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Vedic people opposed literacy? An unexpected accusation. A response to Witzel -- Prof. Shivaji Singh
An unexpected accusation
The Vedic people were not only illiterate but also opposed to literacy - this is what Michael Witzel opines in a recent (2011) paper: ‘Gandhara and the formation of the Vedic and Zoroastrian cannons’ (freely accessible through DASH).
The stand that the art of writing was unknown in the Vedic period is not a new one. Many others have held this view before Witzel although it has been proved to be untenable time and again and most emphatically very recently. Vide the link:But, no, the Harvard professor is not bereft of ‘originality’ characteristic to him! His stand is really novel - a stand taken by nobody else before him. According to the professor, the Vedic people opposed literacy and they did so at least partly for petty personal gains.
Well, being illiterate is no sin, no offence at least. But how can one be pardoned for opposing literacy and that too for personal benefits? The charge is serious indeed! But, let us be patient, and see how Witzel argues his case.
According to him, the Vedic texts were transmitted ‘only by rote repetition’ till the times of the Persian emperors when Armaic came to be introduced and Kharoshthi script invented. This created a possibility of the texts being written which alerted the ‘Brahmins’, the repositories of the oral texts. And, he clearly states on page 10 of his paper (under the subheading The Brahmins and orality):
“We can well imagine what kind of reaction the sudden possibility of written Veda texts – even in imperfect form – might have had: certainly a sort of democratization that meant, loss of status and, at a minimum, loss of income for the ritualistic Brahmins. That threat may have inspired some Brahmins to resist attempts to encode texts in writing, and to intensify mnemonic canonization, … … … .”
What a silly reasoning! One may ask Witzel: Isn’t it a fact that history records the maximum donation to priests in early Medieval India, the period renowned simultaneously for maximum number of Sanskrit manuscripts? In fact, the importance and income of priests supervising Vedic rituals have not decreased the least even today when Vedic texts are printed in abundance mechanically as well as electronically?
In support of his contention Witzel quotes the Mahabharata (13.24.70): “those who write the Vedas, these surely go to hell”. The aversion to put the Vedic mantras in writing is still shared by priests and pundits who are aware of the nuances and delicacies in pronouncing mantras. This is because of the genuine feeling that the notations and diacritics known to writing or printing are too limited to cope with those nuances and delicacies. And it is feared that ill-recited mantras might have evil effects. When such is the condition at present, one may imagine the situation thousands of years before when the Mahabharata line under reference was composed. Writing, though known, was a really difficult job then. The injunctions forbidding the writing of mantras have nothing to do with income or dakshina of ‘Brahmins’ for their ritualistic performances.
It must also be kept in mind that Vedic rituals needed Sutras and Paddadhatis (oral or written), not Vedic Samhitas, and writing of the Sutras and Paddhatis have never been forbidden. The painstaking efforts at mnemonic canonization too was directly related to, and a necessary consequence of underdeveloped writing methods and scarcity of writing materials.
Likes of Witzel must know that those days are gone far behind when Vedic and Harappan cultures were taken to be two totally different cultures and the history of India was considered to start with the invasion of alien and semi-barbarous Vedic Aryans on Harappan city-dwellers of the country. Today, Vedic-Harappan relationships are under serious consideration and majority view is tilting towards Vedic-Harappan identity. It is the right time for them to get rid of the now discredited Vedic-Harappan dichotomy syndrome.
The earlier image of culturally backward and warlike Vedic Aryans persisted for long but is considered no more valid today. In fact, it has drastically changed. The assertion of R. S. Sharma in 1983 that ‘till at least the composition of the family books of the Rigveda, the Aryans were largely nomadic pastoralists ignorant of settled agriculturists life’ may be cited as one of the last examples of upholding the old view. For only some six years later R. N. Nandi, one of Sharma’s own students (nay, a disciple), contradicted him. “Not much exercise is needed”, said he, “to show that permanent dwellings, which together with fertile fields constitute the nuclei of sedentary life, already dominate the family portions of the Rigveda” (Nandi 1989-90:45). About four years later came yet another emphatic statement. “Rigveda”, asserted Bhagwan Singh, “is agog with mercantile activities undertaken by its traders against all conceivable odds” (Singh 1993:192). These examples are sufficient enough to show how researches have gradually but quickly and decisively changed the perverted colonial notions about the culture of Early Vedic Aryans. All the three scholars quoted here, it may incidentally be noted, are Marxists which clearly shows that research findings, not a difference in ideology, has brought about this change in perception. The contempt towards Vedic people was rooted in their earlier barbarous image. But, now, when that image is totally transformed, can Witzel be justified for his continued contemptuous attitude towards Vedic Aryans?
