[INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman

Thu Jul 17 15:43:33 UTC 2014

Thank you for these helpful points.
Best,
Howard

On Jul 15, 2014, at 3:35 PM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for bringing poetics into the discussion. There are many other 'tools' that help this 'history Vs myth' discussion.
>  
> 1. As for traditional Sanskrit poetics, dhvanyālōka, in fact, maintains the autonomy of poet and his poetic creation by proclaiming
> "apārē kāvya samsārē kavi rēkah prajāpātih
> yathāsmai rōchatē viśvam tathēdam parivartatē"
>  
> 2. Another place where we find recognition of 'aśāstrīya' elements  in poetry and proclamation of that as 'not wrong' in Rajashekhara's kāvyamīmāmsa  while discussing his highly innovative categorization of kavisamaya.
>  
> kavisamayaḥ jātidravyakriyāsamayasthāpanā /
> aśāstrīyamalaukikaṃ ca paramparāyātaṃ yamarthamupanibadhnanti kavayaḥ sa kavisamayaḥ /
> "nanveṣa doṣaḥ /
>  
> In support of his 'nanveṣa doṣaḥ' , he quotes several previous scholars mentioning them as 'āchāryāh' and 'yāyavarīyāh' which shows that such an awareness is older than Rajashekhara.
>  
> 3. The above is only about the distinction between the poetic world and the 'real' world. But this is not useful in discussing the awareness among ancient Indians about the distinction between 'mythical reality' and the 'real' reality. Such a distinction is articulated in matsya purāṇa. ṁatsyanārāyaṇa answers manu that his ādisr̥ṣṭi (mythical reality) is to be distinguished from the general sr̥ṣṭi ('real' reality).
>  
>  divyeyamādisṛṣṭistu rajoguṇasamudbhavā /
> atīndriyendriyā tadvad atīndriyaśarīrikā // MatsP_4.3 //
> divyatejomayī bhūpa divyajñānasamudbhavā /
> na martyairabhitaḥ śakyā vaktuṃ vai māṃsacakṣubhiḥ MatsP_4.4//
>  
>  
> 4.. Viewing myth as an unquestionable account of the real happenings of the past was there with all the societies with myth-containing cultures including the Greeks. That in Greek society too, poets modified certain elements /portions of myths to suit their poetic works and those viewing myth as an unquestionable account of the real happenings of the past considered this to be 'lying about gods' is evident from Plato's prescription to banish poets from his dream commonwealth for this reason. 
>  
> 5. Scepticism towards myth too is very much ancient both in Greece and India. 
>  
> 6. Interestingly, it is only in the west that the intense defence of myth developed in Kant, and neo-Kantian philosophers such as Cassirer, in Jungian Psychoanalysis etc. 
>  
> 7. Particularly, understanding of Indian myth vis-à-vis history was provided to the modern world by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade. He made 'history' as one of  the ways of looking at the past, by making 'history' the modern man's 'myth' and myth as the myth-believer's 'history'. I remember Levi Strauss asking his readers to imagine what would be the response of the myth-believing people to the 'history' . He says such people would respond by saying " Oh! That is what your mythology says!"
>  
> 8. Interpretations of Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata as the concealed expressions of Vedantic, Kundalini-taantric and other such ideas has a long tradition in traditional Indian scholarship and shows the availability of views other than those of 'real' accounts of the past  towards mythologies in Indian tradition.
>  
> 9. Viewing purāṇic narratives as vēdārtha upabr̥mhaṇa also is an outlook different from that of real accounts of the past towards those narratives.  This outlook is very well established in the traditional Indian scholarship.
>  
> 10. 'parōkṣa priyā vai ivahi dēvāh pratyakṣa dviṣāh'  is a frequent expression in the brāmhaṇas and āraṇyakas, which again is an evidence of the availability of 'non-real' perspectives towards 'deva-narratives' (myths) in the śr̥ti-literature itself. 
>  
> 11. In my PhD dissertation, I developed a model of myth-interpretation using the conceptual tools from the Vedic literature and showed that ancient and medieval Indian poets were aware of such understandings of the myth.
>  
> 12. There at one place, I argued this way: Use of simple present for narrative past is a linguistic convention. Use of past tense verbs for 'eternality' is a converse process to this and this is what we find in the myths.
>  
> Thanks for your patience.
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Nagaraj
>  
>   
>  
>            
>  
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 3:05 AM, Howard Resnick <hr at ivs.edu> wrote:
> Thank you for these observations. I will add this:
> 
