Interpretations of the Bhagavad-Gita and Images of the Hindu Tradition

The Song of the Lord

Catherine A. Robinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134278916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

The Bhagavad-Gita is probably the most popular - and certainly the most frequently quoted and widely studied - work of the Hindu scriptures. This book investigates the relationship between the various interpretations of the Bhagavad-Gita and the Hindu tradition.

Taking into account a range of influential Indian and western thinkers to illustrate trends in writing about the Bhagavad-Gita including Western academic; Indian activist; Christian theological; Hindu universalist; perennialist mystical and contemporary experiental accounts. Examining the ideas of such influential figures as F Max Muller, M K Ghandi, Bede Griffiths, Swami Vivekananda, Aldous Huxley and Swami Bhakivedanta, this book demonstrates the inextricable link between different interpretations of the Bhagavad-Gita and images of the Hindu tradition.

This accessible book aptly demonstrates the relevance of the Bhagavad-Gita for an understanding of Hinduism as a modern phenomenon.

1

ACADEMIC AND SCHOLARLY WRITING

Academic and scholarly writing is important for an understanding of the Bhagavad-Gītā and Hinduism for two main reasons. The first is that such writing, as well as representing current research, has exercised an ongoing influence over the ideas of generations of students and the content of conventional subject knowledge. The second is that such writing, especially though not exclusively when presented in popularizing or introductory works, has reached a broader audience and in so doing shaped general perceptions of the text and tradition.

Of course, it is far from easy to differentiate academic and scholarly writing from other writing on the Bhagavad-Gītā and Hinduism. After all, other writing may satisfy rigorous specialist criteria while having another principal objective such as the Indological expertise evident in some missionary tracts. Similarly, professional writing may not even aspire towards objectivity, however implausible the goal, and, in any case, may be informed by particular ideological presuppositions such as the imperative to compare Hinduism with Christianity, perhaps with an overt proselytizing purpose. Even so, such writing is a useful focus for analysis of the history of ideas and the examples chosen suggest some significant themes, principally the relationship or parallels with the New Testament, but also the nature of religion, types of mysticism and inter-religious relations.

Charles Wilkins’ (1749–1836) translation of the Bhagavad-Gītā, the first into a Western language, also contained observations about the text’s role and status in a wider context. In his preface, Wilkins emphasized the significance of the Bhagavad-Gītā, going so far as to claim that ‘ [t]he Brāhmăns esteem this work to contain all the grand mysteries of their religion’ (Wilkins 1785: 23). In politic manner, he related that his task of translation would have been well nigh impossible had the brahmans who treasured and guarded the text not been moved to cooperate by their experience of benevolent British rule and generous patronage of traditional learning (Wilkins 1785: 23–4). With the brāhmans’ aid and assistance, he was able to translate the text and was emboldened to venture some comments on its monotheistic and iconoclastic message. He defined the purpose of the Bhagavad-Gītā as being ‘to unite all the prevailing modes of worship of those days’, upholding divine unity against the idolatrous ritual of the Vedas (Wilkins 1785: 24). His view was that the author of the Bhagavad-Gītā had sought to subvert polytheism by promising only a lesser reward for devotees of other gods, and image-worship by indicating that the same divine spirit indwelt the various icons. In this way, he argued, the author of the Bhagavad-Gītā was able to undermine, without directly challenging, both the people’s attitudes and the Vedas’ authority (Wilkins 1785: 24).

Although Wilkins admitted that he had not himself read the Vedas, which he acknowledged were the oldest Hindu scriptures, he was clear that they were the basis of a sacrificial cult and a priestly elite (Wilkins 1785: 24–6). This was the foundation for his twofold model of religious belief and practice, contrasting the philosophical beliefs of the brāhmans with the superstitious practices of the people. As he explained, though the wisest brahmans were ‘Unitarians according to the doctrines of Krěěshnă’, they conformed with popular expectations in the provision of ceremonies as prescribed by the Vedas (Wilkins 1785: 24). This dichotomy between the high ideals held by the brahmans and the ceremonial duties they were prepared to discharge on behalf of the people was explained as arising out of the brāhmans’ self-interest and popular ignorance in opposition to ‘the dictates of Krěěshnă’, (Wilkins 1785: 24). Consequently, for Wilkins, the Bhagavad-Gītā taught a pure monotheism and unaffected iconoclasm that stood against the ritualism and priestcraft of the Vedas. At the same time, the qualities he identified in the text were those that suggested to his Western contemporaries a superior form of religion whereby the Bhagavad-Gītā appeared to be an advanced work of some subtlety and sophistication (cf. Sharpe 1985: 10).¹

In his letter of commendation, Warren Hastings (1732–1818) gave a similarly favourable account of the Bhagavad-Gītā, appealing to it to support his positive evaluation of Indian culture. Although he noted the existence of the Vedas as ‘the only… original scriptures of the religion of Brahmâ’ in the context of a discussion of Vyāsa’s legendary authorship of a range of texts and his historical role as a religious founder or reformer, he concentrated on the Mahābhārata and, within it, the Bhagavad-Gītā (Hastings 1784: 5–6). Some measure of his admiration for the Bhagavad-Gītā was indicated by his praising it as ‘a single exception, among all the known religions of mankind, of a theology accurately corresponding with that of the Christian dispensation’ (Hastings 1784: 10). Even where critical of the Bhagavad-Gītā, as he was about its ascription of physical attributes to the divine, he defended it not only by insisting that it excelled other texts with which it could be compared but also by indicating that it aimed to change opinion for the better (Hastings 1784: 10). Further, texts such as the Bhagavad-Gītā were cited as evidence of the achievements of Indians and proof of their worthiness to be treated with respect.