Witzel must accept the Vedic historical reality. Replacing labels (invasion to migration to trickling-in, etc.) won’t suffice. Shifting context of discussions from Aryan invasion/migration to Vedic canonization and all such other efforts at sophistication will not succeed. Garbing the issues in a new jargon and cosmetic surgeries like the ones aimed at portraying literate Harappans as illiterate Harappans or Dravidian-speaking Harappans as Proto-Munda-speaking Harappans will be fruitless. Academic honesty demands us to be brave enough to accept reality even though it might generate a feeling of melancholy that, alas, best part of our lives were spent running after mirages.
But, then, that colloquial saying comes to my mind: ‘you can awake a person who is sleeping, not a person pretending to sleep’!
References
Nandi, R. N. 1989-90. Archaeology and the Rigveda. The Indian Historical Review 16(1-2): 35-79.
Sharma, R. S. 1983. Material Culture and Social Formations in ancient India.Madras: Macmillan India.
Singh, Bhagwan 1993. Trade and commerce in the Vedic age. In S. B. Deo and Suryanath Kamath (eds.): The Aryan Problem, pp. 192-210. Pune: Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti.
Prof. Shivaji Singh
July 22, 2013
Note: This post and assemblages of links expose and refute the motivated statements made by Witzel wearing an academic garb (burqa) to debunk Hindu civilization and traditions.
http://bharatkalyan97.
An unexpected accusation
The Vedic people were not only illiterate but also opposed to literacy - this is what Michael Witzel opines in a recent (2011) paper: ‘Gandhara and the formation of the Vedic and Zoroastrian cannons’ (freely accessible through DASH).
The stand that the art of writing was unknown in the Vedic period is not a new one. Many others have held this view before Witzel although it has been proved to be untenable time and again and most emphatically very recently. Vide the link:
But, no, the Harvard professor is not bereft of ‘originality’ characteristic to him! His stand is really novel - a stand taken by nobody else before him. According to the professor, the Vedic people opposed literacy and they did so at least partly for petty personal gains.
Well, being illiterate is no sin, no offence at least. But how can one be pardoned for opposing literacy and that too for personal benefits? The charge is serious indeed! But, let us be patient, and see how Witzel argues his case.
According to him, the Vedic texts were transmitted ‘only by rote repetition’ till the times of the Persian emperors when Armaic came to be introduced and Kharoshthi script invented. This created a possibility of the texts being written which alerted the ‘Brahmins’, the repositories of the oral texts. And, he clearly states on page 10 of his paper (under the subheading The Brahmins and orality):
“We can well imagine what kind of reaction the sudden possibility of written Veda texts – even in imperfect form – might have had: certainly a sort of democratization that meant, loss of status and, at a minimum, loss of income for the ritualistic Brahmins. That threat may have inspired some Brahmins to resist attempts to encode texts in writing, and to intensify mnemonic canonization, … … … .”
What a silly reasoning! One may ask Witzel: Isn’t it a fact that history records the maximum donation to priests in early Medieval India, the period renowned simultaneously for maximum number of Sanskrit manuscripts? In fact, the importance and income of priests supervising Vedic rituals have not decreased the least even today when Vedic texts are printed in abundance mechanically as well as electronically?
In support of his contention Witzel quotes the Mahabharata (13.24.70): “those who write the Vedas, these surely go to hell”. The aversion to put the Vedic mantras in writing is still shared by priests and pundits who are aware of the nuances and delicacies in pronouncing mantras. This is because of the genuine feeling that the notations and diacritics known to writing or printing are too limited to cope with those nuances and delicacies. And it is feared that ill-recited mantras might have evil effects. When such is the condition at present, one may imagine the situation thousands of years before when the Mahabharata line under reference was composed. Writing, though known, was a really difficult job then. The injunctions forbidding the writing of mantras have nothing to do with income or dakshina of ‘Brahmins’ for their ritualistic performances.
It must also be kept in mind that Vedic rituals needed Sutras and Paddadhatis (oral or written), not Vedic Samhitas, and writing of the Sutras and Paddhatis have never been forbidden. The painstaking efforts at mnemonic canonization too was directly related to, and a necessary consequence of underdeveloped writing methods and scarcity of writing materials.
Likes of Witzel must know that those days are gone far behind when Vedic and Harappan cultures were taken to be two totally different cultures and the history of India was considered to start with the invasion of alien and semi-barbarous Vedic Aryans on Harappan city-dwellers of the country. Today, Vedic-Harappan relationships are under serious consideration and majority view is tilting towards Vedic-Harappan identity. It is the right time for them to get rid of the now discredited Vedic-Harappan dichotomy syndrome.
