The Religious Traditions of Asia

Religion, History, and Culture

Joseph Kitagawa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136875977
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This essential student textbook consists of seventeen sections, all written by leading scholars in their different fields. They cover all the religious traditions of Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Tibet, and East Asia. The major traditions that are described and discussed are (from the Southwest) Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam, and (from the East) Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto. In addition, the tradition of Bon in Tibet, the shamanistic religions of Inner Asia, and general Chinese, Korean and Japanese religion are also given full coverage. The emphasis throughout is on clear description and analysis, rather than evaluation. Ten maps are provided to add to the usefulness of this book, which has its origin in the acclaimed Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago.

ONE

SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

1 HINDUISM

ALF HILTEBEITEL

Hinduism is the religion followed by about 70 percent of the roughly seven hundred million people of India. Elsewhere, with the exception of the Indonesian island of Bali, Hindus represent only minority populations. The geographical boundaries of today’s India are not, however, adequate to contour a full account of this religion. Over different periods in the last four or five millennia, Hinduism and its antecedents have predominated in the adjacent areas of Pakistan and Bangladesh and have been influential in such other regions as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia. But in these areas Hindu influences have been superseded or overshadowed by the influences of other religions, principally Buddhism and Islam. This account will treat only of Hinduism as it has taken shape historically in the “greater India” of the Indian subcontinent. [For discussion of Hinduism outside the Indian subcontinent, see Southeast Asian Religions.]

INDUS VALLEY RELIGION

There are good reasons to suspect that a largely unknown quantity, the religion of the peoples of the Indus Valley, is an important source for determining the roots of Hinduism.

The Indus Valley civilization arose from Neolithic and Chalcolithic village foundations at about the middle of the third millennium BCE as a late contemporary of Egyptian and Mesopotamian riverine civilizations. It engaged in trade with both, though mostly with Mesopotamia. Reaching its apogee around 2000 BCE, it then suffered a long period of intermittent and multifactored decline culminating in its eclipse around 1600 BCE, apparently before the coming of the Aryan peoples and their introduction of the Vedic religious current. At its peak, the Indus Valley civilization extended over most of present-day Pakistan, into India as far eastward as near Delhi, and southward as far as the estuaries of the Narmada River. It was apparently dominated by the two cities of Mohenjo-Daro, on the Indus River in Sind, and Harappa, about 350 miles to the northwest on a former course of the Ravi River, one of the tributaries to the Indus. Despite their distance from each other, the two cities show remarkable uniformity in material and design, and it has been supposed that they formed a pair of religious and administrative centers.

The determination of the nature of Indus Valley religion and of its residual impact upon Hinduism are, however, most problematic. Although archaeological sites have yielded many suggestive material remains, the interpretation of such finds is conjectural and has been thwarted especially by the continued resistance of the Indus Valley script, found on numerous steatite seals, to convincing decipherment. Until it is deciphered, little can be said with assurance. The content of the inscriptions may prove to be minimal, but if the language (most likely Dravidian) can be identified, much can be resolved.

At both Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the cities were dominated on the western side by an artificially elevated mound that housed a citadel-type complex of buildings. Though no temples or shrines can be identified, the complex probably served both sacred and administrative functions. A “great bath within the Mohenjo-Daro citadel, plus elaborate bathing and drainage facilities in residences throughout the cities, suggests a strong concern for personal cleanliness, cultic bathing, and ritual purity such as resurface in later Hinduism. Indeed, the “great bath,” a bitumen-lined tank with steps leading into and out of it from either end, suggests not only the temple tanks of later Hinduism but the notion of “crossing” associated with them through their Sanskrit name, tīrtha (“crossing place, ford”).

A granary attached to the citadel may also have involved high officials in ceremonial supervision of harvests and other agricultural rituals. Terra-cotta female figurines with pedestal waists, found especially at village sites, reveal at least a popular cultic interest in fertility. They are probably linked with worship of a goddess under various aspects, for while some portray the figure in benign nurturing poses, others present pinched and grim features that have been likened to grinning skulls: these are likely foreshadowings of the Hindu Goddess in her benign and destructive aspects.

But most controversial are the depictions on the seals, whose inscriptions remain undeciphered. Most prominently figured are powerful male animals. They are often shown in cultic scenes, as before a sort of “sacred manger,” or being led by a priestly ministrant before a figure (probably a deity and possibly a goddess) in a peepul tree, one of the most venerated trees in Hinduism. Male animals also frequently figure in combination with human males in composite animal-human forms. With female figures seemingly linked to the Goddess and males associated with animal power, it has been suggested that the two represent complementary aspects of a fertility cult with attendant sacrificial scenarios such as are found in the animal sacrifice to the Goddess in post-Vedic Hinduism. In such sacrifices the Goddess requires male offerings, and the animal represents the human male sacrificer. Most interesting and controversial in this connection is a figure in a yogic posture who is depicted on three seals and a faience sealing. Though features differ in the four portrayals, the most fully defined one shows him seated on a dais with an erect phallus. He has buffalo horns that enclose a treelike miter headdress, possibly a caricatured buffalo face, wears bangles and necklaces or torques, and is surrounded by four wild animals. Some of these associations (yoga, ithyphallicism, lordship of animals) have suggested an identification with the later Hindu god Śiva. Other traits (the buffalo-man composite form, association with wild animals, possible intimations of sacrifice) have suggested a foreshadowing of the buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura, mythic antagonist and sacrificial victim of the later Hindu goddess Durgā. Possibly the image crystallizes traits that are later associated with both of these figures.