This was important for Hastings as only by establishing the credentials of India as a civilization could he justify his programme to rule India in what he thought of as an Indian fashion. In this way, the publication of an English translation of the Bhagavad-Gītā would serve to support the Orientalist policy of his administration against any and all detractors who regarded Indians as barbarous and primitive. Rejecting the prejudice that Indians were inferiors, he welcomed ‘[e]very instance which brings their real character home to observation’ as conducing towards ‘a more generous sense of feeling for their natural rights’ (Hastings 1784: 13). Whether by associating the Bhagavad-Gītā with higher forms of religion in its teaching against polytheism and idolatry (Wilkins 1785: 24) or by equating its teachings alone with those of Christianity (Hastings 1784: 10), Wilkins and Hastings accorded the Bhagavad-Gītā a privileged position.

For Wilkins and Hastings, the Bhagavad-Gītā was a text of the highest merit and they cited it as a work of pure spirituality contrasted with the venality and corruption of vernacular religiosity and comparable with Christianity. They were typical of the early period in their appreciation of the Bhagavad-Gītā, as also in their unfavourable assessment of, or relative lack of interest in, the Vedas. However, this attitude towards the Bhagavad-Gītā changed when greater importance was attached to the Vedas as the most ancient Sanskrit literature and, accordingly, greater attention was paid to them as constituting the fountainhead of Hindu tradition and revealing the origin of religion (cf. Rocher 1993: 226–8).

F. Max Müller (1823–1900), the most famous and prestigious Indologist of his generation, in whose opinion the Bhagavad-Gītā was a rather undistinguished latter-day composition, was representative of this later trend. For Müller, the Bhagavad-Gītā was far less significant than the Vedas, his fascination with which was the foundation of his distinguished career. Thus, though he too subscribed to a twofold model of religion, contrasting a true vision with a degenerate version, in his case this meant upholding the Vedas as an authentic insight into the primeval religious instinct and demoting the Bhagavad-Gītā to, at best, an attempt to recover something of this greatness in more recent times. Moreover, he went so far as to deprecate the popularity of the Bhagavad-Gītā and its influence on ideas about Sanskrit literature.

Müller’s major contribution to knowledge of Sanskrit literature was his six volume edition of the ṚRg Veda along with Sāyana’s commentary (published 1849–73) – a project, like Wilkins’ translation of the Bhagavad-Gītā, financially supported by the East India Company (Sharpe 1985: 45, 2003: 29). What he found in the Vedas were ‘only the simplest thoughts that must have passed through the minds of the Rishis [seers] when they began to ponder on the great phenomena of nature’ (Müller 1899: 171). This was why study of the Vedas was valuable since they revealed how the gods had first emerged as names for natural objects and events that, through linguistic confusion, became deified – a mythological process he labelled a ‘disease of language’ (Müller 1899: 190).² His aim in studying the Vedas was to identify their original meaning and true significance as recording a fundamental religious perception so that he treated them as historical documents that testified to a common Aryan past uniting India and Europe (Müller 1899: 190–1). In comparison with the Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gītā did not capture his interest or arouse his curiosity because, as a historian of religion, he was most concerned to discover how what he called Aryan religion began and developed.

During his lectures on the Science of Religion at the Royal Institution, Müller distinguished between ‘[m]odern Hinduism’ and ‘the Veda’, describing the latter as ‘the highest authority of the religious belief of the Hindus’ (Müller 1873: 28). Thus, when itemizing ‘the sacred writings of the Brahmans’, he gave pride of place to the Vedas, especially the Ṛg Veda and associated texts, while including other literature such as epic poetry as necessary

if we wish to gain an insight into the religious belief of millions of human beings, who, though they all acknowledge the Veda as their supreme authority in matters of faith, are yet unable to understand one single line of it, and in their daily life depend entirely for spiritual food on the teaching conveyed to them by these more recent and more popular books.