The earlier image of culturally backward and warlike Vedic Aryans persisted for long but is considered no more valid today. In fact, it has drastically changed. The assertion of R. S. Sharma in 1983 that ‘till at least the composition of the family books of the Rigveda, the Aryans were largely nomadic pastoralists ignorant of settled agriculturists life’ may be cited as one of the last examples of upholding the old view. For only some six years later R. N. Nandi, one of Sharma’s own students (nay, a disciple), contradicted him. “Not much exercise is needed”, said he, “to show that permanent dwellings, which together with fertile fields constitute the nuclei of sedentary life, already dominate the family portions of the Rigveda” (Nandi 1989-90:45). About four years later came yet another emphatic statement. “Rigveda”, asserted Bhagwan Singh, “is agog with mercantile activities undertaken by its traders against all conceivable odds” (Singh 1993:192). These examples are sufficient enough to show how researches have gradually but quickly and decisively changed the perverted colonial notions about the culture of Early Vedic Aryans. All the three scholars quoted here, it may incidentally be noted, are Marxists which clearly shows that research findings, not a difference in ideology, has brought about this change in perception. The contempt towards Vedic people was rooted in their earlier barbarous image. But, now, when that image is totally transformed, can Witzel be justified for his continued contemptuous attitude towards Vedic Aryans?
Witzel must accept the Vedic historical reality. Replacing labels (invasion to migration to trickling-in, etc.) won’t suffice. Shifting context of discussions from Aryan invasion/migration to Vedic canonization and all such other efforts at sophistication will not succeed. Garbing the issues in a new jargon and cosmetic surgeries like the ones aimed at portraying literate Harappans as illiterate Harappans or Dravidian-speaking Harappans as Proto-Munda-speaking Harappans will be fruitless. Academic honesty demands us to be brave enough to accept reality even though it might generate a feeling of melancholy that, alas, best part of our lives were spent running after mirages.
But, then, that colloquial saying comes to my mind: ‘you can awake a person who is sleeping, not a person pretending to sleep’!
References
Nandi, R. N. 1989-90. Archaeology and the Rigveda. The Indian Historical Review 16(1-2): 35-79.
Sharma, R. S. 1983. Material Culture and Social Formations in ancient India.Madras: Macmillan India.
Singh, Bhagwan 1993. Trade and commerce in the Vedic age. In S. B. Deo and Suryanath Kamath (eds.): The Aryan Problem, pp. 192-210. Pune: Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti.
Prof. Shivaji Singh
July 22, 2013
July 22, 2013
Note: This post and assemblages of links expose and refute the motivated statements made by Witzel wearing an academic garb (burqa) to debunk Hindu civilization and traditions.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
See also:
Rao, TRN & Kak, Subhash, 1998, Computing science in Ancient India, Lafayette, LA, The Centre fo Advanced Computer Studies, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana,https://ikashmir.
B. van Nooten notes that Pingala has succeeded in introducing the binary number as a means for classifying metrical patterns.”Instead of giving names to the meters he constructs a prastāra, a ‘bed’, or matrix, in which the laghus and gurus are listed horizontally…The device of the prastāra has to be visualized as an actual table written on a board, or in the dust on the ground. Each horizontal line of the table stands for a line of verse represented as a succession of laghu and guru syllables. Every possible combination of the laghus and gurus is spelled out for a particular meter. Hence there will be separate prastāras for 8-syllabi, for 11-syllabic and 12-syllabic meters. The first line in each will consist of all laghus, the last line of all gurus…He (Pingala) knew how to convert that binary notation to a decimal notation and vice versa. We know of no sources from which he could have drawn his inspiration, so he may well have been the originator of the system…this knowledge was available to and preserved by Sanskrit students of metrics. Unlike the case of the great linguistic discoveries of the Indians which directly influenced and inspired Western linguistics, this discovery of the theory of binary numbers has so far gone unrecorded in the annals of the West.” (van Nooten, B., Binary numbers in Inian Antiquity, in Rao, TRN & Kak, Subhash, opcit., pp. 21-38; this article had appeared in Kluwer Academic Publishers, Journal of Indian Studies 21: 31-50, 1993).
Kak, Subhah, 2000, Yamātārājabhānasalagām, an interesting combinatoric sūtra, in: Indian Journal of History of Sience, 35.2 (2000) 123-127. The note considers the history of a sūtra which describes all combinations of a binary sequence of length 3 in connection with the classification of metres as sequence of laghu and guru syllables.
