lines of argument have been pioneered or promoted by P.N. Oak. One is that the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and a few other well-known Indo-Muslim buildings were really Hindu temples, not built but only usurped by the Muslims. The second is that Vikramaditya (1st cent. BCE) ruled Arabia, a claim that is then linked with the more widespread belief that the Kaaba was originally a Hindu temple featuring a Shiva Lingam. The third is that names of places and people around the globe are of Sanskrit origin and thus testify to the omnipresence and omnipotence of the ancient Hindus. All three are fanciful and totally unfounded. We will consider them in reverse order.
Donkey etymology
Etymology is the science of the original, or at least oldest traceable, forms of words. It is a tricky field and requires knowledge of older stages of a language and of related languages. You may find that seemingly similar words are unrelated while totally dissimilar words may prove to be related.
Consider e.g. the French word feu and the German word Feuer, quite similar in appearance. Moreover, they are identical in meaning, viz. “fire”. So are they cognate words? No, Germanic f- is evolved from Indo-European p-, and Feuer is related to Greek pur, meaning “fire”, whence English pyromaniac and (funeral) pyre, ultimately from IE *péhur. By contrast, French f- generally preserves an Latin f-, which in most cases evolved from IE th/dh- (compare Latin fumus, “smoke”, to Greek thumos, “spirit”, and Sanskrit dhumah, “smoke”). In this case, feu is from focus, “hearth”, and fovere, “burn” (related to Sanskrit dahati), ultimately from IE *dhegh, “burn”. (The forms marked with asterisk* are not attested in writing but reconstructed from younger attested forms.)
Or consider e.g. the English words let. Yes, word-s, for there are two identical-looking words let. Here we don’t need to move up as far as the dim Indo-European past to find their seeming identity deceptive. One is the verb meaning “to allow”, “not to prevent”. The other is less common but known in the expression “without let or hindrance”, where let is a synonym of “hindrance”, meaning “prevent”, “block”, or the very opposite of the other let in the sense of “allow”. How can that be? It becomes clear when we look back only a thousand years, to Old English, or even closer, to its nearest cognate, Dutch. In Dutch till today we have on the one hand the verb lat-en, “let, allow” and on the other the verb be-let-ten, “prevent” and the noun be-let, “hindrance, objection”. In English the distinction between the sounds of the two stems has eroded and they have ended up coinciding. The identical form conceals different origins.
This caveat against trusting appearances is systematically violated by P.N. Oak. To him, similarity proves a common origin. And that common origin is always a one-way street: any word resembling a Sanskrit word must have been borrowed from Sanskrit, never the other way around. Some fifteen years ago, I received a letter from him in which he proposed to collaborate. That proposal made no sense to me as we were working along very different lines and from radically conflicting premises, I suppose he hadn’t even noticed that. There is only one version of history approved by the Nehruvians, with which both of us disagree, but there are many alternatives, some sound and others nonsensical. In passing, he claimed that my native tongue, Dutch, is “the language of the Daityas”. A dubious compliment, for the Daitya-s are demons, kind of opposite to the Aditya-s or gods.
Similar etymological claims have been made by Oak and his acolytes in large numbers. Thus, England, named in reality after the Germanic tribe of the Angles (whence East-Anglia, Anglo-Saxon), is explained as originating from Angulisthan, which happens to mean “finger-land”. Arabia is derived from Arvasthan, “horse-land”. In fact, the name has a Semitic root attested since the Akkadian empire in the 3rd millennium BCE. Horses have nothing to do with Arabia but originate in the Eurasian plain, stretching northwest from Bactria, thousands of miles from Arabia, where they were imported only in the 2nd millennium BC. Rome is said to be derived from Rama, and Vatican (actually from vates, “inspired poet”, cognate to the Germanic theonym Woden/Odin, hence "poets' hill") from Veda-vatika, “Veda park”, incidentally “proving” that Christianity is an offshoot of Vedic dharma. In cases where a foreign name coincides completely with a Sanskrit word, such as the Amerindian ethnonym Maya and Shankara’s philosophical concept maya, there is simply no stopping the euphoric eureka-s in the Oakist camp.
I will not take the easy route of amusing the readers with a long list of Oakisms. Let us only note that this line of thought has caught on in broad Hindu circles. A textbook introducing Hinduism to UK schoolchildren, Hindu Dharma (at least the first edition, perhaps it has been corrected since) claims that the Tibetan title Lama, “ordained monk”, is derived from Rama, the hero’s name. Firstly, this is not true: Lama is pure Tibetan, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, unrelated to Indo-Aryan. The word was originally pronounced, and still written in Tibetan as, bla-ma, of which the first syllable means “upper”, as in bla-dakh, “high mountain-pass”, better known as Ladakh. Secondly, how would it make sense? Why should a community of celibate renunciates name itself after a romantic warrior-prince? Likewise, what is gained by deriving foreign names from Sanskrit? Proving that the ancient Hindus were big losers who once dominated the world and were then chased from all those lands except for India? It seems that a lot of Hindus, when glimpsing a mirage that flatters their collective ego, suspend their critical sense and go ecstatic.
King Vikram and the Arab ghost
On quite a few Hindu websites, you find the claim that king Vikramaditya, presumably the one whose name is linked to the Vikram Samvat calendar (starting 58 BCE, so that 2010 CE roughly coincides with 2067 VS), ruled over Arabia. One can understand where the idea originates: in confusion over genuine data, viz. his proverbial defeat of the Yavana (“Ionian”, i.e. stemming from the lands to India’s northwest) or Shaka (“Scythian”) invaders. “Defeat” can be read as “conquest”, hence conquest of their homelands, hence conquest of all the lands who armies have been labelled by the Indian defenders as Yavanas or Shakas, i.e. Central and West Asia. This could be reckoned as including even Ionia (the formerly Greek west coast of Anatolia) and definitely Arabia, land of origin of invaders like Mohammed bin Qasim, and of the religion of India’s numerous Turkic and Afghan invaders.
So, the shift from Vikram as defeater of northwestern invaders to Vikram as conqueror of the lands to the northwest is understandable. But it is unfounded all the same. There was plenty of literature in West Asia in Vikramaditya’s time, in Greek, Latin, Egyptian and various Semitic dialects, yet none ever mentions Vikramaditya. Conversely, in what little reliable historical testimony of Vikramaditya that we have, we find no recognizable description of Arabia nor a narrative of its conquest.
But, according to those Hindu websites, there is an Arabic record of Vikramaditya’s glorious presence in Arabia, the Sayar-ul-Okul, “memorable words”, said to be available in the Maktab-al-Sultania (Royal library) in Istanbul. But none of them has ever cared to go and see the book. And all of these references can be traced to P.N. Oak, apparently the only person in the world who has ever seen this spectacularly revisionist source of history. This reminds us of the manuscript purportedly left by Jesus in a Ladakhi monastery, where a late-19th-century Russian adventurer claimed to have seen it, without ever being confirmed in this finding by a second eyewitness, yet successful in setting millions of Hindus and New-Agers jubilating that “Jesus lived in India”, thereby only strengthening the missionary claim on India and on Hindu souls. For neither claim is there the slightest serious evidence. Believers who take Oak’s bait do so at their own peril: they take the risk of being outed as fools.
