[INDOLOGY] "Gupta Redaction" and Mahābhārata Criticism

[Joydeep]

Dear Colleagues,

Vishwa and I have composed a brief response to Fitzgerald’s “Brahmanic
redaction of earlier oral epic materials” hypothesis, presented at the
recent Leiden conference organized by Peter Bisschop and Elizabeth Cecil (*Asia
Beyond Boundaries: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Primary Sources in the
Premodern World*
<https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2018/08/conference-asia-beyond-boundaries-transdisciplinary-perspectives-on-primary-sources-from-the-premodern-world>,
August 27–31).



At this venue, Fitzgerald repeated, despite extensive evidence against this
thesis in print, his view that the Mahābhārata is presently a “Brahmanic
redaction of earlier oral epic materials.” Attributing Gupta-era origins to
the text, he stated that the current text reflects an attempt by Brahmans
to exert political and social influence following the Mauryas, an attempt
he called “largely successful.”



We have already discussed the misconception that the Mahābhārata Critical
Edition reconstructs a Brahmanic/normative/final redaction of the text
in *Philology
and Criticism* <https://www.academia.edu/36999444/Philology_and_Criticism>.
We have also shown that the idea of an earlier, shorter, and more “epic”
“Bhārata,” which preceded the Mahābhārata, is a myth. This myth, as we
showed in *The Nay Science*
<https://www.academia.edu/9924667/Introduction_to_The_Nay_Science>,
originated in the German Indologists’ nationalist, anti-Semitic, and racist
longings, and was closely bound up with the idea of an Indo-Germanic or
Aryan race. The search for the so-called *Urepos *has been one of the most
spectacular misadventures in the humanities. Scholars have neither evolved
objective criteria nor provided non-circular, non-question-begging
conclusions. The idea that the Pāṇḍavas were a non-Aryan, Brahmanic tribe
that was “grafted” into the Mahābhārata has racist antecedents, as we
showed in *The Nay Science*
<https://www.academia.edu/7394579/The_Nay_Science_Contents_and_Themes>. No
evidence exists for an earlier *Heldengedicht *without the alleged
Brahmanic and *bhakti *“interpolations,” an idea that we showed was
Christian Lassen’s fantasy. Removing passages from the transmitted text
neither establishes the existence of a “pre-Brahmanic” Mahābhārata nor does
it prove Brahmanic mischief, however much scholars may desire it.
Fitzgerald’s conference paper
<https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/binaries/content/assets/geesteswetenschappen/lias/program-and-book-of-abstracts.pdf>
 uncritically repeated these tropes of an ideological Brahmanic takeover
without either argument or evidence. Finally, the suggestion that the
Mahābhārata is a Gupta-era text suffers from the fallacy of *cum hoc ergo
propter hoc*: from the fact that we find material correlates (inscriptions,
coinage, temple ruins) of the Mahābhārata’s theological and iconographic
descriptions in the Gupta period we must not conclude that the work was
authored or “redacted” at this time. These descriptions could antedate
their correlates by several centuries. Even if the Critical Edition has
features that we think a text in the Gupta period would also have had, it
does not follow that the text was “redacted” to include them, for the
simple reason that no one could have known that they had to redact this
exemplar rather than any other, as it, rather than any other, would produce
descendants that survived. Fitzgerald has not clarified which text he
intends—do his comments pertain to the constituted text of the Critical
Edition, the vulgate, or some earlier version? Moreover, which of the
several manuscripts in existence are Fitzgerald’s “Brahmans” supposed to
have redacted?



We have followed with interest the discussion on this list about opening up
conferences to critical voices and minorities. The intent is laudable. But
we will succeed only to the extent that we ourselves exercise absolute
probity. Not hosting an open call for papers, using ERC funding without a
transparent selection process, announcing conferences four days before they
occur, inviting scholars connected by personal ties to the organizers;
providing a platform for scholars whose tendentious and speculative views
have been refuted, and not permitting competing views—are guaranteed to
bring our discipline into disrepute. As Vishwa and I have repeatedly urged,
let us first get our own house in order. To this day the German Oriental
Society relies on an opaque and feudal system of *Empfehlungsschreiben *that
bars critics from membership (see “Theses on Indology,” nn. 13 and 55
<https://www.academia.edu/30584042/Theses_on_Indology> and “Jews and Hindus
in Indology,” n. 178
<https://www.academia.edu/30937643/Jews_and_Hindus_in_Indology>). To this
day it has prevented discussion of its Nazi connections. The threatened
exit of German Indologists from the IASS raises hopes that we can at last
have a free and fair discussion about racism, anti-Semitism,
anti-Brahmanism, Nazism, Christian evangelism, Protestant fundamentalism,
caste discrimination, and the treatment of Jewish, minority, Asian, and
women scholars in Indology. Instead of using the rhetoric of “*Wissenschaft*”
and “expertise” (*Philology and Criticism*, pp. 269–74
<https://www.academia.edu/36999444/Philology_and_Criticism>) to cover up a
system of reciprocal favors, we should be using the conference system to
foster excellence.


Sincerely,

Joydeep


Dr. Joydeep Bagchee
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Academia.edu Homepage <https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/JoydeepBagchee>

The Nay Science
<http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-nay-science-9780199931361;jsessionid=94DFF6B197750DBE7C7E64A4FB8B28D2?cc=de&lang=en&>
Argument and Design
<http://www.brill.com/products/book/argument-and-design-unity-mahabharata>
Reading the Fifth Veda <http://www.brill.com/reading-fifth-veda>
When the Goddess Was a Woman <http://www.brill.com/when-goddess-was-woman>
Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India
<http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415844697/>
German Indology on OBO Hinduism
<http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399318/obo-9780195399318-0147.xml>
___________________
What, then, is Philosophy?
Philosophy is the supremely precious.

Plotinus, Enneads I.III.5


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