Ardhanarisvara murti stolen and kept in National Museum, Canberra. Australia, return the 'idols' to India's temples.
Published: July 21, 2013 00:37 IST | Updated: July 21, 2013 03:14 IST
Temple idol from Tamil Nadu surfaces in Australia
A. Srivathsan
It was allegedly stolen from the Vriddhagisvara temple in Vriddhachalam, where it was photographed by the French Institute of Pondicherry.
- The HinduThe idol now under worship in the temple. Photo: T. Singaravelu.
Vriddhachalam temple is unaware that its prized Ardhanarisvara is now ensconced in Sydney museum
A thousand-year-old stone sculpture of Ardhanarisvara from the historically important and popular Virddhagesevarar temple in Vriddhachalam in Tamil Nadu has surfaced in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. It is the second museum in Australia now to be involved with the purchase of possibly smuggled Indian artefacts.
Intriguingly, the temple authorities in Vriddhachalam, a town about 200 km south of Chennai, claim ignorance about any theft. They are also unaware that the idol currently under worship in the temple could be a fake one.
The Chola-period Ardhanarisvara is datable to 10th century CE.
With this revelation, that came during ongoing investigations involving Subhash Chandra Kapoor, a United States-based antiquities dealer arrested and jailed for his alleged involvement in an idol theft case, it has become apparent that the looting of Indian temple treasures is far more rampant than what was hitherto assumed or known. And, it would seem that even big and well-known temples have not been spared
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is already the focus of investigation with regard to another idol from Tamil Nadu that has been linked to Kapoor’s operations.
The fact that the Ardhanarisvara – an androgynous from of Siva and Parvati – was missing was not noticed in Vriddhachalam so far because a relatively new idol, though vastly different in terms of details and craftsmanship, replaced the original one. The new idol, which is located in the koshta or niche near the sanctum, is in worship now.
The credit for spotting the missing sculpture goes to Vijay Kumar, a Singapore-based blogger who extensively writes about art and architecture of South India.
Following public pressure that followed the arrest of Kapoor, museums across the world barring a few have had a relook at artefacts procured from him. To its credit, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is probably the only one to release the provenance documents (pointing to the history of ownership) and list the objects it had bought from Kapoor.
Examining photos and documents, Mr. Kumar noticed that the Ardhanarisvara in Australia was strikingly similar to the one that was in Vriddhachalam. He compared it with photographs of the sculpture published by Douglas Barrett, a scholar of Chola sculptures, in one of his books in 1974 and confirmed the match. He alerted The Hindu by email and published his finding on the blog site Poetry in Stone. Following this, The Hindu, collaborating with Mr. Kumar and two investigative journalists based in the U.S. and Australia (Jason Felch of the Los Angeles Times and Michaela Boland of The Australian), unearthed further details. The French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), which has been studying South Indian temples for decades, had documented the Ardhanarisvara sculpture in Vriddhachalam in 1958, 1967 and 1974. All the three images obtained by The Hindu from the IFP visually match the Ardhanarisvara in Australia.
This has raised serious doubts about the genuineness of the provenance documents, which Kapoor provided to the Art Galley of New South Wales. One of the documents shows that Uttam Singh and Sons, a handicrafts firm in Delhi, sold the Ardhanarisvara to a diplomat in April 1970. This seems unlikely since the sculpture was in Vriddhachalam until 1974.
When The Hindu traced out the shop, which still exists in Old Delhi, and spoke to one of the sons of Uttam Singh over the phone, he said he was not aware of such a sale. He also clarified that his deceased father Uttam Singh signed only in Urdu. The receipt produced by the Australian gallery bears no signature. In an email, the gallery officials said they were looking into this issue and promised to reply in a week.
The authorities in Vriddhagisvarar temple seemed blissfully unaware of the lost sculpture and insisted that Ardhanarisvara was still there, pointing to the idol which is in worship. But this idol has no resemblance to the one photographed by Barrett and IFP. The authorities claimed that there were no records of either theft or replacement of the sculpture.
When The Hindu took up the matter with the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu government department that administers most of the temples in the State, P. Dhanapal, Commissioner, acknowledged that it was a serious issue. He immediately referred the matter to the Idol Wing of the Tamil Nadu police for investigation.
(With inputs from A.V. Ragunathan in Vriddhachalam)
See related links on return of Indian murti-s stolen from temples and kept in Australia, Netherlands, Brithsh Museums:
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.
http://bharatkalyan97.