As for the Kaaba being a Shiva temple, this is untrue but it has a serious kernel of truth. Typologically it was of course Pagan “idol” temple. Muslims recognized Hinduism as essentially the same kind of idol-worship as the native Arab religion. The Kaaba’s presiding deity was the moon-god Hubal, similar to Shiva in that the latter is depicted as carrying the moon on his head. His three goddesses Al-Lat, Uzza and Manat, were believed by the Muslims to have taken refuge in the Somnath (Shiva) temple on the Gujarat coast. This is the reason why more than any other, that particular Hindu temple was singled out for destruction upon destruction.
Paganism has thrown up similar deities in widely separated parts of the globe. The Arabs could easily think up a moon god and a triple goddess without ever having heard of Shiva and his Parvati, Durga and Kali. And if at all there was a Hindu influence at work here, it can easily be explained through the well-attested trade contacts rather than through a fairy-tale of King Vikram.
The Taj Mahal a Shiva temple?
In autumn 2009, one Dr. Radheshyam Brahmachari posted an article series, “Distortion of Indian History For Muslim Appeasement” to various Hindutva lists and to the vanguard Islam-critical website faithfreedom.org, e.g.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/islam/distortion-indian-history-muslim-appeasement-part-6e
(where it seems to have been pulled sometime since, probably under the impact of the kind of criticism that I will now formulate). The message he develops is entirely based on PN Oak’s influential thesis that the Taj Mahal is a Shiva temple usurped by the Moghuls. Other mighty instances of Indo-Muslim architecture including the Red Fort are likewise claimed to be originally Hindu structures.
In fact, Hindu tradition has handbooks on temple-building, and none contain the groundplan and features of the Taj Mahal. Nor is there any Hindu temple past or present that looks like the Taj Mahal even remotely. The building may well stand on the site of a Rajput pavilion expropriated by or gifted to the Moghul, but it never ever was a Shiva temple.
In defence of his thesis, Brahmachari challenges the sceptics to explain one particular inscription dedicating an unspecified marble temple in the area to Vishnu. It is not clear from the inscription as given by him that one of the temples stood at the very site of the Taj Mahal. According to his own data, at any rate, the inscription is from ca. 1150 AD. That is well before the destruction of just about every temple in North India by Ghori and Aibak in 1192-94 and by their successors in the Delhi Sultanate. Especially in Agra, lying on the main route of Muslim advance and a sometime Muslim capital, no sizable temple could have been left standing in that orgy of iconoclasm. So there is some 500 years between the destruction of the said marble temples and the appearance of the Taj Mahal.
At any rate, even if standing on a Hindu site, the Taj Mahal is absolutely no Hindu building. It entirely follows the conventions of Indo-Saracenic architecture, with domes and arches borrowed by the first Muslims in West-Asia from the Byzantines, with no Hindu connection in sight anywhere. As a grave, too, it is wildly contrary to Hindu sensibilities. Only accomplished (jivanmukta) sages are buried, other human bodies are cremated or, in related (Parsi, Tibetan) traditions, left to disintegrate under the impact of animals and the elements. The idea of keeping decomposing human bodies close to human centres of habitation in graveyards is repulsive to the Hindu mind. It is a sign of Hindus’ estrangements from their roots that they insist on claiming this un-Hindu site, probably because (Brahmachari writes as much) it is applauded world-wide. Well, proud Hindus don’t care for the poor taste of Western tourists and may point out that the Taj Mahal is bland and vulgar when compared with Ajanta and Ellora, the Meenakshi temple or the Elephanta caves.
The typical Oakist argument exemplifies some flaws in the Hindu nationalist mind. In his very first sentence of his Taj article, Brahmachari falsely claims that three Western authorities have confirmed that the Taj was built in the Hindu temple style. None of them, however, is quoted as explicitly saying so. I won’t accuse Brahmachari of lying; the far more common source of untrue claims is self-delusion. Misreading bonafide documents, like a child misunderstanding a text by and for grown-ups, is probably the most common source of Hindutva misconceptions. Every reader who checks with the original, or who even only knows the field in general, will see through these false claims, the main exception being some even sillier fellow Hindus egged on by their eagerness to find some soothing delusion to indulge. At any rate, if a Westerner or anyone else can believe that the Taj is in the Hindu temple style, he clearly has never seen a temple. And hence is not an "authority".
The appeal to authority is one particularly harmful Hindutva trait. Rather than thinking for themselves, Hindutva polemicists prefer to latch onto some all-knowing Guru and unwisely expect everybody else to be equally taken in by this mindless reliance on authority. It's like in the crisis in the BJP, where most arguments are not about: "What line should we, the BJP membership, take?", but rather: "Which big man can come and save us from this mess?"
Dr. Brahmachari’s and Mr. Oak’s own writings exemplify yet another eyesore trait of Hindutva polemic. When a Hindutva history-rewriter uses logical connectors like "this proves", "therefore", "this provides another evidence for...", you'd better watch out. Invariably, a non-sequitur or other logical fallacy is following.
In the Oakist case for the Red Fort as a Hindu building, we get the following instance, among others. The whole case is built on the presence of Hindu motifs in the Red Fort. Part of this claim is simply false. The so-called Aum sign next to the sun wheel in the gate is just a flourish, distinctly different from the real, Aum sign (e.g. vertically symmetrical, which the OM sign is not). But even to the extent that the claim is true, it doesn’t prove what Oak deduces from it. Firstly, the building was built by a Muslim ruler, in the sense that he ordered it built, but in actual stone it was built by Hindu masons, who slipped a few Hindu elements in. There are numerous instances of this in Moghul architecture. But they couldn't go too far, so you don't see any Hindu deities depicted, or emphatically Hindu symbols. The presence of elephants, cited as distinctly un-Islamic, is a borderline case in Muslim sensitivities, but not off-limits and in fact fairly common in Moghul Indo-Saracenic art (indeed, even humans are routinely depicted, at least in the Moghul school of painting).
Secondly, a certain amount of Hindu presence was a deliberate part of Muslim building policy. Theologically, it made good sense to Muslims to incorporate recognizably Hindu (but non-deity) elements in their architecture as a sign of the submission of Hindus to Islam, vide e.g. the parts of the Kashi Vishvanath temple visibly present in the mosque that forcibly replaced it. Orthodox theologians like the Wahhabis did indeed reject this syncretism, and took it as a sign of the Islamic laxism that in their view caused the downfall of the Moghuls,--- thereby implicitly testifying to the presence of non-Islamic elements in Moghul art. So, even if some Hindu elements could be discerned in the Red Fort, it still does not deny its belonging to the Indo-Muslim building style.
Conclusion
In my close involvement with the Ayodhya debate, I noticed how excellent Hindu historians and archaeologists were very successful at finding evidence, but rather poor in presenting a coherent picture of where exactly their findings fit into the argumentation (a job with which I busied myself). If that is true for real historians, it is all the more true for amateurs like Oak and Brahmachari. For even if their case that the Red Fort was built by a Hindu rather than a Muslim ruler were true, what would it prove? That even when in possession of such a mighty stronghold, the Hindus were too incompetent to retain Delhi in the face of aggression by the militarily far less sophisticated Muslims? That Muslims were incapable of building forts of their own, though the Muslim world inside and outside the subcontinent has quite a few? PN Oak and his followers are not only unable to prove their points, they are also totally confused about why perforce they should want to prove those specific points.
