Read Part 1

After observing how AKR leaves us confounded with academic jargon and widely deviating from his original theme, I’ll continue the same examination a tad more. A commenter helpfully added some valuable information about AKR’s corruption of the ullurai concept.

The focus is slightly different in this case.

AKR presents a very clear understanding of a very beautiful passage of the Brihadaranyka Upanishad, which deals with the Ashva (horse) ritual.

One might say, from this point of view, that Hindu ritual (e.g., vedic sacrifice, or a coronation; see Inden [1978]) converts symbols, arbitrary signs (e.g., sacrificial horse), into icons where the signifier (the horse) is like what it signifies (the universe) and finally into indexes, where the signifier is part of what it signifies: the horse is the Universe is Prajapati, so that in sacrificing and partaking of it one is sacrificing and partaking of the Universe itself (see the passage on the Horse in Brhaddranyaka, First Adhyaya, First Brahmana).

While this understanding is perfect, we only need to examine where he makes it flow from.

What the man has, he is: the landscape which he owns, in which he lives (where sharks do not have to work for the mango, it falls into its open mouth) re-presents him: it is his property, in more senses than one. In Burke’s A946) terms, Scene and Agent are one; they are metonyms for one another.

The Brhadaranyaka passage he has quoted is actually an very beautiful symbolic exposition of philosophy. AKR’s elucidation of the actual symbolism, its significance, etc is correct but it has no relation to anything contextual. The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad is a combination of the Karma Kanda (portions dealing with rituals) and Jnana Kanda (portions dealing with theoretical philosophical expositions). This ritual relates to the Karma Kanda portion, which is simply an aid to concretize abstractions. Which is why AKR fails when tries to fit this within his context-sensitive framework. AKR’s Sanskrit knowledge is highly suspect. While Ashva means a horse, it also can be derived as Na + Shvah = Ashva, which literally means no tomorrow in the sense of the dynamic, flowing nature of Time. It is beyond the scope of this post to more fully explore the Ashva ritual but this is enough to prove that AKR’s one-dimensional approach is misleading.

AKR extends this one-dimensional approach using Tamil and Bhakti literary texts and suddenly arrives at a fantastic conclusion.

…what is contained mirrors the container; the microcosm is both within and like the macrocosm, and paradoxically also contains it. Indian conceptions tend to be such concentric nests: the view of the ’sheaths’ or kosas, the different ‘bodies’ or kayas (Egnor 1975) are examples. Such impressions are so strong and even kinesthetic that analysts tend to think in similar terms: one example is Dumont’s A970: Sects. 31, 34, 106, 118; App. E, F) notions of hierarchic encompassment, where each higher category or jati encompasses all the earlier ones: the Ksatriya is distinct from but includes the Vaisya, as the Brahmin encompasses the Ksatriya.

Another example of AKR’s inability to see the “big picture.” However, AKR is partly right only insofar as he uses the word encompasses. However, the caste as conceived in say, the Purusha Sukta views all castes as stemming from the same Divine Being. Also, there’s no hierarchy whatsoever unless you want to somehow think that a leg is “lower” (in the sense of “less important”) than the mouth in the “hierarchy” of the body. As I had mentioned in a previous post, AKR mentions Rta just so it fits into his context-sensitive scheme of things.

The same kind of contextual sensitiveness is shown in medical matters: in preparing a herbal medicine, in diagnosis and in prescription. As Zimmermann’s work A980) is eloquent on the subject, I shall say little. The notion of rtusatmya or appropriateness applies to poetry, music, sacrificial ritual, as well as medicine. As Renou A950a, 1950b) points out, rtu, usually translated as ’season’, means articulation of time; it is also the crucial moment in vedic sacrifice. Rtd (’order’, the original notion behind dharma) is that which is articulated. Kratu, sacrifice, is a convergence of events, acts, times and spaces. The vocabulary of rtusatmya ‘appropriate- ‘appropriateness’, rasa ‘essences, flavours,

AKR then proceeds in the same vein by extracting random bits like this and removes them from their original context as if that was sufficient proof that everything India ever produced is just context-specific, and hence not “universally” relevant. He calls the Kamasutra a “grammar of love” which

..declines and conjugates men and women as one would nouns and verbs in different genders, voices, moods and aspects. Genders are genres. Different body-types and character-types obey different rules, respond to different scents and beckonings.

