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

Mon May 10 07:43:54 UTC 2021

Dear Caley,
In your reactions I think you have put the finger where it hurts, where the
comparison is indeed entirely fraught.
I especially like your remarks:
(1) ... the middle (even late) Vedic situation ... 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.
(2) ... the focus is really on the poetic-priestly tradition and these
patrons as the audience.
(3) ... we would speak of Vedic "ceremony-networks".
It is remarkable how arguments about ancient India often try to move around
on the map monolithic and mono-linguistic communities, without inner
differentiation and inner (social, sociolinguistic) dynamics.
Your work is an exception, as is the work of Heesterman and a few others.
All best,
Jan

On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 18:12, Caley Smith <smith.caley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Artur,
>
> I would say... I don't know? Most Vedic ritual activities depict
> themselves as being ideally patronized by a materially-wealthy financiers
> or hoping for that (and despising stingy ones). The ritual moment is a kind
> of public moment when many clans are together and so the proto-śrauta
> system, I see, as a kind of inter-clan negotiation one
> which can produce a coalition, a detente to hostilities, as well as
> consecration, marriage, funerary activities. So the focus is really on the
> poetic-priestly tradition and these patrons as the audience. Not much
> mention of cities, urban life, etc. but it's also not necessarily the case
> that a clan that patronized Vedic ritual
> could not be construed through the categories of "farmers, craftsmen,
> merchants" in addition to what we expect (that is ranchers). I would say
> the texts care little for this kind of vision of society, and rather are
> focused on a society made of  generous and hospitable patrons (as opposed
> to stingy ones), and those in our coalition (as opposed to
> enemies/outsiders). But on urban life in the Vedas proper I have heard a
> vast silence---and that makes sense because cities were not "on the ritual
> ground" and nearly everything topical and of concern to the Vedas is
> happening on the ritual ground or is embedded in an aetiological narrative
> justifying something happening on the ritual ground. That does not mean
> that they didn't know about cities, but in my published work I don't write
> about urban life either because it is not the topic at hand (as I imagine
> Buddhist dhāraṇīs, for instance, don't have much to say about urban
> logistics either...). In which case, we wouldn't speak of "Vedic
> civilization" either, we would speak of Vedic "ceremony-networks" from
> which perhaps we can infer things about the historical political
> organizations that employed them.
>
> On the other hand, by this description I am inherently assuming Vedic
> tradition is something that has to do with the "Vedic period" and "the
> Vedas," there are of course much later (pre/post Classical) texts that
> would claim the mantle of the Vedic tradition that *may* have a good deal
> to say about urban life, but if so I am ignorant of them currently and
> would love to know more.
>
> Best,
> Caley
>
> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 11:49 AM Artur Karp <karp at uw.edu.pl> wrote:
>
>> Tak.
>>
>> A few questions, perhaps simplistic, but nevertheless necessary.
>>
>> Did something described as "Indian civilization" actually exist (Caley:  <I
>> am not sure if we should continue to call it "Vedic civilization" at that
>> point.>).
>>
>> If so - then when, where, in what forms?
>>
>> Did farmers, craftsmen, merchants fully participate in it?
>>
>> Were the religious messages preserved in the Vedic texts accessible to
>> them linguistically - and conceptually?
>>
>> Were early urban organisms administered by reference to Vedic legal
>> formulas, including, but not limited to, the cleaning up of urban spaces of
>> refuse, of animal and human excrement? Including taxation?
>>
>> I would like to know where in the Vedic tradition I could find these
>> kinds of formulas. I see them in the Buddhist tradition, clearly - but in
>> the Vedic tradition?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Artur
>>
>>
>> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> Wolny
>> od wirusów. www.avast.com
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>>
>> niedz., 9 maj 2021 o 16:51 Caley Smith via INDOLOGY <
>> indology at list.indology.info> napisał(a):
>>
>>> 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>
>>>>
>>>> LabEx Hastec OS 2021 -- *L'Inde Classique* augmentée: construction,
>>>> transmission
>>>>
>>>> et transformations d'un savoir scientifique
>>>>
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>>>
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>>

-- 

*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>

LabEx Hastec OS 2021 -- *L'Inde Classique* augmentée: construction,
transmission

et transformations d'un savoir scientifique
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