This self-defeating Quixotic exercise can only compromise the credibility of its authors, and of all those trusting enough to convey it. That is why it is grimly irresponsible to contaminate with this nonsense a spearhead website in the struggle for the hearts and minds, faithfreedom.org. That website was created by ex-Muslims who try to help Muslims break free from the mental prison of Islam. Its only weapon is the truth, factual data presented in a scholarly manner, the light of reason that alone is able to defeat Islamic obscurantism. The enemy will love it if such a centre of truth gets tainted with the eager but silly delusions peddled by the Oakist crowd. If Dr. Brahmachari were perchance an enemy agent, he would do exactly what he has actually done in this case. Hare-brained Hindutva polemicists are ten a penny, but one who is in a position to drag down with himself a quality entreprise, that's exceptional.
The popularity of PN Oak’s theses is a sign of gross immaturity among contemporary Hindu activists. It indicates confusion regarding the facts of religious conflict in Indian history, along with a narcissistic greed, a morbid desire to lay ludicrous ownership claims to all manner of precious objects produced by outsiders (as if Hindu Dharma’s genuine achievements weren’t enough to be proud of). In that respect, it is of one piece with claims that Hindus in Rama’s age already used helicopters. But helicopters would at least be a more progressive and scientific achievement to show off than a mere grave, no matter how embellished. No, the best thing to do here is to take the advice of genuine Hindu historians like R.C. Majumdar and Sita Ram Goel, which is to ignore the P.N. Oak school of history. Let it pass gently into the night.
(The author welcomes reactions, here or at koenraadelst@hotmail.com, and may consider a sequel if warranted by the feedback.)
Read more!
Purushottam Nagesh Oak (1917-2007) was a soldier in Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. That much should endear him to Hindus, fair enough. But he is better known and revered for his theories on history and etymology. And these are best put aside and forgotten, instead of being parroted by Hindus on ever larger forums.
In the main, three lines of argument have been pioneered or promoted by P.N. Oak. One is that the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and a few other well-known Indo-Muslim buildings were really Hindu temples, not built but only usurped by the Muslims. The second is that Vikramaditya (1st cent. BCE) ruled Arabia, a claim that is then linked with the more widespread belief that the Kaaba was originally a Hindu temple featuring a Shiva Lingam. The third is that names of places and people around the globe are of Sanskrit origin and thus testify to the omnipresence and omnipotence of the ancient Hindus. All three are fanciful and totally unfounded. We will consider them in reverse order.
Donkey etymology
Etymology is the science of the original, or at least oldest traceable, forms of words. It is a tricky field and requires knowledge of older stages of a language and of related languages. You may find that seemingly similar words are unrelated while totally dissimilar words may prove to be related.
Consider e.g. the French word feu and the German word Feuer, quite similar in appearance. Moreover, they are identical in meaning, viz. “fire”. So are they cognate words? No, Germanic f- is evolved from Indo-European p-, and Feuer is related to Greek pur, meaning “fire”, whence English pyromaniac and (funeral) pyre, ultimately from IE *péhur. By contrast, French f- generally preserves an Latin f-, which in most cases evolved from IE th/dh- (compare Latin fumus, “smoke”, to Greek thumos, “spirit”, and Sanskrit dhumah, “smoke”). In this case, feu is from focus, “hearth”, and fovere, “burn” (related to Sanskrit dahati), ultimately from IE *dhegh, “burn”. (The forms marked with asterisk* are not attested in writing but reconstructed from younger attested forms.)
Or consider e.g. the English words let. Yes, word-s, for there are two identical-looking words let. Here we don’t need to move up as far as the dim Indo-European past to find their seeming identity deceptive. One is the verb meaning “to allow”, “not to prevent”. The other is less common but known in the expression “without let or hindrance”, where let is a synonym of “hindrance”, meaning “prevent”, “block”, or the very opposite of the other let in the sense of “allow”. How can that be? It becomes clear when we look back only a thousand years, to Old English, or even closer, to its nearest cognate, Dutch. In Dutch till today we have on the one hand the verb lat-en, “let, allow” and on the other the verb be-let-ten, “prevent” and the noun be-let, “hindrance, objection”. In English the distinction between the sounds of the two stems has eroded and they have ended up coinciding. The identical form conceals different origins.
This caveat against trusting appearances is systematically violated by P.N. Oak. To him, similarity proves a common origin. And that common origin is always a one-way street: any word resembling a Sanskrit word must have been borrowed from Sanskrit, never the other way around. Some fifteen years ago, I received a letter from him in which he proposed to collaborate. That proposal made no sense to me as we were working along very different lines and from radically conflicting premises, I suppose he hadn’t even noticed that. There is only one version of history approved by the Nehruvians, with which both of us disagree, but there are many alternatives, some sound and others nonsensical. In passing, he claimed that my native tongue, Dutch, is “the language of the Daityas”. A dubious compliment, for the Daitya-s are demons, kind of opposite to the Aditya-s or gods.
Similar etymological claims have been made by Oak and his acolytes in large numbers. Thus, England, named in reality after the Germanic tribe of the Angles (whence East-Anglia, Anglo-Saxon), is explained as originating from Angulisthan, which happens to mean “finger-land”. Arabia is derived from Arvasthan, “horse-land”. In fact, the name has a Semitic root attested since the Akkadian empire in the 3rd millennium BCE. Horses have nothing to do with Arabia but originate in the Eurasian plain, stretching northwest from Bactria, thousands of miles from Arabia, where they were imported only in the 2nd millennium BC. Rome is said to be derived from Rama, and Vatican (actually from vates, “inspired poet”, cognate to the Germanic theonym Woden/Odin, hence "poets' hill") from Veda-vatika, “Veda park”, incidentally “proving” that Christianity is an offshoot of Vedic dharma. In cases where a foreign name coincides completely with a Sanskrit word, such as the Amerindian ethnonym Maya and Shankara’s philosophical concept maya, there is simply no stopping the euphoric eureka-s in the Oakist camp.
I will not take the easy route of amusing the readers with a long list of Oakisms. Let us only note that this line of thought has caught on in broad Hindu circles. A textbook introducing Hinduism to UK schoolchildren, Hindu Dharma (at least the first edition, perhaps it has been corrected since) claims that the Tibetan title Lama, “ordained monk”, is derived from Rama, the hero’s name. Firstly, this is not true: Lama is pure Tibetan, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, unrelated to Indo-Aryan. The word was originally pronounced, and still written in Tibetan as, bla-ma, of which the first syllable means “upper”, as in bla-dakh, “high mountain-pass”, better known as Ladakh. Secondly, how would it make sense? Why should a community of celibate renunciates name itself after a romantic warrior-prince? Likewise, what is gained by deriving foreign names from Sanskrit? Proving that the ancient Hindus were big losers who once dominated the world and were then chased from all those lands except for India? It seems that a lot of Hindus, when glimpsing a mirage that flatters their collective ego, suspend their critical sense and go ecstatic.
King Vikram and the Arab ghost
On quite a few Hindu websites, you find the claim that king Vikramaditya, presumably the one whose name is linked to the Vikram Samvat calendar (starting 58 BCE, so that 2010 CE roughly coincides with 2067 VS), ruled over Arabia. One can understand where the idea originates: in confusion over genuine data, viz. his proverbial defeat of the Yavana (“Ionian”, i.e. stemming from the lands to India’s northwest) or Shaka (“Scythian”) invaders. “Defeat” can be read as “conquest”, hence conquest of their homelands, hence conquest of all the lands who armies have been labelled by the Indian defenders as Yavanas or Shakas, i.e. Central and West Asia. This could be reckoned as including even Ionia (the formerly Greek west coast of Anatolia) and definitely Arabia, land of origin of invaders like Mohammed bin Qasim, and of the religion of India’s numerous Turkic and Afghan invaders.
