[INDOLOGY] Comparison of Brahmins (and their cultural context) with Nazis (and their cultural context)? both inappropriate and inapt

Sun May 9 14:50:10 UTC 2021

Dear Jan,

Thank you for making this PDF available, I have a hard copy but it's always
useful to have a digital one too.

I too feel the comparison is fraught, please correct me if my musings are
completely wrong, but it seems to narrowly define Nazism as a kind of
anti-urban sentiment, and I don't think that is the case at all. Rather,
the Nazis who patronized the House of German Art were *urban*! We know of
many lyric poetic traditions (from the Sangam to the troubadours of
Provençe) who loved to represent the bucolic scene in their verbal art yet
that art was performed at a courtly non-rural setting. So are all these
"anti-urban" and thus some species of Nazism? Hardly. There is a much more
immediate reason why urban Nazis might have preferred landscapes, namely
they figured themselves to be natural inherent landlords of the country
(the Volk) and thus the sole owners/stakeholders of the government.
Everyone else is either an outsider or a service tenant in this model, no?
Urbanites viewing scenes of ruralia seems to me to be more about
constructing a vision of themselves as these landlords, like the
slave-owning plantation owners in the US that Hitler admired (and of course
a feature of classical liberalism is that only landed gentry can vote, that
is "own" the govt; "manifest destiny" easily becomes the quest for
Lebensraum). In other words, the museum becomes a way for urban Nazis to
conceive of their place in their domain.

And maybe this isn't the whole story, but it seems to be radically
different from the middle (even late) Vedic situation, which derives
directly from a real pastoral/horticultural mode of subsistence in which
pasturage/fields are not part of self-idealization but actually the basis
of food production. The elaborate inter-clan hospitality rituals of the
Vedas speaks more to an anxiety of the fragile nature of that existence and
the tenuous balance of power. Rather than anti-urban, I imagine that urban
centers were simply irrelevant to Vedic civilization at first, their more
immediate concerns were inter-clan politics on the ground. Now,
post-Alexander and post-Aśoka we may have a very different story but I am
not sure if we should continue to call it "Vedic civilization" at that
point. And if we are talking about post-Alexander/post-Aśoka then we are
talking about a radically different community, arguably traumatized, and
newly reactionary. I think that's a very different and new set of aesthetic
commitments and social concerns guiding the proto-Dharma tradition than
that of the middle/late Vedic period proper.

Perhaps there is something in the comparison I have completely
misunderstood, and if so mea culpa, but otherwise I don't get it.

Best,
Caley

On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 9:59 AM Jan E.M. Houben via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear All,
> A fascinating symposium on "Greater Magadha" is at present taking place at
> Edmonton (Alberta), Canada, and on account of the ongoing epidemic it is
> entirely online: the announcement (http://eventleaf.com/GreaterMagadha)
> is accessible on several lists.
> In a brief presentation and subsequent discussion of his theory at the
> beginning of this symposium -- a detailed argument and extensive references
> to pieces of evidence for this stimulating and well-researched theory is
> found in his *Greater Magadha: Studies in the culture of early India* (Leiden
> 2007) --   Johannes Bronkhorst referred briefly to his comparison between
> Brahmins (and their cultural context) and the German Nazis (and their
> cultural context). On this specific reference by Johannes Bronkhorst during
> the symposium, I posed a question in the special section set up by the
> organizers of the conference: "Questions and answers will be conducted over
> a separate service, sli.do."
> Since my question, although it received several "upvotes", did not pass
> the censorship of the anonymous "moderator" of the online questions -- who
> wrote to me "3 days ago (only visible to you) There was no such comparison"
> -- it would be useful to pose the question in other fora such as this
> Indology List.
> Those familiar with the work and especially the *Greater Magadha* book of
> Johannes Bronkhorst -- this apparently does not include the anonymous
> moderator of the Questions section of the symposium -- will have
> immediately recognized that the remark by Johannes Bronkhorst refers to pp.
> 251-252 of *Greater Magadha* (and similar passages elsewhere), where we
> read:
>
> "when it came in contact with cities, Vedic civilization did not like them.
> ...
> It is hard to resist the temptation of a comparison with the Third Reich.
> Among the hundreds of paintings brought together in the House of German Art
> in Munich, opened by Hitler in 1937, not a single canvas depicted urban and
> industrial life (Watson, 2004: 311-312)."
>
> The comparison is both inappropriate and inapt, especially since a very
> different analysis of the situation of the community of practicing Brahmins
> in ancient India is possible, for instance the one proposed by me in:
>
> “From Fuzzy-Edged ‘Family-Veda’ to the Canonical Śākhas of the Catur-Veda:
> Structures and Tangible Traces.” In: *Vedic Śākhās: Past, Present,
> Future. Proceedings of the Fifth International Vedic Workshop, Bucharest*
> 2011, ed. by J.E.M. Houben, J. Rotaru and M. Witzel, p. 159-192. Cambridge,
> Mass. : Harvard University, 2016.
>
> As the book is at present no more available but will soon again be
> available in a new edition, I have made this study *temporarily* accessible
> on my Academia.edu page.
>
> The main principles followed in this study to explain the situation of the
> community of practicing Brahmins in ancient India are (1) "natural
> selection" in the transmission of knowledge through any current medium of
> transmission (at first exclusively ritual, next ritual plus written texts,
> inscriptions and manuscripts -- much later printing is added and at present
> the internet...): see e.g. Houben 2001; (2) ritual in the context of an
> *evolving* economical and ecological world: see Houben 2019 (see also:
> Gadgil and Guha, *This Fissured Land: an Ecological History of India*,
> 1992 and Perennials edition 2013).
> N.B. Both Houben 2001:
> “’Verschriftlichung' and the relation between the *pramāṇa*s in the
> history of Sāṁkhya.” *Études de Lettres* 2001.3: *La rationalité en Asie
> / Rationality in Asia*, ed. by J. Bronkhorst: 165-194.
> and Houben 2019:
> “Ecology of Ritual Innovation in Ancient India: Textual and Contextual
> Evidence.” [NB: partly comparing and contrasting Vedic and ancient Iranian
> ritual.] In: *Self, Sacrifice, and Cosmos: Vedic Thought, Ritual, and
> Philosophy. Essays in Honor of Professor Ganesh Umakant Thite’s
> Contribution to Vedic Studies*, ed. by Lauren M. Bausch, pp. 182-210
> (References to this article integrated in id., “Bibliography,” pp.
> 223-238.) Delhi: Primus Books
> are now accessible on my Academia.edu page.
>
> I hope and expect the issue will lead to further fruitful discussions.
>
> All best, Jan Houben
>
> --
>
> *Jan E.M. Houben*
>
> Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology
>
> *Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite*
>
> École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, Paris Sciences et Lettres)
>
> *Sciences historiques et philologiques *
>
> Groupe de recherches en études indiennes (EA 2120)
>
> *johannes.houben [at] ephe.psl.eu <johannes.houben at ephe.psl.eu>*
>
> *https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
> <https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben>*
>
> *https://www.classicalindia.info* <https://www.classicalindia.info>
>
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>
> et transformations d'un savoir scientifique
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