The notion that features of Indus Valley religion form a stream with later non-Aryan religious currents that percolate into Hinduism has somewhat dismissively been called the substratum theory by opponents who argue in favor of treating the development of Hinduism as derivable from within its own sacred literature. Though this “substratum” cannot be known except in the ways that it has been structured within Hinduism (and no doubt also within Jainism and Buddhism), it is clear that a two-way process was initiated as early as the Vedic period and has continued to the present. [For further discussion, see Indus Valley Religion.]

VEDISM

The early sacred literature of Hinduism has the retrospective title of Veda (“knowledge”) and is also known as śruti (“that which is heard”). Altogether it is a prodigious body of literature, originally oral in character (thus “heard”), that evolved into its present form over nine or ten centuries between about 1400 and 400 BCE. In all, four types of texts fall under the Veda-śruti heading: Samhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, and Upanisads. At the fount of all later elaborations are the four Saṃhitās (“collections”): the Rgveda Samhitā (Veda of Chants, the oldest), the Sāmaveda and Yajurveda Saṃhitās (Vedas of Melodies and Sacrificial Formulas, together known as the “liturgical” Saṃhitās), and the Atharvaveda Saṃhitā (the youngest, named after the sage Atharvan). These constitute the four Vedas, with some early sources referring to the “three Vedas” exclusive of the last. [See Vedas.] The material of the four was probably complete by 1000 BCE, with younger parts of the older works overlapping older parts of the younger ones chronologically. The Saṃhitās, or portions of them, were preserved by different priestly schools or “branches” (śākhās) through elaborate means of memorization. Many of these schools died out and their branches became lost, but others survived to preserve material for literary compilation and redaction. The subsequent works in the categories of Brhāmaṇa, Āraṇyaka, and Upaniṣad are all linked with one or another of the Vedic schools, and thus with a particular Vedic Samhitā, so that they represent the further literary output of the Vedic schools and also the interests of the four types of priests who came to be associated differentially with the ritual uses of the four Saṃhitās. It is from the Ṛgveda that Vedic religion in its earliest sense must be reconstructed.

Although the urban civilization of the Indus Valley had run its course by the time of the arrival of the Aryans in about 1500 BCE, the newcomers met heirs of this civilization in settled agricultural communities. The contrast between cultures was striking to the Aryans, who described the indigenous population as having darker skin, defending themselves from forts, having no gods or religious rituals but nonetheless worshiping the phallus. As small stone phallic objects have been found at Indus Valley sites, this is probably an accurate description of a cult continued from pre-Vedic Indus Valley religion that prefigures the later veneration of the liṅga (phallus) in the worship of Śiva. In contrast to this predominantly agricultural population, the invading Aryans were a mobile, warlike people, unattached to cities or specific locations, entering Northwest India in tribal waves probably over a period of several centuries. Moreover, their society inherited an organizing principle from its Indo-European past that was to have great impact on later Indian civilization in the formation of the caste system. The ideal arrangement, which myths and ritual formulas propounded and society was to reflect, called for three social “functions”: the priests, the warriors, and the agriculturalist-stockbreeders. Early Vedic hymns already speak of three such interacting social groups, plus a fourth—the indigenous population of dāsa, or dasyu (literally, “slaves,” first mythologized as demon foes of the Aryans and their gods). By the time of the late Rgveda, these peoples were recognized as a fourth “class” or “caste” in the total society and were known as śūdras.

Most crucial to the inspiration of the early Vedic religion, however, was the interaction between the first two groups: the priesthood, organized around sacerdotal schools maintained through family and clan lines, and a warrior component, originally led by chieftains of the mobile tribal communities but from the beginning concerned with an ideal of kingship that soon took on more local forms. Whereas the priests served as repositories of sacred lore, poetry, ritual technique, and mystical speculation, the warriors served as patrons of the rites and ceremonies of the priests and as sponsors of their poetry. These two groups, ideally complementary but often having rival interests, crystallized by late Vedic and Brahmanic times into distinct “classes”: the brāhmaṇas (priests) and the kṣatriyas (warriors).

