Identity and Division in Cults and Sects in South Asia, Proceedings of the South Asia Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, Peter Gaeffke and David A. Utz, editors. Philadelphia: Department of South Asia Regional Studies, 1984.

This is now an old and obscure book so there is no point in writing a proper review. A few of the collected papers are noteworthy, so some analysis and quotation from those articles will be noted here.

“Changing Patterns of Diversification in Hindu Law”

Ludo Rocher wrote on “Changing Patterns of Diversification in Hindu Law,” pp. 31-44. Rocher starts by affirming the reality of diverse laws in ancient India, referring in particular to the levirate or niyoga laws where this practice was commended by some and strictly forbidden by others. Inheritance laws is another example of diverse statutes.

The most complicated reality in discussing diversity in law is the fact that the same text can both affirm and deny, as the Laws of Manu does with regard to the levirate. [Rocher does not document this, but the text is 9.57-68; see the translation and note on the contradiction in Manu’s Code of Law by Patrick Olivelle, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, pages 193 and 326.] This leads to an obvious question about the nature of the Dharmasastra codes. Rocher’s opinion on this can be given in his own words.

“Now I can explain what I think our lawbooks really are: in my opinion they are collections of maxims, gathered together by an individual, or by several individuals in the course of time. These maxims may have come from different areas and from different social groups. From our point of view these maxims often contradict each other, but that is our point of view because we erroneously look upon these texts as lawbooks. There is nothing wrong with them if we take them for what they are: collections of maxims, as many maxims as possible, taken from various castes and whatever other goups.

In fact, all these texts are unanimous in telling us that all customs, even the unwritten customs of all groups – craftsmen, traders, the military, and others – are valid sources of law within the group. The texts even allow these customs to be applied in as many specialized courts. From this is seems to me that there must have been even far more diversification of law in India than the written texts have preserved for us.” (34-35)

This is the first phase of diversification in Hindu law, that Rocher calls “stylized and, unfortunately, noncontextualized diversification” (36). The second period came about because Dharmasastras ceased to be written and instead long commentaries were written on those older compositions. These texts specialized in finding solutions to the apparent contradictions in the Dharmasastra texts; “if anything looks like a contradiction, it just means that we have not reached a correct understanding of the texts” (37). The most convenient way to deal with these things was to blame Kaliyuga, which was done so regularly that “an Indian scholar has been able to devote a whole book to the subject” (37).

“As time went on, the commentaries became longer and longer. There are more and more predecessors whose opinions have to be quoted, to be either approved or rejected, and, above all, to be improved upon….But there are also numerous instances in which the later commentator quotes the opinion of two, or three, or more predecessors, fully and in detail, and then simply goes on to the next topic. This situation, in which authors quote several opinions – different opinions, contradictory opinions in Western terms – without saying explicitly which one is right and which one is wrong, leads me quite naturally into a third period of diversity in the history of Hindu law: the diversity introduced, not by the authors of Dharmasastras, not by the commentators or digest writers, but by the British.

As you know, in 1772, Warren Hastings obtained that, in a number of matters concerning family law, Muslims should be governed by the law of the Qur’an and Hindus by the laws of the ‘shaster.’ For judges who did not know Sanskrit, applying Hindu laws to Hindus was more easily said than done.” (39-40).

Rocher refers to the British period as “haphazard diversification” (41). The British did not understand what they were doing when the elevated Manusmriti, nor when H. T. Colebrooke declared the Dayabhaga as the law for Bengal and the Mitaksara as the law for the rest of India (40). In fact, Rocher shows that prior to the British in Bengal it was Muslim law that was in force, not the Dayabhaga.

“In other words, the British raised the Sanskrit commentaries and digests to the status of lawbooks to be used in the courts, a role these were never meant to play. It is therefore not only a period of haphazard diversification, it is, at the same time, a period of artificial diversification.” (41)

The final period is that of independent India. It has not been possible to achieve a unified civil code, nor has Hindu law been fully codified.