> 1. In his Dhvany-aloka, Ananda-vardhana uses the term aucitya, “fitness, suitableness” in this sense: in order to inspire the proper rasa or sentiment in an audience, reader, hearer etc, one may adjust or change some “historical” details of a story. One good example: the story of Shakuntala, found in Mahabharata and then “adjusted” for rasika effect by Kalidasa. 
> 
> 2. Apart from the license accorded by aucitya, acaryas and other commentators may ‘correct’ shastric passages on theological, i.e. siddhantic grounds, as in the case of Madhva “correcting” the Mahabharata. Similarly, the Bhagavata Purana “corrects” various stories of the Mahabharata, such as the death of the great King Pariksit. (It seems like everyone corrects the Mahabharata!) 
> 
> 3. At least to some extent Vedic/Hindu belief in the cyclical, repetitive nature of time certainly plays a role here. Imagine a poet who has observed many times the passing of four seasons. The poet then writes an ode to spring, or winter, etc. On the one hand, the poem does not seek to give a “scientific” metereological description of a specific spring or winter, with hard numbers for every day and hour. On the other hand, the poem is a poeticized, synthesized depiction of a real, objective phenomenon in the world: seasons. Ditto of course for Vivaldi’s classic Four Seasons. I suggest that sages, including shastra-krits, who believe in, or (from a faithful standpoint) experience, endless yuga cycles, including endless manvantaras, avataras, etc, give at times what they take to be a poeticized, synthesized picture of yugas, manvantaras, avataras, divya-lila etc. But like poets or composers who speak of seasons, these sages generally, perhaps not always, believe that they are speaking of real things, as much as Vivaldi certainly believed that four seasons exist.
> 
> 4. It seems the truth of this matter thus lies somewhere between two extremes:
> 	First extreme: Vedic and Hindu thinkers believed that Shastras are historical in exactly the same sense that modern academic historians believe that a well researched, well written history book basically tells an objective story.
> 	Second extreme: Vedic and Hindu thinkers had no sense of history, and no sense that itihasa-purana is objective history.
> 
> Thanks for your patience!
> Best
> Howard
> 	
> 
> On Jul 14, 2014, at 12:54 AM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> That was my hunch. I do not think that there was a purva-paksha that itihasa is not history and I also think that such a position was of general concern at his time.
>> You might want to reconsider your claim "Yet he accepts the basic Mahabharata story as real history, in all its supernatural abundance" then.
>>  
>> At a time when the category of 'history' itself is being interrogated , 'history' as a 'modern' category is being intensely scrutinized through 'post-modern' tools, elevation of 'history' to a higher value vis-à-vis myth and other narrative accounts of past is more and more being viewed as a product of enlightenment age fascination for logical positivist understandings, the tendency of an office to hang on to the obsolete tendency of claiming the assumed superior status of 'history' to certain narratives is what comes of the reported words of the new ICHR Chairman.
>>  
>> Warm regards,
>>  
>> Nagaraj 
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 5:07 AM, Howard Resnick <hr at ivs.edu> wrote:
>> Again, I think we need to first find evidence that Madhva engaged a purva-paksa notion that itihasa is not history, or that such a position was of general concern at his time.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Howard
>> 
>> On Jul 13, 2014, at 2:09 PM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > "Yet he accepts the basic Mahabharata story as real history, in all its supernatural abundance"
>> >
>> >                                                                                                                                        -Howard Resnick
>> >
>> > This is really interesting. May I know the exact words used by Sri Madhvacharya with the meaning 'real history' ? That citation will help in tracing the history of the notion of 'real history' among pre-modern Indian writers.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> >
>> > Nagaraj
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
>> > Hyderabad-500044
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > INDOLOGY mailing list
>> > INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>> > http://listinfo.indology.info
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
>> Hyderabad-500044
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
> Hyderabad-500044

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