What does the author of Kamasutra, a celibate Rishi (sage) say in the very beginning about the goal of his work? Moksha, or liberation. That is the framework, the context of the Kamasutra, which again corresponds to, and flows from the “big picture.” AKR’s concern seems only to do with the specifics of the Kamasutra, an instance of removing it from its original context. From the Kamasutra again, to the other famous episode in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad.

In Brhaddranyaka 5.1., Lord Prajapati speaks in thunder three times: ‘DA DA DA’. When the gods, given to pleasure hear it, they hear it as the first syllable of damyata, ‘control’. The antigods, given as they are to cruelty, hear it as dayddhvam, ‘be compassionate’. When the humans, given to greed, hear it they hear datta, ‘give to others’

He says this episode stems apparently from a world “where systems of meaning are elicited by contexts, by the nature (and substance) of the listener.” Fair enough. But again, out of context. The “DA” is Prajapati’s single solution to a specific problem faced by the gods, humans, and demons. Each of the three felt a sudden, inexplicable, prolonged vacuum in their lives. The “nature” is closer to the accurate explanation: Gods were immortal and addicted to a life of sensual pleasure; humans were endowed with a finite lifespan and hence the obvious/natural need to hoard, and demons endowed with fear-inducing brute strength were obviously cruel by nature. Yet, all of them accepted the Prajapati as the all-knowing God who would end their woe with certainty. What does that reveal?

Conclusion

AKR concludes his paper beginning with what he calls “modernisation” which he perceives as

…a movement from the context-sensitive to the context-free in all realms: an erosion of contexts, at least in principle. Gandhi’s watch (with its uniform autonomous time, governing his punctuality) replaced the almanac. Yet Gandhi quoted Emerson, thai consistency was the hobgoblin of foolish minds. Print replaced palm-leaf manuscripts, making possible an open and egalitarian access to knowledge irrespective of caste. The Indian Constitution made the contexts of birth, region, sex and creed irrelevant, overthrowing Manu, though the battle is joined again and again. The new preferred names give no clue to birth-place, father’s name, caste, sub-caste and sect, as all the traditional names did: I once found in a Kerala college roster, three ‘Joseph Stalins’ and one ‘Karl Marx’..

In a word this is: bunkum. The phenomenon AKR has mentioned has a one-word, commonsense explanation: change. But AKR simply persists.

In music, the ragas can now be heard at all hours and seasons. Once the Venkatesasuprabhatam, the wake-up chant for the Lord of Tirupati, could be heard only in Tirupati at a certain hour in the morning. Since M.S. Subbulakshmi in her devotion cut a record of the chants, it wakes up not only the Lord, but anyone who tunes in to All India Radio in faraway places.

Now, AKR turns to assault Indian classical music. The time-raga relationship has nothing to do with context-sensitivity. All ragas can be sung at all times during a day. However, specific times are recommended because these time-specific ragas have their complete impact on both the singer, and the listener’s emotions. Nobody prevents you from singing Bhowli late in the night but the effect it has when you listen to it early in the morning is a million times more powerful. And I shall not even venture a comment on AKR’s mention of Subbulakshmi.

Somewhere towards the end of this chaotic paper, I could kind of sense where AKR was headed: egalitarianism. More specifically, he wants what I can vaguely comprehend as “universal equality.” Again, a one-size-fits-all scheme. It is but a sophisticated variant of today’s reservations champions. According to this theory, a person whose educational qualification is a pass in 10th-grade should be equally entitled to become a rocket scientist because egalitarianism demands it.

AKR has managed to get away with such hogwash because he wrote for and pandered to an ignorant, and patronizing audience. He emphasized their biases and based his work on their interpretations. AKR and his ilk are largely irrelevant today but a TCA Sreenivasa Raghavan surfaces every now and then.

Postscript: Reading the paper was a painful experience, personally. AKR flummoxes us with his constant going-back-and-forth. In many respects, it awed me, what with his amazing knack for trying to prove something on the basis of material that conveyed the exact opposite.