So, the shift from Vikram as defeater of northwestern invaders to Vikram as conqueror of the lands to the northwest is understandable. But it is unfounded all the same. There was plenty of literature in West Asia in Vikramaditya’s time, in Greek, Latin, Egyptian and various Semitic dialects, yet none ever mentions Vikramaditya. Conversely, in what little reliable historical testimony of Vikramaditya that we have, we find no recognizable description of Arabia nor a narrative of its conquest.
But, according to those Hindu websites, there is an Arabic record of Vikramaditya’s glorious presence in Arabia, the Sayar-ul-Okul, “memorable words”, said to be available in the Maktab-al-Sultania (Royal library) in Istanbul. But none of them has ever cared to go and see the book. And all of these references can be traced to P.N. Oak, apparently the only person in the world who has ever seen this spectacularly revisionist source of history. This reminds us of the manuscript purportedly left by Jesus in a Ladakhi monastery, where a late-19th-century Russian adventurer claimed to have seen it, without ever being confirmed in this finding by a second eyewitness, yet successful in setting millions of Hindus and New-Agers jubilating that “Jesus lived in India”, thereby only strengthening the missionary claim on India and on Hindu souls. For neither claim is there the slightest serious evidence. Believers who take Oak’s bait do so at their own peril: they take the risk of being outed as fools.
As for the Kaaba being a Shiva temple, this is untrue but it has a serious kernel of truth. Typologically it was of course Pagan “idol” temple. Muslims recognized Hinduism as essentially the same kind of idol-worship as the native Arab religion. The Kaaba’s presiding deity was the moon-god Hubal, similar to Shiva in that the latter is depicted as carrying the moon on his head. His three goddesses Al-Lat, Uzza and Manat, were believed by the Muslims to have taken refuge in the Somnath (Shiva) temple on the Gujarat coast. This is the reason why more than any other, that particular Hindu temple was singled out for destruction upon destruction.
Paganism has thrown up similar deities in widely separated parts of the globe. The Arabs could easily think up a moon god and a triple goddess without ever having heard of Shiva and his Parvati, Durga and Kali. And if at all there was a Hindu influence at work here, it can easily be explained through the well-attested trade contacts rather than through a fairy-tale of King Vikram.
The Taj Mahal a Shiva temple?
In autumn 2009, one Dr. Radheshyam Brahmachari posted an article series, “Distortion of Indian History For Muslim Appeasement” to various Hindutva lists and to the vanguard Islam-critical website faithfreedom.org, e.g.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/islam/distortion-indian-history-muslim-appeasement-part-6e
(where it seems to have been pulled sometime since, probably under the impact of the kind of criticism that I will now formulate). The message he develops is entirely based on PN Oak’s influential thesis that the Taj Mahal is a Shiva temple usurped by the Moghuls. Other mighty instances of Indo-Muslim architecture including the Red Fort are likewise claimed to be originally Hindu structures.
In fact, Hindu tradition has handbooks on temple-building, and none contain the groundplan and features of the Taj Mahal. Nor is there any Hindu temple past or present that looks like the Taj Mahal even remotely. The building may well stand on the site of a Rajput pavilion expropriated by or gifted to the Moghul, but it never ever was a Shiva temple.
In defence of his thesis, Brahmachari challenges the sceptics to explain one particular inscription dedicating an unspecified marble temple in the area to Vishnu. It is not clear from the inscription as given by him that one of the temples stood at the very site of the Taj Mahal. According to his own data, at any rate, the inscription is from ca. 1150 AD. That is well before the destruction of just about every temple in North India by Ghori and Aibak in 1192-94 and by their successors in the Delhi Sultanate. Especially in Agra, lying on the main route of Muslim advance and a sometime Muslim capital, no sizable temple could have been left standing in that orgy of iconoclasm. So there is some 500 years between the destruction of the said marble temples and the appearance of the Taj Mahal.
At any rate, even if standing on a Hindu site, the Taj Mahal is absolutely no Hindu building. It entirely follows the conventions of Indo-Saracenic architecture, with domes and arches borrowed by the first Muslims in West-Asia from the Byzantines, with no Hindu connection in sight anywhere. As a grave, too, it is wildly contrary to Hindu sensibilities. Only accomplished (jivanmukta) sages are buried, other human bodies are cremated or, in related (Parsi, Tibetan) traditions, left to disintegrate under the impact of animals and the elements. The idea of keeping decomposing human bodies close to human centres of habitation in graveyards is repulsive to the Hindu mind. It is a sign of Hindus’ estrangements from their roots that they insist on claiming this un-Hindu site, probably because (Brahmachari writes as much) it is applauded world-wide. Well, proud Hindus don’t care for the poor taste of Western tourists and may point out that the Taj Mahal is bland and vulgar when compared with Ajanta and Ellora, the Meenakshi temple or the Elephanta caves.
The typical Oakist argument exemplifies some flaws in the Hindu nationalist mind. In his very first sentence of his Taj article, Brahmachari falsely claims that three Western authorities have confirmed that the Taj was built in the Hindu temple style. None of them, however, is quoted as explicitly saying so. I won’t accuse Brahmachari of lying; the far more common source of untrue claims is self-delusion. Misreading bonafide documents, like a child misunderstanding a text by and for grown-ups, is probably the most common source of Hindutva misconceptions. Every reader who checks with the original, or who even only knows the field in general, will see through these false claims, the main exception being some even sillier fellow Hindus egged on by their eagerness to find some soothing delusion to indulge. At any rate, if a Westerner or anyone else can believe that the Taj is in the Hindu temple style, he clearly has never seen a temple. And hence is not an "authority".
The appeal to authority is one particularly harmful Hindutva trait. Rather than thinking for themselves, Hindutva polemicists prefer to latch onto some all-knowing Guru and unwisely expect everybody else to be equally taken in by this mindless reliance on authority. It's like in the crisis in the BJP, where most arguments are not about: "What line should we, the BJP membership, take?", but rather: "Which big man can come and save us from this mess?"
Dr. Brahmachari’s and Mr. Oak’s own writings exemplify yet another eyesore trait of Hindutva polemic. When a Hindutva history-rewriter uses logical connectors like "this proves", "therefore", "this provides another evidence for...", you'd better watch out. Invariably, a non-sequitur or other logical fallacy is following.
In the Oakist case for the Red Fort as a Hindu building, we get the following instance, among others. The whole case is built on the presence of Hindu motifs in the Red Fort. Part of this claim is simply false. The so-called Aum sign next to the sun wheel in the gate is just a flourish, distinctly different from the real, Aum sign (e.g. vertically symmetrical, which the OM sign is not). But even to the extent that the claim is true, it doesn’t prove what Oak deduces from it. Firstly, the building was built by a Muslim ruler, in the sense that he ordered it built, but in actual stone it was built by Hindu masons, who slipped a few Hindu elements in. There are numerous instances of this in Moghul architecture. But they couldn't go too far, so you don't see any Hindu deities depicted, or emphatically Hindu symbols. The presence of elephants, cited as distinctly un-Islamic, is a borderline case in Muslim sensitivities, but not off-limits and in fact fairly common in Moghul Indo-Saracenic art (indeed, even humans are routinely depicted, at least in the Moghul school of painting).
