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Wendy Doniger now a sanskritist - new book
"On Hinduism"
"On Hinduism"
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http://www.business-standard.
K Bhattacharya | New Delhi April 12, 2013
ON HINDUISM
Author: Wendy Doniger
Publisher: Aleph
Pages: 664
Price: Rs 999
Evolution of a sanskritist
Unrestrained by the need to address a foreign audience, Wendy Doniger
seeks to answer all the questions Hindus might have about their
religion in an impressive collection of essays
Wendy Doniger makes two interesting confessions at the start of this
book - a compilation of 63 selected essays, condensed into 43 chapters
and distributed under seven broad segments to ensure ease of reading
and thematic integrity. These are essays that she wrote on Hinduism in
her long, distinguished career as an Indologist and published in
different journals across the globe.
Her first confession is personal. She says she was trained as a
Sanskritist, but she was not a "real Sanskritist", who, she says, were
so unfriendly that they would leave a room when she entered it.
The second confession concerns her earlier book, The Hindus: An
Alternative History. She says that the book was essentially meant for
an American audience and, therefore, she was utterly surprised by the
large number of Hindus who read it, some of them so
"confrontationally" that she was appalled.
Doniger's views on Sanskritists are no exaggeration and, hopefully,
should provoke some debate in the country, which possesses so many of
them. As she correctly notes, Sanskritists are "cold-blooded pedants
interested in verbs and nouns". Modern India has plenty of them -
missing the spirit of a truly modern and flexible language for the
fussiness of its grammar and thereby depriving oneself of the
pleasures of great literature and philosophy that Sanskrit could
spawn. A language that was an outcome of a reformist drive is now a
prisoner of those who are opposed to change and reform. That Doniger
was a victim of such pedantic Sanskritists even in some universities
of the West comes as a surprise. It only underlines the crisis that
endangers one of the world's oldest languages that produced the Vedas
and the Upanishads.
Her second confession is startling because it reveals her naivety
about the modern Hindu. This comes as a bigger surprise even for a
Doniger fan like this author and the naivety is in stark contrast to
her intelligent analysis and easy-flowing narration of Hindu
mythologies and religious texts with subtlety, understanding and
precision that are rare in most modern-day writers in this genre. Her
earlier book on the Hindus had filled a gap that had existed for years
- a document that could simply explain and background basic Hindu
concepts, myths and ideas from ancient to modern times. Some Hindus
might have approached the book confrontationally, but a much larger
number of Indian readers expectedly lapped the book up for its
intrinsic merit as primary reading material on Hinduism. It was clear
that, contrary to Doniger's belief, many Hindus did not know many
things about their own religion or were not averse to learning them
from an "American woman".
Fortunately, such naivety has had a hugely positive outcome. It has
led to the birth of the current volume - On Hinduism. The essays in
it, originally written many years ago, are rewritten and repackaged to
form part of the thematically structured seven sections in the book.
In doing so, she has kept in mind that the book is primarily for an
Indian audience. Thus, the different chapters seek to answer all the
basic questions a Hindu might ask about her religion - about
polytheism, monotheism, birth and death, tolerance, reincarnation,
myths of creation, laws on gender, desire and gaining control over it,
the place of animals in Hindu religion and the eternal conflict
between reality and illusion. You may quarrel with Doniger over the
way she defines tolerance or question her assertion that there are no
Indian words that correctly connote religious tolerance, but the
coverage and treatment of issues and themes about which a Hindu is
naturally curious is impressive.
At another level, this book is an evolutionary journey for Doniger. In
The Hindus: An Alternative History, she took pains to make the myths
and concepts accessible for the Western reader. But in On Hinduism,
Doniger is more relaxed and expanding on her favourite ideas and
themes with the knowledge that she is addressing an audience that
already has some idea about Nishkam Karmayoga or the role Krishna
played at the battlefield of Kurukshetra, advising Arjuna about the
relevance of action. Thus, she can easily wonder if Krishna in his
dual role of both a god and Arjuna's sarathi (charioteer) is
expounding the idea of gods being conscious of human fallibility. For
those with a smattering of knowledge about Hindu mythologies or its
main epics, On Hinduism will be a delight, since Doniger here is
unrestrained by the need to reach out to an audience that might be at
sea with the subject.
If there is one chapter that virtually completes Doniger's
evolutionary journey and connects her personal voyage with her
becoming what a true Sanskritist ideally ought to, it is the one at
the end of the book in which she explains the concept of a
Vaanaprasthi, one who is in the third stage of her life. Like a true
Sanskritist (as opposed to the "real Sanskritists" she was confronted
with in her academic life), she has given a more acceptable and
comprehensive definition of Vaanaprastha, where she can take a
detached view of life and work without worrying or aspiring for
anything, for achievement no longer matters to her. This is what
Krishna would call the state of a Sthitapragnya (an enlightened
person) or even a Karmayogi (a doer without any desire for results).