(Müller 1873: 107–11)

Interestingly, on this occasion, he made no mention of the Bhagavad-Gītā but surely he would have classified it in the category of the ‘more recent and more popular books’. Further, this division of literature into the older and the newer was consistent with his notion that Hinduism had passed through stages of increasing complexity and obscurity and its corollary, a strong preference for the pristine purity of the past. His developmental model was one that saw in the Vedas the childhood of humanity but likened the Indian religion of his day to ‘ a half-fossilised megatherion walking about in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century’ (Müller 1873: 279). It was a moot point whether, in his view, Hinduism could achieve maturity on its own terms and using its own resources – the imagery suggesting an evolutionary oddity, an ancient survival in the modern world.³

In another course of lectures, in this instance delivered at the University of Cambridge to candidates for the Indian Civil Service, he described the earlier phase of Sanskrit literature, epitomized by the Vedas, as ‘ancient and natural’, and its later phase, including the Mahābhārata, as ‘modern and artificial’ (Müller 1883: 88). Discussing the literature of this later phase, he allowed that it might embody ‘remnants of earlier times’ but, though ‘full of interesting compositions, and by no means devoid of originality and occasional beauty’, he did not attach equivalent importance to it or regard it as possessing the wider implications or interest of the literature of the earlier phase (Müller 1883: 88–9). In contrast to the earlier literature that he believed demanded the serious consideration of many disciplines, in his judgement the later literature would be attractive only to a specialist audience, to Orientalists, and not to historians and philosophers more generally (Müller 1883: 89).

So it was that Müller lamented the fact that the Bhagavad-Gītā and other later literature ‘belonging to the second, or the Renaissance period’ had acquired prominence in the West before the earlier literature that he esteemed far more highly (Müller 1883: 90). This later literature might be intriguing but initially it had appealed to Westerners on the grounds of its supposed great age and its production by a people hitherto presumed to lack literary sophistication. Latterly, however, the dating of this literature had been revised to reflect the texts’ more recent origins and Western perceptions of Indians had been changed to acknowledge their learning and artistry. Hence he asserted the prior claim of the Vedas beside which no other text seemed of any particular significance (Müller 1883: 97). Without entirely dismissing the Bhagavad-Gītā, for him it amounted to ‘a rather popular and exoteric exposition of Vedantic doctrines’ (Müller 1883: 252); he did not see in it special qualities nor did he see it as central to an account of India’s religion. The marginality of the Bhagavad-Gītā was further underlined by its omission from Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion based on his Gifford Lectures. Although he made many references to India’s religions and recommended the study of India’s sacred books, what he had in mind was Vedic texts as here too he deplored the fact that Indian literature had first become known through later works such as those associated with Vaiṣṇavism (Müller 1891: 149).

Müller’s comments on the Bhagavad-Gītā and Hinduism, or to use the term he generally preferred, Brahmanism, showed how much ideas had changed since Wilkins’ translation appeared. Müller’s concentration on the time of origins led him to emphasize the Vedas, not the Bhagavad-Gītā, and to vest authenticity in the distant past of the Vedas, not the more recent period that gave rise to the Bhagavad-Gita. This dichotomy between ancient and modern, if inflected differently, has remained a feature of many accounts of Hinduism. Where Müller’s views have proved less influential on scholars is in his according the Bhagavad-Gītā a secondary role and status as illustrative of a stage of decline in the history of Hinduism. Müller’s focus was on the Vedas, texts generally unknown or unfamiliar to scholars of a previous generation, who, even if aware of them, were, in contrast to Müller, neither particularly impressed nor enthusiastic. With his sights set on the Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gītā was not the centrepiece of Müller’s account of Hinduism insofar as that was ever his concern.

Certainly Müller’s views were not entirely endorsed by his contemporary and fellow Sanskritist, Monier Monier-Williams (1819–99), partly because Monier- Williams detected in the Bhagavad-Gītā similarities with Christian scriptures just as he detected in Hinduism correspondences with Christianity. Unlike Müller, he was full of praise for the Bhagavad-Gītā but, despite this, like Müller, he believed that the Bhagavad-Gītā was ultimately unsatisfactory, albeit for reasons very different from those that led Müller to deprecate the text. In Monier-Williams’ judgement, the Bhagavad-Gītā was of considerable significance for Hinduism and, in its proclamation of devotion to Kṛṣṇa, it provided a basis for his claim that there were connections between Hinduism and Christianity upon which the missionary could build. Moreover, his analysis of the Bhagavad-Gītā could not be isolated from his general argument about the development of polytheistic Hinduism from pantheistic Brahmanism and its implications for a popularizing project based on devotion to a personal deity, especially one incarnated in human form. As a text inculcating devotion to a personal deity, the Bhagavad-Gītā thus represented Hinduism; it was also fundamental to Vaiṣṇavism, an aspect of Hinduism of which he appeared to approve. Yet the significance he attached to pantheism meant that in the end it was not possible to accord full ontological and soteriological status to the worship of the personal saviour. Hence, for all his appeal, the Kṛṣṇa of the Bhagavad-Gītā was not truly comparable to the Christ of the Bible since pantheism undermined incarnation. Considering that the doctrine of incarnation featured prominently in his comparison between Hinduism and Christianity, this inevitably entailed the superiority of Christianity and, by extension, the necessity fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: the Bhagavad-Gītā and modernity - the construction of 'Hinduism', 'religion' and 'scripture'
• 1 Academic and scholarly writing
• 2 Social and political activism
• 3 Christian theological and missionary critiques
• 4 Universalist visions
• 5 Romantic and mystical insights
• 6 Contemporary teachers and movements
• Conclusion: the role and importance of the Bhagavad-Gītā - global presence and contemporary media
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index