Secondly, a certain amount of Hindu presence was a deliberate part of Muslim building policy. Theologically, it made good sense to Muslims to incorporate recognizably Hindu (but non-deity) elements in their architecture as a sign of the submission of Hindus to Islam, vide e.g. the parts of the Kashi Vishvanath temple visibly present in the mosque that forcibly replaced it. Orthodox theologians like the Wahhabis did indeed reject this syncretism, and took it as a sign of the Islamic laxism that in their view caused the downfall of the Moghuls,--- thereby implicitly testifying to the presence of non-Islamic elements in Moghul art. So, even if some Hindu elements could be discerned in the Red Fort, it still does not deny its belonging to the Indo-Muslim building style.
Conclusion
In my close involvement with the Ayodhya debate, I noticed how excellent Hindu historians and archaeologists were very successful at finding evidence, but rather poor in presenting a coherent picture of where exactly their findings fit into the argumentation (a job with which I busied myself). If that is true for real historians, it is all the more true for amateurs like Oak and Brahmachari. For even if their case that the Red Fort was built by a Hindu rather than a Muslim ruler were true, what would it prove? That even when in possession of such a mighty stronghold, the Hindus were too incompetent to retain Delhi in the face of aggression by the militarily far less sophisticated Muslims? That Muslims were incapable of building forts of their own, though the Muslim world inside and outside the subcontinent has quite a few? PN Oak and his followers are not only unable to prove their points, they are also totally confused about why perforce they should want to prove those specific points.
This self-defeating Quixotic exercise can only compromise the credibility of its authors, and of all those trusting enough to convey it. That is why it is grimly irresponsible to contaminate with this nonsense a spearhead website in the struggle for the hearts and minds, faithfreedom.org. That website was created by ex-Muslims who try to help Muslims break free from the mental prison of Islam. Its only weapon is the truth, factual data presented in a scholarly manner, the light of reason that alone is able to defeat Islamic obscurantism. The enemy will love it if such a centre of truth gets tainted with the eager but silly delusions peddled by the Oakist crowd. If Dr. Brahmachari were perchance an enemy agent, he would do exactly what he has actually done in this case. Hare-brained Hindutva polemicists are ten a penny, but one who is in a position to drag down with himself a quality entreprise, that's exceptional.
The popularity of PN Oak’s theses is a sign of gross immaturity among contemporary Hindu activists. It indicates confusion regarding the facts of religious conflict in Indian history, along with a narcissistic greed, a morbid desire to lay ludicrous ownership claims to all manner of precious objects produced by outsiders (as if Hindu Dharma’s genuine achievements weren’t enough to be proud of). In that respect, it is of one piece with claims that Hindus in Rama’s age already used helicopters. But helicopters would at least be a more progressive and scientific achievement to show off than a mere grave, no matter how embellished. No, the best thing to do here is to take the advice of genuine Hindu historians like R.C. Majumdar and Sita Ram Goel, which is to ignore the P.N. Oak school of history. Let it pass gently into the night.
(The author welcomes reactions, here or at koenraadelst@hotmail.com, and may consider a sequel if warranted by the feedback.)
Read more!
Friday, June 11, 2010
Extremism in South Asia (Review)
Extremism in South Asia includes armed class struggle, armed secular nationalism, and religious militancy ranging from street riots to organized terrorism and state repression against dissidents and minorities. The willingness to resort to violent means seems a natural enough criterion for separating extremist from moderate politics. The criterion is at any rate implicit in Deepa Ollapally’s book The Politics of Extremism in South Asia, which gives only passing attention to non-violent instances, such as school textbooks inculcating hatred for other communities or nations, or institutionalised discrimination against them. The book is less a study in underlying ideologies than in actual politics and armed conflict.
Dr. Ollapally is Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington DC. While doubtlessly interesting to students of South Asian religions, her book’s principal target audience seems to be the makers of international and security policies. The main armed conflicts of the past decade in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir, India’s Northeast, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are reviewed. The prehistory of these conflicts is sketched only very briefly, e.g. the Pakistani repression (of “particular ferocity”) in East Bengal that triggered the war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh is dealt with in a footnote (p.188 n.35); while the Sikh separatist movement for “Khalistan” that died down in the early 1990s is not discussed at all.
By contrast, the recent story of the extremist movements is recounted in detail. This survey of factual data approaches the norm of impartiality better than most. Sometimes the author takes issue with colleagues whom she deems less unbiased, e.g. against the attempt to portray India as an overbearing “hegemonic” power (common in the US since the Bangladesh war), she points out India’s restraint during its invited participation in the Sri Lankan conflict and argues: “Barbara Crossette calls India ‘the regional meddler’, a loaded term at best, but it reveals a certain amount of confusion on the part of outside observers.” (p.164)
For each country and instance of actual extremism, she enquires which one of the current explanation models applies best. Is extremism a reaction to poverty, or to state repression, or is it the result of religious doctrines, or of state initiative? Predictably, she downplays the religious factor. No clash of civilizations here, but the primacy of states as political agents. This happens to be the position of most academics and of most governments involved, including the latest American presidents with their insistence that terrorism, though committed in the name of religion, has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. In recent years, Western authorities have zealously adopted the mantra familiar in India, where every communal riot or bomb attack is followed by assurances from every pulpit that “terrorists have no religion”.
While conformistic, the de-emphasizing of pre-existing religious identities as factors of conflict can reasonably be justified on merit. The role of religion turns out to be secondary in some cases, and often asymmetrical between the parties to a conflict. Thus, in Sri Lanka the Buddhist clergy gradually involved itself in the nationalist Sinhalese movement and gave the conflict a religious character, on their part anti-Hindu (with occasional vandalization of Hindu temples) and often also anti-Christian. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam concentrated on strategic rather than symbolic targets and maintained a secular stance. Though the international media often created a muddle by speaking of a struggle between “Buddhist Sinhalese” and “Hindu Tamils”, the LTTE had a Christian component, while its roots lay in the emphatically secular Dravidianist movement.
A more novel focus of this book concerns the importance of a country’s “geopolitical identity”. Thus, while Pakistan draws its identity from the Partition, and has since enjoyed a certain prestige in the Muslim world as a frontline state of Islam, Bangladesh found a new and less predetermined identity in the 1971 war of liberation. Geopolitical identity largely determines the attitude of the outside world to the internal conflicts of South-Asian countries, e.g. in reporting on the condition of the minorities, secular and democratic India is measured with a different yardstick than Islamic Pakistan. International concern for the minorities, as for the Lankan Tamils in the final phase of the war, is not always innocent: the author notes that colonialism in its last phase justified itself no longer as an instrument to “civilize the savages” but to “protect the minorities” (p.40). The reader can take the hint that neocolonial interferences in South Asia, often through NGOs, use the same justification.
Review: The Politics of Extremism in South Asia. By DEEPA M. OLLAPALLY. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xi, 239 pp.