“These [uncodified] areas of Hindu law continue to be administered according to the system that was essentially created by the British and continued by the courts of independent India. There is no new diversification, and whatever diversification remains is shrinking. I shall therefore call the fourth period the period of residual diversification. How much and how long there will be some kind of residual diversification is hard to predict. But that is a problem to be solved by the Indian Parliament, not by us in the South Asia Seminar.” (42)

Discussion notes follow this conclusion of Rocher’s paper, and the discussion concludes by quoting Rocher saying that “Muslim law has had a major influence on the development of Hindu law. The schools of Hindu law are the result of people like Colebrooke who were familiar with Muslim law and went to India believing that all Oriental legal systems had schools of law. They looked for such schools of law in the Hindu texts and found them to their satisfaction” (43-44).

“Function of Textual Traditions in Sannyasin Orders”

Patrick Olivelle wrote on the “Function of Textual Traditions in Sannyasin Orders,” pp. 45-57. Olivelle opens by affirming that he has no idea how many sannyasin orders there are, referring to H. H. Wilson claiming 43 and B.D. Tripathi saying 66 (45). Olivelle focuses on just a few, including Buddhists.

Buddhist laws regarding renunication are much easier to trace out historically. Hindu traditions and texts had to fit into the realm of dharma, which was not easy.

“The evidence of the early Dharmasutras indicates that the mainstream dharma tradition was initially hostile to the ideal and life style of renunciation. Brahmanism espoused a different ideology: its norm of holiness centered around sacrifice, family, purity, and caste. All these were negated by renunciation. Moreover, within the structure of these texts there was no place for a treatment of renunciation.” (49)

The introduction of asrama theory changed all of this. Renunciation of the fourth stage of life was introducted and varna and asrama became the defining marks of the Brahmanical way of life.  But “endless controversies among sects” also developed, not least because “the smritis and Vedic texts contain numerous examples of hostility toward and downright condemnation of renunciation. these passages were also authoritative and required interpretative gymnastics of the highest order in order to be explained away” (49).

In Bhuddist, Vaishnava and Saiva renunciant traditions there are exegetical problems with conflicting texts. Olivelle closes his paper by saying,

“This is not the right time, and I am not the right person, to explain the abstruse mimamsa rules of interpretation. But to gain an insight into the function of texts in the renouncer traditions, it would be instructive to survey some of the unique methods of textual interpretation found in these traditions. An examination of how there sectarian pandits resolved conflicts in law will also give us an insight into the exotic realm of a pandit’s brain.” (55)

Two random quotations

Wilhelm Halbfass in “Indian Philosophers on the Plurality of Religious Traditions” (pp. 58-64) speaks about Indian fulfilment ideas. “To refer to other ways of thinking, to articulate one’s own position in terms of its relation to other positions, or by means of incorporating and subsuming other teachings, is a genuine and essential element of classical Indian philosophy, in particular those philosophical schools which have been most productive in the field of ‘doxographic’ literature, i.e. in Jainism and in Advaita Vedanta. Both traditions have developed explicit and sophisticated schemes of subordinating or ‘fulfilling’ other religious and philosophical teachings – the Jainas presenting other philosophies and religions as different and partial perspectives on the one true (sic) which has been fully grasped in Jainism, the Vedantins arranging other teachings as a hierarchy of more or less distorted views of the one and only atman/brahman which has been fully comprehended in Advaita Vedanta. However, this does not mean that all Vedantins are interested in using this model for harmonizing and reconciling different religious traditions. Sankara, the greatest and most respected teacher of Advaita Vedanta, does not show much interest in demonstrating the compatibility and ultimate reality of all religious and philosophical traditions.” (59) [Question: if Sanakara was not interested in this, is this really a modern re-interpretation of Advaita?]

In “Buddhist Sects in Contemporary India: Identity and Organization” (pp. 94-110) Eleanor Zelliot comments on Dalit myths of origins. “All over India, almost all untouchable myths of origin use some ancestral error, usually based on good intentions, to account for their despised place, or claim pre-Aryan status, or former Ksatriya status. The theory of previous Buddhist identity fits well into the untouchables’ need for an honorable past, a cultural heritage that can be claimed with pride, and even the unlettered find this mythic background comforting.” (97)