Doniger, it seems, has a new name for them - Vaanaprasthi!
http://www.business-standard.
K Bhattacharya | New Delhi April 12, 2013
ON HINDUISM
Author: Wendy Doniger
Publisher: Aleph
Pages: 664
Price: Rs 999
Evolution of a sanskritist
Unrestrained by the need to address a foreign audience, Wendy Doniger
seeks to answer all the questions Hindus might have about their
religion in an impressive collection of essays
Wendy Doniger makes two interesting confessions at the start of this
book - a compilation of 63 selected essays, condensed into 43 chapters
and distributed under seven broad segments to ensure ease of reading
and thematic integrity. These are essays that she wrote on Hinduism in
her long, distinguished career as an Indologist and published in
different journals across the globe.
Her first confession is personal. She says she was trained as a
Sanskritist, but she was not a "real Sanskritist", who, she says, were
so unfriendly that they would leave a room when she entered it.
The second confession concerns her earlier book, The Hindus: An
Alternative History. She says that the book was essentially meant for
an American audience and, therefore, she was utterly surprised by the
large number of Hindus who read it, some of them so
"confrontationally" that she was appalled.
Doniger's views on Sanskritists are no exaggeration and, hopefully,
should provoke some debate in the country, which possesses so many of
them. As she correctly notes, Sanskritists are "cold-blooded pedants
interested in verbs and nouns". Modern India has plenty of them -
missing the spirit of a truly modern and flexible language for the
fussiness of its grammar and thereby depriving oneself of the
pleasures of great literature and philosophy that Sanskrit could
spawn. A language that was an outcome of a reformist drive is now a
prisoner of those who are opposed to change and reform. That Doniger
was a victim of such pedantic Sanskritists even in some universities
of the West comes as a surprise. It only underlines the crisis that
endangers one of the world's oldest languages that produced the Vedas
and the Upanishads.
Her second confession is startling because it reveals her naivety
about the modern Hindu. This comes as a bigger surprise even for a
Doniger fan like this author and the naivety is in stark contrast to
her intelligent analysis and easy-flowing narration of Hindu
mythologies and religious texts with subtlety, understanding and
precision that are rare in most modern-day writers in this genre. Her
earlier book on the Hindus had filled a gap that had existed for years
- a document that could simply explain and background basic Hindu
concepts, myths and ideas from ancient to modern times. Some Hindus
might have approached the book confrontationally, but a much larger
number of Indian readers expectedly lapped the book up for its
intrinsic merit as primary reading material on Hinduism. It was clear
that, contrary to Doniger's belief, many Hindus did not know many
things about their own religion or were not averse to learning them
from an "American woman".
Fortunately, such naivety has had a hugely positive outcome. It has
led to the birth of the current volume - On Hinduism. The essays in
it, originally written many years ago, are rewritten and repackaged to
form part of the thematically structured seven sections in the book.
In doing so, she has kept in mind that the book is primarily for an
Indian audience. Thus, the different chapters seek to answer all the
basic questions a Hindu might ask about her religion - about
polytheism, monotheism, birth and death, tolerance, reincarnation,
myths of creation, laws on gender, desire and gaining control over it,
the place of animals in Hindu religion and the eternal conflict
between reality and illusion. You may quarrel with Doniger over the
way she defines tolerance or question her assertion that there are no
Indian words that correctly connote religious tolerance, but the
coverage and treatment of issues and themes about which a Hindu is
naturally curious is impressive.
At another level, this book is an evolutionary journey for Doniger. In
The Hindus: An Alternative History, she took pains to make the myths
and concepts accessible for the Western reader. But in On Hinduism,
Doniger is more relaxed and expanding on her favourite ideas and
themes with the knowledge that she is addressing an audience that
already has some idea about Nishkam Karmayoga or the role Krishna
played at the battlefield of Kurukshetra, advising Arjuna about the
relevance of action. Thus, she can easily wonder if Krishna in his
dual role of both a god and Arjuna's sarathi (charioteer) is
expounding the idea of gods being conscious of human fallibility. For
those with a smattering of knowledge about Hindu mythologies or its
main epics, On Hinduism will be a delight, since Doniger here is
unrestrained by the need to reach out to an audience that might be at
sea with the subject.
If there is one chapter that virtually completes Doniger's
evolutionary journey and connects her personal voyage with her
becoming what a true Sanskritist ideally ought to, it is the one at
the end of the book in which she explains the concept of a
Vaanaprasthi, one who is in the third stage of her life. Like a true
Sanskritist (as opposed to the "real Sanskritists" she was confronted
with in her academic life), she has given a more acceptable and
comprehensive definition of Vaanaprastha, where she can take a
detached view of life and work without worrying or aspiring for
anything, for achievement no longer matters to her. This is what
Krishna would call the state of a Sthitapragnya (an enlightened
person) or even a Karmayogi (a doer without any desire for results).
Doniger, it seems, has a new name for them - Vaanaprasthi!