The Journal of Asian Studies (Cambridge), volume 69, issue 02, pp. 637-639.
http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A77kQYP2
Dr. Ollapally is Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington DC. While doubtlessly interesting to students of South Asian religions, her book’s principal target audience seems to be the makers of international and security policies. The main armed conflicts of the past decade in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir, India’s Northeast, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are reviewed. The prehistory of these conflicts is sketched only very briefly, e.g. the Pakistani repression (of “particular ferocity”) in East Bengal that triggered the war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh is dealt with in a footnote (p.188 n.35); while the Sikh separatist movement for “Khalistan” that died down in the early 1990s is not discussed at all.
By contrast, the recent story of the extremist movements is recounted in detail. This survey of factual data approaches the norm of impartiality better than most. Sometimes the author takes issue with colleagues whom she deems less unbiased, e.g. against the attempt to portray India as an overbearing “hegemonic” power (common in the US since the Bangladesh war), she points out India’s restraint during its invited participation in the Sri Lankan conflict and argues: “Barbara Crossette calls India ‘the regional meddler’, a loaded term at best, but it reveals a certain amount of confusion on the part of outside observers.” (p.164)
For each country and instance of actual extremism, she enquires which one of the current explanation models applies best. Is extremism a reaction to poverty, or to state repression, or is it the result of religious doctrines, or of state initiative? Predictably, she downplays the religious factor. No clash of civilizations here, but the primacy of states as political agents. This happens to be the position of most academics and of most governments involved, including the latest American presidents with their insistence that terrorism, though committed in the name of religion, has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. In recent years, Western authorities have zealously adopted the mantra familiar in India, where every communal riot or bomb attack is followed by assurances from every pulpit that “terrorists have no religion”.
While conformistic, the de-emphasizing of pre-existing religious identities as factors of conflict can reasonably be justified on merit. The role of religion turns out to be secondary in some cases, and often asymmetrical between the parties to a conflict. Thus, in Sri Lanka the Buddhist clergy gradually involved itself in the nationalist Sinhalese movement and gave the conflict a religious character, on their part anti-Hindu (with occasional vandalization of Hindu temples) and often also anti-Christian. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam concentrated on strategic rather than symbolic targets and maintained a secular stance. Though the international media often created a muddle by speaking of a struggle between “Buddhist Sinhalese” and “Hindu Tamils”, the LTTE had a Christian component, while its roots lay in the emphatically secular Dravidianist movement.
A more novel focus of this book concerns the importance of a country’s “geopolitical identity”. Thus, while Pakistan draws its identity from the Partition, and has since enjoyed a certain prestige in the Muslim world as a frontline state of Islam, Bangladesh found a new and less predetermined identity in the 1971 war of liberation. Geopolitical identity largely determines the attitude of the outside world to the internal conflicts of South-Asian countries, e.g. in reporting on the condition of the minorities, secular and democratic India is measured with a different yardstick than Islamic Pakistan. International concern for the minorities, as for the Lankan Tamils in the final phase of the war, is not always innocent: the author notes that colonialism in its last phase justified itself no longer as an instrument to “civilize the savages” but to “protect the minorities” (p.40). The reader can take the hint that neocolonial interferences in South Asia, often through NGOs, use the same justification.
Review: The Politics of Extremism in South Asia. By DEEPA M. OLLAPALLY. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xi, 239 pp.
The Journal of Asian Studies (Cambridge), volume 69, issue 02, pp. 637-639.
http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A77kQYP2
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Far Right and the dissolution of Belgium
Foreign press correspondents in Brussels are telling their readers and viewers in the home country that the Flemish Far Right is clamouring for the divorce between Flanders and Wallonia. This is true in itself, but by obscuring the non-Right support for this demand and the non-Flemish Far-Right support for Belgian unity, it falsely suggests a natural and intrinsic connection between separatism and the Far Right.
Foreign press correspondents posted in Brussels to cover EU affairs, are once again showing how clueless they are about the internal politics of the federal Kingdom of Belgium. Faithfully copying the anti-Flemish hate daily Le Soir, they claim that the divorce between Flanders and Wallonia, once more on the horizon after the ignominious demise of the Prime Minister Yves Leterme's Federal Government, is a demand of the Flemish Far Right. In fact, the demand has far wider support, and conversely a part of the Belgian Far Right is the most militant supporter of Belgian unity.
The title in today's French News, "Far-right party calls for dissolution of Belgium", could easily be read as suggesting that there is something far-right about wanting the dissolution of Belgium. The party intended, the Vlaams Belang ("Flemish Interest"), has had Flemish independence as its the central plank in its platform since its foundation (as Vlaams Blok, "Flemish Bloc") in 1978. In that sense, the article's message is not exactly "news". But there is also a centrist party, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, New-Flemish Alliance), that advocates Flemish independence, for which its president Bart De Wever is the best-known and most effective pleader. Till recently there was also a leftist party, the Vlaams-Progressieven ("Flemish-Progressives", now split, with the defectors joining the Socialist Parrty and the rump uniting with the Green Party) that wanted more radical Flemish autonomy though not outright independence. There still is a sizable non-party leftist movement, centred around the monthly Meervoud, that pulls no punches in advocating full independence.
Conversely, on the Walloon side, the Far Right is the most consistent in its opposition to the dissolution of Belgium. This is true of the main party, the Belgian Front National, as well as of its splinter parties and of non-party cores of far-rightist activism. There exists a separatist Walloon movement, with a highly fluctuating appeal among the general population, rarely aiming for independence and mostly for accession to France (rattachement, hence "rattachisme"), but this tendency is centrist or leftist. The Far Right strongly clings to the union with Flandres inside the Belgian Kingdom.
To put their position in perspective, it is necessary to understand the position of the Walloon or Belgian French-speaking mainstream. Belgium came about as an accident, a compromise imposed by Britain which opposed French expansion. The Belgian revolutionaries of 1830, some of whom were actually French, never wanted to create a separate new state, but wanted accession of all the wholly or partly or prospectively French-speaking parts of the Low Countries, since 1815 united in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to France. On the Flemish side, only some Roman Catholic hard-liners wanted to break away from the Protestant-dominated Netherlands, the vast majority was satisfied enough with the status quo. So, nobody really wanted Belgium, it was only imposed by Britain (especially when Britain could arrange the choice of a king linked to the British monarchy) as the least harmful alternative to the break-away territory's accession to France, which the revolutionaries and their French allies were plotting.
A kind of Belgian identity was fostered by the second King, the notorious Leopold II, plunderer of the Congo. He not only gave the country a vast colony as a common project that could unite all entreprising Belgians, he also allowed some concessions to the oppressed Flemish because a Flemish component helped affirm the non-French identity of Belgium and hence its self-justification as a state separate from expansive France. The royal family had a genuine attachment to Belgium because it was their source of income, the Walloons were only won over by the enduring experience of being the dominant group in the new state, a position they wouldn't have held in France. Their love for Belgium was conditional on their privileges. That is why the calls for accession to France have become more outspoken as Wallonia became less dominant as a consequence of its economic decline.
At any rate, the mainstream Walloon parties take the option of accession to France into account even if it is not on their agenda right now. At present, they oppose the dissolution of Belgium because they want to extract all the profit they can get from the more successful Flemish economy through the Belgian state for as long as they can get away with it. At the same time, they are mentally fully prepared for Belgium's break-up and their own accession to their cultural motherland, France. Note that French TV stations are more popular among the Walloons than their own (let alone Flemish stations, which have nearly no Walloon viewer at all), and that French politics is followed and discussed with at least as much involvement as Belgian politics. Economically, the Walloon political class still prefer Belgium because it allows them to dole out goodies paid for with Flemish money, a lifestyle they would have to abandon under French rule. In the case of accession to France, the likely scenario is that France, eager enough to extend it territory and importance, would foot the bill for the Walloon share of the huge Belgian state debt, but only as a one-time bride-price, and that it would next enforce fiscal discipline, something unheard of among the present generation of Walloon politicians. So, they have monetary reasons to prefer Belgium, but otherwise wouldn't mind acceding to France.