Although the Ṛgveda alludes to numerous details of ritual that soon came to be systematized in the religion of the Brāhmaṇas, it brings ritual into relief only secondarily. The primary focus of the 1,028 hymns of the Ṛgveda is on praising the gods and the cosmic order (ṛta), which they protect. But insofar as the hymns invoke the gods to attend the sacrifice, there is abundant interest in two deities of essentially ritual character: Agni and Soma. Agni (Fire) is more specifically the god of the sacrificial fire who receives offerings to the gods and conveys them heavenward through the smoke. And Soma is the divinized plant of “nondeath” (amṛta), or immortality, whose juices are ritually extracted in the soma sacrifice, a central feature of many Vedic and Brahmanic rituals. These two gods, significantly close to mankind, are mediators between men and other gods. But they are especially praised for their capacity to inspire in the poets the special “vision” (dhī) that stimulates the composition of the Vedic hymns. Agni, who as a god of fire and light is present in the three Vedic worlds (as fire on earth, lightning in the atmosphere, and the sun in heaven), bestows vision through “illumination” into the analogical connections and equivalences that compose the ṛta (which is itself said to have a luminous nature). Soma, the extracted and purified juice of the “plant of immortality,” possibly the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom, yields a “purified” vision that is described as “enthused” or “intoxicated,” tremulous or vibrant, again stimulating the inspiration for poetry. The Vedic poet (kavi, ṛṣi, or vipra) was thus a “see-er,” or seer, who translated his vision into speech, thus producing the sacred mantras, or verse-prayers, that comprise the Vedic hymns. Vedic utterance, itself hypostatized as the goddess Vāc (Speech), is thus the crystallization of this vision.

Vedic religion is decidedly polytheistic, there being far more than the so-called thirty-three gods, the number to which they are sometimes reduced. Though the point is controversial, for the sake of simplifịcation we can say that at the core or “axis” of the pantheon there are certain deities with clear Indo-European or at least Indo-Iranian backgrounds: the liturgical gods Agni and Soma (cf. the Avestan deity Haoma) and the deities who oversee the three “functions” on the cosmic scale: the cosmic sovereign gods Varuṇa and Mitra, the warrior god Indra, and the Aśvins, twin horsemen concerned with pastoralism, among other things. Intersecting this structure is an opposition of Indo-Iranian background between devas and asuras. In the Ṛgveda both terms may refer to ranks among the gods, with asura being higher and more primal. But asura also has the Vedic meaning of “demon,” which it retains in later Hinduism, so that the deva-asura opposition also takes on dualistic overtones. Varuṇa is the asura par excellence, whereas Indra is the leader of the devas. These two deities are thus sometimes in opposition and sometimes in complementary roles: Varuṇa being the remote overseer of the cosmic order (ṛta) and punisher of individual human sins that violate it; Indra being the dynamic creator and upholder of that order, leader of the perennial fight against the collective demonic forces, both human and divine, that oppose it. It is particularly his conquest of the asura Vṛtra (“encloser”)—whose name suggests ambiguous etymological connections with Varuṇa—that creates order or being (sat, analogous to ṛta) out of chaos or nonbeing (asat) and opens cosmic and earthly space for “freedom of movement” (varivas) by gods and men. Considerable attention is also devoted to three solar deities whose freedom of movement, thus secured, is a manifestation of the ṛta, a prominent analogy for which is the solar wheel: Sūrya and Savitṛ (the Sun under different aspects) and Usas (charming goddess of the dawn). Other highly significant deities are Yama, god of the dead, and Vāyu, god of wind and breath. It is often pointed out that the gods who become most important in later Hinduism—Viṣṇu, Śiva (Vedic Rudra), and the Goddess—are statistically rather insignificant in the Veda, for few hymns are devoted to them. But the content rather than the quantity of the references hints at their significance. Visnu’s centrality and cosmological ultimacy, Rudra’s destructive power and outsiderhood, and the this-worldly dynamic aspects of several goddesses are traits that assume great proportions in later characterizations of these deities.

Although it is thus possible to outline certain structural and historical features that go into the makeup of the Vedic pantheon, it is important to recognize that these are obscured by certain features of the hymns that arise from the type of religious “vision” that inspired them, and that provide the basis for speculative and philosophical trends that emerge in the late Veda and continue into the early Brahmanic tradition. The hymns glorify the god they address in terms generally applicable to other gods (brilliance, power, beneficence, wisdom) and often endow him or her with mythical traits and actions particular to other gods (supporting heaven, preparing the sun’s path, slaying Vṛtra, and so on). Thus, while homologies and “connections” between the gods are envisioned, essential distinctions between them are implicitly denied. Speculation on what is essential—not only as concerns the gods, but the ritual and the mantras that invoke them—is thus initiated in the poetic process of the early hymns and gains in urgency and refinement in late portions of the Ṛgveda and the subsequent “Vedic” speculative-philosophical literature that culminates in the Upaniṣads. Most important of these speculations historically were those concerning the cosmogonic sacrifices of Purusa in Ṛgveda 10.90 (the Puruṣasūkta, accounting for, among other things, the origin of the four castes) and of Prajāpati in the Brāhmaṇas. Each must be discussed further. In addition, speculations o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• One South and Southeast Asia
• Two Inner Asia and Tibet
• Three East Asia
• Contributors