The Walloon Far Right, by contrast, clings to the union with Flanders with a vengeance. One of the more intellectual reasons is that they care about history, and Wallonia has been united with the provinces to its north for centuries, under the Holy Roman and Habsburg empires, the Spanish and Dutch kingdoms, even under French revolutionary occupation, and of course in Belgium itself. Another historical factor is WW2, when Walloon collaborators with Nazi Germany joined the Waffen-SS with Belgian nationalist symbols including the Belgian flag and anthem, fighting side by side with Flemish volunteers who used Flemish nationalist symbols. The prime Belgian collaborator was of course the King, Leopold III, who was neither Flemish nor in favour of the country's break-up; even before German occupation, he had a very authoritarian view of politics and his own role in it. The number two was Léon Degrelle, leader of the Rex movement and of the Walloon unit in the Waffen-SS, again a non-Flemish pro-Belgian rightist.
So, rightist Belgian nationalism has a considerable historical pedigree. But the more pressing reason for Walloon opposition to the break-up of Belgium is immigration. Walloon rightists expect the Germanic nations to conduct a more realistic immigration policy. While the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark are not exactly very strict against immigration, at least they have gradually adopted a more serious policy of immigration control. In Belgium, most Flemish parties favour a more restrictive immigration policy, whereas the mainstream Walloon parties all favour what amounts to an open-borders policy. Part of the reason is typically Belgian (immigrants as a demographic weapon against the Flemish majority), but part of it seems to be a wider French phenomenon. Among Walloon rightists, the impression exists that France is irredeemably lost to religious (Muslim) and racial (African) population replacement. A Flemish-majority Belgium seems to be a slightly better safeguard for Wallonia against the demographic flood of immigration.
Therefore, the French-speaking Far Right in Belgium is passionately attached to the preservation of Belgium's unity. They see a Flemish-majority Belgium as their historical homeland and as a bulwark against the tide of immigration, highly imperfect but nonetheless far preferable to France. While there is only an accidental connection between rightism and Flemish separatism, a platform shared between rightist and non-rightist Flemings, there is in the present circumstances a sound logical reasons for Walloon rightists to cling to Belgian unity and oppose separatism.
Read more!
Foreign press correspondents posted in Brussels to cover EU affairs, are once again showing how clueless they are about the internal politics of the federal Kingdom of Belgium. Faithfully copying the anti-Flemish hate daily Le Soir, they claim that the divorce between Flanders and Wallonia, once more on the horizon after the ignominious demise of the Prime Minister Yves Leterme's Federal Government, is a demand of the Flemish Far Right. In fact, the demand has far wider support, and conversely a part of the Belgian Far Right is the most militant supporter of Belgian unity.
The title in today's French News, "Far-right party calls for dissolution of Belgium", could easily be read as suggesting that there is something far-right about wanting the dissolution of Belgium. The party intended, the Vlaams Belang ("Flemish Interest"), has had Flemish independence as its the central plank in its platform since its foundation (as Vlaams Blok, "Flemish Bloc") in 1978. In that sense, the article's message is not exactly "news". But there is also a centrist party, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, New-Flemish Alliance), that advocates Flemish independence, for which its president Bart De Wever is the best-known and most effective pleader. Till recently there was also a leftist party, the Vlaams-Progressieven ("Flemish-Progressives", now split, with the defectors joining the Socialist Parrty and the rump uniting with the Green Party) that wanted more radical Flemish autonomy though not outright independence. There still is a sizable non-party leftist movement, centred around the monthly Meervoud, that pulls no punches in advocating full independence.
Conversely, on the Walloon side, the Far Right is the most consistent in its opposition to the dissolution of Belgium. This is true of the main party, the Belgian Front National, as well as of its splinter parties and of non-party cores of far-rightist activism. There exists a separatist Walloon movement, with a highly fluctuating appeal among the general population, rarely aiming for independence and mostly for accession to France (rattachement, hence "rattachisme"), but this tendency is centrist or leftist. The Far Right strongly clings to the union with Flandres inside the Belgian Kingdom.
To put their position in perspective, it is necessary to understand the position of the Walloon or Belgian French-speaking mainstream. Belgium came about as an accident, a compromise imposed by Britain which opposed French expansion. The Belgian revolutionaries of 1830, some of whom were actually French, never wanted to create a separate new state, but wanted accession of all the wholly or partly or prospectively French-speaking parts of the Low Countries, since 1815 united in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to France. On the Flemish side, only some Roman Catholic hard-liners wanted to break away from the Protestant-dominated Netherlands, the vast majority was satisfied enough with the status quo. So, nobody really wanted Belgium, it was only imposed by Britain (especially when Britain could arrange the choice of a king linked to the British monarchy) as the least harmful alternative to the break-away territory's accession to France, which the revolutionaries and their French allies were plotting.
A kind of Belgian identity was fostered by the second King, the notorious Leopold II, plunderer of the Congo. He not only gave the country a vast colony as a common project that could unite all entreprising Belgians, he also allowed some concessions to the oppressed Flemish because a Flemish component helped affirm the non-French identity of Belgium and hence its self-justification as a state separate from expansive France. The royal family had a genuine attachment to Belgium because it was their source of income, the Walloons were only won over by the enduring experience of being the dominant group in the new state, a position they wouldn't have held in France. Their love for Belgium was conditional on their privileges. That is why the calls for accession to France have become more outspoken as Wallonia became less dominant as a consequence of its economic decline.
At any rate, the mainstream Walloon parties take the option of accession to France into account even if it is not on their agenda right now. At present, they oppose the dissolution of Belgium because they want to extract all the profit they can get from the more successful Flemish economy through the Belgian state for as long as they can get away with it. At the same time, they are mentally fully prepared for Belgium's break-up and their own accession to their cultural motherland, France. Note that French TV stations are more popular among the Walloons than their own (let alone Flemish stations, which have nearly no Walloon viewer at all), and that French politics is followed and discussed with at least as much involvement as Belgian politics. Economically, the Walloon political class still prefer Belgium because it allows them to dole out goodies paid for with Flemish money, a lifestyle they would have to abandon under French rule. In the case of accession to France, the likely scenario is that France, eager enough to extend it territory and importance, would foot the bill for the Walloon share of the huge Belgian state debt, but only as a one-time bride-price, and that it would next enforce fiscal discipline, something unheard of among the present generation of Walloon politicians. So, they have monetary reasons to prefer Belgium, but otherwise wouldn't mind acceding to France.
The Walloon Far Right, by contrast, clings to the union with Flanders with a vengeance. One of the more intellectual reasons is that they care about history, and Wallonia has been united with the provinces to its north for centuries, under the Holy Roman and Habsburg empires, the Spanish and Dutch kingdoms, even under French revolutionary occupation, and of course in Belgium itself. Another historical factor is WW2, when Walloon collaborators with Nazi Germany joined the Waffen-SS with Belgian nationalist symbols including the Belgian flag and anthem, fighting side by side with Flemish volunteers who used Flemish nationalist symbols. The prime Belgian collaborator was of course the King, Leopold III, who was neither Flemish nor in favour of the country's break-up; even before German occupation, he had a very authoritarian view of politics and his own role in it. The number two was Léon Degrelle, leader of the Rex movement and of the Walloon unit in the Waffen-SS, again a non-Flemish pro-Belgian rightist.
So, rightist Belgian nationalism has a considerable historical pedigree. But the more pressing reason for Walloon opposition to the break-up of Belgium is immigration. Walloon rightists expect the Germanic nations to conduct a more realistic immigration policy. While the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark are not exactly very strict against immigration, at least they have gradually adopted a more serious policy of immigration control. In Belgium, most Flemish parties favour a more restrictive immigration policy, whereas the mainstream Walloon parties all favour what amounts to an open-borders policy. Part of the reason is typically Belgian (immigrants as a demographic weapon against the Flemish majority), but part of it seems to be a wider French phenomenon. Among Walloon rightists, the impression exists that France is irredeemably lost to religious (Muslim) and racial (African) population replacement. A Flemish-majority Belgium seems to be a slightly better safeguard for Wallonia against the demographic flood of immigration.
Therefore, the French-speaking Far Right in Belgium is passionately attached to the preservation of Belgium's unity. They see a Flemish-majority Belgium as their historical homeland and as a bulwark against the tide of immigration, highly imperfect but nonetheless far preferable to France. While there is only an accidental connection between rightism and Flemish separatism, a platform shared between rightist and non-rightist Flemings, there is in the present circumstances a sound logical reasons for Walloon rightists to cling to Belgian unity and oppose separatism.
Read more!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Chinese philosophy of Change
Sometime soon, the annual Philosophy Day in the Netherlands is devoted to the theme "change". I responded to the call for papers with the following proposal. They turned it down, probably out of a persistent Eurocentric bias among our academic philosophers.
“Except for the fact that everything changes, everything changes.” It would be odd to discuss the phenomenon of Change among philosophers without mentioning the extant philosophy of Change, developed some 25 centuries ago in China. Given that country’s current breakthrough, time has come at last to take China’s central philosophy seriously. It has summed itself up in this nutshell: “One yin, one yang, that is called the Way.”
The world is subject to a polarity of yang (“bright”) and yin (“cloudy”), light and dark, heaven and earth, sun and moon, masculine and feminine, hard and soft, and change is the alternating predominance of either. The character yi, “change”, shows the sun piercing through the clouds. To soften the picture and make it more realistic in a not so black-and-white world of diversity, six intermediate power equations between them are also acknowledged. But still, any change can be analysed as an interplay between these two basic poles, as in the alternation of day and night, summer and winter.
It started with the Book of Changes (ca. 1100 BC), not yet a philosophy but a manual of divination, originated in a milieu of feudal patriarchal sun-worshippers who candidly considered the yang as superior, the yin as inferior. The horoscope as a representation of real-life situations needed its heroes and villains, its white knights and black monsters. This view is systematized in more moderate version by the Confucians in their great commentary, The Ten Wings (ca. 500-200 BC), and by the neo-Confucians (ca. 1100 CE). They re-employed the building blocks of the ancient divination system in a true philosophy of Change.
Meanwhile, Zou Yan (ca. 260 BC) and the Daoists (from 500 BC) revaluated the yin to appreciate its subtle qualities: how the soft can be stronger than the hard, how water quenches fire and erodes the rock. It is this version that has drawn attention in the modern world, esp. by its application in the martial arts. Popular mystifications attribute these sophisticated techniques that turn hard into soft, to “ancient sages”; but of course their very sophistication implies that they could only be developed gradually from a pre-existing simpler tradition of hard and straight fighting. Likewise, the proto-feminist philosophical twist upgrading the yin to a kind of equality with the yang was necessarily and demonstrably a later amendment to a pre-existing tradition that viewed the yang as positive, the yin as negative, unequal par excellence.
“Go with the flow”, “ride with the tide”, such is the practical application of the philosophy of Change. Don’t stand like a rock but adapt to circumstances. Chairman Mao’s dictum: “Withdraw when the enemy is strong, attack when he is weak”, is only a variation on the ancient (ca. 450 BC) strategist Sunzi’s application of the philosophy of Change.
Buddhism, upon entering China with a radical anti-worldly message, oddly found itself in agreement with the pragmatic this-worldly philosophy of Change at least in one key respect: the law of impermanence. “All things must pass”, there is no point in attaching oneself to an existing state of affairs. While abiding by this principle is the way to worldly success, it is also the way to spiritual freedom.
Read more!
“Except for the fact that everything changes, everything changes.” It would be odd to discuss the phenomenon of Change among philosophers without mentioning the extant philosophy of Change, developed some 25 centuries ago in China. Given that country’s current breakthrough, time has come at last to take China’s central philosophy seriously. It has summed itself up in this nutshell: “One yin, one yang, that is called the Way.”
The world is subject to a polarity of yang (“bright”) and yin (“cloudy”), light and dark, heaven and earth, sun and moon, masculine and feminine, hard and soft, and change is the alternating predominance of either. The character yi, “change”, shows the sun piercing through the clouds. To soften the picture and make it more realistic in a not so black-and-white world of diversity, six intermediate power equations between them are also acknowledged. But still, any change can be analysed as an interplay between these two basic poles, as in the alternation of day and night, summer and winter.
It started with the Book of Changes (ca. 1100 BC), not yet a philosophy but a manual of divination, originated in a milieu of feudal patriarchal sun-worshippers who candidly considered the yang as superior, the yin as inferior. The horoscope as a representation of real-life situations needed its heroes and villains, its white knights and black monsters. This view is systematized in more moderate version by the Confucians in their great commentary, The Ten Wings (ca. 500-200 BC), and by the neo-Confucians (ca. 1100 CE). They re-employed the building blocks of the ancient divination system in a true philosophy of Change.
Meanwhile, Zou Yan (ca. 260 BC) and the Daoists (from 500 BC) revaluated the yin to appreciate its subtle qualities: how the soft can be stronger than the hard, how water quenches fire and erodes the rock. It is this version that has drawn attention in the modern world, esp. by its application in the martial arts. Popular mystifications attribute these sophisticated techniques that turn hard into soft, to “ancient sages”; but of course their very sophistication implies that they could only be developed gradually from a pre-existing simpler tradition of hard and straight fighting. Likewise, the proto-feminist philosophical twist upgrading the yin to a kind of equality with the yang was necessarily and demonstrably a later amendment to a pre-existing tradition that viewed the yang as positive, the yin as negative, unequal par excellence.
“Go with the flow”, “ride with the tide”, such is the practical application of the philosophy of Change. Don’t stand like a rock but adapt to circumstances. Chairman Mao’s dictum: “Withdraw when the enemy is strong, attack when he is weak”, is only a variation on the ancient (ca. 450 BC) strategist Sunzi’s application of the philosophy of Change.
Buddhism, upon entering China with a radical anti-worldly message, oddly found itself in agreement with the pragmatic this-worldly philosophy of Change at least in one key respect: the law of impermanence. “All things must pass”, there is no point in attaching oneself to an existing state of affairs. While abiding by this principle is the way to worldly success, it is also the way to spiritual freedom.
Read more!
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